Jephte's Daughter (27 page)

Jephte. Am I? No. I was forced to promise. I also had no choice. Her face above his in the hospital room. Promise me. Swear a sacred vow to me, Batsheva, that you will not leave him, your husband. That you will not bring disgrace to our name. That you will keep the vow, so that my mother’s soul will rest in peace. But it could have been a good life for her. What had he asked of her that was so terrible. To marry? To have a child? To follow God’s law?

Isaac, he thought suddenly. “How could I leave my baby in my husband’s care?” Her voice on the phone: “He is so cruel to me.” Isaac, Isaac, he thought, and felt the silo within him slowly open.

The Hassidim, who crowded around the house throughout the day and night, looked at Isaac Harshen’s straight back, his impeccably clean clothes, his calm face, and were filled with awe. He was from another world, they told each other. He was on such a high spiritual plane he could already view the tragedy the way the angels did in the World to Come, where death was simply the beginning of the real life. But then some began to look at him slightly differently. A wife, a firstborn son. They thought of their own women and their own small children and their souls shuddered and their awe turned to fright. It was not human, they thought. That calm acceptance, that unbending, tearless grief. If it was grief…

Then after the first rush of shock died down, others began to ask in whispers: And why did she do it? What suffering was so terrible that she needed to end it in such a way?

He had been the caretaker of the real heir to the Ha-Levi dynasty and he had not watched carefully enough. The last legitimate Ha-Levi was gone, some began to grumble. They remembered the woman who had died in childbirth bringing the child into the world Isaac Harshen had insisted God wanted. That and other stories gathered like tidal waves far out in the sea. And just when it seemed that nothing could stop them from crashing down on Isaac Harshen, an idea was thrown into the still, dangerous water that spread in concentric circles throughout the world of Meah Shearim.

It began with Mrs Harshen. “She was insane, a crazy girl. That is why her father was so willing to give such a dowry. To buy such a house. Insanity.” She dried her dry eyes with a handkerchief. Her poor son. Her poor Isaac. Such a light of the generation. Such a
gaon
, a scholar of such talent and promise. This crazy girl. Why, she would lie in bed till all hours. She had to be watched all the time, like an infant, so that she would not go off and disgrace the family. They had been so good to the ungrateful girl. Taken her into the family like a daughter. Spent more time with her than she did with her own daughters, God help us, and this was the thanks. This was the reward. Then, her eyes lowered, taking shrewd stock of who was in listening range, she whispered of wedding-night problems with signs of virginity and rendezvous with Gentile men in expensive hotels.

My poor son, my poor grandson, she wailed, her eyes truly misting. Evil, insane girl! My poor son, my poor grandson. And the fears and the anger that had come to the surface like bubbles from an underground volcano, burst somewhat, and the calm surface of the water began to return. Insanity. An insane, evil girl, they repeated, hesitantly at first and then, by the fourth or fifth time, with more conviction. And Isaac was a saint who had had untold trouble with her and had borne it like the yoke of heaven.

Isaac Meyer Harshen was patient with his Hassidim, and understanding to his mother. He decreed that those who had decided to fast over the tragedy should now stop and eat. And he had the satisfaction of hearing them whisper, “He thinks only of others,” and seeing their wonder, their awe of such compassion, such saintly calm. Only he knew how long and hard he had traveled within himself to reach such calm.

The gray dress, the tiny black vest, covered with seaweed, rancid with salt water, had hit him full in the stomach, numbing all his senses. He had come home and thrown himself across his wife’s bed, nuzzling her soft pillow, inhaling her lingering fragrance. He had staggered like a drunk into his son’s room, filled with the echo of his childish laughter: sturdy, stubborn little boy! He had sat down and wept with bitterness and horror.

Then, suddenly, his tears had dried up. She had won, after all. She had freed herself and the child and he was left behind, helpless, an object of pity and derision and cruel speculation. She had defied him this one last time and won an irrevocable victory. What would his Hassidim think? The thought had terrified him.

