“You must write us, Batsheva, as Isaac will be too busy to. And you must call every week. If there is anything you need, anything at all, please let us know,” her father said with a formality that hid his helplessness. He rubbed his hands together nervously. Batsheva wondered at the huge beads of sweat that slipped from beneath his black hat down his forehead to the sides of his cheeks. His hands were wet from wiping them away.
Ever since her wedding night, the bond between them had slackened. She felt grudging toward him, like a child promised a present and then denied it. An adult would have sensed that there was a score to settle, but in her feelings toward her father, she was still not an adult. You have hurt me and I am mad, was as far as she could define her attitude, which made her feel silly and childish.
Yes, she told herself. I am glad they are leaving. It will free me from playing the role of Isaac’s dear, dutiful little bride. She had made this calculation with a cynicism that both appalled and delighted her: While her father was still around, she would do as she was told. Her reasoning was simple. The time was approaching when she would have to teach Isaac Meyer exactly whom he had married. It would be painful for him. It would hurt him and humiliate him. Like a doctor preparing a patient for surgery, she preferred the operating theater to be closed to close relatives who might sway her judgment and cause the knife to be held back, or to slip.
“Dear Aba, of course I will write.” She wrinkled her nose at him, like a child.
His hand went instinctively to smooth back her hair, then he pulled it back a little foolishly, touching the wig, mark of the pious married woman. He wiped the sweat from his brow and patted her shoulder instead. The comradely touch of an equal.
Batsheva lay in bed a long time. She didn’t bother to feel the place where her husband had been, familiar now, after several months of marriage, with its emptiness. As always, the empty bed continued to offend her like a sudden, unexpected slap across the face. Gone to the yeshivah already. But there beside the bed was the tray with a hot Thermos of coffee and a red rose he had left for her. She looked at it, her annoyance softening. She picked up the rose and let its fragrance wash over her. Just typical of him. She didn’t like coffee and never drank it and what she needed was him beside her, not a tray. But still, it was awfully nice of him anyway, she told herself, trying and failing to work up the appreciation she felt she ought to have. Nice and completely unnecessary.
She washed her hands three times as the morning ritual required and began to recite her morning prayers. But it was no good. Her eyes brimmed over with tears of regret for the stubbornness of her soul, its recalcitrance. She had everything a woman could want, didn’t she? And here she was, unable to thank God, to praise Him.
A child’s confusion and anger reigned in her heart. She was not used to being told what to do on so regular a basis as she was with her newly acquired husband. He was even worse than her parents, who at least spoiled her most of the time. But Isaac Meyer Harshen walked a straight-and-narrow path and he didn’t mind pushing and shoving her along with him. He told her, after consulting with his mother, which of her dresses he found acceptable (nothing with red, or bright colors that stood out) and what shoes were permissible (closed toes, low chunky heels). In his parents’ house, Isaac’s mother watched everything she did like an exacting and disapproving governess. She once even humiliated her in front of guests by correcting the way she ritually washed her hands before eating bread; the way she held the water, the amount she filled the cup, the position she held her hands in when she poured water over them, everything was criticized and corrected.
Isaac tutored her on when to speak and when to keep silent when his friends—rabbis of all shapes and sizes, clothed in black and white, their faces almost hidden by beards of red and black and saintly white—filled the house. He asked her to sit in the kitchen and prepare them tea and cake, to serve them and then slide silently away when they began to discuss the weighty matters of the law, even though she understood the discussions quite well and was interested in at least hearing what they had to say. She understood that it was out of extreme piety that these men did not look her in the face, or speak directly to her. But all the same, it made her feel beneath contempt, almost as if she did not exist, as if she were just a shadow. They made her feel ashamed in a nameless, guilty, unfocused way. But most of all, it made her furious. She, who had dreamt of being looked at and admired! She felt a hot rebellion growing inside of her, gathering force like lava beneath a dormant crater.
Every day, try as she might to feel otherwise, she found herself filling with almost unbearable irritation from the little things he did to her—a mild correction in the way she said the prayers over the Sabbath candles, a barely perceptible nudge under the table to curb her outspokenness when he and his father were discussing the Torah portion of the week. These were enough for her to torture him with her silence in front of everyone. She was acutely aware of his embarrassment, the way she made him suffer. “Batsheva,” her mother-in-law had said, her brow arched, “don’t have the first fight and you will never have one.” Old advice from old wives, long browbeaten into silence.
