Davita's Harp (43 page)

David chanted the morning service in a voice that was changing
timbre and growing deep. I listened to the music of the service. He read the Torah, slowly, carefully, the melody flowing across the curtained wall. I saw him dimly through the curtain; he was standing at the podium in his dark suit and tie and dark skullcap and prayer shawl, swaying slowly back and forth as he chanted the service. My mother sat very still, her eyes on the Bible in her hands. She looked lovely in a pale yellow dress and a white beret, her face smooth and high with color. We sat together, listening to David. I wished I could see him clearly. I wished I could watch clearly his eyes and his lips and the movements of his body. I wished I could be near him when he finished. Some minutes later he completed the final blessing and was deluged by a cascade of candies. There were cries of “Mazol tov! Mazol tov!” I saw dimly through the curtain my father embracing David. Around us, women shook my mother’s hand. Then I heard my father’s voice. He had stepped to the podium and had begun the second portion of the service.

A few minutes later David stood before the congregation and began a lengthy talk based on the Torah reading. He talked about the future of Yiddishkeit in America, about the need to build more yeshivas, about the importance of the law in the life of the Jew. He quoted repeatedly from the Talmud. He thanked his father. He thanked his mother, of blessed memory. He thanked my mother. He even thanked me for being a kind sister, and I felt my face go hot. He thanked his teachers. He uttered a prayer for a speedy end to the war and for the coming of the Messiah. It was an involved talk and I remember the music of his voice—strong and clear and shading into the deep baritone he would one day have. How I wished I could see him clearly!

He was done. A loud murmur of approval filled the room. People seemed awed. My mother sat very quietly, her head high. And then I saw her nod slowly to herself. She was looking off into a corner of the synagogue, where no one sat, where there was only the juncture of floor and walls—and nodding slowly and faintly to herself. Her face was serene and there was a light in her eyes. I
had the feeling she was telling herself she had made the right choice for her life and was now finally content.

My mother rose to her feet three times to say Kaddish. She was the only one in the women’s section to do that. A few of the women responded in the appropriate places. Most were silent, impassive.

Afterward there was the crowd outside in front of the school, the tumult of congratulations, the exhilaration of successful achievement. David was thumped and pounded and congratulated. His face was flushed; he seemed in a state of astonished disbelief over having accomplished it all so successfully and being forever done with his childhood. I looked at him as he stood surrounded by his classmates and felt for the first time the gnawing touch of envy. Nothing like that for me when I’d leave my childhood. All I had to look forward to was menstruating every month, bleeding and sanitary napkins and discomfort.

David was graduated the following day. The Akiva Award went to an eighth-grader named Joshua Langner. I had seen pictures of him in the newspapers, a silent and sullen boy who was reputed to possess a photographic memory. He delivered a boring talk in a low and barely audible voice.

David’s name was announced. He rose to the podium to receive the Talmud prize. Loud applause followed. The winner of the Akiva Award seemed to have been forgotten. David was the center of a joyous communal festival. All seemed to sense that his future achievements in Talmud would reflect upon them, their school, their synagogue, their small Torah world.

That night I was unable to sleep. Images of the day crowded my eyes. I lay awake and listened to the apartment settle into the deep silence of the night. Still I could not sleep. I got out of bed and turned on my desk lamp and stood squinting in the light. There was the picture of the beach on the wall and there was the harp on the door. Carefully, I opened the door and stood in the hallway, listening. The harp sang briefly and grew still.

The apartment was dark and silent.

I went quietly to the living room, snapped on a table lamp, and took down from a bookshelf the first volume of my father’s
Jewish Encyclopedia.
It was a large book, bound in thick dark red buckram and very heavy. I turned off the lamp and went back to my room.

I put the volume on my desk and sat in my chair. I had on only a nightgown, but the air was warm and I did not feel chilled. An odd throbbing sensation filled my throat. I opened the book and began to search through it for the name Akiva.

It was not there.

I thought there might be a different spelling of the name; that happened often when Hebrew words were spelled out in English.

