The Enemy of the Good (17 page)

‘He goes to synagogue three times a day,’ she said. ‘Morning and evening in Hendon and lunchtime near his office in Stepney Green.’

‘That’s just what this family needs,’ Mike said pompously, ‘another religious fanatic!’

‘Fine. You can all dust off your prejudices before you meet him.’

‘I can’t wait to meet him,’ Carla said. ‘You should have invited him here tonight.’

‘And put him through this?’

‘We’re just concerned for you, Nanna,’ Clement said, his appeal to their nursery intimacy making her flinch.

‘That’s very kind of you. But why not try showing me a little less concern and a little more respect? Do you think I’m such a bad judge of character that I’d fall for a man who’d hurt me?’

She bit her tongue as they all fell silent, picturing the black eye and broken rib that led to her leaving Chris.

‘It’s not that,’ Clement said finally. ‘But we’re your family. We want the best for you.’

‘Then you should want Zvi.’

‘You’re your own woman. Strong-willed. I still bear the scars.’ She refused to smile. ‘Look at how you’ve built up the company from scratch. Are you really going to throw it all away for the sake of a man you met five minutes ago?’

‘Three and a half months.’

‘I stand corrected.’

‘And I won’t be throwing anything away. You’re right that most Lubavitch women work in the home. But it’s not compulsory. I can still go to the office. I fully intend to. I just have to make a few adjustments.’

‘Such as covering yourself up like a Victorian piano leg!’

‘Has it never occurred to you that the Victorians might have found a piano leg arousing? You live in a world where sex comes at you on every street corner – ’

‘I wish!’ Mike interjected.

‘But there are still people who value delicacy and restraint, for whom a naked ankle has the power to shock.’ Fearing that her vehemence might itself be immodest, she softened her tone. ‘It may be hard for you to grasp. Their world is so alien to yours. And to mine too, I admit, until lately. In ours, men and women fall in love, marry, have a couple of children and divorce. In theirs, they marry, then fall in love, have a dozen children and stay together for life.’

‘But you do love him?’ Carla asked.

‘Oh, yes.’ She felt tears welling in her eyes. ‘Yes, I love him. That’s the first time I’ve said it aloud. And it’s wonderful. I know it’s strange, Clem, that I can say it to you when I’ve not yet said it to him, but that’s part of the deal. And I’ve accepted it. OK? I love him with every breath in my body. And my body’s never felt so alive.’

‘Nanna, please try to see – ’

‘No, you try to see! For years all I’ve cared about is myself and my job and staying ahead of the game. I longed for another relationship, but the older and more successful I became, the more conditions I placed on it: the more perfect my perfect man had to be, until I’d talked myself out of it even before the first date. Then the moment I stepped into the Chabad House – ’

‘The what?’ Mike asked.

‘The synagogue – I knew that I’d found my roots, my place in the world.’

‘Half of you comes from Oxfordshire,’ Clement said.

‘It was more than a sense of vitality: I can get that at a club. It was more than a sense of fellowship: that’s soap opera stuff. It was a sense of being at one with the universe and, yes, with God.’

‘That’s good, surely?’ Carla appealed to Clement and Mike.

‘It is to me,’ Susannah said. ‘Everything’s changed. My life’s no longer a problem to be solved; it’s a pattern to be followed.’

‘So there we have it!’ Clement said. ‘The Susannah we know and love, the girl with the tidiest bedroom in the West Country.’

‘Which proves what exactly?’

‘My dear little sister, you’ve always longed for order… for clarity and
neatness
. Now you finally have them. No more nasty ethical conflicts or moral choices. You can escape them all in a world of “thou shalt nots”.’

‘Nothing you can say will make me change my mind. I know that what I feel is true. And the greatest proof is that God has brought me Zvi. He’s awakened my heart and my spirit and my senses all at the same time. I’m triply blessed.’

Susannah opened the glove compartment of the car and took out her
well-thumbed
copy of
Judaism For Dummies
. Turning to the entry on Purim, she read that it was the first festival of spring, a joyous celebration of the victory of the Jewish Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai over the Persian Haman, a time for drinking and dressing up and dancing in the streets, as well as
offering
gifts to the poor and food to friends. Fixing the names in her head, she grabbed the bottle of champagne for Rivka and hurried up to the house.

