Jephte's Daughter (16 page)

It came to her like a revelation: She was one of them—that crowd of pilgrims of every faith who quickened their weary steps toward an incredible lifetime goal. Jerusalem. It seemed to her that wherever else she might go, her life could never have as much meaning and depth as it had here. The beauty of the city touched her artist’s eye and her loving, religious soul. Its variety satisfied her hope for adventure, and its Jewishness provided her with the greatest gift of all: normalcy. After the artificial ghettos of Brooklyn and the cultlike isolation of California—an island in a sea of people who thought her odd and strange, who didn’t understand her customs and beliefs at all—she felt a magical sense of happiness at having finally arrived at the mainland; at having finally found her way home.

Isaac Meyer Harshen lay back on his wife’s bed, staring at the ceiling. He was deep in painful thoughts, trying to make some important decisions. On three separate occasions that day, rebbes of rank and importance had approached him with information about his wife that each felt important enough to overrule the Divine commandments against gossip and slander. She had been seen, they told him, wearing pants and without head covering. Their wives or their students had confirmed this. Another had seen her alone in the hills at night near the Tomb of Samuel, as he led his students to the nighttime prayer of exultation beneath the light of the moon. She went for drives each day, unchaperoned, to distant places. These men, whom he respected as both learned and politically powerful leaders, looked meaningfully into his eyes and held him firmly by the shoulder as they imparted this information.

He was frightened. They all wished him to do something, but he was not sure what that must be. Ever since their wedding night, he had felt her discontent. He had wanted obedience, but he had envisioned gaining it through kindness and compassion, through gentle hints, through the respect that was due him as a scholar and a husband. But she mocked him, he could feel that. He blushed thinking at how he fumbled in bed and how she moved away from him with such alacrity, such pleasure. He was chagrined at his failure and bitter at her lack of help, her lack of sympathetic understanding. He wanted so much for her to love him, to want his body, to admire his ideas, to respect his authority. But he had no idea how to achieve all these things together. He did not understand her; she was a strange, exotic creature whose needs were utterly mysterious to him. He wanted to satisfy her but had no idea how.

As head of the family, he told himself, trying to still his panic, I am the person whose duty it is to guide her. I am responsible for her actions. I have to point out the dangers I see, warn her, exert my authority. I must stop mincing words. He got up and began pacing the floor, his hands behind his back. If I only had some key to unlock her, he thought. He was very sure the things she did during the day were harmless, but they were causing both of them to be talked about. She didn’t understand that this wasn’t America! Here they were both in a fishbowl. There were spies everywhere. They were in a public position. Eventually the Hassidim would look to them for guidance in everything—where to send their children to school, whom to marry, whether or not to have an operation. They—or rather he—would be the sole authority for all their spiritual and physical dilemmas. His answers would be obeyed slavishly, without question. Even his simple everyday activities—how he dressed, at what time he went to the synagogue, would be picked over carefully for meaning and object lessons.

All this would happen in due course. But now, this blind acceptance was not coming to him, to them. First they would be watched by the Hassidim like animals in a zoo for any signs of aberrant behavior, for any indication of unworthiness. Their every movement would be scrutinized and criticized, held up to the measure of past sainted leaders of the sect. And should he be found wanting, he would be ridiculed and thrown out. He would not exert any power over them. Already he was being criticized, because of his wife! Didn’t she understand that because of her, his piety, his scholarship, would be held up to doubt? He rubbed his forehead in anguish. How had he allowed her to go on in this way! How had he let it come to this! He had assumed that she was home doing what all married, childless women do: cleaning, cooking, reading Bible stories in the Yiddish
Tzana Reana
. If she went out, he had assumed it had to do with shopping, or with some charitable work, or perhaps to visit his sisters. He had not thought to question her because of their strained relations and how happy and content she had seemed.

