Sotah (35 page)

It was like her dreams of being in the army, she thought. She would never do it. She walked idly to the window and stared out at Noach’s curtained windows. What was it like inside his house? she wondered. What did his clothes look like in the closet? The shirts, the intimate undergarments? Folded neatly, white? Or a jumble? What kind of chairs did he sit on, and how did his legs look when he was relaxed? And how would his chest look if you unbuttoned just the very top button or perhaps the one after that? …

She shivered and hugged the baby, who wriggled in mighty protest. She held fast to his warmth, his living motion. She was still a good mother, she told herself. A good wife. No one could prove otherwise. She hadn’t trespassed any commandment. Even
yichud!
Her mind was her own. As in the past, she told herself, there was no harm in dreaming. But somehow there was more to it this time. The dream was frighteningly close, terrifyingly real, almost as if it weren’t a dream at all.

And the clock ticked on, relentlessly moving her life toward some goal she didn’t dare predict.

Chapter thirty-two

T
here was a horde of customers, all impatient, all demanding. The store was in an uproar, packed. She felt she could hardly breathe. So many were women who knew her or had known her mother. It was almost personal, like social visits. And each time the bell chimed, she lifted her head in panic toward the door. What if he should walk in on her now, surrounded by all these witnesses? They would all know immediately! Her face would beam the message out to them like a garish neon sign. Yet as the evening wore on and there was no sign of Noach, her panic in seeing him was replaced by an awful dread that he might not come.

And then the store emptied out. She looked around at the old, chipped walls, the stacks of yarn boxes that reached almost to the ceiling. Everything seemed to be waiting breathlessly, with that harsh, in-held breath of dismay that preceded some terrible crisis. She put on her coat slowly, wondering where she would go now, forgetting completely that there was no choice involved. She would go to the bus stop. She would ride the number four bus to a block away from her home. She would walk down the quiet street, up the quiet stairs, and enter her quiet house. Judah would be there, solid and loving, waiting for her. The baby would be there, sleeping his deep, healthy sleep. She would change her clothes and crawl in beneath the familiar clean bedcovers.

Yet it was impossible! How would she live through it?

She locked the shop and began the walk to the bus stop with heavy, reluctant steps. She waited dully for the bus, watching its tiny yellow lights, bright and predatory in the distance, grow brighter and more dangerous each moment as it drew relentlessly closer.

Yet, instead, there was his car. Noach rolled down the window and leaned over. Her heart leapt just at the sight of him. She felt an inexplicable relief and climbed in easily. This time the seat belt didn’t even need to be adjusted.

“Where are we going?” she said gaily, moving over the difficult transition without hesitation. There was no longer any pretense of a working relationship, innocent excuses, or pretended moral outrage. She had climbed into the other woman’s seat with alacrity, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

All Noach’s explanations, made unnecessary, dried up in his throat. He wasn’t sure how to react, whether to be glad or dismayed. He had had other expectations of her. He couldn’t decide if this behavior made her more or less desirable to him. He thought about it as he drove, throwing cautious glances at her, reminding himself of how lovely she was. Her eyes shone with a special light. Her whole face seemed to blossom in happiness.

His misgivings faded. He wanted to reach out for her small hand, yet some instinct prevented him. Her touching him didn’t count. Once he touched her physically, she might wake up. He had to do it so slowly and cautiously, she would never know how it had all come about. Noach Saltzman knew just how to accomplish it. He was a man with experience.

He drove down a long, deserted road that crossed over into the eastern, Arab half of the city. It was a bit dangerous, with the
intifada.
Many cars had had their windshields smashed by Palestinian teenagers—political delinquents, full of hatred and idleness. But what else could he do? The only hotel in which he could be absolutely sure neither of them would be recognized was the Hotel Inter-Continental in East Jerusalem, an Arab-run hotel full of foreign diplomats, the only major hotel in Jerusalem that did not have a certificate of kashruth from the chief rabbi’s office simply because their customers were the kind that wanted ham and eggs for breakfast.

The danger of the road winding past the little, darkened Arab villages, their mosques sounding the ancient call to prayer, made Dina quiver with a dark thrill. Yet how could she fear rock-throwing Arabs when she had chosen to do something as incredibly dangerous as keeping a liaison with a married man behind her husband’s back? The dark road, the uncertainty on every side, seemed a perfect metaphor for her emotional life. Once you defy G-d, there is nothing to be afraid of since everything is equally dangerous. Whether she walked to her own back porch or down this unguarded road, G-d’s mighty hand of justice lay in wait for her. Of this she had no doubt. She could either repent and beg to be forgiven or go on and just not think about her fate. She chose the latter.

The hotel, with its famous seven-arched windows overlooking the Old City, was a breathtaking place. As they walked up into the lobby, a ray of light came through its great doors and fell on Noach. He had taken off his skullcap, she noticed. She stood motionless. The act, which could not be excused
halachically
, suddenly colored everything differently. He was ashamed to be seen with her with his skullcap on. He had no trouble just taking it off.

“Noach, put it back on! How can you?”

He looked at her as if she’d gone mad. He pulled her arm toward him with a little jerk. “Don’t make a scene, Dina. The last thing we need is for people to think we are coming from Meah Shearim. The word would spread like wildfire.”

She stumbled up the steps after him. Of course! How stupid! What would a religious couple be doing in a hotel that wasn’t even kosher! Yet it bothered her. It was a concrete act, a throwing off of the yoke of heaven that was small and measurable, whereas the other, the act of being with another man, was too big and amorphous to be considered in all its ramifications. Kill one person and you are a murderer to be executed. Kill millions and you go down in history.

He led her to an elegant patio cafe. The gently lit city shone on them with a strange, beckoning light. But the more she looked at it, the less familiar it became to her. She had never seen it from this side before. It was a foreign place, full of Arab villages, mosques, and minarets. What had it to do with her?

“I’ll have a beer,” he told the tall, polite Arab waiter who bent his head diffidently in their direction.

“A cola,” she wavered. Even the glasses would be
trayf
, washed together with plates holding forbidden meats and cheeses. She would not pour it into a glass but drink it from the can, she told herself.

“Do you like it here?” he asked her, smiling.

“I hate it,” she answered him brutally.

“But why?”

“Because you had to take your skullcap off. It’s degrading.”

She was an odd one! But it intrigued him. “Why is that?”

“I haven’t done anything wrong! We were working together, that’s all. The door wasn’t even locked. It wasn’t even
yichud!
”

“So my taking off my skullcap is the first wrong thing we’ve done, is that it?” He tried to keep the amusement out of his voice but failed.

“You’re mocking me.” She got up abruptly. “Take me home, now!”

“But, Dina, please. Just have your drink. Look, I’ll put my skullcap back on.” He took it out of his pocket and placed it on top of his head. The black velvet material faded into his jet black hair. He looked around uncomfortably. “Don’t you think it’s worse for me to be seen eating in a
trayf
place wearing a skullcap? Why, people might think that the hotel suddenly went kosher! They might order a whole meal on the basis of seeing me here with a skullcap!”

She sat down as if all the air had gone out of her. Of course. It was
marit eyin
, visual deception. A person had to make sure he didn’t even seem to be breaking a commandment. Thus, even if you ordered a Coke in McDonald’s, drinking it there with a skullcap on your head might give people the impression that you were eating a Big Mac, fries, and a milkshake. Of course he was right. She felt very foolish.

“Why do you constantly suspect me? Do I seem to be such a worthless infidel in your eyes? Such a
kofer?
”

“No. It’s me. I don’t know what to think. I’m so ashamed. I shouldn’t have come.”

He reached out across the table and held her cold, trembling fingers until they were warm again. “We are just talking, Dina. That’s all.”

She looked down at his hand on hers, feeling some barrier shatter, the shards cutting deep into her soul. The tears swam in her eyes. The touch of his naked flesh on hers was so wrong, so degrading. Yet she felt she wanted it more than anything. “There is no hope for me. G-d will cut me off. I am lost.”

