I Am Forbidden

by Anouk Markovits

  “Your father is strange,” her friends told Rachel, “he cries when he sees you.” “All of them cry when they see children, his whole generation,” Rachel replied. “His crying is different,” Rachel’s friends insisted. But Rachel did not perceive Josef’s anguish as particular to herself. She attributed the fervor of her father’s prayers, his longing and dejection, his heightened concern for her, his silences, to the way people from back there had a darkness in them that they could not escape, a darkness that stemmed from the war against Jews about which they did not speak.

  *

  SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Rachel came home from school and described the joy that seized her class that morning. Lessons were suspended, tables and benches were piled high against the walls, and all the girls sang and danced, lifting the chair of the first girl to be engaged. “You should have heard her scream when the chair almost toppled! You know this step, Mama?” Rachel drew her mother into the living room; a true daughter of Israel shies from dancing even in front of her father.

  Josef heard mother and daughter tap the new step between couch and coffee table; he heard their laughter, his head bowed.

  What am I doing? What have I done?

  The telephone rang more often in the Lichtenstein home. Such an accomplished daughter, and good-looking like her mother, tall like her father—

  “My Rachel is barely seventeen!” Mila protested.

  “You want to wait until all the good boys are taken? ”

  Josef’s old teacher, Halberstamm, heard of Rachel’s devotion, of her bright disposition. He, too, called. “Blessed be the Lord, your daughter has come of age. Let me get to the point, Josef. You know my youngest.…”

  Halberstamm’s boy would sit and learn—time was too precious for such a good head to work for a living, but a gifted girl like Rachel would find a job easily, teaching kindergarten or primary school. Later, when work would interfere with child rearing, God would provide.

  • • •

  Rachel Lichtenstein, seventeen, and Shai Yankel Halberstamm, eighteen, met across the dining table. Did Rachel want a husband focused on material pursuits or one who studied Torah? Torah of course. Where did Rachel want to live? Right here, in Williamsburg, close to her mother and father. Would she consider spending a year near his yeshiva after.…

  He meant, after the wedding.

  They looked down at the embroidered cloth, they blushed.

  At the close of the evening, the two were engaged.

  *

  JOSEF started to fast every day of the week, not just the days of mourning for the Temple destroyed.

  Faced with Josef’s anguish, Mila wondered whether she should go to a court of rabbinic law to prove her innocence at Enayim, for who knew better than the Lord that Rachel was conceived with His name on her mother’s lips? Rachel was as pure as King David, Rachel was beloved by the Lord. A court of law would proclaim Mila’s innocence and Josef would eat again, he would stand at the foot of her bed.…

  But judges made mistakes; judges would have burned Tamar and extinguished the line of King David had Judah not proclaimed: She is more righteous than I.

  Who would come forth to save Rachel if judges erred in this case? Would a court’s verdict even matter? Who, in Williamsburg, would marry Rachel if the slightest doubt hovered over her status? Mila did not go to a court of rabbinic law.

  THE REBBE himself danced at the wedding of this bride born of two rescued orphans. In his brocaded white caftan, white socks, laceless black shoes, the Rebbe danced holding one end of his white sash; the bride held the other. His feet traced mystical letter combinations in front of Rachel while she, eyes closed, swayed in prayer: May Shai Yankel and I form a righteous couple in Israel.…

  Then it was the father’s turn to dance with the bride. Josef nestled Rachel’s hands in his. Pitching from foot to foot, he knew this was his last chance to speak before this marriage was consummated, before another seed in Israel was corrupted. But he could hear Rachel’s wail as they left the court of rabbinic law: My marriage invalid? My husband forbidden to me? He could see Rachel huddled by the low wall outside the marriage hall, clasping her lapel as the men inside danced at other weddings.

  The child is innocent! Josef protested.

  Of course, the child was innocent. The Torah and the rabbis never claimed that a mamzer’s plight was ethical. The Lord commands; man obeys.

  The Sages said that those brought to sorrow because they are mamzerim will be seated on thrones of gold, when the messiah comes. Tears coursed down Josef’s hollowed cheeks. Thrones of gold? Rachel needed her Shai Yankel, she needed her marriage to be valid, she did not need a throne of gold.

  Some guests already whispered: To sadden a daughter’s wedding with such sorrow!

  NINE MONTHS after her wedding, Rachel gave birth to a baby girl she named Judith, in memory of Josef’s murdered mother, Judith Lichtenstein.

  Josef’s skin grayed. What degree of self-denial might redeem his silence now?

  Rachel named her second child Chaim Yankel in memory of her husband’s grandfather deported to Auschwitz.

  Josef’s nails became brittle.

  She named her third child Gershon, in memory of Mila’s father.

  Her fourth child she named Pearela, in memory of Josef’s little sister, and she added the name Alte so this Pearela would live to an old age.

  Josef’s eyesight weakened. Always he was cold.

  • • •

  When Rachel gave birth to her sixth child, Josef suffered phases of muscle weakness during which he could barely walk. In his hunger-induced trance, he saw his beard swing from the nail in Jesus’s palm.

  One entry in the Set Table, the authoritative rabbinic code of law, tormented Josef even as it offered some relief about the prospects of Rachel’s children:

  The husband’s declaration of a son’s mamzeruth is not believed if the son already has sons of his own for this would taint the son’s son of mamzeruth and the Torah has not conferred so wide a power upon a husband.

  Now that Rachel had children of her own, a court of law might not be permitted to believe him, if Josef spoke.

  The Law would let him evade the Law? Josef wondered.

  Even if he always knew?

  Another entry related how one rabbi went to great length to avoid inflicting the stigma of mamzeruth, allowing for a ten-month gestation in the case of a husband who had been on a journey nine months earlier.

  But if judges were no longer permitted to believe him, then Josef would be sentenced like transgressors never brought before a human court—covert desecrators of the Sabbath, masturbators, secret adulterers—he would receive the punishment of kareth, his soul exiled from the Lord’s presence. Winter eternal.

  And so would Mila.

  *

  THE WATER boiled in the blue enamel pot. Mila poured rolled oats into the brisk bubbles, sprinkled a pinch of salt, stirred, lowered the heat.

  “Mila?” Josef called.

  The wooden spoon stilled. She turned to the warmth in his voice—as if he had forgotten. “Oh Josef, can I add fruit to your oats?”

  “Not today.”

  “But if you don’t improve your diet—” The spoon moved again, stirring the film that already wrinkled the oats’ surface. The doctor had warned of irreversible cell degeneration; Mila had begged, reminding Josef that not eating was suicide and suicide was forbidden. Still, she had not solicited Zalman Stern or the Rebbe, who might have forced the question of what sin Josef had committed that required such expiation.

  “Your eyes—are the drops helping?” she said.

  “They are helping.”

  Mila saw the bowl of oats, untouched, on the dining table. She leaned against the wall, into the faded wallpaper. She felt so helpless watching Josef’s wasting body that she almost wished for a swifter decline. But one block away was the consolation of Rachel living out Mila’s dream of a home full of children: boys studying Torah, girls preparing to be mothers in Israel. Ra
chel’s home confirmed that if there had been sin, it was sin for the sake of redemption: Descent for the sake of ascent.

  And Rachel giving birth to yet another child renewed Mila’s resolve to withstand Josef’s collapses.

  *

  WHEN sixty-two-year-old Josef grew too weak to walk, Mila helped him out of bed. The first time her hand touched his, they both held their breaths. The square inches of skin against skin awakened their bodies’ past joys and their bodies’ deprivations, awakened the question of whether the Law might have softened.

  The Lord forgiveth the sinner, whispered a voice Josef had heard when he stood next to Florina at mass. But other voices clamored: The Lord Himself is offended.

  Mornings, Mila wheeled Josef to the closest prayer quorum. She waited on the stoop if it was warm, by the coatrack in the entry if it was cold. She wheeled him back home after services and helped him into an armchair where he sat, bent over a magnifying glass, scanning the Talmud tomes.

  Afternoons, Mila fetched Josef’s old eiderdown, the one Florina had once tied with string, which Mila had washed and stowed with lavender sachets, and which she had retrieved one winter day when Josef was especially cold. She swaddled his knobby knees and narrowed ankles, she adjusted the faded tassel closer to his heart.

  Tucked in the eiderdown, Josef remembered his two mothers even though he failed to evoke the contours of their faces. He smiled, and Mila, too, broke into a smile as she tiptoed out of the study, leaving the door ajar, slightly, so she would hear if he called.

  Evenings, she wheeled him to the prayer quorum, and back to the armchair by the bookcase, where he stayed past the midnight lamentation over the Temples destroyed. Then she helped him into bed. When his breath evened, she closed her eyes.

  *

  ONE AFTERNOON, swaddling Josef’s feet, Mila whispered, “Rachel’s eldest, Judith.…”

  “Is something wrong with Judith?”

  “No, no, nothing wrong. She is … seventeen.”

  “Judith was born the twenty-first of Kislev 5749 … that’s right, seventeen.”

  “That’s what I was trying to say. Judith is.…”

  Dread enveloped him. “With whom?” he asked, barely audible.

  “A good match,” she stammered, “an honor for our family.”

  There was a long silence during which Mila imagined that perhaps Josef did not need to know.

  “Who?” Josef whispered.

  Some of the pride to which Mila felt she was entitled slipped into her voice. “Our Judith is engaged to Yoel Stern, Etti’s son, Zalman’s grandson.”

  Josef gasped.

  “Judith is so happy,” Mila insisted.

  The telephone rang. Mila left the study and Josef heard her accept congratulations from Mrs. Halberstamm. His eyes closed. Halberstamm’s lineage was passul (corrupted) … was it now Zalman’s turn? Would Rachel and her children corrupt the lineage of all the most pious Hasidim?

  No, Judith’s engagement to a Stern grandchild was no accident. It was the sign. God was sending Zalman Stern to save them both one last time.

  He would go to the Rebbe.

  Or perhaps to Zalman himself.

  Zalman would cancel the engagement.

  Josef thought of his first grandchild, Judith, who as a five-year-old buried her nose in his prayer shawl because she liked the smell of holiness. Later Judith stroked the gold letters on Josef’s Talmud, declaring that she would become a woman of valor and would support her husband’s Torah study. She asked whether she looked like her namesake, Josef’s mother, and inquired in the community for the walnut-hazelnut roll recipe—not as it was prepared in Kolozvár or Szatmár or Temesvár but the recipe from Maramureş where Grandpa Josef was born. How the girl beamed when Josef remarked that Judith’s rolls were the smell of home.

  Perhaps not Zalman.…

  Rachel, he should speak to Rachel. Rachel had the strength he never had … Rachel would go to the Rebbe, right away she would go.

  Let Rachel decide; the children were hers.

  He would speak to Rachel.

  He would begin … come innocent lamb, he would begin … like a father who blesses his child … May the Lord permit you to be like the mothers in Israel, like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel—three times he would bless her, then he would speak and Rachel, whom they had raised to follow the Lord’s command, would go to the Rebbe.

  He saw Rachel’s children huddled outside the synagogue, pressing themselves against their mother, after he had spoken; he saw Rachel veiling her face in shame. He raised his eyes to the ceiling.

  You claim to shun human sacrifice, but it is in the name of a father’s knife against his son’s throat that we ask forgiveness.

  His head bowed.

  Yes, I will speak to Rachel.

  Like Isaac on the altar asking to be bound tight to counter his fear of the knife, our Rachel will seek to fulfill the Lord’s command, that is how we brought up our Rachel.

  In sacrifice, man and God kiss.

  Lord God, her neck already bleeding.…

  There is no thicket, no ram? No angel to push the knife aside?

  A fly buzzed above him and Josef turned right and left; he could hear the fly but could not see it. He closed his eyes, opened them. He breathed softly, in, out … and he could barely see the table in front of him.

