The Innocents

by Francesca Segal

“Ten days holiday a year,” he explained, sitting on the pavement outside Cafe Cluny in the West Village. The benches were all full; even with a reservation they’d been told that it would be another half an hour for a brunch table. Impatient New Yorkers would be patient only if there were eggs Benedict on the horizon.

  Rachel was sitting on her bag to avoid getting marks on a new cream dress and was biting the straw of the iced coffee that she would press, intermittently, against her cheek to cool herself down.

  “That’s awful!” she exclaimed. “Daddy and Tony give everyone at GGP twenty days, don’t they?”

  “Christ, I should move back to London. Sorry, Ezra should be here any second and then they’ll seat us. We need ‘all of our party’ before they’ll give us the table. I wanted you to meet him though, I think you’d get on. He used to be a lawyer too but he jacked it in a couple of years ago and you’ve never seen a happier man.”

  Adam thought Zach himself looked pretty contented. He had made no attempt to assimilate and seemed actually to have become more English during his tenure in New York—he was wearing a pink and white striped shirt, the neck open, the collar turned up, and had grown a foppish shag of hair that fell into his eyes. The boys on their football team would never have permitted this in London and would have ridiculed him until he had a haircut and turned his collar back where it belonged, but Adam imagined that the English-dandy look probably went down quite well with New Yorkers. In any case, as a Sabah, he was more qualified than the others. Adam noticed that his signet ring, never aired in North West London unless he was going to see his grandfather, was back on the little finger of his left hand.

  “Anyway it’s good here, I swear, I wouldn’t keep you waiting otherwise. Great eggs.”

  “Brioche French toast with berries for me!” said Rachel happily. She had studied the framed menu in the window when they first arrived and, Adam noticed, was embracing carbohydrates as long-lost friends.

  “Ezra. Ezra!” Zach stood from the pavement and gestured to a very tall man who was ambling toward them across the cobblestones, a white keffiyeh round his neck and shoulder-length dark hair held back in a plastic Alice band. He was holding a scroll of newspapers and had a very large Polaroid camera hung round his neck. Adam stood to shake his hand; Rachel stayed perched on her bag and waved shyly.

  Ezra lifted the camera from round his neck and handed it to Zach. “I just found this in a consignment store on the way. Isn’t it amazing? The mirror’s jammed but I think I can fix it.” He turned to Adam and Rachel. “So mazel tov, you guys. Zach says you’re on your honeymoon.”

  Adam nodded. Rachel glowed.

  A girl in an extremely low-cut black top leaned out of the door of the restaurant and called into the small crowd, “Zachpartyoffour?” She led them in, gesturing with a clipboard, and they were settled at a table in the window under the envious eyes of the crowd still waiting and sweltering outside.

  “So how’s the play?” Zach asked Ezra, and then explained, “He’s written a really cool play in collaboration with a scientist at Harvard about the synthetic genome, and it’s been on in Brooklyn for the last month or so.”

  “They’ve just extended the run actually.”

  “A play about science?” Rachel asked, dubiously.

  “It’s genius,” Zach reassured her, taking a monogrammed handkerchief out of his pocket and polishing his sunglasses. The handkerchief, Adam thought, was going a bit far.

  “What’s it about?” asked Adam.

  “It’s about that guy, Craig Venter, he’s a sort of an entrepreneurial geneticist, and his lab created a synthetic genome, the first synthetic life—”

  “I remember that, it was terrible!” Rachel interposed.

  Adam noticed Ezra’s eyebrow twitch.

  “What inspired you?” Adam asked him, quickly.

  “It just consumed me when I read about it.” Ezra turned away from Rachel to Adam. “I got obsessed, and I started e-mailing this biologist guy I knew at Harvard to learn a bit more about it. It was the most beautiful feat of bioengineering, and it’s created a taxonomic shift in everything—the way we see life. It changes the very definition of it. On a practical level, what Venter achieved has brought us closer to a time when we’ll be able to create bacteria that make biofuels, or clear carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or are, like, miniature factories for specific vaccines. On a far more crucial level though, and what I was interested in, he’s pushed the boundaries. He’s changed the definition of what it is to be alive. What life means. He’s shown what can be achieved if scientists—if people—are open-minded and think outside the prescribed boundaries of what conventional morality, or religious doctrine, might say is acceptable. He’s actually playing God.”

