by Miryam Sivan
“What the . . .” Emanuel asked startled. “That was pretty impressive, Issie.”
“No, Emanuel.” Isabel walked to the window and held back tears. Thin horizontal sun bands penetrated the shutters. Slits of light in Birkenau’s huts. Slivers of dawn in a shed’s wooden walls. “I can’t, I . . .”
“Shh, shh.” He came over and hugged her from behind. She let him lead her back to bed. She let him undress her. She knew he was trying to be more exciting for her. To surprise her. But that’s not what she needed from him. She loved his steadiness, his dependability. She needed him to always love her while sparing her the roller coaster ride of his own emotions. For she knew he had them. She saw the love in his eyes towards her, towards his daughters, towards her children, and even towards Woody. And she knew he muted his lows. Molly said Emanuel was a prime example of a mature man. Even when he was buffeted to distant shores by passing emotion he held steady. He was anchored. Like his mathematics. He sought simplicity and elegance and most of all solutions. And, Molly would add, he was offering Isabel the chance to ride with him on this steady sea. Molly was right. She should climb on board. She should but didn’t know if she could make it last.
With a quick yank, Emanuel pulled her pants off. He was smiling broadly and watching her face. He wanted to please her. He wanted to be her playmate, her soulmate, her go-to-man. And she loved this man. She could not deny this but she didn’t want only him. She stared into his eyes. They were frisky. She could see how much he wanted to get into a role he thought would turn her on. Poor Emanuel, trying so hard and still managing to get it wrong. But she loved him and wanted him. Inside. She wanted the comfort of his strong body. Fuck Schine’s deadlines. Fuck the man instead.
Isabel wrapped her legs around Emanuel’s black pants. He let the Nazi armband fall to the floor and lowered himself to her. The pants’ rough material chafed her inner thighs. Emanuel moved slowly. Back and forth. Isabel gave way to his rhythm. He watched, waited for her to shift from first to second to the third gear of pleasure. Then he picked up the pace and repositioned her legs on his upper back and touched the place precisely where her orgasm began. He pushed and rubbed against it. When her wave launched he beat against her shore with sharp jabs. Rolling hips. Delight spread from her epicenter and rose to claim her entire body and clear her mind. A string connected the tip of Emanuel’s penis to the tip of her vagina. Love passed through the small space of air between their hovering lips. Isabel abandoned herself to joy and began to cry.
Emanuel always made sure she orgasmed first. Zakhi and Jiri did that, too. Sign of a man who appreciated a woman’s body and sexuality, Zakhi said. Isabel didn’t have a theory. She just knew that men who tended to their partner’s gratification first were irresistible. Men who came “wham bam thank you ma’am or maybe just wham bam,” as Martha Gellhorn described sex with Hemingway, were useless to women. No, worse, they were toxic.
Isabel held on to Emanuel. She drifted under his caresses in a cocoon of quiet. He kissed her collarbone and shoulders. She held tighter. Why not say yes to Emanuel, to this? After a few minutes Emanuel moved out of the embrace. Isabel watched him undress. He took off each item of clothing and folded it neatly on the back of the chair and walked back to the bed. Isabel didn’t notice until he stood before her that the riding crop remained in his hand. He held it out. Level with his keen penis.
“Take the crop.”
Isabel didn’t want to. She would touch his body instead.
“Please,” he said quietly.
She took it reluctantly. Emanuel lay down on his stomach.
“I’m not going to hit you with this thing.”
He laughed. Turned on his back to face her. “Put the black shirt on now. And the boots.” Isabel didn’t move. “Now,” he commanded.
Maybe Emanuel wanted this scene also for himself. He was not a child of a survivor but a nephew of many. His maternal grandparents were Zionists and left Poland in the mid-30s with their three youngest. All the other children remained in Europe. Emanuel’s mother lost five siblings and ten nieces and nephews. For her the war was an open wound. And if for the mother, then for the child as well.
The black shirt hung down past Isabel’s thighs. The boots came up past her knees. Walking was difficult. Only a thin belt of naked leg showed. She stood over Emanuel menacingly. If he wanted a spectacle, he would get one. She tapped his hip lightly with the crop. “Let’s see your cock’s reaction to the beating you’re about to get.”
A small smile opened on Emanuel’s face. Thwack. Isabel brought the riding crop down hard by his head. He jumped. “I forgot you’re trained in martial arts, my dear. Try not to leave marks.”
“Quiet Jew.” She brought the crop down again, centimeters from his thigh. Emanuel flinched involuntarily. She trailed the crop along his body, from his Adam’s apple down the middle of his chest past his navel. There it rested. Then down through his pubic hair to his penis. She caressed his penis with the crop. Up one side, down another, and laid it horizontally at the base of the shaft above his balls. Pressing down lightly on his scrotum she took him into her mouth. Emanuel moaned. She pressed the crop down a little harder. It was uncomfortable and wonderful for him at the same time. He moaned louder. Abruptly she pulled away. “Stop making noise. Jude.” Isabel brought the crop down by his head.
“Oh,” he groaned with interrupted pleasure, fear, and delight.
She bent low towards the floor, picked up the arm band, and put it on. Her arm with a Nazi swastika went up and down, up and down. Three four times and the riding crop cracking against the bed. Not that close to Emanuel. Not so far away either. Her arm mesmerized her. Disembodied. Homeless. Possessed of power. Liable to abuse. A perpetrator. After so many years living inside victims’ voices, she was a perpetrator. Seeing the situation from the other half of the universe.
And suddenly, like a thunderclap in a cartoon, eureka, a totally intuitive moment, Isabel understood Molly’s antipathy to Mati. Limbs abusing power. Sex used as a weapon. What Emanuel was teasing her with now. What she was teasing back. What they felt titillated by, but what she really couldn’t do. For them it was just play. A few bed whacks and shudders.
But Molly. Molly was touched against her will. Isabel didn’t know how she knew but she was certain she was right and felt sick. She started to move away from the bed, stricken by the thought of Molly being hurt, but Emanuel took her arms and pulled her down to the bed. He held her arms flat against his chest, her face right on his groin. Isabel suppressed a wave of nausea but she knew the script and had to do right by the Jew. She took Emanuel’s delirious cock in her mouth, pressed her tongue around the head that pushed up and orgasmed. She swallowed his thin semen. Faint, Isabel wriggled out of Emanuel’s hold. In the bathroom she rinsed her face and chest and drank large gulps of water. Her body shook with grief. Emanuel found her sobbing over the sink.
“Come here.” He held out his arms and hugged her. Kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I just thought . . .”
“I know. It’s okay,” Isabel muffled into his chest, “According to Hitler, anti-Semitism was a legal form of pornography. Even he admitted anti-Semitism was a kind of perversion.”
“Shh, Isabel, shh.”
“An allowance for fetish.”
“Shh.” Emanuel stroked her back. Ran his hands along her buttocks. Held her closer and brought her under the hot water of the shower. He soaped her body carefully from crown to toes. The water washed over her. Amniotic. Hypnotic. A balm for a fretful soul.
“I love you.” Emanuel paused at the front door and kissed her lightly on the mouth. Time for good-bye. For work. He to teach at the university, she to bully sentences at her desk.
Alone by her computer Isabel stared out the window. A patch of migrating birds passed. She wondered about pornography. Was crawling into the skins of other people a form of pornography? Was this what Suri obje
cted to? Was her experiencing the Holocaust from the inside a kind of degeneracy? Was her attachment to Zakhi and Jiri and who knows who else might pop up on the horizon also perverse or maybe just self-destructive? Isabel loved Emanuel but she didn’t want to live with him. It felt burdensome. Treacherous even. Alone was better. Alone was reliable. Safe. Fast moving. Untethered. It was not lonely nor wanting. Alone was one small bag, her child and dog, and she was off.
✶
Isabel opened Jaim Benjamin’s file on her desktop and read sentences from the day before. Immediately she knew she would have a hard time penetrating the story. She couldn’t think clearly. Her mind was like a spin art flinging thoughts everywhere. She called Molly.
“I’m coming over.”
They sat together on a porch swing under Molly’s birch tree.
“I want to ask you a question. You don’t need to answer.”
“Okay.”
“Your reaction to Mati. Why so strong?”
“Mati of the illegal immoral probing fingers?”
“Yes.”
Above them silver leaves rustled in the wind like cards being shuffled.
“Your relationship to your body, to sex is different than mine,” Molly said as they pushed back and forth on the swing.
“But why so judgmental?”
She didn’t answer.
“Molly, something happened, right?” Isabel stopped pushing at the ground. She looked at her best friend, wondering about the therapist who wouldn’t disclose trauma. The shoemaker going barefoot again.
“I . . .” Molly looked down at the grass. Her spine curled. Her face crumbled.
“Forget it, you don’t have to tell me anything. I’m sorry for being so nosy. You know how I like to have answers . . .”
“’Cause Suri never talks . . .”
“Yes, but it’s fine, really. Let’s drop it.” Isabel took Molly’s hand. She couldn’t stand hurting her. Why press her to speak when she preferred to remain cloistered. Isabel’s default mode, the one learned early on with Suri, kicked in. Her desire to know easily eclipsed by the need to protect.
“Everyone has their battles,” Molly said. “And I think you have battle fatigue. I am truly concerned about you.”
“I’m not fighting. I’m scribing.”
“Fighting your own demons.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Yes. You’re right.” Molly got off the swing and stood with her back against the wide white trunk of the tree. She looked at Isabel. “One evening, in Dublin, it was still early, still light, I was on my way home from visiting a friend.” She stretched her arms up toward the canopy of leaves. “I love this tree.” She looked up at it and looked back down at Isabel. “I was grabbed from behind and dragged to a construction site. A young man, about my age I guess, raped and beat me with a piece of wood. He hit me so much and so hard I thought I was going to die.” Her voice tapered off.
“Oh Molly.” Isabel left the swing and stood next to her. She took Molly’s hand.
“At the hospital I had to have a tetanus shot. So many nails in the wood.” Molly placed her hand on top of Isabel’s who placed hers on top of Molly’s. A stack of hands. A rujumb. “I was seventeen years old and virgin.”
“Who have you told?”
“Only Noam. And my mother.”
“Thirty years and only your husband and mother know?”
“And now you.”
“And now me.”
Isabel didn’t tell Molly that she had this intuitive flash after her strange sex with Emanuel. The Nazi costume brought it out. Molly would laugh at Isabel’s assumption of associative serendipitous insight, having no tolerance for mysticism or for anything that smacked of the recent vogue in spiritualism. She worked strictly from her brain. From reason. An Irish Litvak.
“It took years of love and patience, but Noam helped me feel good about my body and sex. Lots of love and patience. Sorry for being so mean about Mati. Guess I’m still a bit queasy.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Isabel’s stomach wound up in knots.
“Are you going to ask Suri?”
“I’ve been asking Suri for decades.”
“Yes, but specifically.”
“Specifically?”
“About being raped.”
“You think?” How had Isabel had never considered that?
“May explain her silence. Her stubbornness. Who knows what she had to do to keep her little sisters alive in Siberia.”
The shame. The guilt. The angst of sexual trauma. Of course.
“When I’m in New York I’ll ask.”
“Ask without expectations.”
“It will be good for her to talk about it.”
“Don’t decide what’s good for her. Open the door. Don’t force her through.” Molly looked down at her watch. “My two o’clock’s about to arrive.” They peeled one layer of hand off the other and hugged each other tightly. “Flow with Suri, Isabel. Words in a stream encourage more.”
Isabel called Zakhi when she got home. He was still not taking calls. Three days earlier he sent her a text message that he was in mourning and said he’d call when the seven days of shiva were up. At her desk Isabel went straight to Jaim Benjamin’s manuscript. Hard to believe but there were only twenty or so pages to go. Close enough to feel the end. Smell it. Surf her way into it. She dialed Zakhi again. The seven days were over and he hadn’t called. But she needed to talk to him. Knowing he might be only minutes away drove her crazy.