From the very beginning, they had not trusted him. He had seen it in their calculating eyes, in their raised eyebrows at his decisions concerning points of law and ritual. He had felt, from the beginning, that he must prove himself worthy. He must lead the battle against the
Tumah
—the impurities—of the outside world, its encroachments: the women tourists who sauntered into Meah Shearim bare-armed, bare-legged, teasing the boys from the yeshivoth. The government of black-hearted Zionists whose dirty deals compromised the Laws of God. The bus shelters, for example, which had been built by an advertising company in exchange for permission to put up advertisements—posters depicting depraved women almost naked in bathing suits, young girls posing with young boys for Kodak pictures. To burn, burn, burn. It was the only way to restore the purity of the holy city. And the young boys in the yeshivah who had been led astray. They were found talking to girls on street corners, or going to the forbidden movie houses, or the theater—the filth of Roman amphitheaters! He had led the faithful and had not spared the rod! He had helped to beat the
Tumah
out of them and return them to purity. And his wife, his Batsheva, he had tried so hard to teach her! To remake her in the image of the women he knew—his mother, his sisters—silent, holy presences that did what was needed and slipped quietly away when men gathered for important Torah matters. Yielding presences that made no demands. Listeners willing to sit at the feet of scholars and drink in their wisdom.

Her beauty had always frightened him—tempting and voluptuous, she was the essence of sin. But he would have yielded totally to her, to it, if she would only have accepted him! But she didn’t want him. He bit the tight, white knuckle of his clenched fist. That was the great stone he had needed to crush to have her spring newborn, meek and clean for him. Her silent negation of him, of everything he stood for and believed in. He had felt it emanate from her with the power of a searchlight, uncovering all his hypocrisy, his petty cruelties. She hated him and he loved her so…It had been a hatred that threatened his life, his very sanity. He had come to understand that he had to destroy that hatred, even if it meant destroying her.

She would tell everyone he was not a scholar, not even a man. She dangled the keys above his head, taunting him. They all looked at him and knew: All the wealth, the position, it all came from her. He was nothing. A calculator, a rememberer of facts and figures. She alone had questioned his faith and his scholarship. She alone had seen him sink into the soft velvet couches and luxuriate in the wealth and comfort and power she had brought him. Dangerous woman.

He thought of his son. It had been hard for him to feel the child was really his—the blue eyes, the raven-black hair—he was Batsheva totally. He had seen no hint, no reminder, of himself in the child in looks, character, or temperament. If only Akiva had had his own brown eyes, or the shape of his nose—some reminder that he was not totally a Ha-Levi,
the
Ha-Levi. He had had mixed feelings at the child’s birth: triumph at his success at providing a fine young son and despair in the knowledge that he had created his own rival and successor. A real Ha-Levi, a male Ha-Levi, now lived. He shuddered. Had lived.

“Would
kavod harav
like a drink?” someone asked him deferentially, softly.

He shook his head with a wan smile and returned his gaze to the open Talmud before him. Calm, they thought him. Saintly calm. And some thought, he knew, that he just didn’t care. But that was not true. He simply felt that on some fundamental level it had nothing to do with him. The woman had never been his wife in any real sense. She had always sought to separate herself from him, from his ideas. She had scorned him with her soft, polite words, her false, calculating meekness. He had felt the sting of her contempt and fear and disgust. So, being separate, she was responsible for her own actions, which were so horrible as to negate any petty bullying or unkindness on his part. With her death, his love turned quickly and totally to hatred. She was totally responsible, and he, like the High Priest in the Temple after sacrificing the red heifer on Yom Kippur, emerging from the Holy of Holies dressed in pure white linen, felt his forehead beam with purity, totally absolved from all past sin.

In time, when the body was found, he would send out hints that he needed a new wife, and sweet, local girls, fresh young virgins who had never left Meah Shearim, would be brought to him. He knew that the one he chose would consider herself quite fortunate.

