The Marrying of Chani Kaufman (2 page)

 

Chani had been on date after date after date. All arranged, each prospective suitor having been carefully considered by her parents and the matchmaker. She had suffered hours of cold coffee and awkward conversation. The men that she favoured did not favour her and those that wanted her, she had found dull or unappealing. After each meeting, the boy's mother would call to give the verdict regardless. Her mother made polite noises into the receiver. Then she would hang up, her face a wall of patient disappointment. It was hard enough being rejected, but it was galling to be rejected by a boy you didn't even want. One by one, her peers were getting engaged. She was desperate not to be the last. She did not want just to settle, but it became clear she had little choice.

What was the point in an unmarried Jewish girl? She did not want to be like Miss Halpern, the bible teacher at school, her long, pale face souring with each passing year, her uncovered head bent over tattered exercise books, ignoring the sniggers of the young girls she taught; girls who were on the verge of womanhood, alive with the vitality of hope and promise. So Chani gritted her teeth and persevered.

After a while she had come to resent them all, even the ones that wanted her. She could not bring herself to say yes to the pasty scholar, the squat teacher or the melancholy widower. All highly observant, all seeking a good Yiddisher girl to stir the cholent and light their Shabbes candles. An instant wife – just add water. None of them wanted to know about her.

At night, under her big white knickers, her hands explored her own naked form, enjoying its smells and contrasting textures. She pressed and caressed and felt a momentary electric thrum. But her body remained a mystery to her.

Invisible barriers surrounded her. As a small girl, she had wanted to hitch up her frumpy skirt and hurtle down the street for the bus, her legs pumping like pistons. Instead, she had learned to walk and not run, her arms clamped stiffly to her sides. She had longed for freedom of movement but had been taught to restrict her gait.

At school aged fifteen, her garrulousness had got her into trouble. In response, she filled old exercise books with angry scribbling. She was considered audacious but gifted. Her grades soared. Everything interested her – the little she could get her hands on. There was no television or internet at home or school. ‘A television is an open sewer in the living-room,' her father growled. After school at Brent Cross shopping centre, she stalked the front of Dixons, mesmerised by the flickering screens and lurid colours of a world which she desperately wanted to plunge into.

Thick, black marker pens violated Shakespeare's texts. Brand new copies of Julius Caesar had been desecrated, ugly inky patches hiding the ‘inappropriate language' beneath. In art, her favourite subject, Gauguin's nudes had been skilfully doctored. Da Vinci's drawings looked like a patchwork quilt. Buttocks, breasts and genitalia had been covered over with white labels.

Once, she was caught picking off a sticker and was sent to the Headmistress. Nobody knew exactly how old Mrs Sisselbaum was. It was generally assumed she had been born ancient and shrunken, for she was a very short woman. Her wig was styled in an ash blonde Thatcher-like wave. Her hair looked as if it had congealed on her head. The Headmistress had gazed up at Chani without blinking, her eyes magnified by enormous glasses. Mrs Sisselbaum reminded Chani of an albino rabbit. The rabbit had informed Chani that such curiosity was unnatural in a Jewish girl. ‘Do it again and you will find yourself looking for a new school, a school for shameless girls like you.' Chani had fled the office, rebellion pounding in her heart. If HaShem had made the naked human form, why was it banned from sight?

She was living under a bell jar. But finally, despite the objections and the obstacles, a match had been struck. Finally she had said yes. She barely knew him from their few awkward meetings, where she had bitten her tongue and spoken in stilted sentences. A nervous, gangly yeshiva boy, albeit one who seemed genuinely kind and attentive. She hoped that the bell jar might finally be lifted. Or at least she would have someone to share it with.

 

The midnight blue canopy closed over her head; its golden fringes shivered as the wedding party huddled beneath. Cream roses and waxy lilies covered each pole, charging the air with scent. Chani stopped momentarily at Baruch's side.

It felt strange to be standing so close. This was the closest they had ever been. Still they were not touching. Not yet. A breath remained between them. Chani was intensely aware of Baruch's physical presence. She sensed how hot and tense he was under his black suit and prayer shawl. The brim of his hat hid his face. He twitched and tapped his brogue. But he did not look at her. Not directly anyway. She knew he was slyly watching. Bubbles of hysteria welled up inside her. A squeak erupted from the corner of her mouth. The Rabbi shot her a warning look, his eyebrows bristling disapproval.

