Sotah (45 page)
She looked at the old fern. As it did every summer, it had gotten sort of dry and brownish and rather sad-looking. But this year, she thought, it looked even worse. It looked weary. Old. Her eyes shifted to its offshoot, a spontaneous growth thrust off from the mother plant sprouting nearby. It was so fresh and green and strong.
She had a sudden insight. Offspring. Children. We replace ourselves when life wears us down. We pass on the torch. You don’t have children just to dress up and cuddle and play with. You have them to make sure you give over your most cherished values, your carefully sorted-out place in the great chain of being. And what were those values? What was that place? Did religion, culture, history, the ties of birth, play any part in it?
In a way she pitied Dina, as one would pity a Samoan tribesman dancing to drive away evil spirits in some apartment in the Bronx. She had come from a world where it all made sense, the rituals, the strict adherence to strange rule … It all seemed so terribly pointless in America—land of the shopping mall, home of the aerobic dance class.
Yet, Joan also had to admit, she also envied her. Her world seemed such a clean, orderly place, not the incomprehensible maelstrom of random violence, disease, and human waste it often seemed to Joan. She seemed to know every moment of the day what G-d expected of her and how to please him. It was all too ridiculously simple, of course. Life was not a sewing pattern where all you had to do was follow the instructions to clothe yourself in goodness. But perhaps, just perhaps, there might be a kernel there, something she could learn from.
In the kitchen, Dina placed two candles in exquisitely carved wooden holders. She lit them. They flickered, pure flames, tiny golden lights. Then she covered her eyes and blessed the Lord of the Universe, Who had sanctified her and commanded her to light the candles of the Sabbath day.
Joan stood there watching her, some deeply buried longing tugging at her, making its ancient claim.
T
he days went by slowly. Dina felt the worm of doubt grow within her, becoming a monster whose heavy jaws were slowly devouring all her beliefs, all the careful teachings that had sustained her life so far. Questions that had lain locked within her since childhood rose up like specters, frightening and torturing her. What did she really believe? What kind of life was truly holy? Who was she, really? And who might she be with the right education, the right opportunities, the right to choose?
And more and more she thought with sickening guilt and longing of Judah and Yossele. Who, she wondered with almost unbearable envy, was tucking in her little boy’s shirt, smoothing down his soft curls, washing the milk from his chin? Judah. My husband, she thought, sometimes convinced that his kindness, his tender care, were the only things she needed or would ever need. How had she not understood that? He seemed so real, so substantial, compared to Noach. Noach was a ghost, she told herself. Why, why had she done it?! It could never, ever be forgiven. The words beat inside her like the ominous drumroll before an execution. There was no compassion, no forgiveness in the universe that would cleanse her. Only punishment, she thought. Only suffering.
Like a prisoner shuffling through his days, paying off his debt to society, Dina walked through the hours from daybreak until nightfall like a machine, working, working, working, the harder the better. The house shone. The floors and windows and furniture and endless knickknacks gleamed, dustless. And each night she wondered: How will it all end? She tossed, sleepless, her mind a cauldron of anger, regret, homesickness, despair, and confusion. She felt bloated, deformed with the heavy guilt of unatoned sins.
She did not mind the work, even its humiliation. She wanted to suffer, because it would mean G-d’s anger was being wrecked and the time for His compassion was drawing near. But what was she to do with the burden of Joan’s kindness, her constant generosity, which faded her hopes as colors fade beneath the relentless benevolence of the shining sun? Like one who has borrowed from a usurer, Dina felt her debt simply increase from day to day. She did not want kindness. She wanted to be punished.
And then, one day, just after eleven P.M., when Joan and Maury were out for the evening and the children were asleep in their beds, the doorbell rang.
“Hello, dearest,” Noach Saltzman said, his voice as smooth and thick as honey pouring over the sides of a jar.
Dina backed away near the wall, her eyes darting, panicstricken, in all directions.