At Bloom’s in London’s East End, the lunchtime laughter and conversation rose to almost deafening heights. The voices spoke a rather odd mixture of proper British English interspersed with Yiddish expressions. White-coated waiters with sad European faces gave the menu of the day in Yiddish-accented cockney. The photographic mural running the full length of the wall showed racks and racks of clothes, bringing some of the bustle of the wholesale garment trade of Aldgate into their midst. Certainly the boisterous, friendly atmosphere of the kosher restaurant was a far cry from the staid, muted tones of other English dining establishments in the city.

The noise seemed to disturb a little blond girl sitting with her mother? sister? aunt?—the curious businessmen waiting for their gefilte fish, kishke, mutton and chips could not decide which, although they had studied the stunning young woman from the moment she had stepped through the door. A movie star from Hollywood, some conjectured. The flowing blond hair, the dark glasses and gray fur coat. The little girl was also dressed stylishly: a velvet jumper and frilly white blouse.

“Don’t be afraid, darling,” the woman whispered, of necessity loudly to be heard above the din of voices and clatter of rolling serving carts and dishes. “Here, do you want me to cut your meat for you?”

The little girl nodded, scratching her head.

An American accent, the men all agreed. And definitely not Lower East Side of Manhattan. An actress or a dancer, they agreed, studying the long legs in fine knee-high calf leather. Then someone noticed the small suitcase. Tourists, perhaps? In need of guidance, perhaps?

They nudged each other, and finally, the boldest, a salesman with dark red hair and a friendly paunch, got up amid guffaws and pats on the back and strode over purposefully.

“Excuse me, miss, is it? I wonder if you wouldn’t be so kind as to settle a little dispute among the fellows.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of his tablemates. “Some of us are certain you’re a famous movie star out of Hollywood, or a stage actress perhaps?” She smiled, confused, annoyed, and shook her head no. “You don’t have to hide from us, you know. We wouldn’t even ask for an autograph,” he continued aimlessly. “We also couldn’t help noticing your American accent and suitcase and wondered if you might need some guidance in finding a place to stay in our fine city? A nice Jewish hotel, perhaps? Golder’s Green has several…I just happen to be headed that way myself. The car’s parked a minute away…”

“Thank you so much.” Her eyes were blanks behind the smoky lenses, giving no clues. “But I am not Jewish.”

The man took a step backward in confusion and his eyes met the laughing, expectant faces of his tablemates. “I’m sorry. I simply assumed—eating kosher food here at Bloom’s—that you would be.”

“Moslem, actually. My mother was English, married to a Palestinian. Moslems eat no pork, you know. My husband and father will be waiting for me outside when I finish. They are very protective.”

“Palestinian, as in PLO?” He swallowed hard, and his face turned a dark red, matching his hair. He stumbled back to his table.

“Finish quickly, darling. Here, take your drink.” Careless, careless! The woman berated herself, suppressing a small smile around the corners of her mouth. I must not take these chances. From now on, they would eat at home, or only in vegetarian restaurants. The Jewish world was too small. The child scratched her hair and pulled at the soft, blond curls. The woman reached over and gently pulled the hands away. She would have to learn to deal with men who looked her boldly in the eyes, who made clear offers of themselves and their property. She would have to stop blushing and take these things matter-of-factly, the way heroines did in novels by Judith Krantz and Rosemary Rogers. She chuckled thinking of the way she had handled the last one. Not bad for a beginner.

She breathed in a glad breath of surprise and pleasure as the waiter set the steaming platters of food in front of her. Hot, tender lamb chops with new potatoes. Potato kugel. Hot apple strudel. She ate greedily. There had been nothing but lettuce and tomatoes to eat in Cyprus. Unwashed lettuce and tomatoes. She wrinkled her nose in disgust, remembering the foul dockside fare. She searched the child’s face for some sign of damage, but there was nothing but the blank, careless concentration on stuffing as much of the frankfurter into its mouth as theoretically possible. As she ate, she tried to plan, but always her gaze would wander off and settle on some quaint Dickensian storefront, or an Englishman in a bowler hat and tweed jacket braced bravely against the ice-cold London dampness. It was as if she had been born yesterday. Every sight, every sound, seemed new and full of pleasurable discovery. As the warm, hearty meal eased the sharp pangs of hunger she had carried with her for several days, she felt a deep contentment with everything around her. It was all new and yet familiar from the books she had read in her girlhood.

