I Am Forbidden

by Anouk Markovits

  From then on, Mila returned to the Forty-Second Street library every time she had an appointment with her physician. Mila had been taught that Atara’s insistence on finding out what happened was a pleasure-seeking quest, a toying with superficial matters instead of the weightier teachings of the Law, but now Mila recognized that whatever was driving her own need to return to the library, Atara must have felt from a young age.

  Watching a clerk retrieve books from a rolling cart, watching the clerk shelve the books, Mila imagined Atara working in such a place, that one day Atara would appear behind the reference desk. Finally Mila summoned the nerve to ask the woman behind the checkout counter if she knew someone named Atara Stern, who particularly liked libraries. The woman politely explained that the New York Public Library had many thousands of patrons.

  In the reading room, as the light traveled across the tall windows, Mila came across an article by a professor at City University, Fifth Avenue. She realized the address was near the library. She walked down the few blocks and found him in a small office behind a glass door. Yes, the Kasztner train was a subject of deep interest to him, both as a historian and because he owed his life to Kasztner: the professor’s mother was pregnant with him when she escaped on Kasztner’s train. Yes, he knew about the Satmarer Rebbe’s escape. He had documents, testimonies.…

  ONE THURSDAY evening, Josef was peeling carrots for the Sabbath soup when Mila said, “About the dream, about Kasztner’s dead mother, or his aide’s dead mother urging Kasztner, or his aide, to rescue the Rebbe of Szatmár—is that how the Rebbe explains his escape?”

  “I believe it was the Rebbe himself who told the story of the dream but I never heard him talk of it.”

  “Some people are angry with the Rebbe. They say he, and other community leaders who fled on that train, behaved shamefully. They say these leaders knew about the camps, knew that Kasztner’s train would be let out only if other Jews did not resist deportation. That’s why Kasztner’s convoy left Kolozvár after the other Jews were deported: to make sure the prominenten remained silent. ‘It was a good bargain,’ Eichmann said during his trial.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Kolozvár was only four kilometers from the border and Jews were no longer killed in Romania in the spring of ’44. Had the Jews of Kolozvár known about the extermination camps, they would have fled. There were twenty thousand Jews and a handful of armed guards. Some would have been shot while fleeing, but most would have survived.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Had they known about the camps’? No one knew.”

  “The leaders had been warned. Certainly our Rebbe knew enough to escape with the help of a Zionist even though he had expelled from the congregation anyone who interacted with Zionists.”

  “The Rebbe never asked a Zionist for help. He never asked to be on that train.”

  “He begged. ‘Nem mir, Ich bin der Rebbe of Szatmár.’ ” (Take me, I am the Rebbe of Szatmár.)

  “Nem mir?” Josef laughed. “Our Rebbe asked to be part of a venture negotiated by a Zionist?”

  “Begged. And Josef, our Rebbe would never have transgressed the Sabbath if he had not known it was a question of life and death. He knew, Josef, he knew about the extermination camps—”

  “Our Rebbe transgressed the Sabbath?”

  “Atara told me years ago. She read it in newspapers. There was a trial … I didn’t want to think of it … I went to the library.”

  “You went inside a library?”

  “I had to know, Josef. What if the Rebbe knew what would happen to everyone left behind? What if he did what he accuses Zionists of doing, what if he failed to warn his community—”

  “Mila! Where are you hearing such things?”

  “I’m not angry with the Rebbe for surviving; I’m angry because when it came to his life, he allowed himself to compromise, but when it comes to our lives, we cannot do the one test that would permit me to start a fertility treatment.”

  “It’s the test you’re talking about? I told you, this isn’t about the Rebbe. No God-fearing rabbi would permit what is expressly forbidden in the Torah.”

  MILA’S NEIGHBOR recommended a physician who would prescribe fertility drugs without a semen sample: drugs to regulate Mila’s time of ovulation—which had not been irregular—drugs to stimulate her ovaries though everything indicated she ovulated regularly. The drugs, the temperature charts, the count of blood days and clean days, the intimate inspections melded into one wrenching failure to conceive. Mila barely noticed Josef reaching for her, his longing, his tenderness, his embrace.

  Clean: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

  Blood.

