Jephte's Daughter (24 page)

“Let them say what they will, right, Dina? We must raise one worthy of being my little Dina’s husband.” He took the child into his lap and played an elaborate game with her fingers and toes, counting them off and walking his fingers up and down her arms, and tickling her beneath the fat folds of her little chin. Akiva, attracted by the laughter, toddled over to them and pulled himself up, holding onto Gershon’s pants. He stood watching them, stamping his foot and clapping his palms and spread fingers together. But when Gershon swooped him up with one arm and the child saw the man’s beard, his hands tightened into fists and his little body twisted, struggling to get away. He screamed with fright.

Batsheva felt a sudden leaden weight fall down from her throat to her stomach with a hard thump as she gathered her baby into her arms. She understood only too well the child’s terror and agitation. He had mistaken the man for his father.

Human beings are strange and wonderful creations. They have been known to accommodate themselves to the barest conditions of survival. As survivors of Auschwitz and prisoners of war will testify, one can survive deprived of love, respect, home, warmth, sustenance, family, even God; be subjected to torture, terror, and daily degradation. As long as everyone around one is subject to the same conditions, men and women can cling to life, the way desert plants survive for years waiting for one rainy day. But let a man in Auschwitz see a man in the next bed receive a crumb of bread more than he, he will not be able to live one more minute without that crumb. His life will become meaningless without that equalizing crumb.

And so it was with Batsheva. Her meeting with Gita and Gershon made her realize with profound shock that Isaac Meyer Harshen was not inevitable. That there were different kinds of men, different kinds of marriages. The circumscribed and holy lives of the people around her, which she had asssumed had the same inevitable shape and form as her own, were in fact as individual and eclectic as the people themselves. Her observation of Gita and Gershon’s relationship gave her a model by whose clean and wholesome lines she could finally contrast with certainty the grotesque deformity of her own marriage. There was no love, there was no passion. She had reconciled herself that these things did not exist in the world her father’s vow had condemned her to. And now, suddenly, she saw it in front of her and wanted to die if she could not have it.

Each day, she grew paler and thinner. Only the baby gave her strength to go on. Only darling little Akiva, who had to be cared for. She gave him all of her pent-up love, all of her passion, sublimating it all into one great rushing stream of caring and kindness for her child. He was a little boy, climbing, running, scraping his knees, bloodying his chin. She took every fall personally. If only she had been more careful, if only she had been faster to catch him! Gita laughed at her, then worried about her. Children fall. Their wounds heal. But it wasn’t right, Batsheva silently told herself, that Akiva should ever cry because he had hurt himself when she, by being wiser, faster, or more understanding, could have prevented it. Whenever he fell, she felt the pain in her own body, sharp, like a knife wound. With his birth, and that desperate, helpless cry of a newly born human being who recognizes neither the weary small hours of morning nor the rightful, earned rest of night, had come that revelation that changes every young girl into a woman and a mother: the total dependence of another human being on one’s generosity, one’s love and kindness.

The brilliant, harsh light of summer slowly faded into the cool burnished gold of autumn. Batsheva watched her tiny son grow with something like awe. Each word he learned filled her with pride and an inner conviction that he must be a genius. A word—Ima. He, who had lain helpless on his back, without sight or understanding, now expressed himself.

“No nana” he would say, throwing bananas on the floor, and she laughed with delight. She learned to know him as a person with tastes, opinions, hobbies, likes, dislikes. That he favored noodles and disliked cheese. That he hated to be wet but could live quite comfortably being dirty. That he loved water, in his face, in his hair. That he needed to be tickled, but liked it under his armpits, not his chin. That he loved best to be outdoors. He ran, climbing recklessly up stairs on all fours, kicking balls into the gutter. He would lean back and close his eyes, feeling the hot sunlight on his face. He would stretch out his hands and watch the shadows dapple his skin.

They sat down to dinner, Batsheva, Isaac, and Akiva. The child sat with them in a chair that attached to the table. He banged the plate with his spoon. Isaac looked up at him sharply and took the spoon out of his hand.

“No!” the father said with cold authority.

“He’s just a baby, Isaac. For pity’s sake.”

“It is never too early to teach him respect for his father.” The child reached again for the spoon, picking it up in his fist, whamp! down it came again.

