Jacob's Folly (20 page)

“I think you could be really fine, Masha, truly exceptional at your work. If you don't try you'll never know what could have happened, the work you might have done. But … you can't do it halfway like this. I mean, it's Friday night. You think all the theaters are closed? You think Broadway is shuttin' down 'cause it's Shabbos? And Hollywood? The TV studios? They work Friday night, they shoot Saturdays. You're gonna have to make a choice. You're one thing or the other, but you can't be both. You either stick with it, or … I don't know, you get married, and find another line of work.” His voice shook, and he turned back to his view out the window.

“I'm sorry,” he said, his forehead pressed to the glass. “It's none of my business.”

Masha had stopped her game, and sat in the chair, staring at the floor. She knew what he said was true. Yet she couldn't bring herself to dwell on the contradiction. She pushed the floor away sideways with her feet, pivoting back and forth for a while. Then she looked up at him with solemn hopefulness.

“Can we watch TV?” she asked.

“You came all the way to Manhattan and you want to watch TV.”

“I already broke the rules so bad … you'd have to turn it on.”

“How about a movie?” he asked.

I had never seen anyone observe that way. She was so
alive
. She watched the film as if witnessing a close relative in a bare-knuckle fight. Every moment
counted
. Her whole body tensed up with the thrill of scary moments, her feet tucked under her. She squinted at love scenes through her fingers. And when there was a laugh, she spun around to share it with Hugh, so vital, filled with the miracle of the joke. I was painfully jealous of him. If I could have sat beside her, oh! What wouldn't I have accomplished? After a while, Hugh stopped watching the film and just watched Masha. At the end, her face wet with tears, hiccuping from the weeping, she let him shut off the box. Clearly, he was enthralled by her now. Who wouldn't be?

Hugh made up his bed fresh for her; he slept on the couch. His room was barren, but for a few books by the bed. Masha lay awake for a long time after she had said her evening prayers. Watching that movie had scooped her out, filled her with want. She yearned to be one of those people who became other people. She had to find a story to live in.

The next morning, a young woman's voice woke Masha up. She rose, still in her dress, and peeked through the door. It was Shelley, her dandelion-fluff hair lit up by the morning sunlight streaming through the dusty window. A husky, tall young man stood over her. They were laughing. Masha walked in.

“There she is!” said Shelley. “We heard about your mishap. I hope you're not in trouble.”

“What are
you
doing here?” asked Masha, pleased.

“I live here,” said Shelley.

“You do?”

“I thought you knew,” said Hugh, who was huddled under a pile of coats on the couch. “I figured you two had talked about it.”

“This is Paul,” said Shelley.

“Hi,” said Masha, her hands clamped behind her back. Paul looked at her somberly.

“Isn't she beguiling?” asked Shelley.

“Yes, she is.” Paul smiled. Shelley's boyfriend had a pugnacious face, eyebrows puckered over a pair of intense little eyes.

“I'm so glad you got stuck in Manhattan,” said Shelley. “Are you hungry?”

Masha wasn't allowed to go back home until that night at sunset, so Hugh went out and came back with bags of bagels, kosher cream cheese—and smoked salmon, which surprised Masha. Maybe he was rich? Shelley made eggs. She was wearing a light cotton dress and Mary Janes. The two men lay on the couch and talked, waiting to be fed. There was something improvised about the setup. They seemed like
orphaned children, the three of them, and Shelley was playing the mother. Masha set plates onto the flimsy card table and Shelley served them all. Masha sank her teeth into the thick cream cheese, tearing at the doughy bagel with her teeth, eyes closing. She felt so satisfied here. Later, Shelley showed her the room she shared with Paul. Unlike Hugh's room, it was carefully furnished, with a wicker bedstead, a desk, a couple of chairs.

“I'm desperate to move out,” Shelley whispered as Masha investigated the many photos up on the wall above the bed.

“Why?”

“It's over between me and Paul, we're like a sixty-year-old couple. Now I'm stuck; I can't afford to leave,” said Shelley.

