Sotah (16 page)
But most devastating of all was the mild rebuke of Rabbi Reich: “Can this be my dear Chaya Leah speaking?” he asked in his soft, patient way. “It can’t be, it must be someone else. A mistake. My dear good child would never speak in such a way to her parents. Would never upset her sister a few moments before a fine young man was to come to meet her …”
Chaya Leah burst into loud sobs.
Just then the doorbell rang.
Everyone froze. Chaya Leah’s sobs were still filling the living room. Dvorah took her youngest sister firmly by the hand, leading her into the bedroom, while Ezra rounded up the boys into their own room. Chaya Leah’s sobs suddenly got softer, then were replaced by an odd, muffled silence.
Judah Gutman stood at the threshold, his silent presence filling the small room.
Dina looked at him with a tinge of despair and yet an odd sensation of excitement. He had no beard, and he was so big! Yet handsome, too, and manly.
The conversation with Rabbi Reich went swiftly and easily, the two men finding much to discuss. It would have gone on all evening if not interrupted by a softly murmured suggestion by the rebbetzin that she was sure he didn’t want to stay out too late with Dina because she had school the next day.
Judah had caught only a glimpse of her when he came in, just enough to make his heart pound and the beads of perspiration dot his forehead as he realized that not only had Garfinkel been telling the absolute truth, but he had positively understated it: Dina Reich was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his entire life.
Numb, he followed her out of the apartment and into the fragrant, cool April evening.
“Where would you like to go?” she asked him as the silence grew between them.
“Why, wherever you would like to go,” he said, hoping that was acceptable.
“Well, why don’t we just take a walk, then? It’s so lovely out.”
“Yes, all right. Only …”
She looked at him expectantly.
He blushed and stammered, “Only … well, perhaps. Could we walk someplace else? I mean, not here.”
People were staring at them left and right, nodding to Dina, examining him curiously.
She recognized the agony of his self-consciousness and felt a stab of pity. Physically they were an odd match. But, strangely, this didn’t bother her at all. It was almost a comforting feeling to be walking beside such a man if you were a small, fragile woman. She felt enveloped, totally secure. “I didn’t mean here.”
“We could go to town, perhaps. Yemin Moshe?”
She looked up at him, flashing a real smile that lit up her serious features with the first real warmth he had seen in her since the evening began. “I’d like that.”
The bus took forever to come. They stood apart, almost offensively distant. He put his hands behind his back, gripping his fingers painfully. He racked his brain for something to say.
“How do you like school?” he asked her.
“Fine,” she answered, looking at her shoes.
Again a long, awkward silence. He glimpsed the bus in the distance and said a short, heartfelt prayer of thanks. But getting on the bus was even worse. He had to bend down to get in, and the little seats were not meant for his knees. If he shared the two-seater benches with her, he would leave her no room at all. She’d be crushed into a corner. So instead of sitting down next to her, he stood up in the aisle. He could see the questioning surprise in her eyes.
Why haven’t I written him off yet? she asked herself. They were a ridiculous couple, weren’t they? Look at people’s secret smiles! Yet his silence intrigued her, and she felt rather grateful to have been spared the usual cross-examination. Perhaps he isn’t all that interested in knowing about me, it suddenly occurred to her, a thought like a slap. Perhaps he’s already decided.
The scent of the blooming spring flowers hit them immediately, even from across the street. They crossed the wide boulevard, he taking careful, measured steps to match hers, to keep from reaching the other side long before she did. Perhaps it was the darkness, or the vivid riot of flowers, or just being alone, but a wave of relaxation coursed through both of them.
“I love this place,” she told him.
He nodded, engrossed in the silver sheen of moonlight on her hair, her shapely, delicate hands and feet. She seemed to belong in this setting, a rare species blooming with heart-stopping loveliness. You are so beautiful, so very rare and lovely. It hurts me to look at you, he thought.
“Do you like it, too?”
“Yes, I like it, too,” he answered, almost not fully conscious of what he was saying. The white stones, bathed in silver, seemed like ancient obelisks in the courtyard of the holy Temple, sacred and full of hidden meaning. Then, with stunning suddenness, her exquisite, womanly body in the soft, silky dress was all he saw. Her face, like an angel’s, unreal and smoothly sculpted by the moonlight, blotted out the universe.