Batsheva rushed over and took away the spoon. Isaac grabbed her wrist.

“Put it back.”

“Please, Isaac. But why, if it annoys you, he’s only a baby.”

“Put it back, I told you.” His voice was menacing.

She gave it back to the child, who examined it carefully for a moment, then threw it across the table.

Isaac rose up. “No!” he shouted, and drew back his hand, open-palmed.

Batsheva grabbed the child into her arms. “Don’t you dare touch him. Don’t you dare. I’ll kill you, I vow to God I will. Don’t you ever dare!”

His eyes narrowed, but then something about the firm brace of Batsheva’s body, the slight hysteria in her voice, amused him. He laughed. “A man who spares his discipline hates his son.”

“Another quote, Isaac, brilliant scholar? Teach me, yes. Wife beating, child abuse, why, you must have one for murder too, I bet.” She spoke bitterly, beyond caring about the consequences. “Even murder or suicide. Give me a quote for that, Isaac, dear. To show that it’s all right, that it’s a
mitzvah
even.”

“Why, as a matter of fact, it is permissible, even laudable, under particular circumstances. For example, Pinchas was blessed by God for killing the Jew who was whoring in public with a woman. Ran them through with a sword. As far as suicide, if someone asks you to take another’s life or he will take yours, you must submit and have your life taken rather than be party to a murder.” His voice had that prissy, instructive singsong he used in the yeshivah. Poor students, she thought, molded in his perverted image. A corrupt teacher could damage so many lives. And Isaac was not just to be a teacher, but a leader to thousands. It was sickening.

When Akiva had been a baby, Isaac had taken no interest in him. He refused to hold the child. “A scholar who has a spot on his clothes is deserving of death,” he quoted to her. The baby was not clean enough, important enough, for him to deal with. But as the child grew, he began to go into the nursery each morning and evening to recite prayers to him. Batsheva would hear the Hebrew words of the Shema—Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One—and Modeh Ani—I am thankful before you, King everlasting, for Your great compassion in returning my soul. The prayers, which she had always found so touching and beautiful, echoed darkly through the house in Isaac’s stern voice. “Shema,” he would say to the child, “now repeat it. Shema.” The child would turn his beautiful, curious little face up to his father and reach out his hands to be picked up. “Say it, Shema,” Isaac would repeat, like a machine. And the child, frustrated, would cry for his mother behind the closed door of the room until Batsheva was permitted to swoop down and rescue him.

Thus, the shaky contract, the modus vivendi of Batsheva and Isaac’s marriage began to crumble with her bitterness over his treatment of Akiva, and her new understanding of her husband. Suddenly she felt she could not bear to be with him one more minute. His step in the hallway made her heart sink, the touch of his hand made her physically ill. Often she daydreamed that a car would hit him full speed. She imagined the funeral, his dead body swathed in a winding sheet laid deep beneath the earth and covered forever. She imagined herself as a blameless widow raising her child alone in secret joy. Sometimes watching the daily ways he maliciously hurt the child made her suffocate with rage so strong, her hands would tremble with the need to squeeze his throat, to see him choke, and to stop the flow of his words forever.

Once, when the child had just finished eating meat and therefore would have to wait six hours before having any kind of milk or cheese, Isaac opened the refrigerator and deliberately took out a carton of ice cream. He eyed the child carefully as he filled up the bowl, piling in scoop after scoop. The child walked over to him and pointed to the icy rainbow of colors, the delicious creamy stuff. He pointed to his mouth and began to whimper as the father, unmoved, deliberately ate spoonful after spoonful. The child, breathing in the tantalizing aroma of chocolate and strawberry, the sweet irresistible odors, rubbed his tiny fists into his eyes and began to weep in earnest. He reached up, trying to stick his fingers in the bowl. The father looked down at him and said calmly: “You have just eaten meat. You can’t have ice cream for six hours.” His eyes twinkled with sadistic amusement as the child threw himself on the floor, hysterical with the denial.

