The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘You mean Orthodox women?’ Susannah asked, picturing two of her most neurotic Jewish friends.

  ‘I mean Jewish women,’ Rivka insisted. ‘Women who obey the Law. They’re assured of their place in the world; they’re able to express their femininity; they know that, in God’s eyes, they’re worth as much as men.’

  ‘I wish I could have this conversation with my mother. I hate to say it, but she’s one of the worst offenders. She makes so much of the similarity between the sexes, you’d think we’d never developed beyond the first weeks in the womb.’

  ‘Your mother is clearly an exceptional person. You’ve a lot to thank her for, not least your birthright. Without it, you’d have had to go through a long and arduous conversion.’

  ‘But if I’m joining the community, I want to be truly part of it. Not some special case.’

  ‘And you will be. The Rabbi’s put you in the category of a tinok shenishbah, someone who was captured and brought up by heathens. You’re regarded as a Jew in every respect. You can even marry a kohain.’ Susannah looked at her in confusion. ‘A descendant of the ancient line of Temple priests.’

  ‘But Zvi isn’t a kohain,’ Rebekkah interjected.

  ‘You should go and change,’ her mother said sharply. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, as Rebekkah left the room.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Susannah said, taking heart from Rebekkah’s assumption.

  ‘But when such a good man as Zvi remains unmarried… He’s already turned down four fine matches.’

  ‘Four?’ Susannah said, at once grateful for his discernment and fearful of becoming number five.

  ‘But I’ve no need to spell out his virtues to you.’

  ‘No. When I took the Kabbalah class, my interest was purely spiritual. It worried me that my attraction to Zvi – am I allowed to say that? – coloured my feelings for the faith and vice versa. But now I can see that it’s both.’

  ‘Zvi is a devout Jew. The two can’t be separated.’

  ‘I know. And I’m glad. Everything’s such a new experience for me. I feel that I’m learning about him and his beliefs at the same time. At first I thought he was cold… taciturn. But he can be wildly enthusiastic. You should hear him talking about Tzivos Hashem… did I pronounce it right?’

  ‘You did, and I have.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’ Rivka shrugged off any offence. ‘He’s so good with children. He ought to have some himself.’

  ‘I’m sure he will.’

  Susannah felt her body crying out, not for Rivka’s reassurance but for Zvi’s. ‘It’s so hard. I long for him so much. It’s not that I want him to break the rules. I know it would make him less of himself. I just wish that sometimes he’d bend them a little. Is that very wrong of me?’

  ‘I can’t wave a magic wand over you both. However much I might like to.’

  ‘I come from a world where you make God in your own image. My brother – a painter – does it literally. It’s a seismic shift to a world where you find God in the letter of the Law.’

  ‘I see that it must be hard for you. I only met the Rabbi three times before we were engaged.’

  ‘So it was love at first sight?’

  ‘More like blind terror!’ She laughed. ‘We were in America. His parents had escaped from Lithuania after the war and settled near the Rebbe – the previous Rebbe – in Brooklyn. My family weren’t so lucky. We didn’t get out until Khrushchev. It made no sense. The Soviets didn’t want the Jews in their country and yet they refused to let us leave. Much of my childhood took place behind closed doors. We lived in a world of backstreet circumcisions, while the West was enduring the blight of backstreet abortions. When we were finally freed, we joined the community in New York. I married the Rabbi, or as he then was the shaliaich on a mission to the Lubavitch in Pittsburgh. He returned to Brooklyn to be ordained, after which the Rebbe sent him over here. I was seventeen.’

  ‘No wonder you were terrified!’

  ‘My father thought I was already old. He believed a woman should marry at fourteen.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘That’s when our bodies are ready, when we’ve moved beyond childhood and ought to unite with a man. The longer we wait, the more we find ourselves at odds with the world and our own emotions.’

  ‘All the same, fourteen!’

  ‘I told you that Jewish life was different.’ To her amazement, Susannah realised that if she, her daughter and her granddaughter all married at fourteen, she could be on her way to becoming a great-grandmother. No wonder she felt so unfulfilled. ‘You know of course,’ Rivka added, ‘that we categorically reject any form of sex before marriage – ’

  ‘Believe me, Zvi and I haven’t so much as held hands. Not once.’

