Disobedience

by Naomi Alderman

  She gathered her courage. She thought, this is not about love. Love is not the answer to anything. But speech, at least, can defeat silence.

  She said, “What you saw, yesterday. Me and Ronit, what you saw…”

  She stopped there. Love urged her to remain silent. Love is a secret thing, a hidden thing. It feeds in dark places. She said to her heart, I am tired of you. Her heart said, if you say this you will never be able to go back. She agreed that this was the case.

  She said, “What you saw. It wasn’t the first time. It began long ago.”

  The clouds moved silently through the sky, carrying shapes with them that would become other shapes and further shapes. Nothing remaining the same, not even for an instant. That was the truth of it.

  She said, “It began when we were schoolgirls. Before I ever knew you. And it has…” She stopped again. Where were the moon and the stars when she needed them? Where was the gentle comfort of the night?

  She said, “It has always been this way with me. No other way. I think I will never be any different than this.”

  Behind the sky, the stars and the moon continued to turn. In front of the sky, the clouds continued to be swept up by the winds and carried around the globe. It occurred to Esti that the world is very large and that Hendon is very small.

  Dovid raised himself up on his elbows. He looked out toward the trees and the motorway beyond. Esti could see his face. He was smiling.

  He said, “Have you thought all this time that I didn’t know?”

  See? said Esti’s heart. Now look what you’ve done. Nothing will ever be the same. Even the past isn’t the same anymore. Every element of your life must be reevaluated. Time to stop now. Say nothing. Be nothing.

  She said, “Since when?”

  He said, “Since before we were married, I think. In a way. Not completely.”

  She said, “Then why?”

  He said, “I just. I didn’t want you to shrink like this. I thought I could keep you safe. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  He leaned back and looked at the sky.

  “If you want to go, I won’t try to stop you.”

  “If I want to go with Ronit?”

  “Yes. Or not. If you want to go. Away.”

  “Do you want me to go?”

  Dovid thought, this is only pain. All that this can possibly be is pain. It cannot do anything significant.

  He said, “I don’t want you to stay if you want to go.”

  She thought of how that might work. She would go away, carrying the baby inside her like a present to be unwrapped elsewhere. She would live in some other, contrary fashion. She would be free to do as she pleased. She might become another sort of person entirely: make friends with a one-legged ex-fireman, set up her own pie-making business, cut off her hair and take up her skirts, draw and paint and learn the bassoon, take a lover to whom she might feed ripe strawberries and climb to the top of a tree in midwinter to gaze at the moon. She saw her life, in that moment, as a sort of fabric laid out before her, to be cut and shaped to her desire. She might choose something else. She might write her own story, for this, too, is a life that exists.

  She laced her fingers into his. She said:

  “Have you been happy, Dovid? Have I made you a bit happy?”

  There was a long pause. She watched the clouds drift by, white, yellow, pink, gray. At last, he said, “Yes.”

  Her heart said, silence, silence is best. Say nothing now. Consider. Reflect.

  She said, “I’m pregnant. We. We are pregnant.”

  They walked together back through Hendon toward the house. Hendon was busying itself for Friday. In the butcher’s shop, the baker’s, the greengrocer’s, the delicatessen, people noticed them walking.

  Esti thought, let them notice. That is for them to decide, not me. The thought made her smile. It was a new thought. Not Dovid’s, not Ronit’s. It did not belong to the silence that is appropriate to women. She held it tenderly in her mind. She felt there would be many more such thoughts to follow. A new way of thinking, not dominated by silence.

  At home, Ronit was waiting for them, all awkwardness. Before they had entered the hallway, before they had removed their coats or shoes, she was already talking, describing plans she had made, how she needed to be on her way, would move her ticket to enable her to do so swiftly. She would leave on Sunday, they would not have to put up with her any longer, she wouldn’t be attending the hesped, so at least they wouldn’t have that to worry about. Maybe she could even move the ticket to Saturday, except that Hartog probably wouldn’t like it and anyway it didn’t seem respectful somehow, did they know what she meant?

