Disobedience

by Naomi Alderman

  Chapter Nine

  Between Me and the Children of Israel, it is a sign for ever that in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested.

  Exodus 31:17, recited on Friday night,

  at the commencement of the Sabbath

  It is ridiculous, of course, to speak of the Lord resting. Are we to believe that the Ein Sof—He who is without end—became tired from His labors? That His muscles were exhausted? We are not children, to believe such nonsense. What, then, does the Torah mean when it tells us that God rested on the seventh day? Our sages explain that it is not that the Lord rested on the seventh day, it is rather that on the seventh day he invented rest.

  It must be understood that we are not speaking here of sleep or food or time for tired muscles to knit. These are only forms of work. They exist to service work. We sleep, we eat, we relax our limbs and our minds in order that we may be nourished and fit for further work. And if all that we are is work, what are we? We work in order to gain food to swallow or a pillow to press our head into. And we eat and sleep in order to work. We are machines, doing nothing more than reproducing ourselves endlessly.

  But Shabbat shows us that this is not so. Shabbat is not a day of recreation, of pastimes, it is a day of abstention from creativity. It is a day of treading lightly upon the world. We do not use wheeled or motorized transport, we do not spend money, we do not speak on the telephone or use any electrical item. We do not carry outside our houses, even an object as small as a handkerchief, even in a pocket. We do not cook, we do not dig, we do not write, we do not weave, we do not sew, we do not draw. As far as possible, the world is not altered by our sojourn in it over Shabbat. Instead, we eat food we have already prepared, we talk, we sleep, we pray, we walk—simple, human things. And by these actions we resist our impulse to be constantly meddling with the world, altering it, making it conform more closely to our desires, as though our desires were all that mattered. Shabbat is simply to take our hands from the wheel and let it spin.

  And here we reach the heart of the matter. For if we cannot be distracted by our actions, our creation, we must, at last, come to ourselves. Man-and-woman were created at the moment before sunset on the sixth day. We should recall that each Friday, at sunset, is the anniversary of our birth. Shabbat draws us back to ourselves. Shabbat presents us with all we have achieved, but nothing more. Shabbat asks, quietly but insistently, who we are. And Shabbat will not relieve us if we should have no answer.

  Friday, Esti thought, hums like a frightened insect. It buzzes. Trapped inside the head, it flits from one side to the other, striking the skull, making a noise like a clock ticking. With each tick, it declares: these are the minutes until Shabbat. And now these. And now these.

  This hum, this ticking, is a light thing, a simple thing, but as demanding and as impossible to disobey as the rhythm of one’s own need for breath, or of the times and days of the menstrual cycle. Friday will not go unanswered. Friday may not be postponed. If that which is needful is not accomplished on Friday, no mercy will be shown. For the Sabbath cannot be delayed by even half a minute from its appointed time, and all who think to halt its arrival commit thereby a grave transgression.

  Esti rose at just after six a.m. The dawn had not yet whispered its morning words into the sky, but, as she looked out the window, she could see a few touches of a lighter and more tremulous blue beginning to caress it in the east. She washed her face briskly at the basin and stared out for a few moments at the insidious fingers of light creeping into the sky. It was Friday, and Friday would not wait. It was Friday, and at every minute from now until sunset, she would know what time it was. She checked the printed calendar on the wall. Sabbath would begin at 6:18 p.m. She dressed quickly, gathering up her hair into a loose bun, pulled on a beret, and tucked in the loose strands. She had things to do. Like Friday, she could not be detained.

  She ran through her mental list. There were clothes to be washed and ironed, the food to buy and cook, the rooms should be cleaned and ordered, the table laid, the time switches set, the urn filled, the hotplate prepared, and, and, was there anything else? Of course. The special errand. How long would it take? It was hard to know. The other things should be completed first. Then she could think further.

  For the next eight hours, she worked. It was the same work as every week, the same dishes to be prepared, the same food to be bought. There was an order to it, a calming pattern. She found that while she worked she did not worry. At the baker’s shop, she picked out three large plaited challot, glossy and warm. At the greengrocer’s, she chose fresh fruit and vegetables. She passed by a chemist’s shop, paused fractionally outside it, contemplating. Mrs. Salman, from synagogue, passed by on the far side of the street laden with butcher’s bags. Mrs. Salman noticed Esti, smiled, and, with some difficulty, raised a hand. Well. It could not be done here, then, the special errand. Not in Hendon. Esti walked on from the chemist’s.

  At the butcher’s, she selected some raw chicken livers. At home, she koshered them over an open flame, the blood dripping down, the smell distinctive as of singed hair or nails. She made soup, boiling the water in her large stockpot. Drops of condensation formed on the outside of the pot. She held the three chicken carcasses up to the light, admiring their tracery of veins and rosy muscle filaments. Their bones moved beneath the clinging remnants of flesh, in a fine articulated motion. She turned them over, considering their elements of life, and, suddenly decisive, dropped them, one by one, into the boiling water. They rose to the surface, the meat blinking from living pink to white, a sudden sharp aroma of soup causing her to swallow. And so it goes, she said to the chickens, and so it goes. From muscle and bone to soup. So it goes. And what are you, after all, but chickens? A life of feathers and squawking, what is that? She looked at the clock. 10:07 a.m.

  Toward the end of the morning, Dovid telephoned to say that he was leaving Manchester, that he expected to be home in four and a half hours. At some point, too, Esti became aware that Ronit was no longer in the house. Earlier in the week, she might have wondered where she’d gone or paused to reflect on her presence. On another day, she might have felt the same stomach-dropping despair, the same caught-breath fear as ever. But today was Friday.

  At last, early in the afternoon, Esti finished. The clothing was clean, the Shabbat outfits ironed, the house in order. In the oven, the chickens were almost roasted, though not quite brown enough. On the stove, the soup was merry, bubbling, and wakeful. The tzimmes, the liver, the kugels, the cakes, the gefilte, the potatoes, the vegetables were all as complete as they could be without spoiling. A few small things remained to be done, but they could be completed on her return. Her body spoke to her in a quiet, unrelenting voice. Today. It should be done today. She turned off the oven and the stove, took up her bag, and left for the station.

  The day was unseasonably warm and as she walked she began to sweat, a thin, unpleasant dampness sticking her skin to her clothes. The prickling sensations in her arms and legs were the thousand eyes of the people of Hendon. “Isn’t that Esti Kuperman?” “Where could she be going in such a hurry?” “And on a Friday afternoon!” There could only be one possible answer to the riddle. Where would a married woman be going at great speed only hours before Shabbat? They would know, they would all know. These were not friendly eyes, she realized that now. She could not trust them to keep her secrets, she could not trust them not to think. Esti tried to breathe slowly, speaking softly to the muscles of her thighs and calves, telling them to be easy, for there could be any number of reasons, no one, she murmured, would ever guess. Her legs would not listen to her. They sped on, faster and faster.

  At the station, she was confronted with the fact, bold and unanswerable, that she did not know where to go. It should be somewhere she would not meet anyone, somewhere no one would look at her and note: Esti Kuperman. But where in London could she be certain of that? She looked at her watch—3:20 p.m. Dovid would be home very soon. Shabbat was a
t 6:18 p.m. She did not have time for this uncertainty. The buzzing in her head was louder and more insistent, the knocking sound on the inside of her skull stating more firmly: ticktock, ticktock. She ran her eye along the map of the Northern Line. Where could she be certain? Which of these little unfolding buds? There. A point of intersection. Camden Town. She purchased her ticket from the impersonal machine, grateful for its simple questions: Where are you going? How many zones? Not: Why are you going? Not: For what?

  She counted again as she traveled. The rhythm of the journey was good for counting. She counted first these days, then those, then the extra ones. She counted again and again, and the total was always the same, and always wrong. She leaned her head against the cool glass partition, feeling tired, and a little faint. She closed her eyes and listened to the click-clack of the train, so like the ticktock in her own head. It was only as the doors were about to close that she noticed she had reached Camden Town. She leapt up and bolted through the door.

  Camden sweated. It was loud. It smelled. Esti stood outside the station simply looking, her bag clutched tight against her body. A thin young man, whose chest read SCREW THE PEOPLE, was leaning against the railing, eating a baked potato from a plastic container. He jabbed up every mouthful with his fork as though hoping to cause the potato pain. Without warning, he twisted his mouth, glared at his food, and threw it onto the floor. He walked away. The melted butter trickled onto the pavement, its scent rising. A small dog, dragged past by a woman teetering in pink sandals, stopped to lick the paving stones two or three times. The world spun. Esti wondered if she was about to faint. The shops and people began to merge into a distorted inner-ear judder. Everything became suddenly upside down, inside out. Bingle-mingle.

  Camden would not cease at 6:18 p.m., the streets would not become quiet, the people still. These people had not prepared for the Sabbath, they did not hear the sound of Friday in their skulls. The thought made her weak, a dizzying ache, a breath of compassion. She held on to the railing, breathing deeply. This would not do, she thought. She must restore order. She must continue to breathe. She looked at her watch—3:53 p.m. Two hours and twenty-five minutes left before Shabbat. The thought quieted her a little. Still gripping the railing, she looked about her. She glanced at the faces walking past, each one absorbed in its own confusion. Never to hear Friday, never to know it. It was as though they had never known love: both terrible and wonderful. She had considered them before, the people who did not know Friday. She wondered now if this was how Ronit felt in New York, without lines and demarcations, without order and sense, without anchor. A thing both to be feared and desired.

  She lifted her head and looked a little farther, searching for the right kind of shop, a chemist’s shop. Her heart pounded in her chest. She tried not to breathe too rapidly. There was one, on the opposite side of the road. She hurled herself toward it, racing between the angry cars. Things were cooler in the chemist’s shop, clearer. The people moved more slowly, spoke more quietly. Although she was surrounded by aisles of products, they remained in their lines and orders, there were small labels by which they could be identified. She felt calmed by the sense that all this had been intended. She began to search.

  She walked along each aisle, turning her head to the right and to the left. As she walked, she counted. She had been counting for two days now, adding and subtracting, figuring and refiguring. But perhaps she had been mistaken? How foolish she would feel, how absurd, if all this time she had simply counted incorrectly. She counted again. The numbers remained the same, mute and unanswerable. She walked on, past shampoos and conditioners, creams to remove hair and sprays to replace it, deodorants and perfumes, vitamins and minerals. She found the thing she was seeking just past the array of contraceptive products, the two sitting next to each other like an exhibit demonstrating the law of cause and effect.

  She turned the packet over in her hand. “Fastest, most accurate results” it proclaimed. “Recommended by doctors” and “Use from the first day your period is due.” She counted the days again. The days of bleeding, and the days of counting after bleeding, the day of mikvah, the days between mikvah and when Ronit arrived, the days since then. Twenty-nine days. And tomorrow it would be thirty. She had felt none of the signs, had experienced no pain. She knew it would not begin tomorrow. She held the thing in her hand and looked up and down the aisle to see if she was being watched, to see if anyone had noted her interest in this most private and holy of all areas.

  An elderly man with yellowed eyes was examining the toothbrushes, holding them to the light in turns, squinting as if to detect some esoteric flaw. Nearer to her, a young black woman, her hair braided into cornrows dotted at the ends with colored beads, was standing before the moisturizers. Both her arms were red and scaly, wrist to elbow. It looked painful. Esti felt another wave of fatigue break over her, veined-pink and roiling. Her eyes defocused and for a moment there were two women in front of her, not one, each of their cornrows swaying slightly. Esti leaned heavily against a shelf and dislodged two or three boxes, which clattered to the floor. The young woman looked at her and moved away. Esti clutched the thing in her hand, looked at it again. “Results in one minute,” it said. She looked at her watch—4:25 p.m. Friday muttered and growled. Less than two hours to go. Ticktock, ticktock, no time for this nonsense.