Batsheva, immobilized by hatred, watched the man in front of her. The big tablespoons of ice cream were spooned in so rapidly that they did not fit and some slobbered slightly down his chin. He dabbed it away before the drop fell onto his clothes, staining him with evidence. He was so successful at that, she thought. Hiding the evidence. If I could kill you now, I would gladly do it, she thought. But she could not, and so she turned the rage inward. If I could only die, she thought. If I could only die. She ran to her baby and lifted him, straining him to her breast. “Sha,
tateleh
, my baby. Sha,” she crooned, her heart splitting with the child’s pitiful rage and frustration and her own helplessness.

“Batsheva, you look awful.” Gita took her by the shoulders and peered carefully into her face, her downcast eyes. “What is it? Are you ill? Come, sit down.”

“It’s nothing. A cold perhaps.”

“It’s Isaac, isn’t it?”

Batsheva looked at her friend, startled. “But how…?” She kneaded her fingers together. “Is it that obvious?”

Gita nodded sympathetically. “You are from different cultures, different worlds. You’ve been all over, read, studied. Isaac knows so little about your world. Perhaps you should both get a good marriage counselor. Now, don’t shake your head no. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You have no idea how many
frum
couples I know have needed this kind of help. It’s hard to live with anybody else, and Isaac is basically a stranger.”

Batsheva opened her lips to speak, then pressed them together. How could she explain? To say that she hated him, body and soul, she knew would reflect badly mainly on herself and might even damage her friendship. How could she discuss his petty cruelties to the baby or tell Gita that she would have gladly seen him dead over such trifles? “It’s true, I don’t understand him at all,” she finally whispered, ashamed.

“There’s a woman, Mrs Schrieber, who is known for her help to young couples like us. I’ve never personally been to her. But rumor is that she does help. Why don’t you call her?”

The room had a musty smell, like old curtains in the attic. The furniture, heavy with elaborate carvings, seemed to place them in another era, long ago. Batsheva stood stiffly, awkwardly.

“Come, dear child, sit, sit.” The woman patted a chair facing hers. She was in her mid-fifties, Batsheva guessed. Despite the warmth of the rooms, Batsheva noted that she wore a high-necked blouse that buttoned to just beneath her chin, and long sleeves. Her wig was plastic-looking, stiff with spray. But her gray eyes seemed intelligent and kindly.

“Now, you must tell all about yourself first. You are a new immigrant, yes? From America.”

Batsheva nodded. “My accent always gives me away.”

“That and your face. Americans have such pretty little faces.” She smiled. “Your dear parents are still there? Ah, yes. So lonely to be separated from one’s family. I myself lost my family in Europe.” She sighed.

“My father’s family, too, was lost,” Batsheva said sympathetically. “I am an only child.”

“You are newlyweds, I suppose? I am so glad you came to me,” she reached over and patted Batsheva’s arm intimately, “so glad. You have no idea how many hundreds of couples I have helped. Hundreds. It is not easy for me. I am a poor widow and I take no money for what I do. But I feel this is God’s will, why He has put me here on earth, to help His children Israel live in harmony. You know marriage is very hard. You must work at it, every minute. My mother, she should rest in peace, used to say: ‘Don’t have the first fight, and then you will never fight.’ But nowadays, the girls especially are so forward. They want so much and right away. Patience, I tell them. Patience. Now please, child, what was your problem?”

The problem, Batsheva thought, is that I hate my husband and wish him dead. But she said only: “My husband and I are not getting along. I find his ways…difficult. He does not let me do any of the things I enjoy. He is cruel to my son. To our son,” she corrected herself. It was a mistake she often made.

“Can you give me examples, dear?”

“He took all of my books and burnt them.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “What kind of books were they?”

“English literature. Forster, Lawrence, Virginia Woolf…” The woman stared at her blankly. “Well, they were important to me.”

“And what kind of things does he do to your son?”

Batsheva thought—how can I put it into words? He tortures him with stupid tests of discipline. He watches him cry and doesn’t reach out his arms to him. He is constantly molding him into his own image, denying him the right to be himself. But what, specifically? “He wouldn’t let him have ice cream,” she said helplessly, and was not surprised that the flicker of a smile crossed the woman’s face. “You don’t understand. He took out ice cream deliberately to eat it in front of the baby. Just to torture him because he knew he had just eaten meat and wouldn’t be able to have any for hours…”