  Esti found the new place in her thoughts, the place that had opened up in the park. She saw that Ronit was afraid, that she was running away. Ronit thought she was running away from God, but in fact she was fleeing from silence. She would need to be shown that it did not need to be feared. That ceasing to flee from it did not mean that it had to be embraced.

  Ronit said, “Umm…Esti, where’s the telephone?”

  I wanted to go. When I woke up that morning, all I wanted was to leave as soon as I could. It was quite clear to me that I’d been here too long, that everything would be much better for all concerned if I left. I packed in a hurry, gathering as many items of clothing as I could find, not worrying too much about the rest. It was ten o’clock, probably enough time to rearrange my flight for tonight, to call Hartog to set up our little assignation, to go. But no, bollocks, today was Friday. No driving for Hartog tonight. Well, maybe I could persuade him to let me go anyway, without an escort.

  Except, a little snag. Phone nowhere to be found. Once or twice I thought I heard a faint ringing somewhere in the house, but wasn’t able to trace it before the sound disappeared again. I asked God if He was deliberately concealing it from me for the purposes of teaching me a valuable moral lesson of some sort, but He remained resolutely silent on the subject.

  In a kind of sadness, I pulled my cell phone out of a pocket in my bag and turned it on. It beeped mournfully, searching for a signal, then one long tone when it realized it couldn’t find one. It was too far from home. I knew exactly how it felt.

  I waited for Esti and Dovid. They took too long to come back. The sun was already low in the sky and I couldn’t believe I was noticing this sort of thing and worrying about Friday by the time they reappeared. I thought maybe they’d been arguing, then I decided that one of them had probably killed the other, like Cain and Abel in a field somewhere.

  I tried to argue with my father so many times. He was a difficult man to argue with. He believed in silence. It doesn’t make for rip-roaring, gut-busting, passionate debate, trying to argue with someone who believes in silence. I could shout my lungs hollow at him and he wouldn’t respond. He’d listen, with all appearance of attention, and when I was finished, he’d wait for a few moments and then turn back to his books. Dr. Feingold reminds me of him, just a little. In the velvety softness of her silence, in the pause after I finish speaking.

  When he did speak, it was in allegory and metaphor.

  When I was sixteen, the year before I left home forever, he found out that I’d been eating in a bakery that he didn’t approve of. It wasn’t a nonkosher bakery, God forbid, there was no ham or bacon, no cheese mixed with chicken or beef with butter. It had a certificate on its wall to prove that a Rabbi had been in there to watch the food being prepared. But it wasn’t one of our bakeries, not supervised by Rabbis we trusted. For a small people, we do seem to enjoy subdividing. In any case, the news found its way to my father’s ears that I had bought an egg sandwich from this bakery, and when I got home from school he beckoned me into his study. He said, “They tell me you have eaten from Streit’s Bakery?” A hollow sensation in my stomach, a sudden dip and swoop. “Don’t you know that we don’t eat from there?” Yes, I knew. He looked at me, just looked. He said, “I’m disappointed in you. You know better than this.” And there was a throbbing in my head, a kind of press
ure from the inside, and I found that I was shouting. I can’t remember everything I said. I know it wasn’t all about egg sandwiches. I remember that I said, “It’s no wonder that I hate you so much, because you never listen!” I remember that I said, “I wish I were dead like my mother!”

  He said nothing. He listened, and when I’d finished shouting he turned back to his work.

  My mother gave me my name: Ronit. It’s not a usual name for where I come from, not typical. I should have been called Raisel, or Rivka, or Raeli. But my mother liked the name. Ronit. The joyful song of angels. I think about that sometimes; I could have changed my name when I moved to New York and changed everything else, but I didn’t. Ronit: a song of joy, a voice raised in delight. The name my mother gave me.

  They told me, those who would tell me, that my father and mother used to laugh together, before she died. That they could make each other laugh in a roomful of strangers with nothing more than a look. I have no way to tell. I can’t remember her and I never heard him say three words together on the subject. She was the aching, absent heart at the middle of our lives and the words could never be spoken.