  ‘Please don’t get me wrong,’ Rivka said, taking off her apron. ‘I’ve no doubt whatsoever that you and Zvi have obeyed the laws. What I’m trying to say is that I’m afraid you and Zvi will find it harder to make a life together because of what you already feel for each other.’

  ‘Really? Why’s that?’ Susannah asked, her faith in Rivka’s judgement faltering.

  ‘So many couples today aren’t in love; they’re in love with the idea of being in love. It gives their lives meaning and excitement. They fool themselves that they can build a lasting relationship on this self-deception. True love – the mixture of commitment, understanding and passion – only comes after marriage. We say that there are three people in a Jewish marriage: the man, the woman and God. Love is what God brings to the equation.’

  ‘Believe me, I shall devote every ounce of my strength to being a good wife to… to my husband.’

  ‘I’m sure of it. And I pray that you’ll have your chance very soon.’

  Rivka called Rebekkah, who returned sulkily to the kitchen, ignoring Susannah’s supportive smile. Together they removed the hamantaschen from the oven, leaving them to cool before putting them in the baskets. Rivka then led Susannah into the dining room, where the table had been extended by two card-tables and set for twenty-four.

  ‘It’ll be a squeeze, but I’ve sat thirty in here before now.’

  ‘Were they all Lubavitch?’ Susannah asked.

  ‘We don’t invite gentiles to our table. I know there are many worthy ones, but then there are more than enough worthy Jews. People may condemn us for keeping to ourselves – and no one more harshly than the liberal Jews – but I can’t conceive of a richer, more satisfying life.’

  Susannah walked with Rivka and Rebekkah to the Chabad House, the wind unseasonably sharp for the spring festival. Masked children preceded them up the stairs, the girls and younger boys sitting in the women’s section, the older boys moving self-importantly to the men’s. She listened as the Rabbi intoned the Megillah, the scroll of the Book of Esther. Although the Hebrew remained unintelligible, the names of the protagonists were clear, the children greeting every mention of Haman with catcalls, whistles and rattles. She was startled by the football-terrace behaviour, but Rivka assured her that it was sanctioned by the Rabbis’ claim that ‘the sacred noise of children casts out the enemy’. While she might have wished that the sacred noise were quieter or else the references to Haman more sparing, Susannah relished the exuberance of the congregation which, at the end of the service, spilt over into the street. As they joined worshippers from other synagogues, it felt as if New Orleans had come to Hendon. Men linked arms and danced as spontaneously as they had burst into song. Two drivers stopped their cars, stepped into the middle of the road and embraced, one of them whirling the other in the air to a furious cacophony of hoots from the traffic stalled behind them. Susannah laughed to think how, a few weeks earlier, she would have been among the loudest hooters; now, she was leading the applause.

  The cars finally began to move, only to face a further hazard when a giant Mickey Mouse and a miniature George Bush leapt from the pavement and flung sacks of flour over their windscreens. Having forced the irate drivers to stop, they solicited donations for charity.
Susannah, afraid that they would provoke either an accident or an assault, was astonished by Rivka’s composure, not least when she identified the pranksters as Yosef and Tali.

  The carnival spirit persisted when they returned to the house, where the Rabbi donned a curly blond wig that transformed him into Harpo Marx. Susannah felt disappointed that, with the exception of a pair of furry ears which made an unlikely bunny girl of the cantor’s wife, Eliezar’s pantomime moustache which neatly concealed the traces of her own, and Rebekkah’s pair of plastic lips, the women had yet again opted to observe rather than participate. She gazed into the study past the spindly Frankenstein, overweight Superman and toothless Tiger to Zvi, who towered above them in a headdress of lit candles and wax fruit. Even a judge less partial than herself would have felt bound to award him the prize.

  As the evening progressed, friends and neighbours brought gifts of food at regular intervals. Rivka, meanwhile, sent Yosef and Tali to the nursing home to distribute the Purim baskets. ‘At last the old people will have someone they recognise.’

