The Beautiful Possible

by Amy Gottlieb

  The next morning Rosalie takes the subway to the Seminary, marches up to the attic, and bangs on the heavy door. She has rehearsed the scenario in her head. Walter will answer, she will look down at the floor instead of into his eyes, tell him that she cannot see him again, that she will not return to the Radish’s class and certainly not back to this geniza. She will say to him, It was a regrettable mistake, and then she thinks, no, it was a beautiful mistake, and then she decides she will tell him, that was beautiful and not a mistake at all. She opens the door and lets herself in.

  Walter stands beside the file cabinet and holds a plastic bag filled with brown seeds. He picks up his sil batta from India and methodically crushes the seeds into powder. Rosalie stands at a distance, watching the twitch of his arm muscles.

  He looks up.

  “I—”

  “Shh,” he whispers. He takes her hand and they stand in front of the table where the Torah lies covered with a suit jacket. One kiss lasts for a long time, long enough for Rosalie to allow herself to say yes and long enough for Walter to move his hand up her skirt and explore her slowly and with care. Nothing is awkward between them; everything is permitted. Walter teaches Rosalie what she was waiting to learn about her body and Rosalie teaches Walter that it is possible, once again, to know pleasure.

  Hours later, Rosalie skips down the attic stairs alone. She sprints outside the building, crosses Broadway, and runs into Riverside Park, where she collapses on the chilly grass, and reviews what just happened. Walter’s hands and tongue. The inside of her thighs, the unfolded map of her longing. The spice he held to her nose and rubbed on her leg. What she did not know. What she knows now. Something so beautiful cannot ever be a mistake.

  Rosalie presses her feet into the earth and stares at the clouds. She had left her shoes behind in the attic and when she returns to the Seminary an hour later Sol greets her in the lobby and asks why she is barefoot. She raises her hand to her mouth, pretending to be surprised.

  No one can promenade around a text with Sol Kerem’s alacrity. While his fellow students stumble through the guttural Aramaic, Sol pirouettes with brisk confidence. He thinks of every text as a field that welcomes him to linger and listen to the rustling of the trees. The letters are alive to him; the words of the Talmud make Sol ache with longing for more words, more pages, more paths toward knowing his God.

  Sol is in his final months of learning. He has completed his first round of interviews and the wedding invitations have been mailed. He has no use for Walter now. Why did he let his chavrusa slow down his learning? All those hours wasted while they pillaged the text for fun. Had he had a real chavrusa, someone like Morris with actual skills, Sol would have had a proper partner to challenge his thinking. He never should have crossed the threshold of Walter’s geniza. Something was calling out to him during those winter months—more moments, more life, more love—but what he craved was not another man but the words of the texts themselves. A sea of words. Law and lore. Storehouses of stories. Scripture in its skin. The tellings told anew. A rabbi without a Talmud is a heretic and Sol Kerem is anything but a heretic.

  In the hallways he brushes past Walter and does not speak to him; in class he no longer turns to look at the back row. There is no more time for goodwill toward refugees who wear cloth shoes and Indian outfits—Sol needs to shape himself into the next great American rabbi. Now, late at night, when Sol touches himself before sleep, he thinks of Rosalie, imagines their first time after the wedding, soon, so soon. Sol will ask his wife to undress slowly; he will elongate the seduction, making it last after all these months of waiting. He feels himself touching Rosalie’s thighs, her breasts, the skin he has not yet seen. When he is just about to come he can taste Walter’s kiss, at first like fruit and then like ashes.

  Walter and Rosalie return once more to the back row of the Radish’s class. They stare straight ahead and pretend to listen to the Radish lecture about ancient laws of taxation. They do not pass notes. Rosalie senses Walter’s every gesture: his hand moving across a page, the turn of his head when he brushes his hair out of his eyes. When she has the urge to pull him close, she focuses on how the lining of her skirt presses tightly against her hips. She considers the silk of the fabric, conjures the person who wove the silk with his fingers, the silkworm that spun the cocoon from its body. She reaches for a sheet of paper and writes:

  She’elah: If the finest silk is woven into a fabric used for impure purposes, is the silkworm unholy in its spinning?

