Sotah (36 page)
Outside in the darkness white gloves flashed like exclamation points in the night. Dark men stood silently, watching.
S
he was traveling toward the brink. She felt if, saw it, like a bold and dangerous new frontier that loomed solid and immovable in the distance. Yet it was hard for her to believe in its reality. At home everything remained virtually the same. Judah asked no questions, demanded no explanations of her comings and goings. He was calm, steady, and warm in his love. He continued to shower her with his odd little gifts: wildflowers, drawings of birds, little wood carvings, pretty scarves, packages of exotic teas. Only, perhaps, his young, smooth brow had begun to lose its flexibility, springing back slower as, increasingly, he kneaded the skin in thought.
Her time together with Noach was becoming less frequent and more difficult to arrange. Chaya Leah had finished her exams and taken over the shop once again in the afternoons and evenings, giving Dina little reason to be out after dark.
She had taken to meeting Noach after visits to her father and Dvorah. But lately she was finding the transition from honest family visits to illicit, secret liaisons increasingly loathsome and degrading. More and more, with sickening results, the question kept repeating itself to her: “What if they knew?” She felt as if she were carrying the germs of some vile contagion deliberately into their healthy, innocent homes.
She began to see him less often, yet her thoughts were never far from him. Her dreams took on new urgency, new color, and an almost violent passion. Often she was in his arms, their bodies tangled inseparably. She could not get free of him. She did not want to. With him, even only his image in her mind, the whole world was charming and light, with an unpredictable newness, a variety, she found irresistible.
No, it was not her husband who was transforming the familiar landscape, turning it into an unknown, unexplored country. It was Noach.
He was constantly pushing, convincing, wooing. Even when her eyes were closed, his silent face pleaded. His eyes implored from every window. His hands were urging, insistent, and on the brink of rage. He wanted her to go away with him to Tel Aviv for two days. His wife was going to Haifa for a cousin’s wedding, and he had convinced her to stay on at the hotel with the children for a few extra days’ vacation while he went back to work. He wanted Dina to join him in Tel Aviv overnight.
“We have no privacy,” he argued convincingly. “We’ll be able to swim at the beach. To watch TV and videos, with no one to bother us …” The rest he left unsaid. The ultimate act of intimacy, the complete joining that would officially unite them and damn them forever, they never discussed. So far, their intimacies had not gone beyond long talks, long walks, some hand-holding, and a few kisses. “In Tel Aviv, in a five-star hotel, no one will suspect we aren’t man and wife,” he whispered to her, his breath warm on her neck and ear.
In the light of day, or sitting with Judah in the lamplight, the idea seemed an impossible, vaguely repulsive fantasy. Yet at other times—after hours of romantic conversations, with Noach’s hands caressing the small of her back—it seemed like the most delicious, wonderful, exciting experience life could ever offer her. She hated the swift passing of their stolen moments together. If two hours left her breathless with joy, then what would happen in two days? she exulted, brimming with a reckless elation, a joyous, in-held laughter so loud that it deafened her to all other voices, like a tremendous thunderclap.
Then one morning, after a week and a half of not being together, she returned home from the park with the baby and found Noach standing in front of her door.
“Noach!” It was broad daylight. People were walking up and down the stairs. She even thought she heard his wife’s voice coming out of his apartment. It was insane!
He pressed his body against hers, backing her up against the door. “Let me in,” he said in low, urgent tones. His pupils were dilated, his lips closed together firmly.
Little Yossele was still sitting in the carriage, his eyes wide with surprise, watching his mother and the stranger. She fumbled for her key, wanting only to get into the house, away from the neighbors who might pass by. The door opened. She backed in slowly, holding the baby against her chest, as if for protection. Noach followed her swiftly.
“I have to talk to you.” He was pacing up and back, agitated.
She ran to close the curtains. She put the baby into his playpen, then walked back into the living room. He was sitting on Judah’s chair. The sight of him there filled her with a sickening guilt.
“Don’t!” She pulled him up.
