Sotah (31 page)
He looked at her, his eyes filled with disappointment yet acceptance. He never resisted her. He tried to focus on her words. “The store? Your mother’s wool store?”
“There is no one to run it. Dvorah has been doing it in the mornings and Chaya Leah each afternoon. But her exams are coming up. Her schoolwork, you know … piling up.”
“Do you want to?”
“Well, I do want to help, but wouldn’t it be hard for you to manage? I wouldn’t be home to serve you dinner.”
He looked up at her, crestfallen. He loved her serving him dinner! He loved her sitting across from him, reaching out for his plate, filling his coffee cup. “Well, I suppose if the family needs you and it wouldn’t be too hard for you … What about the baby?”
“Your mother has been kind enough to offer to come and watch him. She’ll see to your dinner. I won’t be home too late. The store closes at seven each evening.” His reluctance was oddly spurring her on, giving her a sudden urge to convince. It became important for her to go without her even knowing why.
“Are you sure it won’t be too hard for you, my dove?”
His honest concern drove her mad with aggravation: “You act as if I am made of soap and will melt!”
“You must do what you think best, of course. I was just concerned,” he added sorely, hurt by her rebuff, the way she contemptuously brushed away his care.
“I know.” She kissed him on the cheek, slightly penitent. But the light in her eyes was oddly triumphant.
I
t had been a disastrously rainless winter. The dryness had prolonged the warm late summer weather, and all through October and November the sky had been a bright, cloudless blue. Yet the sunny, warm, clear days had begun to feel like an evil omen, a portent of G-d’s punishing anger. If the rains did not come between October and April, it would be too late. The crops would die, the reservoirs dry up.
Prayers for rain were intensified, and the pious flocked to the graves of saints in Tiberias to entreat heavenly mercy. Without rain Israel would once again become the barren desert it had been before the Jewish people reclaimed it. Nevertheless the face of heaven continued to look down, a blank, indifferent blue.
When by January the rains still hadn’t started, there was a sense of foreboding and panic in the country. The reservoirs were reaching low points they had not known in years. The pumping stations that carried water to the Negev had been shut down. There was no rain. It was not weather. It was a personal tragedy felt deeply by every religious person. The prayers were redoubled.
And then G-d smiled, and the rains began—slow, gentle day-long showers that replenished the dry earth without flooding it. People went out into the streets and lifted shining faces to heaven, laughing at the water that touched their eyes and cheeks and hands like friendly kisses. Just the sound of the water tapping on the windows and pavement seemed like a melody, a sweet, youthful song.
Dina had suffered the barrenness of the dry spell, taking it almost as a personal punishment. And now, as the clouds filled the sky, she felt herself forgiven. The winter flowers, the cyclamen and iris, were blooming again. She felt a benediction in the cold rain, an odd pleasure as she made her way to the wool store.
The dampness of her soaking raincoat mingled with the salty warm smell of wool. It was pouring outside, the rain crackling against the store windows, sending a cool, steady draft under the ill-sealed front door. She put on the small heater and hugged her sweater close around her as she sat on a high stool, puzzling over scribbled pieces of paper and the backs of envelopes that constituted Chaya Leah’s inventory control system.
The air in the little store warmed quickly. She took off the sweater and adjusted the shoulders of her pretty flowered blouse. Her figure had changed since the baby. Although she had lost all the extra weight quickly and easily, still, she no longer looked like a little girl. Her body was more womanly, softer. The milk in her breasts still lingered, giving them a voluptuous new shape over which she harbored a secret, proud joy.
The passion of her nights with Judah had opened a new world to her, a world in which she was not entirely comfortable. It didn’t seem right to her to fall into such voluptuous abandon, such unrestrained intimacy, with the same person with whom she felt such estrangement during the light of day. In his daily words and acts, there was never any hint of his nightly passion, and she resented it.
Yet his boundless adoration of her body had made her treasure her womanliness with newfound satisfaction. No longer did she feel her body was simply a given, a functional machine whose purpose was to produce children. For the first time she focused on her body instead of her soul, welcoming her physical beauty as a good in itself, with no need for a higher meaning. She found herself becoming quite vain, quite proud, as she studied her body with increasing frequency.
