Jephte's Daughter (12 page)

And then, as all the guests filtered to the huge banquet halls for a feast that only kings could afford, the bride and bridegroom, as tradition and law required, walked alone into a small room, the door closing behind them. They faced each other, two strangers. Boldly, she took his hands in hers. They were cold and moist with sweat, making her own hands damp. Ashamed, he dried them on his suit and lifted back her veil. A small shiver of expectation ran along her spine. He took a step backward and offered her a drink and a piece of cake. They had eaten nothing all day and watched each other break the long fast. And too soon there was a knocking on the door as the Hassidim demanded them. Reluctantly, and perhaps a bit relieved, too, to be forced from the sudden intimacy, they opened the door and were led out, he to the men, and she to the women, the long partition that ran the length of the room separating them for the rest of the evening.

The dancing took on a frenzied, riotous joy. Circle within circle moving with a step inward, and a step outward, creating a rhythm that was at once of this world and of the next. It was a celebration of an earthly happiness but more, a celebration of a heavenly decree now fulfilled. Men balanced bottles on their heads, balanced chairs on the tips of their nose. To please the bride and bridegroom was a
mitzvah
. To see them laugh was a
mitzvah
. The bride, surrounded by the women, sat enthroned as they danced around her with the pretty, delicate grace of women. Understanding and pity wet the eyes of the married women, envy and joy the eyes of the young girls who surveyed the bride. Her own eyes were blind, seeing only her own inner confusion. Whatever happened outside her went by in a white rush, a blur, almost as if her eyes had gone suddenly nearsighted and she was forced to see without glasses. “Serve God with gladness,” the men’s voices intoned, beginning slowly and growing louder and faster with each beat.
Streimels
and earlocks bobbed and wove in unison; hundreds of bodies pressed together, sweaty hands were clasped. Their eyes were closed, deep in thought, and their teeth were clenched together, their bodies straining to realize the significance of God’s awesome mercy in bringing back to life that which was dead.

The food and wine were served up in huge platters—the most delectable and glatt kosher of meats and chickens, the finest pastry, delicious kugels and tzimmes, wonderful aromatic cakes and cookies. Special tables were set for the poor and the hangers-on. The meal lasted three hours. And then, when the last dessert was served, and people began taking greedy handfuls of flowers from the enormous centerpieces and walking out the door, only the most immediate family and friends remained. A watchful silence descended and someone got up and announced in a loud, awe-stricken whisper:
Mitzvah tanz
. The long partition separating the men from the women was dismantled.

“Come,” Mrs Harshen urged a startled Batsheva, leading her across to where the men had celebrated in supreme isolation all evening. This crossing over was shocking to the bride, who felt she had overstepped some terrible boundary. But seeing the cheerful faces of everyone around her, she was reassured and relaxed. There was Isaac, already seated in a chair, waiting for her. He looked so tall and handsome, immaculate in his white
kitel
. She sat down next to him, the women behind her and the men before her. Now the “inviter” stood up. “Now we call a father to dance with the bride in the
mitvas rekide
, the
mitzvah
dance!” Abraham Ha-Levi moved slowly in front of his daughter. He wiped the sweat that poured down his forehead and someone handed him a handkerchief. Batsheva looked at her father, her eyes suddenly focusing with a smile of love. She caught hold of the handkerchief and her father danced before her like a young groom, full of laughter and merriment. The joy in the room swelled out like a balloon and she thought: It must burst, it cannot contain any more, just as my full heart cannot. One by one, the grandfather, father-in-law, uncles, brothers-in-law, took hold of the handkerchief and danced before her with slow, shuffling steps. And then, when they had all had their turn, Isaac got up.

He walked toward his beautiful bride with small, unbelieving, hesitant steps as the “inviter,” the self-appointed master of ceremonies, sang out, half serious, half laughing:

Always the reminder of death, even in the midst of life, of joy. One must be reminded that there is a Creator and around the corner darkness lies in wait for us. Batsheva heard the words of the song and shivered. What did it mean? She could not move her eyes off Isaac’s as he slowly came to her and lifted the corner of the handkerchief from her trembling hand. He took tiny, mincing steps before her, his eyes closed. She tried to sway with him, to follow his steps, but could not. She didn’t understand where he was going, or why. So she followed him blindly, hopefully, as he led her around the floor. And all at once, his steps grew slower and more meaningful as he moved near to her and then backed away in a slow, deliberate rhythm that she could anticipate, moving toward him as he reached toward her. For a single moment, his eyes opened and met hers and she felt an unfolding inside herself, almost indecent, a raw, naked longing that made her legs too weak to hold her.

