A Late Divorce

THE DAY OF THE SEDER

Violet light seeps from a mortal wound into the broad sky curved over the bay etched in copper evangelic burning filaments cut into the pinkish flesh of the infinite day driven westward to the heavily the slowly the in-triple-time breathing sea sinking into sleep for the night. The sun-softened water luminescent now warm spray of oily flame turning slowly to gray in the soft lava of darkness spewn up from the earth from the great vats hidden in the watered grass overrun with fierce weeds thorny burnet yellow-blossoming broom creeping up among the treetops fanning out on a breath of wind turning blue day into a black canopy for this sodden world of wet earth greedily sipping clinging with lips that suck that kiss stoutly swinging the tongueless bell of evening snuffing out the small spaces between the lines between the words making the pages of my book a shapeless blob while empty and bloated a giant moon suddenly flips over in the last window quietly slips into the evening on a weak low slant. If the dog were here he would cock his head and howl so did she that first clear winter night we arrived she awoke and sat on the windowsill gripping the bars letting down her hair her clothes barking with joyous abandon with secret delight at each little well-aimed yelp until they came with a straitjacket.

“Come on. Let’s go! They’re beginning… the singing has started… they’ve begun to sing…”

Yehezkel’s voice begs from the door at the far end of the room but I will not answer him I will not move beneath my light blanket.

“You can’t stay here all alone for the seder,” he says again turning out the light stepping into the room gliding among the beds in his large suit in his hat and new tie a cigarette lit in his mouth. He’s hoarse he’s been chasing me everywhere for a whole week in a dither over my divorce. And now here he is among the beds in the women’s ward where he’s never dared intrude at night before desperately glancing fearfully about him his own turmoil driving him on. And only now do I notice that we are alone in the ward. Many patients went home this morning with their families and the others are waiting in the dining room now for the seder. Even the night nurse is gone. Even the doctors’ room is locked. And here the silence is broken only by his footsteps small and determined he comes toward me his hands shake the spittle flies when he talks. “Come on! You can’t do this to me. The singing has started…” He halts by my bed with a violence I never knew was in him he grabs the book from my hands and slams it shut he lays it on the night table and pokes about among my things there pulling out the white parchment divorce and holding it up to the moonlight suddenly angry with me. “Is this how you leave your things, just lying about? You’re no better than a baby! What will become of you?” And without asking permission he gathers it all up and crams it in my drawer rattling my lost dog’s chain yanking off my blanket in a fit of annoyance with unaccustomed roughness making me get up glaring at me angrily he must think that I’m now public property. “You’re ruining our holiday! We’re all waiting for you. You’re the reason I stayed behind.” His light warm hand grips my shoulder. “You can’t do this to me!” Cast on the bare wall by the door is Musa’s huge shadow motionless except for the hungry movements of his mouth that never stop.

They clustered round me from the moment that Yehuda and the rabbis left the hospital. It was as though they popped out from under the wheels of the taxi when it drove off, a whole gang of them that Yehezkel had inflamed in recent days: Musa and Ahre’le and D’vora and those two young ex-soldiers. “Congratulate her!” he commanded, grabbing my hand and extending it to them. “She’s a free, eligible woman now. There’s no need to kill him anymore. They’ve both been saved.” Even Musa touched my hand, stammering and blushing with emotion. All day today they followed me everywhere, I couldn’t shake them off. The nurses tried to reason with him but he kept stubbornly turning up again at my door, trailing after me as far as the fence, sitting opposite me at lunchtime, passing me platters of food, rolling out the water hose for me. There was no way to unstick him from me and no one to ask to do it. The hospital itself was in a chaos: cars driving in and out around the cottages, families looking for members to take home for the seder, strangers crowding into the wards, dressing the patients, collecting their things, signing forms, memorizing medicines, making a racket, joining us for tea. Yehezkel had a caller too, his son, a carbon copy of him: the same pinched, hangdog look, the same disintegrating face, the same wet cigarette in a corner of the mouth. The only difference between them was that the son’s thinning hair was still dark. A future basket case himself. He came in a khaki scooter with a sidecar for his father but Yehezkel wouldn’t go. He became so hysterical that no one could talk to him. In the end his son went to the office and brought back a doctor and nurse but Yehezkel was adamant. Absolutely not. It was his duty to stay here with me. “I tell you, he’s in love with her,’’ I heard the young doctor say. The blood rushed to my head and I ran off to my deck chair in its clump of trees, put on the glasses that father brought back today from the optometrist’s, and opened the book that I’ve been reading for the past several years while listening to the roar of the departing scooter and the sound of Yehezkel searching for me. I mussed my hair, shut my eyes, pulled my straw hat down over my face and made believe I was asleep. Already I could hear their whispers and the branches stirring around me, could feel the earth shake from Musa’s heavy tread. But when they saw me sleeping they grew oh so still and sat down where they were to keep watch. The gentle spring sun ran its rays over me. Slowly the noise of the strangers and the cars died away. A deep, peaceful silence came over me and I thought, here I am with the divorce that I wanted, he’s given me his share of the house, never again will I hear him speak to me in that overbearing manner of his that punched my life full of holes. And I thought too, perhaps now is the time for a visit from her to tell me what she thinks. But my breathing grew heavier and the book slipped to the ground while I dozed off, dimly aware of someone taking my glasses and propping my head on a pillow. My mussed hair blew in the wind and I sank deep into a dream at the bottom of which a child’s voice spoke in English. From somewhere came a strong smell of cooked mushrooms as though she were really nearby, my murdering-so-filled-with-longing other, and then I felt a light hand and woke with a start to see D’vora’s white face framed by its faded blond hair and Yehezkel hiding behind her, holding her arm like a stick with which to stroke me. “Tsvi’s come!” he exclaimed right away. “He’s here. He’s waiting at the gate. He sent us to get you.” I had thought Tsvi might call but I never imagined he would come by himself on the day of the seder. I rose feeling woozy but clear-headed inside, as though I’d been scrubbed clean in my sleep. The hospital was completely deserted now. Alone on a path in all his glory, decked out for the holiday in an old, freshly ironed doctor’s smock in place of a white shirt and a red bandanna tied around his neck, stood our King Og, our giant Musa. He even wore a black skullcap, fastened by a bobby pin. “Tsvi’s at the gate,” Yehezkel repeated frantically. “Did you know that he was coming? Have you spoken with him?” The man was in despair. After having stayed behind just for me, here I was running out on him. “Has he come to get you?” But I didn’t answer him. Drowsy but so clean inside I walked to the gate, feeling the newly risen breeze that was softly seeding the bright sky with small clouds, followed by the three of them; Yehezkel, Musa and D’vora. (Ahre’le had vanished, someone must have come for him too.) Yehezkel was beside himself. He kept running forward, waiting for me like a faithful dog and running ahead again, as though he were clearing the way. When we passed the closed ward we all stopped at the sight of three unfamiliar children in undershirts and gym shorts, playing as unconcernedly as though they hadn’t a notion where in the world they were. Children in the hospital… a tall blond girl and a skinny boy rolling their chubby baby brother on the lawn and chattering gaily in English…

We reached the gate, from which a row of eucalyptus trees flanked a road that ran ruler-straight through fields stretching out on either side: to its right a green fuzz of cotton that would break out in white blossom toward summer’s end, to the left great furrows of plowed earth with huge clods thrown up alongside them. Past them the railroad tracks streamed north to touch the foothills of the Galilee, whose scrub forests cut into strips by firebreaks formed a soft horizon rubbing up against a serenely innocent round sky full of sweet radiance, like a bowl of raspberry syrup mixed with the thin exhaust of the speeding cars on the highway. Somewhere out there, where the orchards and villages ran inland, Horatio loped dirty and hungry through the juicy young thorn shoots, fooled by the intoxicating scent of my wandering wild other no borders could hold, who was making her way steadily eastward.

