The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘I’ve barely scratched the surface,’ she replied evasively.

  ‘According to Curtis, the one thing all these incarnations have in common is a passionate love affair that culminated in the lover’s death. He’s terrified the same thing’s going to happen to me.’

  Susannah’s outlook on life had changed so profoundly in the past six months that she was reluctant to urge caution on anyone. What Carla needed was someone to guide her through the labyrinth of her emotions: a Buddhist counterpart to Rivka. The thought of her mentor made her long for Tuesday night and the next in their series of preparatory talks on marriage. For once she didn’t regret the requirement on Zvi to take a separate course with the Rabbi, since it enabled them to talk with a frankness that would have been impossible in mixed company.

  ‘Marriage,’ Rivka said, ‘stands at the very heart of Judaism. I can’t claim to be an expert but, from what I understand, Christians see it as a sort of consolation prize for those too weak to choose a life of chastity.’

  ‘“Such persons as have not the gift of continency.”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the Prayer Book phrase. My brothers and I used to laugh.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. With us, it’s the opposite. Marriage is both the source of new life and the way for men and women to transcend their bodies and touch the divine.’

  ‘Quite a tall order.’

  ‘Don’t worry, help is at hand. Help is always at hand in the Torah. You know of course about the ritual of Mikvah?’

  ‘I know that Zvi goes every morning.’

  ‘That’s different. For men it’s a spiritual discipline, a preparation for prayer. A woman goes once a month at the end of her cycle. For the five days she bleeds and a whole week after, she’s held to be niddah. She’s forbidden to have any contact with her husband… and I don’t just mean in bed. She mustn’t so much as pass him a cup of tea. Then at the end of twelve days she immerses herself in the mikvah and they can resume relations. You look worried? Is there something you don’t understand?’

  ‘No, nothing… Just I suppose I’m enough of my mother’s daughter to resent any suggestion that menstrual blood is unclean.’

  ‘Believe me, immersion has nothing – nothing whatsoever – to do with hygiene. The woman who enters the mikvah purifies her union with her husband, and her husband too, as much as she does herself.’

  On the eve of her wedding, Susannah paid her first visit to the mikvah. As Rivka led her to a door which, the tarnished mezuzah apart, was indistinguishable from its neighbours, she felt a pang of disappointment that such a solemn ritual should take place in such a nondescript setting. They rang the bell, to be admitted to an airy waiting room, furnished with armchairs, a glass table and a smiling portrait of the Rebbe. Miriam, the attendant, greeted them warmly and, after some preliminary paperwork, showed Susannah to a changing room which was so well appointed that she mistook it for the mikvah itself. ‘It’s an easy mistake,’ Miriam said graciously, as she pointed to the various facilities and handed her a checklist to ensure that she cleaned her teeth, trimmed her nails, removed her make-up and combed her hair. ‘Spend as long as you like,’ she said on leaving. Susannah took her at her word, washing, scrubbing, swabbing, brushing and tweezing, so that there would be no residue of her former life to stand between herself and God.

  After putting on the robe and slippers provided and winding a towel around her dripping hair, she rang for Miriam who led her to a small, dimly lit pool, which was surrounded by potted plants. She handed her the robe and towel, took a second shower and slowly descended the steps. Bracing herself for a spurt of cold, she was delighted by the gentle warmth of the water lapping her legs. She crouched until she was completely covered. When she emerged, Miriam placed a piece of cloth on her forehead and asked her to repeat the prayer: ‘Blessed Are You, King of the Universe who has made us holy with your commandments and commanded us regarding immersion.’ As she stepped back into the water, she thought of the millions of women who had preceded her: the Biblical matriarchs: Sarah; Rebecca; Rachel; Esther; as well as her own ancestors in the shtetls and ghettos of Eastern Europe. She felt reconnected to her history, her family and her soul. She had a new sense of herself as both a woman and a Jew. She longed to stay submerged forever, freed from the temporal world, yet, even as she climbed out and into the robe Miriam held open, she knew that her sense of loss was only temporary for she would be back within less than a month.

  Feeling at once empowered and humbled, she returned to the waiting room.

  ‘I see I’ve no need to ask how it went,’ Rivka said.

  ‘I’m so blessed, Rivka. At last I can appreciate what the Rabbi taught us in the Kabbalah class: “We’re not human beings having spiritual experiences, but spiritual beings having human experiences.”’ Without a trace of self-consciousness, she began to sob.

  ‘God be thanked, my dear Susannah.’

  ‘Shoana. Do you think you could call me Shoana? From now on I’d like to be known by my Hebrew name.’

  She stayed the night at the Rabbi’s. To her surprise, she slept like a child, waking at seven to spend the morning fasting and reading psalms. At noon Rivka came upstairs to help her dress, her practised calm as mother to six brides guiding her safely through the thicket of petticoats and tangle of lacing. They pinched and pinned and tied until, the transformation complete, she gazed at herself in the cheval glass, swathed in white from beaded cap to embroidered train, and felt both protected and pure.

