Jacob's Folly (14 page)

T
he morning after I bought the pistol dagger from Blond Nathan, the sky liquefied. It rained hard for days, then weeks. Paris was sodden. The Seine was engorged. Drains overflowed; tangles of earthworms writhed in crumbling logs of shit. Mme Mendel guided Hodel through this chaos one evening, firmly insistent that her daughter purify herself after the two-week period of being unclean, whatever the weather.

Throughout Hodel's menses, and for seven days afterward, I had been forbidden to touch her. We slept in separate beds. She was not even allowed to hand me a glass of water. No contact whatsoever was permitted until she had been ritually cleansed, after which copulation was a must.

Had we lived in Metz, or indeed any town with a decent Jewish population, Hodel could have gone to the ritual bathhouse and been cleansed in a vessel of immersion filled with water fed from a living spring. But we did not have a mikveh in Paris. Much like the country women who lowered themselves into rivers, our women had to cleanse themselves in the water of the Seine. There were, however, several
bateaux de bain
stationed along the Seine, and one of these was available for use by the Jews.

As she always did, Hodel began the ritual by washing in our wooden tub at home. Every bit of her had to be scrubbed clean. There could be nothing—not one particle of dirt—between her skin and the purifying water. Once she had scrubbed herself, washed her hair, cut her toenails and fingernails (making sure to burn the nails lest her sister-in-law step on them and lose the baby), and removed her jewelry, she waited for the sun to set, then walked the winding streets to the Seine, her mother's arm clamped firmly through her own.

On an average day, the water of the Seine is gentle enough to swim in; after three solid weeks of heavy rain, the river was a torrent; you couldn't hear your own voice over the rushing water. Yet there was business to be done, and the boatman, his skiff modified for Jewish patronage, was on the lookout for ladies in need. When he spotted little Hodel and her freakishly tall mother waving their white handkerchiefs in the darkness, the man dispatched his wife in a rowboat. Battling the current with her single oar, the woman managed to keep the little boat level long enough for Hodel and Mme Mendel to jump into it from the riverbank. The next few minutes were treacherous; the boat nearly capsized several times, and Hodel, terrified, was soaked in river water and rain by the time she climbed onto the lurching deck of the bathing boat. A Jewish lady, Mme Zimmerman, acting as attendant that evening, dutifully pulled my little wife to a standing position, and they staggered about trying to enter the tentlike screen that covered the deck for modesty's sake. In lieu of a vessel of immersion, a barrel with holes in the bottom had been nailed to the side of the hull. This was so that the Jewish women could lower themselves into the water in the barrel safely and modestly, dunk under, and return via the ladder.

As Mme Mendel told the story to us later that night, weeping with rage: once inside the protective tent, Hodel disrobed and stepped from the tent out into the darkness, her arms held by Mmes Zimmerman
and Mendel. Naked, shivering, my child-wife walked down the few slimy steps into the barrel filled with frigid, churning water. Halfway down, the women released her. But Hodel slipped! She fell in a diagonal, hitting a rotten board in the side of the barrel. The thing gave way, and Hodel disappeared under the water. Mme Mendel screamed at the boatman furiously, to no avail. She watched as her daughter popped up several yards away and whirled limp, like a belly-up dead frog, pale skin glazed by the roiling water as a clump of orange peels and a stiff dead cat sped by her. A few more seconds, and Hodel was swallowed by the darkness.

I imagine my little wife waking up just as she was passing under the Pont Notre-Dame; struggling and choking by the Pont au Change; fainting again—probably from shame at her nakedness—somewhere around the Pont Neuf, and ending her journey snagged among the many narrow, tethered skiffs that lined the Seine. This is all I know for certain: a washerwoman abed in her laundry boat—plying her darker trade, as so many of them did when not bleaching clothes—woke to find a naked Hodel clutching her starboard side. She pulled the bleeding girl out of the water, dressed her in clean linens, and brought her to her family apartment.

Hodel spent two full days in the washerwoman's crowded home, unable to remember where she lived, as all the men in our community, a quarter of a mile up the Seine, searched the river for her body. Even the Paris police lent a hand.