His arms enveloped her. She felt herself thrown back against the wall, crushed, overpowered. Yet her body responded with odd joy, more to his enthusiasm, his passion for her, than to anything else. They were two bodies, nothing more. She didn’t think. There was no such thing as right or wrong. The longing was so strong, it obliterated all other considerations, all restraints.
Strangely, it was Noach who pulled back. He didn’t want it to be quick. He had plans that took time, long, slow, unhurried hours of absolute privacy. Like a gourmet, he was not willing to take his meal, no matter how delicious, without the proper surroundings. Her baby calling from the playpen, his wife just across the hall, was not what he had in mind. “I want you to say yes. I want you to agree! To promise me! June twenty-ninth at the Tel Aviv Hilton. For two days!” Before she could answer, his hands pressed her back toward him, his mouth covering hers. She felt his fingers slipping inside the collar of her dress, caressing the back of her neck.
He took his mouth off hers, waiting for her to speak. He felt her fall against him, burying her head on his shoulder. “I want you to answer me,” he cajoled. “Please …” Tears sprang into his eyes.
She looked up at him, shocked. With her small, childish palm, she wiped away the tears, drying her hand on her own cheek. “Yes—” She stared into his face, overpowered by the intensity of the moment, the overwhelming relief at having come to some decision. “Only go now. Before someone sees!” She almost hated him suddenly for being there. And yet her body! What was she to do with its longing, its shameless, unequivocal response?
“So you swear?”
“No. I promise. You know one is not allowed to swear,” she admonished him.
It made him smile cynically, as always, this evidence of her small pieties in the face of her very large sins. Then he released her. He listened by the door a moment, then swiftly made his exit into the hall.
She locked the door, then leaned against it, feeling annihilated. And glad.
B”H
Dear Moishe,
Your cousin Mendel held on to your letter two weeks before getting it to me, so that is the reason for the delay. As always, the minute I open it up I smell it. But it doesn’t smell particularly like you. It smells like the army, all sweaty and oily.
How I wish I could see you!
I was surprised to hear about the payess. Are your parents aware you’ve cut them off? Or are they still refusing to see you? It must be very awful for you on the holidays when the other men go home. Holidays at home are not the same for me either. Not without Ima. The housekeeper tries her best, but she is no cook, and the boys still ache for Ima. I try to substitute in a little way. It comforts me too, to hold them. I’m so lonely most of the time, I could die.
Don’t pressure me, please, about Aba. He doesn’t understand about us. He’s pretending nothing has happened. He’s talking about calling Reb Garfinkel … Don’t worry!! They will never, never pressure me as they did my sisters. No matter what it winds up costing, we will be married one day. I defy them all! But I can’t fight with my father just now. He is so exhausted most of the time, so weak. I just can’t aggravate him.
My final exams went all right, I guess. I wasn’t trying very hard. And Morganbesser watches me like a hawk. How I detest that woman, with her phony little sermons, her sickeningly sweet smiles. Maybe in your fantasy of rounding up the Morals Patrol in your tank, you could include her, especially in the part where you start dumping them over the Syrian border!
I know you mean well when you tell me not to feel responsible for my mother’s death. But I can’t help connecting the grief I gave her to what happened. My heart is broken over it, as you know. I can’t promise you it will ever heal. That is why I must be the biggest tzdakis from now on. You would laugh if you could see me cleaning the house, tending the boys, making chicken soup for sick neighbors, bringing warm clothes to old people. But the work is good. It feels as if I’m working off some enormous debt. I don’t really know if I will ever be finished.
No, I haven’t gotten all pious on you. I’m still myself. Just older, and sadder.
How I long for you!
Chaya Leah
B”H
Dear Chaya Leah,
I don’t think you would recognize me. The uniform fits better now than it did in the beginning. I’ve lost weight, which is not surprising, since the army isn’t exactly a place where the food is tempting to begin with. Besides, even though the food is supposed to be kosher, and in fact there is even some little knitted skullcap type that is supposed to be the mashgiach, I still don’t trust the kitchen. People are constantly in there. They use the meat knife to cut the cheese, and put cereal and milk into the meat soup bowls. So, I’m pretty much subsisting on raw fruits, vegetables, bread (mostly two days old), and lots of leben and yogurt. Can I manage two more years of this? Do I have a choice?
