Disobedience

by Naomi Alderman

  “You mean,” he said, aware that his speech was a little slurred, “you mean until we appoint a new Rav?”

  The men around the table leaned back and smiled.

  “Perhaps,” said Hartog.

  And Dovid knew. He grasped, all at once, Hartog’s intentions, those of the board. But the red precluded full understanding. Its force gathered. It was creeping out again, soaking through the interior of his skull fiber by fiber, invading him.

  “No,” he said. “No, I can’t, I’m not.” He looked at the men. A swarm of red encircled them.

  Hartog leaned back in his chair. He spread his arms, broad and expansive. He said, “It is time for this coyness to be over, Dovid.”

  The table turned their heads to Hartog, swift as birds. Red pounded in Dovid’s head.

  Hartog smiled again. “We need you,” he said. “The community needs you. You were at the Rav’s right hand. You will not, obviously, be the Rav. But the community needs order, continuity. You will provide it for us. We have, after all, provided your education for this purpose, Dovid.”

  Red had reached its zenith. It was strong, a mighty power, a sea of red, held back only by his will. Soon, very soon, it would break through all defenses, sweeping over him like a tide of scalding water, defeating him.

  He saw the whole thing as if it had already occurred. He saw how it would happen, so simply, so smoothly. Inch by inch, he would be given the Rav’s place. It had already been connived at. He would speak from the Rav’s book and from his notes. He would speak of the Rav. He would give an illusion of unchanging continuity. He would desiccate, like an elderly book. He had, as Hartog said, been prepared for this role. He could tolerate it. But Esti.

  “But my wife,” was all he managed to say.

  “Yes,” said Hartog, “we have considered that. We know that you have held back. Your wife, it is difficult. She is not, perhaps, ideally suited to this role. This place may not be right for her. But we would be happy”—Hartog beamed, a demonstration of happiness—“to enable her to spend much of her time elsewhere. She has family in Israel, yes? It would, perhaps, be appropriate for her to spend more time there, away from the demands of the synagogue.”

  Red circled and recircled a thought in Dovid’s mind. He thought, I will lose her. If you make me do this thing I will lose her. She will not return, whether you send her away or not. He thought, I may already have lost her. He thought, perhaps that is best. He thought, this place kills women, it bleeds them dry. Red took up that thought. It enjoyed it, rolling it back and forth in the tide of his mind.

  “There is no need, of course, for this to be decided now. We have time. All that is needed today is to arrange the hesped. This, at least, is simple. You will speak, Dovid.”

  Dovid strained to think. This was, he realized later, a mistake. There should be no struggle on a red day, not when the strings were so tight, so precise. As he worried at his mind he felt something strain, then snap. Red broke through, small circles marching in the corners of his eyes, chattering. Not now, not now. Oh, yes, said red. Now.

  “You will speak,” said Hartog. It was not a question.

  Red overcame him. There could be no more arguing now.

  “Yes,” whispered Dovid.

  Red surged and pounded. It began to trickle out from its bright spot, out, out across his skull, more powerful than he had known. He found that he was breathing more deeply, more quickly. Red thrummed to the rhythm of his pulse. It was coming and the only thing left was surrender, to let it be over quickly, smoothly, without fuss. Since childhood, Dovid had kept a certain phrase for moments like this, unbearable moments. He considered it now, turned it over and over. He thought of nothing else, as red boiled in his skull, bubbling and spitting, preparing to burst forth, raw-hot from his ears, his mouth, his nose, his eyes. This is only pain, he thought, all that this is, all that it can possibly be, is pain. It cannot do anything more. Just pain. Only pain. Like a diver casting off into the ocean, he took a breath and went down into red.