  ‘Do you mean George Bush or Mickey Mouse?’ Susannah asked.

  ‘Either. Both.’

  Although she had long since learnt that a Lubavitch dinner was no vicarage tea party, Susannah was taken aback by the amount of alcohol consumed. Elderly men downed tumblers of whisky as recklessly as a pop group after its first hit. Snatching a moment alone with her in the hall, Zvi explained that, on Purim, excessive drinking was not just condoned but actively encouraged. The Rabbis held that a man should be so drunk that he could no longer distinguish between the words ‘blessed is Mordecai’ and ‘cursed is Haman’. While marvelling to discover another quirk in the religion to which she was pledged, Susannah prayed that no one – least of all, Zvi – would disgrace himself.

  The carousing continued throughout the meal but, though the songs were more raucous than usual and the cantor attempted a headstand after the soup, the atmosphere remained jovial. Spurred on by her conversation with Rivka, Susannah allowed herself to study Zvi more openly, finding something fresh and endearing with every glance. First, there was the way he crumbled his bread with one hand and scattered the improvised croutons on his soup; then, the way he sat ramrod straight to protect the guttering candles as he linked arms with Tali for a toast; then, the way he sent a napkin swan sailing down the table to Rebekkah. Finally, most enchanting of all, there was the tight-lipped but tender smile that he flashed at her.

  Susannah slipped away at midnight, giving what she described as her familiar Cinderella impersonation. As Zvi escorted her to her car, the streetlamps lending his face an ethereal glow, her one regret was that the carnival licence did not extend to matters of the heart.

  The long drive to Notting Hill served to accentuate her separation from the community. By the time she reached home, she had made up her mind to rent a room in Hendon within walking distance of the Rabbi’s, where she would be able to observe the Sabbath. Rather than ring an estate agent, she scanned the advertisements in the Jewish Chronicle, spotting three distinct possibilities, which she set out to investigate the following Sunday afternoon. After rejecting both the elderly widow who identified a ‘good listener’ and the retired wigmaker whose poodle took an unwholesome interest in her leg, she began to lose hope. Her final call was on a tart middle-aged translator, whose determination to preserve her privacy came as a huge relief. Helen showed no curiosity about her weekly visits, concerned only that she should supply two reliable references and pay three months’ rent in advance. After agreeing that, all else being equal, the room would be free from the following Friday, she declared a strict ban on overnight visitors. Susannah assured her that she had nothing to fear.

  Although her plans for a weekend retreat had never included a rented room in north London, Susannah could not have been happier had she been handed the keys to a Cotswold cottage. With the Rabbi and Layah offering to act as referees, she set about effecting the other necessary changes to her life. Like Zvi, whose first step to conversion had been to wear tefillin under his shirt, she would demonstrate her commitment in her dress. She began by resolving to banish trousers forever. To guard against backsliding, she gave all seven pairs from her wardrobe, plus the two wasp-waisted ones from the loft, to Oxfam. Far from feeling their loss, she was filled with a sense of liberation, her gesture all the more meaningful for being secret. Having never seen her in trousers, the Lubavitch would have no idea how much it had cost her, while her old friends would simply assume that she had put on weight.

  The trousers were just a start. On Thursday afternoon, telling Alison that she was meeting a client, she made her way to Peter Jones and Jaeger, modesty not age prompting her to pick stores long associated with her mother. She needed sleeves that would cover her arms and skirts that reached to her calves and, although a reluctance to confide in a friend left her with no one to endorse her choices, she came away with a suitably demure wardrobe. She took a selection with her the following evening when she drove up to Hendon. Helen had gone out without leaving a word of welcome, but she refused to feel aggrieved and put on her new dress with all the excitement of her first mini-skirt. Twenty minutes before sundown, she spread a white cloth on the dressing table and lit two candles, the first to remember the Sabbath, the second to observe it. Then, imitating Rivka, she waved her hands over the flames, covered her eyes and recited a prayer.

  ‘Blessed are you, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who has commanded us to light the Sabbath candles.’

  As she repeated the words, time and space dissolved and her heart was filled with God.