At last Hodel's address dawned on her. She arrived at our doorstep one afternoon in an immodest décolleté, her face a blank. Beside her was a woman with a large, firm bust and lined face—the laundress, who, I suspected, used her hands for more than just soaping underwear. I handed the louche rescuer a livre for her trouble. She seemed pleased, though she was clearly shocked when she saw from my mode of dress and our interior decoration, which included a menorah, that Hodel was a Jewess.

The next morning, Hodel woke up and asked for some meat. Her
mother fed her a bowl of beef broth. Hodel drank that, but she wanted flesh, too. Mme Mendel brought some beef left over from the Shabbat. Hodel ate it ravenously, then went to sleep. When she woke up, she said she was hungry again. I brought her a chicken leg. The color began to return to her cheeks. Her intestinal problems seemed to be healing, as well. No extra trips to the latrine. What's more, she arranged her dolls on a bench by the window and didn't take them into bed with us that night. I almost reminded her, but thought better of it. Once we were settled in bed, with the candles blown out, I jumped in surprise when I felt her little hand on my belly.

Minutes later, as I was taking my pleasure on top of her, Hodel began to breathe strangely, and cried out as if in pain. I stopped moving, searching her face for an expression in the near dark. She writhed beneath me, her back arching. I realized with a shock of pleasure that these were the hoarse cries of ecstasy. Once that happened, there was no stopping her. Hodel wanted to couple every day—morning, evening, afternoon if I was available. It was fantastic. This was the married life I had been hoping for! I went to sell my wares whistling with joy, and hurried home at day's end to my little lustwagon. I was no sooner through the door than she pounced on me, tearing off my coat, ripping her frilled bonnet from her head, and letting the curly red locks spring up around her young face.

M
rs. Cohen, the matchmaker, had over five hundred names in her computer, each of them individualized: likes, dislikes, talents, and family histories were all entered in on Mrs. Cohen's master file, a genetic gold mine, promise of the future,
shidduch
machine. Mrs. Cohen would stay up late into the night shuffling and reshuffling the names, matching this one with that one, that one with the other one, playing with the kids' futures like a novelist thinking up different twists a tale could take. This would have been a nerve-racking business if it were not for the fact that Mrs. Cohen believed that really all these matches were
beshert
, destined, anyway—Mrs. Cohen was just the facilitator for the divine. Still, she worked hard to find the voluble girl to draw out the studious boy, the levelheaded oldest sister to bring a dreamy baby of the family to heel. Mrs. Cohen made a lot of good matches. This was, of course, all on a free-will basis, and if the kids didn't hit it off with each other, this too was
beshert
! As long as they married somebody. Mrs. Cohen believed in marriage above all things, because Jewish marriage meant Jewish babies. Her whole family—seven people—had been murdered by the Nazis within a month of one another in 1943. Only one ten-year-old boy, her grandfather, survived the camps, though he nearly died from the Hershey bar an American
soldier gave him to buck him up on the day they liberated Dachau. When he came to America he married a girl who lived on Hester Street and they had thirteen children. Mrs. Cohen's work was a continual joy.

When her second cousin by marriage, Pearl Edelman, called and asked her to find a match for her daughter Masha as soon as possible, Mrs. Cohen needed to take a breath and think. Masha Edelman was a good catch in some ways: she came from a wonderful family. She was FFB:
frum
from birth, meaning she came from an observant family and was not one of those girls who turned to Torah Judaism from the outside. A lot of those women were lovely, but they tended to try too hard, and they weren't as desirable in the marriage market as the FFB girls. The Edelmans, though—they were an exemplary family. On the downside, Masha wasn't sturdy, healthwise, much as the mother tried to hide it. Mrs. Cohen had done her homework. She was a bewitching girl, what's more, and allure was only good in moderation. Even wearing a skirt five inches below her knee and old lady shoes, this girl managed to look immodest. The wrong man—an overly sympathetic or weak man—could end up being the girl's servant. An overly lustful man would never leave her alone, or become crazed with jealousy. Too much appeal, Mrs. Cohen had learned over the years, was almost always a curse. And what about the relentless strains of child-rearing? There were no sick days for mothers. Mrs. Cohen tried to imagine Masha helming a brood of three, four, five, eight children. It didn't seem right. Yet the girl had to marry someone.