Beyond the gate, near the darkened guardhouse from which rock music bubbled out, my Tsvi was taking the air by a white automobile, a long cigarette in his mouth, the sleeves of the jacket draped over his shoulders whipping in the breeze to reveal a knit beige shirt above his light bell-bottom pants. He always did have a flair for color that was worthy of a fashion magazine. As soon as he saw us he broke off his small talk with the watchman, bowed casually to my escort and breezily opened the gate for me, shutting it gently in Yehezkel’s face even as he thanked him. He threw away his cigarette, turned to have a look at me, took my two hands in his own, flashed a triumphant smile, and embraced me warmly. He kept up a stream of chatter as he hurried me to the car, from whose back seat he took out a bouquet of flowers. He laid them in my arms and grinned again. “You’re crazy, Tsvi,” I said. “Honestly.” He burst into a merry laugh. “Well, you’re free at last,” he said. “Free as can be. I spoke to Ya’el on the phone, and when she told me it went smoothly I couldn’t resist coming up. I had to, and Calderon agreed to drive me….So it’s over, then. Whereupon, I’ve been told, you went and fell peacefully asleep. Hats off to you, mother…” He didn’t stop running on at the mouth, saying the most fatuous things. And a bouquet of flowers, no less! In the car I could see the banker’s eyes glitter anxiously. He nodded imperceptibly, stiff with deference, afraid to intrude on us.

“So it’s over,” repeated Tsvi, slipping an arm through mine and walking with me down the road between the quiet, pre-holiday fields. “How do you feel? To tell you the truth, I was afraid he’d back out at the last minute.” He looked at me. “Or else that you would. Ya’el said something about some rabbi who kept making trouble right down to the wire. But here it’s over at last: you’ve parted honorably and without a fuss. I called Asi to tell him and he was glad too. ‘It had to happen… sooner or later it had to… there was no choice’—he kept saying that over and over. That’s his great insight, you know, that everything has to happen. Tomorrow he’ll come with Dina to say goodbye to father, and perhaps he’ll visit you too. To extend his congratulations…’’

All at once he came to a halt, winked, and hugged me again. “And now, what do you propose that we do? I thought I would come to take you… but where to? I’m tom between the two of you. He’s flying back tomorrow night, and I’ve hardly seen him yet — in fact, I feel that I won’t be seeing him again for a long time. He really is leaving us — I finally had to believe it when I saw how calmly he let you have the apartment in the end. And Ya’el asked me to spend the seder with them… although Kedmi and his monster mother will be there too… and I can’t stand the thought of leaving you here with all these people. I did so want to be with you — who would have thought that I’d be the excited one and that you’d have dozed off so quietly?…But is everything really all signed and sealed… the documents, the bill of divorce… you have it all? We have to decide what to do in a hurry, because poor Calderon has to be home for the seder… all hell has broken loose there… and he keeps deliberately provoking it… so what do you say? We could go somewhere by ourselves, just the two of us… perhaps to a hotel… there must be one with a communal seder around here… or should we just go back to Tel Aviv and have our own private holiday meal there? You still have your old clothes in the apartment…. Well, what do you think?”

But I stood there without answering, still groggy from my deep sleep and shapeless dream, wondering if she’d come back today, if I’d be able to talk to her, if I still remembered how. My throat and lips felt parched. I let him lead me down the road, looking at the wet, fissured earth, at the plowed-up weeds scattered over it. A single sunny day would burn them all yellow. And he so childishly wanting to celebrate, such a blabbermouth, dragging me as far as a large, rusty plow that stood at the end of the field. He examined its caked blades curiously, wide-eyed.

“What do you say then, mother? What shall we do? We have to make up our minds, we can’t keep him any longer… his whole family is waiting for him there. His world has caved in on him and he’d like everyone else’s to also. Why don’t we send him on his way and go eat by the fisherman’s wharf in Acre… we’ll be the only Jews there… what do you say? You can’t possibly stay here by yourself on the night of the seder…”

“Why not?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“How terribly depressed you were that first year. I was with you here.”

“You were with me here for the seder?”

“Of course.” He smiled. “You’ve forgotten. You were very ill then. You hardly noticed a thing… but I was with you, and I’ll never forget what a madhouse it was. It gave me the creeps…”

All at once my heart felt for him. He was the only one never to be afraid of me. To come to see me even then. I took his hand.

“Go be with father. You’re right. You won’t see him again for a long time. I’ve already said my goodbyes to him, but I want you to be with him. And I want you to help Ya’el. I’d just lie here in bed and read anyhow. Father brought me back my glasses. Why must you do all this for me? Everything is finished with… you say that I’m free now… I suppose you think that I’m eighteen years old…”

He was moved to sadness. Thoughtfully he knelt by a row of little sprouts and absently began to pluck them until he realized what he was doing and stuck them quickly back into the earth with an embarrassed smile. And I thought, was I really with him that seder or only with her, so alert and enjoying herself? And I lifted my eyes to the mountains and saw in the soft light of the setting sun a distant dot that made me freeze. It was she, on the trail in an army windbreaker, her hands in her pockets, traveling light. I couldn’t tell if she was moving toward me or away. And then suddenly I felt the old throbbing, the urge to have her be part of me again like a heavy backpack, the joy of her wild otherness between knife thrust and light flash…

Tsvi brushed the dirt from his clothes, out of breath, the first wrinkles of age in his face. He turned back toward the hospital and the distant gleam of the sea. “It’s so peaceful here. So lovely. I even dreamt about it. A haunting dream — I’ll tell you about it sometime. But I have to go now. Come say goodbye to Calderon… he’s falling apart, he’s lost all control of himself. In the end he’ll even be fired from the bank…” As he walked me slowly back to the waiting car I could feel that he wanted to say something else but was keeping it back, could hear her light footsteps behind me. The man was reading, his crewcut gray head bent over the wheel.

“Calderon,” said Tsvi gently. “Say goodbye to my mother.”

He roused himself, and when he looked up I saw his face bathed in tears. He wiped them away as he climbed out of the car, flushing hotly, in inner conflict.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Kaminka.” He shook my hand, nearly falling all over it. “It’s just… it’s this Chekhov book. Do you know it? We saw the show of Uncle Vanya, and so Tsvi brought me the book. A tremendous production. Fantastic. And when I think of how everyone cried then it makes me want to cry again… although I know it’s silly to shed tears over a bunch of Russians who lived a hundred years ago and were probably anti-Semites at that. Well, how are you? I heard that it all went well, praise God. As long as it’s over — sometimes what matters is not what you decide but simply having decided…”

He shook his head, red-eyed with tears that still wet his cheeks. Suddenly he remembered to say:

“I wanted to wish you a happy Passover. And what lovely spring weather it is… winter is finally over…”

“Where will you be for the seder?” I asked.

He glanced at Tsvi. “I don’t know yet.”

“At home,” declared Tsvi sharply. “You’ll be at home. Haven’t you gotten that into your head yet?”

“Yes,” he sighed, looking back and forth between the two of us. “I suppose I’ll be at home.” He gripped his book while stealing a glance at mine. And again he recalled something:

“Mr. Kaminka told me that on your mother’s side… that you… I mean, that you have a bit of us in you…”

“A bit of who?”

“Of Abrabanel.” He pronounced the name grandly. “That you’re part Abrabanel… I mean that you have their blood…”

When did they meet and what made Yehuda tell him about Grandmother Abrabanel?

“He was very glad to hear that we’re part Sephardi,” explained Tsvi.

“Does that seem important to you?” I asked softly.

He squirmed redly. “It’s another way of looking at yourselves… a different bloodline… the Abrabanels are of very fine stock. Of course, it’s not literally the blood… I don’t believe in that… it’s something intangible…”

He glanced at Tsvi with such deep love that it appalled me. Tsvi smiled mockingly back. And just then I saw her pass quickly by above the treetops. I felt a splitting pain in my head and made a face.

“Is anything wrong?” both asked at once.

“No. Nothing.”

