I Am Forbidden (22 page)

But if judges were no longer permitted to believe him, then Josef would be sentenced like transgressors never brought before a human court—covert desecrators of the Sabbath, masturbators, secret adulterers—he would receive
the punishment of kareth, his soul exiled from the Lord’s presence. Winter eternal.

And so would Mila.

*

T
HE WATER
boiled in the blue enamel pot. Mila poured rolled oats into the brisk bubbles, sprinkled a pinch of salt, stirred, lowered the heat.

“Mila?” Josef called.

The wooden spoon stilled. She turned to the warmth in his voice—as if he had forgotten. “Oh Josef, can I add fruit to your oats?”

“Not today.”

“But if you don’t improve your diet—” The spoon moved again, stirring the film that already wrinkled the oats’ surface. The doctor had warned of irreversible cell degeneration; Mila had begged, reminding Josef that not eating was suicide and suicide was forbidden. Still, she had not solicited Zalman Stern or the Rebbe, who might have forced the question of what sin Josef had committed that required such expiation.

“Your eyes—are the drops helping?” she said.

“They are helping.”

Mila saw the bowl of oats, untouched, on the dining table.
She leaned against the wall, into the faded wallpaper. She felt so helpless watching Josef’s wasting body that she almost wished for a swifter decline. But one block away was the consolation of Rachel living out Mila’s dream of a home full of children: boys studying Torah, girls preparing to be mothers in Israel. Rachel’s home confirmed that if there had been sin, it was sin for the sake of redemption:
Descent for the sake of ascent
.

And Rachel giving birth to yet another child renewed Mila’s resolve to withstand Josef’s collapses.

*

W
HEN
sixty-two-year-old Josef grew too weak to walk, Mila helped him out of bed. The first time her hand touched his, they both held their breaths. The square inches of skin against skin awakened their bodies’ past joys and their bodies’ deprivations, awakened the question of whether the Law might have softened.

The Lord forgiveth the sinner
, whispered a voice Josef had heard when he stood next to Florina at mass. But other voices clamored:
The Lord Himself is offended
.

Mornings, Mila wheeled Josef to the closest prayer quorum. She waited on the stoop if it was warm, by the coatrack
in the entry if it was cold. She wheeled him back home after services and helped him into an armchair where he sat, bent over a magnifying glass, scanning the Talmud tomes.

Afternoons, Mila fetched Josef’s old eiderdown, the one Florina had once tied with string, which Mila had washed and stowed with lavender sachets, and which she had retrieved one winter day when Josef was especially cold. She swaddled his knobby knees and narrowed ankles, she adjusted the faded tassel closer to his heart.

Tucked in the eiderdown, Josef remembered his two mothers even though he failed to evoke the contours of their faces. He smiled, and Mila, too, broke into a smile as she tiptoed out of the study, leaving the door ajar, slightly, so she would hear if he called.

Evenings, she wheeled him to the prayer quorum, and back to the armchair by the bookcase, where he stayed past the midnight lamentation over the Temples destroyed. Then she helped him into bed. When his breath evened, she closed her eyes.

*

O
NE AFTERNOON
, swaddling Josef’s feet, Mila whispered, “Rachel’s eldest, Judith.…”

“Is something wrong with Judith?”

“No, no, nothing wrong. She is … seventeen.”

“Judith was born the twenty-first of Kislev 5749 … that’s right, seventeen.”

“That’s what I was trying to say. Judith is.…”

Dread enveloped him. “With whom?” he asked, barely audible.

“A good match,” she stammered, “an honor for our family.”

There was a long silence during which Mila imagined that perhaps Josef did not need to know.

“Who?” Josef whispered.

Some of the pride to which Mila felt she was entitled slipped into her voice. “Our Judith is engaged to Yoel Stern, Etti’s son, Zalman’s grandson.”

Josef gasped.

“Judith is so happy,” Mila insisted.

The telephone rang. Mila left the study and Josef heard her accept congratulations from Mrs. Halberstamm. His eyes closed. Halberstamm’s lineage was passul
(corrupted)
 … was it now Zalman’s turn? Would Rachel and her children corrupt the lineage of all the most pious Hasidim?

No, Judith’s engagement to a Stern grandchild was no accident. It was the sign. God was sending Zalman Stern to save them both one last time.