Round, round, round. Chani circled Baruch, counting to seven in her head as she broke down the barriers between them with each step. She remembered how they had both flinched when their fingers had accidentally brushed in the hotel foyer. The sugar had scattered across the table. Frozen, neither had made a move to clean it up. Both were shomer nageah – observant of the laws of restraint.

Tonight, prohibition would be lifted.

 

Baruch's foot crashed down on the wine glass. It shattered and the shul exploded into life and sound. ‘Mazeltov!' roared the congregation. The men scooped him up and he was thrown about in their frenzied dance. Someone trod on his foot. ‘Zimmen-tov und mazel-tov! Mazel-tov und zimmen-tov!' they yelled and stamped. The women clapped from the gallery. Beards flapping, shoulders bashing, the men whooped and swirled around the chuppah. Faster and faster they spun. Chani was a white blur at the edge of his vision. He tried to catch her expression, but he was whirled away. Sweets pelted them from above as children threw them for luck. One caught him on the back of the head.

He was twenty. His life felt narrow: the pressure to succeed, to be a rabbi, to please his father. His quick analytical mind was to be harnessed to The Talmud. The English degree he longed to study remained a blasphemous secret buried in his heart. He listened to Coldplay on his iPod, his father believing that the wisdom of Rabbi Shlomo was filling his ears. Beneath his mattress lay the novels he was banned from reading – Dickens, Chandler, Orwell – but they were no longer enough. He felt controlled – there was no release, no relief.

One night, he took the Tube home after a lesson. A woman sat opposite him. She was huge. Her shirt was unbuttoned revealing two orbs of sunburnt flesh. Averting his eyes, he glanced at the advert above her head. But the advert showed a nubile girl in a bikini. He did not know where to look. He muttered a prayer but his eyes had strayed back to the rosy mounds in front of him. The flesh was alarmingly real in its imperfections. He could see a faint creping at the base of her throat. The breasts held a primordial power over him. He was drowning in the dark chasm between them. The train rattled over the tracks. The breasts shook. He grew hard. The woman stared. He clamped his prayer book over his erection. The doors opened and he scrambled out.

At night, he pressed his need into the mattress. He hoped his mother wouldn't notice the wasted seed when she did the laundry. He had tried to restrain himself by wearing gloves and two pairs of underpants, but now his dreams were a forbidden landscape of enormous breasts, rising like dunes in the desert. He was lonely and craved something, someone.

 

Married. Ten minutes alone together in The Bedeken Room. Suddenly Chani missed the crush of female bodies and swishing of skirts. Unusually, she didn't know what to do or say. She tried to imagine what the Rebbetzin would advise in this situation, but her gentle words would not come to mind. She had glanced up at the women's gallery. Where was she?

Chani could not look Baruch in the eye. Her friends had giggled over the theory that this brief respite granted to newlyweds immediately after the ceremony, was actually for the couple to do it. She stiffened in fear. She wondered if Baruch was thinking the same.

A cake stand had been set up. Tier upon tier of flaky delicacies glistened on doilies. Below were two bottles of mineral water and two crystal goblets. Neither Chani nor Baruch had eaten or drunk since the day before. They stared at the cakes. Instinctively, they reached for the same almond slice.

‘No, go on . . . you have it. Please,' croaked Baruch.

Chani mumbled thank you, whispered a blessing and nibbled the cake. She could have scoffed the lot. Munching in silence, they avoided eye contact.

‘Feels strange doesn't it, being married?'

‘Mmm.' Her mouth was still full.

‘Is it like you imagined?'

She shook her head vigorously. ‘I am not sure what I imagined,' she said. ‘It feels very, um, quick.'

‘Yes, it does. I guess it's the same for everybody.'

‘Probably.'

‘Well, they'll be coming any minute now, perhaps we should . . .' His words tailed off into silence.

Baruch sensed he should kiss her but he had no idea how. Anyway, he hadn't brushed his teeth all day so decided against trying. Chani felt a large, bony hand close round hers. She wished her hand wasn't so sweaty. Side by side, holding hands, they chewed and swallowed one more pastry each, until the door opened and they quickly let go.