  The next day, he told me the story of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve. They argued in a field, and Cain killed Abel. But that verse, the place where the Torah tells us what they argued about, is unfinished. The line says, “And Cain said to his brother Abel.” It doesn’t say, “And Cain spoke to his brother” or “And Cain talked to his brother.” It uses the word vayomer: he said. Something should come afterward. But it doesn’t. It stops. The next sentence is: “And it happened when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.”

  My father said, over this, we pass in silence. Even the Torah does not enter into arguments between close family. Even the Torah uses silence here. That also made me shout at him. I can’t stand revisiting those memories now. Shouting at this old, silent man. And the truth is, I understood what he meant.

  Once Esti and Dovid returned, and Esti had passed me the phone, cold and covered in condensation, I called Hartog.

  As he picked up the telephone, he was sniggering as though he’d just heard a wonderful joke.

  “Hartog?” I said.

  “Miss Krushka? Do forgive me; my wife and I were just laughing over…”

  Plague? Pestilence? Flood? The death of innocents? I almost said.

  “…well, it doesn’t matter. What can I do for you, Miss Krushka?”

  For all the world like we were friends. Reasonable people. Hartog, Hartog, I wanted to say, boychick, why can’t we be honest with each other? Neither of us is a reasonable person.

  “I was calling to say…that you won, Hartog. I know you wanted me to go before the hesped. Fine. I’m going, sooner than you asked. I’ll go tomorrow night, or Sunday. A whole week early.”

  You weasel, you hound, you lowlife pond scum.

  There was an intake of breath on the other end of the line. I could almost imagine the man smirking, mouthing to his wife, something. Perhaps I’m paranoid. Doesn’t mean, of course, that they’re not out to get me.

  “Now, now, Miss Krushka, remember our little talk. Delighted as I am to hear that you’re so eager to return home, I must insist that you stay until the day before the hesped, as we had agreed. I wouldn’t…” He chuckled, a wheezy asthmatic sound. “I wouldn’t want you having second thoughts and deciding to come back.”

  “Surely you don’t—”

  “No, no, Miss Krushka. We will keep to the original plan. The hesped is next Monday. You will fly out next Sunday evening. As you board the plane you will have your effects, and not before. And as you board the plane, you will receive your check.” I could almost hear him smirking on the other end of the line. “I’m sure we understand each other.”

  I put down the phone and listened to the hum of the house or, possibly, the ringing in my ears. In the kitchen, Esti and Dovid were preparing the food for Shabbat. Together. They were talking in low voices.

  I thought, I can’t stay here. But I can’t leave. Not if I want Hartog’s money, my father’s things.

  In the kitchen, Esti said something that made Dovid laugh. I hadn’t remembered what a deep laugh he has, a rich vibrato thrum. I didn’t understand how this was possible: Esti and Dovid laughing in the kitchen. I picked up the telephone and listened to the purr of the dial tone until it turned angry.

  I thought, I don’t need his fucking money and I don’t need his bagful of trinkets. The one thing that I wanted was those candlesticks, and I never found them. So I thought, New York. My real life. The life I want. I can leave and never come back, I can leave tomorrow, go back to work, my job, which I enjoy, which I’m good at, which rewards me for the effort I put in and is always fully explicable under all circumstances. I could call Scott, tell him I’m coming back to the office next week, probably if I work it right manage to take the rest of my “compassionate leave” somewhere warm and sunny later in the year.

  I dialed the number and, a quarter of the way across the world, I made a British number appear on a black telephone on a blond-wood desk. It rang. And rang. And rang. And clicked over to voice mail. I checked the time. Eleven in New York. I couldn’t imagine Scott wouldn’t be at his desk or that his secretary wouldn’t pick up in his absence. I dialed again.

  This time, Scott answered the phone after two rings, his voice a little ragged and out of breath, as if he’d had to sprint for the phone.