“
Hot mir a gutte nacht
,” the “inviter” intoned suddenly. Have a good night. And the wedding was over and their life together took its first tentative step forward.

Then suddenly, almost shockingly, they were in their home, totally alone. He did not carry her over the threshold, for that is not a Jewish custom. Batsheva, who had seen Hollywood movies and (secretly) television shows, and had read
Women in Love
and
The Rainbow
, felt somehow diminished stepping into the house in an ordinary way. Her first home, her wedding night. Her imagination had dwelt on these things like any sensitive young girl’s, turning both into magical moments on another plane of existence where somehow all of her experience of reality would no longer prove relevant.

But there it was. The floor was hard and cold beneath her feet as she kicked off her pointy, pinching high heels, worn out from dancing in circles with the women. She was weary but exhilarated too. Isaac sat in the living room opening wedding envelopes. Batsheva’s heart sank as she saw the big pile still unopened.

“Isaac,” she murmured, touching him hesitantly, “must we do this now?”

“Ah, yes.” He let the envelope fall, and he reached up to caress her face. He saw her close her eyes and tremble and it frightened him a little. A sudden perverseness, almost a force outside his control, made him pick the envelope up again. He was avoiding the bedroom, delaying for time. And also, he really wanted to know how much money he had. It was amazing, he had never seen so much money up close.

“It vill only take,
vus
, how do you say, a jiffy. Right?” She hated him to speak his pidgin English, preferring to hear his fluent Yiddish. “I vant to add it up, put it avay inda bank tomorrow.” She walked resignedly into the bedroom. A maid had already unpacked her suitcase. She sat in front of the mirror and took off her bridal veil. Slowly, she began to take the pins from her hair. The long strands fell like a soft caress down her back. She ran her fingers through it and pulled a lock across her face, breathing in its perfumed fragrance. Such soft, sweet-smelling hair. Her cheeks were flushed with the excitement of the evening, the sweet wine that had flowed like water, the dancing; and the unbearable anticipation of the night that was to come. She looked closely at herself, trying to envision what he would see. All fiery, sweet and yielding, she knew without a single hesitation that she was ravishing. She drummed her fingers impatiently, almost painfully hard, on the dressing table.

Why didn’t he come?

She reached behind her and felt the endless row of tiny silk buttons that ran the top length of her gown. She remembered when her mother had buttoned them. “You will need help to take this off, but I imagine you will have someone to help you.” There had been a secret smile on her mother’s face, a laugh in her voice that had made her blush. She had imagined that he would do it slowly, gently, until the gown fell from her shoulders to a heap on the floor. She would then step out of it, turning modestly away from him as she took off her slip and finally her bra and panties. She had planned to come to him so, as a gift, with no separation between them. Such, she had imagined, was the way a man and his wife should be. She had planned to give herself to him completely out of love, a desire to make him happy and fill him with manly joy. For it was more than just her body she was handing to him. It was the single most precious dream of a lonely child, a dream that she had spent half her lifetime embellishing and perfecting. It was an antidote to a childhood filled with isolation and pain. She would never be lonely again, the dream said. Her mind, heart, body, and soul would have its perfect partner to fill every vacuum completely. Trembling, her hands reached back, struggling to push the tiny buttons through the holes. Finally, aching and defeated, with more than half of the buttons yet to go, she let her arms fall dejectedly to her sides.

She wandered listlessly around the bedroom, trying to comfort herself with the touch and sight of the beautiful things her parents had shipped from the States. She picked up the music box, her father’s gift, and wound it up. “Lara’s Theme.” She watched the young couple in the sled drive round and round in the furious, blanketing snow and imagined it was something like what God must feel holding the world in His hands, seeing the lives of human beings unfold, knowing that they would go round and round until they came back to where they started. The sadness in the thought startled her.

