Jacob's Folly

by Rebecca Miller

  “Drop it, you stupid Jew, before I kill you!” he yelled. I let my weapon fall gently on my shoes, not wishing to shatter it. Buhot bent down and picked up my treasure, examining it carefully. Then he looked up at me, breathing hard.

  “You surprise me,” he said.

  I was in a cell with two Frenchmen, both thieves. They found it fascinating that I was a Jew, and asked me all sorts of questions, like whether we really mixed the blood of Christian children in with the Passover matzot, and was I in for cheating on loans. I didn’t answer, but sat there listlessly, in a kind of shock. The prison nurse had bandaged the cut in my arm, but it smarted. I would be in the Bicêtre Prison for years. I didn’t care. I was more afraid of Hodel than of incarceration. The world of river demons and succubi, Mme Mendel with her evil face, the terror that had moved into my body like a living spirit since my marriage, eating away at my rational mind—it was all locked away from me now. I never wanted to return to it. I began to fantasize that I would be deported; then I could begin a new life somewhere else.

  The following morning, inspector Buhot arrived looking put out. A guard began to open the barred door of my cell.

  “Jacob. You have a visitor.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Follow me,” said Buhot dryly.

  I followed him down a long hallway lined with piss-stinking cells, down a worn stone stairway. The inspector took out a key and opened a heavy wooden door. I could smell rancid sweat rising from my armpits.

  The room was filled with light. The rest of the prison was quite dark; I had to close my eyes to let them adjust. When my vision returned to me, I was surprised to see a man in the powdered wig and splendid clothing of an aristocrat sitting by the window.

  “Here he is, Monsieur le Comte,” said the inspector. “The man who stole your weapon.” It took me less than a second to remember the wide nose, fleshy lips, basset-hound eyes. For the count, it was more of a struggle. When he did recognize me, he laughed shortly.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Monsieur le Comte,” I whispered.

  “Your name is … Cerf?”

  “Jacob Cerf.”

  “That’s right! This is bizarre, don’t you think? When the inspector told me the man who stole my dagger was a Jew, I wanted to meet him. It took skill to swipe a weapon right out of my opera box while I was in it,” he said, smiling.

  “I am sorry, sir,” I said. “It was not me. I only bought it to sell.”

  “That’s disappointing,” said the count with a pout. “Nevertheless. I loved the story of the duel with the inspector. Do you find it odd that we have met again, in this way?”

  “Very much so,” I answered. The count looked out the barred window of the visiting room. “I detest prisons,” he said with a shudder. Then, standing, he placed his hands on his wide hips. “Once again, I ask you. Would you like to be my second valet? I have been looking for a Jew. You are very difficult people to convince.”

  “Why a Jew?” I asked.

  “I have my own reasons,” he answered. “Do you really think you should be questioning me at a time like this? The inspector just told me you would get years for this infraction. Inspectors don’t like to be shot at. But I could write to some of my friends at court. You would be out within a month, if you decide to work for me.”

  You can guess my decision.

  19

  Masha opened her eyes. The room was filled with people moaning, squatting, weeping, whispering to themselves. The cinder-block walls were the color of mint ice cream, the linoleum floors grimy oatmeal. Shelley, of the long torso and dandelion-fluff hair, was kneeling beside her, stroking an invisible body. Her cheeks were slick. Snot and tears collected to form a mucus pendulum that swung fascinatingly from the end of her nose, yet she did not wipe it away, such was the anguish that she felt, stroking this invisible thing.

  A man in his forties wearing a tie and pressed pants straddled a chair. He was making grunting noises and hitting the air with his fist. He kept muttering, “Oh, yeah?”

  A plump girl was laughing, eyes closed, face turned up to the ceiling.

  A young man in pajamas stretched, letting out yawnlike moans.

  Masha sat in a corner, knees pulled up tight to her chest, arms clamped around her calves, hands cupped around an orange, fingers running over its pitted surface again and again. She had been told to memorize it with her hands.

