It was Maurice – who for the first time sat next to her on the seat in Avi’s bus – who had prepared her for the cable car (although Kitty had already been aware that she must ride in it when she booked the tour), Maurice who had brought her fear of heights and of falling into the open and had encouraged her to confront them.
He was a strange man. After the excursion to the ill-fated Canyon of the Inscriptions, and the drive down to Sharm-El-Sheikh, Kitty had looked for him among those who had boarded the bus on the other trips but he had not appeared. She had been aware of an initial feeling of disappointment, which the new sights and fresh discoveries had soon dispelled. Yesterday, after a half-day tour, she had spent the afternoon, her last at leisure, in a deckchair. Dozing, and meditating on the holiday which she had enjoyed more than she had ever hoped she would, and her family which she was looking forward to seeing, she was aware of, but did not listen to, the familiar orchestra of noises from the pool. She wondered if Josh would be at the airport to meet her, whether Sarah had put any weekend food in her flat – it would not, of course, have entered Rachel’s head – whether Carol and Alec would bring her grandchildren, whom she had missed, from Godalming on Sunday afternoon to visit her.
She must have fallen asleep in the sun. She was woken by the public address system with the adenoidal consonants of its announcer. She recalled thinking how disruptive the calls were, how they disturbed the vacational calm, when her attention was suddenly aroused. At first she thought that she had been mistaken. Her mind, affected by the sun, was playing her tricks. She opened her eyes and waited. There was nothing to be heard but the screams of the splashing children from the shallow end of the pool. She must, she thought, have been dreaming, and lay back once more in the chair. She had barely closed her eyes when there was a crackle from the amplifier and a loud and unmistakable request: “Mrs Kitty Shelton to the telephone please…”
It was she who was being summoned, beyond any possible doubt. She took the call at the bar. The pool-man handed her the receiver.
“Kitty…?”
She recognised the Central European accent beneath its New York overlay.
“This is Maurice…”
He wanted to take her for dinner to Yoske’s Fish Bar in the town.
“If bone china is made from ground bones,” Sarah said, “why are we allowed to eat from it?”
She was calling from the kitchen and Josh, at the end of his day, was scarcely in the door. He stood still for a moment, key in hand. It was not the question which stopped him – there were many of them these days – most of which he was unable to answer. At unexpected moments, when they were driving home from a theatre, drifting into sleep at night, sometimes when they were making love, Sarah would ask him ‘who wrote the Talmud?’ or ‘are we allowed to leave our organs for medical research?’ It was not the questions which stopped him in his tracks. It was her use of the first person plural. Already Sarah considered herself Jewish, at one with his mother and his aunts, Beatty and Freda and Mirrie, and his sisters, Rachel and Carol; already her knowledge, gleaned from Mrs Halberstadt on Wednesdays, from her own searching and her voracious reading on the subject, went deeper and was wider than theirs. When Sarah did something she did it properly, a characteristic she had inherited from her father, who by following his own precepts had risen high in the diplomatic service. It was this attribute that had sustained her in her advertising work, which earned her a salary which almost equalled Josh’s. Sarah understood the ideological bric-à-brac of ‘things,’ as she understood people and their need for them. Her talents lay in transforming thought into visual images and latent dreams into the manifest. Given a household cleanser, a package holiday or a potato crisp, Sarah, with her alchemy, her book of spells, could make them indispensable.
At one time she had greeted Josh with the current worry about a product which was temporarily defeating her; how to market a chocolate biscuit or whether she could get away with the assertion that a washing machine had a ‘pretty face’. She would spend all evening staring at a perfume bottle or pondering how to make an orange identify in the public mind with a tablet of Vitamin C. These days it was her affair with Judaism that preoccupied her. Her enthusiasm was contagious. Although the fundamental beliefs in his religious heritage, instilled by Sydney, were firm, Josh had drifted away, together with most of his contemporaries, from the practice of his religion. It had been more a case of spiritual and ritual back-sliding than a conscious decision, although sometimes – when he thought of the fate of the Jews in Germany or their present plight in Soviet Russia – he questioned the value of Jewish distinctiveness. He had not forced Sarah to become Jewish, although their children would not be unless she did. He had not asked her to. She had simply announced her decision on their delayed honeymoon in Arizona. As the sun rose over the Grand Canyon, picking out like some unseen conductor, in pink and green and ochre, the creviced contours of the rocks, Sarah turned to him.
