And what she had learned was that the Law advocated a life of spiritual striving, and yet her parents lived surrounded by exorbitant material wealth next to movie moguls and actresses in Beverly Hills. Yet her father was not like them. He was not a materialistic man or a show-off. He treated their possessions the way she had seen rabbis treat ritual objects—silver wine cups, menorahs—using them simply to make their inner lives more beautiful. The material exalted the spiritual, uplifted it. Still, it was an odd life-style, surrounding yourself with objects only to belittle their intrinsic value. She would have preferred a simpler life, a smaller house. Fewer things.
Her mother had not changed with the wealth. She was still a gentle, quiet
balabusta
. She woke early and puttered around the house, keeping everything running smoothly, keeping the servants in line, or appreciated, as the case might be. Her mother, over-weight and cheerful, liked nice clothes and seemed to rejoice in the many lovely objects that filled the house. Yet Batsheva always sensed that her mother, too, was uncomfortable in the elaborate setting, that she could not really believe the house was hers. Even religion, Batsheva thought, is Aba’s, and Ima partakes in it, like everything else in the house.
She wondered as she dried her hair and patted the soft, thick towel over her sweet naked flesh, where her father was now and what he would bring her when he came home. It was an old game she had played as a little girl when they had been poor tenants in a roach-infested walkup in the Bronx. She would hear his weary, dejected footsteps on the staircase after a day’s back-breaking labor of bricklaying in the New York sunshine and run down the steps into his wide-open arms. Always, no matter how tired or heartbroken he was from the indignity of his descent into a common laborer, his poverty and his aching bones, always, his face would break into a smile of such happiness and pride. She would squirm out of his caress and slip down to his feet, thrusting her eager small fingers into his pockets, and there, always, no matter how little there was to eat or wear for her parents, there would always be a joyous surprise—chocolate, a wind-up toy, a stuffed animal…
Only on Yom Kippur did he catch her hand in his and look at her with such tormented, fanatical eyes she had never forgotten it. She began to be afraid of him. But he had only kissed her fingers, one by one, and said “I am sorry, Sheva. I promise you, with God as my witness, I will never come to you empty-handed. You are my future, the last hope of the Ha-Levis.” She had had no idea what he was talking about.
He seemed sometimes to have a certain demon behind him that whipped him on to more and greater efforts. And as if he had made a pact with the devil, he seemed to succeed at whatever he tried.
First he was made a bricklaying foreman, and then he quit and got his own team together. With the money he saved, he bought his first piece of property, a burned-out apartment house in a Jewish neighborhood. Miraculously he was able to borrow the money and rebuild it with his own crew.
After that, the presents in his pockets began to change. First there were expensive chocolates in beautiful little boxes, and then tiny jewelry cases with gold, turquoise, emeralds, and tiny diamonds for her ears, throat, and arms.
They moved out to an expensive Riverdale apartment house. She had been happiest then, on the crowded block full of new friends, in the packed, noisy synagogues and
shteibels
where her father would pray on the Sabbath with other Jews in long black coats, fur-trimmed hats, and silk overcoats.
But her father had known no peace. He isolated himself from the other Jews, modern Jews with three-piece suits and hats. He sometimes took her for Sabbath walks and would nod stiffly to his neighbors. Then his business had prospered and he had disappeared for days, even weeks, traveling all over the country, buying property in Texas and California. And soon he was sending her presents instead of bringing them. And finally he had uprooted them to the West Coast.
They had not believed their eyes when he had driven them up to their new home. It was a palace, she thought. A golden palace. A long road wound up a hill and there at the top in white stucco with a red-tiled roof, overlooking the whole valley, was their house. Behind it was a pool the color of lapis, a deep pool with a grotto and a fountain that sprayed water through the mouths of naked babies and fairies.
She had felt like a princess standing there, surveying the valley. She loved to watch the mountains, never tiring of the view because it was never the same. The mountains would rise up in the clear sunlight, turn pink at dawn and golden at sunset. A deep fog would appear in the valley and she would feel as if she were an angel gazing down from heaven.
But if New York had been an island, a ghetto, California was another planet altogether. There were no neighbors they spoke to. No religious girls her own age to be friends with. And even though Pico Boulevard was full of kosher butcher shops and places to eat, it was a drive, not a stroll. There was no feeling of community, of being part of a little world. And on the Sabbath her father invited nine other men and their wives as guests, usually people her parents’ age, setting up his own little synagogue right in their home. The isolation was awful but at times also beautiful and liberating. No one was looking over her shoulder either.