  Again, she curled up on the bed.

  Josef ached to take her in his arms. Nothing wrong with her, the doctors said. Shame swept over him, for her bloated ankles, her nausea, her despair. If he were the infertile one, then she was taking the drugs for naught—the drugs that so altered her moods. He never did deserve her, her tenderness, her beauty that now, too, begged for salvation. He hungered for her laugh, how long it had been since she had pulled him into her dance—Yadidadidam!

  *

  MILA knew that after ten years of barren marriage, an orthodox Jew may not abstain any longer from keeping the command to be fruitful and multiply. One evening, she asked, “Almost ten years since we are married. Has anyone suggested … that you divorce?”

  “Divorce!”

  “It is a commandment for a man to bear children.”

  He stroked her face, kissed her eyelids. “You’ve been taking these drugs too long. Would you consider—”

  “I won’t stop the fertility treatment.”

  Josef reached for a Talmud treatise, searched for a clause that might permit a semen analysis, and once more failed to find it:

  If his hand touches his penis, let his hand be cut off on his belly.

  Would not his belly be split? It is preferable that his belly be split.…

  If a thorn stuck in his belly, should he not remove it? No.

  … But all such, why?

  To emit seed in vain is akin to murder.

  *

  ON THEIR tenth anniversary, Mila copied out for the first time the verses that weighed so heavily on their marriage, the passage from Genesis about Onan’s death sentence for spilling his seed upon the ground. Her handwriting started off steady, intent on making a faithful transcription, but later, as she copied out the verses again and again, the script trembled as she grasped that the story was not Onan’s—Onan dies as soon as he is mentioned; the story was Tamar’s. Law and custom demanded that Onan’s widow, Tamar, be married to Onan’s brother, but her father-in-law, Judah, reneged on his promise to do so. Facing childlessness, Tamar took matters into her own hands.

  Once more, Mila copied the verses into her Book of Days:

  And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father-in-law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep … and Tamar took off the garments of her widowhood … and she sat near the entrance to Enayim, which is on the way to Timnath … Judah saw her and he thought her to be a harlot … and he said, “I pray thee, let me come in unto you.…” And he came in unto her. And she conceived.

  On another evening of separation—Josef was hunched over a Talmud tome at the cleared dining table, Mila was reading her Expanded Rabbinic Bible in the armchair by the window—Mila asked, “What does it mean, that Tamar sat at Enayim? Was there really a place called Eyes?”

  “Ah, you too are reading about Onan.”

  “About Tamar. The verse says: Tamar sat bepetach Enayim.”

  “One reading is: Tamar sat near the gate of Two Fountains. Of course, since enayim also means eyes, and petach also means opening, it is not incorrect to read: Tamar sat at, near, the Eyes’ Opening. The Targum Jonathan says: She sat near a division of paths, near a crossroad that requires all eyes to open and consider which way to proceed.”

  “And King David stems from Tamar?”

  “So will the messiah. Befor
e Judah knew Tamar, he pledged a signet ring to her. The Midrash says the signet bore a lion to signify that from this union would come the royal line of Israel, the lion of Judah.”

  Mila circled back to a commentary and entered it into her notebook:

  For a holy mission to succeed, it is sometimes necessary to trick Satan into thinking a holy act is like himself: satanic. It is sometimes necessary to shroud a holy act in sin. So did Rebecca, Jacob, Judah, Tamar.… Rebecca and Jacob deceived Isaac. Jacob married two sisters. Tamar lay with her father-in-law, yet Tamar brought forth the line of King David of whom it is said:

  BEHOLD, DAVID WAS ENTIRELY HANDSOME TO LOOK AT,

  OF ALL HUMANS, DAVID WAS MOST FAVORED BY THE LORD.

  Below this, Mila wrote and circled two words:

  Nem mir (take me)

  Two words with which Mila drew the unholy train into the story, and from that moment on, it was all connected in Mila’s mind, all the same story: Tamar, Judah, the Rebbe, each shrouding a holy act in the satanic cloak.

  The numerologies that had so enchanted Mila at the seminary now spilled from the margins of Scripture into her Book of Days as she attempted her own sums and interpretations.