“I would like to become Jewish,” she said.
It was her wedding present to him.
She had asked for his help. Josh was no scholar as his father had been, but he had done his best, pointing her in the right direction. He introduced her to Reform Judaism, which took the attitude that modern conditions rendered the observance of many of the ancient laws impracticable, but to his surprise Sarah said that what the movement had to offer differed little from what could be found in certain forms of Christianity. She preferred the Orthodox way of life, the timeless authority of Rabbininc Judaism, harnessed at one end to the revelation of the Torah to Moses, and at the other to the arrival, one day, of the Messiah when there would be peace on earth. Josh had thought that the strictly decorous Reform services, where families prayed together, would appeal to her; but Sarah enjoyed the informal atmosphere of the Orthodox synagogue – where the Ladies sat in a special gallery – with its talking and gesticulating, its comings and goings, more reminiscent of the market place where public readings of the Torah had originally been held, than a house of God. Rabbi Magnus’ synagogue, which she had attended with Kitty, made Sarah feel, she said, at home. In its confines, she was conscious of a spiritual sense of reciprocity with God and found the relaxed atmosphere conducive to spontaneous prayer.
Her workmates were intrigued by her decision. Across a table on which an aerosol can of lavender-scented polish awaited the ballyhoo which would hopefully make it indispensable in a million homes, or before the blowup of a car destined to make the paterfamilias dissatisfied with his own, Sarah spoke of Judaism’s concern with the education of the child, respect for the aged, the comforting of the sick, of the stressed need for constant improvements in human relationships to colleagues who thought it had all to do with not eating pork.
Josh was learning too: that a mans’ word must be his bond (in particular in the case of a promise made to the poor), that to shame a person in public was one of the gravest offences, according to the Talmud. The dietary restrictions themselves – although it was many years since he had observed them – acquired new dimensions when Sarah explained that they not only imposed restraint but taught moral freedom; that the exercise of control over what went into the mouth promoted a positive spiritual attitude towards life and a guard over what came out of it. ‘Who is strong? He who subdues desires.’
At the end of a demanding day bent over his dental chair, Josh’s desire was now for Sarah. He could not answer her shouted question about the bone china. She would have to take it to Rabbi Magnus or Mrs Halberstadt. As he closed the front door he became aware of a strange smell which seemed to have possessed the flat.
In the kitchen Sarah was peering into a saucepan. Josh embraced her then followed her gaze. The aroma was coming from a greyish, watery mass.
“What on earth’s that?” He kissed Sarah’s hair, her ear.
“For your mother,” Sarah said. “Gefülte fish. She’s coming home tomorrow.”
Josh looked at what should have been, according to his book, feathery,
carrot topped balls of specific dimensions, and wondered if Sarah had forgotten some vital ingredient. He took her in his arms and turned off the gas beneath the mess in the saucepan.
It was not like his mother made.
Eleven
“I’m on the sea-food diet,” Maurice said, while Kitty battled with her conscience and the desserts on Yoske’s copious menu. “…I see food and I eat it.”
He did that all right. Kitty had never seen such a prodigious appetite – in addition to his dinner he had demolished half a loaf of bread – yet Maurice was not fat. Throughout the meal she had had to pinch herself mentally to prove that he was there at all, sitting opposite her at the corner table.
His invitation had been such a surprise, so totally unexpected that she had accepted, just like that. There was no good reason why she should have refused. Except that she had never had dinner alone with a man – she did not count her nephew Norman – other than Sydney. She told herself that Maurice was lonely. He looked more lonely on the tours. Bereft. He had the air of being in the world but not of it. As if it was Maurice Morgenthau versus the rest.
She regretted her acquiescence the minute she had put the receiver down and replaced the telephone next to the basket of lemons at the end of the bar. Well, not regretted, but the invitation disturbed her, as if she would not know how to behave. She would not. The afternoon, her last by the pool, was fragmented. For what remained of it she sat upright in her chair, looking at the frenetic activity around her, but not seeing it, glad when the heat of the sun began to diminish and it was time to go to her room. In its privacy she decided that the agitation, engendered by Maurice’s invitation and her response, was due to guilt. She felt guilty. That she was breaking faith with Sydney as categorically as if Maurice Morgenthau had invited her into his bed instead of to dinner at Yoske’s fish bar.