No sooner had she stepped through the door than Rivka set her to work alongside Rebekkah and herself preparing Purim baskets. They were taking twelve to the local nursing home, packed with chocolates, biscuits, fruit and
hamantaschen
, a triangular pastry filled with jam, cheese or poppy seeds. While aware that any Lubavitch meal was as much a matter of blessing as cooking, Susannah was surprised to find Rivka blessing not only each
ingredient
but each separate flavour of jam. Once the pastries were in the oven, she helped to clean the kitchen, gathering a pile of plates, before panicking at the thought that one of them had been used for cheese. She gazed at the sinks, unable to recollect which was for meat and which for milk and even if it were permitted to mix cheese with jam.

Rivka relieved her of both the plates and the problem. ‘Remember you’re doing it for God and it’ll become second nature.’

‘That’s guaranteed to intimidate me even more.’

‘Keeping a kosher kitchen is a
mitzvah
, our way of turning a base human appetite into something spiritual.’

‘It’s not just the kitchen though, is it, Mama?’ Rebekkah said. ‘Wouldn’t the same be true of all our laws?’

‘Quite right, darling,’ Rivka said, beaming at her. ‘Not least the different laws for men and women. I know how hard it can be for a stranger coming into the community.’

‘Not at all,’ Susannah said, fearing that she had betrayed her ignorance.

‘Believe me, I think you’re doing splendidly. But Jewish life is very different from life elsewhere. It’s not about asserting our rights or imposing our wills. It’s about honouring the covenant God gave us. It’s about sanctifying
everything
we are and do. Nothing today is more damaging than the illusion that all people are the same and all relationships are valid. “Everything is good as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone,” is the cry, which begs the question of whether it’s hurting God. And don’t you find it odd that the people who shout the loudest about respecting our differences ignore the most basic one of all: the difference between men and women? Of course women have an equal place in the world and an equal responsibility to fulfil God’s plan. But the Bible teaches that we must set about it in our own way. Women are by nature more compassionate; it’s our job to look after the home and bring up the children. Men are more aggressive; it’s their job to go out into the world.’

‘A few months – even a few weeks – ago I’d have taken issue with you on that. I was brought up to believe that women could do everything as well as men. The rest was just conditioning or, worse, a male conspiracy to keep us down.’

‘To some women, everything’s been a conspiracy since the Garden of Eden.’

‘But since I’ve come here, I realise that the pressure to compete is the very thing that made me miserable.’

‘That’s a story I hear time and time again. Feminists claim that they’re setting women free when what they’ve done is to make them slaves to dogma. Everywhere I look, I see unhappy women: women who are unsure of their place in the world; women who are afraid of their own femininity; women who are desperate to measure up to men. Jewish women are exempt from this.’

‘You mean Orthodox women?’ Susannah asked, picturing two of her most neurotic Jewish friends.

‘I mean Jewish women,’ Rivka insisted. ‘Women who obey the Law. They’re assured of their place in the world; they’re able to express their femininity; they know that, in God’s eyes, they’re worth as much as men.’

‘I wish I could have this conversation with my mother. I hate to say it, but she’s one of the worst offenders. She makes so much of the similarity between the sexes, you’d think we’d never developed beyond the first weeks in the womb.’

‘Your mother is clearly an exceptional person. You’ve a lot to thank her for, not least your birthright. Without it, you’d have had to go through a long and arduous conversion.’

‘But if I’m joining the community, I want to be truly part of it. Not some special case.’

‘And you will be. The Rabbi’s put you in the category of a
tinok shenishbah
, someone who was captured and brought up by heathens. You’re regarded as a Jew in every respect. You can even marry a
kohain
.’ Susannah looked at her in confusion. ‘A descendant of the ancient line of Temple priests.’

‘But Zvi isn’t a
kohain
,’ Rebekkah interjected.

‘You should go and change,’ her mother said sharply. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, as Rebekkah left the room.

‘Don’t worry,’ Susannah said, taking heart from Rebekkah’s assumption.