She was grateful for the silence of the empty store. For the two weeks she had been there, the bell on the door had never stopped clanging, and customers had filled every empty space, clamoring for her attention. She had not found a spare moment to tackle the books or make some kind of ordering system. It was finally winter, and the cold, dark Jerusalem nights kept people home, knitting and crocheting through the long dull evenings in homes where no television, radio, or newspaper was allowed to enter. Women came in droves to the familiar little shop they trusted to buy the wool.
But tonight, Dina saw, the weather was too harsh for any but the most intrepid to brave the streets. She looked down at Chaya Leah’s sloppy jumble of numbers, chewing pensively on a fingernail.
The doorbell gave a small jangle. She felt the cold gust enter the store. When she looked up she felt a shock rip through her bowels, beads of sweat sprout in her armpits. And at the back of her neck little hairs sprang up, as if pinched by intimate, icy fingers.
“Ah, hello, Mrs Gutman, I had no idea …” Noach Saltzman said with friendly casualness.
To her dismay and fascination, she saw that he looked at her steadily instead of dropping his gaze modestly or looking over her shoulder, as every other man she knew outside her family would have done. He looked and looked. At that exact moment, she knew it had been his eyes behind the window. She also knew, with a knowledge more terrible and exhilarating than she had ever felt before, that he had seen her looking back.
“How … how can I help you?” she stuttered, pulling her sweater protectively around her shoulders. She saw his eyes flit down to her shoulders, to where the flowered silk molded itself to her arms and caressed her neck. She saw his gaze momentarily linger.
“Terrible night to be out. I’m soaked through.” He laughed at himself, shaking drops of water from his coat. She was surprised at the deepness of his voice and the elegance of his language. He spoke Hebrew the Israeli way, with none of the guttural Yiddishisms that Judah and her father used. He spoke almost the way the
chilonim
spoke, the consonants crisp (“Shabbat,” not “Shabbos”; “tallith,” not “tallis”). There was a foreignness that made him sound distinguished and a bit dangerous. It excited her imagination. “My wife’s been wanting to knit a baby blanket but hasn’t been able to get out this past week. I pass this way from work anyway, so I thought I’d help her out.” Again the dark blue clever eyes, amused and intent beneath the low, intelligent brows. She was glad for the solid counter between them.
“What kind of wool?” she asked.
“Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Just plain wool,” he said, perplexed.
Her tense, tight lips relaxed into a little smile. “What weight do you want? How many ply? Cotton, acrylic, or wool? What color? How many ounces? And it would help if we knew what size needles she’s using.”
“I have no idea.” It was his turn to be confused. Then his eyes focused on her smiling lips. He saw them tense again. “I just thought balls of wool were all the same! I guess I’ll have to ask her again for more details. Thank you for straightening me out.” He began to button his coat. “It can’t have been much of a night for business,” he said, laughing, as the wind rattled the door.
“Not much. But at least I have some peace and quiet to do the books. Not that I know what I’m doing.” She shook her head, wondering why she was prolonging the conversation. He made her uncomfortable, yet she didn’t want him to go. She found the contradiction stimulating. She found herself preening a little, touching her hair, smoothing down her brow.
“Why, it may seem difficult, but actually there is not much to it. When I began in the diamond business, I also couldn’t make heads or tails out of inventory and profit margins. But I’ve actually become quite expert at it. Why, I’d be happy to give you a few pointers.”
“It would be a great
chesed
,” she said honestly, trying to fight down her apprehension at seeing him unbutton his coat. The apprehension won. “But I’m afraid I have to be getting home now. Perhaps some other time?”
“Of course. Why, it’s lucky I came by at this hour. My car’s right outside, and we live in the same building …” He looked at her expectartly.
She hadn’t actually meant to shut the shop so early. It was barely six-thirty. Yet she’d already told him she was leaving, what else could she do? How could she refuse the ride without practically admitting the unthinkable ideas that had been going through her mind and that she suspected in his?