  6

  For all the joys of what she had privately dubbed her ‘faith-nest’, Susannah was relieved to wake up on Sunday morning in Notting Hill. The widow’s garrulousness and wigmaker’s dog had acquired a new appeal after three weeks of Helen’s ill-concealed hostility. Resentful of the need to let the room, she took pleasure in chipping away at her lodger’s convictions. Despite the mezuzah on the doorpost, she despised any outward expression of Judaism, saving her strictest censure for the Orthodox women who shaved their heads only to wear luxuriant wigs supplied by destitute Ukrainians. Nothing Susannah said could persuade her that their poverty was precisely why they welcomed the trade, preferring to crop their hair than sell their bodies. She even suspected Helen of deliberately removing the box of tissues from the bathroom, forcing her to tear off loo paper on the Sabbath as reluctantly as she would once have torn ten-pound notes. Nevertheless, she was prepared to face any number of obstacles for the chance to practise her beliefs.

  Her reordered calendar had little use for Sundays. She shied away from old friends whom she had yet to admit to her new life, along with films and exhibitions that were reductively secular. Varying her staple diet of newsprint, she studied Lubavitch texts, making up for the forty years of Jewish education she had been denied. Her current reading was a collection of the Rebbe’s homilies, chosen by Zvi from the Rabbi’s library. She had been deeply moved to see him kiss the book when he took it off the shelf, realising as she rubbed her finger down the spine that it was the closest she had come to his lips. Eager to warrant his confidence, she spent the evening struggling with the knotty prose. Exhausted by the unequal effort, she went to bed at an hour that would once have depressed her, fell into a pill-less and dreamless sleep, waking refreshed to obey the Rebbe’s instruction to praise God with the first breath of the day.

  Entering the conference room at ten o’clock on Monday morning, she wondered how much longer she could hide the truth of her Friday nights from her staff. Having judged her absences too frequent for pleasure jaunts, they had ascribed them to medical treatment. So far no one had challenged her, but she had heard whispers of both radiation and dialysis. Matt had even replaced his Barbarella screensaver and taken to wearing a pink breast cancer ribbon. She checked a guilty smile as she deflected their sympathetic glances and, with a cheerfulness that she knew would be read as courage, hoped that they had all enjoyed their w
eekends.

  In a bid to lighten the atmosphere, she brought forward the announcement that, after extensive appraisal, Granville’s had been placed on the PR roster at the Central Office of Information. The whoops of joy that greeted the news bore witness to the achievement. Yet, while the others were thrilled to learn that, in Robin’s words, ‘they were up there with the big boys,’ she remained ambivalent. She had often laughed at the industry joke that the government campaigns for NHS Direct had been spearheaded by a PR with private health insurance, for road safety by a PR who had lost his licence, and for cancer awareness by a PR who popped out in the middle of the launch for a cigarette. It was equally ironic that her pitch for an anti-drugs campaign had succeeded despite the habits of half the people around the table. Nevertheless, she was keen to reward their loyalty, inviting them to a celebration lunch with the proviso that, until then, it was business as usual.

  This was a maxim she failed to observe herself. After dismissing out of hand a request for Hiroshige to open a new club in what was to them March but to her Passover, she snapped at Wilson Tierney who rang to protest about a tabloid story which claimed that he spent several hours a day on eBay, monitoring the market in his own memorabilia, intervening should the bids be too low. With uncharacteristic harshness, she suggested that, if he wished to preserve his anonymity, he would do well to use a different credit card.

  After three tough days at work, she faced the further strain of throwing a dinner party to introduce Zvi to Clement, Mike and Carla. ‘I’m breaking all the rules by coming,’ Zvi said. ‘You’ll land me in hot water with the Rabbi.’

  ‘I’m not going to eat you.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m kosher.’

  She realised with delight that it was the first time he had cracked a joke. Moreover it was a sure sign of his serious intentions towards her that he had agreed not just to meet her family but to visit her flat. Carla had offered to host the meal but she preferred to keep it on home ground, a decision she came to regret when, no sooner had he entered the sitting room than Clement, who professed to deplore television, questioned her about her missing set, maintaining that Lubavitch laws would make it impossible for her to do her job.