Since moving to California, she had spent the school year in New York, boarding with a religious family and coming home on holidays. The other girls at Bais Sarah had the same boring lives, she thought. They all thought about boys constantly, but the good girls pretended not to, pretended that they didn’t care about looks at all, as long as he was a scholar and they would be able to support him. Bad girls (herself, Faygie, Chaika) bemoaned their manless existence and wondered if all men had to have hairy chests. They were divided over whether they liked it or not. Esau had a lot of hair, Faygie pointed out. And you know how he turned out.
Faygie had it even harder than she, Batsheva thought. Her father was a butcher and she was his advertisement for being strictly kosher. She had to wear sleeves down to her wrists, winter and summer, and frumpy dresses that fell below her calves. But she would always roll up the skirts at the waist when parents and teachers weren’t looking and push up the sleeves. They discussed for hours ways of getting around not wearing lipstick on the Sabbath. The reason you couldn’t was because it would change the shape of the tube. If, however, before the Sabbath you put some on a piece of wax paper, you would be allowed to kiss the paper and get some color on your lips. But since the “good” boys were all hidden away behind the impenetrable walls of their yeshivahs, it was really all a waste of time anyway, they sighed.
But recently Faygie’s father had arranged an “introduction” for her, and they had discussed it in feverish detail.
“What is it like?” Batsheva had begged her.
“My father brought him home and my mother served tea and cake. And first they talked to him and his parents alone. Then they brought me in and I sat across the table from him and our parents kind of walked into the living room and—”
“Left you alone with him!”
“Well, the door was open, but we could talk.”
“What did you talk about?”
“First I have to tell you this.” At the most dramatic junctures of life, Faygie always had to tell you a joke. It was maddening, but it allowed her to keep her sanity, Batsheva supposed.
“A boy is going to meet a girl and he is terrified so he asks his rebbe: ‘What should I talk about?’ So the rebbe says, ‘My son, talk about food, family, and philosophy.’ So he meets this girl and they sit there. He sort of hems and haws. So he finally asks, ‘Do you like blintzes?’ She shakes her head no. So he hems and haws and says, ‘Do you have a brother?’ Again, she shakes her head no. Then he flounders around and remembers—philosophy. ‘If you had a brother, would he like blintzes?’ Seriously, it was pretty boring. He told me what he was learning in Talmud. He talked and talked…”
“And that’s all?” Batsheva had asked in terrible disappointment. But then she had brightened. It wasn’t going to happen to her that way. It was going to be like Ursula and Birkin; like Mellors and Lady Chatterley; like Anna and Vronsky…
A small, invisible organ at the center of her body swore this to her, and she believed it with all of her heart.
Abraham Ha-Levi rested his weary forehead in his palm and sat in Batsheva’s darkened room studying his sleeping daughter. He had just arrived back from the grueling twenty-hour trip between Tel Aviv and California. He was exhausted in body, but eager and fully awake in spirit. Exhilarated. He had crept in just for a moment to see her, as he used to when she was a baby to check if her breathing was all right. They took such tiny breaths when they were babies and at any moment they could stop.
He studied her calm, healthy sleep, untroubled by any past and warmed by dreams of a wonderful future. And why shouldn’t she have such dreams? Hadn’t he spoiled her, given her everything, given in to her every whim, fought for her against her teachers, who cautioned him against her wide-ranging reading, her constant visits to art museums, concerts? Bais Sarah was a conservative school, he had thought then, meant for girls with limited intelligence and little willpower. Girls who needed firm guidance every step of the way down the right path to Jewish wifehood and motherhood.
His Sheva, he had always believed, possessed the Ha-Levi insight and their natural piety. But now, knowing what he would be asking of her in the morning, he wondered if they had been right and he wrong. That tutor, that Elizabeth, had filled her head with a great deal of modern nonsense. But Sheva was attached to her and they were after all only studying English. But if she discussedd this arranged marriage with Elizabeth, there was no telling what he would have on his hands.
What if she refused outright to consider marriage now, any marriage? He knew she wanted to go back to school, to learn photography and other such foolishness.
Yes, he chewed on his lower lip, what if she outright refused? According to the Law, you couldn’t force her to marry anyone. She was a free agent. No rabbi on earth would perform the ceremony knowing she was being forced into it. He looked at her wide childish brow, her sweet lips, like a small flower. He loved her more than his own life. She was everything to him.
But inside himself, he already felt a certain iron wall going up, a steel girder that enclosed his emotions, steeling him against his tender love for her. As sometimes God ruled with infinite compassion and mercy, and sometimes with stern, unbending justice, so must he, Abraham Ha-Levi, now take hold of his father’s feelings and act like his own father would have expected him to.
He, the last remnant of the Ha-Levis’ glorious two-hundred-year-old name and mission, must protect that heritage. It was no cruel irony that had given him that duty—
dafka
him, the rebellious son, the son who wanted to draw, to study art and medicine, the son who ran away from home to the university only to be brought back by his heartbroken father and mother. He had always known his lineage, the part he was expected to play, and he had always sought an escape. This was a gift, a way for him to do absolute repentance and redeem, finally, his father’s and brothers’ name. He had no choice, no choice at all.
