I Am Forbidden (19 page)

J
OSEF
reached the clinic where he had scheduled his appointment. The Torah verses wept on his shoulder as he entered
the tiny tiled cubicle. He placed the velvet pouch that held his prayer shawl and phylacteries outside the cubicle, so the objects of worship would not witness his defilement. He turned off the light and did not look at the magazines with naked women.

The rain pattered on the sill.

As if I were with her, merciful Lord—Is this not the time when she is permitted?

His hands neared his ammah. If God slew him as He slew Onan, death would be welcome, death that would free Mila from her barren marriage.

He was trying with dry hands.
My lawful wife, Mila MilaHeller, dear Lord, a child, a home, a Jewish home, Mila MilaHeller.…

R
AIN
spattered on the gargoyle’s eyeballs. Conceived, conceived, each pattering drop echoed on the narrow ledge … 
Tamar sat near Enayim and Judah thought her to be a harlot, he came in unto her and she conceived, conceived, conceived
.

Would Mila Heller not raise a name for
her
dead?

She held on more firmly to the parapet; straddled it, pulled herself back onto the terrace.

• • •

In front of the Sorbonne, the statue of Auguste Comte wore a red necktie. People milled in and out of the large gate. In the courtyard, the statues of Zola and Pasteur brandished red flags. Groups argued next to makeshift stands heaped with manifestos, poems, announcements;
Marx … Trotsky … Mao … Alienation
.…

How would she find the youth Xavier in this crowd?

A large placard read:

Mila heard a few notes, then a deep chord. There, in the middle of the courtyard stripped of its cobbles, someone had rolled a baby grand piano. At the keyboard, behind a group arguing passionately … she made her way toward him, but he looked down at the keys, face hidden by long curls falling onto a red scarf.

She leaned her back against the piano’s bend. The hammers struck the strings. The notes resonated through her. She let herself slide to the ground and under the piano. She was too tall to sit comfortably; she reclined. A fragrance of earth after rain rose around her. Her eyes closed.

The notes climbed up her ankles, along her shins, twirled around her knees, rested on her belly. Her eyes opened. The underside of the piano stretched above her like a black sky trembling with melodies.

She lay her head on a folded elbow.

The notes fluttered in spring exuberance. The pianist’s boot pressed the brass pedal, stretched past the pedal, the flat of his jacket brushed the jean-clad thigh. A key chain dangled out of the jacket pocket. At the end of the chain, a lion stood on its hind legs.

The melody crested above her.

The pianist’s foot pressed the pedal; the lion advanced, retreated.

The hammers struck a deep chord.

Ten empty years thudded inside her belly.

A few high, scattered notes … fading. Silence. Hands clapped. The wind leafed through the pamphlets on the stands.

“Nem mir,” Mila said.

The youth leaned sideways on the stool, looked under the piano, squinted as if doubting his eyes.

He was not the student of the night of the riots, not Xavier.

She blinked. Their gazes met.

“Nem mir,” she called again.

The student put his hand to his ear, indicating he did not hear or understand.

“Nem mir! Prends-moi! Take me!”

His Adam’s apple went up, down. His palm scooped the molded metal lion on his key chain, and dropped it in his jacket pocket.

• • •

She walked quickly; he followed. Her hips swayed up the stairs to the terrace, past tall rectangles of light cast by narrow embrasures. Her hand on her womb,
Quiet now, sleep, hie lee lu lee la
.… Her hand on the knob,
If it is locked, God is forbidding me
. The door swung open.

J
OSEF
stood in the cubicle, a shakiness in his legs. His breath accelerated. He had presumed this act would be devoid of pleasure without her.…
Dear Lord, Mila MilaHeller
.… He was sweating in his thick black coat and the shakiness now was a swaying he had heretofore known as prayer. The release he had called by her name only—inside the cup!

His unsteady hand placed the cup in the metal case that opened on both sides of the wall. The nurse’s steps on the vinyl tiles.

He pulled up his black pants,
Forgive my weakness
. He glued his lips to his fringed garment,
Don’t punish me past my strength
.

T
HE SCARLET
scarf around the gargoyle’s neck rippled in the breeze.

Mila bent over the parapet and did not turn to face him.

She lifted her skirt.

Below, the trees had an after-rain sheen.

“Tu es belle,” he said, “belle et folle.” He enunciated “folle” as if madness, too, were a form of desire. “Folle,” he repeated, his tongue rolling over the “
ll
’s” as his arms rounded her waist. He lifted her skirt higher.

She felt the brush of cooler air on her bare skin, between the straps of the garter belt and the top of the seamed stockings.

He unbuckled his belt.

As if it were him, my Anghel.…

He pulled down her colored, cotton underwear, her permitted-days underwear. He came in unto her.

She moaned.

“Oui, ma chatte!” he cheered.

And his speaking, too, was a breach, as was the light.

He sank deeper into her.

Her gaze lifted from the glistening canopy to drifting clouds and heavenly gates.
Inscribe a child, O Lord, in the Book of Life
.

She trembled around the hardness inside of her, and her lips opened for the prayer before death:
“Shemah Yisrael Adonaï Elohenu—” (Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God—)

“Oui, mon chaton, Adonaï Echad!”
(Yes, my pussycat, the Lord is One)
the youth exclaimed, laughing, as his seed issued into her.