“Well, we’d better be off,” said Tsvi. “If you’re not home soon, they really will murder you.”

“Let them,” said Calderon with a wry smile.

Tsvi kissed me warmly and said once more, “I’m glad that it’s over with.” And again I felt that he had left something unsaid. They got into the car, waving goodbye as it turned, and drove off to the east. My clear head was muddled now; it ached all over and things in the distance went fuzzy. The white car headed down the road — and then, by the railroad tracks, in the wet jungle of weeds, someone went flying, a dress shot up in the air, and the car stopped and drove back in reverse. Tsvi jumped out while it was still moving and ran up to me. “Mother, perhaps I should keep those papers that father gave you. It’s better not to leave them in the hospital. Someone might take them and lose them.”

So that’s what he had wanted to say all along. Perhaps even why he had come. “Who will take them?” I asked, not showing him my feelings, my eyes on the jungle of weeds. And he said, “But that’s our only document of ownership for the house. Perhaps I should put it in my safe-deposit box because legally it’s all we have… so that if we ever should want to…” “Want to what?” I asked. “…It doesn’t matter. Whatever. Father won’t be here, and…” He was breathing heavily, afraid he had said the wrong thing. “It wasn’t my idea. It was Calderon’s. He’s an old hand at these things.” But although I didn’t say so I knew that he was lying and that the idea wasn’t Calderon’s. And then all at once, smiling sadly, he relented. Far away a dog barked. “Did you know,” I said, “that the dog still hasn’t come back?” His arms dangled helplessly. “Yes. I heard. That Kedmi is a bastard. But Horatio has run away before and always returned.” “Never for so long, though,” I said. “Perhaps tomorrow you should look for him.” “All right,” he promised. “We’ll do that.” He hugged me again. “You look wonderful. It’s done you a world of good already.” And he gave me a last kiss. Even in the worst of times he was never afraid to kiss me, to hold me tight, to calm and comfort me.

The gate swung open and I walked back in. Only Musa and Yehezkel, who felt greatly relieved that Tsvi hadn’t taken me, were still waiting. We walked up the path that went past the closed ward and saw the three strange children still playing fearlessly under the stares from behind the bars. We passed the library, whose door was partly open because I hadn’t locked it properly. Something made me want to go inside. A sweet, burned smell hung over the dim room. The reddish light glanced off the rows of books covered with brown wrapping paper and off the dirty teacups and the plate of crackers that still lay on the table. The flowers I had put everywhere this morning were still there too, just softer-looking now, their heads bowed. A hard crust of dried mud covered the floor, which was littered with cigarette butts and a black paper skullcap, while a pair of sunglasses had been forgotten on one of the shelves. I took them and put them on, turning the world a dull brownish gray. This morning the sharp light was as harsh as splinters of broken glass. And since then no one had been in here, everyone was busy preparing for the holiday. I put the flowers on a tray, carried them outside, and handed them to Yehezkel. Then I shut the door, locking it with the key I still had in my pocket, and threw the flowers on the ground with its trampled grass and the tire tracks of the taxi. I had waited by the door for Yehuda to come since early morning. At dawn I was up and around in my white smock, picking flowers and arranging them inside, setting out the teacups and watering around the cottage, which I suddenly noticed was not at all straight but oval with crooked walls. I had my papers in the pocket of my smock and was all there: I never remember feeling so together before. And I was alone because the day nurse, Avigayil, who had been supposed to help me, never appeared for some reason. At eight o’clock the black taxi arrived, cutting like a boat between the lawns, its wheels spraying mud, until Yehuda mistakenly stopped it a hundred meters away. He climbed out of it first, dressed in a dark suit, and led the rabbis to the library, picking his way between the puddles, blinded by the strong sun, sinking into the mud, fording swarms of little insects that flew about newly generated from the light. One of the men, an old Yemenite with a slight limp and a plastic carrying case, rushed spryly ahead, jabbing his cane in the ground and bending now and then to sniff some flower or pluck the leaf of some plant and crush it between his fingers. After him came round, jolly Rabbi Mashash, who had been to see me several times before, carefully guiding a thin old man in black clothes and dark sunglasses, while slowly bringing up the rear was an odd-looking person in a long, tawny army greatcoat and a visored cap. I hurried to greet them, feeling a twinge when I saw how pale Yehuda looked: this was the third time this week that I had seen him, and each time he looked paler than before. The Yemenite bowed as though performing a lively dance step and shook my hand with a smile before darting quickly into the cottage. I followed him inside and Yehuda ushered in the two older rabbis while the younger one — who had a head of golden curls and a complexion that, though red from the warmth of the woolen scarf around his neck, was as smooth as a girl’s — lingered to kiss the mezuzah in the doorway and then entered hesitantly too. I watched the clean floor turn to muck in no time. The men were amazed at how much mud fell from their shoes and made an effort to clean it up. “Never mind,” I said to them while they took off their hats, put on skullcaps, wiped their perspiring faces, and exclaimed at the abundance of flowers in the small room. “Never mind.” Then Rabbi Mashash introduced his companions. The oldest was Rabbi Avraham Avraham; next came the Yemenite scribe, Rabbi Korach; and last was Rabbi Subotnik, a new immigrant from Russia, a scholarly prodigy straight from a forced-labor camp.

“Are you here by yourself?” asked Rabbi Mashash. “Well, no matter. Dr. Ne’eman said he’d try to make it, but we won’t bother waiting for him.” Straightaway they began to rearrange the room, moving about chairs, putting the table in a corner, and seating Rabbi Avraham there by a window. The Yemenite scribe made room on it for his implements, paused to sniff some flowers before placing them on the floor, took out several bundles wrapped in large handkerchiefs from his plastic case, undid the knots, and produced an inkpot and some quills. Yehuda helped while the Russian remained by the door, his large blue eyes scanning the room suspiciously, his hands on the scarf still wound around his neck, as though uncertain whether to remove it. And then all at once he spoke, in a soft, melodic voice, with a terribly thick Russian accent.

“But where is she?”

“Where is who?” asked father.

“Your wife. The woman getting divorced.”

“My wife? She’s right here.”

“Her?” asked the Russian in amazement, pointing at me. He had been sure that I was a nurse and that the real wife would be dragged in any minute screaming and tied to a chair, drooling and letting her head loll. “This is her?” he asked again slowly, with disbelief.

“Of course,” put in Rabbi Mashash quickly, wiping away his perspiration, his cheeks ruddily blotched. “Of course it is. This is Mrs. Kaminka. Who did you think it was?”

He continued to wrestle with the flowers while, still on the threshold, Rabbi Subotnik threw me a sharp, annoyed glance as though he were the victim of a swindle. Yehuda helped the rabbis out of their coats. “Whew… it’s hot in here… a real spring day…” came their low voices while he bowed and scraped before them. When I went to pour the tea, though, he was suddenly in my way, pulling out my glass case from his pocket and murmuring, “Here, Ya’el had them fixed for you. Now you can read again.” He handed me a brown envelope from which he took a typed letter. “And this is the house waiver that you asked for. Everything is signed, exactly as you wished.” He ran a long finger down the printed lines, talking in a heated whisper. “Here.” He took out some more documents. “This is a power of attorney that I’ve given Asa. If there are any problems, he can act in my place.”

“Asa?” I marveled. “Why Asa? Why not Ya’el?”

“Because I didn’t want Kedmi butting in again,” he answered quickly. “Asa is the stablest of them all. The sanest.”

The papers made a rustling sound. I could actually smell his fear. How lucky that she isn’t here now, I thought, if she were she’d have a fit. “Why are you so pale?” I asked. He smiled bitterly. And then suddenly we felt how silent it was and saw the four of them watching us in wonder.

