by Dalya Bilu
Exhausted by the events of the day she switched off the light, fell into a heavy sleep, and woke with a start to see the first rays of the sun filtering through the shutters and covering the bed in golden stripes of light with glittering specks of dust dancing in them. She raised herself on her elbows and looked appalled at the strange man lying next to her. Full of guilt and fear, at that moment she wanted to shake him awake and send him packing before her husband came home and beat them both black and blue. Then she looked at the sleeping man again, and with Joseph’s eyes contemplating her mockingly through her silk panties, she remembered the wedding. She curled up behind her new husband’s back and showered his neck with wet kisses, ignoring Joseph’s reproachful looks.
That same morning, before Shraga woke up, she climbed effort-fully onto a chair, and in spite of Joseph’s vociferous protests tore his picture off the wall, together with her panties hanging on the frame, ripping the nail from the plaster as she did so. The protests turned to insults, and then to threats, and when he saw that he was beaten, to a string of juicy curses. Quickly, so his threats and curses wouldn’t make her change her mind, she wrapped the picture in the sheet on which he had found his death, and pushed it into the storage space between the bedroom ceiling and the roof. Later on she covered the rectangular mark on the wall with the new wedding picture in a shiny white plastic frame, showing the bride and groom standing side by side against a backdrop of red velvet. Only the sharp eyed noticed that the groom was standing on a little stool covered in black material while the bride was bending her knees in obedience to the instructions of the photographer, so that they would both be the same height.
After hiding Joseph in the storage space above, Rosa could have sworn that she heard him drumming on the glass with his fists and begging to be let out. To her daughter Ruthie, with whom she was particularly frank and from whom she hid nothing, she confided that at first he coaxed her sweetly, but when she failed to comply with his request he called her a whore, cursed her, and threatened that she would get her just deserts and feel the punishment of his strong right arm on her soft white flesh, even if he had to escape from the dungeons of hell to give her what she had coming to her.
Immediately after Shraga left the house with Angel in his arms to wait for the van transporting the handicapped children to day care, Rachelle burst in.
“So tell me, what was it like?” she demanded impatiently.
Rosa lowered her eyes and blushed.
“Why are you blushing like a virgin?” Rachelle mocked. “How was it?”
“It was,” replied Rosa briefly, turning her broad back to her friend and putting the kettle on to boil.
“What do you mean, ‘It was’? How was it?” insisted Rachelle. “You’re so big and he’s so small,” she added spitefully.
“It was terrific,” said Rosa. “Shraga’s fantastic.”
“But all your life you’ve been with Joseph, and now suddenly you’re with someone else. Weren’t you ashamed to get undressed in front of him?” Rachelle persisted with an innocent expression.
“No,” Rosa replied briefly.
“Didn’t it worry you that he would see you naked with all your fat? Didn’t you try to hold your stomach in? Weren’t you afraid that he would be put off when he saw the size of your butt? And those thighs of yours—didn’t you try to hide them? Didn’t it bother you that he would see you as you are?”
“No,” said Rosa and tried to change the subject to the soaring price of tomatoes.
Only after Rachelle had left and she remained alone in the kitchen nibbling salty biscuits did she think of her friend’s words in the context of what had happened the previous night. She didn’t understand why she should be ashamed of her body. Shraga was her husband who loved her greatly, and why should a woman be ashamed in front of a loving husband? Perhaps it was thin women who should be ashamed of their bodies, women who had no bosom and no behind and who starved themselves to death. A hungry woman was an unhappy woman, and an unhappy woman didn’t enjoy making love the way that she, Rosa, enjoyed it. And when she finished all the biscuits in the box and started on the leftovers of the wedding cake the caterers had packed up for her to take home, she came to the conclusion that if they conducted a survey and asked men if they preferred fat women or thin women, every last one of them would say that a plump woman in bed was a celebration of all the senses. And in general, Rosa convinced herself, men weren’t dogs, men didn’t like bones, men liked flesh, and a lot of it. Because going to bed with a fat woman was like going to bed with a lot of women at once. Whereas going to bed with a thin, hungry woman—whose pelvic bones stuck out and dug into you, whose arms were like twigs, whose breasts were shriveled as raisins, and whose face was sour—was no fun at all.
