Disobedience

  “Do you think I don’t know that you have chosen this David, son of Jesse, to your shame and the shame of your mother’s nakedness?”

  The Haftarah reader was talented. Through the singsong notes he managed to produce King Saul’s rough, anguished voice. Now. She had waited long enough. She touched Ronit very lightly on the arm.

  “Do you remember?” she whispered.

  Ronit looked at her and blinked.

  “Sorry?”

  “It’s Machar Chodesh. Tomorrow is Rosh Chodesh, the new moon. Do you remember what you told me once about this day?”

  Ronit frowned. Esti waited. The cadences of the reader’s voice were low and melodious, recounting David and Jonathan’s meeting in the fields outside the city, telling of a love that, the Rabbis record, was the greatest that has ever been known. The notes fluttered up and down the scales, falling like tears and rising like an arrow sprung from the bow.

  “Machar Chodesh. When we read about David and Jonathan?” she whispered.

  Ronit’s face cleared.

  “Oh! Right. Yes. Yes, it’s today.”

  Esti smiled. She turned back to her book. It’s today, she thought. It’s today.

  The reader came to the end of the portion. Jonathan went to David’s hiding place and told him to run away, for King Saul meant to kill him.

  “And the men kissed each other and wept with one another until David exceeded. And Jonathan said to David ‘Go in peace. What we two have sworn in the name of God shall be forever.’”

  At the end of the Sabbath, after they had eaten lunch, after Ronit had gone to and returned from her father’s house, after the Sabbath detritus had been cleared away, Dovid set off for Manchester, where his mother had been sitting shiva, close to her other sons and kept company by them. He had been intending to go; he wanted to see his mother, to comfort her in the loss of her brother. It had all been arranged. The car was ready. He took Esti’s hand, kissed her cheek, and he was gone. Esti and Ronit stood in the empty hallway. Ronit shuffled in place. She said:

  “I think I’ll…”

  And Esti said, “Let’s go out. Let’s go for a walk. A coffee.”

  She said it so boldly that there was nothing for Ronit to say but yes.

  Waiting for Ronit to change her clothes, Esti stepped out into the overgrown front garden. She looked up. The sky was blue and black and purple, uncertain as the skin of an aubergine. The moon was absent, a circle of darkness denoting the possibility of presence, the inevitability of return. Tomorrow is the new moon, she said to herself. Tomorrow the moon will return, as Ronit has returned to me. Esti breathed the cool night air, waiting.

  They walked, side by side, along the quiet suburban streets, through one of the large, open parks of Hendon, heading toward Brent Street and Golders Green High Road. The path was heavily overgrown, with gangly tree arms sweeping this way and that from overhead. Although the evening was warm, a gusty breeze blew a few dry leaves across the face pathways and the tarmac playground with a skittering sound. The place was utterly deserted; Hendon rested contented and perhaps a little overfull from the Sabbath. Hendon might walk out later to buy bagels or for a cinema outing, but for now was satisfied to remain at home.

  Esti took Ronit’s arm as they walked. Ronit looked at Esti’s arm, interlinked with her own, but did not try to move away.

  “Do you remember,” Esti said, “we used to come here after school? Over there”—she stretched her right arm across the dark expanse—“are the swings. Do you remember? We used to come here after school sometimes on Fridays in the winter. When they let us out early. It was a special place.”

  Ronit peered out into the darkness to the right of them. The movement brought her closer to Esti, pushing her into Esti’s arm and side. She made a moue with her lips, a puzzlement.

  “Was that here?” she said. “I can’t see. Wasn’t it nearer to the station? I think I remember some swings near the station.”

  Esti smiled.

  “That was later. When we were older. Those were the swings we used to go to in the evenings. When we told our parents we were studying at each other’s houses. You remember.”

  There was a pause. They walked on, more slowly now than they had been.

  “Oh, yes,” said Ronit. “I’d forgotten that. You do remember everything.”