“Enough.” Isabel leaped up and kicked at a pile of papers. Woody looked up at her, thinking ‘What now?’ she assumed. She took out her phone as if it were a gun with a loaded cylinder. She pressed Zakhi’s number again and listened to the ring ring ring ring ring. “I said enough,” she yelled into the room. “Enough.” She cried. She missed Zakhi. She missed Suri. She wanted Yael to be home. She wished Lia were here to comfort her. She even missed Alon. And then she realized that she wanted Emanuel. He was the one who held her the best, the most consistently, the hug with the most promise of all. The one who always took care of her. Isabel scooped up Woody in her arms and cried some more. He was accustomed to his mother’s crazy ways and waited for it to be over. She kissed Woody on the head and set him back down on the floor.
“Thank you, boy.”
He laid down again. This time he faced her, to keep an eye on her. No more surprises. She laughed to herself and faced the screen. Moved the mouse. Text showed up.
When the war was declared over, Jaim Benjamin came down from the mountains. He returned to Florina. Just one of two Jews who did. Jaim’s neighbors welcomed him with food, with clothing, but they were wary. Strangers had moved into the Benjamin house. Jaim went into his bedroom and slept for days. On Sunday morning, when the entire village went to church, including the family that occupied his home, he went into the yard. Under a particular olive tree his father had buried some money, his tefillin, and jewelry. By the time the family returned for lunch, Jaim was gone.
Isabel’s phone rang.
“Zakhi.”
“Told you I’d resurrect after seven days.”
“I’m so sorry about your brother.”
“Yeah, it’s rough. Luckily he only has three children. They had fertility issues. Imagine if he left a wife and twelve behind.”
“Zakhi.”
“What’s up?”
“Finally getting some serious mileage on these pages. End’s in sight.”
“You should sound happier than you do.”
She recounted her conversation with Molly.
He sighed. “The Baal Shem Tov said that light—אור—and secret—רז—each add up to 207.”
“A secret revealed brings light into the world?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
They were quiet.
<
br /> “Any free time today?”
“Winkler house in ten?” Isabel closed Jaim Benjamin’s file and stepped away from the desk.
“I’m already here. Make it five.”
“I’m on it.”
Isabel drove and thought of Zakhi’s revealed secret. The world of the ultra-Orthodox that spawned, rejected, and re-embraced him in mourning. She drove quickly for she didn’t have much time before Uri came home from school.
The Arts
1
It was night. The sky and the airplane cabin were dark. Yesterday Molly told Isabel that sometimes people did not expect others to act on their ultimatums. Declaring them out loud made their expectations clearer—to themselves and to others. It clarified limits. Isabel didn’t believe Emanuel capable of such shallowness. If he said their relationship would be over if they didn’t move in together, he meant it. Her heart stung at the thought of losing him though. She loved his soft humor. His intelligent disciplined mind. His handsome face and grey curls. His excellent coffee. The way he tickled her inner arm at the movies. She enjoyed their love making. Sweetness and comfort moved between them as they folded into one another. He inside of her. She inside of him. Skin, lips, tongues. It was not the wild unabridged passion she had with Zakhi. Or the soul-freeing sex she felt with Jiri. It was lovely and reliable and safe. But could she give up other men for it? If orgasms were a little death, Isabel pulled the thin airline blanket to her chin, then monogamy was somnambulism. The extremes of ardor corralled to a parve middle ground where the field shifted from meritocracy to mediocrity. From revelation to predictability. Orgasms on an assembly line. She despaired at this shut-off valve and feared her own inevitable mutiny.
Emanuel had driven her to the Haifa train station. The riding crop scene settled over them like a yellow dust. Every movement left a trace. Fortunately Emanuel had gone to a conference in London immediately after that morning and Isabel became super busy prepping for this trip. But now, after ten days of strained silence, he wanted to give and she was willing to accept this peace offering. More than that. She wanted to receive. She wanted to love and be loved by him.