They walked down the steps in silence.
She felt close to tears. He had hardly opened his mouth. Had she become that undesirable, that unattractive to be with, that a man didn’t even want to talk to her anymore? She sat down on a stone bench in the park near the windmill, her feet suddenly weary. Carefully he placed himself next to her, making sure not to touch her in any way.
She felt exhaustion overcome her, rising up from her soul. She didn’t care anymore what happened. It was just as she had thought. After Abraham, there would never be anyone else. “The first time I came here, it was raining. The stones were all shiny, almost polished. I’d never been here before, even though I grew up in Jerusalem. Do you think that’s odd?”
He shook his head no.
Wasn’t he ever going to say anything? “I think it is. After all, Jerusalem is such a small place, and to have lived here all your life and never to have seen anything as beautiful as this! It makes you sad, doesn’t it? To think that there was this lovely place, so close to you, and which could have made you so happy, and to realize that you just hadn’t known about it. It makes you wonder what else is out there, just around the corner, that can make you happy, that you’re missing.” She looked up at him. Again he nodded, wordlessly.
She found his silence terrible, bordering on offensive. And yet, oddly, instead of it evincing a similar silence from her, it had the opposite effect. She found herself pouring out intimacies and confidences she would never have dreamed of sharing with a more talkative stranger; it panicked her into an untoward articulateness born of desperation, the need to say almost anything to fill the terrible void. She just couldn’t stop herself.
“The first time I came here was with my first
shiddach
. He was in
kollel
. But it didn’t work out. My parents didn’t have enough money. He’s going out with someone else.” She was appalled at herself! Yet she had kept all these feelings bottled up for so long that now, once she began, she was like a train on a track rushing down a mountainside with no place to detour. Anyhow, except for a slight alertness in the way his eyes looked at her, he didn’t even react. Was he even listening? she wondered. She kept on talking. “I was very hurt, because I wanted him. I felt it was right. But G-d didn’t let it work out. And G-d always knows best.”
His heart contracted, feeling her pain, the pain of a helpless small creature caught in a trap. There wasn’t a trace of bitterness in her words, he noted. How good she was! He felt angry at the unknown suitor. Jealous. All emotions he was unfamiliar with.
“Girls never like me,” he suddenly blurted out. “They think I’m stupid and clumsy. That I don’t understand anything because I don’t speak very well. I never really cared too much about it before. But I wouldn’t want you to think I was. I don’t think I could stand that.” He slapped the stone bench in frustration. “I feel things, but I somehow … I can’t … say them.” But I could draw them for you. Or make them out of wood, he thought. If you would only come to my shop once, I think I could show you what I mean. But of course Dina Reich would never come to his shop. Why should she? He was a great big silent lump. Yet he wanted so much to comfort her. “I wish I could tell you stories and make you laugh. It would be good for you to laugh.”
Her eyes raised themselves slowly to his face. It was shining with a strange light that comforted and mystified her. She studied the dark, sensitive, kindly eyes, lowered with shy awkwardness, the cleanly shaven, strong jaw whose muscles strained with strange emotion, the tender lips—like a young boy’s.
And still how strange and stilted were his words. And she felt she needed words. They were important to her. With horror, she felt the tears well up in her eyes and drop slowly down her cheeks.
His heart melted in compassion, and he reached into his pocket for a tissue, but all he felt was the bread. It took almost every ounce of willpower he possessed to keep himself from reaching out to her. He almost felt the satin smoothness of her wet cheek on his rough palm, almost felt the slow, infinitely patient draw of his large thumb wiping away the wetness, first from one cheek and then the other. He got up, turning his back to her, shoving his hands forcefully back into his pockets. “Don’t cry,” he said, turning around slowly. “I’m not worth very much, but all I can say is if you had wanted me, I would have let them bury me before I would have given you up.”
The unexpected, surprisingly tender words felt like fingers on her skin. They injected a shock into her system like electrodes used in therapy. So unfamiliar, so wrongly, sinfully intimate! And yet it felt so natural, so right.
