Sotah (54 page)
“And the
sotah
who is proven innocent, she is left alone. She goes back to her husband, her children. Will you go back to Judah?”
“If he’ll have me. I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “
Aba
, can you forgive?”
He hesitated.
She froze.
“How can I forgive?” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I would like to. I should. But how can I? It’s too terrible. Too terrible.”
The sharp sliver in her soul grew into a stake, embedding itself deeper and deeper. She felt the excruciating pain of her speared heart splitting. It was unendurable. “Please, I beg you!”
“But, child, how can I? Kurzman, those others who forced you to leave, who told us nothing. Worse, who let us believe the worst. How can I ever forgive them?”
She covered her face with both hands and laughed into them, a hysterical laughter that was nevertheless not without some joy. Then she embraced him, hiding her eyes, her mouth, in his dark, warm coat.
“
Aba
, then you do forgive me?”
“Forgive you … you?! My dear child … Do you have to ask … do you …” His veined palm brushed warmly against her cheek.
The stake melted like ice, leaving no scar.
“
Aba
, there’s something else. It’s Chaya Leah. She’s so unhappy and she’s afraid to talk to you about it. She doesn’t want to hurt you. But,
Aba
, her heart is also empty …”
Let her go where her heart is.
He stared at his daughter, his little Dina, his good child, and saw the face of his dear wife peering out at him with accusation. A flash of guilt forked lightning bright into the darkness of his incomprehension, bringing sudden, brief illumination. He shuddered. And then he understood why G-d, with true justice and not without mercy, had brought all this suffering upon him.
R
eb Garfinkel wasn’t particularly happy to see Rabbi Reich standing on his doorstep immediately following a heavy lunch of gefilte fish, horseradish, boiled chicken, and borscht. Any reminder of a bad match, especially one doomed to end in a scandalous divorce, was disastrous for his delicate digestive system. Rightly or wrongly, such matters always pointed an accusing finger at the
shadchen
, as if he were somehow supposed to magically detect that beneath the demure, pious exteriors of these little brides beat the heart of a passionate wanton! But go try to sell that reasonable idea to the public! Ignorance, pure ignorance.
Still, Reich was not the type to complain. In fact, he recalled vaguely, there was another unmarried daughter—big, heavy, a good worker with a yarn store in a wonderful location near the
shuk
. He wiped the chicken grease off his lips and belched with satisfaction, ushering the good rabbi in with as much grace as he could muster.
“My dear Reb Chaim,” Rabbi Reich began cordially.
“My dear Rabbi Reich,” the other man answered with a suspicious smile.
There was a pause.
“A drink, perhaps, Rabbi?” the
shadchen
offered, safe in the knowledge that such courtesies were never accepted. To his surprise, Rabbi Reich nodded. In fact, to his amazement, no sooner did the rabbi swallow one plastic cup of schnapps than he poured himself another. Only then did Rabbi Reich begin to speak.
“My dear Reb Chaim, as you know, my good wife has passed on to her reward, and so it is now my responsibility to care for my children. I have, thank G-d, three beautiful daughters, may they live long! Two are married, as you know, you were the
shadchen.
”
Garfinkel tensed. Was there a tone of accusation there? Undecided, he said nothing.
“Wonderful marriages. Two fine sons-in-law I have, thanks to you.”
The
shadchen
allowed himself another small release of gas, mellowing. Boiled chicken, he comforted himself, was after all very easy to digest.
“So of course, who should I come to now that my Chaya Leah is ready to be married?”
Garfinkel took out a toothpick and began to mine his molars meditatively. A smile of pleasure spread across his face as he opened his little book and began to flip the pages.
“Let’s see … there. Ah. Just the one. A family of rabbis. A fine, upstanding young scholar. So, a small limp, I see. But not in the family; a little accident …” He looked at Rabbi Reich hopefully. “So, we start with someone else. Here, in Bnai Brak. Just in from Crown Heights. American income, a job in his father’s travel agency, a serious part-time learner …” He looked up. Rabbi Reich looked uncomfortable.
