Jephte's Daughter (20 page)

“Clearly a basket case.” He lifted his chin and sipped the drink with bored nonchalance.

Elizabeth moved a little farther away from him and examined him carefully. His voice was cold and dripping with superiority. “I can’t believe this.” She shook her head and jumped out of bed, putting on her robe. She wanted to cry with disappointment.

“Are you planning to interfere then? Is that it? After you took the money from Daddy?”

“Not even an honest whore, what?” she shot back harshly. She went over to the window and looked out, fighting the lump in her throat.

He walked over to her and put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed it. “You are much too harsh on yourself, Liz dearest. Your imagination is aroused. Sympathy flows in your exquisite breast. But what in heaven’s name can you do? This is a different world with its own rules. Your coming in from the outside and upsetting things might make them even worse. Anyhow, she sounds so passive. Typical effect of religion on the masses.” He tilted his head back lazily, swallowing the last drops from the glass.

She shrugged off his arm and turned to face him, her eyes blazing and narrowed. “Remember Wordsworth? The continuum of existence. The social obligations of the poet to reach out and touch society, to make that connection with the non-I. Remember all that stuff you taught me about how literature humanizes, how it lets us break through the boundaries of our own narrow culture and experience and to experience the shared human condition?”

“You get an A, my dear.”

She stared at him. Hairy, pidgeony chest, red swollen organ flapping around comically. What had she ever seen in this man?

“I taught Batsheva everything you taught me, and we believed it! Two fools, huh? A country girl and a passive religious lunatic. What was it, then? Just some more hype? Another day another dollar from the poor-fool students, seekers of truth and MBAs?” She took off her robe and threw it down. “Okay. Here it is. Tits and ass. If that’s all you want, just take it and let’s not bullshit each other anymore, okay?”

He lifted the robe and gently helped her into it. “My mother told me never to get involved with the Irish. Temper, temper. Whew, my dear lady! Excruciatingly sorry for the bloody mistake. Your sentiments are indeed noble. Let me point out yet another consideration. By the postmark, this letter is at least four months old. And what if, pray tell, while it was wandering around London, all these problems have cleared up? And even if, more likely I grant you, they haven’t, my question remains. What can you do?”

She closed her eyes, remembering that day in California when she had reached out and hugged Batsheva Ha-Levi. She had felt something real then, inside her chest. She had made a promise. Even a calculating climber like me has some pride, some sense of honor, she thought. That promise stood. “She needs a friend. I would have thought that a man of your artistic temperament could understand that, could scrounge up a little sympathy for a sweet, confused, and desperately unhappy child—because that’s all she is.”

He leaned forward and held her close, brushing the hair out of her eyes with his lips. “Do you know why I love you? You don’t, do you? You think it’s your stunning body, your wonderful face. I love you, you little fool, because every once in a while you make me remember what it’s all about. I forget sometimes, in between food and fornication and marking papers and faculty wars. Don’t ever let me forget, okay?” He made a low sweeping bow. “Sancho Panza, at your service.” He picked up the phone and dialed the long-distance operator, reading the name and address off the envelope. He dialed and when Batsheva Ha-Levi Harshen picked up the phone he said, “Graham MacLeish here. Your friend Elizabeth is waiting to speak to you, dear, hold on a moment.” Elizabeth took the phone from him and smiled, remembering suddenly why she loved him.

When the plane was safely off the ground and the roar of the engines had died down, Graham repeated the question.

“What did she say that has us winging our way to Jerusalem five hours later?”

“You didn’t have to come!”

“Touchy, touchy. Tut, tut, a mere theoretical question. Artistic curiosity. I might write a novel about this someday.” Elizabeth leaned back and looked out at the darkening sky over the twinkling lights of London, clone of New York and Los Angeles. Large, festering, and impersonal labyrinths with millions of human tragedies happening every minute. Why, just as they spoke, a young innocent girl was being raped or killed, a child was being sexually abused by its father, a nurse or doctor was killing a patient, a vile old man was giving money to a twelve-year-old prostitute. But it didn’t touch them, any of them, sitting comfortably among the clouds. You couldn’t make much of a difference in this world, could you? But you had to try anyway when the rare opportunity came your way.

“She said to forget her letter. She said she was fine.”

He sat up bolt upright and stared. “It must be the ascent clogging my ears. Or perhaps the cabin is running out of oxygen and my brain is therefore not functioning. She said she was fine? And this is the reason that you immediately packed and boarded a plane for the Middle East?”

Her cheeks felt hot. She cupped her palms around her face. “She is not herself. It was awful to hear her. All the life has gone out of her. She’s dying, Graham.”

