Disobedience

by Naomi Alderman

  “No, no, Ronit. I will accompany you to the airport. I will watch you check in your luggage. I will see you go through passport control. And as you do, I will give you this bag. Not before.”

  He shook his head again, chuckling slightly.

  The urge to punch him in the face welled up in me again. I could see it. His nose bent crooked, blood gushing down his chin, dribbling onto his yellow silk tie. I held on to that image, pure and clear, as he locked the front door behind us, jangling his bunch of keys in my face when he was finished.

  Dovid and Esti conspired over the washing-up that night, as if I had already gone, laughing little, meaningful laughs, flicking foam at each other. I sat in the other room, trying to read my newspaper. And I thought: I am taking something home with me. I’m not leaving with nothing.

  So the next morning, Thursday, I did an evil thing. Dovid left early for a meeting of the synagogue board. I remember those meetings: my father used to attend them. Four hours at least of old men expressing the same point several times very slowly. I had time. Esti had school in the afternoon but not the morning. She and I were alone in the house, but there was no fear in her. She had been more relaxed, more whole, since Dovid’s return. That was best; it would make everything easier.

  I walked to the shops. I understood my own intentions. I looked for exactly the right item. No near misses would do. I felt the guilt strike my face with heat when I asked for what I wanted and a voice in my head said she is not for you, this one.

  And I said I thought I told you to shut up. I thought I killed you with chocolate cake and prawn sandwiches.

  And the voice said no.

  And I said fine, talk all you like. I’m not listening.

  You are doing wrong, said nothing and no one.

  Oh, what do you know? She’s gay, any fool can see it. She fancies women. If you’re so bothered by that, why didn’t you make her straight?

  There are more kinds of belonging than you know, Ronit, my joy. The world is not so easily categorized as you might prefer. And you are trying to steal that which you do not even desire.

  Oh, what do you know about desire? That, at least, is our area, not yours. And what do you mean, steal? I found her first.

  Childish games, my dear one. You are more than this.

  And I said I will stoop to whatever I like, because I don’t have to listen to you anymore. I have learned to disobey.

  And the voice said other things, but my heart was hardened to them.

  I crept into the house. I listened. Deep, penetrating silence. I could almost hear the motes of dust in the hallway softly settling on the dried flower arrangement, the pile of letters, the scuffed shoes lined up against the wall. Where would she be? A noise from the kitchen, a glass being put down. Of course. I turned the door handle. There she was, at the sink, staring into the garden, one arm wrapped around her waist, her hair in a collapsing bun, soft tendrils at her neck. I watched her for a moment. It’s funny, but I’d forgotten that she was beautiful. There was a sensuousness to her, a grace in the angle of her jaw and the curve of her breast. I felt it then. I wanted what I had decided. Well, that’s always been my way.

  I walked over to her. She was absorbed in the view, twisting her hair around her fingers, thinking. I looked at the garden for a few seconds. The day was damp, mist curling through the trees, droplets clinging to the leaves. Esti was warm and slow-breathing next to me. I wanted, suddenly, to embrace her, to circle her waist with my arm, to gather the folds of her dress in my hands, to explore her again, as I used to. I ran my thumb slowly down her spine, from the nape of her neck to the curve of her buttocks. She turned around, not startled or surprised, but smiling. I let my hand rest on her waist and, with the other, offered her my gift.

  “Here. For you. Hydrangeas.”

  Chapter Ten

  It is a vitally important commandment always to be happy.

  Chasidic saying

  How is it possible always to be happy? Does not King Solomon tell us that there is a time for weeping and a time for laughter? Should we attend at a house of mourning, show our beaming faces to the bereaved, and declare, “Be happy”? Such behavior should be far from us. What, then, is the meaning of the commandment to be always happy?

  To answer this question, it is necessary first to understand the nature of human happiness. Happiness is not the same as comfort; it is not necessarily to be found in ease, in luxury and plenty. Ease, luxury, and plenty are not shameful, but they are not happiness. Too much comfort can, in fact, cause weakening of the body, depression of the spirit, and despair of the soul. We human beings, like the Lord Almighty Who created us, yearn to build. Our happiness, in this world at least, is to be found in creation.

  And when we are creating, any fleeting pain becomes not only irrelevant, but actually joyful. An example. One who walks by mistake into a birthing room might think, at first glance, that he has entered a torture chamber. The room is covered with blood. At the center, a woman is screaming in agony while attendants look on. The scene is medieval in its cruelty. And yet. Were we to ask this woman, in the instant at which the pain is most extreme, whether she is unhappy, we would be met with incomprehension. She may be worried, exhausted, experiencing physical agony, but unhappy? Absurd. This is the happiest day of her life. Because that which she has built, that which she has created in her inmost self, is about to burst forth.

  Happiness is not a sensation of ease and comfort. Happiness is the deeper satisfaction we find when we create: when we construct a physical object, or compose a work of art, or raise a child. We experience happiness when we have touched the world and left it different, according to our will. We experience the greatest happiness when we have touched the world and left it better, according to the Will of the Almighty.

  And though the work itself may be on occasion enjoyable, certain works can only be accomplished through struggle. Thus it is that happiness often resides where we find pain. And the greatest agony often presages the greatest triumph.

  Red. It had begun as a film of red, a passage of circles surrounding and rebounding. The red was in the circles of his eyes, in the roundness of his head, singing through his ears like a train, around and around, its curve allowing no purchase. It was a vector of destruction, a soft and unfortunate muffling, concealing its true identity.

  When he woke, it was barely anything. A less experienced man might have disregarded it. He imagined himself as a guide, taking tourists around his head. “You see this,” he said, indicating the swirling circles of gentle red gathering on the horizon. “Doesn’t look like much, does it? But in an hour or two, mark my words, there’ll be a raging storm here.” The tourists gasped, bewilderment mixing with skepticism, gazed fearfully at the far-off clouds, and walked to shelter. Far away, red gathered.

  Dovid wondered sometimes if the headaches were always there, at the edges. If, like weather, they never really went away, only became subtler, less demanding. Even while feeling quite well, if he took his thoughts around his head he could find the shadow of one cooling its heels in his temples or the bridge of his nose. Sometimes, when a headache had shrunk him so that he could only gaze fixedly at a single tiny object—a smooth stone, or the rubber on the end of a pencil—he wondered what it was doing with all the room it had made, whether some secret process was taking place in the fractured other segments of himself. Perhaps it was he himself who did these things. Often, at the times of greatest agony, Dovid had the disconcerting feeling that some element of his mind was observing his discomfort, noting it down and commenting, “Yes, this is interesting.”

  “Dovid, what are you doing?” asked Kirschbaum, the secretary, sharply. Kirschbaum was sharp, from the point of his nose to the crisp corners of his shirts and the glinting buttons of his jacket. Dovid’s eyes hurt to look at him, but he supposed he could not go on indefinitely staring at the rubber end of his pencil, absorbing its comforting and insightful roundness. He raised his head, allowing a few circles of red to slide
down into his neck. The boardroom was paneled in wood and furnished in leather. He rested his gaze on the blond panels just above Kirschbaum’s head and strove to make a remark. He said:

  “Hmmm?”

  “On the morning of the hesped, Dovid, what are you doing?”

  Dovid wondered if it was time to lower his head yet. The red circles invaded his eyes, tiny and clustering. They chattered there, among themselves, and every time he tried to look at them, they moved away, remaining forever at the edge of his vision. He knew this was a very bad sign indeed. He explained the matter to his imaginary brain-tourists, gratified by their cowering and shivering. He wondered whether he himself ought to be cowering somewhere. Home. Bed. Sleep. Yes. No. He could not return home. It was vital to be here, to listen to all that was being said, to understand it all. It was vital because something was happening. Something he did not want, something out of his control. Red beads rolled and tumbled inside the dome of his skull, cutting off lines of enquiry.

  “Now, now, Kirschbaum,” said Hartog. “Dovid doesn’t need to do anything. Just arrive like any other guest, Dovid. That’s best.”

  Hartog sounded concerned. The red circles, jostling one another, began to tumble out of Dovid’s ears onto the table. He wondered why the other board members couldn’t see them, then realized that, of course, they vanished once they left his body.

  It had all begun so much better than this.

  The morning had been clear, insightful, and sharp. It was often that way on red days. The beginning of red, a transparent, crystalline pink, manufactured the world in perfect order. The air saluted. A slight hum behind his eyes assured him that all was well. He knew better than to believe it.

  In bed, before rising, he made his calculations. His wife was curled alongside him, the two beds pushed together to make one, although he was sure—certain, in fact—that the time for this had passed. Her nightgown was rucked up, swirled between her thighs. He buried his face in her shoulder, inhaling her biscuity fragrance. She stirred, sighed, and settled back into sleep. He put his arm around her waist. Nothing more, the decisive pink made apparent. Nothing more than this was possible, but this, itself, was something.

  The beds had been pushed together when he returned from Manchester, a large sheet spread over them, making them one again. He had stood, staring at the beds for several minutes, wondering if he ought to comment or if it would be better to say nothing. He could not remember when they had last slept together in one bed; perhaps their first year of marriage? Yes, it might have been then. He decided to say nothing. She also said nothing. It was, Dovid reflected, best. Words would only have complicated this simple thing.

  Nonetheless, he found a perilous joy in those next few days. There was a sweetness in allowing his hand to brush against her back or shoulder while they lay in bed. On the pink morning, he found that she had rolled near to him in her sleep, that she was curled like a mouse facing him, that her hair touched his arm. She was close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body in the nest they had made. He looked into her face and smelled her breath. Its scent was warm bread. It had been a long time.

  He remembered an incident from their wedding day. He recalled almost nothing of the day itself, only moments: the terrible lurch when he was lifted up on his chair during the dancing, the way his hand had trembled as he placed the ring on her forefinger, and the vast crowds of smiling faces. He remembered her, cool beside him. And he remembered the half hour they had spent alone together, in the midst of all the confusion. It is the law. After the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom must spend a little time together, alone in a room, witnessed as they enter, witnessed as they leave.

  The room set aside for this purpose at the Rav’s synagogue was a small windowless antechamber, a storage place for the festival prayer books. They were stacked in cardboard boxes against the walls. A space had been cleared in the center of the room and a folding table and two chairs set up. Someone had thought to leave some small sandwiches and plastic cups of fruit juice. Dovid remembered that Esti had walked across the threshold of the room first and that, as he walked in behind her, one of the guardians of the gatepost, an uncle of Esti’s in his late fifties with a small mustache, had winked and smiled at him. As though they shared some knowledge, although, he reflected, they shared the very opposite of that. The purpose of this yichud room is privacy. It is the first creation of that space which lives forever between a husband and a wife, and which only they inhabit. What he shared with Esti’s uncle, Dovid supposed, what all married men shared, was the knowledge that that secret space existed, the understanding that each possessed a room whose contents would remain forever hidden.

  Esti’s dress seemed to fill three quarters of the room. It billowed around the table leg and nudged up against the boxes. Within it, she seemed small and inconsequential, an ornament for the dress. Dovid almost wished she would take it off. He experienced a sharp pang, somewhere between joy and pain, when he realized that later in the day she would take off her dress. That he would be present. That even this was no longer forbidden. She sat down. He sat down. She looked at him.

  Dovid had studied for three months the laws pertaining to marriage, those governing the contract between husband and wife and those dealing with more intimate relations. But his knowledge was nothing in the face of this slender woman and the life pulsing through the blue veins in her wrists. Dovid had never before done so much as hold the hand of a woman. He wondered how he should proceed. It had all seemed so obvious when he had decided on marriage, so simple when she had agreed. But now, what was to be done?

  Esti cast her eyes downward at his hand resting on the table. Her own pale hands were in her lap. With the lightest of touches, she ran a single finger along the back of his hand. It was the first time they had touched. He had not anticipated how soft the pads of her fingers would be. He had never before considered the pads of the fingers of any other human being. He could find no words that seemed appropriate to express this.

  She took his hand in hers and brought it, gently, to her face. She held it there, his palm cupping her chin and jaw. He could feel the fine hairs of her cheek, her fingerprints burning into the back of his hand. They sat together like that for a long while.

  Dovid knew nothing, he realized, of the contents of Esti’s mind. He could not hope to discover, let alone understand, what thoughts moved her as she sat holding his hand to her cheek. He was alone, in the smallness of the room, in the space within him. And yet they were both together, alone. He understood, as if the knowledge had been waiting for him in this windowless chamber. That was, at bottom, what it amounted to. To be alone, together.

  That thought returned to him as he lay in bed, crystalline pink, watching her sleep. Alone. Together.

  There were six members of the synagogue board. They would have been seven with the Rav. A divine number, as the Rav used to point out, the days of creation. A useful number, as Hartog had it, an odd number with no possibility of a stalemate in voting. In any case, a good number. But now they were six, and decisions would still have to be reached.

  They passed easily over the first few items of business: agreeing to repoint the synagogue’s brickwork before the winter, raising the membership fee by fifty pounds. The debate over the hesped began sedately: quick agreement on how the tables in the hall should be arranged, a brief discussion about which caterer to appoint. No expense should be spared, this was certain, particularly because so many eminent figures would be attending from around the world.

  The pink slowly deepened into red. As the color accumulated drop by drop, Dovid found that the words of the board members began to lose meaning. It was something like listening to a conversation while falling asleep. Some sentences would be perfectly comprehensible, but then he would find that the words had vanished, that he had missed some important point. The discussion gradually began to lose coherence. They were discussing how the honored guests should best be treated. Or was it…no, now they seemed to be d
iscussing where the wives should sit? Or, no? The order of the speakers, how long each should speak for. There. Something there. He had heard his name. He struggled, concentrated, and pushed back the tide of red, splitting it to make a dry path.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Dovid, at what point in the service would you like to speak?” Rigler asked. He was holding a pencil, running it down a list on a sheaf of papers. “We think, perhaps, the end would be best. A grand finale!” Rigler smiled a little too eagerly.

  Dovid blinked.

  “Now, now,” said Hartog, “let’s not frighten Dovid. There’s no need for it to be seen as a grand finale. Simply a fitting end to the service.”

  Around the table, the men nodded.

  “But I don’t,” said Dovid, “I don’t want to speak. It’s not, I mean, I’m not. Someone else, surely?”

  “No, no,” said Kirschbaum, “we are quite convinced. We’ve discussed the matter at some length. It will be quite right for you to speak. And, perhaps”—he paused, looked at Hartog, who nodded—“also to take over one or two of the Rav’s other duties. To give the sermon on Shabbat, for example. After the hesped is over, naturally. We wouldn’t want to rush things.”

  Dovid looked around the table. Red pulsed at the corners of his eyes, a drumbeat, a military march. There was pain now. It increased steadily, beat by beat. He summoned his strength and stared at the red, congealing it into a single point of blood above his left eye. He held it there, throbbing and complaining. He was making it worse by refusing. There was no refusing, in the end. Concentrate, concentrate.