“Dina,” he whispered. “Please, dear. Don’t make a scene. I only want to talk to you. Please,” he begged. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”
Speechlessly she turned around and walked into the booklined study.
“Please, sit down a moment.”
She did as he asked, staring down at her hands as they kneaded and twisted the material of her skirt into ragged pleats.
“You knew I would come, didn’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.
She nodded hopelessly.
“You knew I would turn over heaven and earth to find you.”
“I knew you would,” she said dully, working intently on creating tiny, twisted knots.
“Why? Why did you run? How could you have done it? I have been in complete hell all this time.” He plowed his fingers through his hair with sudden violence, cradling his forehead, covering his eyes. Then he lifted his face and looked at her, searching her. A slow smile spread across his mouth, a knowing, hungry gleam came to his eyes. “I have found you now.”
“Yes,” she answered, a prisoner on the witness stand who has given up all hope of a favorable verdict, ready to accept all consequences simply from sheer exhaustion, simply to be done with it already.
“Each day we have been away from each other, my love has grown, you know …”
She looked up at him with horror. Was it a joke, a sick joke? But there was no humor in his face. It had that gleaming, all-encompassing passion that had once seemed so appealing to her. “After everything that has happened?” she said with disbelief.
“Nothing has happened,” he replied calmly. “Small things have happened. My feelings have not changed. They grow like a lake fed by melting snow, overrunning the banks, rushing, turning white.”
Could he be serious? She felt a strange glow of the old passion pass through her like a distant memory. “I have lost everything! My child, my husband, my family, my home …”
“My darling! I will make it all up to you. I swear. You will never be sorry. I am here in New York now. My father-in-law arranged work for me in the diamond district in Manhattan. I will rent a beautiful little place for you. You can work or not, whatever you choose. We can even have a child together, if that would make you happy. We will be together always.” He reached out to touch her.
She moved away, but sadly, as if a bit reluctant but resigned. “And your wife and children, where are they?” Her tone was calm, almost indifferent.
He made a deprecating sweep of the air, as if brushing off an annoying insect.
“Did the Morals Patrol make you divorce her?”
“Well, actually … no. They just insisted I move away. Threatened to tell my father-in-law.”
“So you are still with your family? You haven’t lost your wife or children. You have a new home. While I …” Her voice grew soft with shock and incredulity.
“I can take you out of here now. I can take you with me. I have lawyers …”
“You come here,” she said thoughtfully, as if trying to understand, to make some sense of it, “after the way we parted from each other? You come here to tell me you love me?”
“What happened in the hotel … it meant nothing,” he said with slow precision, a strange calm. “You don’t know anything about me at all if you think I would let that change anything. You are mine. You will be mine forever. I want you more than ever. It’s like a madness.”
His words passed through her like white hot needles. He had lost nothing! Neither home nor wife nor child. He was alive and well and prosperous. He could come to her now, freely, with these propositions. The same crime, and yet those who claimed the righteousness to judge had meted out punishment with such appalling inequity. For the first time she gave thought to the possibility that Rabbi Kurzman with his white gloves might not be G-d’s representative on earth after all.
Noach took her long silence for agreement. He reached into his pocket and took out a velvet jewel box. “Here, my darling, just the first of so many.”
With almost trancelike tranquillity, she opened it. It was a bracelet of rubies and diamonds set so beautifully, it seemed as if only the air connected them. It sparkled and burned against the black velvet.
Noach smiled and took the bracelet out of the box, his smooth fingers locking the clasp securely around her childish wrist.
Dina watched his fingers working. She felt the touch of his warm hand and the cold grasp of the gold, like handcuffs, around her wrist. “And will you leave your wife, then, and marry me?” she asked in the same tone a wife would say to a husband: “Will you pick up the clothes from the cleaners? Will you buy the evening paper?” It was not so much a question as a description, a passionless discussion of practical events that would or would not take place.
He hesitated. “You are my wife, you know that. The other …” He shrugged. “Well, she takes care of my children. You wouldn’t want me to leave them, would you?”
