Jephte's Daughter (34 page)

“Ah, this wee one must be yours, then,” a stranger’s voice interrupted the tense silence. The man, who held Akiva’s muddy hand, looked shrewdly at David and then at Batsheva. “Yes, I knew he must be yours. Spitting image of his father.”

“Akiva!” Batsheva exclaimed, horrified and amused. He was so incredibly wet and dirty and wore such a big smile.

“He just took in after the ducks. Thought he was a duck too, hey, little fellow?” the man said with a chuckle, patting the child on the head. “I’d get him into some dry clothes if I were you, luv.”

David wrapped him in his jacket and walked him quickly to the car. He looked at the child. Spitting image of his father. It was a cruel irony that the child could be mistaken for his. For the child he would never have. The beautiful little boy. They took him home in a strained silence. David had not said a word. He knew she was waiting for him to say something, but he was so miserably confused. Despite the unbelievable complexity of their relationship, his mind kept offering up the most exasperatingly simplistic solutions. I just want to hug you, he thought foolishly. I want to hold you close to me and never leave you. I want to go home with you and stay, to wake up in the morning with you, to feel you next to me when I sleep. But what can I offer you? How could you ever love me, a fool like me, a poor confused coward like me? And even that offer was a false one. He did not belong to himself, but to the Church. So he could not honestly even offer her that.

So he said nothing.

Batsheva, respecting his desire—as she thought—to be rid of her, was too proud to plead. They would part in dignity, if nothing else. She hugged Akiva close to her and giggled. She just couldn’t help it. She giggled.

“What is it?” David turned quickly, not understanding.

“He smells…he smells like…” She burst out laughing, uncontrollable laughter that made her shoulders heave. “He smells like a swamp,” she finally said, barely understandable through her laughter.

David took a deep breath and let it out. He smelled the awful swampy, muddy odor of the wet clothes. “And it’s all over my jacket. Hmnph. Ha—” He guffawed once, loudly, trying to restrain himself. But it was no use. He was caught up in the laughter. He laughed until his eyes blurred with tears and his stomach ached.

David carried the child into the house, swinging him, and felt satisfaction and relief as Akiva squealed with laughter. He undressed the child as Batsheva got the bath ready. He got pleasure from looking at the firm, pudgy body still plump with baby fat and from the press of the child’s small, trusting arms around his neck. He handed him over to Batsheva with an unconscious reluctance.

“Can I watch, please?”

“Of course.” She smiled at him. She was absorbed in the child, soaping down his sweet little body. There is so much love and gentleness in her hands, David thought. He watched her strong, capable arms, her beautiful long fingers take the washcloth across the child’s smooth back, down his little arms and legs. She was on her knees, her slim, graceful back arched over so vulnerably. I want to protect you, he thought irrationally. She shampooed the child’s hair carefully, her fingers caressing the shining, fragrant bubbles into his small scalp. David felt his own scalp begin to tingle with longing. He felt a warmth go out to her from somewhere in the middle of his body—his heart, his groin. It was all mixed up together—love and lust and tenderness. They flowed together seamlessly, and there was no way to tell where one began and the other ended.

Batsheva wrapped Akiva in a large towel. The room was hot and moist, filled with the intimate fragrance of warm, clean skin and soap. David made no move to leave. She didn’t understand. Why? She felt as if she were balancing something very carefully that might, even with the most delicate movement, come crashing down upon her head. His presence filled her with a silent, unfathomable joy.

“Shall I put him into bed?”

“Thank you, David, but I don’t know if he’ll go…” But even as she spoke, to her surprise, Akiva reached out his arms to David.

“Swing me. Hard,” the child demanded.

“Ho, ho. So that’s it, eh? Well, I don’t know about that. You just hold still, now, don’t you dare go swinging around,” David said with mock sternness that delighted the child, and he swung him high up, almost to the ceiling. Akiva screamed with pleasure. “Let me down, let me down! Mama!” But as soon as David brought him down, his face, flushed red with happiness, beamed up at him. “Again, David, again!”

“What, you again? Now, didn’t I tell you not to go putting your feet off the ground?” He lifted the child, all the while delighting him with that mock-stern voice: “There you are, off the ground again. Now, under no circumstances are you to go swinging…” He swung him up. “Now, there you go again. My, my.”

Finally, he laid the child down in bed and kissed him, breathing in his clean child’s sweetness and warmth—the warmth of home, of family, of deep, meaningful connection to life.

“Good-night, son.” It sounded so good to him.

Batsheva stood in the doorway and watched them. Did Akiva remember his father, she wondered, with a sudden, aching longing to be held in the arms of her own father and mother. A child needs parents. A father and a mother. He closed Akiva’s door. Without the child between them, the intimacy became unbearable.