  She passes her note to Walter. He pauses for a moment, then writes:

  Teshuvah: The silkworm is always holy. True love is never impure.

  MILK OR MEAT

  February 1947

  While Sol attends his afternoon seminars on practical rabbinics—how to conduct funerals, unveil gravestones, bless converts, write marriage contracts—Walter and Rosalie spread a blanket in the darkest corners of the attic and explore the possibilities of their bodies in the shadows of the eaves where bats have left their droppings. They call the attic the upper geniza and Rosalie keeps the Ishbitzer’s Mei HaShiloach right beside them.

  “This book serves as our witness,” she says.

  “Of what?”

  “That we are a vessel for God’s desires.”

  “Even now?”

  “Especially now. Don’t you think so?”

  “Your fiancé is the expert on theology, not me.”

  Walter leads Rosalie downstairs to the Seminary basement and guides her through an endless warren of corridors. He opens doors to rooms that lead to other rooms littered with office furniture, cartons of unmailed letters, and boxes of torn books, labeled SHAIMOS—FOR BURIAL. They name this labyrinth the lower geniza. When Rosalie learns her way around the maze of rooms, Walter picks up an abandoned prayer shawl and uses it to make a blindfold for her eyes.

  “Now,” he says. “Look for me.”

  “It’s too confusing,” she says. “I’ll get lost.”

  “Look, darling. I will hold an open jar of coriander in my hand. The wisdom of your nose will help you.”

  Rosalie finds Walter hiding in a broom closet and they call this home base, the place to which they always return. At night when the students retreat to their dorm rooms, Walter and Rosalie play the spice game in the basement until they either find each other, or abandon the game and rendezvous in the closet. In the upper geniza they seduce each other with words: her quotes from the Ishbitzer and his quotes from Tagore. The upper geniza is where they talk about Rosalie’s past—lessons from her father, her desire to embrace all of life—and Walter’s future as a historian of religions, just as Paul Richardson has scripted for him. In the upper geniza Walter repeats the story of how he followed a man wearing a brown felt hat and wound up in Bombay, and how he didn’t know that man was Paul Richardson. Rosalie listens to Walter’s words and follows the music of his accent, but she does not pry for details.

  In the lower geniza Walter and Rosalie speak little. They forget that time is measured in minutes and hours and that the sun sets at dusk. They look for hints of each other’s bodies in empty broom closets and play hiding games that arouse them both. They touch each other with daring and mark each other’s skin with turmeric. In the lower geniza they sniff the strongest spices, the ones that make them forget that Sol and his classmates inhabit the floors above, learning their final lessons in how to name and how to marry and how to bury; how to consecrate, how to nullify, and how to explain things that defy comprehension.

  Rosalie and Sol sit across from each other at a Friday night dinner in the dining hall.

  “Did you find a dress yet?” he asks.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Get the flapper. Get whatever you want.”

  “Yes,” says Rosalie. “I plan to. Get what I want, I mean.”

  “Your choice.”

  Morris sits down next to Sol. “May I interrupt?”

  “Of course!” Sol turns to Rosalie. “Morris and I are learning
together now. He’s a much better chavrusa for me than Walter.”

  “No more refugees clouding the thoughts of our ilui!” says Morris. He laughs and turns toward Rosalie. “What did Sol ever see in that man?”

  “I don’t know, Morris.”

  “Now, I can see how women would adore him. The mysterious stranger who wears a tunic the color of pea soup. He’s a real lady-killer.”

  Rosalie looks down at the table.

  “Really,” says Morris. “Can you imagine anyone considering him an object of desire?”

  “Walter is a good man,” says Sol. “Sad and confused and decent.”

  Morris laughs. “Sounds just like you. Just think, Rosalie. All over this building you have your choice of sad, confused, and decent men.”

  “And I chose this one, Morris. This beautiful man is my fiancé.” Rosalie smiles at Sol.

  Morris winks. “I expect an invitation to the wedding.”

  Sol and Rosalie leave before dessert is served. It is always as it was, she thinks. I love him no less. Walter is a dream, a figment, a palace gate that will soon be closed. I will be a mother and a grandmother and the secret of these weeks will resound in my bones as private music that only I will be able to hear.