Why didn’t he come, why?

She heard the door open softly. He stood there, looming larger and more powerful than she had ever remembered seeing him, making her feel small and helpless.

“You are still dressed?”

She blushed. “The buttons are difficult for me alone.”

He hesitated, then walked slowly toward her. He was terrified of this woman. Of Woman. What would she expect of him? What must he do, as a man? In his experience so far he had had only theory. The holy books taught a man everything, everything. Yet, it was still theory. They had not prepared him for her soft, beautiful face full of unreasonable expectations. He was just a virgin too, after all, who had not been expected or allowed to indulge in dreams of flesh. And now that it was suddenly a
mitzvah
, indeed a positive Commandment, he did not know how to change gears. His soul, trained in repression for so many years, resisted her soft body as if it was still a sin, as if no wedding had taken place, no blessings had been pronounced.

He was afraid to touch those small silken buttons, to see what was underneath. He began to hate her a little as she moved toward him, presenting her back to him. But what could he do? He had been taught that woman was a lustful creature that had a right to be satisfied. If he could not, she had a right to divorce him under Jewish law. He touched her small back, bent modestly and humbly toward him. Slowly, the work progressed, button after button opening, revealing white skin. Sometimes his large fingers would slip and touch the skin. Its incredible softness burnt him like coals, sending flashes of fire down his back to his loins.

The dress was open. She stepped away from him and let it fall to the floor. He could not bear it. “I will undress in the bathroom. We must preserve some
tznius
,” he said with a coldness that covered sheer panic.

She felt as if he had slapped her across the face.
Tznius
. Modesty. He must preserve it. She clutched the dress to her, humiliated and cheapened. He had thrown her gift back in her face. There were twin beds in the bedroom. When he came out of the bathroom she was already under the covers in her bed, wearing a long negligee of pure white silk. She lay stiffly, still smarting from the wait and his insult. All her limbs were contracted in a pattern of resistance.

He shut off the light and she felt him climb in beside her. A stranger. Yet for all that, he was a man. She felt the cotton of his clean pajamas and smelled the soap and toothpaste. Manly, clean. His skin had a fragrance she had never breathed before. Not like perfume, but a musky, darkly pleasing odor, very male, that came from no bottle. He was so comfortingly close to her. She felt him turn toward her in the darkness and lift her nightgown over her head partly and she understood she must do the rest. Ashamed and yet excited, shielded by the darkness, she undressed completely, flinging the clothes to a soft heap on the floor. She heard him murmur, prayerlike, fumble with his own clothes, and then there was something else. Icy cold and smooth, it covered the whole length of her body. She felt him roll over and put his arms on either side of her shoulders, supporting himself. She did not feel his warm skin, but a cool separation, like material, which interposed itself between their bodies. She was confused and frightened. What should I do with my arms, my legs? He seemed to push at her, nudge her, trying to communicate something, but she didn’t know what he wanted. And then she felt something hot and sticky ooze between her legs. His weight lifted from her, and he turned wordlessly away. She heard the other bed move to accept his weight.

She had expected pain. She had expected to be transported. She had expected humiliation, shame, joy, incredible excitement. But this, this nothing? This wet fumbling in the dark? This coldness? She wondered at it until mercifully the complex lines of night were erased into the simple darkness of sleep.

The hot Mediterranean sunlight slanting through the drapes woke her. She found herself alone in the bed and for a moment did not know where she was, who she was. She felt hot and dirty. She listened for a sound, a motion that would indicate someone was in the house. Hearing none, she walked naked into the bathroom. She lay in the tub a long time, trying not to think, for each time she put the night together in her mind, her jaws stiffened and her stomach contracted. She felt so incredibly stupid and confused and alone. Most of all she felt ashamed. She scrubbed herself hard, taking none of her usual pleasure in the sight of her beautiful, full breasts, tiny waist and long, shapely legs. She felt the lovely sheen of her youth had grown dull, the soft bud of her body fading like a flower that had been ripped from its roots and left without water. He, the man, had seen her, touched her, and had not validated her beauty, her womanliness. He had turned away and gone to his own bed. Like Eve after the fall, her nakedness was obscene to her now.

