Sotah (56 page)

“No,” she protested, “I didn’t really give you a chance, did I? Judah … can we try again to make each other happy? I do love you.”

He restrained the urge to crush her to him, to smother her in the encompassing warmth of his grateful, forgiving arms. Instead he hugged her gently, so that they remained two separate people, each supporting the other. They sat there in the dusty, dark shop, in the pale shadows of the big machines, clinging to each other like sole survivors of a great natural disaster.

She looked into his deep, forgiving eyes, and then she remembered the narrow, violent eyes of the other men; the superior, contemptuous eyes of the women. The irony of it struck her. He, who had been so unfairly treated, so unbearably misused, would forgive her. Yet Kurzman and his cronies, the women and girls who looked at her with such unrelenting malice at every street corner, people she had never harmed in any way, they would never forgive or forget. They might look and dress the part of those who belonged to the tradition she’d been brought up in, but they were not part of it. They were bugs, hiding in and befouling life-giving flour.

“Sift …” She suddenly understood.

All her life she had accepted the world of her parents as a whole, organic and indivisible: charity to strangers and Mrs Morganbesser’s rules on how long to wear your sleeves. The smell of citron and willow branches on the Feast of Tabernacles and throwing rocks at cars that passed through the neighborhood on the Sabbath. But it wasn’t a whole! she realized. Just as Joan’s world was neither the fearsome, despicable entity her teachers had portrayed it nor utopia. It too had good and bad.

She did not want to live her mother’s good life or her sister’s, but a good life of her own choosing filled with the rich bounty of all that she loved and respected in both worlds.

And then, with a revelation just as sure, she understood that she would not be able to do it here.

She took Judah’s hands into hers, enfolding them. This was her first choice, the foundation of her new life.

“Judah, I can’t live here anymore,” she whispered.

“But why? Is it Kurzman? Is it? Because if it is, I’m not afraid … my word is stronger than his among the people I respect …”

“No,” she answered him with sudden understanding. “It’s not him. I have this … letter. From Noach. It’s a description of everything that happened between us, how he wants me back. It proves what I’ve said is true. I thought to use it, to fight Kurzman, to prove my innocence. But I can see now that it really doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid. It’s just … I just … can’t … live here anymore. Among all these eyes who’ll be watching me, making sure I keep all the rules they’ve set down. I’m not talking about
halacha
. I know you can’t pick and choose among G-d’s laws. I’m talking about rules that have nothing to do with G-d, all those narrow-minded mistaken decrees our world has invented to somehow seal us off, to keep us all the same. I’d suffocate. There are so many good things outside our world, Judah. Music, art, wonderful movies and plays and books. I need to be able to choose what I let in. It makes me happy. And I think it will help to make me a better person, too. Can you at least try to understand that?”

She saw his eyes moisten as he glanced around the old shop at his little refrigerator, the boxes filled with prayer books in the back. From the street came the high whine of the Austrian’s drill, the heavy pounding of Lazarovich’s hammer. He couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

Then he looked at her. He didn’t understand her, not yet, not completely. But he did understand himself.

“You are my home.” He shrugged. “Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. We’ll talk about it. We’ll decide. Together.”

And then she saw it, that quality in him she had always known was there, buried within his human form, hidden within his skin and bones, his blood, his muscles, his fleshy human organs. What would you call it? she wondered. Depth, courage, unselfishness? And yet that wasn’t it. Not exactly. It was stronger and more beautiful. Whatever words she thought of only seemed to squeeze it down, turning it into something pettier and more familiar.

She, who had always loved and needed words, who had respected them so much, suddenly realized their weakness, their limitations. Whatever it was, words couldn’t contain its breadth and strangeness and shining exuberant beauty, which spilled over, a mighty river overflowing its man-made banks. They could do no more than hint at the magnificence of his soul in all its simple goodness and steadfast love.

Slowly she brushed the tear from the corner of his eyelid, wetting her thumb, her fingers spreading out like a delicate web across his forehead, reaching back to caress the softly quivering warmth of his pulse, which throbbed, exposed and vulnerable. She traced the small, growing smile where his lips curved up into his cheeks, transforming his face.

