A Late Divorce

by A. B. Yehoshua

  “To whom?” I ask. “God?”

  He laughs soundlessly winking at me full of good humor extracting a piece of matzo from my grasp with the same soft warm paws that once used to tie me and give me electric shock. “Never mind. There’s just a bit more to go. It’s only a ceremony, you know. Just a bit more. I don’t believe in it either, but why demoralize people?...”

  He stood there on the wet earth, lighting a cigarette, rotting leaves and fallen blossoms all around him, pacing the growing grass, bathed in the sharp, splintery light of the violent spring, seeing nothing, oblivious to the blooming earth, self-involved, shifting papers, his tie loose, the soft curly gray hairs showing through the frill of his shirt. Why, for a moment I even saw the pale mole that once I kissed with such passion and the reddish seam they had stitched in him like a hooked beak! He showed them to me, both abashed and amused, a twinkle in his eyes, almost smiling, asking me did I really as though he didn’t know. Did I really? Well, now he could afford to, the divorce was almost over on the other side of the door. It pleased him to think that it might all have been a mistake, a passing aberration: that whole brutally muggy summer dawn on which he threw my food to the dog, diddling with his pots, with his constipated, self-involved mind that never would change, that locked itself up with keys swinging from strings, go back to bed, how come you got up, what a night, he sure can scream, we can’t go on like this, we should never have bad him here ... and all the time looking for my medicine and so mechanically measuring it and giving it to me, here I was barely risen and already he wanted to drug me, to knock me out, even to drive me away. How quickly he had despaired of me, how disappointingly he had given up on me from the moment he noticed the umbrella I brought home from the store. “What did you buy that for?’’ he wanted to know. And I said, “I didn’t. It got into my shopping bag by mistake. I never paid for it.” The next day I returned with two more umbrellas and a brown mug. “How easy it is to steal,” I mused. “Not that I was stealing—at least I didn’t feel that I was—but perhaps somebody else was doing it for me. I suppose you had better take it all back.” He hit the ceiling. “What kind of monkey business are you up to? I want you to stop it at once.” I let a few days go by and went to take it all back, but this time they were waiting for me, they had already spotted me the time before. They grabbed me without letting me explain, some young salesman stood me in a corner and insisted on calling the police. In the end they got hold of Yehuda too, who came running from the university to identify me, frightened and as pale as a sheet. I was hungry and tired by then but he didn’t even speak to me. He just fawned on the policeman, a fat sergeant who had to calm him down, who understood right away because he knew all the signs and never thought for a moment of pressing charges: a primitive-looking but gloriously humane soul, from the start he behaved gently toward me, he let me go off to the side and only cautioned Yehuda. On our way home we didn’t speak to each other. Yehuda was furious, he would only look at me from the corner of his eye as though I were a stranger. We kept quiet in the house too. I ate, washed, and got into bed with the last of my strength, still not exchanging a word with him. But as I was dozing off in the twilight I felt him standing in the doorway with a suspicious stare. “You see,” I began to explain to him, “there’s someone else here now. It’s hard to draw the line but there’s an other in me, perhaps a whole extra person. You have two wives now. But don’t be afraid. You can cope with her. Just go along with her, don’t panic and try to fight her. She may even be the original me. Perhaps she’s a virgin. I’m only first getting to know her. I can feel that soon she’ll start talking, and then you’ll hear her too.” He covered his face, not wanting to accept it, refusing to hear anymore. “She’s still quite primitive. She isn’t used to stores, she can’t even tell the difference yet between what’s hers and what isn’t. She comes from the desert. But you’ll see that she can be talked to. That she can even be loved. Just you tell her that too. You have such a good way with words. Make an effort with her. Let her feel your presence. Now that you’re retired and have time on your hands, she can give new meaning to your life.” “That’s enough!” he burst out. “You’re doing this on purpose. It’s just an act.” “But it’s not, Yehuda. Listen. She’s going to talk to you now, just to demonstrate.” And she really did begin to, quickly and in my mother’s voice, saying the most complicated, confusing things. He slammed the door and fled, and as soon as she stopped I fell asleep. When I awoke it was the middle of the night. The bedroom door was open and a dim light shone in the house. Someone was singing on the television. Tsvi was up. He came to look in on me and I knew right away that father had told him everything, that he had asked him to come back home to live with us.