  Bridget Mooney, wearing her high-heeled brown boots and tweed skirt, sedately wove her way through this pain festival, claw hand behind her back, the other on her cane, tortoise eyes narrowed as she checked each of her students in turn, inspecting the quality of their anguish.

  Masha heard the ominous click of her teacher’s heels approaching, the dull rubber thud of her cane.

  “How’s it going, Masha?” rasped Bridget, dragging a chair over and lowering herself into it slowly.

  “Okay, I think,” said Masha.

  “Have you tried putting down the orange?”

  “No.”

  “Put it down.” Masha put down the orange.

  “Now try and feel it with your hands.” Masha made a little well out of her hands. She closed her eyes. She felt the cool skin of the orange, the weight of it gathering there. It was working.

  “I think so,” she said. “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Bridget. “Now. Sniff.” Masha sniffed her make-believe orange. All she got was an image of the orange in her head. No odor. She shook her head.

  “When you can smell the orange, you’re ready to try a scene,” said Bridget, easing herself off the chair.

  Shelley looked over at Masha, wiping her nose at last with a paper towel. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Almost nobody can really smell the orange. She’ll still let you do scenes.”

  At the end of class there was a little flurry of recognition near the door. Late twenties, tall, lanky, with a black eye, Hugh Crosby loped in like he owned the place.

  “I’m back,” he said in a gentle Southern drawl.

  “Hugh,” said Bridget, opening her arms. Masha could tell immediately: Bridget loved this guy. She felt herself lurch over a surprising hillock of jealousy. Bridget put her arm around him. “I have the perfect scene partner for you. She dropped in out of the blue.”

  “That so?” said Hugh. “Who’s that?”

  “Masha,” Bridget growled. “Come here.”

  I dreamed of Solange wearing a yellow dress. She was standing in a square hedged garden, holding up a silver tray. On the tray was a single porcelain cup.

  I woke in darkness, wanting my morning tea, wondering if the count was up yet. I stretched my limbs, expecting to feel cool sheets against my skin. Instead I was crawling through a tunnel. I saw a pinprick of light, which grew until I emerged from my burrow to see Masha’s face rise up before me, gargantuan, her puffed lips in a pout, the pure, kittenish eyelids shut. Remembering my condition, I beat my wings with an ignominious buzz, rising up through the tepid thick air, landed on her puffy lip, and crawled along its dips and valleys. Disturbed by my morning constitutional, Masha turned on her back and shook her head from side to side. Strutting back and forth disgustingly on the cracked ledge of her perfect mouth, I worried about my quest.

  I wasn’t really getting anywhere with either of my hosts: Leslie was continuing his daily round of good deeds (he was at that moment pouring motor oil into the engine of his father-in-law’s car); Masha, in spite of the clandestine acting lessons, was the object of an all-out maternal campaign to find her a good husband and set her on the right path. Her first suitor, Seth Allen, had been an absurdity, but the next one up was making me very nervous.

  20

  Eli Bloch turned out to be surprisingly cute, Masha thought. Not too tall, but fetching, with a compact, athletic body, a little dimple in his chin, five o’clock shadow. No way would he use a razor on his face, they weren’t allowed. Masha thought he must use depilatory cream. Eli wore his
black hat set far back on his head. No sidelocks. He took her to a deli. She ordered a roast beef sandwich.

  “You’re the first girl I’ve ever gone out with who ordered real food,” he said.

  “You gone out with a lot a girls?” asked Masha.

  “Well, you know, not for long, but yeah, a few, to see. It’s not going so well.”

  “No nice girls in Brooklyn?”

  “No, of course, but not, ah—not the girl.”

  “How you gonna know when you see her?” asked Masha. “You could maybe get it wrong, who your beshert is.”

  “I’m not worried about it,” said Eli. “I figure, Hashem’ll take care of it. I just go on the dates.”

  “That’s a relaxing attitude,” said Masha, laughing.