And then, suddenly, looking at her face, his anguish was turned to joy. It was a woman’s face, a child no longer! How had he missed that! She needed a husband, a home, children. It was a gift he came to give her now, the greatest of all the gifts he had ever bestowed upon her.
To have the greatest scholar of a generation as a husband—why, it would fill her with joy! She was so bright, he could teach her so much. And being a scholar, he would understand intuitively her needs, be sensitive and kind to her whims.
A smile crossed his lips. She was a lively little thing, so full of life. A man would take pleasure in that. And he, her father, would shower her with such gifts! No bride would ever begin life more elegantly, or with greater potential for happiness. How could a
goya
, a shiksa like Elizabeth, understand any of this?
Morning broke slowly. Batsheva stretched all her young limbs like a young cat delighted with its suppleness. She closed her eyes and said her morning prayers, then jumped out of bed when something caught her eye. There on the vanity was a package wrapped in silver paper with a large pink bow. It shone and twinkled as she laughingly twirled around the room with it, holding it up to the morning light. Aba was home! It must have come from him.
With delicate fingers she pried open the wrapping paper and found a glass-covered music box. Inside, a horse-drawn sleigh carried two lovers around and around a tiny village through ever-falling snow. It played “Lara’s Theme” from
Dr Zhivago
. She thought of cold snows and of Anna on her way to the train station, then shook her head at her foolishness and ran out into the hall with the box.
She found him in the sunroom having just finished his morning prayers. She waited impatiently as he folded his prayer shawl and kissed his tefillin. The vision of him in his ritual garments subdued her somewhat and instead of running to him and flinging her arms around his waist, as she wanted, she walked to him sedately, lifting her forehead up for a kiss. Only her voice betrayed the overwhelming happiness she felt in seeing him.
“Welcome home, Aba, and thank you for the box. I love it!”
“You shouldn’t use that word for a box, surely. You love me, your mother, God, and one day soon, very soon, a husband.”
“Oh, Aba, what would I need with a husband?” She laughed merrily and saw his face blanch. “Aba?”
“It’s nothing. Come. I must talk to you.” He took her hand in his, her little, girlish hand, and stroked it as they walked out into the garden. She laid her head on his shoulder in a long-abandoned gesture of childish love.
“Sheva, you know something about the Ha-Levis, yes? But now I want to tell you something you don’t know. I told you that your grandfather and uncles were scholars, but I didn’t tell you that they were the heads of a two-hundred-year-old dynasty with thousands of followers all over the world who looked to them for guidance. I am the last Ha-Levi.” He stopped, taking out a handkerchief to wipe the sudden sweat that came pouring down his forehead. “No,
you
, Sheva, are the last. I have been to Jerusalem to find the finest scholar in the Jewish world, a light, a giant of the generation to come. When he is found he will come here to meet you and you are to consider him as a bridegroom.”
Batsheva stared at him. Her merry eyes searched his for a sign of levity, but there was none; for patience and understanding, but there was none. His eyes were a dark, unreadable whirlpool. She felt lost as she stared at him, at the strangeness of his kind eyes gone stern and unseeing.
She was frightened and confused, yet excited too. It was a man they were discussing. Marriage, yes, but also a man, a lover.
She turned, walking a little away from him. The flowers were in bloom, she thought, holding their heads up in the sharp sunlight like a living palette of colors. It was such a beautiful day and the flowers were so fresh and young and fragrant. If they could only stay that way forever, never changing. She was filled with an inexplicable terror, a sense of unbearable loss.
“Come, say something.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head.
“Ach. I should have let your Ima speak to you.” Old man, worried father, he sat down heavily on the garden seat. “Instead, I have botched it. Come to me, child.”
She walked to him slowly, then knelt in confusion, laying her head in his lap. He stroked her head gently. “My dear child, my
tireh kindeleh
. You will decide, I promise you. No one will force you. And if he is not handsome and charming and a prince of a man, you will not be
allowed
to marry him, hear? You must give this a chance, this idea. It means so very much to me.”
“It’s just that—I did not think of marriage yet. I wanted to travel, to learn, to go to the seminary and the university…”
“You will do all these things.” He stroked her head gently, with a soft, subtle pressure. “Do you think marriage means the end of life? Of course you shall do all these things, but as a free woman, a married woman with her own home. Who will tell you what to do then?”
His eyes had become human again. She hugged his legs and thought: Maybe they will take months, even years, to find him. She jumped up and twirled around, shaking her finger at her father in mockery. “I will have no fat men, no one with bad breath, no short men with glasses, no tall, skinny men.” She thought of Vronsky.