  , vetahar (and she conceived), summed to 611, which summed to 6 + 1 + 1 = 8.

  Eight children?

  , enayim, summed to 740, which summed to 7 + 4 + 0 = 11 1 + 1 = 2.

  Two children? If she opened her eyes and saw what the Lord wanted her to see, she might have two children? Two was not as many as the other women in Williamsburg, yet how grateful she would be.

  But perhaps she should sum bepetach Enayim? Or, better, petach only since be was a mere preposition? Petach summed to 488 4 + 8 + 8 = 20 2.

  If she sat near the Gate to Enayim, she would have two children? No, they would remain two, the two of them, alone.…

  In the long hours in the empty apartment, amidst her count of blood and clean days, Mila summed and summed again. Sometimes the letters added to 8, 4, 2.…

  • • •

  Mila’s reading had turned into a desperate burrowing, the verses in Genesis no longer Scripture and Law, but a story, the story she needed to survive—her story. By day, she bore into the words to bring her womb to life; by night, she held on to Tamar’s hand so that even in sleep she would not let go of it.

  1968

  Paris

  THE TENTH YEAR of their marriage, Mila and Josef returned to Paris for Passover with the Sterns. During the flight, Mila gazed at the magazines the stewardess handed out: pictures of Martin Luther King shot dead, of a war in Vietnam, pictures of riots in Paris, women going out into the street, taking matters into their hands … like Tamar.

  Enayim 2. Petach 2.

  And Paris?

  (Paris) 298 2 + 9 + 8 = 19 1 + 9 = 10 1 + 0 = 1.

  One child? If she sat near Enayim in Paris, if she opened her eyes might she have one child?

  Policemen in riot gear stopped the taxi near the city center. Mila explained that her family lived in the Marais, off the rue de Rivoli. The police waved them on. The car inched its way between indigo vans with darkened windows. Placards were plastered on every façade, on traffic signs, bus shelters, bold swatches of scarlet and black, and the slogans of spring 1968 would soon find their way into Mila’s notebook:

  LE DROIT DE VIVRE NE SE MENDIE PAS,

  IL SE PREND

  (don’t beg for the right to live, take it)

  ON NE MATRAQUE PAS L’IMAGINATION

  (imagination cannot be hacked)

  And, in every margin:

  BEHOLD, DAVID WAS ENTIRELY HANDSOME TO LOOK AT,

  OF ALL HUMANS, DAVID WAS MOST FAVORED BY THE LORD.

  The taxi turned the corner, RUE DE SÉVIGNÉ. Mila ran up the three flights, into Hannah’s arms. After tea and cake, Mila asked, “May I? Now?,” but Hannah did not answer the usual, “Go child, go.” Instead, she explained: “The streets aren’t safe, the Goyim are protesting each other. You mustn’t go out.”

  Mila stepped onto the balcony. A black flag rippled on a roof. Further off, two red flags. Sirens wailed, insistent. Josef joined Mila. He wanted to use this moment alone to tell her that he had resolved to consult a rabbi in Paris, one more lenient than the Rebbe, a rabbi who might consider allowing the semen sample.

  Mila was staring at a poster on the opposite façade.

  “Nous sommes tous des juifs allemands,” she read out. “We are all German Jews.”

  “What do they mean?” Josef asked.

  “Perhaps … they want to undo the past. Look, that poster over there, it’s the same face. It says: Libérez Cohn-Bendit. I don’t know what it means. Perhaps they want to repair the world?”

  “Josef, have you seen this baraita?” Zalman called from the study. “The Yismach Moshe says.…”

  Mila and Josef stepped back inside. Josef did not get to tell Mila his latest thoughts regarding the test. Mila lifted Hannah’s youngest, inhaled the baby scent, then in a sudden burst, she put down the toddler, opened the front door of the apartment, pulled it shut behind her, and bolted down the stairs.

  The demonstration was dammed on the Left Bank. The bridges were barred, the Pont Louis-Philippe and the Pont Marie, but Mila wanted to see, feel this unrest that throbbed as her own. She ran south and across the Pont de Sully, then north toward the boulevard Saint-Michel. A policeman stopped her.

  “Ma p’tite dame! Il faut rentrer chez vous!”