‘But when such a good man as Zvi remains unmarried… He’s already turned down four fine matches.’

‘Four?’ Susannah said, at once grateful for his discernment and fearful of becoming number five.

‘But I’ve no need to spell out his virtues to you.’

‘No. When I took the Kabbalah class, my interest was purely spiritual. It worried me that my attraction to Zvi – am I allowed to say that? – coloured my feelings for the faith and vice versa. But now I can see that it’s both.’

‘Zvi is a devout Jew. The two can’t be separated.’

‘I know. And I’m glad. Everything’s such a new experience for me. I feel that I’m learning about him and his beliefs at the same time. At first I thought he was cold… taciturn. But he can be wildly enthusiastic. You should hear him talking about
Tzivos Hashem
… did I pronounce it right?’

‘You did, and I have.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry.’ Rivka shrugged off any offence. ‘He’s so good with children. He ought to have some himself.’

‘I’m sure he will.’

Susannah felt her body crying out, not for Rivka’s reassurance but for Zvi’s. ‘It’s so hard. I long for him so much. It’s not that I want him to break the rules. I know it would make him less of himself. I just wish that sometimes he’d bend them a little. Is that very wrong of me?’

‘I can’t wave a magic wand over you both. However much I might like to.’

‘I come from a world where you make God in your own image. My brother – a painter – does it literally. It’s a seismic shift to a world where you find God in the letter of the Law.’

‘I see that it must be hard for you. I only met the Rabbi three times before we were engaged.’

‘So it was love at first sight?’

‘More like blind terror!’ She laughed. ‘We were in America. His parents had escaped from Lithuania after the war and settled near the Rebbe – the previous Rebbe – in Brooklyn. My family weren’t so lucky. We didn’t get out until Khrushchev. It made no sense. The Soviets didn’t want the Jews in their country and yet they refused to let us leave. Much of my childhood took place behind closed doors. We lived in a world of backstreet circumcisions, while the West was enduring the blight of backstreet abortions. When we were finally freed, we joined the community in New York. I married the Rabbi, or as he then was the
shaliaich
on a mission to the Lubavitch in Pittsburgh. He returned to Brooklyn to be ordained, after which the Rebbe sent him over here. I was seventeen.’

‘No wonder you were terrified!’

‘My father thought I was already old. He believed a woman should marry at fourteen.’

‘Seriously?’

‘That’s when our bodies are ready, when we’ve moved beyond childhood and ought to unite with a man. The longer we wait, the more we find ourselves at odds with the world and our own emotions.’

‘All the same, fourteen!’

‘I told you that Jewish life was different.’ To her amazement, Susannah
realised
that if she, her daughter and her granddaughter all married at fourteen, she could be on her way to becoming a great-grandmother. No wonder she felt so unfulfilled. ‘You know of course,’ Rivka added, ‘that we categorically reject any form of sex before marriage – ’

‘Believe me, Zvi and I haven’t so much as held hands. Not once.’

‘Please don’t get me wrong,’ Rivka said, taking off her apron. ‘I’ve no doubt whatsoever that you and Zvi have obeyed the laws. What I’m trying to say is that I’m afraid you and Zvi will find it harder to make a life together because of what you already feel for each other.’

‘Really? Why’s that?’ Susannah asked, her faith in Rivka’s judgement faltering.

‘So many couples today aren’t in love; they’re in love with the idea of being in love. It gives their lives meaning and excitement. They fool themselves that they can build a lasting relationship on this self-deception. True love – the mixture of commitment, understanding and passion – only comes after
marriage
. We say that there are three people in a Jewish marriage: the man, the woman and God. Love is what God brings to the equation.’

‘Believe me, I shall devote every ounce of my strength to being a good wife to… to my husband.’

‘I’m sure of it. And I pray that you’ll have your chance very soon.’

Rivka called Rebekkah, who returned sulkily to the kitchen, ignoring Susannah’s supportive smile. Together they removed the
hamantaschen
from the oven, leaving them to cool before putting them in the baskets. Rivka then led Susannah into the dining room, where the table had been extended by two card-tables and set for twenty-four.