“I’d better be going,” he said with a heavy heart. Nothing had been resolved. It was all worse than ever.

“I’m…(in love with you—God! don’t say it out loud!)…I’m afraid that your jacket will need to be cleaned.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’ll…let me clean it. Or, that is, have it cleaned. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

They were both aware that this meant a continuation of their relationship.

“Well, all right. Thank you,” he said awkwardly. They were downstairs, in front of the door.

She was inches away from him. “Well, good-bye then.”

He turned, in despair, peering outside at the empty, impersonal street that rose up to swallow him. But then he turned and caught her around the waist, his lips finding hers. “Oh, dear God, I love you so much,” he whispered.

“Can you, after everything I’ve told you?”

“Did you really think anything else? You are so brave and wise and good! How could I help it? But I have no right. I can’t offer you anything.” He stepped away from her, his back against the door, his head lowered in defeat.

She reached out to him, putting her arms around his neck, pulling his lips down to hers. They felt themselves filled with an unbearable joy, a happiness that swelled so large they felt they could not contain it, that they would burst. It was totally new and strange, a happiness that neither had ever known before. Then spontaneously, they pulled apart and looked at each other hard, remembering that he was to be a priest, and that she was a married woman of a different, irreconcilable faith. They forgot who they really were, and remembered only the social labels, and the labels made it impossible. And all the joy they felt turned rapidly to despair.

“It’s impossible,” she told him.

“Utterly hopeless,” he agreed, reaching out to her and hugging her to him for dear life.

“We must never see each other again. I don’t think I could stand it.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right.” He shook his head in agreement, feeling as if she had torn into his stomach with a scalpel.

“Nor call either. I can’t stand it, waiting for the calls.”

“Nor call either,” he repeated in a hopeless, dazed way, his face still tingling from the touch of her hair on his cheek.

They felt themselves slowly parting, their flesh becoming cold and separate again.

“Good-bye, David,” she said softly, holding out her hand.

He took it in both of his and kissed the palm.

“Good-bye, Batsheva.”

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Father Paul Craven looked up, recognizing the voice. It was one of his most promising novitiates, a student of rare brilliance. “Speak, my son.”

“I question my ministry. I question my faith, my future as a priest.”

Father Craven, who had heard so many things in the dark of his confessional, nevertheless found himself shocked. He, of all his students? He had pinned so many hopes upon David. He would make a wonderful theologian, a sensitive and caring parish priest…“What has caused you to question your calling, my son?”

“I have found love and question the Church’s answers.”

“The love of a woman?” He held back a sigh. It was the wall for novitiates, the way athletes, driven beyond their strength, encounter that wall of fatigue, of despair. It happened to almost every one of them, if they were normal. It was the critical hurdle.

What worried him more was the intimation of a fundamental loss of faith, to which there was no antidote.

“Not just a woman. A child, too. A family. She is a woman of a different faith. A Jew. She is a married woman who has run away from her husband, a man who was very cruel to her. My intentions, at least at first, were pure. I was asked to help her and intended to reach out to her in Christ’s name. But I found myself doubting she needed help or forgiveness. Her own faith is so strong.”

Father Craven threaded his fingers together carefully. “And this has caused you to question your faith, your calling?”

“I am so confused, confused. I feel small and unworthy. She does not know Christ, and yet her faith is so strong, so deep. I don’t understand it. I have doubts in my heart that betray the Church. I have reached out to a woman whom I cannot offer anything honorable. I have questioned my worthiness,” the voice paused for a moment, lowering in shame, “the foundations of my love and obedience to Christ and to the Church.”

“All these are very grievous sins, my son.” There was real sorrow and disappointment in the old priest. A sense of deep personal failure. “But God is merciful and understands human weakness. He tests all of his servants, the way he tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his firstborn son, as you are being tested now.” Then he looked up sharply as another thought occurred to him. “Have you committed adultery?”

“No, Father. But this is more to the woman’s credit than to mine. She has sent me away. I did not, I do not, want to go. I want to be with her. I think of her constantly.”

The priest felt himself relax. Not as bad as it could be, Father Craven thought, his fingers weaving in and out as his crafty mind sought an answer. “So, even if you were to leave the Church, she could still not marry you since her own faith forbids it, not to mention her own still-unbroken marriage vows?”

“That is true, Father.”

Father Craven’s generous heart went out to the terrible pain he heard in the young man’s voice. Yet, he could not help feeling relieved. He proceeded cautiously. “And can you not convince her to divorce and accept the Church?”