  In her pink suit with pearl-gray piping, her pearl-gray pillbox hat, this woman did not belong in the Latin Quarter, not on this day, not with the riots.

  Mila rose on her toes, to see past the policeman’s shoulder, to better hear the students’ chant.

  The truncheon started to swing.

  “Mila!”

  She spun around.

  Gasping Josef, who had sensed her departure and had run after her. She saw Josef’s lips move, but amidst a siren and waves of shouting, she could not hear him. She thought that he must be saying: But we are holy. Separate. Our concern is God’s six hundred and thirteen commandments—

  With a speed that surprised her and the police, she turned and plunged past the cordon. Josef tried to follow, but the tips of two truncheons pressed against his chest. “Mila!” Josef yelled. The truncheons pressed harder against his chest.

  The pillbox hat bobbed up, down, past the tight weave of the marine police jackets.

  “Mila! Mila! Mila!”

  A ROLLING, delirious tentacle lifted her, carried her forward. Fists pummeled the air in anger and exhilaration. “C-R-S S-S!” the students chanted. Mila’s own arm went up. Her voice, not to be heard in public, not in front of men other than her husband, surged—exquisite melting of boundaries, her timbre mixed with other timbres, as she teetered from raised fist to raised fist, and louder her forbidden voice, “C-R-S S-S!”

  JOSEF stepped back from the police cordon. He rushed to one side street, then another. All access points to the demonstration were blocked. Please, Mila, it isn’t safe. You’re suffering. I’ve been trying to tell you, I’m thinking of it … the forbidden test.… Pushed by a throng, he stumbled into an open door. Out of breath, disoriented, he sat on a bench. Not in my merit but in theirs, in the name of Abraham Isaac Jacob, dear Lord, preserve from harm Blimela, daughter of Rachel, shield her body, guard her soul.…

  Had she run off because they had entered the tenth year of their barren marriage? Did she fear he might abandon her? Was she trying to risk her life?

  When Josef lifted his head, he saw before him blue, shimmering folds that were at once the blue taffeta suit Mila wore the day they met again, across the dining table on the rue de Sévigné, and the folds of Mary’s robe— But he was in a church! His arms flailed as if entangled in Mary’s billowing mantle, his hand struck the stone stoup, which, through the prism of his anguish and past losses, was the stoup in which Florina wet two fingers to sprinkle his forehead with holy water … To live Anghel, to live.

  THE PROTESTORS were now m
arching thirty abreast, arms linked behind a row of red flags and black flags. A song erupted, carried by thousands: “Debout les damnés de la terre!” Mila did not know the words of the “Internationale,” but she heard the summons to rise up. Then she heard the rumbling boots, as did the students next to her. She leaned into the line and passed cobble after cobble, toward the front, where they flew against shields and helmets. A group broke in from a side street. “Libérez nos camarades!” Mila started her own rally cry: “E-na-yim!” A teenager waving a black flag took up her chant: “U-na-nimes! U-na-nimes!” Mila’s eyes teared from acrid, whistling smoke. A rush threw her to the ground. A swinging club—too close, the seam of her skirt ripped, her wig and hat swiveled, askew one instant, then gone … arms pulling her, lifting her, helping her up … a winding stair, a terrace overlooking smoke and flashes—

  “A disinfectant! Bandage!”

  A youth unwound the red scarf from his neck and knelt at her feet. Mila’s eyes opened wide on the scarlet thread:

  … And it came to pass in the time of Tamar’s travail, and behold … the one put out his hand and the midwife bound upon his hand a scarlet thread.…

  After swaddling the cut on her heel, the youth ran his fingers through the stubble on her head. “Like the Brancusi muse: smooth and perfectly whole. Perfectly beautiful.”

  Mila understood that her wig was gone; she flushed, deeply.

  “Comrades!” the youth called, extending an arm toward her.

  “Revolution est belle,” someone whispered.

  Mila’s arms lifted; her hands covered her scalp as she hobbled toward the stairs.

  “Don’t!” the students cried out.

  The youth’s hand on her shoulder, holding her back. “The bastards club anyone they come across after a demonstration.”

  “I must,” Mila said.

  “I’ll go with you.”