by Nora Gold
— 6 —
At home, the house is dark and cold. Soon it will be winter, she thinks. She raises the thermostat and walks through the darkness to her computer. This is always her priority and first point of contact when she comes home from school: her emails from Israel. She works on her computer in the dark, liking the shiny square screen surrounded by the night. This evening there are the usual dozen messages from the Israeli listservs she’s on. There are two peace groups — at war with each other, of course — as well as a feminist social action forum, a left-wing chat room, and an organization that promotes civil rights and pluralism in Israel. But tonight she also has three personal letters. It will be a good evening, she thinks — an evening spent connected to people who love her and whom she loves. She will be “virtually” in Jerusalem.
But she doesn’t open her little treasure trove right away. She wants to postpone these moments of love and comfort. Like postponing in sex so you can enjoy not just the act itself, but also the pleasure of anticipating it. She goes into the kitchen and drinks a cup of cocoa. Then she returns to the computer and studies her inbox. Of the three emails from friends, she decides to read Rina’s first. Rina’s letter opens by saying how delighted she is that Judith is enjoying Dunhill, and she doesn’t doubt for a moment that she’ll succeed splendidly in grad school. Judith, reading this, is gratified. Rina has always had this iron confidence in her — it’s one of the bonds of their friendship. Then Rina writes about her new job teaching Shakespeare at the university, about Michel’s job (there are cutbacks at the hospital now, but so far he hasn’t been affected), and about their three teenagers: Gidi, Uri, and Yael. The oldest, their son Gidi, is going into the army in two months, and the twins, a boy and a girl, will go a year and a half later. Then Rina writes:
Apart from “the situation” — if that isn’t an oxymoron, because of course there is nothing that is “apart from the situation” — we are okay. We don’t go out much, though. With suicide bombings now almost weekly in Jerusalem, it’s safer to just stay home, huddled with those you love. Many restaurants now offer home delivery: that’s the only way they keep from going bankrupt. You can order in not just pizza and Chinese food, but everything. The main thing now is not to go out. Downtown is still the worst place, but actually we don’t go anywhere we don’t absolutely have to. My daily routine, my life, is remarkably reduced now. It’s just from home to work, and then back home again, except for essential errands like buying food.
Judith can picture Rina and Michel and their kids — all three teenagers with red hair and freckles — pacing like caged leopards around their claustrophobically small apartment, with Rina’s shrill voice yelling at the kids five times a day for leaving their stuff in a mess all over the house or for playing their music too loud, and Michel withdrawing more and more into his study. Rina writes that last Shabbat, at the end of a tense afternoon, Gidi, Uri, and Yael, in a rare united front, confronted her and Michel.
“You can’t keep telling us not to go out,” they said. “We’re not babies anymore — two months from now Gidi’s going into the army. And all our friends are allowed to go out. There’s a concert downtown tonight — Mashina’s performing and everyone’s going, and we want to go, too. Just because you guys want to stay cooped up at home doesn’t mean we also have to. If you want to bury yourselves alive, go ahead. But we’re young …”
Better buried alive than buried dead, I thought, but I stopped that before it came out of my mouth. Because I wasn’t sure if it was even true. What sort of a life, I asked myself, am I advising my children to live? What am I really teaching them — to live lives so full of fear they just hide in their holes all the time like little mice? That would be a victory for the terrorists, if anything would.
So in the end, with all my doubts and hesitations I’m no better than Hamlet. Like him, I’m weak. I caved. I gave in. I let them go to that club downtown with their friends. I told myself: Life, youth, hope must triumph over fear. Don’t you agree, Judith? I hope — I think — I’m right.
Judith frowns. She isn’t sure. On the one hand, she is full of admiration for Rina. She’s braver than I am, she thinks. But at the same time she’s appalled: How could you have let them go? How would you ever live with yourself if something happened to them? Still frowning, she reads the end of Rina’s letter:
Anyway, letting them go to the concert had a side benefit: it gave me and Michel the house to ourselves for the first time in months. And we had the most wonderful sex — delicious, drawn-out, and … noisy! Something amazing …
Judith laughs. What a crazy country. What a crazy world.