  There was a short queue at the checkout. The elderly man in front of her had laid out seven toothbrushes and was asking for the price of each one before he made his final selection. Behind her, an Indian woman, plump midriff deliciously exposed, rummaged through her handbag, clucking and sighing. She smiled at Esti. Esti smiled back. The elderly man decided not to purchase any toothbrush at all and moved away. Esti handed her item to the cashier. The Indian woman, peering over Esti’s shoulder, said, “Oh!”

  Esti turned. The woman was beaming. She placed a soft hand on Esti’s arm.

  “It is a blessing from God. You understand? A blessing from God.” She pointed upward, lifting her eyes to emphasize. Esti nodded. In her confusion, she gave too much money to the cashier, three five-pound notes. Some had to be handed back. She tried to move away, but the woman plucked at her sleeve.

  “Remember,” she said. “From God.”

  The time of the commencement of the Sabbath is known to the Almighty more precisely than any clock can declare it. In His infinite mind (if we may be permitted to speak of the contents of His mind) the sixth day becomes the seventh without fuss, without effort, the border between one and the next perfectly clear. The minds of man, however, do not admit of such ecstasies of understanding. For the Sabbath was created by the Lord; it is an object of the Divine, but a man is simply a man. And thus our sages, whose interest was ever in translating the Divine to a human tongue, instituted the eighteen minutes. For although the Sabbath begins precisely at the moment of sunset, the printed Sabbath times in calendars or newspapers in fact allow a margin of eighteen minutes before the setting of the sun. This knowledge is not to be used lightly. It is infinitely preferable and meritorious to commence the Sabbath at the printed time, and thus to avoid all doubt. But if one finds oneself without resource, that margin still remains. Eighteen minutes of grace before the start of the holy day.

  By the time Esti arrived home, only thirty-four minutes remained before the start of Shabbat. The small package in her handbag spoke of its reliable results available in only one minute. But the soup muttered coldly, with round syllables of fat on its surface. And the chickens, knowing their own incompleteness, ruffled nonexistent feathers, demanding a perfect brown to replace them. Dovid and Ronit had both returned, but Esti could not consider that now. She worked, warming the soup, roasting the chickens, glazing the potatoes, seasoning the cholent, icing the cake. Friday marked off the moments more and more clearly: ticktock, ticktock, ticktock. Slow and steady, neither aggrieved nor impatient, but inexorable as the tide. Ticktock. Ticktock.

  At three minutes before the printed time of Shabbat, the final items had been p
repared. She switched off the oven and the hob, tucked a strand of hair back into her hat, and looked about her with satisfaction. Two full meals were cooked, chickens and potatoes, glistening rice, cholent deliciously bubbling in its slow cooker, vegetables steamed, cakes baked and decorated, soup magnificently rich, fish clad in carrot scales. Dovid had left for synagogue; she heard the door slam behind him. Her candles were set out in the dining room. It was time to light. Was there anything she had forgotten? She swept her eyes across the kitchen, the dining room, the hallway. In the hall, in her handbag, a small voice squeaked. “Test at any time of day. Accuracy guaranteed.” Tick, said Friday, tock. It was time to light her candles. Shabbat was coming.

  Tick

  Esti ran upstairs to the bathroom, the package concealed in her sleeve. She looked at her watch. The eighteen minutes had begun. Locking the door, she examined the packaging again. One minute for a reliable result. There was time. She pulled open the packet.

  Tock

  The instructions were more confusing than she had anticipated. It took several minutes to read and comprehend them fully. The tip of the plastic stick should be immersed for five seconds only. She must time it, counting off the seconds, allowing no errors. She tore at the inner plastic wrapping.

  Tick

  She waited for the color to change. This, surely this, was the necessary emergency, the thing that cannot be postponed until after the Sabbath day. She looked at her watch. Thirteen minutes slid over to fourteen. She must leave time to light her candles. The moisture crept up, fiber by fiber, taking its own time. Was it even permissible to look at the thing after the Sabbath had begun? Surely it must be forbidden even to touch it, a device that changes color, an object with no purpose on the Sabbath. How long could she wait?