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He didn’t know you were a translator yet. I don’t know.

He called me queen. That’s weird.

Maybe he was talking about Esther, Benny said. She’s the queen who charms the king to save her people. A benign Salomé. You know, the
Book of Esther
and the
Song of Songs
are the only books of the Bible in which the figure of God doesn’t appear.

So Shira and Esther have something else in common, I said, trying to be sardonic.

The
Book of Esther
is like a fairy tale, Benny said. You’d like it.

I continued translating. At the end of the reading, Shira stands to the side, scanning the crowd. Romei suspects she does this to mask awkwardness.

He approaches her. (He didn’t, you know. I’m sure he didn’t, I
said. Wouldn’t I have remembered? Benny shrugged. He wasn’t famous then, he said, no photos on book jackets, no appearances on Letterman. You remember something, I said. He did talk to me, didn’t he? I recollect, yes, that he did.)

You are knowing Rome very well, Romei says in English.

She looks at him, with only half her attention.

You are tourist there? he says, knowing this will make her talk.

As a matter of fact, I used to live there, she says. I don’t think you could call me a tourist.

You will visit again soon, I think.

I doubt it. Rome belongs to my past, I may never return.

But is the land of Botticelli, Michelangelo … In your story …

My story is just a story. If you’ll excuse me …, I say, and turn away.

You mention Dante, perhaps you are scholar of Dante?

He hoped flattery would keep my attention. It did.

At one point. I was a graduate student in Italian Studies. I translated
Vita Nuova
, maybe you’ve heard of it?

Here in the city?

Yes, I say, and excuse myself, to congratulate Paula the tired language poet.

Was I this much of a jerk? I asked.

I wasn’t listening.

You were probably hitting on dainty Barbara Baskin!

Barb had composed poems for the audience on the café’s drinks refrigerator, using plastic magnetic letters. It was a performance piece, an improvisation where the words’ color and arrangement were as important as their sense. Most were about patriarchy. Patriarchy and menstruation. The longer poems depleted her letter collection, which gave her performances a certain
frisson
: how would she end with so few letters, what would she write! Most ended, perforce, with the unvoweled howl of the oppressed:
rzf glflnx!

I don’t remember Miss Baskin, Benny said.

Redhead. She looked like a bird, all torso, no legs.

Maybe I remember her.

You wanted to photograph her improvised refrigerator poems for
Gilgul
. She accused you of trying to petrify her with your objectifying gaze, she called you Medusa.

Maybe I remember her.

Benny was embarrassed, no longer half asleep.

I’ve changed, you know.

I know.

You believe this, right?

Sure, I said.

I don’t believe you believe.

What do you want me to say?

Remember that conversation we had at my house, when I explained about my, uh, patterns with women?

You compulsively revisit a primal scene by trying to destroy fragile girls, but they kick your ass and have the last laugh. You can’t get off the bus, you’ll always be attracted to this type.

I might have put it more gently.

You aren’t contemplating a future with you.

My point is you’re not like them. I don’t want a fragile girl, I want you.

I’m glad for you, but I’m not sure what you’re saying.

I’ve gotten off the bus, Shira. Being with you is different.

Hmm, I said.

You don’t believe me.

Sounds like magic.

When I described my shit to you that night, something happened. You didn’t judge me, you just
listened
. I didn’t have to defend myself, which meant I heard myself. When Marie asked me to choose between you, I chose you, remember? It sounds New Agey, but in telling you who I was, in saying no to her, I created the possibility of change.

Jesus, Benny! You didn’t just say no! You humiliated her and she wrecked your store!

I didn’t say I was a saint. But this won’t happen with you.

I thought about that time in Benny’s kitchen when he’d been a centimeter away from crushing me like a bug. I wasn’t convinced. I wanted to be.

You said that to change your pattern you’d have to forgive your father.

That’s the weird part.

It’s all weird.

The more I turn away from the pattern, the less hold anger has on me. It’s the opposite of what I thought.

You thought you’d have to forgive him first, then you could get on with your life.