He would go to the Rebbe.

Or perhaps to Zalman himself.

Zalman would cancel the engagement.

Josef thought of his first grandchild, Judith, who as a five-year-old buried her nose in his prayer shawl because she
liked the smell of holiness
. Later Judith stroked the gold letters on Josef’s Talmud, declaring that she would become a
woman of valor
and would support her husband’s Torah study. She asked whether she looked like her namesake, Josef’s mother, and inquired in the community for the walnut-hazelnut roll recipe—not as it was prepared in Kolozvár or Szatmár or Temesvár but the recipe from Maramureş where Grandpa Josef was born. How the girl beamed when Josef remarked that Judith’s rolls were the smell of home.

Perhaps not Zalman.…

Rachel, he should speak to Rachel. Rachel had the strength he never had … Rachel would go to the Rebbe, right away she would go.

Let Rachel decide; the children were hers.

He would speak to Rachel.

He would begin … come innocent lamb, he would begin … like a father who blesses his child … 
May the Lord permit you to be like the mothers in Israel, like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel
—three times he would bless her, then he would speak and Rachel, whom they had raised to follow the Lord’s command, would go to the Rebbe.

He saw Rachel’s children huddled outside the synagogue, pressing themselves against their mother, after he had spoken;
he saw Rachel veiling her face in shame. He raised his eyes to the ceiling.

You claim to shun human sacrifice, but it
is
in the name of a father’s knife against his son’s throat that we ask forgiveness.

His head bowed.

Yes, I will speak to Rachel.

Like Isaac on the altar asking to be bound
tight
to counter his fear of the knife, our Rachel will seek to fulfill the Lord’s command, that is how we brought up our Rachel.

In sacrifice, man and God kiss
.

Lord God, her neck already bleeding.…

There is no thicket, no ram? No angel to push the knife aside?

A fly buzzed above him and Josef turned right and left; he could hear the fly but could not see it. He closed his eyes, opened them. He breathed softly, in, out … and he could barely see the table in front of him.

Lord God I have heard you. I will speak to Rachel, yes. I will begin: Is it an easy pregnancy you are having? And the children, how are the children? I will tell her … before Rachel turns from us, I will tell her that I noticed she started to wear her mother’s perfume … I will tell her about wild anemones, in Maramureş … pleasant fragrances please the Lord, incense was burnt continuously on the Golden Altar.

Yes Lord, I will speak to Rachel.

Josef closed his eyes and saw Rachel take the grandchildren, their lithe bodies and laughter, saw Rachel walk the
children to the front door. “Rachel! Rachel!” he called but Rachel did not look back as she turned the corner and disappeared, forever turned and disappeared. “Rachel, you must take care of my Mila!” Josef rasped.

Mila rushed in.

“What is it Josef? What should I take care of?”

“Milenka? Ah, it’s you. Should we call Rachel back from the country? I am not well, I must see her.” Josef pointed to spines of Talmud folios. “Please bring me this one … and this one.…” With each volume’s thump on the desk, his hollowed frame quivered.

Josef turned the Talmud pages his eyes could read no longer, kept turning them.

When Mila came back into the room, she saw him bent over an upside-down volume. “You can’t see? You can’t see at all?”

Josef asked for the set of letter blocks with which he had taught Rachel and then her children the aleph-beth. He tapped the embossed surfaces. He pushed aside blocks until his fingers found what he sought. When his hands lifted, the letters read:

Hineni,
Here I am, ready
—Abraham’s rejoinder to God’s:
Take your son … whom you love … and sacrifice him as a burnt offering
.

“Hineni?” Mila read aloud. She scrambled the letters, feverishly.

Josef’s frail neck strained from side to side as the blocks’ edges knocked against one another.

After Mila left the room, Josef tapped the table and arranged the letter blocks again:

*

M
ILA
stared at the black-and-white kitchen tiles. Shades drawn, the house was dark and quiet, as empty of children’s play as it had been during her barren years. The oppressive heat had allowed Mila to insist that pregnant Rachel and the children stay in the country. Only Judith—who needed to be in the city for a last fitting of her wedding gown—would spend the High Holy Days with her grandparents.

Mila retrieved the Book of Days kept hidden since she came home from the maternity ward with Rachel.

The entries read like an ancient ledger: