The Enemy of the Good (21 page)

‘I feel like an astronaut on a space-walk,’ she whispered to Carla. ‘I’m seeing the world in a whole new light.’

She met Carla again on Monday evening to choose a dress that would fulfil both the modesty requirements of long sleeves and a high neckline and her girlhood dreams of wafting down the aisle in a cloud of satin and lace. Surfing the Net, they found the perfect design in a sixteenth-century French court gown with a pearl-encrusted cap. Carla put her in touch with a dressmaker friend who promised perfection within a month. Susannah explained, with regret, that she would have to modify the cap. She was forbidden to wear any jewellery to show that Zvi would be marrying her solely for herself.

The wedding was to follow strict Lubavitch principles, although the Rabbi had made one concession by allowing them to hold it in a Docklands hotel rather than Brent Town Hall. They had hired a caterer to kosher the kitchen. ‘It’s a pity,’ Susannah said sourly, ‘that we can’t kosher some of the guests.’

‘I’ve spoken to Clement,’ Carla replied, picking up the allusion. ‘I’m afraid he won’t relent until you show – his words, not mine – some respect for his sexuality.’

‘How about he shows some respect for my religion?’

‘One of you has to make the first move.’

‘Yes, him,’ Susannah said. Then, not wanting to offend her staunchest ally, she questioned her on the state of play with Curtis.

‘I wish I knew,’ she replied. ‘It’s hard to sustain a relationship that’s already spanned several lifetimes.’

‘How can you be so certain?’

‘I’m not. He is. He took a course in Neuro Linguistic Programming to investigate his childhood traumas. After a while he started to suffer from a succession of pains for which neither he nor the doctors could find any
physical
cause and which the NLP therapist insisted weren’t linked to any
emotional
scars. So he started regression therapy and unearthed several past lives: a man who loved women; a woman who loved women; a child who was killed in a ritual sacrifice. In one of the most violent, he was a mercenary captain who was crushed to death by his men. It seems that his current chest pains stem from that.’

‘Is there no way to break the pattern?’ Susannah asked, struggling to
suppress
her incredulity.

‘Only time,’ Carla said. ‘Which is ironic when you come to think of it. Meanwhile, he’s left with a crippling burden of guilt that isn’t linked to his current life but to his mercenary past. All his old friends have lost patience. They claim he’s dreamt it up in a bid to make himself more interesting. He says I’m the only one who takes him seriously. Which, to tell the truth, can be a little wearing. But you understand, don’t you, from your work on the Kabbalah?’

‘I’ve barely scratched the surface,’ she replied evasively.

‘According to Curtis, the one thing all these incarnations have in common is a passionate love affair that culminated in the lover’s death. He’s terrified the same thing’s going to happen to me.’

Susannah’s outlook on life had changed so profoundly in the past six months that she was reluctant to urge caution on anyone. What Carla needed was someone to guide her through the labyrinth of her emotions: a Buddhist counterpart to Rivka. The thought of her mentor made her long for Tuesday night and the next in their series of preparatory talks on marriage. For once she didn’t regret the requirement on Zvi to take a separate course with the Rabbi, since it enabled them to talk with a frankness that would have been impossible in mixed company.

‘Marriage,’ Rivka said, ‘stands at the very heart of Judaism. I can’t claim to be an expert but, from what I understand, Christians see it as a sort of
consolation
prize for those too weak to choose a life of chastity.’

‘“Such persons as have not the gift of continency.”’

‘What?’

‘That’s the Prayer Book phrase. My brothers and I used to laugh.’

‘I’m not surprised. With us, it’s the opposite. Marriage is both the source of new life and the way for men and women to transcend their bodies and touch the divine.’

‘Quite a tall order.’

‘Don’t worry, help is at hand. Help is always at hand in the Torah. You know of course about the ritual of Mikvah?’

‘I know that Zvi goes every morning.’

‘That’s different. For men it’s a spiritual discipline, a preparation for prayer. A woman goes once a month at the end of her cycle. For the five days she bleeds and a whole week after, she’s held to be
niddah
. She’s forbidden to have any contact with her husband… and I don’t just mean in bed. She mustn’t so much as pass him a cup of tea. Then at the end of twelve days she immerses herself in the mikvah and they can resume relations. You look worried? Is there something you don’t understand?’