A Passover, a pastoral divorce, just a few hours before the seder, in the library of a rustic madhouse purposely garnished by me with flowers and greenery. The Yemenite finished arranging his quills and parchment and rolled himself a cigarette of greenish tobacco while gazing curiously out the window with his shrewd eyes, excited to be in an insane asylum. Rabbi Mashash handed out copies of our file, his jolly roundness filling the room, keen to get through with the ceremony in a hurry. “Professor Kaminka,” he called warmly to Yehuda, who winced at the words, making me wonder whether he had really been promoted in America or was simply trying to impress them. I passed among them pouring the tea while he followed me with spoons and sugar, offering them the crackers as though they were guests in our house. At first they balked, glancing at their watches to see if there was still time to eat leavened food, but in the end they each took a cracker, careful to keep the crumbs off their clothes. The Russian sat in a corner with his coat on, smelling unwashed; he had just taken hold of his teacup between two fingers in the ancient way, blown on it, and broken into a blessing in his slow, melodic voice when the door opened and a young woman I didn’t know, no doubt from the closed ward, came in with a book. I supposed she must have seen that the library door was open and hurried over to exchange it. At a loss, the men looked at me but I said nothing, not even when father rose to stop her. She slipped quickly past him into the room, and I knew at once that she had a double, that there wasn’t one of her but two, and that, though she knew she mustn’t come in, it was her double who had made her, who was now forcing her to simper and circle among us as tiny as a bird, studying the rows of books and touching them lightly while glancing at us over her shoulder. Suddenly she said in a violent whisper, “Get your hands off of me, you infantile jerk!” Everyone froze, except for the Yemenite, whose eyes sparkled with mirth. Yehuda made a move to restrain her but I put a hand on him because I knew that her double wouldn’t stand for it. Finally she took a book down from a shelf, glanced at it, threw it on the floor as though we weren’t there, and fled from the room with an obscene bump and grind.

The Yemenite was enraptured. Like a child he laughed merrily and even went to the window to watch her walk away. Rabbi Mashash, though, was annoyed. “This will never do. Perhaps we had better close the door, because we haven’t much time and we’ll never finish like this. I told Dr. Ne’eman that we needed a quiet place… well, never mind. Let’s begin. First, gentlemen, we will identify the divorcing couple.”

They opened their files for an identity check. First they asked for our fathers’ and mothers’ names, then for the names of their parents, and then for their dates and places of birth.

“Since everything is in order, Rabbi Korach,” declared Rabbi Mashash, “you can begin to write the divorce.”

But just then the young Russian — who had said nothing so far and had not even opened his file but had simply sat staring at me — rose from his place and said:

“One small moment. Not to rush, please. We must not go against law.”

And turning to Yehuda, he requested him to leave the room.

“But what is the matter?” Rabbi Mashash angrily protested. “What’s wrong?”

“I want to ask something the wife by herself,” said the Russian in his thickly accented, odd, melodious Hebrew. He took father by the arm and opened the door for him. “Please, one moment outside.” Something hard and domineering seemed to emanate from the gently bright-curled figure.

“But what’s wrong?” asked the other rabbis. “What is it you want? Why don’t you ask us first?”

He insisted, though, humming some biblical verse and repeating the name of some rabbinical authority. Yehuda grew alarmed. “All right,” he said. “All right. I’ll leave.” The door shut behind him while Rabbi Mashash and Rabbi Avraham jumped angrily up and glared at the troublemaker, moving back and forth in the room like the black hands of a clock, one big and one small, while he, a thin, light second hand, stood still and stared at me.

“I did not think that she… that you, madame… was in condition… that madame was so normal. I was said no choice in matter. But me, I see choice. In no circumstance… if mind is free… madame understands… she has right too, even in asylum… if madame says I do not sign… here is not Russia… here is no… nu…coercion…”

By now Rabbi Mashash was furious.

“Coercion? There’s been no coercion here, Rabbi Subotnik. What are you talking about? Mrs. Kaminka signed of her own free will. It was her decision. I beg of you. What are you trying to do? She herself asked him to come from America… you’re putting us in an impossible position… an impossible light… everything has already been seen to… we’ve given our word of honor… Rabbi Vital himself gave us his blessing…”

He turned excitedly to old Rabbi Avraham, who, hidden behind his dark sunglasses, had begun to bite his nails worriedly.

But the Russian didn’t turn to look at them. With great dignity he bore down on me in his heavy Red Amy coat whose big copper buttons bore the head of an eagle, his ritual fringes hanging down to his knees underneath it. He couldn’t have been much older than Asi. A smooth, unlined face. A fanatic.

“Is you here… is you asked… but why? What difference it makes if she… nu, you, madame… is in this place anyway… and not young no more too… nu…”

He turned red, flustered, his broken, melodious Hebrew tripping him up. Yehuda had talked just like that when he first came to this country.

“But he’s going to have a baby soon,” I said.

“Baby? Where is baby?”

“In America.”

That lit a fire under him. He turned angrily, sarcastically, to the others.

“Nu. So now we have little bastard on our hands.” He thumped the file that he held. “Here says nothing of it…”

“Rabbi Subotnik!” Rabbi Mashash was shouting now, pulling at the heavy greatcoat. “Explain yourself!”

But the Russian shook himself free and went on leaning tautly over me, so close I could feel his breath.

“Mrs. Kaminka! Never mind bastard… are many, will be one more… everywhere is same big mess… but marriage is holy…”

He was crimson now.

“Holy for whom?” I asked calmly.

“For whom?” For a moment he was taken aback. “Nu, for God, of course…” He said the word very gently.

At last. It was time. My anger hummed inside me. I had to force myself not to choke on the torrent of words that poured out of me.

“God what are you talking about who is that?”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t want to hear another word about it. Not another meaningless word. Please understand that God means less than nothing to me. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

Old Rabbi Avraham sat up stiffly and buried his face in his hands. As red as a beet now himself, Rabbi Mashash assailed the Russian, who retreated a step with a smile.

“Rabbi Subotnik! That will be enough. How do you think you’re making us look? There’s a procedure to be followed here. There’s a presiding judge. I ask you to keep your philosophy out of it.”

He stepped hastily over to me and steered me to the door. “Mrs. Kaminka, there’s been a small misunderstanding. We’ll continue soon. Please wait outside for a minute.”

He led me out into the strong sunlight, closing the door after me. Father was sitting on a rock to one side, smoking. “What’s going on?” he asked. If only he would have taken me in his arms now. It was too much to ask. And yet he did that first day, and with such unexpected warmth. “What’s going on?” His anxiety was growing. “What do they want?”

The sound of shouts and of someone thumping on the table reached us from behind the door. Father hurried to it just as it opened again.

“Professor Kaminka, come in for a minute. By yourself, please.” It was Rabbi Mashash, who gave me a dirty look as he pulled father inside.

My headache felt like an omen, like the first sign of an approaching illness. The words I had managed to get out at last clung like foam to my lips. Inside the cottage the voices grew dim. The young rabbi was examining father now, fighting to save our marriage.

“Professor? Of what?…America? Where?”

Yehuda’s deep voice answered softly, in that enchanting way of his, while Rabbi Mashash kept intervening and trying to calm the young Russian down. Smoke rose from the hospital kitchen, drifting up into the brightening glare of the sky, and someone stirred in the clump of trees where Yehezkel and his band were watching us. Someone else was there too, a stranger I couldn’t place, someone made of branches and leaves. Was it her again? I couldn’t believe it. A sudden silence came over the library. Even the whispers had stopped. If only Avigayil were with me. I walked around the cottage, through the high weeds, until I came to the open window and saw father without his jacket, his tie loose, baring his chest while Rabbi Mashash pointed something out to the young Russian and Rabbi Korach rose curiously to look too. I shut my eyes and bit my lips, sinking down on a stoop by the path. After a while the door opened and father was sent back outside. He threw me a tense, angry look, keeping away from me, glancing despairingly at his watch, oblivious of the crisp morning, of the sun and the flowering earth.

“Who asked you about a baby? But you, you had to go tell them…”

A faint smile of contempt flecked his face.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that…”

“Never mind,” he interrupted.