  Lord God I have heard you. I will speak to Rachel, yes. I will begin: Is it an easy pregnancy you are having? And the children, how are the children? I will tell her … before Rachel turns from us, I will tell her that I noticed she started to wear her mother’s perfume … I will tell her about wild anemones, in Maramureş … pleasant fragrances please the Lord, incense was burnt continuously on the Golden Altar.

  Yes Lord, I will speak to Rachel.

  Josef closed his eyes and saw Rachel take the grandchildren, their lithe bodies and laughter, saw Rachel walk the children to the front door. “Rachel! Rachel!” he called but Rachel did not look back as she turned the corner and disappeared, forever turned and disappeared. “Rachel, you must take care of my Mila!” Josef rasped.

  Mila rushed in.

  “What is it Josef? What should I take care of?”

  “Milenka? Ah, it’s you. Should we call Rachel back from the country? I am not well, I must see her.” Josef pointed to spines of Talmud folios. “Please bring me this one … and this one.…” With each volume’s thump on the desk, his hollowed frame quivered.

  Josef turned the Talmud pages his eyes could read no longer, kept turning them.

  When Mila came back into the room, she saw him bent over an upside-down volume. “You can’t see? You can’t see at all?”

  Josef asked for the set of letter blocks with which he had taught Rachel and then her children the aleph-beth. He tapped the embossed surfaces. He pushed aside blocks until his fingers found what he sought. When his hands lifted, the letters read:

  Hineni, Here I am, ready—Abraham’s rejoinder to God’s: Take your son … whom you love … and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

  “Hineni?” Mila read aloud. She scrambled the letters, feverishly.

  Josef’s frail neck strained from side to side as the blocks’ edges knocked against one another.

  After Mila left the room, Josef tapped the table and arranged the letter blocks again:

  *

  MILA stared at the black-and-white kitchen tiles. Shades drawn, the house was dark and quiet, as empty of children’s play as it had been during her barren years. The oppressive heat had allowed Mila to insist that pregnant Rachel and the children stay in the country. Only Judith—who needed to be in the city for a last fitting of her wedding gown—would spend the High Holy Days with her grandparents.

  Mila retrieved the Book of Days kept hidden since she came home from the maternity ward with Rachel.

  The entries read like an ancient ledger:

  (Enayim) 740 11 2

  (Paris) 298 19 10 1 38.5°

  Blood 2, 3, 4, 5. Clean 2, 3 … 5, 7

>   AND DAVID WAS BELOVED BY THE LORD.

  Mila raised her pen. She wrote:

  And so is my Rachel, beloved by the Lord for ten generations,

  And so is her Judith, pure and white and beloved

  Mila drew a garland around David. She picked up a second ballpoint pen and colored each petal of the garland red. The garland sent out shoots that intertwined the names David, Rachel, Judith.…

  When the doorbell rang and Judith’s voice called from the stoop, Mila was so startled her hands gripped the tablecloth as she rose. The carton of milk exploded onto the tiles, the uneaten bowl of oats shattered.

  October 2005

  Manhattan

  A MESSENGER delivered the notebook that Mila’s adolescent hand had labeled so many years ago: Mila’s Book of Days—Private. Clipped to the cover, a note scrawled on the back of a pharmacy receipt:

  Dearest Atara,

  I should have come,

  but it is too late

  to travel back

  in time for sundown.

  My granddaughter

  Judith has read

  my notebook.

  She will come to you.

  Tell her

  everything.

  —Mila

  • • •

  Atara had often imagined Mila’s knock on the door and a great childhood love returning to her life, but now, too late to travel back in time, it was for the knock of Mila’s grandchild that Atara waited.

  The opening pages of Mila’s notebook flooded Atara with memories of the days when Mila commenced a count of blood and clean, and drifted farther from Atara, memories of the Paris dawn in which Atara stood in front of the double porte cochere, a string bag in her hand—a toothbrush, spare underwear—and turned the corner onto the avenue, Paris, the wide world.…

  Atara reached to switch on the lamp by the couch and a postcard fell out of the notebook. On the left of the card: Mila Lichtenstein and an address in Williamsburg. On the right, Atara Stern but no address. The card was dated 1958, the year Atara left.