by Shifra Horn
Pnina-Mazal’s hair refused to sink with her body into the water, and it spread out around her head like the long roots of weeds choking the wellsprings of life and sucking the sap out of them.
“Sink, sink, sink,” the voice of the rabbi’s wife hammered in Sara’s ears, rousing her from the visions of her daughter’s carnal lust swaying before her eyes and from the cries of passion ringing in her ears and covering her face in a deep blush.
As if waking from a dream she looked at her daughter ducking her head in the black liquid, her water-darkened hair floating around her like a creature with a life of its own, threatening to strangle her stalklike neck. It seemed to Sara that a long time had passed since her daughter had sunk her head in the water.
“Tell her to take her head out,” she ordered the rabbi’s wife.
“Get out,” said the latter, but the girl’s head remained still in the water, surrounded by floating hair.
“Get out,” screamed Sara, but there was no response. When the head refused to rise, Sara jumped into the water in her clothes and pulled Pnina-Mazal out, her eyes closed and her lips blue. She dragged her up the steps with superhuman strength, crouched down beside her, and shook her still body. A strong jet of water burst out of her throat and nose and wet the feet of the rabbi’s wife, who was standing nailed to the spot. Sara turned her daughter onto her stomach and slapped her cheeks to revive her.
Pnina-Mazal opened her eyes and a violent fit of coughing racked her thin body, which went on vomiting quantities of stagnant water, as if she had swallowed the entire contents of the pool.
“Now she’s clean on the inside too,” mumbled the rabbi’s wife in an awed voice. “Not only from without but also from within,” she repeated to herself incredulously.
“The girl’s a saint,” the rabbi’s wife proclaimed, summarizing the events of the day for the benefit of the women who streamed to the mikvah in the wake of the rumors.
Chapter Eleven
The wedding Sara laid on for her daughter would long be remembered in the neighborhood. It was a large and sumptuous affair, attended by all the students and teachers from David’s yeshiva, all the inhabitants of the neighborhood down to the last of the beggars, Pnina-Mazal’s school friends, the librarians from all the libraries where she had borrowed books, her language teachers, and even the residents of the American colony. Until the last minute the mother and daughter entertained the hope that the father of the bride would arrive. A telegram of congratulations had announced that he was preparing for the journey and had every intention of attending the wedding. But on the great day Pnina-Mazal stood beneath the wedding canopy, dressed in the magnificent bridal gown that Rachel had bought for her in America, with only her mother by her side. Afterward she heard from their neighbor Esther that she had heard from Ya’akov the barber, who had heard it from Shimon the butcher, who had heard it from Theodosios the Greek monk, that a man matching Avraham’s description had been seen on board a ship sailing for Palestine, but he had disappeared without a trace the moment he set foot on the filthy, sinful soil of Jaffa.
But why had Avraham failed to attend his daughter’s wedding? Theodosios the monk described how Avraham had mounted the ramp of the ship in the port of Salonika, accompanied by three iron trunks encircled by hoops and reinforced by thick leather straps, and retired to the best and biggest cabin on the ship. After that he hardly ventured out, except at mealtimes, when he hastily swallowed the food on his plate, replied politely to the questions of his fellow passengers, and vanished into his cabin again.
The only one Avraham was prepared to talk to was Theodosios himself, the floor of whose monastery, carved out of a gigantic catapult stone that had fallen out of the sky and landed on the narrow ledge of a windswept mountain, he had once covered with immense Persian carpets. In the wake of this work Avraham had received commissions from neighboring monasteries, hollowed out of skyscraping stones covered with stardust and teetering between heaven and earth on the edge of barren cliffs. Loading the great, heavy carpets on the iron hooks let down from the monastery walls was a skilled and difficult operation, about which Avraham was happy to reminisce with Theodosios, recalling the creaking of the chains, the frightened shouts of the porters, the calm replies of the monks, and the laying of the carpets on the monastery floors.