  Tsvi helped me up and made me something to eat, surrounding me with warmth and concern. He was clearly in the best of spirits. Father was already sleeping on the couch in his study. And only then did I grasp the full extent of his despair, of his fear, of his disappointment, of his surrender. He was handing me over to Tsvi, who was only too glad to get me and to treat me royally. He turned off the TV, made his bed in the guest room, and went off to look for a book to read in it.

  Suddenly you can hear a pin drop. I look up from my book to see the rabbi beckon to the pretty young American mother. She rises blushing in her gorgeous dress encouraged by her husband she tiptoes anxiously over to the rabbi he hands her a large porcelain bowl. She holds it in her thin hands while he raises his big wine cup and begins to list the Ten Plagues in some old chant from the steppes letting one large red drop of wine fall into the bowl for each plague. Blood. Frogs. Lice. Locusts. Vermin...

  The pretty young American smiles she has stage fright and doesn’t understand the bowl shakes slightly in her hands while the rabbi continues drop by drop flicking each plague off his finger into the pinkish bowl and chanting as it falls. Boils. Hail. Wild beasts ... Hypnotically she smiles at each drop. Darkness. The Killing of the Firstborn ... At last he’s done. He shuts his eyes and motions her back to her seat but still she stands there reverently holding the bowl uncertain what to do with it. And then suddenly she raises it to her lips and begins to drink. Everyone shouts at once. The bowl of plagues is snatched from her. Shrieks of laughter accompany her shamefaced return to her seat where her children crowd around her and her husband gives her a kiss. And still the tenor voice quavers on.

  “Rabbi Yossi the Galilean hath said...”

  You paced slowly back and forth on the wet earth, careful not to sink into it, the divorced divorcing divorcer in the splintery glare of the raging spring, your pant cuffs stained with mud, your new American suit shiny in the sunlight, someone else was dressing you now, you never had such a stylish collar before. You lit a cigarette, your face dissolving into vapor in a puddle of water, you exhaled bluish smoke, you sank deeper into yourself, shifting papers from pocket to pocket. Inside the closed cottage, behind drawn curtains, the rabbis fought over our divorce, but already I was parted from you, sitting stock-still on the stoop and staring at the soft gray curls over your heart, at the thin scar hooked like a beak. All at once you stopped worrying and looked at me. What were you thinking of just then? Still of yourself as you and he the way you once used to? You turned to me so unexpectedly, so openly, so shining with wisdom, yes, even with humor—why, the worst part of it then was that you completely lost your sense of humor! “Did you really? You really did? You wanted to kill me?” Perhaps now that we’re parted at last it flattered you to think that. “Yes,” I said. But that wasn’t so. I had only wanted to cut you loose. Can’t you understand there’s a difference? To cut you loose from the desperate fear that made you want to run away, but to leave some part of you too. Because I’m sure there would have been something left. To cut you loose from your constipated fear, from your self-involved, self-diddling intellect with its anxieties and its imaginary, self-destructing missions to the world. Not at that exact spot. Although perhaps there never was a better one. But I was sure that there must be on
e, the fulcrum from which you would come apart. If only you hadn’t been so scared. If only you had waited another moment without moving, you might not have even felt the pain. But you didn’t know who you gave the knife to. It wasn’t to her, as you thought. It was to me, who loved you and would never have harmed you. Who wanted only to open you up. To cut you loose but not to kill you. To free you. Oh how gladly I would have taken apart that mono-self of yours! It broke my heart to see you with your apron on among those pots, a beginner in the kitchen trying so hard to cook, the dawn-star Venus upon you, a soft sun of flame beneath your steamy, boiling meat soup. You gave her the knife and you panicked because you couldn’t see how in a flicker of thought I took it from her right away. Cut him loose, don’t kill him, I whispered to her. Start with the key on his chest. If only you had kept still then as you did today, smiling patiently ... we did, you know, spend so many years together, even if they were a bitter disappointment ... what made you grab my hand and wrestle with me, what made you run away? But you’ve always run away. Always surrendered. Always gone to get Tsvi, to wake up the children, not that they ever did you any good. Because it wasn’t a question of doing justice or of being fair. It was a question of being together. You shouted when you should have talked. For the longest time you choked your words to death, you constipated all your sentences. Who were you shouting at? Why? And in such a high, female voice that one might almost have thought that my other was in you and was dragging you off to her wilderness. Groggy as I was I knew I had to act quickly and so did the loudly barking dog. I knew that it was either now or never to cut up that stubborn mono-self into its original parts. If only you hadn’t moved. If only you had calmed your mind instead of screaming “Oh, my God!” and springing for the door. A fresh, clear stream of words would have sprung from you instead and done the job without a drop of blood. You would have been cut loose painlessly, joyously. We could have done without the knife.