  The following Monday Rosalie tells Sol she plans to spend the day in Brooklyn with her mother, buying a dress at Kleinfeld’s and celebrating over lunch. But instead she takes the subway alone to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau on West 16th Street. She sits in the reception area, waiting for her name to be called. Rosalie fidgets in her seat and her eyes dart toward the other women in the room. What do they know that she doesn’t? She is new at this, not much older than a child. Rosalie wants to ask someone for advice but what question would she ask first? Sol or Walter? Milk or meat? The lockstep of generations or the seduction of spices? She closes her eyes and imagines herself standing inside a circle of women who dance around her. Rosalie wears a traditional wedding dress; an opaque veil covers her face. The women gaze at her with admiration, except for her mother, who wears a black gown and glares. You’re too young to be a mother, she says. She hands Rosalie a small round box and says, No babies until you find your heart. Rosalie opens the lid and holds a rubber diaphragm in her trembling hand.

  Sol stares at his reflection and winks. He has grown a mustache to appear older for the second round of interviews. Rosalie will be pleased, he thinks. He hasn’t seen her in two weeks. “So much to do, Sol,” she had said to him over the phone. “My mother, your mother, all the lists! Just be glad you are not involved in this wedding insanity.” All for the best, thinks Sol. In a few months they will drive off in their Dodge and leave everything behind: the Radish, Morris, Walter. He would stay in touch with his teacher and with Morris, but Walter would not travel with him beyond these walls. Yes, his one-time chavrusa offered him a diversion. They had some moments on the page, some memorable flights through the Talmud. But Walter knows so little; he is a pawn in Paul’s academic scheme. And that regrettable moment! Best to erase the memory before it festers and Sol becomes like the Talmudic figure Reish Lakish who saw Rabbi Yochanan bathing in a river and thought he was a beautiful woman. What did the Talmud leave out? Did the two men kiss and part, or did one always long for the other? What misperception was fastened to the text, recorded into history? Sol’s indiscretion, at least, would not be recorded anywhere; it was a moment of youthful abandon, an episode he would discard with the library books he would return on his last day of rabbinical school.

  The dogwood tree in the Seminary courtyard blossoms in March. Ivory petals float on the lawn, but interview season has begun and the students barely notice. While they prepare for their first pulpits and are quizzed on their knowledge of Jewish law—how to build a mikvah and how to kasher a metal pot—the fiancée and the refugee explore each other’s bodies in the upper geniza and in the lower geniza: the upper where they speak in words and the lower where they find each other in silence and surprise.

  One afternoon in the lower geniza, Walter pulls a bag of black seeds from his pocket. “Close your eyes, Rosalie. Sniff. Now, give the smell a name. Make one up.”

  “Teacup.”

  “Black cardamom.”

  “Winded spice.”

  “Fenugreek. Good for digestion.”

  “Apple dust. Coriander. Good for awakening the spirit.”

  “Thighbone. Lotus seed.”

  “Serenity check. Borage flower.”

  “Camel skin. Turmeric root.”

  “Latke festival. Mustard seed.”

  There is no end to the variety of spices he puts before Rosalie’s nose; the associations she conjures fly from her mouth like birds. Sometimes Walter grinds a mix of seeds against her skin, sniffs, and licks it off until her body smells like a spice garden, just like in the Song of Songs.

  Walter and Rosalie have fallen asleep in the broom closet and she wakes up with tears in her eyes.

  “How will Sol know me as you do?”

  “You will educate him,” says Walter. “In time he will learn how to please you.”

  “But this can’t be translated.”

  “You will teach him as I was once taught before you came along. Every man learns from the first woman.”

  “Adam learned from Eve.”

  “Yes, my chavrusa. And Jacob and his two wives. Leah was given to him first so she could teach him how to satisfy Rachel.”

  “You make it sound like a daisy chain of lovemaking.”

  Walter laughs. “The infinite, single story of a man and a woman.”

  “How on earth,” she asks, “will I ever let you go?”