On the last day of the voyage the sea was smooth as a mirror, cradling the passengers with a gentle rocking motion. Then Avraham told Theodosios the purpose of his journey. He was going to see his family in Jerusalem. His wife, who was the most beautiful woman in the world, had golden hair that covered her body from head to foot. His daughter, who was a baby when she sailed for Palestine, and had already mastered several languages, was about to be married. About his beautiful mute son too he told Theodosios, and how they had consulted all the doctors and magicians without finding a cure. He was bringing many gifts for his family, he whispered into the monk’s ear, lest the rumor reach greedy ears. There were carpets rolled up in his trunks, to cover the cold stone floors and warm their feet on the winter nights. Bolts of silk from China, red and gold, to sew them dresses; thick, handwoven cotton from Egypt to cover their beds. And carved crystal goblets to dazzle their eyes with their beauty and tickle their ears with their icy tinkle; and heavy silver spoons, wrapped in wool to keep them from turning black, to eat the feast of the seven blessings after the wedding. And many gold coins were hidden in the trunks, too, all the money he had received for the shop that he had sold after the death of his parents. With their help he would open a carpet shop in Jerusalem and support his family in style.
When he got off the ship and was carried ashore on the shoulders of the Arabs, whose feet were as swollen as sponges, he watched like a hawk to make sure that his trunks had been unloaded with him, and he was not satisfied until he was standing on the shore with all his belongings stacked around him. He looked around for a carriage to take him to the railway station, and then he saw her.
Who she was, what she looked like, and what she was wearing the monk Theodosios was unable to say, but he remembered her hair very well. All his life, until he died at a ripe old age in the Great Greek Monastery in Jerusalem, whenever he remembered that hair it glinted and glittered before his eyes, dazzling them even when they were blind with age. And if he was asked, he was always happy to describe it, as if the gleaming memory illuminated the darkness of his old age and filled his blind eyes with radiance.
The moment Avraham saw her the gold struck his eyes and dazzled him and he cried: “Sara!” She turned around, looked at him, and he murmured her name as if mesmerized and followed the deceitful radiance, the apparition that confounded him and brought catastophe down on his head. And she walked away with her head held high, with her hair trailing after her like the train of Lilith’s wedding gown, and leaving the delicate traces of a tangled web in the sand. Avraham stumbled after her, his damp eyes fixed on the shining aureole dancing before him as he followed the prints in the sand swept by that golden broom. He did not bother to look behind him and check the porters running after him, bowed beneath the load of his luggage. Theodosios the monk brought up the rear of the procession. Lurching like a man struck by lightning he too followed the wheel of radiance, the hem of his long black habit blurring the delicate traces of the sweep of golden hair and covering the footprints of the barefoot porters, sunk deep in the sand due to the heaviness of their load.
Without looking back she led Avraham to a squalid little hotel. Her hair swept the filthy, dust-covered wooden steps that led to a narrow, windowless chamber. There she shook out her hair and with a waterfall of light banished the darkness from the room, barred and sealed like a tomb with Avraham’s three iron trunks stacked up against the door. In the sealed room he shut himself up with her, and their bodies united on the damp, moldy mattress stained with the secretions of its previous occupants and covered with graffiti of lust so tortuous that nobody has ever succeeded in deciphering them.
What happened to him there he
told the monk Theodosios the following morning. After searching for her throughout the length and breadth of Jaffa he met the monk, and asked him for a little money, which he promised to return. The moment they arrived in the room, he recounted, she took off her clothes and wrapped herself in her hair, which covered her body and fell all the way to her feet. And its color was dazzling gold and its touch was like the finest silk. Trembling he stretched his hands out before him and touched it with the tips of his fingers, felt it and weighed it in his hands as the tears streaming from his eyes wet and darkened the silken strands he clutched despairingly, like a drowning man.