“…they didn’t know.”

He turned toward me angrily. “Didn’t know what? I don’t know what baby you’re talking about. Because there isn’t any… His voice grew shrill, as though he were crying inside. “Can’t you see whom you’re dealing with? Why complicate things even more when I’ve given you everything as it is? Damn it all… it’s all so humiliating…”

His despair was making him cruel. He was afraid that it would all fall through.

“Maybe I should try explaining to them…” I tried to rise but could not. I felt as though a stone weighed me down.

“Don’t. You’ll only make it worse. That Russian rabbi is a nut. He turns every word against you.”

I said nothing. I sat with my white smock covering the stoop, cradling my knees, listening to the birds and to the sounds of the awakening hospital, to the tenor voice of the Russian striving fiercely in its pathetic Hebrew to rise above the wheedling tones of Rabbi Mashash: a strange, antisocial man, fighting to save our marriage for reasons known only to himself. Father fell silent, a handsome but weak, degenerate intellectual, straining to hear while his hands went through the pockets of his jacket and his pants, taking out and putting back his passport, his plane tickets, his documents, his wads of money, distractedly rummaging through the mountains of paper he had with him. For a moment our eyes met. Inside the library the voice of the vainly battling Russian was losing ground, while that of the Yemenite, who had entered the fray now too, rose in a keen yodel. Yehuda took out a cigarette and lit it nervously, blind to the world, to the trees, to the hospital, to the sky, fumbling aimlessly, buttoning his shirt which he had noticed was still open, drifting ever further away from me. And I thought, this will be my last picture of him.

“You know, I’m probably the only one who’s never seen that scar you show to everyone.”

He heard me unwillingly. “What?” he asked, turning hotly toward me.

“You’re leaving soon and I’ll never see you again. And that scar you have from then… from me… I’ve never seen it…”

He was annoyed. “It doesn’t matter. Why should you want to see it? Let me be, Naomi.”

“I’m the only one who hasn’t seen it. Tsvi said you show everyone. So why shouldn’t I see it too?”

“Please, not now.” His voice was entreating. “Some other time. Just let me be.”

“But when? We’ll never meet again.”

“Of course we will. Why shouldn’t we? I’ll be back… there are the children… after all, they belong to us both…”

But I was tired, impatient. “Show it to me!”

He sensed the threat in my voice, my terrible lust to see it, and debated only briefly before almost gladly yielding. Quickly he unbuttoned his shirt again and showed me in the glaring light the chest I knew so well and had forgotten, with its curly gray hairs and its large, pale mole. Across it ran a hooked line like a reddish beak. A near miss, a swooning memory. Not where I’d meant it to be, he had dodged at the last second…. He stood there looking at me quietly, already rebuttoning his shirt. All at once he focused on me sharply, his face lit by that ironic, knowing smile of his.

“But you really did want to kill me!”

He wasn’t asking. He was simply musing out loud, struck by the thought.

“Yes,” I said quickly, a sweet, dry taste in my mouth.

“But why?”

“Because you disappointed me.”

He ran a hand through his hair, content with my answer as though it had confirmed some deep inner truth of his own. With a start I saw her soar through the smoke above the kitchen roof, a small satchel strapped to her back. But just then the door opened and Rabbi Mashash stepped out in his starched white shirt sleeves and invited us back in with open arms. The room was full of smoke. Steam still rose from the electric kettle and a chair lay on its side. Everyone was on edge. As soon as we entered, the ceremony began. Rabbi Mashash read the bill of divorce out loud while the Yemenite scribe at the table copied the words with his quill at breakneck speed. Then Rabbi Mashash led me to a corner and led father to another one near the Russian, who stood crestfallenly by the window. The text was read back to us, after which it was passed around to be signed and handed to father. And then the Yemenite hastened to cup my two hands, the parchment flew through the air and swooped down into them like a small dove, some prayer was growled loudly, and I was divorced.

The Russian opened the door, letting a burst of bright light flood the room, and fled outside, the tails of his army coat flapping behind him, while the Yemenite scribe retied his implements in bundles, Rabbi Mashash went about collecting papers, old Rabbi Avraham groped his way to the exit, and Yehuda approached me with an anguished look. All at once I felt that he could not bear to part from me.

“Mr. Kaminka,” they called to him. “There’s still a seder to get to today.”

He wavered uncertainly. “Perhaps I’ll stay on for a while.”

“You can’t,” said the Yemenite, plucking him by the sleeve. “It’s forbidden for you two to be together now.”

What a softy he suddenly seemed, a desperate old man trying to shake my hand.

“Did I tell you that I’ve given Asi power of attorney in case any problem comes up?”

He pulled loose from the Yemenite’s grasp, wanting to say more.

“Well, so you had your way in the end…”

I didn’t answer him. But to myself I thought, why, I’ll never see him again, he’ll really vanish for good now. I was sure that was so. And already they were dragging him swiftly outside, where they sank again into the weeds and wet earth that I had watered in the morning, running into Dr. Ne’eman and Avigayil, who were rushing to get to my divorce. Dr. Ne’eman shook the rabbis’ hands and roared at one of his own jokes, while Avigayil hurried breathlessly into the library to join me.

“I was afraid we wouldn’t make it,” she said.

“It’s already over with,” I answered, tossing her the parchment.

“What’s over with?” she asked. And then all of a sudden she understood and threw her arms around me. “It really is over with? What a crazy day this has been…”

“Come, it’s begun already.”

He tries getting me up lured by my new freedom in the moonlight-silvering dark. Musa too stomps into the ward bumping into all the beds. Yehezkel pulls one of his fainting fits. He falls to the floor he won’t open his eyes he says he won’t move. And Musa begins to groan again that they’re eating already.

I rise from my bed still wearing the white smock over my cotton dress. “All right,” I say, “I’ll walk you as far as the dining room.” They walk on either side as though carrying me while I glide down the path with my book. There is a fresh chill in the air. We pass by the library. A light is on as though someone were waiting inside. I can feel my heart catch but I must go in. The door I had locked is open again the cups are all gone but the floor is still caked with the hard crust of mud the weak light shining on the rude brown curds. How awfully sad. The last vestige of a marriage that here came to an end. He had wanted to ask me something and they took him away. An overflowing ashtray lies on the table a large ink-stained piece of paper sticking out of it. It’s from the first agreement that Kedmi brought me that father tore to shreds why right here is where Asi stood hitting himself. Behind me Yehezkel and Musa are waiting like statues once more they start to whine that it’s beginning that the singing has started already. Yehezkel turns out the light silhouetting the windows burnished in a glitter of glass-frosted smoke beyond them I see the lights of nearby villages a dog barks far away. Can it be? Already she stands by the hospital gate wrinkled and tanned with her olive green rucksack high hiking boots on her feet neither hunger nor thirst searching for me on her way to me. I want to go hide beneath a blanket but they drag me back to the path that leads to the lit-up dining room joining us on it is a large group of doctors and nurses Dr. Ne’eman too with his great bellylaugh and demoniacally the visored cap of the young Russian rabbi that Subotnik he’s back again there’s no mistaking his voice he’s still in his heavy Red Army coat. They hurry past us and disappear through the large door of the dining room that’s as far as I want to go. “Leave me here,” I murmur but Yehezkel won’t hear of it if I don’t come to the seder he’ll faint again he’ll drop dead right here on the floor. Musa is drawn to the smell of the food but he’s bound to Yehezkel too he doesn’t dare enter without him. And so I’m swept inside with them into the singing the noise the confusion the tables arranged in a large square and covered with stiffly laundered sheets turned blue from too much starch the stacks of matzos flaking plumily at their browned edges and crackling quietly to themselves the large labelless bottles filled not with wine but with some yellowish glowing freshly-squeezed-looking liquid the patients the nurses the office personnel sitting in groups and making a noise like the sea. At one table dressed in their holiday best are the three children who played today on the lawn their hair slicked and combed. Beside them sits their mother a young rather pretty woman looking bewilderedly around her while her American doctor husband a newcomer to the staff converses gaily this may be their first seder in Israel. And now everyone stands up as though in my honor in my cotton everyday dress beneath my white smock holding my book in one hand the divorcee the divorcer. But it’s only the rabbi signaling them to rise he’s risen too his glance resting tensely on me his bright blue eyes know who I am. He balances his cup between two fingers as he did this morning all at once his strong mellow tenor voice rings out in the blessing over the wine.