Still, she recognized she had serious problems. She needed to rent an apartment, to furnish it. She needed a job and someone to care for the child while she worked. How does one rent an apartment, she wondered. Or find a job? It was a total mystery. She felt the confusion of a young baby, newly freed by its maturing limbs from immobility, who realizes with elation and panic the possibility of movement. But where to go, but what to do with this enormous freedom? She had been in London less than twenty-four hours and she had no idea where she was. She had asked about a kosher restaurant at the tourist information center at Heathrow and had given the cabbie the address. She could be on the other side of the moon, for all she knew. Or on a small island.

She got up from the table and smoothed the new cashmere dress with a deft, soft movement from her waist to her knee. She put the gray fox wrap around her shoulders and walked over to the table of laughing men, seeking out the red hair. As she approached, the voices died down to a whisper and then died altogether. She smiled.

“I wonder if you gentlemen couldn’t recommend a good hotel in a central location?” The men cleared their throats nervously and peered toward the door. She had played her role too well. She threw back her head and laughed. “The PLO are busy tonight, gentlemen. Don’t worry,” she told them in her best Yiddish.

Nigel dropped her off at a quaint little hotel in Mayfair. A kind fellow, Nigel. A little like the young man in Eilat—full of easy laughter and pleasant manners. This must be what they call flirting, she thought, thinking of the complimentary banter that had gone on between them, the broad hints at a shared future, the almost embarrassingly sweet flatteries. I had not known it was so easy to attract men. It had always seemed so very deep and complicated before, a contact with a man. She pulled the hotel’s thick towel around her and sat down in front of the vanity. No bathrobe, no slippers. She would need to shop tomorrow.

She looked at her child fast asleep in the big double bed, back to being a little boy again. The top of his head was covered with dark stubble. She smiled. He looks like a—what were they called? A punk rocker. The latest style. He had no pajamas, but then he was warmly covered and the room was overheated, as were most places she had been in the city. She looked at her own dark hair. It had been two years since she cut it, ever since Gita had told her it wasn’t necessary. It was long and straight, and beginning to get back its former shine and thickness.

She had not told Nigel her name. She must have a name. But she couldn’t change it legally until they stopped looking for her. If they were looking. Perhaps it was all paranoia and they were already getting up from sitting
shiva
, already beginning to forget. She thought of her mother and father and the guilt and pain tore her stomach. She took a deep breath and her mind wandered back to the open window of the Tel Aviv hotel.

The ledge had been very narrow and the chair she rested one foot on tottered each time she tried to leave it. Akiva’s clasping, trusting arms pulled heavily down on her neck and shoulders. She inhaled the salt of the sea and felt the hot blue Mediterranean sunlight dapple through her eyelids. Fifteen stories down, tiny men and women walked as if it were an ordinary day. Cars honked. Buses careened awkwardly to stops. She closed her eyes remembering the moment before her death—for even now, alive, she still thought of it that way. No one knew she was there poised above them, a twenty-two-year-old who had so rarely been permitted to experience the ordinary pleasures of life. If she jumped, the stream of people would stop for a moment and gather. But soon they would go on again, a careless, flowing river accepting the sacrifice of her blood, her baby’s blood, with calm indifference.

Why couldn’t she be one of them, anonymous and ordinary, her life flowing easily toward the end that awaited them all? She looked out to sea and saw the big ships crossing the horizon and remembered that day in Haifa and thought again of boarding one and taking off to Tïmbuktu. Anywhere. But it was too late to turn back. She had no home. She was already dead and she could not see her child murdered by them, his spirit slowly beaten down, repressed into a carbon copy of his father. She felt his tiny hands shift restlessly. One swift jump. Closing her eyes, she thought back to the first time she had plunged, headfirst, into deep water. Down, down she dove, terrified, into the dark, bottomless underworld. But then, swiftly, had come the exhilarant rush, as she surfaced into the light again. Yes. One must plunge into the ultimate darkness in order to reach the light again. And suddenly all fear left her and she kissed her child’s sweet head, feeling the shaved scalp. And she had vowed to protect every hair. It was that kiss that gave her determination.