“A bit melodramatic, aren’t you? After all, it could have been a lousy connection, a water-clogged cable, a shaky satellite transmitter…”

She took his hand in hers and kissed it and shook her head slowly from side to side. “What they must have done to that poor child in only a year. It breaks my heart. If only I hadn’t left California. If only I had waited for my scholarship to come through. If only I hadn’t thrown her to the wolves. I’ll never forgive myself, never. I have to make this right, Graham.”

“I again applaud your noble sentiments. However, you flatter yourself overmuch if you think anything you can do will make that much of a difference. What are you planning to do when you get there, if I might be so bold as to inquire?”

“I’m planning to drag her out of there and bring her back to London.”

“Surely you’re joking?” He laughed.

“I fail to see what’s funny. If you saw a child about to be run over by a car, would you discuss safety with him, or drag him bodily out of harm’s way?”

“You are too precious and naïve. A real country girl. Don’t you think her husband, her in-laws, her parents, are going to have some say in all this? Don’t their opinions matter?”

“They’ve sold her down the river for some crazy, fanatical, cultish reason. Their opinions don’t count.”

The stewardess pushed the cart of tinkling drinks down the aisle and Graham looked up. “You’d better give me a stiff one.” He drank it in one gulp. “Now, let us carry this fantasy to its ultimate conclusion. You have by some stretch of the imagination carted and cajoled this young heiress out of her connubial bliss and back to London, where she moves in, I suppose, with us.”

She put her fingertip into her mouth and chewed on the nail thoughtfully. “I haven’t thought it out that far, actually.”

“That’s clear.”

“I don’t know exactly what I’ll do when I get there.” Her tone turned peevish and stubborn. “But one thing I know for sure: I’m not going to let fate just chew up that child and spit her out. I’m not going to sit passively by.” She put a placating arm on his. “We’ll just have to play it by ear. Please, trust me. My instincts are good, and so is my education. I had one of the best teachers around.”

“You know, the last time Crusaders came to the Holy Land they rounded up all the Jews and murdered them. Don’t be surprised, my darling, if the Jews are ready for us this time ’round. Poetic justice?”

It was just the kind of black humor Elizabeth was in the mood for, and, had she heard it, it would have pleased her immensely. But the effects of the long day, the tension and the Dramamine combined to put her fast asleep. Graham smiled at her tilted, oblivious head framed in red-gold curls. He took his blanket out of the compartment in front of him and unfolded it, tucking it in around her shoulders. “Sweet dreams, Don Quixote.”

I must be mad, he thought. All this for a woman. A lovely woman, a delicious woman, but nevertheless a woman. I’m such a pathological liar. Admit it, sir. You love this classless little American fool, this child. You have loved her for four tortured, noble years in chastity, out of respect for the establishment. You pined for her like a schoolboy and almost clicked your heels for joy when you opened that white envelope. He remembered a wonderful story he had once read. Faulkner, perhaps? Anyway, it was about a man sitting in jail after having acted out the plot of a Western thriller he had read, only to have been caught in a way not mentioned by the author. Could he sue the author, he wondered, for having lied?

What was all that stuff he had taught Liz?

More specifically, did literature succeed in humanizing the savage animal instincts native to each and every one of us? Are we kinder, more charitable, more loving because of the books we read? Could
Crime and Punishment
stop us from murdering an old lady whose money we needed? Could
Lord Jim
stop us from jumping ship and saving our own necks and letting everyone on board drown instead? Total bullshit, of course. And yet this was precisely the lofty message he conveyed to his students.

He was a cautious man, a man of thought and very little action. He was pleased and rather alarmed at the insane impracticality of the mission he was currently embarked upon. In truth, he had very little sympathy for Batsheva Harshen, whoever she was. Along with D. H. Lawrence, he believed that for every murderer there is a murderee, a person who consciously or unconsciously chooses his own fate, no matter what protests he makes to the contrary. He did not believe that fate tolerated interference. Indeed, if they ever got the girl back to England she would no doubt attach herself to a man just as awful as her present husband. Once a victim, always a victim. Of course, he would not say any of this to Elizabeth. He would stand by her side, playing the good mentor, the moralist with the heart large enough to encompass all the music, poetry, literature, and history of Western civilization. He would not say that Coleridge was wrong about each of us constantly changing and evolving, creatively reaching our potential in harmony with some organic creative principle. He would not say that he had long ago lost faith in his scholarship, and that it had ceased to have meaning save for that given it by the young, impressionable students who copied each word feverishly and even, on rare occasion, took them seriously. He leaned over and planted a gentle kiss on Elizabeth’s forehead.