Something like that. But it’s more dialectical. I haven’t quite figured it out yet.

Are we talking about Esther again? I asked.

No, Benny said. Believe it or not, we’re talking about me.

Sorry.

Why don’t you continue?

Sorry. Okay.

It’s okay. It’s just that I’m having trouble staying awake. I want to hear the rest before I go.

Right, I said. Okay.

I’m going to make myself comfortable on your shoulder, he mumbled. My head, I mean. Not my entire self.

I turned the page, but was just back where I started.

That’s it, I said, riffling again through the pages. Oh, wait: there’s a footnote.

I pause.

You won’t believe this!

I bet I will, Benny said, his eyes drooping.

The bastard gave my story an epigraph!

Read it, Benny said.

Again, O Shulamite, Dance again, That we might watch you dancing!

Chapter seven, verse one. Bloch translation. Apposite.

You don’t know that. The citation, I mean.

Benny shrugged.

What do you know about the Shulamite? he asked.

She’s the female character in the
Song of Songs
; she dances for her lover. Did Romei write this because the young Shira dances for T. in “Confessions”?

Did you really do that? Benny asked, his eyes opening.

It’s fiction, remember? Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. It’s not supposed to matter.

The point is, you displayed yourself to him, you signaled your availability, demonstrated your openness to him.

Something like that.

Dancing is a good metaphor for that.

Maybe.

Satisfied, Benny relaxed again against the sofa.

I think I know what he’s doing, he said.

He’s putting his stamp on my work. Twisting it, making it his own.

Benny thought a moment, burying his hand in his beard.

I don’t think that’s it. Look, in “Confessions,” you compare yourself to Salomé, dancing to get the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Salomé is a cynical figure, love doesn’t figure into her story at all. The Shulamite, on the other hand, is innocent. Her love is erotic but pure. And reciprocated. Romei is asking you to re-vision your past, to see yourself not as Salomé but as the Shulamite. Reject the calculating, Salomé part of yourself, identify with that innocent part, the part that loves easily, that feels herself loved. You loved that boy in “Confessions,” right?

I shrugged, blinking back something that might have been tears.

Benny continued, He’s saying that the thirty-five-year-old woman who wrote “Confessions” was disconnected from her inner Shulamite, if you’ll forgive yet more New Age imagery.

That’s what the story’s about, I said. Loss of innocence.

But the woman who wrote it despised innocence as much as her character did by the end of the story. The author can’t accord innocence even to her young, unspoiled self, so she compares her to Salomé. She should have compared herself to the Shulamite.

That’s enough, I said.

Benny took my hand, kissed it, but he wasn’t finished: There are some, he said, who think Salomé and the Shulamite are the same person, or two sides of the same person: both names derive from
Solomon
.

You want too much from me, I murmured. Both of you.

I don’t think so, Benny said, leaning over to kiss me. We want everything, that’s not too much. Is that really it, all he wrote?

I nodded and Benny lay back on the couch, extending his legs onto the coffee table. I held Romei’s pages close to my heart, feeling in them the end of things.

Had he given up? Had he said all he needed to say? What else
was
there to say? The ball was in my court, freeze-framed, awaiting my shot. I wouldn’t hear from him again, I wouldn’t hear from my mother. Any decision I made now I’d make on my own.

Almost.

I put my hand again on the bristled cheek of my beloved.

My beloved is mine
, he said.

And I am his
, I said, kissing his fingers, one by one.

You will always be beautiful to me, he whispered. I put his finger in my mouth, and he moaned.

And you to me, I whispered back, and kissed his arm, his belly, his
tzitzit
.

What would happen if I stayed over tonight? he murmured. I want you. I can’t stand this.

He pulled me up to him, coiled his arms around me.

I don’t like it either, I said into his chest.

You don’t?

I shook my head and stood up, took Benny’s hands, gestured for him to stand. Talk to me, I said. Tell me about
Shir haShirim
, and I lifted his T-shirt and kissed his long, slender belly, and when Benny said,
Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth
, I did, and when he invited me to his garden, I came.