“Blessed art thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe…”

But now a nurse hurries up to big portly Dr. Ne’eman who stops the rabbi and whispers into his ear. A side panel opens and into the dining room come the patients from the closed ward nearly a dozen of them I’ve never seen before escorted by a young doctor and two nurses. Tense and bowed they move in a diagonal line led by a short very squinty-eyed redhead of maybe forty a fireball on his feet dragging the others heavily after him how awfully depressed they seem looking over their shoulders halting in a daze and lurching forward again their skullcaps in their hands the dining hall electric with their invisible split selves all packed into one room as though not twelve but a hundred of them had marched in rattling their chains. The staff helps seat them at a table and fills their glasses. Again the signal is given and the Russian raptly shuts his eyes he too is moved by the occasion perhaps it’s his first seder here too. Once more his strong tenor voice rings out.

“Blessed art thou 0 Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hath chosen us among the nations, and exalted us above all tongues, and sanctified us with His commandments…”

Someone screams. The redhead has slipped away from his restrainers and jumped on a table squinting at us all with a beaming festive cross-eyed ecstasy. In no time he’s pulled down and dragged outside a sparking shrieking fireball his harsh muffled sobs like the grunts of some wild beast can still be heard. Rabbi Subotnik has turned pale. He starts the blessing all over the kiddush cup poised between his fingers while everyone rises again. Except me. I stay seated and open my book how I hate the words of the blessing I won’t wait for it to be done before I drink the sweetish juice in my cup has some wine mixed in with it after all. Now everyone sits and the little boy gets up. He faces his family and recites the Four Questions in a heavy American accent as though the words were stones in his mouth but with blind confidence not knowing what they mean pulled through in one almost show-offy breath by the anxious love of his brother and sister without a single mistake while the dining room gasps in amazement and breaks into applause when he’s done. He makes a loathsome rehearsed bow and the Russian tenor rings out again hushing the babble of voices. “For slaves were we to Pharaoh in Egypt, and God redeemed us from there with a strong hand and outstretched arm…” But at once the murmurs and laughter resume I see her face now by the window how thirsty she suddenly is. Overcome with longing I rise Yehezkel rising with me. I try making him sit again but the thirst is too much for me I take the bottle and put it to my lips I guzzle from it greedily while the rabbi goes on ranting we were slaves…

He stood on the watered earth, amidst the rotting leaves, by a strip of growing grass, bathed in the sharp, splintery light of the violent spring’s flaming sun, the cuffs of his pants stained with mud, too occupied with himself to notice the world all around him, shifting papers from pocket to pocket, his tie loose, the soft curly gray hairs showing through the slit of his shirt by the large pale mole that once I kissed and the small reddish seam that resembled a hooked beak. Did you really want to kill me? With such naive curiosity, yet that wise smile of his lighting his face. As though it had been simply a mistake or a dream. He couldn’t believe that that morning… only it wasn’t morning yet, it was a muggy, lingering summer dawn with the sea showing through far away like steamy gunmetal. The kitchen light was still on when I found him at the table in his undershirt and pajama bottoms, a tall, skinny, unshaven bird wearing a small apron. He had eaten an early breakfast on the sly and his plate now lay on a yellowed newspaper beside the lock that he had removed from his door, the key to which hung from a string around his neck. He pouted wearily, a cold, withheld man, shut up in the circle of his own self-involved thoughts, his little pots simmering on the stove, full of things he had cooked for himself, while the dog lay under the table, wagging his tail and sniffing at my food that he had thrown him.

He was startled to see me. “How come you got up? Gaddi finally fell asleep again. He sure can scream, he’s a loudmouth just like his father…. But why don’t you go back to bed? We’ll have to bring him back to Ya’el. Perhaps you’ll take him, and I’ll stay here and try to get organized. I haven’t read a single line this whole month.” Quickly he rose to clear away his plate and hide his pots from me. He brought me my medicine, measured it into a glass with a tablespoon, and handed it to me mechanically, without a word. He was on the verge of collapse. And I thought, what he’ll organize is his own despair so that he can get rid of me. I went to the stove to see what he was cooking. He smiled awkwardly but removed the lid to show me a piece of boiled, blackened meat. I lowered the flame, stirred the water with a spoon and stuck a fork in the meat. It was hard as a rock.

“Come, let me help you,” I said. “That’s not how to do it. Let me have a knife.” He looked in the drawer and handed me a large one, which he tried snatching back as soon as he saw how eagerly her hand grabbed the moist handle. He’s noticed that there’s someone else, I thought, filled with new hope. He recognizes her. He knows who she is. He understands that I’m not just pretending.

The knife was wrenched free from him now. He beat a retreat toward the door.

“I think we’d better wake up Tsvi…’’

The singing rocks the dining room. Ve’hi she’amda ve’hi she’amda everyone happily picks up the tune the personnel the nurses even some of the patients shouting it flinging down the words again with unfathomable delight. Next to me Yehezkel is letting himself go too nudging my arm to make me join in. The rabbi regards the singers with a faint smile on his lips seeking to follow the unfamiliar Israeli melody. I bury myself in my book my head pounding loathing the words the melody thinking of her behind the door in a bathrobe shaking out the drops of water from her loose hair listening happily to the music wanting to join in but too hungry her mouth waters. She notices the stack of matzos and reaches out to them. Go ahead I whisper take one. As though inadvertently she does breaking off a piece and sticking it in her mouth. People are staring at me. I bend over my book and pretend not to see them while I eat reaching for more matzo quickly breaking and chewing it I’ve hardly eaten all day. The dry flat bread makes a loud crunchy sound in my mouth. And slowly nervously the singing dies down. The rabbi catches my eye and signals me not to but I go right on eating breaking off piece after piece now Musa reaches out and does the same so do the patients from the closed ward across from us all taking their cue from me. “Just a minute there!” somebody shouts trying to retrieve the filched matzos the doctors’ table buzzes excitedly. The rabbi turns to it in a whisper he bangs his fist on the table. “One minute, friends! Please wait for the blessing.” But calmly spitefully I go on eating cramming matzo into my mouth and chewing it swiftly piece by piece the crumbs raining down on my dress. Dr. Ne’eman smiles and comes over to me big and portly he bends down and hugs me warmly pinning my hands. “Mrs. Kaminka! My dear Naomi. Let’s just wait until the blessing. That’s all he asks, because it’s annoying.”

“To whom?” I ask. “God?”