  Yes, thought Esti, everything. She looked up at the stars. They were brighter here, away from the streetlights. The sky was almost cloudless, with only one long streak of thin cloud smudged across the blue-black. Beneath the heavens, she thought. This is where we are. Always, but especially here, with the heavens looking. She spoke to the stars silently. She said, “Can you still love me, after what I have done?” The stars were quiet, but they continued to shine. She took this as a positive indication. She said, “Your sister is gone.” The stars thought for a moment. They said, “Our sister will return.” Esti said, “As mine has?” The stars winked and smiled.

  Ronit said, “Esti, what are you muttering about?”

  Esti said, “Let’s walk through the trees.” She pulled on Ronit’s arm, directing her gently toward the clump of trees by the side of the path. They stopped in the midst of the trees, where the leaves and branches obscured the heavens just a little.

  Ronit said, “I don’t think this is the way. Shouldn’t we be going up the hill?”

  Esti tugged on Ronit’s arm.

  Ronit said, “Esti, are you all right?”

  Yes, Esti wanted to say. I am better than I have known myself to be. She did not speak for a moment. She took comfort from the stars and the whispering arms of the trees. A thought occurred to her. She said:

  “Do you think that you are the stars, perhaps? And that I am the moon? I thought you were the moon. But I have been absent, too, you know. I think I have been absent all this time.”

  Ronit looked at her.

  In the silence, a night bird called to others of its kind. Beneath the trees, under the heavens, Esti passed her hand across her face, tucking a strand of hair into the scarf wrapped respectably around her head. She wondered if she should have explained herself more clearly. She could not explain herself at all. There were no words, no permitted words, to explain anything that she wanted to say. All the words that could have communicated it had been banned, not only from her mouth but even from her mind. She was reduced to mere actions, which are both more and less than words.

  Ronit took a step backward and said, “I really think it’s up that way, Esti.”

  This was the time. If she was to do it, it would have to be done now.

  “No,” she said, “no, come here.”

  Ronit’s eyes were very wide.

  “Esti,” she said, “you’re behaving like a serial killer. Let’s go and get a coffee, for goodness’ sake.”

  Esti saw that she had begun this incorrectly, that she should have chosen other words, perhaps another place. It was too late now for such decisions. She looked up, through the branches of the tree, at the empty moon and the iron-cold sky. She pulled on Ronit’s hand, smiling, and saw Ronit shake a little. She knew then that Ronit felt it, too. She pulled Ronit toward her. Ronit resisted a little and then surrendered. They were standing close, under the arms of the tree. She could smell the milky scent of Ronit’s American soap and the slight tang of her sweat.

  Ronit said, “Really, Esti, this is freaking me out.”

  Esti said, “Shhh,” leaned forward, raised herself on the balls of her feet, and placed her lips, very softly, against those of her love.

  Fuck.

  Just when everything was going so well.

  Fuck.

  I should have seen it coming. Really. I should have seen it from the way she looked at me at the Hartogs. Or maybe earlier than that. Maybe when I knew she’d got married to Dovid. Or when she seemed so nervous to see me.

  Perhaps I did see it coming, in a way. In synagogue she was so strange, going on about David and Jonathan as if they were in some way significant. As if they
were more than a story in a book. And then at home, for lunch, when she asked about Miriam, my imaginary architect lover, with the strangest look on her face. Happiness and envy and disgust and disappointment and longing all mingled together. Or, being honest, maybe I’m making that up in retrospect. In any case, what I did then that perhaps with hindsight I shouldn’t have done was to admit that there was no Miriam. That, for all the Hartogs’ shock and the Goldfarbs’ attempts at sensitivity the night before, I’d just made her up.

  Dovid laughed. I was surprised. He laughed and said:

  “So, are you single, then?”

  And I said, “Yes.”

  Because I didn’t want to say yes, although I’ve been seeing a married man who broke up with me a few weeks ago because he felt guilty about deceiving his wife, but we did sleep together last week, although only because I was feeling low. Honesty has its limits after all.

  And Dovid said:

  “You invented Miriam, to irritate the Hartogs?”

  “Yes.”

  I expected him to give me a disapproving look, but instead he stared down at his plate with a tiny but discernible smile playing on his lips. I wondered what Dovid could possibly have against the Hartogs, the people who were offering him the glittering prize of being Rav of the synagogue. I didn’t ask.