I found the name Akiba. There were ten entries under that name. I did not know what to do.

I began to read each of the entries.

The first was about a medieval talmudist and mystic named Akiba Baer ben Yosef. The next three were references to other entries. The fifth was about someone called Akiba ben Joseph. I read the first paragraph and knew I had found the name I was seeking.

He had been born about the year 50 of the common era and had died a martyr about the year 132. The article called him the father of rabbinical Judaism. It said that he marked out a path for rabbinical Judaism for almost two thousand years.

The second paragraph was more difficult to read than the first. Akiba was an ignorant shepherd, it said, and began to study when he was forty years old. I read that again. Forty years old.

The article was difficult to read. But certain words and phrases leaped out from the densely clustered language and small print: Akiba’s political followers; numerous journeys; modesty; kindness toward the sick and needy; moral worthiness; could not be cowed by the greatest. Quickly the article became highly technical, and I could not read on. I skipped to the end and saw a section titled In Legend. I read a story about the sudden change in his life from shepherd to student: He noticed a stone at a well that had been hollowed out by drippings from the buckets, and said, “If these
drippings can, by continuous action, penetrate this solid stone, how much more can the persistent word of God penetrate the pliant, fleshly human heart, if that word but be presented with patient insistency.” I read that he owed everything to his wife, who was the daughter of a wealthy and respected man and who married him on condition that he devote himself to study. When her father discovered the marriage, he drove his daughter from his house. They lived in terrible poverty. She had to sell her hair to enable him to continue his studies. He spent twenty-four years away from her, studying, and returned a great and famous scholar, escorted by 24,000 disciples. When his poorly clad wife was about to embrace him, some of his students, not knowing who she was, tried to restrain her. He said to them, “Let her alone; for what I am, and for what we are, to this noble woman the thanks are due.” I read that his favorite saying was, “Whatever God does, He does for the best,” and that when someone asked him, “Why has God not made man just as He wanted him to be?” he answered, “For the very reason that the duty of man is to perfect himself.”

I began to read a section titled Akiba and the Dead, and fell asleep over the book. I woke hours later and for a long and fearful moment did not know where I was. The air felt cool. I went out of the room with the volume and returned it to its place in the living room bookcase. I climbed into my bed and lay awake in the darkness, thinking of Rabbi Akiba.

The following week Germany invaded Russia.

“I hope they destroy each other,” my mother said as we sat in the kitchen, listening to the radio. “I hope they eat each other alive.”

Hot darkly joyous vengeance lay upon her face and in her eyes. “But what if Hitler wins?” David asked.

“No one can defeat Russia,” my father said somberly. “Hitler has just lost the war. But millions will die before it’s over.” We spent the summer in the red-brick house in Sea Gate. Every
morning and evening my mother walked to the little synagogue to say Kaddish for Jakob Daw. I swam and went about with young people my age and took long walks on the beach and the Coney Island boardwalk. I read a great deal—short stories and novels and a book I found in the Sea Gate library on Rabbi Akiva.

We returned to the city in the first week of September. David began traveling daily to a prestigious yeshiva high school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where there was a talmudist who had received a law degree from Columbia University and with whom his father wanted him to study.

I entered eighth grade.

In the early fall the Kaddish period for Jakob Daw ended. I came into the kitchen one morning—and there was my mother, preparing breakfast. Our family returned to its normal state.

Some weeks later my mother told us that she was pregnant. She announced it at the kitchen table during supper. “I would like to tell all of you that the woman of this household is expecting a baby early next summer.”

My father, normally reserved, coughed, put down his knife and fork, stared at her, and nearly burst into tears. He was overjoyed and seemed not to know what to say. Never demonstrative in his affections toward my mother when the children were around, he now embraced her and gave her a long kiss. He opened a bottle of wine and we drank to life. He could not contain his joy. My mother sat quietly, smiling and serene.

David and I glanced at each other; his cheeks colored slightly.