He laughs soundlessly winking at me full of good humor extracting a piece of matzo from my grasp with the same soft warm paws that once used to tie me and give me electric shock. “Never mind. There’s just a bit more to go. It’s only a ceremony, you know. Just a bit more. I don’t believe in it either, but why demoralize people?…”

He stood there on the wet earth, lighting a cigarette, rotting leaves and fallen blossoms all around him, pacing the growing grass, bathed in the sharp, splintery light of the violent spring, seeing nothing, oblivious to the blooming earth, self-involved, shifting papers, his tie loose, the soft curly gray hairs showing through the frill of his shirt. Why, for a moment I even saw the pale mole that once I kissed with such passion and the reddish seam they had stitched in him like a hooked beak! He showed them to me, both abashed and amused, a twinkle in his eyes, almost smiling, asking me did I really as though he didn’t know. Did I really? Well, now he could afford to, the divorce was almost over on the other side of the door. It pleased him to think that it might all have been a mistake, a passing aberration: that whole brutally muggy summer dawn on which he threw my food to the dog, diddling with his pots, with his constipated, self-involved mind that never would change, that locked itself up with keys swinging from strings, go back to bed, how come you got up, what a night, he sure can scream, we can’t go on like this, we should never have bad him here… and all the time looking for my medicine and so mechanically measuring it and giving it to me, here I was barely risen and already he wanted to drug me, to knock me out, even to drive me away. How quickly he had despaired of me, how disappointingly he had given up on me from the moment he noticed the umbrella I brought home from the store. “What did you buy that for?’’ he wanted to know. And I said, “I didn’t. It got into my shopping bag by mistake. I never paid for it.” The next day I returned with two more umbrellas and a brown mug. “How easy it is to steal,” I mused. “Not that I was stealing — at least I didn’t feel that I was — but perhaps somebody else was doing it for me. I suppose you had better take it all back.” He hit the ceiling. “What kind of monkey business are you up to? I want you to stop it at once.” I let a few days go by and went to take it all back, but this time they were waiting for me, they had already spotted me the time before. They grabbed me without letting me explain, some young salesman stood me in a corner and insisted on calling the police. In the end they got hold of Yehuda too, who came running from the university to identify me, frightened and as pale as a sheet. I was hungry and tired by then but he didn’t even speak to me. He just fawned on the policeman, a fat sergeant who had to calm him down, who understood right away because he knew all the signs and never thought for a moment of pressing charges: a primitive-looking but gloriously humane soul, from the start he behaved gently toward me, he let me go off to the side and only cautioned Yehuda. On our way home we didn’t speak to each other. Yehuda was furious, he would only look at me from the corner of his eye as though I were a stranger. We kept quiet in the house too. I ate, washed, and got into bed with the last of my strength, still not exchanging a word with him. But as I was dozing off in the twilight I felt him standing in the doorway with a suspicious stare. “You see,” I began to explain to him, “there’s someone else here now. It’s hard to draw the line but there’s an other in me, perhaps a whole extra person. You have two wives now. But don’t be afraid. You can cope with her. Just go along with her, don’t panic and try to fight her. She may even be the original me. Perhaps she’s a virgin. I’m only first getting to know her. I can feel that soon she’ll start talking, and then you’ll hear her too.” He covered his face, not wanting to accept it, refusing to hear anymore. “She’s still quite primitive. She isn’t used to stores, she can’t even tell the difference yet between what’s hers and what isn’t. She comes from the desert. But you’ll see that she can be talked to. That she can even be loved. Just you tell her that too. You have such a good way with words. Make an effort with her. Let her feel your presence. Now that you’re retired and have time on your hands, she can give new meaning to your life.” “That’s enough!” he burst out. “You’re doing this on purpose. It’s just an act.” “But it’s not, Yehuda. Listen. She’s going to talk to you now, just to demonstrate.” And she really did begin to, quickly and in my mother’s voice, saying the most complicated, confusing things. He slammed the door and fled, and as soon as she stopped I fell asleep. When I awoke it was the middle of the night. The bedroom door was open and a dim light shone in the house. Someone was singing on the television. Tsvi was up. He came to look in on me and I knew right away that father had told him everything, that he had asked him to come back home to live with us.

Tsvi helped me up and made me something to eat, surrounding me with warmth and concern. He was clearly in the best of spirits. Father was already sleeping on the couch in his study. And only then did I grasp the full extent of his despair, of his fear, of his disappointment, of his surrender. He was handing me over to Tsvi, who was only too glad to get me and to treat me royally. He turned off the TV, made his bed in the guest room, and went off to look for a book to read in it.

Suddenly you can hear a pin drop. I look up from my book to see the rabbi beckon to the pretty young American mother. She rises blushing in her gorgeous dress encouraged by her husband she tiptoes anxiously over to the rabbi he hands her a large porcelain bowl. She holds it in her thin hands while he raises his big wine cup and begins to list the Ten Plagues in some old chant from the steppes letting one large red drop of wine fall into the bowl for each plague. Blood. Frogs. Lice. Locusts. Vermin…

The pretty young American smiles she has stage fright and doesn’t understand the bowl shakes slightly in her hands while the rabbi continues drop by drop flicking each plague off his finger into the pinkish bowl and chanting as it falls. Boils. Hail. Wild beasts… Hypnotically she smiles at each drop. Darkness. The Killing of the Firstborn… At last he’s done. He shuts his eyes and motions her back to her seat but still she stands there reverently holding the bowl uncertain what to do with it. And then suddenly she raises it to her lips and begins to drink. Everyone shouts at once. The bowl of plagues is snatched from her. Shrieks of laughter accompany her shamefaced return to her seat where her children crowd around her and her husband gives her a kiss. And still the tenor voice quavers on.

“Rabbi Yossi the Galilean hath said…”

You paced slowly back and forth on the wet earth, careful not to sink into it, the divorced divorcing divorcer in the splintery glare of the raging spring, your pant cuffs stained with mud, your new American suit shiny in the sunlight, someone else was dressing you now, you never had such a stylish collar before. You lit a cigarette, your face dissolving into vapor in a puddle of water, you exhaled bluish smoke, you sank deeper into yourself, shifting papers from pocket to pocket. Inside the closed cottage, behind drawn curtains, the rabbis fought over our divorce, but already I was parted from you, sitting stock-still on the stoop and staring at the soft gray curls over your heart, at the thin scar hooked like a beak. All at once you stopped worrying and looked at me. What were you thinking of just then? Still of yourself as you and he the way you once used to? You turned to me so unexpectedly, so openly, so shining with wisdom, yes, even with humor — why, the worst part of it then was that you completely lost your sense of humor! “Did you really? You really did? You wanted to kill me?” Perhaps now that we’re parted at last it flattered you to think that. “Yes,” I said. But that wasn’t so. I had only wanted to cut you loose. Can’t you understand there’s a difference? To cut you loose from the desperate fear that made you want to run away, but to leave some part of you too. Because I’m sure there would have been something left. To cut you loose from your constipated fear, from your self-involved, self-diddling intellect with its anxieties and its imaginary, self-destructing missions to the world. Not at that exact spot. Although perhaps there never was a better one. But I was sure that there must be one, the fulcrum from which you would come apart. If only you hadn’t been so scared. If only you had waited another moment without moving, you might not have even felt the pain. But you didn’t know who you gave the knife to. It wasn’t to her, as you thought. It was to me, who loved you and would never have harmed you. Who wanted only to open you up. To cut you loose but not to kill you. To free you. Oh how gladly I would have taken apart that mono-self of yours! It broke my heart to see you with your apron on among those pots, a beginner in the kitchen trying so hard to cook, the dawn-star Venus upon you, a soft sun of flame beneath your steamy, boiling meat soup. You gave her the knife and you panicked because you couldn’t see how in a flicker of thought I took it from her right away. Cut him loose, don’t kill him, I whispered to her. Start with the key on his chest. If only you had kept still then as you did today, smiling patiently… we did, you know, spend so many years together, even if they were a bitter disappointment… what made you grab my hand and wrestle with me, what made you run away? But you’ve always run away. Always surrendered. Always gone to get Tsvi, to wake up the children, not that they ever did you any good. Because it wasn’t a question of doing justice or of being fair. It was a question of being together. You shouted when you should have talked. For the longest time you choked your words to death, you constipated all your sentences. Who were you shouting at? Why? And in such a high, female voice that one might almost have thought that my other was in you and was dragging you off to her wilderness. Groggy as I was I knew I had to act quickly and so did the loudly barking dog. I knew that it was either now or never to cut up that stubborn mono-self into its original parts. If only you hadn’t moved. If only you had calmed your mind instead of screaming “Oh, my God!” and springing for the door. A fresh, clear stream of words would have sprung from you instead and done the job without a drop of blood. You would have been cut loose painlessly, joyously. We could have done without the knife.