When had he lost his faith? Maybe it was just a gradual wearing away over time. Literary criticism had become a kind of game, sifting through the books for patterns of meaning, for thematic significance in concrete details. Proving the author had meant just such and such by a certain word or phrase because of letters he had written. And always there was some bright young scholar who came along and could prove just the opposite with other letters, and other facts, until it became a meaningless game, a search for higher meanings where none existed. After all, literature was not the Bible, words of God that had holy significance, or were placed in such and such an order for Divine reasons. Authors just wrote to make money or to point out some brilliant, original new slant on the human condition, which no doubt had been pointed out zillions of times before, usually much better. But even though his scholarship was empty, he kept going through the motions. He could not abandon it, because he had nothing else to take its place and he abhorred vacuums. He attached himself parasitically to Elizabeth because her young belief somehow made up for his own corrupt lack of faith. She gave his life some meaning because she still took his long-abandoned values seriously. She had enough faith, enough youth, enough love for them both. And this would be true as long as she didn’t find him out.

He gestured with his glass toward the passing stewardess, who stopped and refilled it. He lifted it in a silent toast to Batsheva Ha-Levi Harshen, wherever she was, thanking her in his heart for making him look good.

Only when the plane touched down at Ben Gurion did Elizabeth feel a sense of panic. A strange country, a stranger mission. What if Batsheva really
was
all right? She’d feel such a fool dragging Graham all this way, spending all this money. Worse still, what if she really was as bad as she sounded? Not actually dying, but physically sick or flipped out? The thought terrified her, as did the idea of who would answer the door when she knocked. She shuddered just imagining the possibility that she would have to meet Isaac Harshen. The man sounded positively insane. And then a small unworthy idea entered her mind: What if Batsheva had become one of them? Graham was right about this being a totally different world. She had never understood Batsheva completely, Jews like her completely.

Graham steered her efficiently by the elbow through the crowds toward the taxi stands, where they waited for four other passengers to fill up the cab before it headed into Jerusalem. She was comforted by the familiar atmosphere at the airport. Like airports everywhere, it was crowded full of one-minute human dramas, partings and meetings, hugs and tears. Children running everywhere. No matter where you went, people were people. During the forty-five-minute drive to the capital, she tried to concentrate on her next step. Find a hotel? Or straight to Batsheva?

Reading her thoughts, Graham leaned over to talk to the driver: “Can you recommend a nice hotel?”

“
Betach
, sure. You want for…uhm…many dollars?”

“Sure.” If we are hell bent on making brownie points, Sheila can just wait for her alimony this month.

“Go to Hilton. Best food. Best, you know…”

“This your first visit, darling?” an elderly woman with several shopping bags and a strong Brooklyn accent asked Elizabeth. “Oh, you gotta see all the sights. The Old City, Meah Shearim, where the Hassidim are, you know—with the long black coats and hats straight out of Poland in the Middle Ages. Even the kids dress like that and speak Yiddish. Little kids, imagine. So cute. But what they’re gonna do with Yiddish when they need to earn a living, you should tell me.” She stopped and examined Elizabeth carefully. “But you have to dress a little different when you go there, darling, you shouldn’t be offended I’m getting so personal. Otherwise you could get stoned or something. Put on a blouse and skirt, darling.”

Elizabeth was suddenly conscious of her nipples showing through the thin material of her halter top and of the tight cut of her jeans.

“Stoned! Do you mean that literally or figuratively?” Graham interrupted, his eyes wide with concern.

“I never went to college, mister, but what I mean is a rock in the head.” She settled her shopping bags about her more comfortably. “And don’t try to drive a car in there on Friday night or Saturday neither. They don’t like people messing up their life-style. So listen, everybody has a right to live their own life. So I just put on a skirt and a blouse and a head scarf.”

“I think we’ll go to the Hilton first and call her to meet us there, what, Elizabeth dear?”

Elizabeth took a deep breath and shook her head like a stubborn child. “I’m going straight there. But why don’t you go to the Hilton, darling? I’ll meet you there later.”

“And let you brave the natives alone? What kind of chivalry are we discussing here? No, no, my dear. Wherever Quixote goes, Panza follows.”

She put her arm gently on his. “Please, Graham, I need to do this alone. I’m not afraid.” She gave a little brave toss of her head. “Besides, I’m just a shiksa. As long as a local boy doesn’t invite me home to meet his mother, I’m perfectly safe.”