Masha craved a shower, but it was forbidden to use water heated on the Sabbath. She washed herself with cold water. For toilet paper, she used Kleenex she found in a drawer; she still felt bad about the time she tore the napkin at the Shabbos table. When she left the bathroom, she whispered the benediction
asher yatzar
, thanking Hashem for her working orifices, walked into the living room, and saw that angular Hugh was grabbing the coats he'd used for bedding off the couch. The other two were gone.

“Where did Shelley go?” she asked.

“She and Paul had to go out for an hour or so. They have an appointment with a professional,” he said. “One of those rituals you perform when your relationship is dying, apparently.” Masha didn't know what he meant. She picked up his copy of the play, which was on the floor, and leafed through it.

“You don't understand,” she said.

“What's that?”

“To you, all the rules are weird and hard, right? You think being a real Jew is hard.”

“Seems like it.”

“But I know the rules like I know how to breathe, so it's easy. What's hard is living without the rules. That's hard.”

“I'm sorry if I said something I shouldn't have,” he said. “I do that a lot.”

“Let's play the scene,” she said, tossing the play on the couch.

He plucked the lawn chairs out of the way so they would have room to work. I flew onto a standing lamp and watched them. From the moment she began the scene, Masha's body changed. Barefoot, she circled her prey with a confident animal grace. Her hand came close to Hugh's arm, but it never landed. She was not allowed to touch him, and she would not. Yet the charge coming out of her was stunning. I tried to find her thoughts, but there were none of her own. She was the person she was pretending to be. She had become Carol Cutrere, lost Southern belle (albeit with a Long Island accent). Her face seemed molded to the skull in a different way; she looked older, ground down by a ten-year party, yet gloriously defiant in her chosen wildness. Poor Hugh Crosby was getting lost in her performance. Skilled as he was, he was no match for this creature.

Afterward, she flopped, spent, onto the office chair, and began to swivel it side to side again as she slowly came back to herself. Watching her, a knot of fear formed in my fly's belly. There was something inhuman in her stare. It was an expression that I recognized, but I couldn't remember why.

Afterward, still in the grips of the scene, Masha splashed water on her face in the bathroom. As her head swung up, she caught her reflection and froze there. Framed in powder-pink tiles, her pale face, with its inky frame of hair, seemed to be floating. Her dark, kohl-smudged eyes looked vast, glassy, tinged with violet. Her mouth was slightly open, and the insolent gap between her two front teeth was just visible. She looked predatory. For the first time, Masha took her own breath away. I inhabited her as she stared at herself, felt the vanity solidifying in her like cooling fat.

When night fell, Hugh walked Masha through Penn Station. She allowed herself to hold on to the edge of his down jacket, following him in her long dress as he fought through the roiling crowd to buy two tickets at a kiosk. In the train, he sat beside her, his legs crossed at the ankles. Dread was gathering in her now as she stared out the flashing window, her red wool coat sliding down her shoulders. They would be angry, maybe. Disappointed. Yes. This was so far from what was expected. It would frighten them, she knew. Oh, why? Yet she couldn't muster regret.

On the Far Rockaway platform, Hugh lit a cigarette. There was a thick, complicit silence between them. He walked her to the end of her street. She stopped then, faced him. She was frightened now.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Good luck with the family,” he said, his eyes flicking down to her mouth.

“Yeah.”

“See you Tuesday?”

“Okay.” She turned and walked down the block.

The lights were on in her house. The first person she saw was Miriam, walking out the door. Seeing her, Miriam charged down the block, grabbed Masha's arm, and pulled her toward the house, her mouth a tense red slash.

“What happened? Mommy was like dead all Shabbos, she could barely talk.”

“I told her. I missed the train,” Masha said.

“Yeah, but … were you alone?”

“Yes.”

“I saw you with a guy just there.”

“You were spying?”

“I caught sight of you. I was waiting for you to say goodbye. Forgive me for not screaming your name in the street.”

“He's a friend.”

