Sotah (20 page)
“Then what’s holding you back? Is it still how you feel about Abraham? He’s getting married, you know. Next week. A very rich girl. But ugly.”
The news struck her like a blow. What was holding her back? she thought. Just foolishness and pie in the sky. Just a silly notion of what she was supposed to feel like. Perhaps she’d never feel that way. (She didn’t add “again.” She must exorcise Abraham Breitman. Abraham Breitman was a young girl’s foolish dream. He no longer existed. He was getting married.)
“Nothing is holding me back. He is a good man, everyone says so. And I think … that is, I have reason to believe, he lo—that he cares for me deeply.”
“Then you are the luckiest girl in the world.” Dvorah leaned over and gave her sister a kiss. “Marriage isn’t easy. But we have to work at it. It’s our role in life. It gives G-d the greatest pleasure to see a good Jewish home filled with love and growing children.”
She is lecturing, Dina thought. Giving me a speech. She doesn’t look well, and yet she seems fulfilled. The house is clean and pretty with delicate little womanly touches: flowerpots hanging on the wall with little pink bows, clean curtains at the windows, fresh laundered linens in the bedrooms. How lovely it would be to have my own home! To have more than just a tiny corner and a few small shelves to call my own. She looked at the baby, her heart yearning. She lifted him from her sister and held the active little warm body in her arms. Her lips brushed the sweet, satin softness of his newly washed hair. A home. A baby. A good man. G-d was offering it to her on a silver platter. All she had to do was reach out and take it.
She thought of all the other girls at Beit Yaakov. Half were married, another quarter engaged. She had been going to weddings and engagement parties all summer. The “G-d willing by you’s” had rained down on her head like a warm summer shower. If she didn’t get married soon, she thought, they would grow as cold as snow and then as big and punishing as hailstones.
He is a good man, she told herself. And he can provide for me. My parents will be spared worry, expense.
Aba
won’t have to work another job or pay another mortgage.
And then she thought: Perhaps Judah will open up to me when we are married. He is simply shy now. But I will show him love and care, and he will become calm and show me everything I know he has inside. That was the key to Judah Gutman, she told herself suddenly. My acceptance. Once I agree to marry him, he will change. I will see the man who made the windmill, who carved the flowers, who thought to fill it with fragrance. Everyone in the family would rejoice.
She could envision a life with him. He would always be kind and gentle. He would look well in the lamplight, steady and comfortable. There would never be any great disappointments or major unhappiness. He would work hard, pray regularly, learn diligently in his spare time. He would divide his charity among the poor and hand his salary over to his wife. There would never be reason to argue with him bitterly or difficulties in getting or giving an apology. Calm waters, she thought. A clean, straightforward, and reliable path through the straits of wanton desires and shameful surprises. It would be a good life.
The following day she called her parents together and informed them of her desire to marry Judah Gutman. Their dear kind faces shone with naked joy.
T
he first note Chaya Leah had hardly been able to read, it was so stained with fish blood. She had opened it in the bathroom, her fingertips sticky and red, tingling with the unfamiliar thrill of guilt and excitement. It read:
To the honorable Chaya Leah, may she live long,
Surprised I know your name? I have my ways. We can’t go on meeting like this. I’m not at my best in a stained apron. Anyhow, I’d like to be able to talk to you about something besides fish. I will be, G-d willing, at Sanhedria Park at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday. If you should happen to be in the area next to the last exit, we might accidentally meet and have a real conversation.
Moishe
She’d carefully folded the little blood-soaked paper and hidden it in her drawer inside a package of sanitary napkins. It had taken her only about ten minutes to decide whether or not to go. Actually it had taken her ten minutes to decide how to cover herself. The idea of not going never even entered her mind. She felt a curious lack of guilt. It was like the earrings. She had her own definite set of values, which surrounded her like a fortress. The light artillery of Mrs Morganbesser and even the heavy cannons of her parents had never really made any inroads.