The next email is from Yonina. The exhibit of her paintings at the Artists’ House closed yesterday. It was quite well received, she writes. A few days after the opening there was a good review in the weekend supplement of Yediot. And given “the situation,” she supposes she should be grateful any people at all left their homes to come see her exhibit. Anyway, she writes, this will likely be her last exhibit for some time. The arts grants have all been cut — to free up money for more guns, bombs, and missiles, no doubt — so pretty soon she’ll have to find a job, or jobs (probably some combination of waitressing and teaching art to kids like she did a year ago). So, Yonina concludes her letter, so much for painting for a while.
Reading this, Judith feels a pang. She loves Yonina’s pictures. They are fabulous and vivid, with lots of bright blues and greens, and they’re full of parrots and other birds in jungle scenes. Her paintings seem simple, but in fact are subtle, nuanced, multi-layered, and complex. So much for painting for a while — and Judith pictures a parrot being shot down by a cannon.
With a deep sigh, Judith stands and arches her back. Then she circles the room a few times before returning, like a homing pigeon, to the dining room table and her third email. She’s saved Bruria’s letter for the end. The best for the last. She is in much more frequent contact with Bruria than with any other friend: they write each other twice or three times a week. So Bruria’s letters have a special quality of immediacy and continuity. Judith opens her letters almost like a fan of a soap opera eager for the next installment. What is the latest development in the ever-unfolding saga of Bruria’s life, with all its different subplots: marital, familial, social, professional, and political? But none of Bruria’s previous emails could have prepared her for the one she opens now. Bruria’s son Noah, Noah with the heart-shaped lips and golden curls, is in prison for refusing to continue doing military service in the occupied territories. He’s been there for the past three days, since just after Bruria last wrote. This has all happened very quickly. Today’s letter, astounding for someone as meticulous about language as Bruria, is full of typos, spelling mistakes, and half-finished sentences. It’s hysterical and breathless, and if a letter could be one great long sob, this one is. Or perhaps, rather, it’s a series of broken screams, like shvarim, the broken blasts of the shofar at the end of Yom Kippur. Bruria writes she is proud of Noah — she knows that what he’s doing is morally right. But she is also terrified for him. He’s been in solitary confinement for three days, and she and Pinchas haven’t been allowed to see him. She doesn’t know if he’s been given food or water. She’s mad with worry that he’s losing weight, or that he’s very weak or sick and not being cared for, maybe even being mistreated by the prison staff. She and Pinchas spoke today with the best lawyer in Israel for these sorts of cases, but he is only willing to take on Noah as a client if they agree to a group lawsuit with two other boys in the same situation. Bruria and Pinchas aren’t sure about this, and are trying to figure out what’s best for Noah. They have only twenty-four hours to decide. “Judith, I’m so scared. Solitary confinement! Please pray for our boy. Pray for my baby.”
Judith would like to pray, but right now she can’t. All she can do is curl up on the couch, breathing deeply. This is too much pain for her to bear. It is so naked, coming at her from people she loves. This is how it is whenever she reconnects, even for
an hour, with Israel: she feels everything people there feel — they are her people, and whatever they feel, good or bad, she feels too. There is no boundary between her and them. She’s defenceless against this love. So now she lies curled up on the couch, breathing deeply and steadily. Trying to calm down. And after a while, lying on the couch in the darkened living room, she falls asleep.
— 7 —
Four days later, on September 27, it’s the last of the eight days of Sukkot, Judith’s favourite holiday. She’s standing under the leafy roof of a sukkah, the makeshift hut — in this case adjoining a shul — replicating the booths the Israelites lived in during their forty-year journey in the desert. Shellacked gourds, ears of purple-and-white Indian corn, pomegranates, and carobs hang from the latticed ceiling; children’s colourful drawings of men and women from the Bible adorn the rickety wooden walls; and down the middle of the sukkah, a long, thin table is spread with a vegetarian/dairy feast for the worshippers. Services aren’t quite over yet, but she’s come out early to have some time alone in the sukkah before the hordes descend for the meal. She loves its bright, cheerful decorations and dangling fall fruits, the constant rustling of the fresh-cut branches on the roof, the smell of the pine needles on the floor, and the sharp sunlight slicing into the sukkah through the slats in the walls. But she also loves being in a sukkah because it exemplifies what she experiences as the most essential human truth. That life is fleeting and fragile. This makeshift hut, thrown together out of thin planks of wood and a few boughs for a roof, is a structure a wolf could huff and puff and blow right down. Nothing, she thinks, can truly protect you. Other than God, if you believe in Her. Which I probably don’t.