“It’s a terrible thing to be lonely. And we’re not doing anything wrong. I am a religious, G-d-fearing man. But what … It’s the community that decides the rules. They make a big thing out of the idea of ‘Thou shalt be holy.’ But what about ‘Thou shalt not steal’? Who does the community honor with seats by the eastern wall of the synagogue, with the sixth aliyah to the Torah? Why, all the rich, crooked businessmen! And nobody minds! What is my crime, your crime? That we were married too young to the wrong people? That we are lonely and desperate for love? I do not steal. I am simply a lonely man tied to the wrong woman—a man who needs love, companionship. Passion. Is that so terrible, to have finally found, after all my years of searching, the woman I love? The one I want to spend my life with?”

She had never been wooed by a man before with such thrilling words. She was an innocent who took each worn phrase and folded it into her heart as if it were an original. As if she were the first woman in the world to be told “My wife doesn’t understand me!”

“You know,
haredim
think that it’s easy to get a girl,” he went on. “Among themselves, the men talk. They think that if a girl agrees to talk to you, she’ll agree to everything else. It isn’t so. I want to tell you about my first girl.”

“Why?” She was amazed.

“I don’t know. I just want to. Can you understand that, the relief in not having to lie anymore? I want everything to be straight between us. This girl I met in the office. She was about eighteen, the daughter of the head of a yeshiva in Bnai Brak. For some reason, she hadn’t yet married. They said it was because she was too pretty, too well connected. No one was worthy of her. I could see that she was lonely. I saw it in her eyes and she saw it in mine. We began to talk, just—you know, nothing special. She stayed late one night—I never knew if it was on purpose or not—and I decided to stay with her. I have a television set in my office with a video recorder and some movies. Nothing terrible. Little romances like
Gigi
, musicals. I asked her if she wanted to watch one with me.”

Noach paused and looked intently into the lovely, fragile face of Dina Gutman. Perhaps it was her tears that made her lovely eyes a bit red. Or perhaps it was the worry lines of guilt that suddenly sprouted on her forehead, making her a little less lovely. Whatever the reason, he began to think like his old self. Like a man in a new suit who changes back into comfortable work clothes, his old self fell over him with curious ease. He squeezed her hand a little tighter.

“What happened?” she finally asked.

“Well, it went on for months. I never slept with her,” he found himself lying with strange ease. “I swear it! I know those who found out will never believe me. But the sex wasn’t important. It was the feeling, the communication, the caring between us. We hugged a little and kissed. She used to like to cry on my shoulder. I don’t know, it made her feel like she had a life of her own. At home they were so strict with her.”

“What happened to her?”

“They married her off to some yeshiva bocher quickly.” He drained the last drops of beer. “I swear to you by all that is holy that I never slept with another woman other than my wife. I have never even been tempted before, until now.” He looked into her eyes meaningfully until she felt herself going blind and lost. His words fueled her pride. She was special. She could make things happen. She had some control over her life. And he wasn’t bad. Not really. His palm over hers began to burn into her skin. She pulled it away, pouring the can of
Coca-Cola
into the clean glass, forgetting she hadn’t meant to use it. She remembered, in the middle, about the glass but didn’t stop. She drank it down, her lips eager, straining for the final cool drop. Then she waited for something to happen.

Through the long, quiet moments sitting beside Noach in the elegant lobby, through the long, slow ride back to the city, she waited breathlessly for something to happen, some terrible accident, some sudden, painful smash-up. But the air was benign. The roads clear. The silence innocent. Perhaps, then, she thought, nothing would happen? So many good people suffered. So many bad ones prospered. Who was to measure G-d’s justice? She had drunk from a
trayf
glass. She had touched another man behind her husband’s back in the full sight of G-d, from whom nothing could be hidden, and still she breathed, safe and unharmed.

It was so late when they got back that he didn’t bother discreetly leaving her off a block away, as he had been doing. He pulled up in front of the apartment building. He stopped the car. And then with stunning release, she felt the rush of his arms around her, the press of his lean, eager body into her soft, yielding one. His cheek, the soft hair of his beard, brushed against her eyes and temples. She reached up and found the back of his head. He pressed his lips full on her mouth with reckless, careless passion.