“My dear Reb Chaim,” Rabbi Reich began. “These sound like wonderful boys. I know that they will find their happiness through you and your blessed efforts. But … I have something. else in mind.”
“Something else?” What else? Garfinkel considered guiltily. A cripple and a yeshiva dropout. Maybe he was insulted. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. Of course, here”—he riffled rapidly through the incomprehensible handwritten pages—“here. I don’t know where my wits were. Here, the perfect one. A
kollel
boy, a cohen with a father who owns a plumbing supply store. Maybe you could expand the yarn store, open up a section for plastic pipes …” He looked at Rabbi Reich and began to sweat. Still, that uncomfortable look of dissatisfaction. He was growing annoyed. His stomach rumbled.
“Well, I must be honest with you. I have an idea of my own.”
“I’m here to listen,” Garfinkel said with forced amiability.
“Well, there is this boy I know. A fine learner. His father owns a fish store in Meah Shearim.”
“What’s the name?”
“Minskoff’s Kosher Fish and Poultry.”
A new light dawned in the
shadchen
’s shrewd eyes.
“Minskoff is a Belzer Hasid. And his son Moishe is in the army.”
“Well, Hasidim are also Jews, pious Jews. And the country needs an army to defend us from the
goyim
,” Rabbi Reich said mildly.
Garfinkel smiled amiably. “I don’t deal with Hasidim. They have their own
shadchonim
. But, back to my list …”
“Yes, I know. But this is a special case. You see, I think this is what would be good for my daughter. My wife, before she died, she asked me about this boy. She wanted the match.”
Garfinkel’s hand slammed down on the table. “
He’s a Hasid and he’s in the army!
It’s out of the question. I can’t be involved in such a thing. It would ruin my reputation. Besides, the match seems to have been made by other means already.” He stood up abruptly.
“Please, please, Reb Garfinkel. Sit a minute.” He sighed. “It has been a terrible year. My wife, my dear wife, may she rest in peace, I lost her. A young woman. And so many small children still to raise. You understand? The responsibility. Now, all on me. I never knew … she worked so hard.”
There was silence. Garfinkel sank back down onto his chair.
“Then all this business with Dina. You must have heard? … Ah, yes. Hard, very hard. But I want you to know she is a good girl. She is back home. And, G-d willing, soon back with her husband, a wonderful man …”
No divorce, then. Garfinkel felt his anger ease. That was worth a lot.
“Still, I appreciate your problems. I know what it is to try to find a match for a girl whose family has been talked about. It’s very, very hard.” Garfinkel nodded, grateful for the sympathy and understanding, commodities in short supply among his customers. “This boy, Moishe, is a good boy. He will make a good husband for my daughter. Besides, it was my wife’s dying wish that they be married.”
“But a Belzer
Hasid …
” Garfinkel protested weakly. What could you say against a wife’s dying wish?
“I want to tell you something, a thing I just found out recently. There are among us, Jews, in Jerusalem, who dress like
Bnai Torah
, have beards like
Bnai Torah
, but are simply Esau in Jacob’s clothing. Hasid, Misnagid. Just words. If they keep the Torah and raise the children to be good Jews, can we ask for anything more? Besides, Reb Chaim, who can understand what fills the emptiness in a person’s heart?”
Garfinkel looked at his fingertips, which needed clipping badly, and sighed. “Your wife’s dying wish,” he muttered. “What else can I say?”
“And please consider, my dear, good Reb Chaim. This will be an easy match, with no negotiations. Yet the fee, the fee will remain the same. I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”
Garfinkel’s tragic face broke into that rarest of expressions, something he had experienced maybe twice or three times in his life: glee sanctioned not only by profit, but also by a mitzvah. “My dear Rabbi Reich, may you live to see many grandchildren, and may they all decide to be Misnagdim!”
“Amen.”
“
Y
ou don’t have much time. You’re due in court this afternoon for the divorce hearings. Let Yaakov and me go with you to Judah. Let us help you expl—”
“No!” Dina cut her off. Then, contritely: “Thank you. But I have to do it myself. Just me and Judah, together. It’s the only way I’ve ever envisioned it in my dreams and nightmares. So many times, just that way. It can’t be any other way, don’t you see?”