The problem I had with the other recruits at the beginning is getting better now. They no longer call me kuni lemel, and have come to see the wisdom of having a beard (otherwise you have to shave every morning, even out in the field!!). The men have also come to see the advantage of having a “dos” (that’s how we are nicknamed here, from Orthodos) in the unit. I am very popular when I volunteer for guard duty every time they are dying to see some soccer match on TV. On the other hand, they use me as the official whipping boy for anything that happens anywhere in the country which puts religious Jews in a bad light. You know, that whole disgraceful thing with Reb K., the Rabbinical Court judge, who was getting the women who came before him to sleep with him in exchange for granting divorces. Well, you’d think this perverted creep was my twin brother, the way everyone jumps on me! See, see, how can it be? they constantly demand. You see, how all the religious ones are just as bad as we are! Reb K., the pervert, may he drop dead for all the problems he’s given me. But I’ve learned not to fall into that trap. I just shrug and say: “How should I know why he behaved the way he did?” That sort of takes the wind out of their sails and they leave me alone for a little while. Until the next religious scandal.
My master sergeant (
RASAR,
they call him, everything in the army is an acronym) has let up on me and given me the time I need each morning and afternoon to put on tefillin and pray. Also, I told him that if he didn’t give me the time I needed, I was going straight to the colonel. I would have, too Army rules are pretty generous when it comes to keeping religious beliefs. Who would have believed it, in Israel of all places!
The first part of the training was the worst. I figured out that the only purpose to most of the things we did—all the midnight marches, the two a. m. inspections, the minute examinations of how we folded our blankets and cleaned our guns—was to break our spirits. That is, to take away any lingering ideas that we were still independent, thinking human beings. In the army, you are not supposed to think, but to do what you are told. I guess, in a way, being a Hasid is pretty good training. But combining being a Hasid with being a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces is pretty near impossible. I’m happy I did it, though, despite everything. I’m glad to have escaped Meah Shearim.
Most of my scars have healed, although one or two still ache whenever it rains. That’s when I think of Kurzman and the Morals Patrol the most. I’ll be happy to add Morganbesser to my dream of rounding them all up at gunpoint in Meah Shearim before dragging them in my tank to the Golan Heights. A boy can dream, can’t he?
But most of the time, I dream about you. I worry when you don’t write. I hope you’re feeling a little less depressed than the last time. It’s insane for you to blame yourself for your mother’s death. A heart doesn’t get weak and give out overnight. Besides, some say it’s genetic, that your heart is just born with that little built-in recorded message when to give out. I regret that you got into trouble. But I don’t regret anything else.
In another year and three months, I’ll be out of the army. Please, wait for me. We’ll think of something.
All my love,
Moishe
T
he strangest thing about the day was its lack of strangeness. The sun rose, the baby smiled. Judah ate his breakfast and kissed her good-bye. She even sat down and buttered herself a slice of toasted challah bread left over from Shabbat. She ate it with amazing slowness, but with no appetite. In fact, although she felt the crumbs on her tongue, in between her teeth, she couldn’t taste anything. Or perhaps she just couldn’t remember she was eating and so forgot food was supposed to have a taste.
He would be waiting for her at two P.M. in a Tel Aviv beachfront hotel. Judah had hardly seemed to listen as she’d begun her casual but long explanation of how she had to stay overnight in Bnai Brak with an old friend to help her over a difficult pregnancy. “She’s so depressed. She just begged me to come,” she’d said fairly easily. Only when she’d added, “It would be a mitzvah,” did a small ache at the back of her throat almost strangle the words in her chest. Judah hadn’t asked her any questions, just looked down at the floor as if he were studying something broken or dirty that needed to be taken care of, making a mental note to take care of it. But he’d nodded his assent pleasantly enough, she’d noted, as his look began to prick her ballooning sense of confidence and well-being.