She was such a stranger to him, he realized. He knew nothing at all about her. He scoured his mind for clues to her heart, her character. Her beauty, her lineage, had blinded him. He could remember nothing of the talks they had had in America, the ideas she had shared with him. He walked idly over to her desk. Her books had come from America. A whole library. They had not even been unpacked yet. Yes, perhaps that would help. He opened the package. D. H. Lawrence. He had never heard of the man. There were so many books there. He picked up one and read the title:
Women in Love
. He sat down on his wife’s bed and began to read.

It was noon when Batsheva finally came home, hot, tired, and exultant. She flung off her shoes, which were full of dust and small stones, and washed her hot, sunburnt face in cool water. She thought of the packages of unpacked books. She had shipped them last because she couldn’t bear to be parted from them for long. What a perfect way to spend the afternoon, she thought, going through the pages, rereading the passages she loved. Books were like old friends, with their worn covers and well-thumbed pages that fell open at her favorite passages. She went into the bedroom and her heart did a quick, unpleasant somersault. There, seated quietly on the bed, was Isaac Meyer—and strewn carelessly all around him were her precious books. He leaned back, his elbows cutting into the thin paperbacks, bending them forever out of shape. She felt physically violated. Then something occurred to her, and a shy smile played around her lips.

“What are you reading, Isaac?”

He did not answer, but held the book up, a blank look on his face.

“Is the English too difficult for you? If you like, we could read it together. I would be happy to read it to you. It is one of my favorites.” Isaac Meyer and herself in the evening discussing literature. She and Isaac Meyer watching the sun rise. She would open his eyes to a whole new world they could share.

He said nothing, but stood up, his hands held palms up, his thumbs gripping either side of the book, and in one swift, savage motion turned the pages back and ripped it in half. He threw it to the floor and ground the pages with his heel.

“No!” She threw herself at his feet, trying to pull it free. She pushed at the hard, stiff, black leather of his shoes, bruising her fingertips. It was not the book under his feet, it was herself. She felt black and blue, as if the black leather had trampled her own flesh. He grasped her arm and lifted her roughly from the floor. His face was contorted in disgust and rage. His voice was hoarse, his throat muscles strained and corded with tension.

“This…this filth you do not bring into our home! Every sin, every temptation made beautiful and desirable. You will have no time to read such things as the wife of Isaac Meyer Harshen. If I had known what putrid things your mind was filled with, I never would have…” He stopped, reconsidering, controlling himself. “But you are my wife now, the wife of the future leader of the Ha-Levis, in the holiest of holy cities. I will wipe your mind clean of the filth of your childhood, the looseness of your education…”

She pulled her arm free of him and wiped the tears that streamed down her cheeks. She gathered the books together with a kind of mad energy, smoothing down their bent and wrinkled pages. He grabbed both her wrists and threw her down on the bed, his face over hers, his hot breath over her nose and mouth.

“I have seen you pretend to be asleep when I come near you. I have seen you stiffen when I touch you. You are not used to the simple touch of a pure man. These books have made you crave depravity and filth. But you will soon forget that.”

She looked at his eyes, so close above her own. The pupils were dilated. His mouth was stretched into a vacant smile, as if his mind was thinking of something far away. His body lay over hers, crushing her with its inert, careless weight. A small nugget of fear fell into her stomach and shot up hot through her chest to the back of her throat, choking her with rage and humiliation and helplessness. Then he seemed to come to himself, to remember. His right hand dropped her wrist and he caressed her face. “So beautiful, so pure, but all on the outside. Let me help you, Batsheva, to cleanse yourself. To cleanse your soul.”

She pulled her other wrist free and pushed him away, rolling out of his grasp. She grabbed her books and clasped them to her chest, trying helplessly to keep her tears from wetting them. “Yes, you’ll have to help me. You will have to help me to find the filth, because I have read all these books and haven’t found any. They are mine. You have no right to touch them.” She felt herself growing calm. Let the operation begin then. “Don’t you dare bully me,” she said slowly, deliberately. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I am Batsheva Ha-Levi. Everything around you, all the money, the prestige, the honor—it all comes from me. What are you?” She looked at him contemptuously, haughtily. “An inexperienced, uneducated man. A boorish, classless…I hate you. I hate having your heavy body over mine…” All the rage that had been buried deep inside her since the wedding night began to bubble like a hot volcano, spilling over in destructive, harsh words she did not even mean. She felt ashamed, yet full of pleasure at his stunned, humiliated face. But then his face turned dark red. She backed away instinctively toward the door.