“A friend? From where? Where did you get a friend like that? What's going on with you? I know something is going on!”

Masha tore loose of her sister and walked into the house. In the living room, the whole family was looking up at her, a nest of bafflement and reproach. She backed away from them, mute, like a hunted thing, and ran up the stairs.

She sat on the bed and took in her room. Everything was as she had left it yesterday morning, yet it seemed acutely not the same. Her chest of drawers, the forest-green rug, the green-and-blue curtains, Yehudis and Suri's tidily made beds, her hairbrush on the bedside table with a snarl of black hair in it—it was all so … alien. It seemed as if this were a room she was visiting for the first time in years. Something had changed, forever, in a single day. Loss swept through her.

Her mother's knock was soft. “You want something to eat?” Pearl asked.

“No, thanks, Mommy.”

“You must be so tired.” Pearl hugged her.

“I'm sorry I scared you,” said Masha.

“It's over now,” said Pearl. Masha held her mother, gripped the flesh of her arms, put her head against her soft breast, searching for the comfort she had always found here. But a protective case was forming around my beloved, like a magic spell that repelled everything familiar. Her little tear-stained face seemed so strained, so thin, it broke my heart.

Pearl stroked her head. “I am so glad to see you, sweetheart. You rest now. We'll talk tomorrow.”

Pearl shut the door gently. Masha began to undress, removing first the left shoe, then the right, as she had been taught to do. She was so tired all of a sudden. The door opened. It was Estie.

“Where were you, Masha? You ran away!”

“If I ran away, how come I'm here?”

“Hashem's gonna be so mad at you.”

“Why? I didn't do anything. I stayed put. He would have been mad if I'da got on the train.”

“I got in trouble too,” said Estie, one gangly leg up on Masha's bed.

“What else is new? Okay,” said Masha. “Scram. I'm tired.”

“Mashie. Could I sleep wit' you?”

“No way.”

“Please?”

Masha sighed. “Just lie down with me five minutes.” The little girl nestled up to her sister under the blankets, wrapping her small hand in a black lasso of Masha's hair, and gave her neck a long, satisfied sniff. “Don't cry, Mashie,” Estie said.

“I'm not crying, stupid,” Masha whispered.

“You
was
,” said Estie drowsily. Masha held the girl's warm body close. Within seconds the two wild daughters of Pearl and Mordecai Edelman were fast asleep.

I
was summoned to the library. The count was writing a letter at a round table.

“Sit down, Gebeck,” he said. I sat. He slid a piece of paper, a quill, and a bottle of ink toward me. “Write your name,” he said. I began to write
Jacob
, but turned it into
Johann
, then
Gebeck
. He took the paper and squinted at it.

“Do you normally write in Hebrew?” he asked.

“That's what I learned,” I said. “But I do write some French.”

“Your handwriting will improve,” he said with a shrug. “Now. I have an undertaking for you. I wrote a little journal of my travels in Italy last year. I would like you to write me out a fair copy.” I peeked up at him, confused. “Just copy what is in my journal into this clean notebook. Practice your handwriting first. Write out my first two paragraphs on this scrap piece of paper. There.” He left me then.

Half an hour later I was asleep, my head on the table. I was still feeble from my time in jail. Solange led me to the settee and drew a blanket over me. I slept there for several hours. When I woke, I found a tray with soup and bread, water, and hot coffee on the library table. I ate my meal, careful not to spill a drop of soup. Refreshed, I spent
the next two hours improving my script, copying out French I barely understood.

As was the count's intention, the act of copying his language made me more fluent in French. By the end of the day I had begun to understand a bit more of what I read. By the end of the month I was reading easily. The journal was, for the most part, an exhaustive description of the count's pursuit, seduction, and abandonment of various ladies of the Italian nobility. It seemed to me that he would not be very welcome in that country, should he ever wish to return.