  At two thirty they drove in scorching heat to the hotel, where Rivka escorted her into a vast lounge, partitioned by a wooden screen, and up to a regal white chair festooned with flowers fit for a May Queen. She greeted her guests: her mother and Etta, who were seated respectively on her right and left; Carla; her aunt Helena and cousins Alice and Sophie; Karen, who had dyed her green tips pink in honour of the occasion; Rachel; Layah; Rebekkah; Eliezar; and a large contingent from the Hendon congregation. She had decided against asking any of her old friends, afraid to let her happiness be tainted by their scepticism or, worse, their scorn. It was hard enough to see her mother, denied any official role, adopting a professional one, quizzing Rivka about the Lubavitch as though they were an endangered tribe.

  The women’s chatter was tantalisingly underscored by the bass notes filtering through the partition. Shoana’s hopes soared as she was sure that she recognised Clement, only to be dashed by the unequivocal sound of Yiddish. She felt a surge of anger, as much at her own folly as his stubbornness. He had resisted all her parents’ and Carla’s efforts at peacemaking, claiming that she wanted him to deny his identity, when she had simply asked him not to flaunt it. Just when the sense of loss grew overwhelming, Zvi’s gravelly voice rang out to rescue her. To judge by the silence that greeted it, he was giving some kind of speech. As he drew to a close, the men broke into a plangent melody which, after fading from earshot, re-emerged when several of them, carrying candles, accompanied Zvi to her door. He headed straight for her, the mixture of joy and resolution on his face making him look more handsome than ever. She caught his gaze and was seized by a sense of such rightness in the world that she feared she would faint. Without saying a word, he took the heavy veil from Rivka, placed it over her head and walked out. To her relief, nobody tried to talk to her and she sat in a dream waiting for the call to the chupah.

  Ten minutes later she made her way into the garden, finding to her dismay that the chupah, a blue velvet canopy with golden fringes and stout wrought-iron poles, had been set up in full view of the Docklands Light Railway. All her misgivings vanished, however, as she walked towards it, escorted by Rivka, her mother and Etta. Zvi, who had exchanged his charcoal grey coat for a plain white kittel, was waiting for her with his father and Rabbi Zaimen, an old army friend, who had flown in from Sydney to officiate. As the women approached, Zvi stepped into the chupah and stood next to the table. Shoana, accompanied by her mother, his parents, the Rabbi and Rivka, circled him slow
ly seven times. After two or three orbits she lost count and relied on the Rabbi to guide her. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed her father who, as a non-Jew, was not permitted to take part. He looked drawn, and she wondered whether her defection had hurt him more than he cared to admit.

  She entered the chupah and Rabbi Zaimen began the service, his broad vowels in marked contrast to the guttural accents around him. He recited two blessings and handed them a cup of wine, whereupon Rivka moved forward to lift her veil. Zvi placed the ring on her finger and declared in a Hebrew she knew by heart: ‘Behold, you are betrothed to me according to the laws of Moses and Israel,’ after which Rabbi Zaimen read the 2,000-year-old marriage contract in Aramaic. She stood in a trance, unperturbed by her failure to follow a word. The reading over, Rabbi Zaimen stepped out of the chupah and gave the contract to her father who, startled by his sudden inclusion in the ceremony, held it like the report of a clerical scandal he was anxious to forget. Once again Rabbi Zaimen handed her the cup and, as she raised it to her lips, seven men from the Chabad House each spoke a blessing. Zvi then took a glass from the table, placed it on the ground and stamped. The garden resounded with applause and shouts of Mazel Tov. She realised with a start that she was married. She had the man she loved by her side and the promise of his children ahead of her. She had a faith to give her life meaning. Her joy was complete.

  Their parents, together with the Rabbi and Rivka, led them back inside the hotel to a small room where they could break their fast with a snack of tea and cakes. Confounding her fears, the elders quickly withdrew, granting them their first ever taste of privacy. As she sat beside Zvi, no longer afraid to betray him by an inadvertent touch or herself by an illicit one, she gave thanks for the months of restraint that made the present moment so potent. She smiled at him, but his ardent expression caused her an unaccustomed rush of shyness and she longed for the safety of the veil. All such thoughts – all thoughts of any sort – were swept aside when he leant forward and pressed his lips against hers. She avidly responded and they devoured each other, breathing the air from each other’s lungs… the spirit from each other’s souls. Even the beard that had filled her with such alarm turned out to be as soft as one of her grandmother’s stoles.

  He cupped her breasts in his hands, sending a tremor down her spine, and moved to unfasten her bodice, only to be thwarted by the intricate lacing. She wanted to help but he held her so close that she was unable to free her arm.

  ‘Later,’ he whispered, as he diverted his attention to her skirt, hitching up her petticoats and sliding his hand up her thigh. Her whole body melted as he slid his fingers into her pants and on to her already moist sex.

