Jerusalem Maiden (34 page)

“Pierre,” she murmured, and looked up at his face, at the leathery skin, not daring to look further up to his eyes.

“Lovely Esther. My very lovely Esther.” His face drew closer and halted so near she could feel its heat, then the softest prickle of his mustache. And then his lips flitted over her lips, pulled away, leaving her taut, wanting.

Admonition and fear banged inside her head as his mouth again touched hers. She couldn't hold back anymore. Her lips pressed against his, moving of their own volition, trying to take in the whole of him. She had never been this thirsty—

Pierre's arms tightened around her shoulders and drew her closer. “I've wanted to do this since I was fifteen,” he said against her mouth. He had switched to French, and the words were like cherries she wanted to roll on her tongue.

Only now did she remember that they were on the sidewalk, that the thin poplar tree trunk offered no cover. But she lacked the will to resist. Her knees buckled, and she fell against him.

Pierre's hands steadied her, then dropped. He shifted away. She wanted to grab his arms and bring them back around her body, to bring his fingers to her mouth and kiss them one by one. She tried to suppress her heavy breathing. It was embarrassing.

But Pierre took her hand and pulled her along.

H
is vast atelier was illuminated by the flickering light of a dozen candles Pierre had strewn among magnificent black marble torsos of men, pink stone statues of mothers and children, bronze castings of entwined warriors, clay studies of lovers. The tiny animals he had sculpted in his youth were now life-size, from a falcon in flight to a leaping gazelle. Everywhere Esther looked, she was surrounded by idols. This was Pierre's world, and she had entered it willingly, eagerly.

On the mattress Pierre had dragged from the sleeping alcove he gently moved her hands as they covered her nudity. Her body was a temple, he whispered, a temple where he would pray. But, he said as his tongue traveled around the inside of her elbows and behind her knees, he must first prepare this beautiful sanctuary, make sure he lit all its treasures. His fingers found the nape of her neck and the softness of her belly. His mouth sought her in places that should have scandalized her, except that nothing could surpass her wonderment over the new sensations her body was capable of. It writhed, seeking more, astonished that, having been merely a vessel for developing babies and nourishing infants, it now transformed into a fountain of unimaginable joys. Once, this body had belonged to the
klal
, to God, and to Nathan. It was now being returned to her as a gift.

What was she doing? The Bible said she should be stoned to death. Esther shuddered against Pierre's thrashing tongue. The walls of shame slid closer, then shifted away while the whole of her became molten lava churning inside the earth, filling her with its heat. This was the truth of Song of Solomon's verses,
Love flashes are fire flashes, a blazing fire. Mighty waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away.

Her moans rose to a peak. A pagan's ululating cry of abandon.

“That's it, my lovely Esther,” Pierre whispered. “Let me know how much you desire me.”

Didn't he know? The truth of her desire had long seemed as visible on her face as her eyes, as etched in her heart as the Torah on Moses' tablets at Mount Sinai. Esther's hands kneaded the muscles on Pierre's back and shoulders and felt them rippling under the skin. There was newness in the feel of his body, but more so in her freedom to explore it. “Pierre,” she whispered. “Mine. I'm yours.”

“Yes, my love, show me yourself. All of you,” Pierre said.

At the words, the sweetest spasm took hold of her, shaking her body. She heard herself cry out in an unfamiliar voice, a soaring seagull's scream above a stormy sea. Then rapture drained out of her. Her feet fluttered like a bird dropping from the sky, and her mind surrendered to a strange flood tide of calm.

W
hat had she done? The enormity of what had just transpired wrapped her with incredulity and guilt. Esther sat up and covered her face. “I must leave,” she murmured. She needed space to contemplate it all. Who was she? Who was the woman who had been swept so readily into the unthinkable? But then Pierre's hand reached out to her, and her mind transported back to that new place that held nothing but rapture, and when their bodies met again, it was like the two pieces of her broken porcelain bowl glued together.