  “That’s awful!” Rachel said again. “He should stop!”

  Adam resisted the urge to clamp his hand over her mouth but Ezra merely shrugged. He slid off the Alice band, shook his hair out, and then replaced the band higher up. It was an oddly masculine version of a familiar female gesture.

  “Why? I believe in intellectual freedom. He has a right to ideas independent of the dictates of a particular community. I think I’d take the right to think freely and pursue new ideas over almost all else. Venter agrees, and the outraged collective will come to see in the future that he was right.”

  Adam looked expectantly at Rachel. This hypothetical place that Ezra was describing to her—a place free from communal values and where there was no collective judgment to fear—was as foreign to her as the moon. North West London was a place of open minds when it came to science—and politics and literature and sexuality and art—but Rachel did not usually trouble herself with such thoughts one way or the other. When it came to making life choices, other people’s expectations were of paramount importance to her. They made her feel safe, because she always knew what to think. Her world was one in which her own highest aspirations had always been those wanted for her by a community, and the concept of innovation at a cost of isolation (or even mild disapproval) wasn’t worth it. There was security in their social dictates. She was also unused to having men disagree with her. He watched her reaction with interest but she merely pouted slightly and poured syrup on her French toast.

  After a moment Ezra said to Adam, “You should come, I’d like to know what you think.”

  “We’d love to,” he said. Rachel was still busily cutting a slice of French toast, and he could not catch her eye.

  “Great, hit me up tomorrow and I’ll leave tickets on the door for you.”

  Adam exchanged looks with Zach, who was smiling at him with an expression that said, “I told you you’d like him.” There was no corresponding look of appreciation for Rachel.

  On the way back to the hotel they stopped to pick up frozen yoghurt at a do-it-yourself ice cream shop that Rachel had read about in their guidebook. A row of nozzles offered fat-free confections in flavors from lychee to cupcake batter; Rachel got particular pleasure from anything fatless, though to Adam these tasted like air and artificial sweeteners. As they were walking back along Bleecker Street, Adam humming the Paul Simon song and peering into the windows of the cheese shops and fishmongers and Italian delis, Rachel said, “I couldn’t think of a single excuse to give that man about his awful play.”

  “Why? I thought we were going. It sounded interesting. It’s actually a kind of brilliant idea for a play if it works.”

  Rachel laughed, stroking her spoon over the crest of her yoghurt to collect the chocolate chips sprinkled on top. “Seriously, Ads, it sounded like the most boring thing ever! We can’t go all the way to Brooklyn tomorrow to see a play about a crazy man who grows bacteria. If we were planning on going to a show here it should have been something real, like a Broadway musical or something.”

  “Brooklyn’s not that far; they both came up from Brooklyn to meet us for brunch today,” Adam pointed out. He was irritated with her. He had been determined to go to the play and yet he’d known, even as he’d been sett
ing his heart on it, that Rachel would refuse. He had enjoyed talking to Ezra. Adam wanted to see him again and imagined the play would be intelligent. And even if it wasn’t, he thought with annoyance, it was something different to do. It was something they would never do in London. Rachel smiled at him with her spoon in her mouth, raising her eyebrows and holding out her tub of yoghurt to him.

  “It was self-serve,” he said crossly. “If I’d wanted vanilla, I’d have got it myself.”

  “Ads”—Rachel pouted at him—“don’t get your knickers in a twist. We met your friends today and that’s already quite a lot of other people to spend time with on our honeymoon.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, ruffling his hair as if he could be jollied out of a sulk. He smiled back, feeling weary. This was how it would be, he realized, and giving in was easier than trying to explain. When Rachel didn’t want something there was no sensible discussion to be had, because she couldn’t even see that other people might feel differently. He threw the rest of his frozen yoghurt into a bin.

  “Ads, I wanted to try the peanut butter flavor!” Rachel protested.

  “Then you should have got it yourself, shouldn’t you,” he said, as jovially as he could, but he meant it.