People start wandering in. They’re wearing winter coats — not like in Israel, where people in sukkahs sometimes sport sandals and shorts. Now there’s a flood of people into the sukkah in one huge wave, noisy and exuberant, with many little children running underfoot. Soon Rabbi Elaine in her orange-and-pink tallis recites the blessing over the bread. Then Judith piles her plate high with lasagna, salad, tabouli, babaganouj, marinated vegetables, and a brownie, carefully balancing an orange drink on the edge. She is just stabbing a fork into the lasagna when someone shouts her name and touches her on the arm, nearly toppling the whole plate. She rights it just in time, but not before a slice of marinated yellow pepper and a square of purple onion slide onto her shoe. It’s Flora, her father’s old friend, whom she hasn’t seen since shortly after the shiva. Her kind, horsey face.
“Sorry,” says Flora.
“No problem.” Judith surreptitiously kicks away the pepper and onion.
Flora asks how it’s going at Dunhill. Judith says, “Fine.” Flora asks if it’s hard being back at school.
Judith smiles. “Everything’s relative. It’s easier than trying to bring peace to the Middle East.”
Flora laughs.
Judith adds, “Thanks again for helping with that application form. Without you, I wouldn’t be there now.”
“My pleasure. You know how I felt about your father.”
Judith nods automatically, but then something in Flora’s tone makes her look sharply and more closely at her. No, she thinks, actually I don’t — what do you mean exactly? But Flora is looking down at her food and her face doesn’t give anything away. For a while they eat in silence. Judith is relieved to not have to talk and eat at the same time. She’s never understood the logic of socializing over food, when good manners prohibit talking with your mouth full. Furthermore, the eating now is difficult: her marinated vegetables are as slippery as wriggling snakes. Two small boys dart between her and Flora, laughing and shouting.
“How’s the atmosphere at Dunhill?” Flora asks.
“Good. Friendly.”
“No more rallies or riots, I hope? Last year the worst incident there began as an anti-Israel demonstration. Nothing weird going on there now?”
Judith takes a sip of her orange drink. Now she understands the question about the atmosphere. “No,” she says. “There’s a strong anti-oppression movement at Dunhill, and there’s an anti-oppression committee at my school. But I’ve just been asked to co-chair it, so I don’t see any cause for concern. All that must have just been last year.”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” says Flora. “I’ve thought about you numerous times, Judith, and I admit I was worried.” Judith looks at the kind, lined face. She’s touched to discover that, without her even knowing it, someone has been thinking about her, and concerned for her, all this time. “It’s only the beginning of the school year,” Flora adds. “Let’s hope things continue as well as they’ve begun.”
Judith can’t keep back a smile. Flora sounds just the way her father used to. What can you do? It’s that generation. Always anticipating something bad, always fearing the worst for the Jews. It used to drive her crazy when her father said things like this, as if he were deliberately acting gloomy and pessimistic just to put a damper on her natural hopefulness. An undertow trying to drag her down. But now she gazes tolerantly at Flora. There’s something almost quaint about her comment. Flora, like others of her circle, still lives in the past. Not in the extreme way of a teacher Judith once had, an old man who, whenever a balloon or a car tire exploded, would dive under his desk, still traumatized from the war. But something changed in that whole generation of Jews, she thinks. Even her father and Flora, who both spent the war years here in Canada. Judith feels wistful now, reminiscing about her father. And compassionate, too. She has an impulse to put her arm around Flora (Did Daddy ever put his arm around Flora? she wonders because of her strange comment), and to say, “Don’t worry, Flora, the world’s not like that anymore. Antisemitism is a thing of the past. That’s all behind us now.”