The candles had burned out, leaving a whiff of smoked wax, and a full moon bathed the room through a large skylight. Esther looked down the length of her naked body lit in the silvery glow. Her breasts were small again, so soft, unlike the firmness of her youth. Her thighs, even after the weight loss, were fleshy, her stomach pillowy. God had created this body, a complex marvel of pleasures. All along, He had sent her signs that it was hers to enjoy, but she, in her ignorance, had snubbed them.

Her finger traced the lines of Pierre's lips. She pushed lightly into their moist borders, then further inside along his gums. Her finger explored his teeth, as if counting them. His mouth closed on her finger, his tongue licking it before expelling it with a short laugh. At the sound of his laughter, the words from Song of Solomon took on a new depth.
I am my beloved's and his desire is toward me. . . . The voice of my beloved! Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

The moon sailed away beyond the rectangle of the skylight. With the darkness, the wave of guilt washed over her again. She was insane. An adulteress who'd betrayed both her husband and God. Esther pulled away and rushed to the sink to wash.

Pierre wouldn't let her walk back alone. In the silent streets toward Le Marais, he laced his fingers in hers and held tight. Esther was sleepy, drained, but fresh in some new way. She took a deep breath of the night air. It carried a faint memory of Jerusalem nights.

“My mother will send a car for you on Sunday to visit her and her new companion in the country,” Pierre said, and Esther tried not to react to the ease with which her son accepted his mother's scandalous way of life. “We'll go see her together,” he added.

Would Mlle Thibaux be as accepting about her son's affair? As fond as she was of Esther, did she wish for her son to love a woman with a husband and a family? “There are so many reasons ‘why not,' and only one for ‘why yes,' ” Esther said, her tone subdued.

Pierre kissed her. “She's sensed
my
‘why yes' all along. God knows she's worked hard enough to keep me away from you. I'll tell her how you saw her son dangling on top of the tower and rescued him.” He dropped onto his knees on the cobblestones and buried his face in the folds of Esther's dress. “Oh, my love, you've rescued me from a lifetime of longing.”

She giggled and pulled him up off the sidewalk. A choir of frogs sang, and Esther wondered whether this bliss she felt meant that she had lost her mind. A
dybbuk
was making her head work in a convoluted logic, or had eased her into the excitement Pierre exuded.

“I'll be careful with the kosher kitchen,” Pierre continued. “I know about no mixing of dairy and meat dishes.” He made the sign of the cross. “I'll be good. I promise.”

She looked at him, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”

“Come live with me.”

“Whoever heard of unmarried people living together?” She laughed and stopped. “Or rather, people married to others living together?”

“This is Paris, and it is the twenties,” he protested. “The war is over, and the world is free to explore new horizons in art and in love.” He nuzzled her neck. “Yum.”

She nuzzled him back. How could she have been married for so many years without ever conceiving of such a simple gesture of fondness? Pierre's exuberance chased away the dark thoughts.
Thank you, Hashem, for showing me your benevolent hand and for leading me here. Please do not judge me otherwise,
Esther thought into the open sky. A man cleaved unto a woman, the Bible said. The Bible—God—understood passion:
My heart and my flesh sing for joy unto the living Hashem.

Back in her room, she stood at the window, looking at the silent roofs of Le Marais under flickering stars. She was happy, she realized. She had never known that utter, naked emotion, never even aspired to feel it. She had never known anyone who was happy, although men
dovening
in the synagogue often claimed to reach that blessed state, and Nathan had been content much of the time. She mulled over the strange word.
Happy
.
Happiness
had never been in either Hanna's or Ruthi's lexicons when they had believed they were on the road to fulfilling their missions. And Ima would have said, “Who's happy? We must suffer for the redemption of all Jews.”

Esther lit a candle, took out her ink bottle, feather and paper and finally started her letter to Nathan. “I'm glad you're heading back home to keep your promise to the children to be with them on Rosh Hashanah—” Rather than a beginning, the holy New Year marked an end, a cliff suddenly looming on her path. What was past it? Her children. All three of them. “I must take more time until—” She put down the feather. How long could she stay away from Dvora, Gershon and Eliyahu?