  20

  The first time Dan London had brought Willa to the Gilberts’ for Shabbat, Willa had expressed her interest in converting to Judaism and Lawrence had advised her, “There’s really not much to it. Any Jewish holiday can be described the same way. They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat.” On Purim it was Haman, an evil Iago in a three-cornered hat, who had attempted the killing, and whose failure is marked by the eating of three-cornered pastries. Along with these hamantaschen, sweet dough glossed with egg and filled with poppy seeds, the day is marked with a great deal of drinking, attending synagogue in fancy dress, and a theatrical reading of the Book of Esther in which, whenever the name Haman is mentioned, the congregation boos and heckles like a football crowd to drown it out. It is the one day of the Jewish calendar in which cross-dressing is not only permissible but actually encouraged. The closest equivalent is a Christmas pantomime.

  The Purim story’s heroine was Esther, new bride of the Persian King Ahasuerus. Shortly after their marriage, the king’s adviser Haman decided to murder all the Jews of the region, and Ahasuerus agreed to the genocide. It was only when Esther threw herself on her husband’s mercy and confessed that she herself was Jewish that he revoked his consent, and sentenced Haman to death.

  As a bride herself only six months earlier, Rachel had been cast to play Queen Esther in the English performance of the Purim shpiel at synagogue. Adam had not seen her on stage since she played Lady Bracknell in the upper-sixth production of The Importance of Being Earnest (she’d been the best actress in the production by far but had been refused the coveted role of Gwendolen because the director had complained that her inescapably large chest would make her look more matronly than the scrawny teenage girl playing her mother. She had cried about it and had begun the first of her many preliminary investigations into breast reduction surgery—not for the last time Adam and Jaffa had talked her out of it). He was intrigued by the idea of his new wife taking center stage. She had been an excellent Lady Bracknell, but he’d always thought that her own natural sweetness would have made her an ideal Cecily.

  Greeting the arriving guests at the young adults’ Purim party was the freckled junior rabbi Josh Cordova, dressed as a milkmaid with a bosom large enough to rival Rachel’s, blond woolen Heidi plaits concealing his curly ginger hair, and a black and white stuffed cow under his arm that he introduced as Moo-ses. Tanya Pearl’s younger sister, Hayley, stood beside him, dressed as Mata Hari as far as Adam could tell, decked in bells and anklets and displaying a rather startling amount of fake-tanned midriff. Unlike Tanya, she was rail-thin and had been wearing a full face of makeup, complete with false eyelashes and equally voluminous hair, every day since she was twelve. She worked at a respite center for disabled children and taught in the synagogue Sunday school, and if discipline was required for these roles, then Hayley Pearl was the ideal candidate. She had put her face on every morning, even when they camped in the desert on Israel Tour.

  “Rachie!” Hayley embraced her, wrists and feet jangling as she moved. “Come with me, we’ve got a five-minute rehearsal in the kitchens and then you’re on. Did you really bring it? Is that it? Ah, we had a spare one from the fancy dress box just in case you didn’t want to wear it again!” She reached for the garment bag that Adam carried but Rachel shook her head.

  “It’s been dry-cleaned and packed so I couldn’t, but I’ve got a white dress and a crown for the costume instead.”

  Adam squeezed Rachel’s hand before passing her the hanger. There was no need for Hayley Pearl to know that the wedding dress had remained at home because now, only six months after the wedding, it no longer fit. Rachel’s wholehearted return to carbohydrates had had its inevitable consequences. The discovery had been made that morning; the tears had ended only recently.

  Hayley pouted. “But you looked so gorge in it, what a shame! Ah, well. You’ll look gorge in anything. Come in with me. I’ve got my whole class here to see you, they’re going to be so excited. And it’s Natalie Joseph’s seventh birthday today so don’t forget to give her a cuddle.” She drew Rachel away from Adam and they disappeared together through the back doors of the synagogue. Adam remained outside with the milkmaid. His own costume—a hat and magnifying glass to be Sherlock Holmes—was already feeling rather halfhearted.