Dvorah nodded slowly, with inexpressible sorrow. Dina still looked as she had as a child, too soft and breakable to withstand deliberate unkindness. How many times had she accepted blame simply to bring peace? To avoid even confronting her accusers or putting the true culprits in a bad light? Would she be able to do it now? “Tell him the truth, no matter how much it hurts. He has a right to know.”
“It is what I plan … I want to … I … have to …” She sighed, as if already at the end of one of those long, exhausting days of housework that come just before Passover. Days spent cleaning up a whole year’s dirt in neglected dark crevices, closets, and drawers, knowing that no matter how hard you work, you’ll never get it all.
How could she ever make it all come clean and right again with Judah? It seemed impossible. There were too many dark corners to lighten, too many foul stains that had been left untreated too long … And so she had reduced her hopes to something more feasible. All she wanted, all she could think about, was seeing the baby. That and perhaps some kind of postponement of the inevitable. Despite everything that Dvorah had told her, she still felt Judah probably hated her. She was ashamed to look him in the face. After all, only she knew how badly she had treated him and how little he had deserved it. Her heart felt cold.
“Take a coat with you,” Dvorah fussed for lack of anything better to do. “It’s cold, although it might warm up if the clouds clear and the sun comes out.”
“I’ll only take a sweater, then. I want to be ready when the clouds clear and the sun comes out,” she said with a sad smile.
Outside, the eyes were there again, singeing her with the heat of their condemnation. Or were they? she suddenly wondered. Perhaps it was not the eyes of others at all, but some inner eye, the eye of her younger self, that stared with such unflagging condemnation. She felt exposed, indecent.
She almost ran to the bus stop.
She stood there, trembling, when two men in black approached her. At first she thought they were simply going to ask directions, but then she noticed the narrowed, intensely hostile eyes. And, of course, she remembered, such men would never ask a strange woman anything, even the time of day.
“Dina Gutman?”
Without knowing why, her heart began to pound. “Yes?”
“Rabbi Kurzman wants you to know you’ve made a serious mistake coming back from America. His patience is not as everlasting as the Almighty’s. If you go straight to the Beit Din this afternoon and finish with the divorce, no harm will come to you. But if you try to talk to your husband, to talk him out of it … we pity you.”
Why aren’t I more afraid? she wondered. “Why shouldn’t I try to talk to my husband?” she said boldly, amazing herself.
They seemed flustered. “Because men are vulnerable. We cannot allow you to take advantage of his weakness. Our law forbids it.”
Her skin prickled. “And if I … I don’t listen to you?”
“That would be disastrous. Most of all for your husband. He makes holy objects. We will see he never sells another one. He will be ostracized. Thrown out of the community.”
She stared at them, looking beyond their clothes and beards, the showily long
payess
that grazed their shoulders, until she could actually envision the petty smallness of their minds and the enormity of their egos. Her fear was gone.
Then she looked down at the ground modestly and, before they could figure out what she was doing, deftly maneuvered her way back into the thickest part of a crowd of religious women who stood nearby. The men stood watching her, helpless, frustrated. There was no way they could pursue her decently without breaking all their own rules. Before they could decide on their next step, she quickly hailed a cab, jumped in, and locked the door.
“Where to?”
She hesitated. Then, summoning up all the courage and faith she possessed, she answered: “The Street of Carpenters.”
She got out just in front of the shop. Standing silently at the threshold, she studied Judah’s dark head bent in total concentration over his work. His face was thinner, older than she’d remembered it, the dark thick waves of hair casting shadows on the hollows of his cheeks. A strange tenderness awoke in her. She wanted to smooth away the lines of concentration on his forehead, to make it carefree and young again.
She wanted to twine her fingers through his.
She waited patiently for a lull in the noise of the machine, then took one small step over the threshold.
“Hello, Judah.”
He looked at her intently, then lowered his eyes, turning his back and walking deliberately to the other side of the shop. He took the newly formed wood and sanded it, stopping every few minutes to rub his hand over the surface to test its smoothness. With maddening slowness, he took out a can of varnish, pried open the lid, and dipped in a paintbrush.
