I Am Forbidden (15 page)

“A beautiful dress,” Mila said.

“But Florina wears black.”

“Even now she wears black?”

Josef let out a heavy sigh.

Determinedly, Mila arranged the flowered silk inside the package.

In the post office, waiting in line for the postage to Romania, Mila wrote her new name and her Williamsburg address on a postcard. Not knowing Atara’s address, she took the card home and placed it between two pages of her Book of Days.

*

O
N THE
Festival of the Law, Simchath Torah, Mila and Josef attended services at the main synagogue. Mila was still enchanted by this world in which everyone was dressed as she and Josef were dressed, women in white kerchiefs, men in shtreimels. People she had never met greeted them as if they were reuniting; some had known her parents, some remembered her as a toddler, and the newlyweds walked with a greater sense of purpose—they, too, would raise a name in Israel for their murdered parents and siblings.

In front of the synagogue, Josef pointed to a side door. “The women’s entrance. Don’t be shy. Push to the front row or you won’t see a thing.”

A swell of white kerchiefs rolled upward, a surge Mila hoped would sweep her along, but kept leaving her behind. Her neighbor recognized the young bride from Paris and took hold of Mila’s elbow. Together they thrust themselves up the stairs, to the front row.

Unlike the balcony in the Paris synagogue, where a low screen of bronze rosettes allowed men on the main floor to crane their necks and wave to their wives, the women’s balcony in the Williamsburg synagogue was set behind a high, tightly woven wooden lattice. Mila pressed an eye to a diamond-shaped opening in the lath. The first round had begun. The men’s feet lifted and fell rhythmically. She looked for Josef but could not find him in a crowd of hundreds dressed as he was, in shimmering black caftans and sable-fur hats.

In the center of the circle, wearing a white caftan, the Rebbe swayed, cradling a small Torah scroll. His prayer shawl draped over his head and covered his face. The Rebbe ran a few steps as if borne aloft by the men’s singing; the men receded like reeds. “Aye mamale mamale aye,” the Rebbe cried out. “Ayeyaiyaiyai!” his Hasidim responded.

Watching the men dance, it was as if Mila, too, were dancing; hearing the men sing, it was as if she, too, were singing, and when the Rebbe leapt, hugging the scroll to his chest, the tingling in Mila’s knees spread to her belly.

The Rebbe raised the Torah scroll; the two lions embroidered on the scroll’s mantle advanced, retreated, and pranced along the circle, their front paws upholding Judah’s crown.

The Rebbe’s head rolled from side to side and his prayer shawl slid down to his shoulders.

His face uncovered, Mila recognized him at once: the man with the high forehead, loose sidecurls, deep eye sockets; the man who kept looking into a book when her mother ran to him—the man in the open boxcar.

Women behind her jostled to get a glimpse, prying her away from the lattice, but Mila’s hands clenched the slats. Her neighbor spoke in Mila’s ear: “See how the light shines
from
his face, not
on
his face!”

The Rebbe ran a few steps, away from her, then he turned back and Mila thought he was running toward her, dancing in front of her as he chanted
“Aye mamale aye.…”
The Rebbe circled away, twisting this way, that way, like a flame, and inside this flame Mila saw the vanishing train, and she, reaching this way, that way, for her mother and father, reaching, reaching—

Mama?
She held out a hand to a shadow on the ceiling; her other hand clung, white-knuckled, to the lattice. Her knees folded under her and she felt her balance slip. Just when the synagogue grew quiet for the Rebbe to sing, Mila called aloud “Mama? Rebbe?” and slumped to the floor.

Josef heard the cry; he heard the commotion in the balcony.

“It’s all right, she’s coming to,” someone said when he tore open the door to the women’s stairway.

Mila appeared at the top of the stairs, leaning on two women.

Josef helped her out of the synagogue.

The dancing resumed in the main hall, while the women in the mezzanine already wondered about the young bride from Paris: A female raising her voice in public, in the Rebbe’s presence? A fragile health, God forbid.…

When Mila lay tucked under her eiderdown, Josef asked what had happened.

“Of course it was him,” Mila said, “that was why we went, to see the Rebbe dance.”

“You saw the Rebbe before?”

“My father held me up during an entire sermon so I would see the Rebbe’s face. How would I forget his fiery eyes as he threatened, begged, wept, as he warned against Zionism? Then I saw him again.… Josef, what do people here say of the Rebbe’s escape?”