Why this should have been, she never really knew. She was different and, deep in her heart, stubbornly proud of it. Oh, not different enough to defy G-d or the Torah, or the
halacha.
Just different enough to give what she learned a personal interpretation she had no trouble trusting even when her ideas clashed with those around her.
She had seen nothing wrong with the earrings. And for the past six months she had seen nothing wrong with meeting Moishe at Sanhedria Park, Zion Square, and many other places. After all, they were both unmarried. They weren’t going to touch or anything like that (she blushed to her toes at the very thought of any physical contact with him). She just couldn’t find a single
halacha
she was defying. Modesty? Well, what was immodest about meeting a boy in broad daylight in a public place? Respect for parents? Well, what did her parents have to do with it, anyway? They hadn’t said no, had they? The fact that she hadn’t told them also didn’t bother her overmuch. A person was entitled to a private life. Where was it written that you had to tell your parents everything?
Besides, her intentions were strictly honorable. She had found the boy for her, and she was going to be damned if she’d let her private life fall into the hands of Reb Chaim Garfinkel. No, thank you very much. No one was going to bargain over her like a pile of old tomatoes in the
shuk.
Besides, they never fixed you up with anybody good-looking. Would Garfinkel even know a good-looking boy if he bumped into him, naked, in the mikveh? Chaya Leah seriously doubted it. Besides, being married to someone who spent the whole day learning and came home late every night to learn some more was not her idea of a good time.
She looked at her sisters with pity and a little contempt. She knew they all felt sorry for her. That they considered her the ugly duckling, the slob. But look who they wound up with! Stuck-up Dvorah got her Yaakov Klein (how could she stand having his fat little babies, one after the other?). And now Dina had given in to Garfinkel and was actually going to marry that silent giant. Sickening. She felt a small surge of victory. Her beautiful, good sisters with their neatly ironed and tucked-in blouses. With their “Chaya Leah, fix your hair!” “Chaya Leah, how can you be so rude!” “Chaya Leah, look how you’re upsetting
Aba!
” Well, she wondered what they would all say if they could see Moishe, tall and slim with deep blue eyes. Sending her love notes and meeting her once or twice a week. With nobody the wiser. Her eyes narrowed into shrewd, triumphant slits.
With the plans for Dina’s wedding under way, nobody had had time to check her excuses. That was the only part that bothered her. Lying to her mother about where she was going. But, she reasoned, if lies made to spare someone’s feelings were commendable rather than despicable, hers fell into that category.
Since the dates had begun, she’d lost weight, inveigled some new, form-fitting clothes from her parents, and gotten her hair cut to bring out all its natural curl. She’d also used a rinse on it, lightening it so gradually that not even Mrs Morganbesser had caught on. She liked what she saw in the mirror.
She had a waist, a full, soft bosom, slim hips. An hourglass figure had been carved out of the solid, uninteresting block of sensible female flesh that had destined her for matronliness at seventeen. Her hair framed her face with strawberry-blond wisps of fashionably frizzy curls. She looked like a girl instead of a pioneer wife or one of the formidable rebbetzins who ruled the community with an iron will. She was never going to have Dvorah’s dark, lovely, feminine charm or Dina’s dainty blond beauty. But she looked striking and attractive. Her eyes sparkled with lively expectation.
Now she sat waiting for him, shivering a little. He was ten minutes late. She was sitting on the
tayelet
, Jerusalem’s oceanless boardwalk, a lovely promenade surrounded by gardens overlooking a spectacular view of the Old and New cities. It was where lovers came to walk.
Men were looking at her curiously. She tried to ignore them, but her curiosity got the better of her. Some of them were old and creepy, but a few were quite acceptable. One especially. He was tall and wore a black leather jacket. He looked at her with a forceful and ironic smile. Suddenly he was sitting next to her.
“Shalom.” He leaned very close to her, his cheek almost touching her hair. She jumped back. He laughed. He leaned forward again. “Pretty,” he said in a low, husky voice, almost a whisper.
Her knees felt like jelly, and her heart began to pound with fright, and something more. It was the something more that frightened her most of all. She liked it.
