Sotah (26 page)

“But G-d will help us!” she repeated helplessly, beginning to feel out of her depth.

“But how do you know
how
G-d will help us? Maybe His help will come in the form of letting the bullets we fire land where they’re supposed to, or having our grenades fall and explode on target! It’s not all having enemy bombs fall harmlessly into the sea, you know. I’ll give you an example. Did you ever hear of the story from the Yom Kippur war about the tank driver, Zvika?

“Well, you know the whole Golan Heights was overrun by the Syrians. Syrian troops were advancing from the north and south. Only a thin line divided them, keeping their forces from combining and taking over not only the whole Golan Heights, but Tiberias and the Galilee as well. Our side was completely unprepared and outnumbered. In fact, the Syrian commander was so shocked at how easily he had been able to get his tanks in that he thought it was some kind of trap, that our army was simply waiting for his forces to advance in order to surround and destroy them.

“This, of course, wasn’t true at all. There was no plan, no tanks, and no tricks. All there was was this one lone tank commandeered by a soldier called Zvika. Now Zvika had no idea what was going on. He was totally alone. He’d gotten up to the Heights on his own initiative, gotten two or three tanks to go with him, and they were riding up and down the thin dividing line that separated the two Syrian divisions. He kept shooting at everything in sight, until he was the only Israeli tank left. But he kept calling over his radio, identifying himself as part of ‘the Zvika Brigade,’ making it sound like he was leading thousands of tanks. The Syrian commander, of course, intercepted this and was convinced his ambush theory was correct. So instead of giving orders to steamroll down the mountain and capture Tiberias, he ordered his troops to retreat to Damascus and lost the war. He was later hung as a traitor.”

“So what’s the point?”

“The point is that we were saved by a miracle. And that miracle was Zvika. He was G-d’s instrument. But if he hadn’t been in that tank, how could G-d have used him? If he had been sitting in some yeshiva somewhere praying, it wouldn’t have done much good.”

“Well, some people are meant to fight and some are meant to pray. Anyway, there are enough soldiers. And you’ll serve eventually.”

“Right.” He nodded sarcastically. “When I’m forty and have six children and they can only take me in for three months instead of three years, and I’ll be checking pocketbooks at the movie theater … Anyhow, who decides who fights and who learns and prays?”

She took his arm, which had stiffened in offense. “Let’s not fight, Moishe. You’ll do what you want. Only, I don’t want you to leave me …”

“I’ll be here for the next six months at least, and then there will be home leaves …”

He held her tight around the waist, forgetting himself.

And just then, as the hand of G-d had no doubt arranged it, standing on the corner in profound shock and watchfulness, stood the living incarnation of Judgment Day, as seen in the worst nightmares of Chaya Leah Reich.

“Chaya Leah!” said Mrs Morganbesser, the steam (or was it simply a low evening fog?) boiling around her head.

There isn’t even time to throw myself in front of a truck, Chaya Leah thought. Or to take Moishe’s hand off my waist.

Her parents’ voices, low, then suddenly, sharply, higher, seeped in under the bedroom door of the room she now had entirely to herself. It had been two hours since Morganbesser left. And still, her parents had not called her in. She went to her knitting, dropping more stitches than she made. She looked over the sweater sleeve she was knitting. Would it all unravel, all the careful work, all the planning and care? Would it all go to waste in the end? Would she have to tear it all out completely and start over from nothing? All the good, careful stitches … would they be undone, erased, as if they had never happened at all? She threw the needles down on the bed. It was intolerable! Why didn’t they ask to speak to her at least?

Just then her mother came in, shutting the door behind her. Her face was a mask of pain. Chaya Leah looked at her in shock and dismay, the defiance draining from her tight, closed mouth. “
Ima!
”

“It’s a little late for your concern now, isn’t it, Chaya Leah?” Rebbetzin Reich sat down heavily on Dina’s empty bed. She picked up the little bow-tied pillows and fluffed them, then arranged them neatly against the wall. She folded her strong, work-roughened hands in her lap. “Is it true? Have you been seeing this boy, this Moishe, in the city at night without our knowledge?”

Chaya Leah nodded wordlessly.