M
ILA
was impatient for Josef’s embrace to erase the other union and the other seed, even as she prayed for something of that other seed to hold fast.

She packed her suitcase and Josef’s in silence; in silence she sat in the taxi to the airport. She would carry the burden; Josef would share the joy.

The youth’s impiety still bewildered her. “I knew these prayers as a kid. Never thought of saying them during—well, this!”

The whole flight home, she wished she could simply ask Josef: Is it better if the seed is Jewish?

Each time she turned to him, he smiled at her.

Josef smiled despite the anguish. If the test established that he was infertile, would Mila resign herself or would she leave him?

• • •

Their first night back in Williamsburg, Mila wore the stole that let Josef know she was permitted. Her cheeks were pale, her fist pressed against her breastbone, but the stole, pearl gray and lavender under the lamplight, spun the threads of Josef’s desire. He did not notice her clenched white knuckles. He set the pitcher and washbowl between the two beds, to wash off sleep’s impurity when they woke. By the foot of her bed he swayed,
This month, dear Lord, one child.…

The eiderdown rustled as she lifted a corner.

Her open arms: home, his home.

He lay next to her and then he lay on top of her, as prescribed.
Mila, MilaHeller, my pardes, my own garden of paradise.…
He remembered that they were in the tenth year of their marriage and it set loose in him a desperate energy. In the dark as prescribed. In silence as prescribed.

He did not worry that his passion might be intemperate; she met his thrusts with hers as never before.

He remembered his seed spent in vain and that it was
akin to murder
.

He stilled.

Could he be sensing the other, inside of her? Mila wondered. Her legs circled his hips. Her thighs pulled him deeper in her.

Her heat burned through his anxiety.

He had meant well, Josef reassured himself. He sank deeper.

Her back arched and she let out a cry that startled her even more than it startled him, and Josef wondered, imparadised:
Could this be the sound of my seed, taking root, inside of her?

Her tears coursed from the back of his hand onto the pillow. He kissed her eyelids, her nose, her lips.

Walking to services the next morning, Josef thanked God for creating MilaHeller and for making him the instrument of her cry. She had been so withdrawn during the journey back, but last night, her moan … 
Your ways are unknowable
.

And Josef’s steps beat the cadence of her name,
Mila MilaHeller
, and his breath held the imprint of her rapture.

Wanting to be near her, he went home at lunchtime.

She watched his long fingers unfasten the buttons of his black coat.

Seeing her paleness, he said, “You don’t look well. It’s been three years since you began—”

“I can’t—I won’t stop the fertility treatment.”

“Mila, in Paris, I.…”

“What … what in Paris?”

“Nothing, my heart.” He stroked her face. “Would you be happier if we moved to Paris? It would upset Zalman
Stern if we left the Rebbe’s court but I’ll stand up to him, I’ll explain— Would Paris make you happier? I shouldn’t have waited so long. Forgive me, forgive—”

“Forgive
you
?”

He kissed her wet lashes. “I should never have taken you from France.”

“You didn’t take me. I wanted to come here, with you.”

T
HREE WEEKS
later, the letter from the Paris clinic arrived, informing Josef that he could not conceive. The semen analysis left no doubt; nothing could be done. Mila had been taking the drugs for naught.

Shame flooded him. He would offer to leave her; he must, she so wanted a child.

He placed the thin envelope in a Talmud folio. He looked for the right moment to tell her. “Mila?” he called from the front door, his voice uncertain, no longer sure she would be there, his home her home, his home a home.

T
HE TIME
of Mila’s blood came and she observed that there was no blood.

She wrapped the stole around her shoulders, to let her husband know that she was permitted.

• • •

Searching for words to tell her about his infertility, but not finding them, Josef stood at the foot of her bed, silent, and did not go to her.

The next evening, Mila wore the stole again, and again, Josef did not go to her.

“Come to me,” Mila whispered, lifting a corner of her eiderdown.

Mila had never spoken that way, never called him that way; always it was him, at the foot of her bed, waiting for the cotton’s soft rustle.

“Josef, I found out—yesterday.”

His slow panic. Had she seen the letter from the Paris clinic? But then why was there joy in her voice?

She took his hand and placed it on her belly. “I’m pregnant.”

A heat rose in Josef’s hand. A wild hope, darting from heart to head, that her cry the night of their return from Paris had been the sound of his seed taking root; God had answered their prayers, miracles happened—but even as the fierce wish tore his chest, he did not step toward her, did not embrace her. She extended an arm. The stole slid off her shoulder, to the floor, but Josef did not pick it up. Feet rooted to the ground, he wavered between the possibility of a miracle and the letter from Paris, the laboratory report stating that he could never father children.

She pushed away her covers. “It’s me,
Mila Heller
!”

Josef had told Mila that in his thoughts, he still called her
Mila Heller
. Lich-ten-stein sounded so decisive, he had said. Three hammer blows. Whereas Heller—aspirate the
h
, lull the
l
’s, soar with the
r
:
Heller MilaHeller
.…

“
Lichtenstein
, your name now is Lichtenstein,” he stammered.