“And what of my child?” she said calmly. “What of Yossele?”
“We can have other children.”
Only then did she fully understand him. He would set her up in an apartment in Manhattan, and he would continue living with his wife and children. He would visit her, pay her bills. And she would live here while her family, her child … She held her throbbing temples, wondering how she had not before grasped what kind of man he was, that he could think to propose such a shameful thing to her.
She wept. She wept for the life she had left behind—the real love, the respect, the care of a man she had never appreciated. She wept for the child she had abandoned, for the aging father she had hurt, the sisters she had shamed. She wept for the green dark hills and the milky, silver sky that gleamed over Jerusalem on a rainy day like precious beaten silver. But most of all she wept for herself and the G-d who had turned from a dearest friend into an enemy that allowed her to suffer so. That allowed a man like Noach to prosper.
“Darling …” He put his hand on her shoulder. “I—”
She tore the bracelet off her wrist and threw it on the floor, stamping on it with all her might.
“Dina!” He reached down to rescue it, and she pounded his skull with her fists and tore long welts in his cheek until she felt her arms pinned cruelly to her sides. As if in a dream, she saw his hands suddenly release her, reaching up to touch his cheeks, his eyes staring in disbelief at the dark blood that stained his fingertips. She heard his feet pound the floor. She heard the front door slam. Only then did she stop struggling.
Who can gauge the limits of a person’s capacity for suffering? Who can predict when or why a soul that has ballooned to encompass pain or tragedy will suddenly burst? Her measure was suddenly filled. Some fragile membrane burst open, carrying her beyond grief to an unknown emotion too unfamiliar and vast to completely explore. She didn’t fight it but let it fill her, the way light fills a glass bottle. For an instant, she felt with stunning tragic clarity that there was mercy and forgiveness in the world and that it was in a place she did not know how to reach.
She walked out into the street, her spirit beyond plans, beyond fear, beyond guilt, beyond doubts. Oddly, she was suddenly free. She walked slowly through the dark alleyways of Manhattan, through the festively lit main streets, the echoes of joyous childhood melodies coming back to her in all their sweet harmony. She found herself humming, and as she sang, her voice growing louder and more joyful, she heard the noise of passing trucks, of honking taxis, suddenly disappear. She listened to the silence for a moment. Even her own footsteps had faded. She was all alone, in this great, endless city. All alone, she thought, puzzled but not unhappy. She sang, swaying with blissful forgetfulness down the streets, through the strange silent crowds that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Their faces stared at her oddly or turned away. Some opened their mouths, as soundless as fish.
She walked faster, her goal becoming clearer. And suddenly there were the quiet Sabbath streets, the cobblestones glistening from the sharp winter rains; the scent of spicy cholent bubbling up from the hot plate; the heavy women, their arms crossed over their chests, their faces comfortable and smiling as they greeted each other outside the crowded synagogue. And there were her brothers in their
payess
, their dark little suits and snowy white shirts.
She was home.
It was so good to be home! There was the Sabbath table with the challah and the wine. Her mother leaned over to pass the heavy platters, to smooth back her hair. And then the meal was over. She followed her sisters into the bedroom, listening to the homey clatter of dishes, her mother working in the kitchen. It was a comforting sound, and she was suddenly very, very tired. She took off her clothes in the quiet darkness, still smelling the waxy remains of the Sabbath candles, still tasting the sweet wine from her father’s silver goblet. Above her in the darkness, the moon rose, a sliver of hopeful light.
She lay down and closed her eyes, dreaming. “
Ima
,” she whispered as her mother stood suddenly before her, her eyes loving yet troubled. Like the unseen, untouched scent that clings to a flower, her mother’s presence brought with it a sense of utter simplification. Everything was suddenly reduced to one straight line that led easily from the good to the good. But somehow, in her dream, her feet could not follow. She kept falling down, losing her way. She felt bruised and sick and lost. She called out to her mother, called her back, and there she was again, but this time her eyes were wide with questioning, with disapproval.