  Suddenly someone bangs on a table and the murmurs and the laughter die away. Off to the side somebody starts to sing the next passage from the Haggadah and is silenced. From the other end of the room somebody else takes it up and is hushed too. “Shh ... shh ... wait a minute ... the rabbi...” I glanced up from my book to see the young Russian standing stiffly at the head table eyes shut one hand on his heart and the other raised in the air. “Shh ... shh ...” voices call out. “Quiet, there! The rabbi wants to say a few words...”

  The silence deepens. At last he looks at us his gaze raking us like a blue torch. All eyes are on him. Here and there the trace of a smile. He takes a step back and quietly begins to make the rounds of the tables one hand still on his chest and the other still in the air. We crane in our chairs to watch him quietly slowly circle behind us two or three times until he deftly slips into the square between the tables and begins to circle that too passing in front of us now staring at the ceiling playing some game that maybe he learned in a Soviet labor camp. All at once he halts in front of me and without even a look at me deftly shuts my book then continues on his way one hand still held high not at all the same man who fought for my marriage this morning. Slowly now he lets his upraised arm drop. No one smiles anymore. We hold our breaths hypnotically. He walks even slower he stops to look at the children he circles some more stopping to study the doctors he walks on and stops again in front of the patients from the closed ward he circles on all at once he too begins to sing from the Haggadah offhandedly in a fine tenor voice like someone singing to himself in a melody nobody knows. Done he circles again lithe and assured on his feet cherubic cheeks pink in the bright light golden curls on his nape fluffing lightly beneath his backward-tipped cap. And again he stops by the children now he sings once more his voice poignant full of longing he circles again halting this time by the patients from the closed ward scrutinizing them slowly while they blink and gape with drooling mouths staring back at him in alarm as though he were about to attack them. Yet instead he begins to speak in his soft quiet voice in his thick odd Russian accent his body arched gracefully backward.

  “Nu ...but also you are chosen, do you know? Also you have spark of holiness. Also you belong to God’s covenant ... all of you ...” He sweeps his hand over the dining room. “A-a-a-ll of you, even who do not want, who do not believe. All ... everyone ...” He pauses to look straight at me. “A-a-a-ll ...” he drawls again. And once more he resumes circling as though lost in thought head high voice abruptly turning harsh. “Nu. For you whole earth is something to be”—he whips out a pad from his pocket, his voice dropping to a powerful whisper, and consults it—“trodden underfoot.” He smiles to himself. “Underfoot. Underfoot.” He forcefully repeats the word face red with anger everyone sits too dazed to make a sound. And again he circles round one hand on his heart stalking softly like a cat the scarf flutters on his neck he runs his other hand over the white tablecloth such delicate soft skin his curly locks tumble down his neck now I see him from behind and give a start why it’s a woman disguised as a man I hardly can breathe. He stops across from my table eyeing us. “Nu, nu.” He rouses himself. “In every generation we seek freedom, but only kind of freedom ... only kind of freedom ... is freedom to be slaves ... freedom to be slaves of God. Is freedom inside. Only there. Is freedom outside worth nothing ...” He reaches again for the book I’ve reopened and snatches it from me he looks at it darkly and bangs it shut he tucks it under his arm and circles some more. But now I jump to my feet. How didn’t I notice before that it was her? It’s her disguised as a rabbi! Desperately I turn to all the people watching him. Hasn’t anyone seen? From a far table he starts to sing again he returns to his seat and signals us all to join in the melody. It’s true, then. She’s back. She’s right here. And I bolt outside in a panic.