Late one night, Mrs. Cohen sat in her housecoat and slippers, a steaming cup of tea on the desk, and stared at Masha's file on the computer. The letters of her name were displayed in capital letters in red, like all the other names, yet for some reason this name seemed different. One by one Mrs. Cohen tried matching Masha with each boy on her list. As she always did, she imagined their children, what they would look like, which characteristics from each of their parents they might inherit. Each of the young men on the list had something
special: this one would make a good businessman, this one a scholar, that one would be a great father. The girls, having all been raised to be mothers—though many of them would work all their lives as store clerks, teachers, doctors, therapists—could be various types: harsh, hotheaded, resourceful, loving. But for Masha, all Mrs. Cohen could come up with were qualities of no use to anyone: charismatic, laconic, possibly canny, with an odd power over people. Mrs. Cohen kept up the game of matching men with Masha until she had three believable alternatives. One of these men would work. She knew it.

Seth Allen was courtly. Masha liked the way he opened her car door and flared his nostrils slightly, allowing her to settle herself fully before clicking the door shut with just the right amount of oomph and then walking, unhurried, over to his own side. Opening the door, he whooshed into the leather seat deftly for such a husky guy, and started talking about himself.

Seth was twenty-eight, a successful businessman. He had lived in Israel for several years but, he said, “I came back home to find a wife. The women over there—they're beautiful, but—I don't know, they're different. I couldn't bring myself to propose to anyone. A great Jewish woman is a tall order,” he said. There was something about the way he said it that made Masha want to climb out of the car at the next stoplight.

When they arrived at Delgano's, he opened the restaurant door for her, pulled out her chair, reached around her, unfolded her napkin, and dropped it into her lap, careful not to come too close, then glided around to his seat, asking the Italian-looking waiter for the kosher menu, and perused it earnestly.

“You'll have the chicken cutlet,” Seth announced, nodding to himself.

“How do you know?” Masha asked.

“I know what's good here.”
You also know what's the cheapest thing on the menu
, thought Masha. “With a green salad,” added Seth. “You're watching that figure, I assume. Good habits start early.” He then ordered spaghetti bolognese for himself.

Seth had a way of talking straight through his nose, with no break between the words. The boneless-looking hands he flapped in front of his face to make his points actually reminded Masha of chicken cutlets.

“My kids are going to the Lubavitcher preschools, they're the best,” he droned. “And I want the boys in
kollel
to study for at least three years once they finish yeshiva. I don't care if they're married—a good wife deals with these things, she'll be happy anyway, who doesn't like a scholar for a husband? Do you agree about the Lubavitcher preschools?”

Masha shrugged. “My sister Miriam, one of hers goes to the Chabad preschool, the other ones went to the one in her neighborhood. They all seem pretty happy.”

“School is not all about happiness,” said Seth. “But on the other hand, pleasure has its place.” He smiled at her, his lips shining with oil from the pasta. There were specks of tomato sauce on his jacket. “It's simple: to have a harmonious home, a couple needs to think things through and be on the same page from the outset, because that's where the misunderstandings come in.” He glanced at the menu. “How about a scoop of sorbet?” he asked.

“Great,” said Masha glumly.

A
strange thing happened one Friday afternoon, a month after Hodel fell into the Seine. I was downstairs, having come home early, as was my custom on a Friday, to help with Shabbat preparations and go to afternoon prayer. The delicious smell of boiling meat pervaded our rooms. As I removed the yoke of my box from over my head, I heard Mme Mendel screaming upstairs. I ran up the rickety staircase, opened the door to my in-laws' apartment, and found my mother-in-law looking outraged and alarmed. I took a few steps into the room to see what she was yelling about. There was Hodel, her hair uncovered, gravy on her lips, her hands dripping. She had been eating stew out of the cholent pot with her hands. When I approached her, I saw with alarm that a strange, incongruous smile was lurking on her greasy mouth.