In order to bring some normalcy and respectability to the situation, she had no choice but to casually accept, to go along with the fiction that his coming to the store had been an accident and his offer of a ride home simple neighborly kindness. She had no choice but to ignore the months and months of glances behind curtained windows that had passed between them, drawing them together in a dangerous, beguiling intimacy.
“I’ll just be a minute. This is very kind of you.” She kept her voice steady, but her legs felt weak. Even as she turned to pull on her coat, she could almost feel his eyes bearing down on the soft whiteness of her small hands as she lifted the long blond hair off the nape of her neck. With each button she saw his eyes move with surreptitious longing gradually, slowly, down the whole length of her body. She felt almost faint.
He held open the car door to the front seat for her. He was very tall and slim, and his black overcoat was a fine, pure wool, the kind she had seen on wealthy
kollel
men and yeshiva boys from England. As she brushed past him, she smelled the musky scent of something very male and very clean. The hands on the door handle were impeccable in their unblemished whiteness, unsullied by any physical labor. They were the hands of a scholar, she told herself.
The ride home took much longer than she thought it would. She was sorry she had sat on the front seat beside him instead of in the back, forgetting that it had not been her choice. He spoke little, except to tell her some general principles of accounting procedure. He was frank in his respectful admiration for her plunge into the family business.
“A new husband, a new baby, losing your mother … Why, most women would have just collapsed, but you, you are so brave, so resourceful,” he said, making the intimate words sound respectable somehow. She listened to him gratefully, soaking up the words of understanding and praise like parched earth. He spoke to her heart, understanding what she had been going through. Yet he had not crossed the line into intimacy, she told herself calmly. That was all in her imagination. She couldn’t help feeling a secret immodest pride in the way he looked at her. His longing was so palpable, so flattering. She felt a surge of inexplicable happiness, the first she had known in months.
“Judah,” she called out softly, unlocking the front door. It was just after dinner. His mother had already gone. He came out of the kitchen, wiping his big, rough hands on a dish towel, buffing his broken, stained fingernails. She watched him with strange intensity. They were the hands of a workingman, rough and raw.
She remembered the first time she’d seen him in his workshop: the dusty pants, the stained, greasy apron, the head peppered with sawdust and wood shavings. The appalling thought: This is my husband. A small, secret swell of shame had washed up from her bowels.
She looked up at his kind, good face and blushed with guilt, feeling wicked and hardhearted. She took the towel from him. “Go, rest. I’ll finish.” She went into the kitchen and secretly watched him as he settled himself comfortably on his favorite chair beneath a circle of lamplight. His smooth forehead glistened with health and the oil of being young and contented. It was endearing to her suddenly, that broad, kind slope beneath his thick, unruly hair. Like a vulnerable little boy’s.
She put down the towel and came to him, drawing her fingers across the light worry lines over his brows. He lifted his head in pleased surprise, his lips catching the soft, childish pads of her fingertips. He drew her toward him gently. “My little dove,” he whispered, his caress becoming more forceful.
The house breathed with the hushed quiet of a peaceful evening among convivial people. She felt a contentment at times like these that went deeper than she knew. Her own home. Her own husband. Her own little perfect child. She wanted it to be enough for her, and in a very real sense it was. She owned the map to the good life. She knew just which roads would lead her to spiritual contentment, to a blessed and rewarding family life. That is what they taught girls in Beit Yaakov.
What they hadn’t prepared her for were the sudden storms, the washed-out bridges, the detours, the side roads … The best she could do in explaining it to herself was to say: Just because things are supposed to be a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean they are. Life wasn’t the neat, tucked-in shirts, the ironed skirts, of Beit Yaakov. It was incredibly messy. Pleats came out. You had to squeeze into things so small you could hardly breathe or were forced to wear things so big they hung on you, looking ridiculous.
She closed her eyes and pictured another man holding her. It was his arms, his cheek. Her stomach leapt in shock and excitement. She opened her eyes, looking at Judah, and pushed away his hands. All he ever wanted to do was go to bed, she thought irrationally. He had no feeling, no delicacy … To him it was all the same. She wouldn’t admit it was his love for her that knew no bounds, that never stopped. For her, things had bounds. A caress on the forehead was not the same as going to bed.