After so many years of marriage to Sydney she was as ill equipped to deal with Maurice Morgenthau as she was with life in general. It required application. As usual, she transferred her anxiety to her wardrobe, standing in front of it in as much confusion as a young girl. The emotions did not age. It was something she had tried to explain to Rachel who had looked at her as if she were mad. One develop new skills, mature resolutions, which could be applied to situations, but inside, inside one’s head, despite the passing of the years, one did not change. It was water off a duck’s back. Rachel was no more able to understand her mother’s empathy with her adolescent dilemmas than Kitty had believed in those of her own mother who had always seemed middle aged. She had one white dress. It had been Sydney’s favourite. She had taken it on cruises; it had been to Israel when they had stayed one summer at Herzlia. It was a holiday dress, living the year round in a special cupboard in the spare bedroom, and looked terrible on her when she was pale. She had caught the sun. Addie would say she looked healthy. It was her last night, tomorrow she would be packing. She would put it on.
Half-past seven Maurice had said. He was in the lobby, waiting, in his zippered jacket from which he had not bothered to change. Kitty wondered whether the white dress had been a mistake. He seemed not to notice it. They took a taxi to Yoske’s which was in the new tourist centre. From the vast menu, ridiculously happy not to have been sitting at her table for one in the hotel dining-room, Kitty ordered sole, although she knew it would not be the same as that from her fishmonger at home. Maurice asked for lobster. Kitty froze. Her astonishment was twofold. She had not been aware that foods specifically proscribed by the Torah were served in Israel, and she had never sat, at close quarters, to anyone eating a lobster. She wished she had not come. It had been stupid of her. She had nothing to say to this strange American, kind as he had been in helping her down into the Canyon of the Inscriptions, rescuing her from the unwanted attentions of the Bedouin on the beach at Neviot. He asked her if she wanted salad or aubergines with her fish, unaware that there was anything wrong. Everything was wrong. She was a fish out of water. Fish, ha! It served her right. For betraying Sydney. Sitting at a table – although it was only for dinner – with another man, when there had always been room for only one in her life.
Waiting for the lobster, whose arrival she dreaded as if it were she who would eat it, Kitty told Maurice of the trips she had taken without him. Maurice had been painting, he said – he had brought his water-colours with him – and, from his balcony, had captured the rocks and stones and the iridescent water that lay in the Gulf of Eilat. It was his vacation medium. Mostly he worked in oils. He got up at dawn to catch the morning light and worked through to the evening when the shadows were long. There was so much to say. In paint. The truth that was so hard to capture. The light that defied the combined talents of the colours and the brush.
Kitty listened wide eyed. No one had spoken to her before of landscapes in sonata form, of waves like fugal subjects. She knew what Maurice was talking about because of her evening class, and was about to tell him about it and that she had decided, when she had time, to take another in Hebrew language, when the lobster arrived and stopped her in her tracks. She glanced at it, as if even looking were forbidden, and thought that there was something indecent about its nakedness, something sensual and erotic about its articulated legs. She had been warming to Maurice as he talked to her – as if she had a mind of her own to be reckoned with – about his painting, about his hobby. Now, as he picked up his knife and fork, she felt alienated, as if by ingesting the gross and repulsive object on his plate, Maurice himself would become gross and repulsive. She thought of Sydney and his dedication to the laws of kashrut which permitted no digression, and that he was looking over her shoulder at Maurice Morgenthau as he applied himself to the contents of the two half shells. In her ears she could hear Sydney’s voice when the matter was discussed at table with Rachel or with Josh, propounding the observation of Maimonides: ‘The dietary laws seek to train us in the mastery of our appetites. They accustom us to restrain both the growth of desire and the disposition to consider the pleasure of eating and drinking as the end of man’s existence.’
Noticing her preoccupation Maurice said:
“Something wrong with your fish?”