Her love for him was just beginning.

Epilogue

T
en Years Later

The little rental car strained up the steep climb from the Sea of Galilee to the hills of Safad. “Fantastic!” Maury exclaimed. “Why didn’t we do this years ago! I know! Don’t say it. ‘Because year ago, you were too rich and successful and important to risk enjoying your life,’ unquote. Isn’t that what you were going to say?”

Joan said nothing, her eyes resting on the hills that undulated with liquid grace, rising up green and fertile toward the sky. Below them, the blue haze of the ancient harp-shaped lake shimmered in the vivid sunlight.

They’d be leaving in a few days. It had been almost like a dream: the blossoming orange orchards of Tel Aviv, the dark green pine forests of the Carmel, the barren majesty of the desert. But it was Jerusalem that had enchanted them both most of all. Yet Joan had felt a strange, sad longing as they’d walked the cobblestoned streets among the dark-coated Hasidim.

She had looked up Dina’s old address from years ago and had even located the apartment building. But there had been no one of her name living there. Faced with a group of youngsters who eyed her sleeveless dress with passive hostility and who pretended they didn’t understand a word she said, she’d embraced defeat with as much grace as she could muster.

It wasn’t important, she told herself. She had merely wanted to say hello. Nothing special. A small hug, perhaps, and then to exchange like gifts some moments from their last ten years. Perhaps in a way, she thought honestly, it was better not to have found her. Time was often cruel. Did she really want to risk facing her now, transformed by a decade of experiences she had no way of gauging?

They parked beneath a flowering acacia whose extravagant red-orange bouquet seemed straight out of the palette of Gauguin or Van Gogh. Maury took her hand. “I think the artists’ homes are this way. I think there are some old synagogues, too.”

“Safad is the home of mystics. Did you know that?” Joan asked suddenly.

“Mystics?”

“The Kabala was written here. It’s supposed to contain all the hidden meaning of the universe. Didn’t you ever hear that Rabbi Loew of Prague created a human being, a golem, using the magic in the Kabala?”

“My, those classes you’ve been taking have certainly given you some strange expertise,” he teased her.

She’d started right after Dina left. Classes in Hebrew, Bible, and biblical archaeology. Classes in Jewish law and history. In a. way she was glad she’d never been to Israel before. If she’d have come years ago, it would have meant little to her. But now everything—the hills, the city names, the ancient pottery—all tugged at her unceasingly with a thousand different meanings. It slapped. her into a new consciousness. Birthplace, homeland. The words clanged inside her sonorously, demanding attention.

They walked slowly up the steep winding road past quaint, flowering courtyards where artists’ signs welcomed visitors from eight to one, four to seven. It was just after two. Everything was closed.

“Well, we can get a drink and just wait for them to reopen,” he suggested.

“No, let’s keep walking, if you’re not too tired,” she said with a strange eagerness.

It reminds me of somewhere, Joan thought. The rolling hills, the little courtyards. Even the people … She saw men in Hasidic dress and pious women in wigs and head scarves weaving their baby carriages through the narrow old streets. Yet they seemed to live side by side in perfect harmony with the bohemians sitting with easels and messy tubes of paint at every street corner.

“Here’s one that’s open,” Maury called down to her. “Look, Joan, tapestries! Look at the colors!”

She caught up with him and looked into the shop window. Wall hangings ranging in size from one square foot to eight-by-eight feet covered the walls.

“And look at these wooden objects—
mezuzahs
and spice boxes and sculptures of gardens with houses …”

She walked into the store with a sense of excitement so strong it bordered on dread. There was a child behind the counter of no more than eight or nine. A little girl with blond hair and green-blue eyes. Her heart seemed to jolt as she looked at her.

“Cute,” Maury said. “So are you the one in charge here, young lady?”

The child nodded soberly. “My aunt Chaya Leah soon comes. Can I … fix you?” she asked politely.

“I think you mean help, not fix, but it’s okay, kid.” He chuckled. “Joan, practice your Hebrew on this child. Ask her how much things cost, and who makes them.”