“Who are you?” asked Mme Mendel.

“I'm Hodel,” said Hodel simply.

“No, you're not,” said Mme Mendel. Then she turned to me. “I have known about her for days, but I didn't think anyone would believe me.” I just stood there, baffled. Then, turning back to the girl, she yelled, “Where is my Hodel?”

“I don't know what you are talking about, Mother,” said Hodel, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I was just so hungry.”

She took a step toward her mother, but Mme Mendel shrieked, “Away! Get away!” And she slapped her. Hodel was always very meek with her mother, but not today. She grabbed the woman's hair beneath her matron's bonnet and pulled. The older woman punched her daughter in the side of the face.

“Please, Mother!” I cried feebly, trying to pry these two maniacs apart. “This is your daughter, Hodel. I mean, look at her! Who else could she be?”

“You,” said Mme Mendel darkly, glaring down at me. Then she stalked out of the room, slamming the door of her bedroom behind her. Hodel washed her swollen face and gravy-stained hands in silence. Then she followed me downstairs. I watched the nape of her neck as she tidied our room, and appreciated her newly rounded buttocks as she bent to make our bed. Yet I didn't leap on her. Something about that smile upstairs stopped me. She turned, as if feeling my gaze, then grimaced.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I am unclean!” she pronounced furiously, jerking open our chest and pulling out a few cotton rags.

During the first Shabbat meal, after Friday sundown, Mme Mendel watched Hodel with the eyes of an eagle expecting a rabbit to emerge from under a rock any second. Yet the girl did nothing unusual. It's true, she ate much more than the old Hodel would have done—mostly meat—but that was a blessing. I was so much happier to have a healthy, plump, lusty wife than the diarrheal moper I'd married.

That night I slipped reluctantly into the cold sheets of the extra bed we kept in our room for the periods when my wife was unclean. It was difficult to separate from Hodel. Over the past weeks I had become used to sleeping with her, our limbs entwined. I closed my eyes sadly, my member stiff. Yet there was nothing that would induce me to touch my wife. The punishment for lying with your wife while she was unclean was excision from the community:
karet
. Children born of such a union were cursed. It was out of the question.

I was deeply asleep when I felt the pleasure spreading into my thighs. I woke and was shocked to see Hodel hunched over me, rocking back and forth, her eyes shut. I tried to push her off me, but just at that moment she was racked with a sudden, jerky climax, causing a terrible chord of sweetness to pass through my body, draining my will. I was powerless. Afterward, she slipped off me without a word and slunk back to her bed. I sat up, horrified, covered in her blood.

“What have you done? Hodel! What have you done!”

But the form of my wife huddled in the dark didn't move. She had gone to sleep. Had she been sleepwalking? I wondered if the sin was as grave, in this case. But I—I could have thrown her off me, and I didn't! Oh, Hashem, Hashem, what was I to do? Tell no one. That was all. Perhaps she wouldn't even remember. I would give money to the poor. I would atone. I washed my poor bloody member with the cold water stowed under my bed, water meant for the ritual washing of hands in the morning. I knew this was desecration, but, given the sin I had just committed, it seemed like a minor crime. I sat up through the night, shivering with cold and fear.

The next morning, Hodel sat up and rubbed her eyes in her usual girlish way, yawning and stretching. She pulled the basin from under her bed and poured a cup of water three times over one hand, then the other. She closed her eyes and said her prayer. Then she got up and started a fire in the hearth, not looking once in my direction, though I was sitting up in the spare bed observing her. She scooped up some water from the covered wooden keg in the corner, filled an iron pot with it, and hung it on the hook in the hearth. When the water was warm to the touch, she filled a shallow basin, set it on a stool, squatted over it, hiking up her nightgown, and began washing her sex. Then she looked up at me. Her smile was cold and blank, as it had been when she ate her mother's Shabbat food with her hands. The look she gave me was terrifying. She knew. She knew what she had done!