When his stiff fingers began to knead her scalp she pushed them away, permitting him to touch only the hair covering her head. Then they lay down on the bed, her hair covering both of them, tangling and coiling between their sweating bodies, and her black pubic hair glittered at him invitingly, like a dark temptation. Before he penetrated the darkness of her body he came in a strong jet, wetting the blanket of hair enveloping his body, which shuddered in rhythmic waves of pleasure. At that moment he closed his eyes, saw her face opposite his, and shouted her name in a terrible voice. Afterward he fell asleep, his nose buried in her hair, and its smell, mingled with the smell of the dust from the street, assailed his nostrils and overwhelmed him with longing.
When he woke up his hands were tangled and trapped in her long hair, as if they had been fastened in golden fetters. All day long he lay bound on the bed, calling to her and begging her to release him, shouting and crying until his throat was hoarse. When people came to rescue him, breaking into the dark room through the door barricaded by the iron trunks, they found him curled up like a naked fetus on the bed, with her golden hair scattered all over the room, as if it had taken fright at his cries, deserted her head, and fled in all directions. Sheaves of hair lay on the pillow stained by the rouge of her lips and kohl of her eyes. They found locks of it tangled in his clothes, padding his shoes, coiled around his pubic hair, and piled up on the floor. Naked he crawled round the room on his hands and knees, collecting the golden strands and tying them up in a bunch. He even wriggled under the bed, where he found long hairs clinging to each other as if locked in a desperate embrace, glittering at him amid the dim shadows cast by the bed on the floor, which was covered by a gray fuzz of dirt. Then he got dressed and set out to look for her.
First he opened the doors leading off the corridor, where he was greeted by the sight of hairy backsides crouching between outspread legs. Then he went downstairs and asked about the woman with the long golden hair. The gaudily dressed women with the crudely painted faces replied that they had seen no one matching his description, and if they had, they would surely have remembered. Only one woman, whose face was plastered with a thick layer of white paint, cracked and fissured like parched soil thirsty for water, said that such a woman had once been there. When he asked where she was now, the white-faced woman told him that she had arrived many years before, with a lot of luggage and two babies, and that she had gone out and come back to the hotel without her golden hair, which had vanished without a trace.
When he wanted to leave he was told that he had to pay. He put his hand in his pocket and found that his purse had gone. In a panic he rushed upstairs and opened his trunks, only to find them empty.
Theodosios helped him to look for her. In all the town they left no stone unturned. They ventured into opium dens where they encountered the stares of men with red, sunken eyes that never saw the light of day, into gambling dens, rooms in cheap hotels, squalid slums, and prostitutes’ hovels; they scoured the harbor and the ships, and even investigated the cellars of the monasteries. Everywhere they went Avraham asked about the woman with the long golden hair, produced the crop of gold he had collected in the hotel room, and dazzled the eyes of his interlocutors. But she was nowhere to be found. She had vanished as completely as if she had been swallowed by a whale.
If Theodosios had not been with him to confirm his story, people would have thought that he had lost his wits, and dragged him off to the place where all the lunatics of the town were congregated, swarming and wailing behind lock and bar in the cellar of the monastery next to the seashore. For three days he walked the streets of Jaffa and searched for her, buttonholing passersby, cross-examining gangs of urchins, and begging everyone he met for information about her, but to no avail. It was as if everyone had entered a conspiracy of silence against him. No one had seen her, no one had heard of her. Even the porters who had carried his trunks when he followed her to the hotel stared at him dumbly.
After three days he too disappeared. What happened to him and where he went, nobody knows. Some say that he went to the new town of Tel Aviv and worked there with bricks and mortar and built new, white houses, flooded with light and sun. Some say that they saw him getting on a ship with his empty trunks, out of his mind, and some swore that the Turks arrested him and since he had no papers on him, they sent him to the wars. The money he borrowed from Theodosios was never returned.
* * *
The absence of the father did not mar the joy of his daughter’s wedding. The food and drink, the witticisms of the jesters, and the singing of the women delighted the guests. Rahamim the photographer immortalized the excited couple under the wedding canopy. And after the guests had dispersed, he took them to his studio, where he photographed Pnina-Mazal, in her splendid wedding gown from America, and her brand-new husband David against the background of waterfalls and mountain cliffs painted on the back wall of his shop.