“Gallows humor. A bad sign.” But he heard the determination in her voice and knew that there was little point in arguing. Besides, he needed a hot bath and a drink and could live without becoming embroiled in yet another tiresome domestic drama on this long, exhausting day. So he threw up his hands in what he hoped was a graceful gesture of surrender. “But if you don’t show up at the hotel in two hours, I will come after you, sword unsheathed, I warn you.” Hell hath no fury like a miserly professor blowing for a night at the Hilton and spending it alone.

She pulled Graham’s sweater around herself. Last-minute concession to strangers’ morals. It was almost dark and growing cool. She started toward the house, then turned around. I need to walk around the block. I need to think, she told herself. She tried to remember the phone conversation that had sent her off to the airport. She had not told Graham all of it and could not be sure if it was because she was ashamed for Batsheva or for herself.

“How are you, Batsheva?”

“I am healing, Elizabeth. I am ripped open, but I am healing.” She remembered Batsheva’s penchant for the melodramatic. But the words had terrified her. Ripped open. Ripped. Open. What did that mean? Physically hurt? Tortured? I wish I knew more about these people. I wish I understood. She tried to piece all the bits of information she had together to get some real understanding of the situation. Batsheva, coerced into marrying a man she didn’t know. Browbeaten, probably, into a narrow and suffocating existence, gasping for the air of freedom, slowly dying without it. I am doing the right thing. I am saving a human life. It will not be easy for either of us, but I must make this plunge. For once in my life, I must think about someone else.

Am I thinking about someone else?

Or am I just doing penance for my own soul, to make up for my own corruption?

Circling the block, she had kept her eyes down. Now she looked up. Men in Hassidic clothes passed her by, lowering their eyes as they approached her. Though it was early still, the streets were almost deserted, all the stores shuttered for the day. It was as quiet as a church and as dull. She pulled the sweater around herself more tightly. She thought of London awash with the light of street lamps and brightly lit storefronts in Leicester Square; the National Theatre blazing with light and music beside the Thames, crowded with people in evening clothes, humming with witty, pleasant conversations. They would be standing drinking long cool drinks around a pianist in a tuxedo and a beautiful cellist in an evening gown who were playing duets. She must take Batsheva there! She would show her the British Museum, and the National Gallery—rooms full of masterpieces! She would take her to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bloomsbury. She would go down to Cambridge with her and show her E. M. Forster’s room, and the students—hatless boys with bright red cheeks and long woolen scarves riding bicycles. She owed that to her, at least.

Yes, she told herself, gaining courage from the images of a delighted Batsheva, a beautiful, animated Batsheva alive with interest. She would give her a taste of the great world outside her ghetto. Then she could decide for herself what to do. Where to live out her life. She would only be a teacher, opening possibilities. She would not coerce, not rush in like a fool, offering her own beliefs and life-style as a perfect model. Lord knew it was far from that. She had come full circle and found herself in front of the house again. She looked up and saw a single light burning in Batsheva’s window. With something close to the exhilaration and despair of soldiers before the dawn of battle, she pressed the bell on the beautiful carved oak door, her mind bursting with words and plans.

But then when the door actually opened, she found herself face-to-face with a reality that canceled all of her words and all of her plans. For as Batsheva Ha-Levi Harshen reached out with a gasp to hug her, she felt the swell of the girl’s stomach and the ripple of the unborn child that had taken possession of her body, moving and growing inexorably in her womb.

Batsheva held her tight for a long time, then finally grasped her hands and stepped back. “Is it really you, my friend?”

“I’m afraid it is.” Elizabeth let the girl lead her into the dark house where only a reading lamp glowed. She was a little afraid, and hugged the sweater around her, her eyes darting in all directions.

“Don’t worry, Isaac isn’t here. He won’t be here until midnight, or later. He learns, you see. At least that’s what he says.” Bitterness and resignation. That’s what it had been on the phone. Totally uncharacteristic, it was frightening. She didn’t know this woman dressed in the ugly scarf low down on her forehead and loose brown dress.

“You look so…different.”

“You can say it, Liz. I look old. I look ugly. You of all people have always told me the truth.”

“Let’s put on a light, then I can tell you.”

When the room was illuminated, its richness took Elizabeth’s breath away. The polished ebony of a grand piano. The diamond sheen of a magnificent chandelier. Another gilded cage. Slowly, reluctant with fear, she looked at Batsheva. The tall body was a little stooped now, the proud, lively shoulders rounded with humility and shame. The clothes were awful. Cheap cotton housedress, long-sleeved, high-necked, and almost down to her ankles. But the face was still the face of a beautiful nineteen-year-old. The light, magical eyes were more exquisite than ever but tender, like a badly hurt child’s whose trust has been betrayed for the first time. But the face still glowed. Maybe it was all those hormones coursing through her bloodstream to keep the baby alive. Or maybe, she tried desperately to believe, there was still some hope. No, it still had that sweetness, that reaching out for life. But she looked so different. It was the hair, the absence of her beautiful black hair.