 

***

 

The week before the wedding, Baruch had sat in Rabbi Zilberman's office. The room was a dusty grey box. There were two doors, both locked, but there were no windows. Papers covered the desk. Books filled the shelves and lay scattered on the floor. There was barely room for two plastic chairs. The filing cabinets closed in on him. A huge photo of a beloved sage hung on the wall. The old man stared at him, cataracts glowing blue-white, his hands frozen claws hanging from gaping sleeves. Had he suffered wedding night nerves?

Under the photo sat Rabbi Zilberman, a study in monochrome. His beard was streaky charcoal, his black suit speckled with dandruff. His sad, grey eyes examined Baruch. Rabbi Zilberman officiated at the synagogue that Baruch's family attended in Golders Green. Baruch was more familiar with the rabbi's rounded back, bent in supplication at the front of the shul. The rabbi's son, Avromi, had attended Baruch's school in Hendon and was one of his few and closest friends; but Baruch's relationship with Rabbi Zilberman had always been one of deference and formality. Whenever he had visited Avromi, Rabbi Zilberman would acknowledge Baruch with a curt nod and a stern, patriarchal smile, the corners of his mouth flexing upwards momentarily, his expression remaining sombre. After enquiring politely after Baruch's parents the rabbi would move swiftly on, a whirling column of dark wool and white shirt, leaving the two boys silent and awkward in his wake. That had been the extent of his familiarity with the thin, grey-bearded man sitting opposite him until these strange, compulsory tutorials had begun.

The rabbi started. ‘You are responsible for all your wife's needs,' he said. ‘You must feed her, clothe her, provide a roof over her head and pay for all her material necessities. But you must also give her pleasure in your relations with her.'

Baruch shifted in his seat. Pleasure. It sounded so simple. He had gone as far as to do some private research on the subject at Swiss Cottage Library, far away from the shtetl of Hendon. He had even swapped his yarmulke for a baseball cap for further anonymity. Too shy to ask, he had roamed the stacks lost like Moses in the desert, until he had found the right section. There, he sat immersed in sex advice manuals, a world so taboo to him that his heart raced with guilt. But he could not stop. Fascinated, he read on and stared at diagrams that made his ears burn red with shame. Clitoris, stimulate, arouse, labia, climax – the female body made no sense at all.

At school, he had glanced at the grubby men's magazines passed from desk to desk. The pictures had made his head swim – the women so brazen, their mouths glistening and open, their flesh sleek and pneumatic. He could not equate them to Chani. He had never even seen her elbows. Yet he was duty-bound to give her pleasure.

‘An orgasm, Rabbi?' he offered. Realising his mistake he flushed, the rash of acne on his left cheek suddenly backlit.

Rabbi Zilberman raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I believe that's what they call it nowadays.' But he did not probe further.

‘How will I know if I have pleased my wife?' He had to ask. This was his chance. His mouth had gone dry, but the words had slipped out.

‘You will know with time, with practice. She may even tell you, but do not waste time chattering about frivolous things. Action is important, not words. A child is a wonderful mitzvah. And, to have relations with her whilst she is pregnant is a double-mitzvah!'

Pregnant. Baruch had almost forgotten that these mysterious relations could lead to such a thing. He wasn't ready to be a father yet.

The Rabbi seemed to expand and fill the room. ‘And Baruch, just as we do not eat like animals, we do not have relations like them either. HaShem created us with physical desires and marriage liberates us to enjoy those desires in the right way. Not like beasts in the field.' Rabbi Zilberman was eyeballing him.

Like beasts in the field? But how was this anatomically possible? He remembered the pictures – but surely the behind was the wrong place? Baruch was very relieved that HaShem had solved this problem for him.

The Rabbi was not done yet. ‘And when your wife is niddah, you do not go near her. Don't even touch her until her bleeding has finished and she has purified herself in the mikveh. Then you may rejoice in each other again just like on your wedding night. But all this your wife will know. Consider the time when you cannot have relations as a time to get to know each other again like brother and sister, to solve any disputes and to deepen your friendship.' The rabbi spoke calmly with no embarrassment. Baruch stared at the rabbi's ear. It all sounded very wise and sensible and it was not news to him. He had studied the family purity laws in the Gemarah, a text so dry and remote that any possible eroticism had been bleached out. He had learnt basic biology at school but the mechanical realities still baffled him.