Looking out at the stars, Esther began counting the brightest ones. Each symbolized a broken decree she had once held holy. Dropping on her cot, she burst into tears. A mother of three innocent children, she hadn't even stopped to think about them before throwing herself into loving Pierre tonight. And Nathan? He was a good man, so devoted to her. . . . Where was the demarcation line between actions controlled by God and those for which she must take responsibility?

Esther cried until she was spent. She was so tired of guessing, of feeling guilty, of being torn. Yet, the events of her life—even the adultery by an immoral woman who had deserted her children—could be explained in only one way: it had taken the freedom and daring of expressing herself through both her art and her body for her to discover the Primordial Light in all its glory.

W
hen Esther walked into Cha'im's atelier, his paintings were gone. Two folded easels leaned against the door frame like a pair of tired sentries. Esther's glance took in the table where paints and brushes should have been. Only layers of paint splatter remained. Cha'im's eyes were rheumy, and his breath was rank with alcohol.

Dread came upon her. Her voice was almost a shout. “Have you been evicted? Have your paintings been appropriated?”

“I burned them.”

“All of them!?” Why hadn't she believed his threats and taken them away? Those beautiful paintings, vibrant and fresh like butterflies. And there had been the one promised to her. What insane, tortured heart could have destroyed his own children? “You burned the paints and the brushes too?”

“Oh, that.” With uncoordinated hands, Cha'im dropped the books she had arranged on the shelf into an open box. “I'm moving to the country. Ormaz is taking me to heal my body and soul. If you pay the rent, you can keep this place.”

No way could she afford it. Her eyes rested on her own three finished canvases drying by the window, as alone and lost as orphans. “When will you be back?”

“Maybe next month, maybe never. If you want, I know two artists who would share the space.”

A pounding in the stairwell preceded the entrance of a heavyset man clad in a suit despite the heat, and wearing a homburg. He gave Esther a cursory glance. This must be the famous agent, Ormaz, who represented Picasso and handled Modigliani's estate. Esther didn't know whether Ormaz was his first or last name.

“This is the Jerusalem maiden,” Cha'im said in his broken French. “The talented one.”

“Oh, yes,” the man said. Wiping beads of sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, he asked Cha'im, “Are we ready?”

Should she ask for the rent money Cha'im owed her, which Ormaz was supposed to pay? Esther tightened her lips as she helped them carry boxes downstairs, feeling the loss of more than just money. Cha'im put the key to the studio in her palm and climbed into the automobile.

She stood on the sidewalk, uncertain of what to do next. Then it came to her. It had all been pre-ordained. The air in Pierre's atelier was filled with marble dust that stuck in the wet paint. But she could paint here at her own studio, live at Pierre's, and work at Vincent's, all three in Montparnasse. Pierre's atelier, subsidized by his father, even had its own sink. She rushed to Raysel's rooming house to pack.

P
ierre whistled “sur le pont d'Avignon” while sanding down a marble sculpture. Esther sketched him. He often worked in the nude, a man who had nothing to hide, unafraid to enjoy what nature and God had bestowed upon him. His body was muscled from years of lifting stones, hammering chisels and tedious sanding.

“My
nidah
days have begun.” She spoke into her sketch pad.

“Good. You won't get pregnant.”

“Of course I won't. We can't be intimate.” It would be torture not to touch his smooth, rippling muscles for the next ten days, or maybe two weeks.

He came over and kissed her neck, his tongue exploring her ear until her toes tingled.

How she craved to take his flesh into her mouth as he had taught her to do. Instead, she pushed him away. “You must keep your distance.”

“Are there
nidah
rules for a married woman having a
yi'chud
with a man who's not her husband?” Pierre asked. “Let's find a rabbi and ask him also about the rules for a Jewish woman allowing a
goy
to perform the mitzvah, and not only on Friday. Oh, yes, he's also a
mamzer
—”

The guilt of adultery rushed through Esther's veins. She stomped her foot. “You're making fun of my traditions!” She wriggled out from under his arms. To her left, the kitchen was lined with every utensil Pierre owned. She kept boiling them to make them kosher. “This isn't a joke,” she added, holding on to the fury in her voice to make the point.

“No, my lovely Esther, it isn't.” He took the sketch pad out of her hands and gazed into her face while his thighs and aroused member pressed at her through her skirt.