But perhaps, after all, she was right.
Batsheva finished her prayers and felt as if she had emerged from some cleansing ablution. She resolved to repent and try harder. She got up and looked out of the window at the deep Mediterranean blue of the sky, which never failed to amaze and cheer her. The exotic black dome of the Abyssinian Church, the spires of minarets, the black-and-white tallith shawls draped over men’s coats as they returned from morning prayers at the synagogues to get ready for work made an exciting tapestry. She loved so much about her new life. Jerusalem, the subject of so many longing prayers recited by heart since childhood, the dream of every believing Jew, was now her address and it had not disappointed her. The rituals, the holidays, performed in community, instead of isolation, where they had been practiced so naturally for thousands of years, seemed to take on a richer color, to give a deeper satisfaction. It was as if in the past she had been a skin diver practicing skills in the blandness of a pool and had now, for the first time, been transported to the richness of a real coral reef. She was grateful to Isaac for having made it possible, and her gratitude brought out her guilt.
She walked listlessly around the lovely house, rubbing her fingers over dustless furniture, peering into spotless mirrors and windows, newly cleaned the day before by the cleaning girl, searching for something to do. It was beginning to dawn on her, for the first time, what a serious business she had gotten herself involved in. What, exactly, was she supposed to do all day while Isaac was in the yeshivah until eight or nine every night? Of course she knew what she was expected to do—goodness, hadn’t they drummed that into all the girls at Bais Sarah ad nauseum? But it all started when you had children, all that keeping them clean and quiet and bringing them up to be good Torah Jews. What in heaven’s name was a childless bride, full of life, raring to learn, to experience, to explore, to travel, to…live, supposed to do inside her clean, empty house?
Why not try to get involved in some charitable work? her mother had written. But she hated butting into other people’s lives. Let them have her money, and welcome. But it seemed so tacky to insist on giving it to them personally, seeing them all humble and thankful. Anyhow, hadn’t she learned that was the lowest form of charity, when you gave directly and the receiver knew who you were? She didn’t know anyone yet who needed her help naturally—like a neighbor with six little children who was going in for an operation or, more likely, a nervous breakdown. Why, then it would have made her feel wonderful to step in, full of charity and willing, noble hands (although what exactly she could have done with six whiny, hungry kids was another story she sort of glossed over). But as it was, the neighbors had kept their distance, not out of unfriendliness, but out of awe.
Then, quite suddenly, it occurred to her. Why, she hadn’t even made him a meal yet! Just cheese sandwiches when he came home at noon for lunch, or scrambled eggs. And so he had taken to eating dinner at the yeshivah or his parents’. He made no demands on her. I am no wife to him, she thought regretfully, the fragrance of the rose suddenly wafting through the room once more. I must do better.
She went into the kitchen and opened the cupboards. She took out her shiny new pots and pans, fingering their bright surfaces with pleasure, then opened the brand-new cookbooks and planned a feast. Broccoli with hollandaise sauce. Ratatouille. Baked macaroni and cheese. Mushroom soufflé. It all sounded so easy in the cookbooks. But then the white sauce for the macaroni wouldn’t thicken, so she raised the flame, stirring constantly until she noticed little brown flecks in it and a burnt smell at the bottom of the pot. Unwatched, the macaroni boiled over. She lowered the flame and burnt her hand trying to mop up the hot water that dripped off the stove in rivulets. She got a little yolk into the egg whites for the soufflé, and as much as she beat them, they never stiffened, staying stubbornly in a limp, frothy mass. Then she remembered the macaroni, but it was too late, boiled shapeless into starchy globs. Patiently she threw it all out and started over. She tried making Jerusalem kugel, Isaac’s favorite. It didn’t seem too difficult just melting sugar in oil and mixing it with pepper into cooked noodles.