“That’s a nice color dress, blue. It picks up the blue in your eyes.”
She didn’t know what to do. Of course, he wore no skullcap. He actually had a gold earring in one ear!
“I was waiting for someone, but she didn’t show. It looks like you’re in the same boat. Maybe we were both lucky.” Again that half smile, half jeer. Her whole body was turning into liquid. She couldn’t find her tongue. “You understand Hebrew, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she managed.
“So, are you coming?” He stood up and put his hands into his pockets, nodding his head in the direction of the long, dark promenade.
“I can’t. I’m waiting for someone.”
“Sure he’ll show?”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe next time.” To her utter relief he started to go. Then, all of a sudden, he circled back and handed her a bit of paper with a phone number. “Call me. We’ll set something up. We’ll go to Tel Aviv one night. Jerusalem has no night life.”
Just then Moishe turned up. Her feelings were mixed, but the biggest component was relief as she saw the dark stranger saunter off and disappear. Nevertheless she pocketed the phone number and gave him one last, lingering glance before turning her full attention to Moishe.
He looked wonderful. As usual he had wound his long
payess
behind his ears so she could hardly see them, something he always did outside Meah Shearim. Those shoulder-length
payess
, he’d once explained to her, were like a neon sign, and he just wanted a little privacy, not to be a walking advertisement, a representative of the whole clan. They began to stroll down the long avenue, looking at the sparkling lights of downtown Jerusalem, the ghostly, milky pearl glow of the Old City walls, kissed by moonlight. All around them young couples were paused, caressing each other, lips to lips.
He looked at her shyly. She looked back curiously. The tingling feeling, the melting, was still with her. Impulsively she reached out and took his hand. He gripped hers back, a slow smile of delightful surprise spreading over his face. They walked farther down a little side path. On either side of them lovely fresh violets and petunias, roses and daffodils, perfumed the air. He looked over his shoulder then all around, twice, then three times. Satisfied, he reached up and placed his hands beneath her hair, clasping them around her smooth young neck. His palms cupped her cheeks as he drew her face toward him. Their lips touched. He froze with fear. But then he felt her arms suddenly around his waist, pressing him toward her.
“Moishe,” she whispered, “is it wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, pulling his lips away only far enough to say it. She wanted him to stop talking. He did.
They sat together in the darkness for a long time. She rested her head on his shoulder. He held her gently around the waist.
“We’ll get married one day, won’t we?”
He hesitated. “Your family is Misnagid and mine are Hasidim. Will they accept me?”
“Well, will yours accept me? I mean, it’s not like you are a goy or anything. And you’re religious. So why should anybody care?”
“You’ll have to listen to the rebbe. Follow all the customs. It won’t be easy for you.”
“You could become a Misnagid!”
He shook his head incredulously. “We have a much better time than you Misnagdim! Your prayers have no life! We have music, song, dance.”
“I don’t know. My parents wouldn’t like it.”
“My parents would hate it. The rebbe would hate it. Unless, of course, you converted and became a Belzer, like me.”
“What would I have to do?”
“Well, not much, really. Belz women don’t shave their heads the way Toledot Aharon women do. And you can wear regular-colored stockings, not just black ones.”
“That sounds all right,” she said with relief.
“The hard part would be getting used to going to the rebbe for blessings and to ask questions, sometimes even very personal questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like which doctor to go to for an illness. Or where to buy an apartment.”
“Why would you bother your rebbe with questions like that? How can he know better than you?”
“We believe because of his greatness of spirit, he is on a higher level than mere human beings. He has a mystical connection to G-d which gives him greater understanding and insight. You wouldn’t want to do anything serious without getting his blessing. Also”—his face got red—“our habits in bed are different from you Misnagdim.”
He gave her a swift glance, making no eye contact. “You might as well know it now. We don’t believe in going to bed with no clothes on, the way you do. We keep covered up from head to toe.”
“The way I do?” Her voice rose with amazement.