He took out the bread and flung some crumbs to the ground. First one bird came, a tiny sparrow, and then another. Pigeons and tiny blue-gray
nachnialis
, all shy, tiny. They surrounded him, eating out of his hands.
She watched them, her tears drying in the soft, spring breeze.
D
vorah lay in bed, listening to the baby’s insistent cries, unable to move. Her whole body felt like lead. She was so tired, so incredibly, achingly tired. A heaviness that started at the top of her head pressed down, compressing her sinuses and making her temples pound. Her arms felt weighted, her thighs and calves ached.
The baby’s cries became more insistent. With tremendous effort she raised her head. A strong wave of nausea enveloped her. She groped to the bathroom, heaving miserably. Nothing came out. Nothing could come out. She had been too nauseated to eat for days now.
A virus, she told herself, giving herself hope. Mrs Kombluth upstairs had it. The grocery lady had it. It was going around. She groped for a bathrobe. As she put it on, her breasts ached. They felt swollen, tender. Many women didn’t get their periods so regularly so soon after giving birth, she told herself. She hurried to the baby, lifting him. His diaper was wet and dirty, wetting her clothes. She put him down, and he screamed in protest. “Leave me alone,” she shouted at him, furious. “I’m doing the best that I can!” His face screwed up with wretchedness, red and angry. She changed him. She took off the diaper, and the sight of the disgusting mess made her grip the table as she fought down a new wave of nausea. “Shut up! Shut up, shut
up!
” she screamed, something suddenly snapping.
The baby’s face looked startled. He was strangely silent for a few moments, and then his heartbreaking, terrified screams began.
“Oh, G-d forgive me! Oh, baby. I’m sorry …” She felt the tears running down her face, blinding her. She washed him off quickly and changed all his clothes, then wrapped him in a warm, soft blanket and rocked him.
“I can’t be pregnant. I just can’t,” she told herself. You couldn’t get pregnant while you were nursing! It was a virus, that’s all. In a few days she would feel better. She would start eating again. She would call her mother and get into bed and rest.
Ima
, she thought. She would come and hold the baby and keep him quiet. She’ll cook me soup and press her cool hand over my forehead. And I will sleep. She put the baby in her lap and dialed her mother’s number, then, as it began to ring, she slowly put the phone down.
Ima
had the store. She had the little boys. She had Dina on her hands, going in and out with new men. A baker, an accountant. And Dina looking more depressed than ever. And there was Chaya Leah, who was driving everyone crazy as usual. She had gone out and gotten her hair cut short. Curls, curls everywhere! And she was suddenly on a diet and starving herself and demanding a whole new wardrobe.
Ima
hadn’t been well, either. More chest pains.
She rocked the baby back and forth helplessly. Then, taking a deep, courageous breath, she picked up the phone and dialed the clinic. She would go in and take a pregnancy test at nine. She would have the results by the afternoon.
The baby tugged at her robe. She lifted out her breast and took a sharp intake of breath as the baby’s healthy, greedy mouth pressed over her nipple. She closed her eyes and tried not to think. She’d taken a year off from teaching to be with the baby. A year she’d looked forward to at the beginning. Yet now it was starting to grate on her, being home all the time. She missed the little students and getting dressed up every morning and talking to the other young teachers. She was bored to tears. Her life felt empty.
G-d will punish me! She quickly wiped the thoughts away. She was thinking all wrong. She had everything a woman could want, hadn’t she? How she’d prayed for a husband, prayed for children! And now G-d was probably looking down on her and thinking: Ungrateful wretch! How you spit on your gifts.
She was filled with guilt and remorse. Anyhow, it was probably just a cold. A stomach virus. Please, G-d, just a stomach virus!
Yaakov got home at eight-thirty in the evening. The house was dark. He walked into the kitchen and put on the light. Dishes were piled high in both the meat and dairy sinks. The usually spotless counter was awash in little crumb-filled puddles of dark brown and white. He opened the oven, examined the stove, sniffed the air. There didn’t seem to be any supper in the works, either.