Rebbetzin Reich felt the sharp stab that went through her left shoulder down her arm. “What were your intentions, Chaya Leah?” Her voice was soft, almost painfully intimate, as if she were telling her daughter a secret.

“My intentions are to be his wife,” she said, her courage returning for a moment.

“So, we will not discuss that you have lied to me and your father, that you could have brought our entire family into disgrace and made us the topic of
loshen hara
of every busybody in Meah Shearim. I say ‘could have’ because Mrs Morganbesser has promised not to breathe a word, and I trust her. G-d has taken pity on your father and me by having someone as piously concerned with spreading slander as Mrs Morganbesser discover you and not some hypocrite who would have made it the talk of the town. Do you know what would happen if it became the talk of the town?”

Chaya Leah tossed her head. “It’s nobody’s business, anyway …”

“I see that you don’t,” her mother continued, undeflected. “Well, let me paint a picture for you. First, you would have been thrown out of Beit Yaakov and not allowed to graduate.”

Chaya Leah’s mouth dropped open.

“Then, your father would probably have been asked to leave his job as mashgiach at the yeshiva. After all, a man who can’t control his own daughter can’t be entrusted with the spiritual control of young students. The parents would have insisted on it. And then there is the store. Do you know who buys my wool? Respectable women. True, they come to me because they trust me to give them the best quality at the lowest prices. But they also come to me because they like to talk to me, to be with me. They are my friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. If they hear embarrassing things about us, do you think they will want to come to my store and look me in the face?”

Chaya Leah looked stricken.

“Oh, so finally the defiant one begins to understand! But only begins! Have you given a thought to what will happen to your brothers? The best yeshivot will not accept them if there is a taint on the family, nor will they be able to find brides. You will utterly destroy this family with your foolishness!” The strength that had rested for the most part on anger suddenly drained from Faigie Reich’s determined face as her own words began to become more real to her. Chaya Leah! Her own child. How had she failed so utterly and completely? Her shoulders shook in painfully controlled sobs.

Chaya Leah had never in her life seen her mother cry. It was like having a bomb explode and shatter the whole known world. She started to think about all the things she had done in the last few months in her mother’s terms and began to tremble. She forgot that she had ever had a point of view, a perfectly justified rationale, for acting the way she had. She forgot that she thought it was perfectly fine to choose your own husband and date him without your parents and the community interfering. She forgot that she thought it was perfectly all right for you to kiss and hug him. She had no point of view any longer, but simply a white-hot blazing fear that rampaged through her mind and took the form of her strong, demanding mother crumpled before her in tears.

The only thing she remembered was that she was a fifteen-year-old Beit Yaakov girl who had been caught red-handed in an embrace with a boy by Mrs Morganbesser; that she had almost totally destroyed her family’s income, reputation, and probably their hearts. She felt herself shrinking with each new revelation of sin like a storybook character drinking some magic potion until she was reduced to nothing but dust on the floor. She felt she had never been so frightened in her life until her mother looked up and told her something that sent her beyond her wildest nightmares. It was something so simple, so self-evident, and yet something that she had never thought about at all when enjoying her plans, whether because it just hadn’t occurred to her or because it was too unthinkable to deal with:

“Now, go in. Your father wants to speak to you. You have hurt him deeply.”

The next morning, in the dark of daybreak, on his way home from his daily immersion in the mikveh before his morning prayers, Moishe walked home listlessly. He was feeling a little depressed over having put Chaya Leah in such a compromising position, and he wondered how she was doing. There was no way he could get in touch with her without causing her more problems. He was trying to think of a respectable way out. So immersed was he in these thoughts that he didn’t even hear the white Volvo that pulled up alongside him. By the time he looked around and saw the lean bodies, the
spodiks
, the white gloves, it was too late. He felt himself dragged into the back of the car. A rag was wrapped around his mouth so tightly that he felt the blood trickle down from the corners of his lips.

They drove about fifteen minutes. He felt his arms pulled harshly, his legs lifted. He was in the middle of a forest. Dark pine trees scented the cold morning air. He felt his hands tied roughly behind his back.