  The vats of night spill over me black and cold already I’m being chased I fling myself into some bushes falling through the hard branches I hear feet running down the path Yehezkel is calling in the darkness I peek out and see a thin little woman puffing on a cigarette bending down to pick up the skullcap that’s fallen from her head as she hurries toward my cottage. I cut through the bushes scratching myself breaking loose veering toward the front gate where the road is swimming in white night light I’m near the guardhouse now there’s Arabic music inside. I turn back toward the office the open door is swinging in the wind. Inside the rooms are dark. File folders and telephones gleam in the moonlight. Almost before it has rung Kedmi answers in his brisk voice.

  “Kedmi here.’’

  “It’s me.’’

  “Who? Talk louder.”

  But suddenly I feel so weak.

  “Mother.”

  “What are you mumbling there? Who are you?”

  “Mother,” I whisper.

  “Whose mother? Oh, it’s you ... What’s wrong?”

  “Let me talk to Ya’el.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Let me talk to Ya’el or to Tsvi!”

  “All right, all right. Don’t get nervous. I’ll let you talk to them all. Just tell me first what’s wrong.”

  But from a stack of files in the corner she rises in an old fur coat and galoshes granny glasses falling off her nose tall wrinkled hunchbacked white wool stockings running up her legs cheap chains on her neck reaching out an old bony hand to grab the phone with that smile that I hate in another second she’ll begin to talk already I hear Ya’el’s voice. “Mother? What’s the matter? Mother?” That patient piece of putty is calling me but I hang up and turn to the window how quickly the moon sails through it I stop my ears I don’t want to hear but I can’t stop the murmur that rises escaping from deep in the earth.

  —They’ll have a terrible accident.

  —You’re starting again. Don’t.

  —This time they’ll be caught.

  —You’ve said that a thousand times and nothing’s ever happened.

  —This time underfoot.

  —No. None of your words again.

  —Underfoot.

  —Under
foot. So underfoot. So what?

  —She sings so beautifully.

  —He does. Don’t say she. I’m warning you.

  —No, no, she. You saw yourself all the she there was today. From now on if you’d like there’ll be only she, lots of she, she everywhere...

  —You’re out of your mind.

  —She. Lots of she. Even Musa will be a she if you’d like.

  —I haven’t the strength for this. I don’t believe it’s happening. Anything but having to begin this all over again.

  —She everywhere.

  —Shut up.

  —The earth will turn upside down.

  —Don’t start in on the earth now.

  —Then maybe the sky. Maybe the she-sky.

  —That’s enough. Stop it!

  —Because you know what I’ve been thinking. Godina. Queen of the Universe.

  —No. Anything but that...

  —Godina. It’s so simple. So perfect.

  —It’s insane.

  —Godina. What a brilliant idea.

  —What nonsense.

  —We must remember to tell Tsvi tomorrow.

  —You will not say one word to him. Keep away from him.

  —But he’ll love it. What a beautiful idea. Now that the house is all ours, you’ll see that they’ll have to put up with me.

  —The house was coming to me. What’s wrong with that? What do you want from me?

  —How easily he let you have it, though.

  —Because it was coming to me. He realized that.

  —Then Godina!

  —If you scream like that I’ll kill you. I’ll do it with my own two hands. You know I mean it.

  —What happiness there will be with Godina.