“You must promise me one thing, and promise it truly.”
She looked at him warily.
“You must promise to meet this man with an open mind.”
“Elizabeth says people with an open mind get a lot of garbage thrown in…”
“Elizabeth, Elizabeth. You talk to her of such things?”
“She is my dearest, wisest friend.”
He looked at her craftily, his hands in conference, drumming against each other, and thought: We will have to have a little talk, Elizabeth and I.
The rest of the day was one of total chaos for her. Her feelings made her want to laugh and cry, to shout with joy and fury at the same time. But each time her anger took over she thought of her father’s eyes, the eyes she had seen watch over her every need with such love ever since she could remember. He would never do anything to hurt her. Aba could never…But then she thought of the way his eyes had changed and clouded over like a stranger’s when he said: “You are to consider him as a bridegroom.”
A tiny seed of fear sprouted in her stomach. What if she did not like him? And worse, what if she did! She did not want to leave her home. But then again, it meant travel, adventure! And a lover.
She ran to her room and closed the door, looking at herself in the mirror. Slowly, she took all the pins from her hair and let it cascade down over her breasts and back. She took up her silver brush and gazed into her eyes, brushing with long, sensuous, dreamy fingers.
“Sit down, sit down, my dear.”
Elizabeth dutifully smoothed her pleated dress beneath her. I look like an MBA student. Dressed for success with closed-toe shoes, little silk bow tie. She had no idea what Ha-Levi wanted, but she decided to treat the royal summons seriously. Where there was wealth, there was power, right? No need to tweak your nose at that if you were a poor country girl.
“How long has it been since you began tutoring Sheva?”
“Nearly four years, sir.”
“Ah, such a long time. I hadn’t realized…” He got up and paced, his hands behind his back, his head bent forward in concentration. “And what exactly do you tutor her in?”
“Grammar and English literature.”
“What kind of literature?”
Was that a threat, a challenge? Maybe not. “Well, it’s been rather eclectic, I’m afraid. Everything from Shakespeare to Forster, Conrad, and Lawrence.” Oops, shouldn’t have mentioned Lawrence. People only remembered Lady Chatterley when you said Lawrence, even though that was one of his worst books and not particularly interesting either. She waited a little tensely for his response.
“A little risqué, no, for a sheltered child like Sheva?”
“We didn’t do the controversial books. Just the classics.”
Suddenly, he sat down in a chair beside her, his eyes peering intently into her own. “You don’t very much approve of the way we live, or how we treat Sheva, do you?”
She swallowed hard, then took a deep breath. “I don’t understand it. I don’t think it’s natural for a teenager like Sheva to be so isolated and restricted.”
He smiled and she relaxed her grip on the chair. “Of course you don’t. How could you? We do not live as Americans. We follow the path of our ancestors. We live in the community, but are not part of it. We isolate ourselves in order to fulfill a different destiny, to preserve something very precious. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Yes, but there has to be a balance between preserving the past and living in the present. I can’t see how a little fun, a few dates to the movies, could hurt your daughter.”
His brows knitted together. Uh-oh. Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you, Liz? she thought. But so what. That was the truth.
“You don’t understand. You play at love. You find partners in supermarkets or classrooms, knowing nothing about their families, their beliefs, their commitments. That is all right if your own life is so vague…” He got up with a sudden energy that frightened her and went to look out of the window. “I was born in a small town in Poland. My father and his father and his father before him were considered saints. They had thousands of followers that came from all over Europe to eat at our table, to have a private audience with them. Their existence was not an accident, but a linked chain that went back to Sinai. Any break in the chain, and we perish for all time.” He paused, searching her face kindly.
“I was like you once. I believed in Western values: freedom for the individual above all and family and heritage and custom be damned. I was in Warsaw at the university when Hitler took over. Studying art. I did not want to be a link in a chain, but only myself. The Nazis, they understood about the chain and the links. They believed in it and wanted to destroy it. The SS surrounded my father’s house and marched everyone into the synagogue. They poured kerosene around the building and set it on fire. They waited outside to shoot anyone who came screaming out, anyone who tried to quench the fire by rolling on the ground. Do you know why I am alive? Because I ran away from my family. And because I ran away, God has made me the last link, you see. That is God’s sense of humor. So you see, we are not free to choose our fate. There is a yoke to be borne and freedom is only an illusion. I am not free. God has put me here on earth for a reason. He has chosen Batsheva to be the next link in the chain.”
Elizabeth cleared her throat, fascinated and appalled at the story. And for one of the few times in her life, speechless.
He looked over at her and smiled. “So why, the young American college girl is asking herself, why does this old man tell me such terrible stories? What does this have to do with me? I will tell you. Batsheva thinks very highly of you. She is young and impressionable and you are, she thinks, a woman of the world, a mentor.”