  “What’s the point of getting all stressed out? She’ll find me.” He looked right in her eyes when he said that. Eli was a fine singer, Masha knew. He had won the big community men’s singing competition, the Jewish Orthodox American Idol. Masha’s brothers, Dovid and Simchee, had been to it, and they said he was really good.

  “Do you ever … think you might sing, like, professionally?” Masha asked as they waited for their food.

  Eli hooked an arm behind his chair, spreading his black jacket wide. “Nah. You go out the door into that world, you’re out the door. I want to stay in the community. I wanna have kids—here in the Five Towns, or in Brooklyn, wherever—it doesn’t matter. I’m okay with singing as a hobby and then I’ll have a job, and—it would mess with my head to start trying to break into show business. It would be ridiculous. Certain things, they’re out of the question for us, right?”

  “Right,” Masha admitted. The plate hit the table hard as the waiter served her. She looked down at the massive sandwich. She was going to have to do a lot of chewing to get through this one. She looked up at Eli. He smiled lazily. His relaxation was drawing her into him, making her teeter forward. Any second she might lose her footing and fall.

  Masha really had to plot in order to find a time to rehearse her scene with Hugh Crosby. She didn’t like to do any extra lying to her mother, beyond the whopper about Tuesday nights spent at the nursing home, but she had no choice if she was going to rehearse. The one time that Pearl was definitely out of the house was Sundays, when she taught Sunday school at the synagogue and then organized coffee and cake for the mothers afterward. She always took Suri, Ezra, Estie, and the baby with her. Typically on a Sunday afternoon, dreamy, idealistic Yehudis was out in a van delivering kosher food to Jews in hospitals all over the five boroughs. Yehudis simply shone with goodness. Some man was going to get so lucky with her, Masha mused as she pulled on her coat and hurried down the block, the slender copy of the play Bridget had suggested secreted in her pocket, her fingers fiddling with the pages. She had told her mother she was going to stay home and rest. In case someone came back early and found her missing, she would buy a few groceries she knew they needed on the way home and appear with them. She didn’t like the dissemblance, but the sharp need she felt to get to this rehearsal outstripped her conscience.

  Shelley let her into the school.

  “Hey, Masha,” she said. “Hugh’s not here yet. You want some coffee? I just made some. We’re allowed to use Bridget’s machine when we rehearse.”

  “Sure,” said Masha.

  Shelley gave her the warm cup. “I put lots of that fake creamer in it, it’s so delicious.”

  Masha sipped the coffee. She liked the sweet, chemical taste. “Yum,” she said.

  “What scene are you doing?” Shelley asked, sitting on the desk, her long, skinny legs dangling in argyle tights.

  “Um … from Orpheus Descending, by …” She took the book out to check the cover. “Tennessee Williams.”

  Shelley smiled, looking at her quizzically. “You never heard of him before?”

  Masha shook her head.

  “Never mind. So, you’re playing Carol?” asked Shelley. Masha nodded.

  “Great part. And Hugh is perfect for Val,” Shelley said. “He’s from Mississippi. Bridget loves him. If she gave you Hugh Crosby as a scene partner, it means she has her eye on you.”

  “What do you mean?” Masha asked. Hugh walked in then, his face pale and tight from the cold. The bruised right eye had faded to khaki green at the cheekbone. The eye socket was outlined in blackish puce.

  “Sweet Jesus, it’s cold out there,” he said. “Hi, Masha. Am I late?”

  “You’re always late,” said Shelley. “Coffee?”

  “Sure,” said Hugh, removing his wool hat. His light brown hair stuck straight up in the air from the static.

  They read the scene through, sitting on metal folding chairs in the main room of the school. Masha was nervous. She felt like she was snagging the words, gluing them together, like molasses spilled into a cup of paper clips. She kept glancing up at the closed door.

  “What is it about the door?” Hugh asked.

  “I’m sorry,” said Masha. “I was just wondering. Do you think we could open it?”

  “Sure,” said Hugh. He stood up and opened the door a foot. “Okay?”

  “Thanks,” said Masha.

  They read the scene again. This time Hugh reached over in a casual way and touched her knee. Masha stood up.