  Hartog drove Dovid home. The interior of the car smelled of leather and paint, a stench that reached inside him, revolved in his stomach, conspired with red in flashes of color. Hartog tried to speak to him when they reached the house, but Dovid could not remain. He needed to be inside. Bed. Cool. Complete. All that had transpired could be considered soon, when sleep had drained the red from his skull. He aimed his key at the lock precisely, well done, well done, and opened the door. The house was quiet. Solitary. Very well. Better than noise, better than confusion and concern. Feet must go on stairs. One by one. Each step forced some red back into his head, bubbling and puncturing the center of his ears, but the steps were only thirteen, he had counted them before. And then it would be over, and then there would be a cool blank space of rest. He paused at the top of the stairs, panting. A sound of great rushing was in his ears, and all the objects around him seemed streaked with light: the bookcase, the laundry basket, a bunch of pink and blue flowers lying incongruously on it. How odd, thought a part of his mind separate from the rest. Flowers.

  Nonetheless, the house was quiet and his bed was near, promising white space and blankness. All this, all this, could be considered later. He closed his eyes, resting his hand on the small table next to the stairs. He need not open them again. He had walked these steps many times before with his eyes closed to keep the brightness in. From here it was four steps to the bedroom door, five steps to the bed, and then nothing, nothing more was necessary. He took a step. Red danced behind his eyelids. Another step, quiet, quiet, not to disturb any element of his skull. But the house was not quiet. It seemed to laugh and rustle. Was it the house? The bedroom? The red within him? Very hard to know. Another step. He was almost sure that the sigh, the light sound of movement was not part of the red, but to ascertain this would mean the opening of eyes and all he could possibly achieve was bed. He took the final step and opened the door.

  The brightness at first. Such that he imagined the sun must be standing at the window, opening its mouth at the room. He wanted to open his eyes. He wanted to close them more, double or triple close them because once was not enough to keep this out. He could hear the light in his ears and it sounded like sharp, painful music. Beautiful and terrible all together.

  He opened his eyes. Bad move, said red, stupid, idiotic move. Yes, he said, I know. But I have to see. The instant elongated. Red was breaking through, surging upward, crashing over his head and down his body, boiling him alive. It was fine. He saw what he needed to see.

  In the bed, there was not perfect blankness and whiteness. There was his wife and there was her lover. Esti had wrapped a sheet around herself, but imperfectly, one tender pink nipple was bare, and her hair was let down around her shoulders. Ronit had a face of fear and he wanted to say it’s all right, it’s all right, but he had only two or three words at best and he wanted to keep them, emergency rations. Because he could see Esti: not one, but two.

  He thought, and the thought amused him: then I have lost her already. But still, all this can be is pain.

  She said, “Dovid.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I know.”

  It’s funny, some element of Dovid chattered, how this headache is not ending at all. I thought that it was spent, that it had produced all the fire it could, but it has simply become more cunning, better concealed. I shall have to remember. The knowledge will be useful for the future. The flames spread quickly across his face, down his neck, into his chest, his arms, the small of his back. When his hips and the backs of his legs began to burn, he dropped to his knees and knew nothing more.

  Scott’s wife, Cheryl, is a doctor. I never really thought much about her, it must be said, but I picked up that much from the odd snippets he’d drop into conversation. It’s funny, before Scott I always imagined that the wives of men who have affairs would be mousy little things, stay-at-home mums, who the guys stay with for the sake of the kids or because they can’t bear to hurt something so defenseless. But no, Sco
tt’s wife is an epidemiologist. While he’s at the office, slaying another corporate dragon, she’s off researching vaccination patterns or delivering a paper on, I don’t know, why it’s important to cover your mouth when you cough or something. They’re a power couple. They look it in the framed picture on his desk, he in a casual open-necked shirt exposing a tuft of chest hair, she in a cream blouse and a necklace of small blue flowers; their white-blond children, a boy and a girl, stand in front of them, tidy and smiling. I don’t know, he can be so dirty, so vulgar and crude and funny when we’re together, but there he is, looking like the American dream.

  He said to me once, “Marriage is an enigma, Ronnie. You barely understand it when you’re in it, and no one on earth can understand it from the outside.”

  He was pretty drunk.

  I said, “What about us? Aren’t we an enigma, too?”

  “Sure, sure. But you, you make me happy. Y’know? We have fun. But she is my wife. That’s a sacred thing. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  I kind of did see what he was saying. Of course, I was pretty drunk, too.

  Scott always said that if Cheryl found out about us, it’d be over. In fact, it was over sooner than that. She asked a couple of awkward questions, didn’t take his usual answers. She started demanding to know where he’d been, with whom. Just that.

  He was so apologetic, I remember. That was what annoyed me. He held my hand and kept apologizing and apologizing as though he’d killed my cat or something. As he kept on, I got more and more angry. I just wanted him to be quiet. He’d never promised me anything, I’d never promised him anything. There was no need to apologize.

  That night, I did a thing I’d never done before. It was about seven o’clock. I knew he’d still be in the office, but Cheryl would be home with the kids. I called his house. She answered the phone after a few rings. She said, “Hello? Hello?” I sat in silence for a few seconds. There was a kind of potential in those seconds, like when you’re doing ninety down the fast lane of a motorway, really smooth and easy, flying past all the traffic, and it suddenly occurs to you that if you just flicked your wrist a couple of inches to the right you’d die. Just like that. I listened to the silence like I was watching the speedometer push upward: ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five, and then I put the phone down.

  I wanted Esti to call an ambulance. As soon as Dovid collapsed, I reached for the bedroom phone. She pulled it out of my hands, wrapping her arms around it and clasping it to her chest. She spoke softly.

  “No. No. This has happened before. Sometimes, when it’s really bad…” She petered out, then looked directly at me. “It’s happened before. We just wait. It’ll pass. He wouldn’t want us to make any fuss.”

  I looked down at Dovid, crumpled awkwardly on the bedroom floor, one leg painfully folded underneath him. His face was blue-white. His lips were gray. From the bed, I couldn’t even see if he was breathing. I looked back at Esti, clasping the telephone.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s happened before. It’s a private thing. No need for doctors.”

  Her eyes were large, her hair straggly around her shoulders. The skin of her stomach was rippled, folded over itself. My eyes were opened and I saw that we were naked.

  I said, “We should put some clothes on. I’ll help you get him into bed.”

  We dressed in silence, not looking at each other. I couldn’t find my tights, but I didn’t feel like scouting around under the bed for them. We lifted Dovid into bed. He looked more peaceful there. He was breathing after all, and looked a little less gray-faced.

  I suppose it was for the best we didn’t go to a hospital, really. How would I have explained my presence? Are you his sister? Well, no, I’m his wife’s lover. Do you think if I stick around long enough I can finish him off?

  Esti said, “He’ll be like this for hours. He might wake up in the evening. Maybe tomorrow morning.”

  She looked at me. I looked at her.

  She looked down at her watch.

  She said, “I have to go to school. They’re expecting me.”

  And she left.

  I sat in the living room. I wanted to go to my father’s house, to make another attack on it, to find my mother’s candlesticks and leave. But I couldn’t. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. I wanted to go and sit in Dr. Feingold’s nice safe office and tell her all about everything that’d happened over the past few weeks. I looked around the room. There was nothing to look at except the photograph of Esti and Dovid on their wedding day. I thought about Scott and Cheryl and about how it always seems to work out this way with me. I wanted to take back everything that I’d ever done, to start again from the moment of birth and see if I could make a better job of it next time. I couldn’t do that either. I fidgeted. I was supposed to go back to New York soon. Maybe I could change my ticket? Go this afternoon? Tomorrow morning? The thought seemed utterly marvelous to me. Even the idea of how happy it’d make Hartog didn’t unduly distress me. Wonderful. This time tomorrow I could be back in my own apartment, in my own life. All I had to do was let Esti know what I was doing.

  I pulled on my running shoes and marched over to the Sara Rifka Hartog Memorial Day School.

  The school wasn’t exactly as I remembered it. It had crept from the two large houses it used to occupy into a third, another complicated network of staircases linking the new building in. The entrance was in a slightly different location. They’d done some building work at the back. Still, it was pretty much the same. I buzzed the intercom, told them I was there to see Esti Kuperman, and they let me in. Oh, yes, security as excellent as ever.

  I looked around the hallway. Strange architecture—two front doors next to each other separated only by a stub of wall, two arching hallways mirroring each other, two staircases heading away from each other—the insides of two suburban houses, twisted and made strange. Displays of work on the history of Israel, a math project, some pieces of art. All mounted on colored craft paper, curling at the edges. The place still smelled the same, too, chalk and sweat and Copydex and old gym shoes. I couldn’t very well go and see Esti in her classroom. God only knew what all those schoolgirls would make of me just turning up. But she’d probably come back to the staff room between classes. I wondered if everything was still where it used to be. Staff room. Basement, in the left-hand house. I headed down the left-hand stairs.

  I actually paused in front of the staff-room door before knocking. I raised my hand to knock, and then just held it there, in midair. Looking at the notice that said, “Girls must not knock during break time except for the last ten minutes.” Feeling intimidated by it. I held there for a few seconds, looking, thinking. And I knocked.

  The door was opened by a rather pretty redheaded girl in her early twenties. Were the teachers at the school always this young? She looked suspicious, glancing down at my definitely nonregulation skirt and still-bare legs, but her face cleared when I mentioned Esti’s name. Of course, I must come in and wait. She held the door wide for me, smiling. The staff room was empty; a few battered armchairs, some lockers, and three desks held all the mystique that was to be found here. I sat down and put my feet up on the small table in the center of the room.

  She offered me a coffee and I accepted gratefully. As she puttered with mugs, kettle, and teaspoons, she said:

  “I’m Tali, by the way, Tali Schnitzler. I teach geography. And you?”

  “I’m Ronit,” I said. “Ronit Krushka. I’m, well, I guess, Esti’s cousin-in-law.”

  There wasn’t exactly a crash of broken mugs or a sudden gasp. But there was a definite pause in the proceedings. This Schnitzler turned her head around to look at me.

  “Ronit Krushka? Are you the Rav’s daughter?”

  I nodded. She wished me a long life. I thanked her. She continued to look at me for a little too long, then turned back to the coffee making.

  She attempted a smile as she handed me my mug.

  “Esti will be back soon, I’m
sure. I…I have to go now.”

  Schnitzler gathered her books and made her escape. I didn’t wonder very long over what she was afraid of. It was pretty obvious by now. There could no longer be any concealment of anything, not even from myself.

  I wonder, now, if everyone knew when we were in school. In a way, I can’t see how they could have missed it. And in a way, I can’t imagine that they would have suspected and done nothing. But we lit each other up, those few school-hydrangea years. We spent our breaks together in the playground, chasing each other or talking or climbing things, we studied together after school, we were at each other’s houses for Shabbat and on Sundays. I suppose a lot of schoolgirls have friendships like that.

  It was good, I can’t deny it. At the time, it was good. We had a plan for a while, the three of us. Esti and I would go to seminary in Manchester, and Dovid would be there soon as well, back from Yeshiva in Israel. And then the three of us would be together. And then? I don’t think we’d quite decided. Being together in the same city, away from my home seemed enough. I suppose even then I was swallowing something down, denying something. There was still a piece of tree bark in the skin under my elbow, after all.

  All the other girls were surprised, I remember, when in the end Esti and I didn’t even go to the same sem. My father had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He sent me to Stern College in New York, a seminary and university combined. He said he thought it would suit me better, something more “modern.” I did not question his decision; the mere idea of leaving seemed too wonderful to be real.

  It happened quite simply after that. I avoided the other English girls—who tended to huddle together in any case, sharing hot water bottles and tea. I hung out with the American girls, then with the cool American girls who had TVs in their rooms, then with their cooler friends at NYU. And then I was off. It wasn’t easy, but I made it happen, as though I’d made the decision without realizing in some deep, automatic part of my brain. I got a job, using my student visa, saved every dollar I could. I started cutting classes at sem, switched to more secular studies, more useful subjects. One of the NYU girls had an opening in her apartment.