The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction

by Naomi Holoch

  “But that’s not all,” I said, overwhelmed by the thought of describing a modern world suffused with medieval rites and superstitions. “There are Jerusalemites who attend the university, who travel to foreign lands, who study science and technology—and who still ritually kiss the doorpost when they enter and leave a room; they still weep bitterly at the remnant wall of the ancient Temple; they still have their life partners chosen for them by a matchmaker and a rabbi. They live their lives with one foot planted in a dark age and the other in a mystical present.”

  “And this is wrong to you?” asked Natalia.

  I heard in her question an implied criticism of my modern position. Perhaps it was the wine that led me to this conclusion. Perhaps it was my own guilt at having broken away from the ancient traditions.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  We were quiet then. I had wanted to hear from Natalia that this is a wonderful city, a city set somewhere between heaven and earth. We who live here—having full faith that this is true—always long for others to confirm it. But Natalia did not. I sipped my wine to the last drop and found my head spinning chaotically, unloosing thoughts that should have remained unuttered.

  “You are German. You would not understand this.”

  “But I …,” began Natalia.

  “Germans are not welcome here,” I said, the memory of my gassed grandparents suddenly flooding my mind. “Your interest in Jerusalem is an ugly curiosity, a cynicism, a monstrous, sadistic, necrophilic fascination with the dead!”

  I put down my cup and stood up. Too much wine and history were running through my mind, and I could no longer bear this conversation.

  “No, it’s not that at all!” said Natalia. “My grandparents …”

  “Were Nazis,” I hissed at her, and slammed the door as I left.

  I walked down the narrow path from my house and found myself alone in a dark Malha, hemmed in by the houses that push out against the narrow lanes. I walked through the alleys until I reached the hill behind the village and climbed down the other side, entering the mouth of the valley, walking to the light of the moon, past gnarled olive trees and young almond trees about to give winter blossom, sometimes losing the path and tripping over stones and thorny brambles, making my way deep into the valley, feeling my rage slowly subside as the night wrapped itself around me. Finally I reached a small glen, a place I sometimes go to when I need silence. I sat down on the soft patch of grass, hugged my knees against the cold, and cried. I didn’t know what had come over me.

  I went back to the house later that night, but Natalia was gone. She had taken her things and left. I went searching through the rooms, opening every door in hope of seeing something of hers, a sign that she would be back, but there was none. The two mugs and pot were washed and put away. An empty wine bottle stood at attention on the counter.

  I didn’t expect to see Natalia ever again. I didn’t know how to contact her or find her address. I spent many days thinking through that evening—what had been said, what had not been said—and I could not excuse my outburst. It pained me, but I gradually forced it out of my mind, suppressing the thought of her and of that night.

  Months later, I found myself once again walking through the darkened city, the streets, now deserted, leading me east. The night air was crisp, invigorating. I walked until I came to the wall of the Old City.

  It was late and the buses were no longer running. I passed through Jaffa Gate and entered the walled city, turning toward the Armenian Quarter. I continued along the road and then cut across the Jewish Quarter to the broad stairs leading down to the Western Wall. I do not go to the Wall for solace, but I do sometimes go there to gaze at its sculpted beauty. The light and shadows playing on the stones stirred in me feelings long buried.

  I stood behind the prayer area and watched the few who were keeping an all-night vigil sway back and forth in their prayers. As I watched, I tried to recall some of the prayers that I had learned as a child. The words were coming to me: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. These words which I command thee today shall be in thy heart. Thou shalt instill them diligently in thy children….”

  “The stones do not listen.”

  The words came through the night, soft and direct. I looked up and was shocked to see her there. “Natalia!”

  She smiled, and, remembering how I had left her, I felt that I did not deserve such a lovely smile.

  “We meet again,” she said, “this time on ground that is holy and casts its own spell. Do I stand a chance to speak to you in such a place? If now you run away, I will not interrupt your prayers next time.”

  “I’m so glad to see you, Natalia, so glad to find you again, so long wanting to talk to you after that evening.” The words were rushing out unsorted. “How inconsiderate I was that night—unfair and bigoted. Please forgive me. It was so rude….”

  “Now you come to my home and drink some of my wine,” she said, “and I decide if I forgive you.”

  We walked back together through the large deserted plaza. I wondered what she was doing out at this hour, and at the Western Wall, no less. In fact, what was she doing in Jerusalem? All these were questions I held in my heart as we walked silently through the restored quarter. Reaching a gate, we entered a courtyard, passed several homes, and then stopped at one low, wooden door, set apart from the others by a sign: “N. Koenig-Strauss, Therapist. By appointment only.”

  She led me inside to a sparsely furnished apartment, and I looked around while she went to bring the wine. The room was simple and warm—oriental carpets, two overstuffed armchairs, a low table between them on which a book in German lay open. One wall was lined with shelves of books, another carried diplomas from a Berlin institute. She surprised me with this profession.

  And I was surprised at myself for never having inquired while she was staying in my home.