Proudly she remembered the pictures in the art books that Joseph used to show her, pictures of full-bodied women by Rubens, Rembrandt, and Renoir, and repeated to herself with relish the words that had been dinned into her all her life: “Men like big women.” And she went on eating the wedding cake with its pink marzipan icing. When she had consumed it all, she sat and picked the crumbs from the plate with the tip of her finger, banishing all thoughts of Joseph from her mind, and persuading herself that tonight things would work out with Shraga.
thirteen
THE INVASION OF THE SHOES
Never in her life had Rosa seen so many pairs of men’s shoes, outside a shoe store, as she saw the day Shraga brought his possessions to her house. Full of curiosity, Rosa pounced on the boxes as soon as the porters put them down, opened them, and peeked inside. In every box she opened she found herself staring at dozens of pairs of shoes, crammed together one on top of the other. Shoes of all kinds and colors: ballet shoes made of silk in pink, white, and black, with hard square toes; gym shoes, most of them shabby from use, in a variety of shapes, colors, and brands. Some of the boxes contained fancy patent leather pumps tied with broad ribbons. Before her astonished eyes there spilled onto the floor soft leather moccasins, tough-looking army boots, galoshes, cowboy boots, hobnailed work boots, sandals of every kind—plastic sandals, leather sandals, biblical sandals—wooden clogs, slippers, and a variety of health shoes.
In dismay she stared at the shoes lined up pair by pair in front of her like soldiers on parade, and wondered where she was going to put them. Once before, on television, she had seen something similar, the collection of footwear belonging to the wife of a fallen dictator, and she remembered how the camera had moved over the long shelves full of shoes, as in some vast supermarket of shoes.
Quickly, before she could regret it, she emptied out the closets and pushed her clothes aside to make room for Shraga’s shoes. As she did so she noted that most of them were in a shameful state. The ballet shoes and gym shoes were stained and full of holes; the moccasins were shabby, and the laces were torn. Rosa sorted out the shoes, packing the shabbiest into big plastic bags and making several trips to the green Dumpster on the corner, which gobbled them up greedily in its gaping mouth. When Shraga came home in the evening and asked about his shoes, she led him proudly to the wall closets opened the doors, and showed him how she had arranged them neatly on the shelves according to type and color. Shraga turned pale. Like a man demented he fell on the closets, flung open the doors, and searched the shelves for the missing shoes.
“Where are the yellow running shoes with the blue laces?” he demanded in an ominous tone. “And where are the red moccasins and the pink ballet shoes?” Before he could go on she rubbed herself against him placatingly and said sweetly: “I threw them out. They were worn out. If you like,” she added in a coaxing tone, “we’ll go and buy you some new ones.” Shraga sat down on the kitchen stool and buried his face in his hands, and Rosa saw that his shoulders were shaking.
“How could you do such a thing?” he said at last in a pitiful wail. “In those pink ballet shoes I won third prize in a ballroom-dancing competition in Ashdod; in the red moccasins I stepped for the first time on the soil of Fra
nce; in the yellow running shoes I ran against the national champion when I was in the eighth grade, and there are a lot of other shoes missing too. How could you do this to me?” His lips trembled, and his eyes were red. Rosa, who couldn’t bear to see him suffer, ran outside and retrieved the plastic bags from the Dumpster.
That night Shraga did not join her in bed. When she woke up to go to the lavatory at four in the morning she saw him sitting on the floor surrounded by mountains of shoes, sorting them patiently according to a classification system of his own. The next morning he explained to her that he had put all the shoes he had worn during his stay in France fourteen years before in one drawer. In another were the army boots and other shoes he had worn during his military service. After them, organized in a system only he understood, came all the dancing shoes thanks to which he had received prizes. Other shoes, lacking a distinctive history, were classified according to the year of their purchase, and thus Rosa’s closets were filled with Shraga’s shoes, while her own clothes were thrown into the middle of the room in a colorful heap of dresses, skirts, scarves, wide panties, and bras with gigantic cups.