And then she jumped.

That she remembered. She remembered the child’s sharp intake of breath and her own horrified, final scream as her feet left solid ground. What she did not remember was how she got back down into the room again. There had been a brushing noise, like flapping wings, that had pushed her back, and a flash of gold fire. Or perhaps it had all been a dream and she had not jumped at all, had not even meant to jump, had not even stood up upon that chair, looked out over the ledge into the street…But she knew the rational explanation was also a lie. Something extraordinary had happened to put her feet down again on solid ground, with the boy safely clasped to her, unharmed. And she, in an epiphany, had realized profoundly that explanations simply didn’t matter. Whether God had plucked her physically back, or simply given her the strength to resist the devil at her back, she had survived and was blessed.

“Abraham, Abraham. Lay not your hand upon the child, neither do thou anything to him, for now I know you are a God-fearing man.” She had paid her debt to God and man. Jephte’s daughter, some commentators said, had not been sacrificed bodily, but had simply been sent off to live her life in exile. That would have to be enough.

The rest had come easily. The idea to sell the jewels and buy passage on a private yacht bound for Cyprus. The idea of renting a motorboat and having the yacht pick her up out at sea. The careful planning, the desperate secrecy. The pure luck of having her American passport in her purse, recently renewed, Akiva added to it. It was as if the naïve Batsheva Ha-Levi Harshen had jumped and lay there dead. This new, fearless, enterprising woman she did not recognize. She let the towel fall around her and touched her white, soft shoulders. She liked this woman, this blissfully free woman who had sprung fully grown, not from the head of Zeus, but from her own head. She was creating her as she went along. She tried to see herself as Nigel had seen her, as other new, exciting men would see her now in this foreign, magical city. Her eyes stared back at her—innocent yet wide with expectation, as if she wanted to know everything, to experience everything, and could not wait another second. They were not as friendly as they used to be, and some lingering pain around the edges made her look her age. She felt very sophisticated, sitting there naked. What was it about hotel rooms that made you feel like you could get away with anything? Perhaps the strangeness of everything, the anonymity of the very towels, the sheets that did not know you and thus could never bear witness that you were not acting like yourself.

The blond wig looked good, she admitted, giving her a kind of obvious, Barbie-doll charm. Frivolous, that was the word. She looked ready to dance, to have silly, flirty conversations with handsome, attentive men who drove sports cars and never read books. But it was not her.

When, she wondered, would she ever be herself again? And which self did she really want to be? The little rich girl, the naïve bride, the sacrificing daughter and wife? None of them. She swallowed hard. It was no fiction then. She really had died up there on the fifteenth floor. And was this not, then, a delicious dream come true—to be born in the spring of one’s youth, full of strength, health, beauty, and intelligence and without the restraints of parents and even, for a little while at least, of money? She had gotten fifty thousand dollars for the jewels, nowhere near their worth. And she still had the pearl-and-diamond ring, symbol of her freedom. It would be enough to tide her over until she found work.

She reached for the phone, then put it back again, resisting for the tenth time that day the impulse to call Elizabeth. If her father had any suspicions, Elizabeth’s would be the first place he would send detectives. They would not, after all, ever be dead and buried as long as there were no bodies. Her father, she thought, and the ache in her chest returned. Fear? Regret? Both, perhaps? She tried not to imagine him opening the letter, his pain. She did not wish him any harm, him or her mother. But neither did she wish them reunited with their daughter. They had used her, both of them. She had never been a person to them, but simply an example to the world of what they had accomplished, like the big house they lived in, and the clothes they wore. She glanced at Akiva’s small fists, curled in deep, blissful sleep. You cannot own another person. Even carrying one inside your body, giving him life, doesn’t give you the right to dictate his future. The moment he is out and inhales that first independent breath, he is gone from you forever, a separate life with its own dreams, its own failings, its own right to experience joy and pain, success and disappointment.