  “Hi,” I said, “it’s me.”

  “I know,” he said. And paused.

  And in that pause, I think I knew everything, before he said a word. I knew and didn’t know, as one does in these situations. I knew but did not want to acknowledge.

  I said, “How are things?” Which was to say, what’s wrong? Without having to say it.

  He said, “Listen, Ronnie, I can only talk for a minute, okay?”

  I remained silent.

  “Ronnie?”

  He never calls me Ronnie, not unless he’s drunk.

  “Yeah, I’m still here. That’s okay, I only have a minute, too.”

  “Listen, Ronnie,” he said, as if I were doing something other than listening. “It has to be over, you and me.”

  I kept my voice bright and cheerful. “It is over, Scott. Or don’t you remember dumping me?”

  “No, I mean really over. Look, it’s”—he paused, gasping—“it’s Cheryl. That night, when I came to see you, she followed me. To see where I went. She followed me in the car, in her robe.”

  I imagined Cheryl, whom I have never met, who exists for me only as a perfectly presented photograph on a desk, driving in slippers and a dressing gown. Wild.

  “She sent the kids away this week, so she could tell me. If it doesn’t stop now, she says she wants a divorce and I can’t…Ronnie, I’m sorry. I had to tell her it was you, she wouldn’t let it drop. We can’t work together anymore. I’m sorry. I won’t, I mean, I’ll make sure that you don’t…you know?”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t say anything. This situation, which had been so easy, so blissfully simple and free from complication, had suddenly become tangled and confused.

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand. Don’t worry. I won’t be coming back to the office. I resign.”

  And while Scott was muttering and worrying and telling me I didn’t have to do that, and while I was assuring him that I could because, of course, I’d had a sudden windfall, I found that I was thinking only: yes. This is what happens. If you buy chickens, you should expect that one day, they’re going to come home to roost. See? This is what you get.

  I’m an oddity. I know it. Even in New York, where everyone’s just a little bit Jewish, I don’t make that much sense. The Orthodox world is tight; you don’t tend to meet that many “lapsed Orthodox Jews.” People from my background just don’t leap the tracks, go and bat for the other team. Except when they do.

  There are a few of us out there; I’ve met them from time to time at dinner parties and movi
e outings. People will say, “Ronit! You must talk to Trent. He grew up in Monsey!” And there will be Trent, looking perfectly normal, not as if he could recite the Ten Commandments in Hebrew or anything. I tend to avoid these people. Sometimes, they’re mad. The ones who went too fast, who ran away from Orthodoxy because they thought it was the root of all their problems and then don’t know what to do when they find they still have some. And sometimes, they’re not mad but have some truly tragic story: abuse, neglect, violence, oh yes, these things happen in our community, too. Something that made them, understandably, turn their faces away from anything like the place that had hurt them. And all these people, if I get close to them, if I start talking about religion, will inevitably share their story of escape and then ask to hear mine. How did I get out? That’s easy. Why? Not so easy.

  People who meet me tend to assume that because my father was a Rabbi, there must have been some explosive last scene. People who know me better think that there was some quibbling over my slightly amorphous sexuality. And, let me acknowledge it brutally now, no one has ever got close enough to me to earn the full story. So I suppose I have something in common with my father after all.

  What happened was this: nothing. Nothing and everything. A series of arguments about this and that, from egg sandwiches to the teenage magazines I started to buy and bring home, to the length of my skirt. I don’t think he ever knew, ever even suspected about me and Esti; his mind didn’t work that way. But for all that, Esti changed my relationship with my father. With her, I began to question something. And questioning something, I questioned everything. And his answers no longer satisfied me as they had when I was a child.

  We did not go out of each other’s lives in a blaze of anger. We simply fell out of the habit of speaking. We lost our common language and so lost everything. There was nothing for us to say.

  And now he’s dead, and that’s all there’ll ever be. Silence. No last message for me. No final thoughts. Nothing left to interpret. Only silence.