  The little plastic gemstone tiara that she wore to be queen was comical, but Rachel on stage was not—she was captivating. Rachel’s Queen Esther was sweet and solemn. Her innocence and gentleness lent a grace to her quiet courage as she risked her life before her all-powerful husband, a grave expression in her wide, dark eyes as she pleaded. It was all there in Rachel’s lovely face—a young girl unused to confrontation who, in defense of her family and her people, had found steel within. As she prepared to come before the king unbidden—a crime punishable by death if it displeased him—it was all Adam could do not to walk on stage and enfold Rachel in his arms. She looked so frightened, and yet so determined. She had mesmerized the room.

  The performance ended, and Adam joined the rest of the audience in a standing ovation for the players. Rachel was glowing with pleasure, taking her bow between Haman (Jasper Cohen) and King Ahasuerus (Anthony Rosenbaum). Adam had not been able to take his eyes off his wife throughout the performance and he saw that the rest of the congregation felt the same—the whoops and whistles of approval were all for Rachel.

  “Isn’t she gorge?” Hayley Pearl whispered to him during the standing ovation. Her bells and bracelets jangled as she clapped. “Every man in the room right now is mad about your wife.”

  Adam swelled with pride. “I know,” he said, immodestly.

  Rachel was as proud of herself as Adam was of her, and in the car her excitement was infectious. She sat, clutching the hamantaschen that Rabbi Cordova had insisted they take home, a bag of fifty from the caterer. The rest of the leftover food was going to a homeless shelter in Camden—Rabbi Cordova would deliver it to the same place he took the spare challot every Friday on his way home. But he had been desperate to show his appreciation for the star actress of the night and had only pastries with which to reward her. Refusing had not been an option.

  Rachel shifted the bag on her knees. “Shall we take these to Ziva? It’s only nine and we could just drop them off if she’s going to bed.”

  “That’s a lovely idea, Pumpkin.” They were about to turn in to England’s Lane; Adam continued down Haverstock Hill instead.

  “And we’ll still be home for you to watch Match of the Day.”

  They stopped at a junction and he turned to look at her, her eyes bright in the tawny streetlight, pleased by her own suggestion. In Rachel’s early childhood Ziva had been a source of painful embarrassment, Rachel had once confessed to Adam. At her first primary sc
hool play, Amy Thomas had seen Rachel’s grandmother swaddling fairy cakes in napkins and putting the bundles into her handbag. It was not theft of which she stood accused—Laura Young’s mother had been manning the refreshments table and at the end of the night had been giving them away. But everyone else’s parents had taken one and peeled off the paper case and handed it on to a child, or had simply refused the offer of pink-iced cupcakes unevenly studded with silver balls. Even class six, whose chubby fingers had decorated them earlier that day in Home Ec, knew that they were not good enough to justify wrapping them in shredding tissues to take home. The next day Amy Thomas had suggested that Rachel’s grandmother probably didn’t want to pay for her own cupcakes because Jews didn’t like to spend money, and this had been Rachel’s first gentle brush with bigotry. She knew this only in hindsight—at the time it seemed to say less about the worldview to which a precocious Amy Thomas had been exposed at her parents’ dinner table and more about Ziva herself, who was now a source of humiliation and was perhaps also mad. Rachel had nursed these fears alone until the school carol concert when, forced to explain why she did not want her snack-filching grandmother to come and hear her solo in “Silent Night,” Jaffa and Lawrence had told her about the Holocaust.

  “Kinderlach?” Ziva squinted at them from the doorway. “Vos is dis?”

  Adam held the plastic bag aloft in his fist like a giant funfair goldfish. “Hamantaschen, Ziva.”

  “Wonderful. Come in! Ach, this is a lovely surprise. Come in. We have just been having crumpets.”

  “Oh, do you have people here, Granny?” Rachel had stepped across the threshold and begun to follow her grandmother across the hall but stopped. “We don’t want to disturb you.”

  Ziva continued toward the sitting room. She had momentum; pausing to reply would make the walk more difficult. She addressed Rachel over her shoulder. “First of all, Rachele, with nobody in the world could I be disturbed if my visitor was you. And secondly, I am now alone in any case. Come. Sit. Bring plates.”