“A miracle. There is a big celebration every year, the twenty-first of Kislev, the anniversary date of his arrival in Switzerland. We’ll go. The whole community goes.”

“No one asks how the Rebbe found himself on that train for
prominenten
?”

“The man who negotiated the train had a dream: You must take the Rebbe of Szatmár or your mission will not succeed.”

“A dream? That’s how the Rebbe found himself on the train to Switzerland?”

“Everyone in Williamsburg knows about it.”

“Yes?” Mila’s hands tapped the eiderdown. “No one wonders why this one train ended up in Switzerland and not in Auschwitz? It’s all right Josef, I’m fine. I’m glad the Rebbe escaped … but it’s all true, isn’t it? The things that happened to me really happened to me? The open boxcars, my mother running, yelling,
‘Rebbe!’
 ”

“You mustn’t think of it … or when you do think of it, think of us, our future, our future children.”

“I will. I will. Now go back to shul. You must. People will talk if you miss another round—Josef? Please bring me my T’nach. Tonight we read the passage about Moses not crossing into the promised land, right?” Again, she tapped the eiderdown. “Go now, go. I’m fine.”

Mila opened her Book of Scripture. In keeping with the tradition on Simchath Torah, Mila read from the end of the Book of Scripture to the beginning,

Thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses died … and the children of Israel wept … and there arose not a prophet since … in all the great terror which Moses showed in the sight of all Israel
.

In the Beginning.…

*

I
N HER
B
OOK OF
D
AYS
, Mila counted:
Blood: 1, 2 … 5. Clean: 1, 2, 3 … 7
.

She draped her shoulders in the silver and purple stole.

When there was blood again, at the end of the month, she wanted to curl up and be consoled by Josef, but she knew the yearning was a manifestation of her evil inclination. Why else would she ache for his arms precisely during the part of the month when they could not touch? He could not blow a feather off her dress,
lest it lead to transgression
.

E
VERY MONTH
, Mila went to the ritual bath, but her belly did not swell.

It was not a good thing for a young woman in Williamsburg not to be pregnant.

There was not much to be, in Williamsburg, for a woman who was not pregnant.

From her window in the breezeless apartment, Mila watched the pram-pushing mothers trailed by lines of handholding children, the youngest closest to the pram. She could almost make out the plump baby knuckles squeezing the metal tubing.
Next month, dear Lord, let it be me
.

B
LOOD DAYS
, clean days, on every corner a neighbor’s belly pushed against the fabric of a skirt, one more Hasid impatient
to undo the terrible destruction.
Next month, dear Lord, remember me
.

When Mila passed among them, women hushed their talk of baby bottles and diapers. At Sabbath services, they held on to her hand. “I’m praying for you, Mrs. Lichtenstein.” The women buried their faces in their Scriptures; their torsos swayed.
He That maketh the barren wife to be a joyful mother.…

During the third year of their marriage, Mila consulted with her neighbors, who recommended a physician in Manhattan.

“The doctor says twenty-one is still young,” Mila told Josef upon her return. “He doesn’t see anything wrong.”

“Of course there’s nothing wrong,” Josef said.

On the High Holy Days, Mila prayed with heightened fervor.
Tekiah!
the horn summoned;
Teruah
, the horn wailed, and Mila pleaded:
Inscribe our child, O Lord, in the Book of Life
.

Josef, too, prayed for children. He never expressed disappointment, but at night, he dreamt of her fullness. How lovely she was in those dreams, her belly rounded, her thin face filled in. He dreamt of her singing to the child,
Yadidadidam!

T
HEY HAD PLANNED
for Josef to study
until the children came
, but the children kept not coming and Josef was turning into a
fixture in the House of Study. Alone in the small apartment, Mila gazed at the hard spines of Josef’s Talmud set. On occasion, she opened a tome: a lot of Aramaic, which she did not decipher as well as Hebrew. She picked up the more familiar Expanded Rabbinic Bible, which she read as she had been taught to read in Zalman’s home and at the seminary, stopping after each word, each cluster of words, for the rabbinic interpretations that unveiled the text’s meaning. But as her melancholy grew, Mila paused less frequently for the gloss’s smaller, fainter typeface. What exegesis did Mila need to grasp Rachel’s plea,
Give me a child or I will die
.

