Horizontal Woman (3 page)

Once, a long time ago, her father had taken her into synagogue for a service which had something to do with celebrating the Torah, the huge scrolls. Men of the congregation had carried these scrolls, unwieldy as blocks of wood, through the aisles of the temple and people had bent over to touch or at least gaze at them closely (Elizabeth had smelled talcum powder: something Hebraic and mysterious) but as religious experiences went (and for Elizabeth they did not go very far; she was not sure that in the post-technological culture ancient institutions could carry any weight at all) none of that had anything to match copulation with Rabbi Schnitzler.

Rabbi Schnitzler, his forelocks dancing across his damp forehead, his bearded face creased with a Talmudic concentration, approaches her hobbling, murmuring intricate orthodoxies in an undertone, his fine Chassidic hands already clasping as if in some apprehension of her breasts and even in this awkward position, collapsed on the orange couch with sheaves of hidden religious texts prickling her back, Elizabeth can feel a surge of reverence, call it
belief
if you will in those forces which move Schnitzler toward her.

She has never had a Rabbi, never conceived that she might be able to reach any of the
chassids
in this way but this merely will show you how you can never tell; how the primacy of certain forces may indeed be universal.

Despite the fact that he is a Rabbi, nothing in Schnitzler’s background seems to have prepared him for what is happening now: either that or he is managing to dissemble in a way which would take him into unsuspected cunning. His face seems wiped clean of orthodoxy now, all traces of his heritage falling from him and in the dense light he looks literally Anglo-Saxon as he paces the room. “I don’t believe it,” Schnitzler is saying, “I don’t believe it.”

“Yes you do,” Elizabeth says, lying back, opening her thighs, making herself inviting to him as she takes off the last piece of clothing, her shoes. “You can accept this gift. It’s all right. All right.” She wants his beard now against her breasts so that she can tell him in secrecy how deeply she accepts him.

“Incredible,” Schnitzler says without an accent, “this is absolutely incredible but what is given, God knows, must be taken in that spirit, otherwise would be a sin.” His eyes gleam. He begins, layer by layer, to divest himself of his rabbinical garb, flicking glances between Elizabeth and the closed door of the living room which he seems to fear might at any time fly open to disgorge his wife and thirteen children, all of them on their knees in some intricate prayer of release which they will then cry to him. The earlier Schnitzler assurance seems to have receded: maybe his wife and children are not, as he had insisted to Elizabeth, at the Synagogue consecration of the bathiceremonies after all.

“Ah,” Schnitzler says, forgetting about the door as he grunts with the effort to enclose, “ah, you cannot imagine, you cannot, young lady, possibly imagine, but nevertheless I do not believe this,” and now his robes are coming off, Elizabeth watches with fascination for she has never seen a
chassid
in less than full dress: first goes the outer coat, a long black construction with two prayerbooks dangling from a pocket, after that comes a belt which seems to hold religious implements and then the first robe which is of a pale blue shade with certain Hebraic characters stenciled on it. “Warm,” Schnitzler says, running a hand across his forehead, “very warm all the time,” as if explaining the benefits of his dress and then that robe falls to the floor.

Now there is a complicated arrangement of garments which Elizabeth decides, despite their greenish hue, are probably a suit, a suit for prayers and underneath that is a set of incontestably dirty but orthodox underwear which Schnitzler manages to take off easily. It is surprising how prosaic the elaborate chassidic costume is at the core but then what could she have expected? There are basics to the human pattern. Naked they are all the same: this is something she must teach them, that the devices, ornaments, prejudices and fears merely keep them apart. They are like everyone else. Schnitzler need have no feeling of dislocation.

“This is really strange,” Schnitzler says, moving upon her then with an embarrassed chuckle, “really, really strange, are you sure that you want to do this, Miss Moore?”

“Yes. You know that.”

“Because I wouldn’t want to get into any trouble with the department or with you. I am a gentle man, I make no problems. We need the supplementary home relief because my small salary from the teaching is just not sufficient — ”

“Yes,” she says, motioning him to come against her, “yes, yes, I understand that, it’s perfectly all right. I won’t tell any one. I want you.”