  Ida Wachs carries three dresses under her arm and follows Rosalie into a dressing room. Ida tells her the first dress is too revealing; a sleeveless flapper is unfit for a rebbetzin. The second dress doesn’t flatter Rosalie’s tiny waist, she adds. “A bride should be modest, yet give a hint of what lies ahead.” When Rosalie tries on a traditional wedding gown, her mother rubs her palms together and beams. “You look like the kind of bride I was, only more elegant, more American, a regular movie star! You have made me so happy.”

  Rosalie thinks of her father’s question: Are you in love?

  “What about Tateh?” asks Rosalie. “Do you think he would have approved of this wedding?”

  “Don’t question what we both wanted for you.”

  Rosalie convulses in tears and Ida kisses her hair.

  “A typical bride,” says Ida. “I was the same.”

  As her mother walks out with the gown, Rosalie imagines the filmstrip of her unfolding life: making love with Sol in the light of the Shabbat candles, the welcoming of the babies, the fresh leather of the childrens’ holiday shoes, her hands rubbing fresh thyme on the brisket, the rolling of the rugelach dough just as her mother taught—roll once, twice, three times for the flakiest pastry. More rolling, more specialness, more holiness. A sequence of kitchen sanctity spun out by rebbetzin Kerem, soon-to-be household goddess and patron saint of whatever synagogue would offer her husband his first job.

  She’elah: What does one do with the unsolvable question?

  Teshuvah: The bride will live her question, mold it under her hands, just like rolling out pastry dough on a table.

  Rosalie returns to the spot in the grass where she laid her body after she and Walter made love in the upper geniza for the first time. The grass is slightly wet but she doesn’t care about ruining her dress. She lies down and thinks of this patch of earth as her holy spot, a place on this planet that holds something of her heart. Something so beautiful cannot be a mistake. She flips onto her belly and rests her face on her forearms. It is possible, she thinks. Possible to tell Sol she cannot marry him. Possible to say I’m sorry but. At first he would doubt his hearing and touch his bad ear and then he would realize that he’d heard her correctly. I cannot. Sol’s face would contort and he would let out a whimper. She would look at him and turn away because it would be unbearable to watch. And then she would run to t
he attic and find Walter. I told him, she would say. And she would contort her face as Sol had contorted his and Walter would shake his head slowly. No. No. This is not my way. How could you have misunderstood me? Rosalie would burst into tears because she would have shredded her future for that gesture, that question, that definitive refusal.

  Her lover is a homeless man, caught between worlds. He wears the wrong clothes in the wrong seasons. She wants to live in a house, a real house with two tables: one in the kitchen and one in the dining room. One table adorned with a crystal vase of long roses, the other table offering a wooden bowl of fresh peaches. She wants bedrooms filled with children, their toys and books scattered about the floor, evidence of their joy. She wants to build a family, create a link in the chain of generations. And she wants to do this with Sol, who is learned and sincere and who will teach her Talmud early in the morning before the children wake up. And late at night she will lie beside him and teach him how she wants to be touched. What she learned with Walter. She will translate what is possible. It would not be everything—translation is an imperfect art and Sol would balk at the spices—but she will find a way to live with her husband’s touch. His small hands. His one deaf ear. His big heart. It will take a lifetime to teach him what she wants but she, Rosalie Wachs, soon to be Rosalie Kerem, will find a way.

  Walter lies on the floor of the upper geniza and listens to the faint laughter of the students gathering for their graduation party. Rosalie has told him about the progression of their remaining weeks here. Sol will be told where to report for his first pulpit. The wedding will take place at the end of the month but Rosalie will not disclose the exact date or location, even though she knows Walter will not show up. Sol and Rosalie will marry and drive away in their new car. The rest of the rabbinical students will pack their bags and Walter will remain. Someone on the faculty will notice him lingering in a room and ask what he learned during his stay, and it will become obvious that Paul Richardson’s arrangement was a sham. The rabbis housed him for a while; they lent shelter to a refugee whose sole contribution to the Seminary was offered in the upper geniza and the lower geniza, those holding places for discarded books and source sheets, unmailed letters and spoken words that would never be recorded into history.