‘No, nothing… Just I suppose I’m enough of my mother’s daughter to resent any suggestion that menstrual blood is unclean.’

‘Believe me, immersion has nothing – nothing whatsoever – to do with hygiene. The woman who enters the mikvah purifies her union with her husband, and her husband too, as much as she does herself.’

On the eve of her wedding, Susannah paid her first visit to the mikvah. As Rivka led her to a door which, the tarnished mezuzah apart, was
indistinguishable
from its neighbours, she felt a pang of disappointment that such a solemn ritual should take place in such a nondescript setting. They rang the bell, to be admitted to an airy waiting room, furnished with armchairs, a glass table and a smiling portrait of the Rebbe. Miriam, the attendant, greeted them warmly and, after some preliminary paperwork, showed Susannah to a changing room which was so well appointed that she mistook it for the mikvah itself. ‘It’s an easy mistake,’ Miriam said graciously, as she pointed to the various facilities and handed her a checklist to ensure that she cleaned her teeth, trimmed her nails, removed her make-up and combed her hair. ‘Spend as long as you like,’ she said on leaving. Susannah took her at her word, washing, scrubbing,
swabbing
, brushing and tweezing, so that there would be no residue of her former life to stand between herself and God.

After putting on the robe and slippers provided and winding a towel around her dripping hair, she rang for Miriam who led her to a small, dimly lit pool, which was surrounded by potted plants. She handed her the robe and towel, took a second shower and slowly descended the steps. Bracing herself for a spurt of cold, she was delighted by the gentle warmth of the water lapping her legs. She crouched until she was completely covered. When she emerged, Miriam placed a piece of cloth on her forehead and asked her to repeat the prayer: ‘Blessed Are You, King of the Universe who has made us holy with your commandments and commanded us regarding immersion.’ As she stepped back into the water, she thought of the millions of women who had preceded her: the Biblical matriarchs: Sarah; Rebecca; Rachel; Esther; as well as her own ancestors in the shtetls and ghettos of Eastern Europe. She felt reconnected to her history, her family and her soul. She had a new sense of herself as both a woman and a Jew. She longed to stay submerged forever, freed from the temporal world, yet, even as she climbed out and into the robe Miriam held open, she knew that her sense of loss was only temporary for she would be back within less than a month.

Feeling at once empowered and humbled, she returned to the waiting room.

‘I see I’ve no need to ask how it went,’ Rivka said.

‘I’m so blessed, Rivka. At last I can appreciate what the Rabbi taught us in the Kabbalah class: “We’re not human beings having spiritual experiences, but spiritual beings having human experiences.”’ Without a trace of
self-consciousness
, she began to sob.

‘God be thanked, my dear Susannah.’

‘Shoana. Do you think you could call me Shoana? From now on I’d like to be known by my Hebrew name.’

She stayed the night at the Rabbi’s. To her surprise, she slept like a child, waking at seven to spend the morning fasting and reading psalms. At noon Rivka came upstairs to help her dress, her practised calm as mother to six brides guiding her safely through the thicket of petticoats and tangle of lacing. They pinched and pinned and tied until, the transformation complete, she gazed at herself in the cheval glass, swathed in white from beaded cap to embroidered train, and felt both protected and pure.

At two thirty they drove in scorching heat to the hotel, where Rivka escorted her into a vast lounge, partitioned by a wooden screen, and up to a regal white chair festooned with flowers fit for a May Queen. She greeted her guests: her mother and Etta, who were seated respectively on her right and left; Carla; her aunt Helena and cousins Alice and Sophie; Karen, who had dyed her green tips pink in honour of the occasion; Rachel; Layah; Rebekkah; Eliezar; and a large contingent from the Hendon congregation. She had decided against asking any of her old friends, afraid to let her happiness be tainted by their scepticism or, worse, their scorn. It was hard enough to see her mother, denied any official role, adopting a professional one, quizzing Rivka about the Lubavitch as though they were an endangered tribe.