Painfully aware of her failures, she watched the pot carefully, draining the noodles into a colander at exactly the right moment and rinsing them with cold water. She waited for the sugar to melt and turn brown. But though the sugar on the bottom melted, the rest stayed in a white lump. Remembering the white sauce, she restrained her urge to turn up the heat. When finally, much later than the recipe called for, all the sugar carmelized into a brown syrup, she almost jumped for joy. But, heated to too high a temperature and poured onto the now cold noodles, to her horror the syrup sizzled and congealed into candied lumps that just wouldn’t mix.
She sat down in a chair, rubbing her soap-reddened hands, feeling the burn blister swell up on the palm. Other girls had had mothers who took them in hand young and taught them how to make gefilte fish and kreplach. Now, sitting in the middle of the self-made mess, the waste, she ached with regret for the blithe way she had brushed off her mother’s entreaties to spend some time in the kitchen. What was the point, she had always thought, of what you ate? A sandwich, eaten out in the hills, with the sun ready to set, was a beautiful meal, she had loudly proclaimed to her classmates and their well-nourished mothers. Anyway, Jewish cooking—all cooking—always seemed the same to her—one more way to combine eggs, margarine, flour, and sugar, fish, beef, chicken, garlic, tomato sauce, and vinegar. But now, wanting to make it an offering of her love, she remembered with sadness the proud, plump arms of the Jewish
balabustas
she had known, setting steaming platters in front of their husbands, proof of their unquestionable worth.
She sighed and took out the cookbook, leafing through it with a kind of desperate determination. She turned to the meat. After all, what could you do to meat? She opened the freezer and found she had none. It was getting almost funny now. But she put on her coat—this was a test, she told herself. Like crawling through mud and shinnying up ropes in an army exercise for new recruits, meant to ferret out the men from the boys. She gritted her teeth and found a butcher shop near the house and rejoiced once again at being in a place where all the butchers were kosher. She brought home a fine piece of rib roast and put it into the oven. Braving the heat of the stove, she basted it with marinade, her spirits lifting as the delicious smell escaped, filling the kitchen. She cut up a fresh salad, then peeled potatoes, only nicking her fingers once or twice. She licked off the blood, thinking it a fitting ingredient, considering her sacrifices this lovely fall afternoon on the altar of wifehood.
She dressed carefully, taking off the wig, which she hated, and combing out her lovely black hair. It had to be covered now completely each time she left the house, forbidden to other men’s eyes. But in the house she was free, her young self again. She put Joy perfume behind her ears and between her breasts. She lit two red candles in sparkling crystal-and-silver holders and set them in the middle of the table with some red roses and baby’s breath. And then she waited.
It had been an exciting, wonderful day at the yeshivah, Isaac thought with pride. He had made some discoveries that astounded his teachers, some wonderful connections and leaps of understanding between different commentaries that brought it all together. It was a rare achievement, even for one used to victories in the study hall. Time had passed so quickly, he had not even bothered to eat lunch.
Exhilarated, he had stayed on later to write it all down while it was fresh in his mind. It was after 8
P.M
. when he finished. He had eaten dinner in the yeshivah with the other boys. On the way home he had stopped at his parents’ and had gone over his day’s work with his father. His mother, as usual, had plied him with cake and tea. Time had just flown.
It was after 10
P.M
. when he finally turned up at his own door. He was a little ashamed of being so late, yet, remembering the arch of his wife’s back the night before, he stiffened his shoulders and put on an air of carelessness.
He remembered how she had closed the door to the bathroom quietly behind her and let the water run, trying fruitlessly to drown out her quiet sobs. He had listened to the water running but it hadn’t fooled him. He had turned over and hidden his face in the pillow, humiliated and angry. At first, remembering all the blood that had finally, righteously stained the sheets, he had been terrified of causing her further pain and had hurried to be done quickly. But later, when he felt her arms still insistent around him, he had tried to be patient, but his body, long used to the hurry sickness ingrained in him from childhood, had betrayed him. It could not be stopped. He was bitter at his failure, and angry at her for rubbing his face in it. Why must she mourn so? What did it matter, after all? Nothing of any great importance. Just the animal part of one’s body satisfying itself. The important thing was that he had fulfilled the
mitzvah
. The blessing of his seed lay inside her.