Joan stood staring at a collection of photographs that covered one of the walls.

“Those are pictures of the family. My father says if we add any more, we will have to rent another shop,” the little girl said in fluent Hebrew, giggling.

Joan turned to her, understanding only every other word. But somehow it didn’t matter. Her face spread into a slow smile of recognition. “Come, tell me who all these people are.”

“Well, the first is a picture taken at my aunt Chaya Leah’s wedding to my uncle Moishe. He’s an officer in the army,” she said proudly. “And that’s them with their little boys—Avremie and Shukie. They live”—she pointed out the door—“just down the block. My aunt Chaya Leah helps my mother with this store and the other store in Jerusalem.”

“And what about this photo?”

“Oh, that’s my aunt Dvorah and my uncle Yaakov—who is a very important
rosh yeshiva
, the head of Misifte Moshe Yeshiva in Meah Shearim. It was taken last year, when they had ten children. Now they have eleven. They live in Jerusalem and so does my grandfather, who is very old and a very great tzadik,” she said with authority. “And we go to visit them all the time and they come here. And these are wedding pictures of my uncles Ezra, Asher, and Shimon Levi. Uncle Benyamin just got engaged to a girl from Bnai Brak, and my mother says I can have a new dress for the wedding. And this is Uncle Duvid. He’s still in yeshiva.”

Joan listened to her with only part of her attention, all the while concentrating on the picture in front of her.

“That’s my
ima
and my
aba
with me and Yossele. That was before the twins were born.”

“What is she saying, Joan? Did she tell you who the artists are?” Maury asked impatiently. “Ask her.”

“I already know,” Joan answered softly, restraining a desire to touch the child’s smooth, rosy cheek, her shining soft gold hair. “And what’s your name?”

“Faigie. Like my grandmother, may she rest in peace.”

“And where is your
ima
now?” Joan almost whispered.

“Why, she’s in the house, at her loom,” the child said with surprise, as if it were impossible not to know such a basic thing.

“Maury, would you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right …”

She stepped out into the sunlit courtyard that ran along the back of the store. The main house was close by, down a small footpath leading to the edge of the hill. Next door there was a carpenter’s workshop that sounded with the noise of the turning lathe. She walked down the path to the house. It was a wonderful old place. Old dark stones covered the facade, and boxes of geraniums, petunias, and phlox rioted in uncountable window boxes.

From the companionably open door, the rhythmic click of the working loom wafted gently into the courtyard like the calm, even beat of a satisfied heart.

Joan stood by the open door, looking in.

Behind a loom placed before a large picture window with a breathtaking view of the hills sat Dina Reich Gutman. Sunlight was pouring in gently, gilding the room and the tiny wisps of hair that escaped from beneath her blue silk head scarf. There was a small satisfied curve to her arms, a straightness and assurance in her small, firm back. She looked as young as a girl with remarkably unlined skin. At her feet two infants crawled, making delighted sounds of discovery, tumbling over each other. And then Joan looked at the loom.

The shapes were fluid, dreamlike, like plants growing without pruning. In it she found the colors of peaches ripening in the sun, the soft black of night, the redeeming gold of morning. It made her think of sadness known and spring envisioned, a child’s eyes after crying, a young girl’s hopeful lips, the sky at daybreak, the sea lying under a cloudless sky, the earth, the moon, the color of laughter and music, the color of bright joy and dark regret. There didn’t seem to be any color missing.

She stood watching for several minutes, hesitating. Then she stepped away soundlessly, turning and going back into the shop. She was part of Dina’s past, a dark and tragic part that she found no evidence still haunted her. It would be a great
chesed
, she thought, not to remind her. Besides, she had found out what she wanted to know.

She slipped her hand through her husband’s.

A tall, auburn-haired woman was behind the counter holding a plump, frisky redheaded toddler. She was very helpful, and they bought many gifts for everyone they could think of.

One, however, they kept. It was a small, colorful tapestry. Joan hung it in her office, and every evening she took a few moments to commune with it. It had some magic healing power that never failed to cheer her.