The day after the wedding David went off to his yeshiva as he did every day, and Pnina-Mazal came into the kitchen with a beaming face, dragging a chair behind her. She tied a white napkin round her neck, handed Sara a pair of heavy sewing scissors, and sat down on the chair.
“Cut it off,” she commanded.
“Why?” asked Sara.
“I’m a married woman now, and in any case I’ll have to cover my hair with a kerchief. I don’t need it. David asked me to cut it.”
In order to forestall an argument with her daughter, Sara plaited her hair into a braid, and lopped it off with the scissors. Pnina-Mazal rumpled her remaining hair happily with her hand, and hastened to cover it with a green kerchief embroidered with red and purple flowers. Sara looked at her face and it seemed to her that her daughter had grown up overnight. She wrapped the braid in a piece of cloth torn from a sheet and stored it behind the pantry for safekeeping. The radiant expression never left Pnina-Mazal’s face, and every day she would wander dreamily about the house, reliving the experiences of the night before, her knees turning to water at the thought of the night to come.
Every night the sound of their voices kept Sara awake. Their giggles and stifled moans made the ground slip from under her feet and rocked her on the stormy ocean waves. The storm only subsided when she rubbed the inflamed spots on her body and calmed them. The louder and more frequent the sounds from the room next door, the louder and more frequent were the stifled moans bursting from her throat. And when silence fell in the adjacent room, her own body would grow quiet, and she would snuggle up in the dense, sweet honey spreading from the tips of her toes to the top of her scalp, still prickling with pleasure, and surrender herself to sleep.
* * *
Despite the rumors that Avraham had landed in Jaffa and despite the rumors of his disappearance, the monthly stipend continued to arrive at the Austrian Post Office, and the sum was even increased, so that the young couple too were amply provided for. Even though she had no need to work, Pnina-Mazal presented herself to Lizzie Farkash, the headmistress of the school for girls, upon whom the years that had passed seemed to have left no mark. Miss Farkash still clung to her airs and graces, her ruffled dresses and the cups of tea she still sipped every day at precisely ten o’clock in the morning and five o’clock in the afternoon, and her Sudanese coach driver still drove her home every day from school. But Pnina-Mazal noticed her slackened lips, the deep lines etched on her face, and the threadbare state of h
er dresses. The headmistress was glad to welcome the girl who had come back to her as a married woman, and offered her the English classes to teach.
Grateful for the work she had received, Pnina-Mazal went home radiant with happiness. At supper, while David silently twisted his beard around his fingers, his eyes veiled as he relived the pleasures of the previous night, Pnina-Mazal happily announced the news of her new job.
“Why do you have to go out to work?” he asked her gently. “The money your father sends us is more than enough. Your mother needs you to help her take care of Yitzhak and Ben-Ami, and you want to fly the nest?”
Sara looked at her daughter’s disappointed face and decided not to interfere in the conversation.
In spite of her husband’s objections Pnina-Mazal took up her post as an English teacher in Baroness Sarita Cassuto School for Girls.
“Go,” Sara encouraged her. “I can manage with the two boys on my own. Go, and don’t let David influence you.”
Her eyes sparkling with happiness Pnina-Mazal would leave the house every morning. And when she came back in the afternoon, she would sit in the kitchen with Sara, sorting rice, removing peas from their pods, and telling her mother about her day at the school. In the evening, when David came home from his studies, she would greet him with hot coffee and fresh cookies. When he had revived, she would ask him to read her the new tractate he had studied that day. When he encountered a problem or a difficult passage, she would discreetly offer her own interpretation. He would always dismiss her words with a faint smile curling his lips in a forgiving expression, but he would engrave them in his memory, imagining the surprised expressions of his peers when he slipped these new interpretations into his words the next day. When the rest of the house was asleep, the husband and wife would sit at the kitchen table and in the light of the oil lamp casting flickering shadows on their faces, they would look deeply into each other’s eyes.