That morning I did not go to morning prayers. I couldn't bring myself to speak holy words, or wind the tefillin around my arm and
head. I could not wear a prayer shawl. I felt cut off from God. The pistol dagger hung, loaded, in its tooled sheath at my hip. I meandered through Paris in a daze, walking brazenly into a café, my box of goodies hanging from my neck. We weren't meant to solicit in cafés, yet many of us did. There was a lot of money to be earned that way. I didn't care if I was stopped.

I stayed out until well after dark. When I came home, dried out with exhaustion, freezing and hungry, I found my room filled with people: the eldest few of the Mendel children, the pantheresque Mme Mendel, and her fat-sack husband all sat on chairs lined up against the walls, staring at our bed, which had been dragged into the center of the room. Hodel lay on the bed in her petticoats, feet splayed, palms upturned. She was breathing very quickly, eyes shut tight.

A white chalk circle had been drawn on the floor around the bed. Within it, a young, heavy man was walking, talking to himself very quietly. He turned. It was my cousin Gimpel! I was overjoyed to see him, and began to cry out, but the look he gave me shut me up. It was a look of total concentration, mastery. I approached Mme Mendel, utterly confused. I wondered if someone had discovered what we had done the night before, if this was some sort of punishment.

“What is happening?” I whispered.

“I heard the maggid was back in Paris. We had to call for him. She ate my Shabbat food with her hands again, like an animal. She attacked one of her brothers. Broke his arm!”

“But what is Gimpel doing?” I exclaimed.

“When Hodel fell into the water, a river demon took her place,” whispered Mme Mendel factually, her eyes on her daughter. “It's exactly as I thought.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my sternum rigid with fear.

“It's an exorcism,” hissed Mme Mendel, turning her black eyes on me fiercely. I walked to the corner of the room and watched my gentle cousin Gimpel wave his small hands over the body of my wife, muttering words no one in the room could hear. I had been told of holy
men who knew the sacred words to make demons exit the bodies of human beings. I never dreamed that Cousin Gimpel was such a man. He had hidden his identity well behind that bumbling exterior. As I watched him, I swear I saw a blue flame flare up around the perimeter of the circle. I staggered forward, overwhelmed, tears streaming down my cheeks. Then I lost consciousness.

When I woke on our extra bed, Gimpel and the others were gone. The room was back in order. The chalk circle had been scrubbed off the floor. Hodel was standing by the stove, her back to me. Horror overtook me. I couldn't move.

Yet when she did turn, it was just Hodel, as she had always been, before the accident. She seemed years younger than the creature I had been sharing my bed with. She smiled at me bashfully, and set a pot of tea on the table near the extra bed where I lay. As she leaned over me, I noticed a red string tied around her neck, from which swung a narrow leather pouch—a protective amulet. Gimpel had written the magic names on the scroll inside that pouch to guard her against possession. I couldn't speak. My heart was hammering in my chest. There was sweat trickling down from my temples. Hodel modestly put her nightdress on over her head, disrobing beneath it. She put her clothes away in the cupboard and got into bed. I was mute with confusion and dread. I did not move. Eventually Hodel fell asleep. In the morning, at dawn, I went out to peddle my wares.

Skipping prayers again, I returned to the large café where I had been selling my merchandise illegally the day before. There were plenty of customers coming in and out all day. Also, the wind was cold now, and I enjoyed the warmth. A young lady had approached me to peruse my wares, and was holding a cheap brooch I had bought at Les Halles some months earlier when I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and turned. It was Inspector Buhot.

“Jacob Cerf, hello,” he said, looking down at me with a tense smile. I noticed an explosion of red veins around his nostrils, flakes of dry skin on his cheeks and eyebrows. “I am surprised to see you here.”

“Hello, monsieur,” I said.

“Jacob, may I see your papers?” He had renewed my passport himself a few weeks earlier. I reached into the pocket of my coat carefully, trying to keep the pistol dagger hidden. Buhot's eyes flicked to my waist, but he didn't react.