“Let go of me!”

But he didn't. “What I mean is that I'd like you to shed every rabbinical-inscribed prohibition that has been holding you back. God could have simply created us as stone sculptures. But He didn't. Everything about your body, each of its functions, is part of a living system He has tied together beautifully.” Pierre gyrated his pelvis against her. “Your monthly cycle included.”

She leaned her head on his chest and let her fingers travel into its sparse curly hair, thickened with stone dust. The guilt diffused into an old ache. “The prohibitions are imprinted so deeply in me—” But Asher, even when merely a boy, had also observed the distinction between God's wishes and the rabbis' generations-old layers of dictates.

“Let go of all those chains, my lovely Esther,” Pierre whispered in French. His breath was warm on her throat, caressing her. His palm cupped a breast. “Trust yourself to yourself, then to me.”

“I can't,” she murmured, but closed her eyes and gave herself to the sensations as he undid her skirt and stroked the insides of her thighs. “It's forbidden—”

“Let go. See how far it will take you,” he whispered, his face moving down the length of her body, spraying it with kisses.

The atelier was awash with the morning sun. What were the rules for a woman who was no longer modest, who had a lover, who permitted him to own every centimeter of her body? What were the consequences of allowing his tongue to penetrate her deepest spots? Esther moaned, letting out air trapped in her lungs. She tugged at Pierre's head. “You can't do that!”

He was looking, touching, exploring. “Beautiful,” he mumbled.

The shock that a man could view a woman's private parts and not be repulsed plunged into Esther's core like a rock into the bottom of a pond. But before she could process the idea, she lost herself in rapture as Pierre's tongue worked its magic.

When she had at last stilled, Pierre raised his face and peered up. His white teeth shone in a smile.

“I can't believe it,” she murmured. She covered her face with her hands. “I'm filthy—”

“It's all you, and nothing is impure,” Pierre said quietly. “And if it still bothers you, remember that it washes off more easily than dust.”

Sins did not wash easily; they settled deep into the tissue of one's being. But Esther was beyond resisting. When Pierre urged her to the floor, she complied, giving herself to the pleasure. After, with Pierre's head resting on her stomach, she felt embraced so lovingly at the time her
klal
excommunicated menstruating women from its midst.

Thank you, Hashem, for setting me free.
Tears ran into her hair while Pierre sponged down their stickiness like a midwife. She dozed off in his arms, his mattress a cloud that carried her body to a white, purified heaven.

H
er own atelier! Four artists, not two, showed up, each lugging an easel and a paint box. The room became crowded, and there was a brief talk of taking turns using it, but no one wished to stick to a schedule; they were all too anxious to start. Each handed Esther his share of the rent, and, like refugees anchoring in a safe harbor, set up his area and began to work. Esther arranged her paints and brushes on the table Cha'im had left. An hour earlier, she had sold his dirty mattress and sheets to a passing
alte-zachn
man.

The men's solemn concentration did not break as they passed around a bottle of red wine. At her easel, Esther found herself facing a new dilemma: when only Cha'im had been around, as oblivious as a child, she had moved about bareheaded and wore her hat outside only. Should she wear her
tichel
in the presence of four strangers? Or go fetch the wig she hated?

The summer was too hot, and her short hair, which a beautician had trimmed evenly, was far more comfortable, she finally decided. She couldn't focus on her art with her head confined. Men could be beguiled by many things other than hair. If she were to protect all men from all possible forms of temptation, she'd be wearing a
chador
. No. Just as she had to suppress her urges, it was incumbent in the Talmud upon men to suppress theirs. She combed her hair with her fingers and continued to work.

She had sketched from memory the Parisian synagogue as it looked during Friday-night services: the dark paneled walls, the long benches and the rabbi's head covered in his
tallit
under the bright chandeliers where the congregation of Hassidic men broke into their songs of joy. She began painting the scene. Tomorrow, Friday, she would be back in Le Marais, basking in the holiness of welcoming the Shabbat. She would sit with Mme Horovitz and her daughter in the women's section and later eat at their table. Monsieur Horovitz would offer a stimulating
Dvar Torah
, which Esther would savor.