Suddenly someone bangs on a table and the murmurs and the laughter die away. Off to the side somebody starts to sing the next passage from the Haggadah and is silenced. From the other end of the room somebody else takes it up and is hushed too. “Shh… shh… wait a minute… the rabbi…” I glanced up from my book to see the young Russian standing stiffly at the head table eyes shut one hand on his heart and the other raised in the air. “Shh… shh…” voices call out. “Quiet, there! The rabbi wants to say a few words…”

The silence deepens. At last he looks at us his gaze raking us like a blue torch. All eyes are on him. Here and there the trace of a smile. He takes a step back and quietly begins to make the rounds of the tables one hand still on his chest and the other still in the air. We crane in our chairs to watch him quietly slowly circle behind us two or three times until he deftly slips into the square between the tables and begins to circle that too passing in front of us now staring at the ceiling playing some game that maybe he learned in a Soviet labor camp. All at once he halts in front of me and without even a look at me deftly shuts my book then continues on his way one hand still held high not at all the same man who fought for my marriage this morning. Slowly now he lets his upraised arm drop. No one smiles anymore. We hold our breaths hypnotically. He walks even slower he stops to look at the children he circles some more stopping to study the doctors he walks on and stops again in front of the patients from the closed ward he circles on all at once he too begins to sing from the Haggadah offhandedly in a fine tenor voice like someone singing to himself in a melody nobody knows. Done he circles again lithe and assured on his feet cherubic cheeks pink in the bright light golden curls on his nape fluffing lightly beneath his backward-tipped cap. And again he stops by the children now he sings once more his voice poignant full of longing he circles again halting this time by the patients from the closed ward scrutinizing them slowly while they blink and gape with drooling mouths staring back at him in alarm as though he were about to attack them. Yet instead he begins to speak in his soft quiet voice in his thick odd Russian accent his body arched gracefully backward.

“Nu…but also you are chosen, do you know? Also you have spark of holiness. Also you belong to God’s covenant… all of you…” He sweeps his hand over the dining room. “A-a-a-ll of you, even who do not want, who do not believe. All… everyone…” He pauses to look straight at me. “A-a-a-ll…” he drawls again. And once more he resumes circling as though lost in thought head high voice abruptly turning harsh. “Nu. For you whole earth is something to be”—he whips out a pad from his pocket, his voice dropping to a powerful whisper, and consults it—“trodden underfoot.” He smiles to himself. “Underfoot. Underfoot.” He forcefully repeats the word face red with anger everyone sits too dazed to make a sound. And again he circles round one hand on his heart stalking softly like a cat the scarf flutters on his neck he runs his other hand over the white tablecloth such delicate soft skin his curly locks tumble down his neck now I see him from behind and give a start why it’s a woman disguised as a man I hardly can breathe. He stops across from my table eyeing us. “Nu, nu.” He rouses himself. “In every generation we seek freedom, but only kind of freedom… only kind of freedom… is freedom to be slaves… freedom to be slaves of God. Is freedom inside. Only there. Is freedom outside worth nothing…” He reaches again for the book I’ve reopened and snatches it from me he looks at it darkly and bangs it shut he tucks it under his arm and circles some more. But now I jump to my feet. How didn’t I notice before that it was her? It’s her disguised as a rabbi! Desperately I turn to all the people watching him. Hasn’t anyone seen? From a far table he starts to sing again he returns to his seat and signals us all to join in the melody. It’s true, then. She’s back. She’s right here. And I bolt outside in a panic.

The vats of night spill over me black and cold already I’m being chased I fling myself into some bushes falling through the hard branches I hear feet running down the path Yehezkel is calling in the darkness I peek out and see a thin little woman puffing on a cigarette bending down to pick up the skullcap that’s fallen from her head as she hurries toward my cottage. I cut through the bushes scratching myself breaking loose veering toward the front gate where the road is swimming in white night light I’m near the guardhouse now there’s Arabic music inside. I turn back toward the office the open door is swinging in the wind. Inside the rooms are dark. File folders and telephones gleam in the moonlight. Almost before it has rung Kedmi answers in his brisk voice.

“Kedmi here.’’

“It’s me.’’

“Who? Talk louder.”

But suddenly I feel so weak.

“Mother.”

“What are you mumbling there? Who are you?”

“Mother,” I whisper.

“Whose mother? Oh, it’s you… What’s wrong?”

“Let me talk to Ya’el.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Let me talk to Ya’el or to Tsvi!”

“All right, all right. Don’t get nervous. I’ll let you talk to them all. Just tell me first what’s wrong.”

But from a stack of files in the corner she rises in an old fur coat and galoshes granny glasses falling off her nose tall wrinkled hunchbacked white wool stockings running up her legs cheap chains on her neck reaching out an old bony hand to grab the phone with that smile that I hate in another second she’ll begin to talk already I hear Ya’el’s voice. “Mother? What’s the matter? Mother?” That patient piece of putty is calling me but I hang up and turn to the window how quickly the moon sails through it I stop my ears I don’t want to hear but I can’t stop the murmur that rises escaping from deep in the earth.

— They’ll have a terrible accident.

— You’re starting again. Don’t.

— This time they’ll be caught.

— You’ve said that a thousand times and nothing’s ever happened.

— This time underfoot.

— No. None of your words again.

— Underfoot.

— Underfoot. So underfoot. So what?

— She sings so beautifully.

— He does. Don’t say she. I’m warning you.

— No, no, she. You saw yourself all the she there was today. From now on if you’d like there’ll be only she, lots of she, she everywhere…

— You’re out of your mind.

— She. Lots of she. Even Musa will be a she if you’d like.

— I haven’t the strength for this. I don’t believe it’s happening. Anything but having to begin this all over again.

— She everywhere.

— Shut up.

— The earth will turn upside down.

— Don’t start in on the earth now.

— Then maybe the sky. Maybe the she-sky.

— That’s enough. Stop it!

— Because you know what I’ve been thinking. Godina. Queen of the Universe.

— No. Anything but that…

— Godina. It’s so simple. So perfect.

— It’s insane.

— Godina. What a brilliant idea.

— What nonsense.

— We must remember to tell Tsvi tomorrow.

— You will not say one word to him. Keep away from him.

— But he’ll love it. What a beautiful idea. Now that the house is all ours, you’ll see that they’ll have to put up with me.

— The house was coming to me. What’s wrong with that? What do you want from me?

— How easily he let you have it, though.

— Because it was coming to me. He realized that.

— Then Godina!

— If you scream like that I’ll kill you. I’ll do it with my own two hands. You know I mean it.

— What happiness there will be with Godina.

— Never. Just more miserable depression.

— That isn’t so. There was such sweet happiness then too. And now with Godina.

— I’m telling you that’s enough!

— Godina! We can’t take it back anymore. It’s been said. What a shame that Yehuda…

— You’re crazy. There is no Godina.

— Then just the word. We’ll just keep the word. The soft she-ness of it.

— You’re not dragging me back there with you. I’ll fight. I’ll kill you.

— But it’s all inside you.

— Nowhere else. Deep down. That’s where the war will be. Deep down…

— Godina! You better get it straight. Godina. And now I’m going to sing.

— That’s enough. I’m not listening. I’m through with you. Go back to the desert. Die!

The telephone rings and I know that it’s Ya’el she’s worried maybe Tsvi too maybe even father but I’m afraid to answer because I might say something that will only upset them more. I walk outside to the path hearing the phone steadily ringing waiting to come to my senses to be myself again. Around me out among the trees women are stirring dancing up out of the earth. I bury my face in my arms I listen to the wind fan over me like a tender gust in some huge sail billowing bright light into this darkened world. Far off I hear Yehezkel’s voice at last the phone stops ringing. I look around me inhaling the cool air slowly pulling myself together watching the world go back to normal the guardhouse the road the lit-up dining room the ticking of the water pump the sound of the surf here and there a lone star I rise my head clearing in the good still night slowly I walk back to the office to phone them perhaps I’ll hear Gaddi or the baby I’ll ask them how they like the seder.