Except for Hannah’s needlepoint of a stag with large antlers near a watering hole, the walls were bare, as were the walls in most Hasidic homes. A glass leaf shielded the glossy tabletop, a wedding present from the Halberstamms, for when the children came.

Evening fell. She looked out the living-room window. She tried to make out Josef’s coat among the men rushing on the overpass. In Paris, Josef had stood out, his garb exotic, his black hat sacerdotal, and she had seen that he was handsome, the man who came from the land of her torn childhood, but among the scores of black flaps scuttling on the overpass, she could not distinguish his coat. She picked up her embroidery of the Tomb of Rachel, who had so begged for a child and had been granted two—
Mother Rachel, show me the healing leaves
.

*

“T
HE DOCTOR
says twenty-two is young. There’s nothing wrong.”

“Of course twenty-two is young,” Josef said.

*

E
VERY TWO YEARS
, Mila and Josef returned to Paris for Passover with the Sterns. As if her former home might restore her former promise, Mila filled with a child’s enchantment when the taxi drove along the yew hedges of the Tuileries, along the elms always budding at that season. At last, the taxi turned the corner with the familiar street sign, white letters on a marine background:
RUE DE SÉVIGNÉ
. Mila’s hand lingered on the quarter-turn of the handrail that used to slow her when she slid down, chest against wax-scented walnut. She ran up the three flights. The burnished
mezuzah on the doorpost, the doorsill, and into Hannah’s arms. After the joy of reunion, after tea and cake, Mila asked, “May I? Now?”

Hannah smiled. “Go child, go.”

The heavy porte cochere swung open. Mila gazed up and down the street. Limestone moldings, wrought-iron scrolls, peeling wooden shutters all felt precious after the bland functionality of Williamsburg. Her arm extended to feel the old wall’s caress. A note escaped from the violin repair shop. Snippets of conversation from passersby; her ear harkened after the longed-for liaisons, the vowels softened by
l
’s and
z
’s and velvety
t
’s, the steady cadences that strummed the lives of those who do not leave.

In the Luxembourg Gardens, she followed the chestnut-lined alley to the playground of her childhood, the shady coves of her adolescence. At every bend, she half expected Atara to appear.
Best friends, sisters for life
.

When Hannah and Zalman had found Atara’s note, Zalman hired detectives to bring her home, but the detectives failed to find her. Mila had witnessed Zalman and Hannah’s worry and despair. She had witnessed the stunned younger siblings in front of their parents’ wretchedness. When Zalman decreed that Atara’s name would not be spoken in the household, Mila did not protest. But despite Zalman’s pronouncement, during every Passover visit, Hannah whispered to Mila, “Have you heard anything?”

Mila thought of Atara’s postcards to Hannah. Always the
same three words:
I am fine
. Once:
My chère Maman, Please do not worry about me
.

Mila understood why Atara was not reaching out to her—how would Mila face Hannah and Zalman if she became an accessory to their daughter’s escape?

Mila stopped by the Fontaine de Médicis. Under the tall, untrimmed plane trees reflected in the dark pool, she gazed, briefly, at the forbidden human representations, the marble tangle of limb and voluptuousness, the nymph surrendering in her lover’s lap—and turned her eyes away. She took the exit across the rue Servandoni, looped through the Place Saint-Sulpice to the rue de Seine, and down to the Pont des Arts.

She leaned against the bridge’s railing. The sky meandered in the river that, unlike her, could roam far while tarrying, languorously, in Paris. Ribbons of windows and mansard roofs framed the embankments; here, there, spires, cupolas; she wanted to arch over the domes and bend over the bridges and wrap her limbs around the bulbous balusters. The bells rang the quarter hour, the half hour.

When her shadow grew long, she headed home and threw herself into the frantic Passover cleaning where not one crumb, not one speck of leavened bread must remain. The swirl of Hannah’s growing family intensified Mila’s exertion. She doted on Hannah’s latest-born, changed the baby, cooed to it.

At last Passover came and the cleaning could stop.

During the Passover seder, Mila loved Zalman’s reenactment of the Hebrews’ flight from Egypt. Zalman paced the
dining room, a satchel of unleavened bread on his shoulder. “This is how our ancestors fled the land where we were slaves.…” She loved that Zalman still turned to her to welcome the prophet Elijah. In the dark entry, she held her breath as she opened the door.