  Esti didn’t smile. Instead, she sort of looked at me. That’s all she did. She looked at me and I started to get an uncomfortable prickly feeling somewhere in the back of my mind about that look, and the past and the future, so much so that after lunch I decided to walk back to my father’s house. To look for the candlesticks again, although I didn’t tell them that. I said, “There’s all this stuff to be sorted out, better get on,” remembering of course that sorting out of any description is another thing that’s forbidden on the Sabbath day. Not to mention turning on the radio and dancing in the hallway to Shania Twain. But somehow I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. Somehow even the oppressiveness of my father’s house, even the rows of disapproving books seemed preferable to staying with Esti and Dovid. So yeah, I guess in a way I must have known. Fuck.

  But, in another way, I couldn’t have known at all. Being here forbids it. It’s this place, that’s the problem. It’s being back here with all those little couples sitting in their identical houses producing identical children. It was seeing them in synagogue, all those women in their smart Shabbat suits and their perfectly matched hats and each woman appropriately paired to a man, preferably with a child tugging at each arm. They just fit together, the whole set—like Orthodox Jew Barbie: comes complete with Orthodox Ken, two small children, the house, the car, and a selection of kosher foodstuffs. They make you believe it, until it seems obvious that people come in matched pairs and you don’t think to look underneath and you give up wondering because it all seems just so neat.

  And I wanted to believe it, too. That’s the thing. In a part of my brain I really wanted to believe that even girls you used to sleep with can end up having the happily married Hendon dream as long as they just close their eyes and wish hard enough. I didn’t think I still had that bit to my brain, thought I’d managed to excise it with therapy and anger. But no, there it was. I was convincing myself more and more strongly that everything was perfectly normal here and that Esti was probably completely happy right up until the moment when she kissed me.

  I had forgotten how fragile she is. For the first moment, that was all I could think; that she was leaning into me, resting on my arms and chest, and she was so light I could hardly feel her. And I had forgotten her smell, little changed in all these years. She always smelled clean, something like lavender, soap, and maybe violets. I had forgotten how it had been between us. But I could see she hadn’t forgotten. For just a moment, she made me remember it, too. For just that little piece of time, standing in a field in Hendon in the middle of the night, underneath the stars and the moonless sky, I remembered the taste of her. It was like a connection, a completed circuit linking the past to the present suddenly, unexpectedly, and for that instant I knew where I was but not when.

  I pushed her away gently and said, “No.”

  She looked puzzled. She moved away and then moved toward me again.

  I said, more firmly, “No.”

  She took a pace back. Her face half disappeared in shadow. The trees around us buzzed and hummed. She said:

  “Do you not…with girls? Have you given up? Did you stop?”

  How strange that this should be the first thing to cross her mind. As though that were the only thing she could think of. There was a sort of fearful hope in her eyes. Like she wanted to be taught how to quit.

  “No, I haven’t given up.”

  “And you’re not, you’re not seeing anyone?”

  I wanted to laugh at that. I wanted to nudge her in the ribs and say no, I’m not seeing anyone, but that doesn’t mean I want to see you, because it’s been over for a long time, Esti. It’s old. It was old a long time ago, wasn’t it?

  “No, look, it’s just…” I passed a hand across my forehead. It wasn’t just anything. It was a hundred things. A thousand. “It’s just that you’re married, Esti.”

  I heard her sigh in the darkness. She shifted her shoulders a little and moved toward me. She found my hand with hers and lifted it up, as if to inspect it, although it was too dark for that. With the tip of her finger, she traced a line across my palm. After a few seconds, she spoke slowly.

  “Yes. I’m married. But that is a thing between me and Dovid, do you see? And whatever harm you might do to it has been done already. There is nothing more. And whatever pain I may give him, I have caused already. I know that. And whatever God may think of me, He thinks already.”

  Another long pause. The wind died down to nothing. Above us, an airplane blinked across the night, an artificial star in an empty sky.