“As I told you, Father, her own faith is very strong, stronger I’m afraid than my own. It has nourished her through terrible hardships, taken her back from the brink of death. To ask her to abandon it would be like asking her to destroy herself.”

“Do you mean to say that asking her to accept Christ, to accept her only eternal salvation, would be an evil in your eyes?” he said coldly.

“I told you, Father, I am confused. But that is how it seems to me now,” came the honest reply.

“Pray to Jesus Christ our Lord to grant you wisdom, to strengthen the weak fabric of your faith, my son,” he began sternly. Then, remembering something of the agony of doubt of his own novitiacy, he softened. “Our Savior sends trials to each of us, to test our love. Who of us hasn’t felt the sharp pain of doubt over our vocation? Pray that you may yet overcome these obstacles and bind yourself to the Church. I will pray for you in your struggle.”

“Do you recall one of the novitiates in your theology class, David Hope?” Father Craven asked Father Gerhart over lunch.

“Fine young man. He’ll prove a treasure to the Church,” Father Gerhart said, shaking his large, graying head emphatically and cutting his meat. He was a big man with a ruddy complexion and a robust appetite. He had a reputation for handling problems with novitiates head-on with both sleeves rolled up. Sometimes this approach was quite disastrous, while at others his shock tactics proved more effective than delicate, subtle reasoning. Taking all this into consideration, Father Craven continued the conversation somewhat hesitantly.

“Well, I’m afraid we might be losing him.”

Father Gerhart put down his knife and fork deliberately and folded his arms across his chest. “We certainly can’t afford to lose any more novitiates, especially someone of David Hope’s caliber. He is my star pupil, with a mind so sharp, so retentive. A rare intelligence. Gives me the devil of a time in class, keeps me on my toes. My old answers just aren’t good enough for him.” He shook his head, looking down into his plate thoughtfully. Then he looked up with narrowed eyes. “And what’s at the bottom of it, Paul?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. But I would be grateful if you could perhaps find a way of having him leave here for a while. I think a change of place would be very helpful to him at this stage.”

“I understand completely. Rome, America, Jerusalem…round out his studies, give him time to think.” Father Gerhart picked up his fork and knife once again, cutting vigorously. “Excellent. We mustn’t give up without a fight nowadays, eh, Craven?”

As is often the case with human beings who find themselves grated raw against the sharp, merciless ironies of life, Batsheva thrashed around looking for someone to blame her troubles on so as to lighten her own load of guilt. And finding that it was no comfort to blame anything as amorphous as fate or God, she settled on Elizabeth. After all, she told herself almost convincingly, wasn’t it Elizabeth who had introduced them? If only she had never met him, if only the clock could be turned back! But now, if she closed her eyes, his blue ones stared lovingly at her, as if etched indelibly on the back of her lids. If she walked in the street and saw someone tall and dark-haired, her heart began to knock angrily in her chest. And each time she gave Akiva a bath, she could almost feel the presence of his lean, beautiful body inches away from her in the hot, moist room. It was physically painful, exhausting, and draining.

And so, the way one eases a sharp physical pain by pinching another part of one’s body so as to distribute the concentrated agony, Batsheva began to think back and remember how Elizabeth had not been there when Isaac had proposed and she had desperately needed to talk to her. She began to blame her for that and for not taking her back to England with her when she came to visit, painting over the rational objections of her fair mind with the black brush of her despair.

She became distant and cold when Elizabeth called. She made up excuses to avoid going to see her or having her visit until Elizabeth finally showed up at the door, her face lined with worry, and begged her: “What’s the matter, what’s going on?”

Batsheva gave her a bright, false smile and said, “Nothing. Why should you think anything is wrong? I’m just busy, that’s all.” And she bustled around, ignoring her, making her feel in the way until Elizabeth finally just walked out, deeply hurt.

Having no father confessor, and no close friend who could appreciate the awful hopelessness of her situation except Elizabeth, Batsheva condemned herself to suffer in terrible silence, until all her anger dissolved and turned inward, settling into a dark, heavy depression. She would lie in bed deep into the morning, her head turned to the window, studying the clouds, taking meaning and omens from their random movements. There, she told herself, as a soft white one was overtaken by a dark gray one that moved like smoke, muddying the sky. There it is, the darkness overtaking the light!

Her body felt heavy, leaden. She could find no reason to lift herself out of bed each day except for Akiva’s care. Her days centered around his meals, his bath, reading to him. She did her work lifelessly. In the evenings, she sometimes forced herself to accept invitations for parties she knew would be full of people she didn’t like or respect—immoral, careless people. She would go and drink and parry the foolish come-ons of the men, dancing with them, laughing at their sordid double entendres, then leaving them hot and chagrined outside her locked door. They disgusted her. All men did, she told herself. She would live like a nun, like Jephte’s daughter, sent away in her virginity into the wilderness to live in isolation, loved by no man. Nothing, nothing helped. She felt herself motionless, in a state of suspended animation. Something must happen, she thought. It must.