“You have been warned, my son. You did not listen. It is out of my hands.” The low, menacing, pious tones sent an icy chill of hopelessness down his spine. Then the blows began with merciless, methodical cruelty. Two to the stomach, two to the kidneys, two to either side of his head. On and on they went, like a machine, until his eyes were so blackened that he couldn’t see. He felt his head scrape along the hard, stony ground, pressed against gravel and pinecones. He felt the scream rising in his throat but could hear nothing. Again he felt his legs, his buttocks, battered. The pain was excruciating. He was suddenly choking, the blood filling his mouth.

And then, just as suddenly, the blows stopped. He felt himself lifted carefully. He felt his matted hair stroked with fatherly concern. “He who hates his son does not chastise him,” a low voice whispered. He could feel the white-gloved hand as it brushed against his cheek, dabbing water over his bleeding face with incongruous gentleness.

“You should have listened; you were warned. I mourn for you, my son. Turn now and take the right path, the path that leads away from destruction. And remember, if you call the Zionist police with accusations, your parents will have to find out why you were targeted. The girl’s parents, too. It will accomplish nothing. The Zionists don’t like to get involved in our wars. They let us run things here our own way. So take your punishment and change your ways.” He felt himself dragged into the car again and then lifted out carefully to the sidewalk in front of his home.

When his mother stopped screaming, he told her he’d been hit by a car.

Chapter twenty-three

It was a very pleasant—no, more than that—a very luxurious life, Dina thought those first few months of their marriage.

“Don’t get up,” Judah pleaded with her the morning of his first day back to work.

“But your lunch, your breakfast!” she insisted, scandalized by the very thought of sleeping on into the morning.

“I don’t eat before morning prayers, my dove. As for lunch, I’ve already taken care of it. I prepared it myself the night before.” His voice was gay with triumph. “Why should you get up? Sleep, my sweet one, my little one.” His voice caressed her.

It was a new world, wasn’t it? She had no idea of the ground rules yet, the boundaries. She had no memory even of a weekday morning untouched by the cold, merciless nudge of duty: the heavy shopping baskets, the washing and dressing of small children, preparing countless lunch sandwiches, taking in the morning’s icy laundry from wind-chilled lines … To be treated so tenderly, so indulgently, was beyond her experience. She simply didn’t know what to do with her sense of propriety and obligation, her well-honed work ethic.

After all, it was just the two of them. He had already prepared his lunch and wasn’t eating breakfast. There were no little brothers around with countless needs … She smiled at Judah and pulled the warm covers over her head. “Well, perhaps, just this once,” she murmured.

It is absolutely amazing how quickly human beings not only get used to luxury, but begin to take it for granted. Two weeks later she lay restfully in bed, listening to his quick, quiet morning movements—his slipping into clothes and running the bathroom water, the opening and closing of the refrigerator, and the gentle click of the front door—without so much as a dim memory of her earlier guilt.

With the end of the summer, she’d begun her first classes in the Hebrew Teachers’ Seminary, a two-year course that would give her certification to teach early-childhood classes. She didn’t really want to teach. The idea of standing before a classroom made her forehead prickle as if her circulation had stopped. But she couldn’t think of what else to do with herself.

About three months into the school year, she heard herself being called.

“Dina!” a familiar voice rang out in the hallway crowded with female students hurrying to classes. Most of them, despite their extreme youth, wore the elaborately styled salon wigs that distinguished them as married women.

It was Malka Rachel, a former classmate. They hugged each other.

“Your wig is such a beautiful color. It looks wonderful on you!” Malka Rachel gushed.

“Thank you very much,” Dina said seriously, patting her head with an exaggerated motion that mimicked that of a vain woman primping.

The other girl giggled. “What are you doing here?”

“The same as you, learning.”

“Oh, I’m not one of the students. I work in the office,” the girl said, a little haughtiness sneaking into her tone. Are you a student here?
Baruch Hashem!
Thank G-d! What
mazel
you have that you can keep on studying,“she finally said after her narrowed eyes had enviously taken in Dina’s lovely dress, her gorgeous watch, the rested bloom of her cheeks, her neat school bag. After all, they were both still teenagers.”My husband is in
kollel
, and I’m supporting him. Your husband is learning only part-time, then? Or perhaps his family is well-to-do?”