The day after Shraga’s all-night vigil Rosa got up early in the morning and left the room on tiptoe, in order not to wake her exhausted husband lying motionless on the bed. She hurried into Angel’s room before she woke up with cries of hunger, and washed and fed her, keeping a watchful eye on Shraga through the bedroom door. And after she sent Angel to nursery school, while her husband slept, she sorted out the clothes she didn’t need and put them away in the storage space under the roof. The clothes for use in the coming season she folded up and packed into the living room sideboard, pushing aside the photograph albums, two big fancy albums celebrating Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, tablecloths, half empty bottles of wine for kiddush, crystal glasses, and a large plate for the Passover seder.
* * *
On the first nights after their wedding, when Shraga tried repeatedly to penetrate her, ejaculating prematurely in his excitement and falling asleep immediately in her arms, her longings for Joseph would try their luck and knock hopefully on her heart, and she would banish them by dwelling resolutely on her new husband’s kindness to her, on the way he never came home empty handed, but always brought delicacies and sweetmeats for her and a toy for Angel. She rejoiced especially in the good relationship between her husband and her daughter. Shraga insisted on getting up and going to her when she cried at night. He would carry her in his arms, take her for walks, and keep up with her progress in the special nursery school, as if he were her real father. Rosa would dwell on her new happiness and hope that her mother, who had objected so strenuously to her marriage, could see all these blessings from her vantage point in heaven. Then she would beg Joseph to leave her alone, not to trouble her with his complaints and demands, since her marriage to Shraga was an act of restitution for the injustice he had done her all those years ago by interfering with the natural course of her life. At last justice had been done, and she had been reunited with her childhood love in a meeting ordained by destiny.
One month after the wedding he came home and told her that he had been obliged to close down the ballroom-dancing studio. As soon as he got married, he said in a faintly accusing tone, as if she were to blame for his situation, the women had stopped coming to the shelter, especially after Charlie, a bachelor from Paris, opened a rival studio next door, with modern innovations and up-to-date new steps. And with no money coming in, he was reluctantly obliged to advertise in the local neighborhood paper that he was opening a new school for ballroom dancing and classical ballet for little girls.
And little girls with transparent skin and red cheeks, in pink and white tulle dresses made by their mothers, hopped round the shelter floor on the tips of their toes, fought for the right to dance with him, and battled their way through the Prelude to Swan Lake, Strauss waltzes, and sensuous tangos from Argentina. At the end of every lesson they would line up in front of him, push each other out of the way, stretch their tender necks, and receive a fatherly kiss of appreciation on their cheeks.
For six months he earned a decent living for his family in this way, until a rumor spread through the neighborhood that he had been seen secretly caressing the budding breasts of Yael Buzaglo, an outstanding student and the object of his special attention. Yael’s father, known throughout the neighborhood for his violent temper, stormed into the shelter, and before the eyes of the little girls gliding about in their tutus, beat Shraga soundly and sent the dancers flying in all directions, like a flock of frightened chicks fleeing the dark shadow of a hawk. Afterward policemen came to the house, cuffed his wrists in steel handcuffs that sent cold shivers down his spine and brought his skin out in goose bumps, shamed him in front of the neighbors, and took him to the police station. Bruised and beaten, he went with them, shuffling his feet in their white silk ballet shoes, prevented by the handcuffs from waving good-bye to Rosa and Angel, who stood crying on the balcony and watched him being taken away.
Rosa, who was sure of his innocence, scraped up the money for his bail, and two days later he came home, his elegant clothes stained and torn and his wrists smelling repellently of steel and sweat. Shaking with sobs, he told Rosa that he had been ordered to shut down the dancing school. That same night he threw his jail shoes, as he called them, into the trash. “There are some things I’d rather not remember,” he said.
Six months later the trial took place, and Yael Buzaglo reluctantly testified against him, together with three other girls who resented his coldness toward them. In an article about the trial entitled, “The Pedophile from Katamon G,” the lawyer Yohanan Harel, who they had paid a lot of money to defend him, was quoted as saying: “The possibility exists that a dancing teacher, who in the nature of things touches his pupils in order to correct their posture, could give rise to suspicions of this nature. And perhaps such touches might be interpreted as crossing the fine line between contact necessary to the performance of the teacher’s duties, and what could be perceived as the attempt to commit an obscene act.”