It took me two months to make the fair copy of the Comte de Villars's Italian journal. During that time I also learned from Le Jumeau how to:

I perfected the deadened aristocratic expression required of a servant, a chilly look they called “morgue” in those days. As I studied Le Jumeau, the count continued to study me: he might appear at any time—when I was eating, sleeping, praying, washing. I had to
enunciate every blessing I said over food and drink so that he could copy it down in his little red book. I spoke out my prayers like lines in a play. The effect of all this was to make my religious habits seem more and more like performance. Whatever real feeling I had invested in my daily rituals was being sapped.

My first Friday in the Hôtel de Villars, at sunset, I lit a candle in my room and said the Shabbat prayer, then ate what dainties I had set aside during the week as a Shabbat feast. However, I was unable to devote twenty-four hours to prayer, joy, and rest, as we are prescribed to do. Close to midnight, the count arrived home from the theater and called for me to undress him. Saturday morning, Le Jumeau barked at me to light the stove, shine the shoes. Sunday morning was the servants' only time off, so that we could attend Mass, which I did not do, of course. Neither did Le Jumeau, by the way; he was busy with the comely cook, Clothilde, who had, I learned by way of the scullery maid, abandoned her husband and children to live with the irresistible valet. Now that I was installed beside the count, they shared a bedroom off the kitchen.

One morning I was performing the ritual washing of hands when the door opened. The count strode into my room, reached down, took the basin, jerked the window open, and threw the water into the courtyard. Then he turned on me, his broad, fleshy mouth turned down in an exaggerated grimace, his face red.

“Enough,” he said. “I have been patient with you, Gebeck. But now you need to wake up. Meet me in the library in half an hour. Have some bread and coffee. Forget about my breakfast. Le Jumeau will bring it to me later.”

I reported to the library at the prescribed time, badly shaken. The count's mood had softened.

“I am sorry to be harsh. There is a reason for my behavior. One day I believe you will be grateful for what I am about to give you. Now your French is strong enough. Never mind your duties today.” He had
opened the glass door of a high bookcase and was selecting various leather-bound volumes, setting them on the table. He chose one from the pile and opened it before me. “I will return in an hour or so. You can ask me anything you like then. I am no professor, but I have been taught well, by brutal teachers with great minds: the Jesuits. Your only obligation for the next few months is to educate yourself.” I was overwhelmed by confusion, fear, and a rising sense of privilege. When I answered, my voice barely emerged from my throat.

“
Merci, Monsieur le Comte
.”

And so began my enlightenment.

He started me on Aristotle. I felt I was drowning. I had no comprehension, nothing to cling to, no reference for this mode of thinking. The count walked me through the great ideas of classical civilization as patiently as if I were his own son. My education had been thus far exclusively religious, including only the Torah, the Talmud, and, through Gimpel, heretical whiffs of the Zohar and the Tanya. There was much wisdom in these books, but it was all predicated on faith, and tainted, for me, by the nightmare of Hodel. Logic and empirical reasoning was a relief, like a gust of fresh air after being locked in a closet. To my surprise—and the count's too, I think—I showed an aptitude for philosophy, and developed a love of language, learning adequate Latin and fairly good French, even some English. The count loved a well-turned phrase. Pleasing my master had become very important to me. I had never managed to impress my own father much. He regarded me as a dud, serious about neither selling nor studying; married me off to the first lunatic with a dowry that went on the market. What would he say now, if he saw his chump of a son in a powdered wig, speaking the language of Cicero?

The count was determined to rid me of my superstitions. He bathed me in Locke, lathered me in Voltaire, and powdered me with Diderot. The Jews were, my master contended, sealed off from civilization. Steeped in ancient custom, with a superiority complex supported by our holy text, we were permanent primitives forever linked by a
pseudo-historical umbilical cord to an imagined, heroic past. Worst of all our crimes was the mothering of Christianity, which the count detested as the religion of slaves. My master imagined me up a utopia where Jews, Muhammadans, and Christians alike lived for themselves and one another, not in fear of divine retribution, not ensnared by an intricate net of laws, but free. It was a dizzying prospect, frightening and seductive.