  “I didn’t know that you’re a therapist,” I said, “and I surely didn’t know that you stayed on in Jerusalem.”

  “You talked me into staying,” said Natalia, and I could not tell if she meant it.

  “But what’s your life like here? Do you have family? What’s it like for a German to live in Jerusalem, in the heart of the Jewish Quarter, a short walk from the Temple site?”

  “You come to the point quickly,” she laughed.

  “I spoke too much—and too little—when we were together last. Now you speak and tell me as much as you can bear to tell someone who once insulted you unfairly, but feels great remorse and is sincerely interested.”

  Natalia sat back and sipped her wine. I watched her dark eyes study me.

  “Yes, I will share with you some of these thoughts. You are a careful listener, and you begin to view me through your heart.”

  Natalia then told me about some of her life that had preceded her coming to Jerusalem. Her father had died when she was seven, and she never got along with her mother.

  “Mother’s boyfriends were her first priority,” she said, “and my brothers and I had to help each other cope with that.” It was a difficult childhood, but Natalia had done well in her studies, had found friendship, and had even been married—very young, very briefly—to a volatile Jewish playwright. Perhaps this was part of a fascination she felt for things Jewish: “Not to become a Jew, but to learn about this people and its history.” Several years after her divorce, she came to Israel.

  “And, yes, my grandparents were Nazis,” she concluded, “but I am not.”

  Her words coursed through my system, slowly sinking in. “And I had the arrogance to treat you like the enemy,” I said.

  “That is no longer important,” Natalia responded. “It is now part of our common history. Even confrontation becomes a bond between two people.”

  Yes, a bond between us. There had been a bond ever since that outburst of mine at her. Now she was sitting opposite me in her home in Jerusalem. What was to become of this bond now? Once I left
this room, would our chance encounter have broken my tie of remorse to her, freeing me of any further connection?

  “So, will we have anything to say to each other after all the apologies and explanations are over?” she asked.

  I laughed. “You’re good at reading thoughts.”

  “Sometimes,” said Natalia.

  We sipped our wine in the late night, the quiet lying between us.

  “And I suppose there are one or two little facts in the stories of our lives that still bear some clarification,” she said, a smile just hovering behind her eyes and mouth.

  I looked directly into her eyes and wondered. And she looked directly back into mine. These looks are sometimes unequivocal, but still I felt uncertain.

  “So, does this call for another meeting at a more reasonable hour?” I asked.

  “It might. Or for an invitation to stay the night.”

  I looked at her. “It’s complicated,” I said.

  She didn’t reply.

  “But I’d like to,” I continued. “Another time. If I may.”

  “You may,” she said softly.

  I stepped outside and felt the brooding darkness enclose me, but it did not reach a small light that had turned on inside me. The church spires rose above the rooftops of the Old City, looking more dark and intriguing than I remembered them. Yes, yes, I’d like to. I began the long walk home. And she said I may.

  Maureen Duffy

  A portrait of a 1950s British working-class lesbian bar community, The Microcosm (1966) by Maureen Duffy was a ground-breaking novel, intriguing both for its content and its style. In the following excerpt, the author challenges narrative structure by using shifting points of view to reveal the complexities of this community of women. Prefiguring contemporary discussion of gender representation, Duffy allows her characters to speak in a gender-breaking language that expresses their “butch-fem” identities. Duffy, born in Sussex, England, in 1933, started her long publishing career in 1962; her works include biography, fiction, poetry, and plays. In this passage, the reader overhears Judy’s thoughts as she endures her shift in the factory and anticipates rejoining Jonnie, her lover.

  from THE MICROCOSM

  To it better be time and a half too, dragging us in here like this on a Saturday morning, dragging us out of our nice warm beds, making us do without our little bit of Sat’day lie in and the only time we do get a little bit of the old how’s-your-father these days with Jonnie always so tired working her guts out till all hours every night just so’s we can live a bit near the mark, a bit like normal people, all them Joneses we’re supposed to be so hot on keeping up with like they’re always stuffing us with on the screen, the goggle-box like Matt says. And what was it she said now, she said we love it and hate it, love it and hate it sitting there night after night with only Mitzi for company the little darling, must bathe her tomorrow when Jonnie’s home to help me cos she struggles like a little demon for all she’s only a scrap, nothing of her at all when you come to pick her up but she does her little best snuggling up to me so’s I won’t be too lonely as if she knew somehow and we sit there hour after hour loving it and hating it because there’s so many things I could be doing about the flat if only I could tear meself away but I seem so tired somehow so gawd knows how Jonnie must feel and it’s wrong of me I know to take it out of her when she comes in, but I can’t help it, making up to her, smooching round her for a little bit of the old you-know and feeling all aggrieved when she turns away only wanting a cup of tea and a sit by the fire and I can see it going through her head what have I been doing all evening but she’s too tired to come out straight with it so it’s never brought out in the open for an airing, only I see her looking round at the dust you could write your name in on every flat top and thick enough to grow carrots along the ledges and me still sitting there in me old slacks like I just come in from work, with me hair a mess of tangles and me face gone all blotchy from the fire. Oh I see when I go out to put the kettle on, catch a sight of meself in the glass and think what a fright to come home to. You watch it my girl as mum would say or one day she may not be so keen to come home.