But she can’t. Because even though she first met Flora back in high school, she doesn’t actually know her well enough to put her arm around her. It might even seem condescending. Also, Judith isn’t sure it’s true that antisemitism is a thing of the past. Some people are saying it’s back, and even on the rise. But she doesn’t believe it. Sure, there’s a lot of criticism nowadays of Israel. But some of it is justified. The constant expansion of settlements, the excessive use at times of military force — these things deserve to be criticized. But antisemitism, as she pictures it, is something quite different from criticizing Israel. The mainstream Jewish community always equates the two, she thinks, but that’s because they don’t know enough, or care enough, to be critical of Israel, and they always rubber stamp whatever the Israeli government does. No, she decides, antisemitism is not a problem anymore. There’s nothing to worry about now.
But still … When in doubt, kiss — a rule she came up with when she was four and her cousin Paul, who was three and a half, cried all the time — she’d kiss him and like magic he’d stop. So now, moved by a mixture of emotions, she leans forward and lightly kisses Flora on the cheek. Flora looks surprised, and her face softens. Then she kisses Judith back and gives her a hug. They wish each other a happy holiday, and Flora leaves. Judith takes another minute to finish her lunch. She steps out from under the sukkah’s gently whispering roof, feeling well fed and well sheltered. Succoured. And sukkah’ed. Now on her nose she feels something tickle. She looks up and laughs: the first snowflake of winter.
— 8 —
It’s two and a half weeks later now, mid-October, and Judith’s classes have all continued, like streetcars, along the tracks laid down for them on the first day. Weick’s “Knowledge and Values,” for instance, travels along in the same agonizingly slow, tedious, creaking way it began, not having improved one iota since the first day. She hasn’t skipped any of his six classes, though: she’s too afraid of angering or alienating Weick, especially after Cindy’s warning. But mentally she is never there. She walks in, sits, and lets her mind travel where it will. She survives this class week after week only by not being there alone: Moshe comes to keep her company. Today as always he shows up a few minutes into Weick’s lecture, just as her mind is s
tarting to go numb. Moshe doesn’t come to talk, to offer her conversation more stimulating than Weick’s; he comes to make love to her. This is what he is doing now. Though this time he’s doing it in an unusual way for him: slowly and very passionately, the way he did on her birthday, the one time they weren’t in a rush. He refused to hurry that day: “It’s your birthday,” he said. “Let them wait.” He had informed Koby he’d be late that day, and she called her office too, saying she’d missed the early train and would catch the next one. They lay under the tree at the bottom of the hill. Moshe had smoothed the ground for them, clearing away the pine cones, and even brought a blanket. That day she turned twenty-five.
“A special age,” she told Moshe. “Five times five: a perfect square.”
“Old enough,” he said, “to open your eyes and see what’s in front of you.” He suggested she keep her eyes open today when they made love, so they could look at each other all the way through.
It was an effort because she felt shy, even embarrassed, but she did keep them open after he entered her, and they stayed like that for a long time. They gazed at each other until she was so deep inside his eyes she wasn’t aware of anything else — it was like sliding down the hole in Alice in Wonderland, but never hitting the bottom. The love in his eyes was bottomless. Infinite. Then, unexpectedly, he thrust into her. She cried out and writhed, trying to get to the deepest place, but just when she was almost there, he pulled away. Still moaning, she opened her eyes, and he was smiling at her faintly, and his eyes were wet brownness, like rained-on desert sand. Or quicksand, the way they sucked her in. She slid down, getting lost in them again, and there was no him or her; they were just one person. There in his eyes she rested awhile, with no sense of time. Time was gone: they were suspended in an eternal time zone. Then, catching her unawares — how could there be a thought in his mind that wasn’t in hers? — she felt him thrusting into her again. But this time all the way into the middle of her — into the inside of the inside of her, into her very core, a place no one had ever been. She cried out. Then she screamed and screamed her way to the end. Afterwards sobbing in his arms for a long time. Sobbing like a baby. Finally she opened her eyes. There he was, Moshe who was also Israel, looking at her, his eyes full of tenderness and love. Home, she thought. At last I’m home.