He followed her movement with his eyes and seemed to calm down. He had meant for her to love him, and she threw her hatred and contempt in his face—she who was ruining him! He smiled unpleasantly. Her rebelliousness left him no choice. He would pull out all stops, use all the ammunition he had.

“Very good. And then you know what our sages say about husbands and wives. No? I will quote it to you: ‘The sages commanded a woman to exceedingly honor her husband, to fear him, and all her actions must have his approval. He should be in her eyes as a minister or a king; she must act according to his desires, and remove all things that he hates. And this is the way of the holy and pure daughters and sons of Israel in their marriages.”’ His voice got even calmer. “You have to understand that, Batsheva. I own you and everything that belongs to you. I am the final authority over what you can read, how you can dress, what you can do. This is God’s Law and it is for your own good.” He closed his eyes and began to quote. “‘Any woman who refuses to perform any of the labor she is obligated to do, can be forced to do it even by the whip.’ I want to help you, don’t you understand? To lead you down the right path, and you must not resist me, for your soul’s sake.” He shook his head from side to side, very deliberately. “You have been very rebellious. Do you think I have not understood your message? Do you think that I don’t know you walk out every morning dressed like a
prutza
, in pants and tight sweaters, your hair uncovered, to roam the city? You have humiliated me. ‘But it is degrading for a woman to be continually outside and in the street, and the husband should restrain her from this. He should only allow her to go out once or twice a month, for the only splendor for a woman is to sit in her corner of the house.’ As it is written: ‘The King’s daughter is all glorious within.”’ He clenched and unclenched his fist. “It is Eve’s curse: ‘And he shall rule over you.’ This is God’s command.”

She listened in shocked disbelief as he quoted effortlessly from unquestionably sacred sources. Could it be true? She had never heard that before, and yet he quoted it, word for word. Like a pious young Hindu girl in India or a devout young Catholic bride in Italy, Batsheva Ha-Levi Harshen had no wish to break out of the framework that her birth had given her. As she had once told Elizabeth: “It’s like that great chain of being the Romantics always talk about. Everybody is born to certain parents at a certain time and place for a reason. True, it puts you in a certain box, but it’s more a refuge, a shelter, than a prison. It helps define what you are, and helps you to play the God-given role you were born to.” What she had wanted and expected from her life and from the man she married was not to break the boundaries of that box, but to expand them, balloonlike, to include more and more. She wanted the doors and windows to be open so that she could take in everything that wasn’t forbidden by
Halacha
, Jewish law, and give it its place: art, music, poetry, literature, good movies, good plays, and especially, her photography. She wanted no longer to be held back by those boundaries established by her rabbi-teachers, which, like barbed-wire fences around mine fields, often shut out a wide margin of area that was perfectly safe to trod upon, simply to ensure one’s feet from straying too near real dangers. Not being a scholar, she accepted that she wasn’t in a position to draw those boundaries for herself. That was what she had originally found so appealing about Isaac—the profundity of his knowledge, which she assumed would give him a wide breadth of understanding to draw the thinnest, subtlest of distinctions between the permissible and the forbidden that would lend her life new horizons. With him by her side, she had reasoned, she would no longer be hemmed in by those wide and useless margins that confined her friends and classmates. And now, to her unmitigated horror, she felt the ground shrinking beneath her, all windows locked shut, the door slammed closed, the box becoming so small she could hardly find room to stand up. It literally took her breath away.

“I have had people telling me that my wife runs around by herself. My mother has come to visit you every day this week and you have not been home. Where have you been? With other men, perhaps…?” He grabbed the camera off the bed and held it.