  Look at her down there now working away so all I can see really is her curly black hair with not a gray one in it yet and I’ll make her touch it up as soon as they start showing cos I’m not having my Jonnie looking old even if it is supposed to be distinguished. All the filmstars dye their hair men as well as women so why shouldn’t others and it does you good makes you feel younger if you look it and she’s got such a slim figure still, looks real handsome in her best suit not like some of them fleshy butches you see about and even Matt’s starting to put it on a bit though maybe that’s the winter like that program on bears I saw where they put on pounds to see them through hibernation and there’s a big word for something I wouldn’t have known except for the box so it’s not all rubbish they put on there though I should have known it from school I suppose if I’d paid any attention or had any brains. And that was something they didn’t teach us in nature study only about the birds and the bees and only then how to get a baby and what happens to it inside of you though we knew all the rest anyway from each other and who had seen their mum and dad having it away and whose big sister was expecting but what I’ve needed to know since they never told us, don’t suppose they knew theirselves some of them though looking back there was one or two of the teachers I wouldn’t be so sure about knowing what I do now with that Steve and the others who come down the club, still if they were they never let on to us. That’s why I didn’t know when the girls started calling me names and just because me and Sheila was friends and didn’t run after the boys like all the rest. After all we was only kids of thirteen and how the others knew there were such things I don’t know cos I’d never heard the word before and even when I did I went running home to ask mum what it meant and even she a married woman and dad was never finicky with his language still she didn’t know.

  “What’s that bloke doing in among all them girls?” that man in the blue suit wanted to know when the foreman showed him our shop. Laugh though I went a bit hot and cold at first wondering if the others had heard and what they’d say but funny they never said nothing cos they seem as if they take Jonnie for granted. Being in the army so long I suppose they think makes her a bit different, a bit strange and the foreman he never says nothing neither cos he knows she’s the best worker in the shop and don’t waste no time chinwagging with the others and always keen to do a bit of overtime. Gawd knows how we’d manage otherwise with the lousy wages they give you here, and the rent of the flat, but she would have it we must have a decent home although now I’ve got it I hardly know what to do with it being dragged up to newspaper on the table and hardly a stick of furniture cos he’d never give her anything toward it, food money that was all and not much of that and the few chattels we had were chuckouts from the neighbors like the clothes to our backs was handmedowns. Still we had a bit of fun in them days when he was out of the house till he come home knocking our heads together and clouting her round the earhole till she fell against the scullery wall and her face was the color of dirty sheets not so much because of the pain, no not so much that though he hurt her we could all see more than he hurt us but for the hurt inside and the foul language that seemed to stick to you and thick the air like an open sewer. Seven colors of shit that’s what he used to say he’d knock out of us. Played on me mind as a kid so I was always imagining it and making me stomach throw up and I imagined other people could see it too, the kids and the teachers at school so they’d turn their noses up at me and point. “That girl’s …” Oh it doesn’t do to think about it too much even now how we lived from poverty to poverty in them days.

  Maybe that’s why Jonnie’s so good to me now, gives me everything I could ask for, cos she knows what it’s like. She’s seen hard times too but she’s come out different being more like a man I suppose and not so easy upset though I reckon she understands better’n any bloke could. Only one ever understo
od. “What do they mean by it Larry?” “It’s hard to put it Sadie. I mean I don’t know what to say.” “Go on tell us. I want to know.” “Well they mean you, you’ll never get married. Yeah that’s it, that’s what they mean, you’ll never get married.” “Gawd is that all—what’s so terrible about that. Lots of people don’t get married. My cousin never has. He’s always stayed with his mother. He’s not lonely or miserable. He has his mates come round the house. And our Georgie’s not married either though it’s different for him I suppose being in the army. Still he might when he comes out.” “Oh I don’t reckon. It runs in your family by the sound of it.” And that was all there was to it then. We went on being friends, going out together but he never touched me except sometimes to put his arm round me and I liked it like that. Then it was his turn to go away and I was so lost without him I thought hell why not. After all I’m going to work now and everyone else does at my age. What you think you know at fifteen. So knowall I thought meself all tarted up for me first real date with a boy. He said would I come to the pictures and now I can’t even remember his name. Wouldn’t have been a bad picture The Old Man and the Sea but he never let me see it in peace, had to be all the time messing about and then when we got outside and we was walking home he said could he kiss me good night and I said yes thinking it’d be like me and Larry used to be sort of nice and gentle, friendly and suddenly there he was feeling me in the hatshop doorway and his mouth open on mine with his wet tongue I could feel poking between me teeth till I thought I’d be sick all over him and serve him right the dirty little devil at his age.