After that the article quoted a number of Shraga’s adult ex-students, headed by Rachelle, who gave him glowing testimonials as character witnesses. They testified under oath that the accused was a professional dancer, an excellent teacher, and a refined gentleman who had never touched any of them in an inappropriate way. Rachelle outdid them all, describing him as a saint, who despite the temptations surrounding him every hour of the day had never taken advantage of any of his students, until he remet the great love of his life, Rosa, and married her.
After hearing the evidence of the women who kept interrupting themselves to wipe their eyes and blow their noses, the court recessed. And when the proceedings resumed, Advocate Harel said: “The character witnesses we have just heard reinforce the impression that the accused is a warm and fatherly person, who enjoys good relations with students of all ages, and we must conclude that he is here as the result of a misunderstanding. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the young girls who pressed charges against him did so from psychological motives that should be examined by those professionally qualified for the task.” The article concluded by quoting the judge, Zahara Yardeni: “I have my doubts as to whether the accused was actually intent on teaching his young pupils to dance. He may have been more interested in trying to teach these tender and innocent little girls a new language, one that they should by rights have learned only when they grew older, each in her own way.” In the absence of hard evidence one way or the other, she gave him a sentence of two years’ probation and forbade him to teach dancing to girls under the age of sixteen.
Surrounded by the women he used to teach, and with Rosa holding tightly to his arm, Shraga made his way down the courthouse corridors to the exit, where Leslie-Shimon was waiting for him with his car. As soon as they got home Rosa hurried to the kitchen to brew him chamomile tea to soothe his nerves, set a plate of sugar cookies before him, and watched him compassionately as he
nibbled them, with sweet crumbs sticking to his lips and dropping onto his clothes.
“How could that judge have doubted you?” she said sadly. “They all run after you and try to start with you, and when you turn them down they make up stories to get you into trouble.”
Shraga said nothing and stared at her blankly as if she weren’t there.
“You didn’t do it, did you?” she asked suddenly, doubt entering her heart.
“How could I?” he replied in a high, tearful voice. “You’re my only love. I’ve never loved anyone else but you. Who are all these undeveloped little girls? How could they say such things about me?” he lamented.
And Rosa put her arms around him and whispered in his ear: “Shush, shush, shush,” and rocked him in her arms just as she used to do with her children when they woke up at night after a bad dream.
Afterward he bathed and changed his clothes, and they sat together tired and frightened, with the article in the evening paper spread out in front of them, and discussed their economic future. After consulting the children and talking it over all night, they decided that Shraga would go to work at the big school for the dances of the sixties that had opened in Givatayim. Every morning he got up early and took the number 18 bus to the central bus station, where he got a direct bus to Givatayim. In the evening he came home, his body aching, his face fallen, the soles of his shoes worn out, and his toes covered with blisters. Rosa would wait for him with a steaming bath into which she poured almond oil to soothe his tired body. After his bath she would wrap him in a soft terry cloth robe, bandage his toes, give him his supper in front of the television news, and watch him with a gratified expression as he put the food in his mouth.
Every week he waited for Friday, his day off, when he went to the market for her. Ceremoniously he would put on his “market shoes”—leather boots with thick crepe soles—and slip on his khaki safari jacket with its many pockets. Like a hunter setting out at dawn to stalk his prey, he would take the bus to the Mahaneh Yehuda market with all the other husbands armed with pink and purple plastic baskets in patterns of fishermen’s net or butterflies joined at the wings. He would elbow his way through the throngs of men taller than him by a head, stand on the tips of his toes, and cluster with them round the stalls in a fraternity of male shoppers. With relish he would feel the tomatoes, part the leaves of the artichokes, pat the bottoms of the watermelons, press the avocados, finger the nipples of the lemons, sniff the melons, weigh the grapefruit with his eyes, stroke the fuzz on the peaches, taste the grapes, and run his fingers down the cleavage of the nectarines. Together with his fellow shoppers he would inspect the size of the fresh carrots piled in golden heaps on the counters and measure the length of the asparagus stalks with his splayed fingers.