The women’s chatter was tantalisingly underscored by the bass notes
filtering
through the partition. Shoana’s hopes soared as she was sure that she recognised Clement, only to be dashed by the unequivocal sound of Yiddish. She felt a surge of anger, as much at her own folly as his stubbornness. He had resisted all her parents’ and Carla’s efforts at peacemaking, claiming that she wanted him to deny his identity, when she had simply asked him not to flaunt it. Just when the sense of loss grew overwhelming, Zvi’s gravelly voice rang out to rescue her. To judge by the silence that greeted it, he was giving some kind of speech. As he drew to a close, the men broke into a plangent melody which, after fading from earshot, re-emerged when several of them, carrying candles, accompanied Zvi to her door. He headed straight for her, the mixture of joy and resolution on his face making him look more
handsome
than ever. She caught his gaze and was seized by a sense of such
rightness
in the world that she feared she would faint. Without saying a word, he took the heavy veil from Rivka, placed it over her head and walked out. To her relief, nobody tried to talk to her and she sat in a dream waiting for the call to the
chupah
.

Ten minutes later she made her way into the garden, finding to her dismay that the
chupah
, a blue velvet canopy with golden fringes and stout
wrought-iron
poles, had been set up in full view of the Docklands Light Railway. All her misgivings vanished, however, as she walked towards it, escorted by Rivka, her mother and Etta. Zvi, who had exchanged his charcoal grey coat for a plain white
kittel
, was waiting for her with his father and Rabbi Zaimen, an old army friend, who had flown in from Sydney to officiate. As the women approached, Zvi stepped into the
chupah
and stood next to the table. Shoana,
accompanied
by her mother, his parents, the Rabbi and Rivka, circled him slowly seven times. After two or three orbits she lost count and relied on the Rabbi to guide her. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed her father who, as a non-Jew, was not permitted to take part. He looked drawn, and she wondered whether her defection had hurt him more than he cared to admit.

She entered the
chupah
and Rabbi Zaimen began the service, his broad vowels in marked contrast to the guttural accents around him. He recited two blessings and handed them a cup of wine, whereupon Rivka moved forward to lift her veil. Zvi placed the ring on her finger and declared in a Hebrew she knew by heart: ‘Behold, you are betrothed to me according to the laws of Moses and Israel,’ after which Rabbi Zaimen read the 2,000-year-old marriage contract in Aramaic. She stood in a trance, unperturbed by her failure to follow a word. The reading over, Rabbi Zaimen stepped out of the
chupah
and gave the contract to her father who, startled by his sudden inclusion in the ceremony, held it like the report of a clerical scandal he was anxious to forget. Once again Rabbi Zaimen handed her the cup and, as she raised it to her lips, seven men from the Chabad House each spoke a blessing. Zvi then took a glass from the table, placed it on the ground and stamped. The garden resounded with applause and shouts of
Mazel Tov
. She realised with a start that she was married. She had the man she loved by her side and the promise of his children ahead of her. She had a faith to give her life meaning. Her joy was complete.

Their parents, together with the Rabbi and Rivka, led them back inside the hotel to a small room where they could break their fast with a snack of tea and cakes. Confounding her fears, the elders quickly withdrew, granting them their first ever taste of privacy. As she sat beside Zvi, no longer afraid to betray him by an inadvertent touch or herself by an illicit one, she gave thanks for the months of restraint that made the present moment so potent. She smiled at him, but his ardent expression caused her an unaccustomed rush of shyness and she longed for the safety of the veil. All such thoughts – all thoughts of any sort – were swept aside when he leant forward and pressed his lips against hers. She avidly responded and they devoured each other, breathing the air from each other’s lungs… the spirit from each other’s souls. Even the beard that had filled her with such alarm turned out to be as soft as one of her
grandmother’s
stoles.

He cupped her breasts in his hands, sending a tremor down her spine, and moved to unfasten her bodice, only to be thwarted by the intricate lacing. She wanted to help but he held her so close that she was unable to free her arm.

‘Later,’ he whispered, as he diverted his attention to her skirt, hitching up her petticoats and sliding his hand up her thigh. Her whole body melted as he slid his fingers into her pants and on to her already moist sex.

‘Now,’ she whispered, seeking to reciprocate, but her efforts were frustrated by the voluminous
kittel
. For one horrible moment it felt like trying to undo a shroud. Just when she was about to despair, he slipped a finger inside her and her mind went blank.