Kitty picked up her knife and fork. She would try not to look, not to listen to the snapping of claws and the crunching of bone that was coming from across the table.
“They do the best lobster,” Maurice said tucking his napkin into the top of his zippered jacket.
“I don’t eat it.” Kitty’s voice was small.
“You frum?”
Kitty nodded her head miserably.
Maurice sucked a claw. “My father was a Rabbi.”
Kitty stared at him. He should have known better.
“What about Rachel and Josh and Carol and that husband of hers, Alec…they frum?”
Kitty stared again. He’d remembered their names. All of them. She told him about them. How Sydney, with her help and support, had reared them in the ways of their faith to observe the precepts – including the dietary laws – and guided them through the rules and regulations that governed the daily life of the observant Jew. She told him of her own home, which was run in strict accordance with the demands of kashrut and that she had only eaten away from it with Sydney in homes or restaurants which were kosher or in those which would serve them with omelettes or the simplest of grilled fish. She told Maurice about Carol’s continuing observance – which she was passing on, by instruction and example as was required of her, to Debbie and Lisa and Mathew – and her involvement, even in Godalming, with Jewish affairs. She told him about Josh’s lack of committal to, and Sarah’s new found interest in, the ways of his forefathers. She explained about Rachel and how her apparent disillusionment with the religion, which was of paramount importance in her father’s life, had saddened his heart. She spoke about the synagogue in Hendon where Sydney had been a regular worshipper and Rabbi Magnus’ with which, in more recent years, both she and Sydney had been involved. When she stopped for breath she was surprised to find her plate had b
een cleared away, the lobster gone, and Maurice waiting for her decision concerning dessert. Kitty turned her attention to the menu. She had not talked so much in eighteen months. She ordered strudel, knowing that the calories would be as bountiful as the currants among its flaky strata, and Maurice ordered the same, with a double portion of ice-cream. When it came he spooned a vanilla scoop of it and put it on Kitty’s plate. Although she was unable to explain why, even to herself, it made up in some measure for the affront, the violation almost, of the lobster. He did it with solicitude, as if she were a child. Importuning her to eat he told her about the trip to Masada – for which he had also booked – and about the cable car.
Kitty saw it first, the palace fortress with its flat, table top, standing out, lonely and impregnable, amid the mountains of the Judean Desert on the western bank of the Dead Sea. She recognised it from the picture in the guide book which, unable to sleep after her dinner at Yoske’s, she had taken to bed with her. She had reread the story, too. How in the year 70 AD, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, a little band of Jews had occupied the Masada fortress in order to continue the resistance against the Roman legions. It was a story of magic and inspiration. Nine hundred and sixty-seven souls, men, women and children, exchanging blow for blow with the surrounding assailants for three long years until the Roman warrior, Silva, by building a gigantic ramp which reached the fortress walls, had set fire to them. Watching the flames, the zealots knew their time had come. They destroyed all their possessions except the provisions of food, so that the enemy would see that they had voluntarily chosen death rather than submit to slavery. Families kissed for the last time – Kitty could picture them – and ‘everyone lay down in close embrace’. Tears had come to Kitty’s eyes. Ten men, who had been chosen by lot, then used their swords against the martyrs. When this gruesome task was completed, lots were drawn again, and one of the remaining ten put an end to the lives of his companions. When all were dead he had set fire to the palace and impaled himself on his own sword. A woman, who had hidden in a cistern, had lived to tell the tale to the historian Josephus who had faithfully transcribed it. Looking at the grandeur of the stark rock – towards which Zvi had swung the coach – rising up from the harsh shapes and bottomless ravines of the desert floor, Kitty’s imagination peopled its mass with freedom fighters, with whom she identified as positively as she did with those in her own lifetime of the Warsaw Ghetto. She was one of the lucky ones. Her life, despite her personal privations, was charmed. She had not, as yet, been selected as victim in Roman siege, Russian pogrom or Final Solution. She was keenly aware of this, and reminded herself of her good fortune when suffering some small discomfort, making some minor sacrifice in the name of her religion. As they bumped along the road, approaching the eastern face of the sun-baked fortress, Kitty wondered what sort of martyr she would make, when she could not even tolerate the terrifying prospect of the cable car.
Rose of Jericho Page 10