“Your hair. What have you done to it?”

Batsheva instinctively put her hand to her head as if someone were threatening to remove her scarf. “Nothing. Don’t let’s talk about it, please! Tell me what you’re doing here! Tell me about London.” All the old eagerness she remembered. Encouraged, Elizabeth told her about her studies at Cambridge, about the city of London. She saw Batsheva drink it in like a drunkard who, despairing of getting a drink, suddenly comes upon a full bottle.

“But you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Batsheva suddenly interrupted.

“I’ll tell you. But first talk to me about yourself. Tell me what’s been going on. You scared the daylights out of me with that letter, you know. And over the phone. You sounded so ill.”

“I know,” she whispered, laying her cheek on the back of her hand so that it partially covered her mouth.

Elizabeth reached out and gently took her hand away.

“Don’t stop yourself. You can tell me. Your big sister, remember?”

She had tried so long, tried so hard, to be brave. The tears that Isaac could not wring from her with all his cruelty came rushing like a torrent with the first words of kindness and understanding she had heard in months from someone she loved.

“Liz, I’ve been so unhappy. I want to go home and I can’t. I want to learn, to take photographs, to travel, and I can’t. I hate Isaac. I hate him!”

She gathered the girl in her arms and for one sweet moment all the plans and words she had rehearsed came rushing to her lips. But it was all changed now, wasn’t it? There was another innocent person in the picture. Elizabeth, for all her open-mindedness, believed in families. In fathers and mothers and Thanksgiving dinners, and little baby booties knitted with love. She suddenly felt her role as rescuer transformed into that of homewrecker. But then she looked again at the miserable young girl in front of her. Batsheva. I…want you to come back to London with me. Go and pack. We will leave right now. I will save you from Isaac, from your father, from this life…but the words would not come, they stuck in her throat. She swallowed hard and said instead, “There is the child to think of, isn’t there? Isaac may change with a child. Some men do, you know. They get softer, kinder.” I wish I was dead, Elizabeth thought sharply. I wish I could just die right now instead of saying these things. But some deeper moral had taken over.

“Do you think he might?” She shook her head doubtfully. “You don’t know him. He is so cold, sometimes I think he has no heart. All day he sits and learns about being a good person, about doing God’s will. But he comes home stiff and cold as metal. Everything I want is no. Everything I want is a sin. He thinks, he truly believes, he can do anything he wants to me and no one will see.” Her shoulders shook uncontrollably with sobs.

“Oh, sweetie. Poor, poor child.” Elizabeth rocked her in her arms. What to do, what to do? “Don’t cry, it’ll upset the baby. Sweet baby,” she crooned.

Batsheva sat up suddenly and held her stomach, smiling through her tears. “Sweet baby. I wouldn’t want to hurt the baby. It makes me so happy just thinking about it. Soft, sweet little thing. My baby. Oh, it’s moving, just feel.” She took Elizabeth’s hand and pressed it over her stomach. A tiny lump passed under it like a soft running animal. Alive. A life. “My parents are so happy about the baby. They will all come when it’s born. And if it’s a boy, they will make a circumcision ceremony with thousands of people. He will be the next leader of the Ha-Levis. A little crown prince.” Her eyes glazed with sorrow, staring into the future.

Elizabeth understood what she was seeing in the girl’s face, but not why. To be the mother of a little prince was not a sad thing, after all. She felt totally lost. After all, Isaac didn’t drink, he didn’t gamble. He was a bastard who liked his own way. (A man. So what else was new?) But that was not a reason to leave a child without a father. Maybe she just needed some cheering up. “Let’s go out for a drink. You’ll show me the town, okay?”

“I can’t. Isaac doesn’t let me go out alone at night.”

“You’re not alone, sweetie! Come on. Just tell him an old friend blew in from out of town.”

“I can’t, Liz. You don’t understand.”

“You’re right. There is something going on here I don’t understand. Where’s the Batsheva Ha-Levi that did anything she damn well pleased? The one who jumped into the swimming pool with all her clothes on? The one who longed for a lover like Vronsky? The one who told her rabbi-teachers where to get off? Where’s your courage, your spunk? You can’t let this guy walk all over you! Tell him off, for Christ’s sake. Kick him in the ass. Where’s your courage? You’re not afraid of him, are you?”