“I never thought that it would come to this,” Schnitzler says musing, now poised before her, “to make an honest living in America in my own way, that was all I wanted. But in Williamsburg there are so many rabbis — ”

“Please,” Elizabeth says. She must break through his dissimulation, confront him with his own, aching lust. “No more of this — ”

“Very well then,” Schnitzler says with a strange, European air, a curious formality of expression. “If this is really what you wanted then all our instructions and teachings are that you cannot be denied. Is this not right?” His eyes become abstracted; perhaps he is thinking of his drab wife Rose Schnitzler, her grey complexion, her continuing state of pregnancy. “You are very attractive,” Schnitzler says and then his mood changes, his expression becomes fierce, lust does indeed appear at the periphery of his eyeballs and he hurls himself upon her.

He is enormous, needful; it is all that she can do to take him in a single burst but Elizabeth wills herself to do so feeling his mouth on her breasts, his hands manipulating her pubis as if it were a portion of sacred texts. “God,” Schnitzler says, going against her nipple, “oh my God,” and she knows that she has won again; all Hebraic knowledge seems to be stripped from him, now he is moaning as Felipe Morales, Willie Buckingham, Jesse Culver, all of the others. At the root they are all the same. “Ah God,” Schnitzler says, and righteously begins to fuck her.

It is strange: a strange and solemn experience this one. Of all those she has had she has never yet had a
chassid
, although her caseload is full of them. To now they have been grumbling and resistant, seemingly stupid — despite all of their children — about sex and all of her suggestions. But now at last she has one, the most procreative (imagine, thirteen children!) of them all … and in addition she has never copulated in circumstances quite like this. They are in a huge living room which also serves as the Schnitzler dining room and library: the holy texts are scattered on the shelves and tables, a gigantic menorah, seemingly hoisted by invisible wire, dangling from a chandelier. At the far corner of the room, just within her line of sight, furthermore, is a small closed ark which can contain nothing other than the scrolls of Schnitzler’s faith. In the presence of the ark he is fornicating: these orthodox have no sense of repression in the way that she has come to understand it.

Leaning back further on the couch, impacting her buttocks deep into the cushions, spreading her thighs even wider to receive the Schnitzler seed, Elizabeth thinks that she may hear a faint keening outside. It sounds like a police siren or the sound of children at play with weaponry until she remembers some fragment of her earlier interview with Schnitzler: this must be the sound of the afternoon services, the
Mincha
, coming from the Lubavitcher congregation down the street. Orthodox Jews pray three times a day: morning, afternoon and dusk and what is there to be said about Schnitzler who is missing one-third of his daily output of prayers to possess her? Maybe she will be able to convince him after all that his religion is an anachronism, that he must not hide his self-sufficiency and esteem behind it and can instead enter into the world. “Ah,” Schnitzler says again, “God almighty,” and she feels him come within her. Most of them she cannot feel but this one she definitely does: his orgasm is enormous, spilling and guttering into her and patiently she rides him out. She is anesthetized underneath which is too bad because in some intense way, with Schnitzler, she would like to come: a pity that she cannot.

He collapses across her, at length, groaning, burying his head into her neck, sniffing and snorting, his cheeks moving as if in laughter and then slowly, slowly moves upward from her, rises to his knees and looks around the room with a curiously abstracted expression. It is as if he is looking at everything for the first time. “Well,” he says stupidly after a while, “I should be getting dressed.”

“If you want to.”

“So should you. They won’t be at the baths all afternoon. Just to be safe.”

“Whatever you say,” she says. She flexes her arms, stretches, yawns in an affected way. “That was wonderful,” she says, “it was really good.”

“Well,” Schnitzler says, making a tilting gesture with his hand, “well, you know how it is. Are you by any chance Jewish?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really,” Schnitzler says. “Not if you say so.”

“Do you feel that it would be better for you if I were Jewish? Do you have any sense of guilt?”

“No,” Schnitzler says, standing, groaning, looking for his clothing. “No, no guilt. I do not understand. I cannot talk so well in English. Do you perhaps speak Jewish?

“No.”