59

SHUVI, SHUVI HA-SHULAMIT

What do you think happens next? I asked, stretched over Benny. On the wall of my room, Ahmad’s painting of Shira the Shulamite.

I’d say that’s up to you, Benny said, smoothing my hair. You know what I want.

I had to laugh.

I was thinking about Romei, I said, his story. What happens next? He ends it, what, nine years ago?

I’m more interested in our story.

Right, I said. Why don’t I get us something to drink?

No, he said, restraining me with his arms. I want you here. Please don’t go.

Okay. Well. Okay, I said, and rested my head on his chest. Shit! I said. What word did Romei use to describe the red nightgown? Did he say
sanguigno
? He was comparing me to Beatrice, when Dante first sees her, a child in crimson. I have to check!

In the morning, Benny said.

Right, I said. It’s not important—thinking that Romei had again described me as innocent, untouched, only now it was the adult Shira he described in this way, the thirty-five-year-old author-of-the-story Shira, despairing Shira, Shira who’d just left her husband and had no idea who she was and what she wanted, who believed in nothing
except this quaint idea that she might write—it was
this
Shira he described as innocent, not the girl who’d danced for a boy in her high school chem lab.

How could he have been so sure?

Whatever I was now, I was further than ever from that girl—right? Walking a tightrope between rage and self-revelation, holding at arm’s length a wonderful man who might or might not crush me like a grape, unsure how to love my daughter, forever pulling and pushing at my friends as if they were yo-yos. My mother on her death bed, and I with nothing to offer, no comfort, no consolation, my arms closed tight against her like a child, protecting myself from what? A hurt that was finished but still real, still a part of me after nearly forty years?

Do you think there’s a kernel of innocence inside us? I whispered.

An inner Shulamite?

I guess.

Shuvi, shuvi ha-Shulamit
, Benny said. That’s the beginning of the epigraph Romei gave your story. The translation he cites renders this as
Again, O Shulamite, dance again
. But literally it means
Return, return, O Shulamite
. Phrased in the imperative.

Return in the sense …

In the sense of
t’shuvah
. Return through repentance.

Is that what you think? Repent and ye shall be saved?

Come back from the place of error, return to your self. That’s what I tell my flock.

You think it’s there still, inside me.

The flying girl? I can see her.

I don’t. I don’t see her.

Dance for me, Shulamite, Benny whispered. Let me see you dancing.

You’re kidding.

Benny shook his head.

I want to watch you dancing.

I can’t. Don’t ask me to do that.

Someday. Then you’ll know she’s still there.

I looked at him. I wouldn’t be afraid, he must have known that, I
couldn’t let myself be afraid. Romei was right: I would always read the telegram. I disengaged myself, stood before my lover, naked. My character Rosaria had agreed to dance for her husband, but his purpose had been shame. Dancing in shame was not the way. I found Benny’s eyes in the half-light; he smiled, I closed my eyes, began to move. I swayed to music I remembered from a room that smelled of formaldehyde: Santana, Hendrix, Joan Baez at Woodstock, a guitar riff licking my skin. And before me, T., his eyes filled not with lust but with love, as if I’d misread him, or maybe those were Benny’s eyes. I lifted my arms and swirled, and dropped my head back, as the rhythm hitched itself to my hips and gathered in my thighs with the pounding of my heart, the blood rushing through my body, my innocent body, into my arms and breasts … Swirling, my arms uplifted, I felt myself rise, wings extended above me, covering me, all of my characters, all of me, Elena, the scared child, Cora, the heartbroken mother, the Shulamite, joyfully wanton, Salomé, bitter and vengeful, Rosaria, ashamed and ill-used, Janey, remorseful and supplicant, Rose, naïve and lost, the wings of an eagle spanning the decades, protecting me, lifting me, all of me. And Benny was there, pulling me toward my center, his fingers tracing my backbone, the web that connects us, his hands on my hips, pulling me toward him. Still dancing, I moved my hips around his, I moved my hips and sang. For some reason, I began to sing.