Afterward, Pierre would be waiting for her at Pont Marie. He no longer ate cheese at the conclusion of his dinner so she could kiss him after her meat meal. They would walk home, where her Friday night candles would be at their last flicker of life. If she “honored his right for a Friday mitzvah” as if he were a Jewish husband, Pierre had joked, he wouldn't be working on the Shabbat. Instead, they would take the very long walk to the hilltops of Montmartre and view all of Paris from the steps of Sacré-Cœur.

“Could we dress up and walk along Champs-Élysées?” she had asked, suddenly shy about her childish fantasy. She would wear a new burgundy suit she'd just sewn and carry her parasol, and they would stroll with their arms looped.

One of the artists broke her musings. “I need your opinion about my painting,” he said.

She noticed that the others had gathered around her easel, standing too close. Heat climbed up her cheeks. Her mother's voice banged into her head: “
A king's daughter's honor is all indoors.
” As Esther examined the jumble of lines and colors on the artist's canvas, she saw herself from far away and wondered, Who was this woman with uncovered head, away from her children, speaking to men who weren't her relations?

S
he was standing at her easel, liking the solitude of the early morning before the other artists arrived, when a portly man appeared in the doorway. It took her a few seconds to place the man as Cha'im's dealer.

“Is he all right?” she asked.

Ormaz waved his hand in dismissal. “I take away every canvas he finishes.”

She looked around. Which of her studio mates' works deserved this distinguished man's visit? “He hasn't left anything here,” she said.

“Ah, but he did. You.”

“You mean the rent money I had paid for him?” Esther blushed. “It was, uh, my tuition.”

Ormaz waved his wrist in a gesture of dismissal. “He has drawn my attention to your work. I specialize in discovering unknown artists.”

She put down her brush. Something swelled up inside her, reaching her throat.

“There were only three paintings five weeks ago. Any more since?”

Esther nodded.

“You must be one of those artists who think their work stinks.” He made to leave, but the twinkle in his small, round eyes told her he was playacting.

“Uh, no. No!” she blurted. “There are—uh . . .” She waved with her hand to the back of the canvases angled toward the wall so dust wouldn't stick to the still-wet paint. “Uh, six more,” she finally managed. “But I'm not sure whether they're finished, I mean, if they're any good. I'm only—” She made a helpless gesture with her hand.

Ormaz bent down with a grunt. His kneecaps cracked. She thought he passed gas. Then the only sound was his intake of air as he positioned each of her paintings on her worktable and stepped back to examine them. He presented each canvas to the light, then away from it. Her heart beat fast. Was she good enough to justify God's reasons for keeping her away from her children for so long?

Ormaz tapped on his potbelly. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

“Thank you.” She pushed the words out of a dry mouth.

“You're very literal, aren't you?” he stated more than asked. “In these modern times your work is neoclassical.”

Her fingers twisted around each other. “Neoclassical” meant stale. The Impressionists—and now Picasso and the artists in the École de Paris—painted their interpretations of the subjects. She merely copied what was true to life and color. “I won't dare improve on
Dieu
's creations,” she mumbled.

“But you do.” He picked up a painting of a vase of flowers and chuckled.

She blushed. “Uh—This is the perspective of a child—” She couldn't bring herself to explain that imagining Eliyahu's angle looking up into the depth of the stems, she had tried to portray the awesomeness of God's handiwork in the delicate, yet complex creation of flowers.

Ormaz approached her easel and examined her current work through narrowed eyes. He was silent a long time. Esther barely breathed, afraid to break some spell. Finally he said, “If you continue at this pace, would you have twenty paintings by the end of November?”

November? She must be back with her children by then. And she could only conceive one painting at a time. “Twenty?”

“The cost of canvas and paint are high, I know.” He stuck his hand into his breast pocket and held out a wad of money.

Esther stared at the folded bills held between his index and third finger. Her hands clutched the cloth of her skirt. The veins in her temples quivered.

“An advance,” he said. “For a show. A small one. An introduction of sorts. I have a time slot the first week of December.”