“But you could be Jewish, is that what you say?”

“Look, Rabbi Schnitzler,” Elizabeth says, at ease before him in her nudity. “Jewishness has nothing to do with it. You must stop this parochialism. You cannot live like that forever. There are larger meanings, possibilities — ”

“Of course,” Schnitzler says absently. “Of course, I understand that.” His brow is creased, his face distracted, in no way does he seem to be the man with whom she has fornicated. Rather, with clumsy haste, he stumbles toward his clothing and begins to dress. “Many social workers we have had during our time in this country,” he says. “Of course — ”

“But you feel this is different.”

“I feel you should get dressed.”

“I will, Rabbi,” Elizabeth says gently, realizing that Schnitzler for some reason is on the edge of panic. “I’ll get dressed right away. I only thought we might talk for a moment.”

“What is there to talk about?”

“Many things,” she says, standing, looking for her clothes which as always do not seem to be in the spot she has left them. She must remember to make a more precise accounting of this; it would eliminate all kinds of awkwardness at the end of copulation. Elizabeth is willing to admit that things still are not working out quite the way they should; rather than being open and easy to counsel after fornication Schnitzler (like many of the others) seems to have gone away from her. “Why do you think that I had sex with you?”

“Sex?”

“Don’t you know what that means? Why do you think that we made love together?”

“Oh,” Schnitzler says, “sex. Made love. Now I understand. I do not speak English too well; I have many troubles with the language although I try. I do not know why you had sex with me, Miss Moore.”

“Don’t you? Are you sure you don’t?”

“Miss Moore,” Schnitzler says, reaching for his phylacteries and adjusting them around his belt, “believe me, I would like to tell you these many things but I cannot. I am not even sure that we should have done this. It may have been a grievous sin. There is an accounting — ”

“You must stop,” Elizabeth says, putting on her panties, reaching for a sweater, “with this incessant sense of guilt. Guilt follows you wherever you go; you will not permit yourself to function. Your whole religion is based on guilt.”

“Are you an anti-Semite?”

“No,” she says with exasperation, “I am
not
an anti-Semite; I’m only trying to help you.” It is impossible, quite impossible. In a way she is sorry that she has gone to the couch with Schnitzler but then the only way, often, to deduce certain cases is to take chances with them. This will, probably, turn out to have been another one of her mistakes, yet she had to take the chance. She adjusts her skirt around her, suddenly anxious to be covered, anxious to end this. His shame and guilt have infected her; she is on the verge of losing her professional detachment. “Sometimes it’s important to talk about the things that are bothering you,” she says, “talking is very important, expressing your feeling, coming to grips with yourself. Don’t you understand that?” but it is hopelessness which envelops her like a shroud, not her clothing as she stands, dressed, before him. “You can’t go on this way,” she says, “don’t you realize that? You’ve got to take a stand, make a stand, cease this awful dependency. You must accept the fact of your own desires and act upon them without ambivalence; otherwise you’ll be on public assistance for the rest of your life.”

“I am sorry,” Schnitzler says, “truly sorry, Miss Moore; I do not know what you are saying. I feel now that I must atone for a terrible sin. What I did I thought was right but now I see it was wrong. Forgiveness is what I need,” he says and goes to a shelf at the corner, seizes a prayer shawl and with hurried gestures covers himself. “I must go to the temple.”

“Oh forget that nonsense,” she says, aware that she is losing her control and not even sure why this is the case but she is out of patience, thoroughly out of patience at the moment with the Schnitzlers and all they represent. “You just use that jargon to seal yourself off from reality, that’s the whole point of this. And it’s time for you to think of birth control. You must begin acting as a responsible adult; this breeding, this inconsiderate immature bearing of children into the world which you can neither support nor understand — ”

“Sorry,” Schnitzler says, “I am truly sorry. You do not understand. I do not understand. Forgive me, Miss Moore, I will have to leave. You believe? Good.” He goes to the door, pulls it open abruptly and leaving Elizabeth to the emptiness of his apartment, stumbles into the street. Looking up through the cellar-level window she can see him scuttling on the sidewalk for a few paces, then he passes from view and is gone.