“Two more months on here, is it?” he asked affably, holding up his lorgnette to read.

“Yes,” I answered. He perused the paper.

“You are armed, Jacob,” he said, not taking his eyes from the document.

“Not armed, sir.”

“What, then?”

“I was hoping to sell it. It's a fine piece.” He looked at me, his eyes twinkling with mirthless intelligence. He handed me the passport and folded the lorgnette with a deliberate snap, slipping it into his jacket pocket.

“Jacob, don't be crafty. You are armed. Disarm.” I stood frozen to the spot. The large café was filled with people, yet in this corner all was silent. Two men got up and walked out swiftly, sensing a confrontation. Buhot put his veiny hand on the hilt of his sword.

“Disarm, I say.”

“Why should I not carry a weapon to defend myself?” I heard myself say. “I am a human being, after all.” My Jew's box hung from my neck, a barrier and an impediment.

“Remove the box,” Buhot said, drawing his sword, but keeping it low. I removed the box from my neck. “Disarm.”

I took my pistol dagger by its fine horse-head handle and began to draw it out from its sheath. But, instead of handing it over as I had expected to do, I found myself brandishing it, backing up. A woman screamed. Buhot pursued me into the street. Our weapons clashed absurdly. I had no idea what I was doing. I had never been in a sword fight before. Like a cornered child, I fought him. The cut he inflicted on me was deep in the flesh of my arm, above the elbow. Thoughtlessly,
aiming vaguely, I cocked the loaded gun and fired. Buhot lunged at me through a dense white cloud of gun smoke, pressing the point of his blade into a button at my chest. Clearly, I had missed him.

“Drop it, you stupid Jew, before I kill you!” he yelled. I let my weapon fall gently on my shoes, not wishing to shatter it. Buhot bent down and picked up my treasure, examining it carefully. Then he looked up at me, breathing hard.

“You surprise me,” he said.

I was in a cell with two Frenchmen, both thieves. They found it fascinating that I was a Jew, and asked me all sorts of questions, like whether we really mixed the blood of Christian children in with the Passover matzot, and was I in for cheating on loans. I didn't answer, but sat there listlessly, in a kind of shock. The prison nurse had bandaged the cut in my arm, but it smarted. I would be in the Bicêtre Prison for years. I didn't care. I was more afraid of Hodel than of incarceration. The world of river demons and succubi, Mme Mendel with her evil face, the terror that had moved into my body like a living spirit since my marriage, eating away at my rational mind—it was all locked away from me now. I never wanted to return to it. I began to fantasize that I would be deported; then I could begin a new life somewhere else.

The following morning, inspector Buhot arrived looking put out. A guard began to open the barred door of my cell.

“Jacob. You have a visitor.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Follow me,” said Buhot dryly.

I followed him down a long hallway lined with piss-stinking cells, down a worn stone stairway. The inspector took out a key and opened a heavy wooden door. I could smell rancid sweat rising from my armpits.

The room was filled with light. The rest of the prison was quite dark; I had to close my eyes to let them adjust. When my vision returned to me, I was surprised to see a man in the powdered wig and splendid clothing of an aristocrat sitting by the window.

“Here he is, Monsieur le Comte,” said the inspector. “The man who stole your weapon.” It took me less than a second to remember the wide nose, fleshy lips, basset-hound eyes. For the count, it was more of a struggle. When he did recognize me, he laughed shortly.

“I don't believe it,” he said. “It's you, isn't it?”

“Yes, Monsieur le Comte,” I whispered.

“Your name is … Cerf?”

“Jacob Cerf.”

“That's right! This is bizarre, don't you think? When the inspector told me the man who stole my dagger was a Jew, I wanted to meet him. It took skill to swipe a weapon right out of my opera box while I was in it,” he said, smiling.

“I am sorry, sir,” I said. “It was not me. I only bought it to sell.”

“That's disappointing,” said the count with a pout. “Nevertheless. I loved the story of the duel with the inspector. Do you find it odd that we have met again, in this way?”