She had not seen him or heard from him in two weeks.

“She refuses to talk to me.” Elizabeth flung herself into a chair, holding her head in her hands. “She’s like a stone wall. What have I done? If I could only know that!”

“You know what you’ve done, dearest,” Ian said dryly.

She couldn’t stand it when he did this to her, taking away her little defenses, making her stand there nakedly, all her petty sins exposed. He was right, of course. She knew it was David. “But I only thought it would be amusing for her…” she said weakly, almost begging, hating herself.

He sat down on the arm of the chair and pulled her toward him so that her back rested up against his chest. She leaned against him gratefully. He folded his arms over hers and rested his cheek against her hair.

“Why do I do such terrible things, Ian?”

“Because deep down in your heart you want a happy ending—but an ending that is happy by your standards. You can’t believe that Batsheva can be happy without a man, or that David could be happy as a priest. You’re a meddler, a dear, unprincipled, kind-hearted meddler.”

“A yenta, as Batsheva would say,” she said morosely.

He hugged her and smiled. “Precisely, my dear love.”

She turned around and looked into his face. “Ian, I love Batsheva like a sister. She is making herself sick over this. You should see her face—pale, almost transparent, and those eyes are…are…”

“Don’t tell me. I’ve seen them.” He shook his head.

“You’ve seen Batsheva?”

“No. I’ve seen David. It’s awful. He’s in total chaos. He’s going…or being sent…away, you know.”

She sat up straight. “No, I didn’t. My God, poor Batsie. Oh, Ian, what have I done!? What’s to be done?”

He shook his head, exasperated. “You’ll never change. What makes you think you have to do anything? What makes you think you’re involved at all?”

“But of course I am! I started this whole thing, thinking it would be an amusing diversion. I think I did it for myself, most of all. Just to see the two opposites clash…”

“Tut, tut, tut, there you go again, dearest. Honesty, honesty.”

“Uffff. You never leave me alone!” She jumped up and paced the floor. “Yes, all right. I thought they would be perfect for each other. And they are. Perfect. They are madly in love. What’s wrong with that?” She saw that look on his face of dry amusement. He was a hard teacher. She clasped her hands together, prayerlike, and rested her lips on them. “They should be together. They must overcome the obstacles.”

“Why don’t you call up the pope and ask him if he’s interested in dating Mother Theresa?”

She wouldn’t be deflected. “When is he leaving?”

“On Monday. He’ll be gone six months.”

“That gives us the weekend.” She tapped her forefinger against her lips.

His mouth dropped open. “The weekend for what?”

“Why, to get them together of course.”

“You know, you’re…you’re…incorrigible, really hopeless! What possible good could come of that?”

She walked over to him slowly and put her arms around his waist, resting her face on the soft, worn wool of his comfortable sweater. “I feel it’s right. I can’t explain it. It would be wrong for him to leave without their seeing each other again. It would be too awful for them both. Please, Ian, trust me!” She looked up at him and he threw up his hands and looked up at heaven.

“I am in love with a madwoman,” he shouted.

“And you weren’t good enough for me, remember?” She dug her finger into his armpit, tickling him. He squirmed, like a big, confused, sweet-natured child, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

“The Church isn’t going to let him go so fast,” Ian pointed out. “Novitiates, especially of David’s ilk, are rarer than unicorns, you know. They’re dropping out like flies. And it’s going to be difficult for her, as a corpse of over a year, to get a divorce from the patriarch.” Now he was pacing the floor. He had never wanted David to be a priest either.

“And there’s no reason she should accept an invitation from me now. She isn’t even on speaking terms with me,” she added glumly.

“And I’m not even sure David is free this weekend, or if he’d come if he was.”

“It’s totally hopeless,” they finally agreed, hugging each other. Their eyes met in perfect understanding: “So let’s do it.”

“I know you’re furious at me.” Elizabeth spoke quickly, afraid she’d hang up the phone. “But please come. The countryside is so beautiful this time of year. Akiva will love it, and Ian asked especially that you come. His father will be there and his mother and some friends. Maybe David, maybe not. Please, Batsie!”

“Why are you doing this to me? Don’t you know how ill I am? I can’t!” She dropped the phone back into its holder as if it had suddenly turned into a black, live thing. It rang immediately.

“I’ll pick you up on Thursday morning. He’s going away for a long time,” Elizabeth’s disembodied voice said quickly and then she hung up before Batsheva could do it for her.