I told Ruthie about it in school the next day. She whooped with joy and immediately went and told her father, who was now teaching eighth grade and was our Hebrew teacher as well as the head of the Hebrew Department. He smiled at me when we trooped back into class after the recess and mouthed at me the words mazol tov.

Mrs. Helfman came upstairs that evening and visited with my
mother awhile in the kitchen. From my room I heard them talking quietly and laughing. Later there was a meeting in the living room: my father and some people from the synagogue. I heard strange words again, and voices raised in anger.

The harp lay still on my door. Over my bed the stallions galloped in silence across the red-sand beach.

On occasion my parents would go out in the evenings to the theater or the movies and David and I would be alone. One night he tapped on my door and came inside, leaving the door open behind him. I looked up from my books. The balls of the harp danced softly upon the taut strings.

“Am I disturbing you?” he asked. “Are you still studying? It’s so late.”

I told him to come in and sit down.

He advanced hesitantly into the room and sat in the chair next to my bed. His eyes were narrow, tired. He seemed in an odd trancelike mood.

“I need to talk to you about something,” he said.

I sat at my desk and waited.

“About—girls,” he said.

I looked at him. He was very pale. He spent about an hour each weekday morning on the crowded subway. Then school all day. Then about an hour on the crowded subway home. Then homework. He looked worn.

“I have dreams,” he said. “About girls. Do you ever have dreams about boys?”

“Sometimes.”

“I see them,” he said, then stopped. “They’re—” He stopped again. Then he said, “Do you like me, Ilana?”

“Of course I like you. You’re my brother.”

“No I’m not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not your brother. I’m your stepbrother. There’s a difference.”

“I don’t think about the difference.”

“You should.”

“Why?”

“Because—” He stopped again and passed a hand over his eyes. His face was set with determination. “I dream about you a lot, Ilana. Is that terrible?” He looked ashamed.

“No. Why should it be terrible?”

“It’s a sin to have dreams like that.”

I didn’t understand what he meant.

“Do you dream about me?” he asked.

“Sure. Sometimes.”

“What do you dream?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Tell me.”

“I really can’t remember.”

“Do you ever see me in your dreams without my—without my clothes?”

I stared at him. My heart moved inside me in a strange and frightening way. “No. I can’t remember.”

“I see you that way sometimes,” he said. “You’re very pretty. I’m proud you’re my stepsister. I tell you that in my dreams. How proud I am that you’re my stepsister.”

I did not say anything.

“Are you angry at me?” he asked plaintively. “Please don’t be angry at me.”

“I’m not angry, David.” My voice trembled. I kept my knees tightly together.

“Everyone thinks I’m a saint. Everyone thinks all I do all day and night is study study study.”

I said nothing.

“I really like you, Ilana. I needed to tell someone about my dreams. Sometimes I think I’m going to explode.” “Can’t you tell Papa?”

“No. I don’t think so. Something inside me tells me I can’t talk to Papa about this. Something inside me said you were the only one I could talk to.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“Sometimes when I’m asleep I wake up in the middle of the night and—and—” He stopped. “It’s a sin,” he said. “It’s against the Torah. But what can I do? I can’t control it. What can I do?”

I sat at my desk looking down at my books and was very quiet. I wondered if he could hear the wild beating of my heart.

“Maybe I ought to go to my rosh yeshiva,” he murmured, talking to himself. “But I’m afraid. I’m afraid he may throw me out of the yeshiva. There’s no one to talk to, Ilana, if everyone thinks that you’re a saint.”

“You can talk to me, David.”

“Can I kiss you?” he asked suddenly.

My heart lurched. I stared at him.

“On your cheek. Can I kiss you?”

I nodded. I thought my heart would tear itself apart. He came toward me and put his lips on my cheek. I felt his fear and his heat and his breath on my face. His lips were smooth and hot. He backed slowly away, his eyes strange and a little wild-looking.

“I’m glad you’re my sister,” he said very quietly. “I’m glad you let me talk to you.”

He went slowly from the room, closing the door behind him.