Filled with a sense of nameless loss, she sat at the edge of her bed, drying herself with small, mournful pats at her wet shoulders and calves. She lifted the covers. She felt it again, the cold smooth material. Picking it up, she held it full length. It was just a plain white sheet. Then something caught her eye. In the middle there was a hole. She looked at it closely. Its edges were smooth, evidence of a small scissor. It wasn’t a tear. And then it hit her like a physical blow. He had deliberately cut a neat, small hole. He had prepared this thing to lay over her, prepared it consciously with full knowledge and responsibility, to prevent their bodies from touching.

His footsteps. She dropped the sheet and quickly reached for a robe. He would never see her body again if she could help it. He strode into the room. “
Boker tov
, Batsheva.” He averted his eyes, waiting for her to fasten the buttons. She nodded, her fingers working with swift, nervous energy. She couldn’t bear to look at him. He walked over to her bed and lifted the covers, then looked at her sharply. “Have you changed the linens then, already?” An accusation.

“I haven’t done anything. I just got up.” She spoke in English with deliberate unconcern for him. Let him learn a little English, he was a scholar, wasn’t he? A brilliant scholar. She glanced at him malevolently. He seemed to be examining something that did not meet with his approval. His face had a pinched harshness, a face she would soon come to know well. But now, so soon after their courtship, after their intimacy, it made her feel sick and irrationally guilty.

“There is a problem,” he said with cryptic understatement. She sensed the anger, barely decently covered, threatening any moment to slash through the polite words like a switchblade. Instinctively, she held her ground, looking carefully into his eyes with a kind of defiance. She didn’t understand that he was beyond, far beyond, her recriminations, her wounded feelings, in some world of male pride and fury she did not begin to fathom.

He looked her full in the face. “I am not the first then.”

What did he want? What was she doing in the middle of all this accusation and anger and pain? Why did she feel an irrational need to defend herself? She was filled with the panic of the inexperienced: It was the first schoolday of a child, the first day on a first job. What hidden standards had she failed to live up to? What terrible, unspeakable mistakes had she made?

“The first what?”

“The first man.” His jaws flinched.

She repeated the words to herself as he had said them, not as she had translated them. Maybe there was a mistake.
Der erster mann
. No, he meant it. Man.

“The sheets are clean,” he said through clenched teeth. And suddenly she understood. He was searching for proof of her virginity. There was no blood.

The doctor Isaac Meyer Harshen went to consult in his distress was also a rabbi. His office was merely a room in a rather bare apartment, with foam-rubber couches and huge bookcases filled with medical journals and Talmudical commentaries. Isaac glanced uncomfortably at the other patients—women with swollen bellies, in various stages of preparing the next generation; or thin women with pinched, unhappy faces. A few had their husbands by their side. But he could see from their sidelong glances how odd they found his solitary presence. He shifted with humiliation under their gaze.

“Are you feeling all right, my son?” the doctor asked, looking at him across a bare desk. He said it in a kindly, fatherly way. No, I feel sick, I feel angry. I want to scream with embarrassment. I distrust the woman I’ve married. But Isaac said none of that, nodding listlessly.

“Sit down, sit down. A new
chasan
.
Mazel tov
to you and may Hashem bless you. I don’t want you to worry. Many a new
chasan
has come to me with such problems. Youth and inexperience. But soon they come to me to deliver their sons. So may it be with you.” He chuckled.

“Has she deceived me?” he blurted out in agony.

“Deceived you?” The doctor looked at him without understanding.

“Can you tell? There was no blood on the sheets, as it is written, ‘the signs of her virginity.”’

The old doctor repressed a smile. Here after all was a man in pain. A young, foolish man in pain. But he had many such men come to him from the yeshivoth. The more devout they were, the more removed from reality they seemed to be. Young virgins who were somehow expected to know everything on the wedding night. They learned something from others, brothers, the bad yeshivah boys, books. But still, they had never touched a woman in their lives before their wedding night. “My dear
chasan
. On that score I can put your mind at rest. Your lovely
kallah
not only was a virgin, but I am absolutely certain, from the look on your face, she still is a virgin.”