  “What?” asked Hugh.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But … I’m not allowed to touch you.”

  “Come again?” he asked. She shook her head, embarrassed.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” she said.

  “Just tell me what the problem is,” said Hugh, shutting the play on his finger and looking up at her. “Here. Sit here and talk.”

  She sat. “I … I’m Jewish,” she said.

  “I’m Methodist,” he said.

  “I mean, I’m a religious Jew. Men and women don’t touch each other unless we’re related or married.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, nodding. “Okay,” he said. “Ever?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I guess we can play this scene without touching,” he said with a shrug.

  “And I’m not really s’posed to be with a guy alone, except if we open the door it’s sort of okay.”

  “Does Bridget know about this?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Masha said.

  Hugh chuckled to himself, shaking his head. “Okay,” he said. “I get it. Let’s go.” They read the scene again. Masha managed to get most of the words out in one piece. “It’ll get easier once we know the words,” Hugh said kindly. “Can you make a rehearsal this week?”

  “I don’t know if I can do it till next Tuesday,” she said.

  “I’m free most afternoons.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I don’t know if I can get away.”

  “Take my number.”

  She did get away for an hour, that Thursday. They rehearsed again. It was less awkward this time. She knew most of her lines. Hugh looked startled sometimes when she was speaking, as though she were doing something odd. She asked him once what he was staring at. He said he had just been listening.

  A week later, they performed the scene for the class. Afterward, Bridget sat for a long moment scrutinizing Masha through her profiterole eyelids.

  “I’m trying to figure out what it is about you,” she rasped. “It’s like watching a cat onstage. You aren’t doing anything, but you’re fascinating. Tell me something. Are you feeling anything when you’re playing the scene?”

  “I don’t know,” Masha said.

  “Okay,” said Bridget, nodding.

  The next week, Masha managed to smell a make-believe orange. It happened in the cafeteria of the nursing home, during her break. She had been practicing with real oranges all week at home, sniffing and sniffing. She thought it would never happen. Smell was the hardest thing. That’s what everyone told her. It was a faint whiff, but it was there, in the very back of her nose: a real smell, memory of a scent. It thrilled her.

  Bridget seemed pleased when Masha to
ld her that she’d sniffed the make-believe orange. She didn’t care that she had already performed a scene. “Now you can start remembering what other things smell like and feel like, things that have associations. Like your favorite teddy bear, or the smell of your kitchen. Whatever. Sad things, happy things,” she said. “You can use your senses to access emotion in the scenes. Do you see?”

  Masha had a crush on Eli Bloch. That was the truth of it. When she saw him coming up her walk to pick her up for a date, her chest constricted. When he wasn’t around, she missed him. They’d been on five dates. It was getting exciting. She had a conversation in her head a few times in which she told him about Bridget’s class. Sometimes Eli understood. He promised to keep her secret. Other times he was disappointed with her and walked away.

  21

  Two weeks after the Comte de Villars came to see me in Bicêtre Prison, Inspector Buhot himself shook me awake roughly in the dark. “Cerf. Get up. You’re free.”

  Befuddled by a bare hour’s sleep eked from the cold and noise of a night in jail, I sat up and followed him from my cell, down the reeking hallway, through a padlocked door opened by a pallid teenage guard, down a long, narrow set of stairs. In the courtyard, Buhot’s narrow, erect form etched a peevish silhouette against the milky sky. He turned to me, framed by the arched stone entryway, the iron gates of which were, miraculously, swinging open on my account. I could hear the hoarse cries of the lunatics housed in the next courtyard. I hesitated, unable to believe I was being released.

  “Jacob,” he said sharply. My head pounding with fatigue, I followed my captor out the prison gates, clutching my filthy lapels around my bare throat, and saw, as if in a vision, the vermilion coach of the Comte de Villars rising from a swirl of morning fog. I recognized the family crest of two lions rampant that had so impressed me a year earlier. A driver, impeccably dressed in a light blue uniform edged with white, a powdered wig on his head, looked down at me implacably from his perch.