  She said, “Sometimes I think that God is punishing me. For what we did together. Sometimes I think that my life is a punishment for wanting. And the wanting is a punishment, too. But I think—if God wishes to punish me, so be it; that is His right. But it is my right to disobey.”

  She sounded more certain than Scott had ever been.

  She said, “I’ve been waiting for you, all this time. I knew you couldn’t stay, not then. But now, with your father gone, with everything that’s happened. Now you can stay, can’t you? Now we can be together like we always were.”

  This seemed impossible. Could she really think that I had been longing to come back to Hendon all this time, that I’d only been prevented because of some argument with my father? I took her arm and pulled her toward the path, where the sodium-orange streetlamps gave a little light.

  I said, “Esti. What is it that you see happening here? I live in New York. I’m going back there in three weeks. I’m just here to sort out my father’s stuff. This is not…Look, this was over a long time ago. You and me. It was a long time ago.”

  Esti smiled again and I started to see something in her, something I’d seen earlier but perhaps hadn’t wanted to acknowledge was there, in her stillness in the house when she served us dinner, in her intensity in synagogue. I saw, at this moment, that she had been waiting for me all this time. Perhaps not for me, but for someone like me, for someone she thought I was. That while Esti and I had been over in my mind for a long time, it hadn’t been that way for her at all. And I felt so intensely sad for a moment that I thought I might have to walk away from her without saying a word, to run across the park, out of Hendon, as far as I could run before I collapsed, but I didn’t get the chance because as I was thinking all this she bloody well kissed me again.

  I pushed her off me and held her at arm’s length. I’m stronger than she is, always have been. It wasn’t too difficult.

  I said, “No! Look, Esti, you have to stop that. This is not, I mean, just stop that, okay?”

  She frowned and twisted awkwardly, out of my grasp. She stood, feet apart, looking at me.

  I said, more calmly, “It was
a long time ago, Esti. I know we used to, but I don’t want to anymore.”

  There was another long pause. I looked out across the park but it was too dark to see anything but the moving shapes of trees on the rise of the hill, stirring in the wind.

  Esti spoke, and her voice was a little nearer to my left ear than I would really have liked. She said:

  “But you were the only person…”

  She broke off. I turned my head and saw that she was crying. Silent, streaming tears shining on her face like a medieval portrait of the Virgin Mary. What could I do? She didn’t need me right now. She needed a whole bunch of friends who’d take her out for margaritas and tell her that I was a bitch. She needed my life in New York, just like I’d needed hers in Hendon the night my father died. There’s no solution to these things. I took her hand and said:

  “Look, it’s going to be okay.” This was a lie, of course. I think I was planning to follow it up with something like “plenty more fish in the sea” or “you’ll get over it.” Something pithy like that. But I didn’t get the chance. Oh infinite joy of being in Hendon, out of the darkness spake a voice, and the voice said:

  “Esti! Ronit! Shavua Tov! Did you have a good Shabbos?”

  We turned to look. It was good old Hinda Rochel Berditcher, in wig, smart brown suit, and matching court shoes, on the arm of a tall, bearded man. Hinda Rochel was beaming.

  “This is my husband, Lev,” she said. “Lev, this is Ronit, the Rav’s daughter, you remember I told you about her?”

  I’ll bet she did.

  Lev nodded at me gravely and said:

  “I’m sorry for your loss. I wish you a long life.”

  I thanked him, all the time thinking how much, how much did they see, walking through the darkness toward us, standing under a streetlamp? Not that it’d damage my life, but Esti’s…well, it couldn’t be good.

  We exchanged a few words; it seemed impossible to get rid of them, Hinda Rochel was so delighted to see us, did we want to come back with them for a drink? No? Maybe we’d be free a bit later? Or tomorrow? With Dovid? Oh, he was in Manchester, was he? Hinda Rochel and Lev exchanged a look. Maybe the following Shabbat? We’d give them a call, yes we would, we promised. Or rather, I promised. Esti was positively monosyllabic. And where were we going now? For coffee? Well, they really shouldn’t keep us. Another look passed between them. They smiled. They moved off, out of the pool of light, leaving Esti and me standing underneath the streetlamp again, in silence.