‘It’ll be a squeeze, but I’ve sat thirty in here before now.’

‘Were they all Lubavitch?’ Susannah asked.

‘We don’t invite gentiles to our table. I know there are many worthy ones, but then there are more than enough worthy Jews. People may condemn us for keeping to ourselves – and no one more harshly than the liberal Jews – but I can’t conceive of a richer, more satisfying life.’

Susannah walked with Rivka and Rebekkah to the Chabad House, the wind unseasonably sharp for the spring festival. Masked children preceded them up the stairs, the girls and younger boys sitting in the women’s section, the older boys moving self-importantly to the men’s. She listened as the Rabbi intoned the
Megillah
, the scroll of the Book of Esther. Although the Hebrew remained unintelligible, the names of the protagonists were clear, the children greeting every mention of Haman with catcalls, whistles and rattles. She was startled by the football-terrace behaviour, but Rivka assured her that it was sanctioned by the Rabbis’ claim that ‘the sacred noise of children casts out the enemy’. While she might have wished that the sacred noise were quieter or else the references to Haman more sparing, Susannah relished the exuberance of the congregation which, at the end of the service, spilt over into the street. As they joined worshippers from other synagogues, it felt as if New Orleans had come to Hendon. Men linked arms and danced as spontaneously as they had burst into song. Two drivers stopped their cars, stepped into the middle of the road and embraced, one of them whirling the other in the air to a furious cacophony of hoots from the traffic stalled behind them. Susannah laughed to think how, a few weeks earlier, she would have been among the loudest hooters; now, she was leading the applause.

The cars finally began to move, only to face a further hazard when a giant Mickey Mouse and a miniature George Bush leapt from the pavement and flung sacks of flour over their windscreens. Having forced the irate drivers to stop, they solicited donations for charity. Susannah, afraid that they would provoke either an accident or an assault, was astonished by Rivka’s composure, not least when she identified the pranksters as Yosef and Tali.

The carnival spirit persisted when they returned to the house, where the Rabbi donned a curly blond wig that transformed him into Harpo Marx. Susannah felt disappointed that, with the exception of a pair of furry ears which made an unlikely bunny girl of the cantor’s wife, Eliezar’s pantomime moustache which neatly concealed the traces of her own, and Rebekkah’s pair of plastic lips, the women had yet again opted to observe rather than
participate
. She gazed into the study past the spindly Frankenstein, overweight Superman and toothless Tiger to Zvi, who towered above them in a headdress of lit candles and wax fruit. Even a judge less partial than herself would have felt bound to award him the prize.

As the evening progressed, friends and neighbours brought gifts of food at regular intervals. Rivka, meanwhile, sent Yosef and Tali to the nursing home to distribute the Purim baskets. ‘At last the old people will have someone they recognise.’

‘Do you mean George Bush or Mickey Mouse?’ Susannah asked.

‘Either. Both.’

Although she had long since learnt that a Lubavitch dinner was no
vicarage
tea party, Susannah was taken aback by the amount of alcohol consumed. Elderly men downed tumblers of whisky as recklessly as a pop group after its first hit. Snatching a moment alone with her in the hall, Zvi explained that, on Purim, excessive drinking was not just condoned but actively encouraged. The Rabbis held that a man should be so drunk that he could no longer
distinguish
between the words ‘blessed is Mordecai’ and ‘cursed is Haman’. While marvelling to discover another quirk in the religion to which she was pledged, Susannah prayed that no one – least of all, Zvi – would disgrace himself.

The carousing continued throughout the meal but, though the songs were more raucous than usual and the cantor attempted a headstand after the soup, the atmosphere remained jovial. Spurred on by her conversation with Rivka, Susannah allowed herself to study Zvi more openly, finding something fresh and endearing with every glance. First, there was the way he crumbled his bread with one hand and scattered the improvised croutons on his soup; then, the way he sat ramrod straight to protect the guttering candles as he linked arms with Tali for a toast; then, the way he sent a napkin swan sailing down the table to Rebekkah. Finally, most enchanting of all, there was the
tight-lipped
but tender smile that he flashed at her.