  ‘Now,’ she whispered, seeking to reciprocate, but her efforts were frustrated by the voluminous kittel. For one horrible moment it felt like trying to undo a shroud. Just when she was about to despair, he slipped a finger inside her and her mind went blank.

  ‘Soon, my love,’ he said, ‘and then forever.’

  Dazed by his words, she lifted her hands to his face, stroking his hair and his cheeks and his beard. She ran her tongue down his nose and on to his lips, prising them open until her whole self seemed to be sucked into the kiss. Time expanded and dissolved, making their few minutes grace seem both to last forever and to pass in the twinkling of an eye. A knock on the door brought them back to the outside world, but she felt only a brief pang since she knew that, though separate, they would never again be apart.

  Her assurance was put to the test when, after posing for photographs, they were led off to preside at different receptions. They met again at dinner, sitting together at the top table while their guests were divided by a fern mechitza. Following the speeches, where she felt a twinge of regret at the Rabbi’s assumption of her father’s prerogative, a four-piece band of fiddle, cornet, drum and tambourine played traditional Lubavitch melodies to a contemporary beat. Peering through the foliage, she saw a group of men gyrating in frenzy, clapping their hands and stamping their feet while they whirled their partners around, weaving in and out of the wider circle. As Zvi moved to join them, she felt a moment of panic, which she sought to escape by linking arms with a quartet of women who were themselves spinning across the floor. Having danced with Carla and Rebekkah, she approached her mother, who eagerly accepted. ‘It’s like being back at Greenham Common,’ she said with a smile. As they wheeled round, pushing themselves to the brink of collapse while the onlookers cheered, she had the disturbing sensation of dancing less with her mother than with herself thirty years on.

  No sooner had they resumed their seats than the Rabbi edged towards them. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Granville, but I thought you should know that the Bishop has passed out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He appears to have overindulged a little. No matter. Only to be encouraged at a wedding.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Perfectly. He was grinning and gurgling, then, when he tried to stand up, he collapsed.’ Shoana was moved by the note of concern in his voice.

  ‘Let’s leave him to sleep it off, so long as you’re sure he’s no trouble.’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘After all he has the right to celebrate his darling daughter’s marriage.’ Then, taking Shoana in her arms, she confirmed the sentiment with a kiss.

  3

  MARTA

  1

  Resentment and anxiety were not emotions that Marta had expected to feel at her daughter’s wedding. The prospect of Susannah’s marrying had grown so remote over the years that she was ready to stomach a great deal in the cause of celebration, but it was hard to endorse a ceremony that seemed more alien than the puberty rituals in a Hadza camp.

  As she walked around the chupah with Etta and Chanan two painful steps behind the bride, the Rabbi and Rivka, she was determined to keep cheerful. It was bad enough that Clement’s obduracy had led him to refuse his invitation, but it was even worse that, as a non-Jew, Edwin should be denied any part in the proceedings. She glimpsed him among the men and flashed him an encouraging smile. Quite apart from its cruelty, such a ban made no sense. Susannah had explained that the chupah symbolised Abraham’s tent, open on all sides to welcome guests of every nation. How then could they justify shutting him out?

  As the presiding rabbi recited the prayers in a thick Australian accent, she was seized by a spirit of irreverence, struggling to blot out the image of him poised on a surfboard, beard streaming in the breeze and paunch encased in rubber, negotiating the breakers on Bondi Beach. Her failure to engage with the service drove her to take the opposite tack, summoning her professional detachment as if she were back in the Serengeti, but, to her dismay, her hitherto steadfast belief in cultural relativity broke down. There was too much at stake, too much of the old Poland she thought she had escaped but which remained buried deep inside her. Her journey from the Warsaw Ghetto to Wells Cathedral had been torturous enough without Susannah’s making it in reverse.

  ‘All I want is for you to be happy, darling,’ she had said when her daughter announced her engagement. Recent encounters with the Lubavitch had forced her to revise her view. Susannah’s alliance with these singular people, so confident of their own creed and so defiant of other peoples’, was even more perturbing than her relationship with the unspeakable Chris.

  ‘You’re the one I have to thank, Ma,’ Susannah had replied. ‘If it weren’t for you, I could never have become a full member of the community. Now, if I wanted to, I could even marry a kohain. Not that I do, of course. But, as I said to Zvi, it’s good to know.’

  Marta professed satisfaction, but Susannah’s words had touched a nerve. Suddenly she was back in the ghetto, with her parents, grandparents, sister and aunt, when their already cramped room was invaded by a stranger. Her mother claimed that she was an old friend with nowhere else to go, but her father, less protective of her tender sensibilities or more conscious that the Occupation had hardened them, explained that she had been raped. ‘By a German?’
she asked and her father nodded. It was not, however, the Nazi atrocity that had roused his anger and prompted him to share their meagre resources, but the response of the woman’s husband. He was a kohain and, under the Law, forbidden to marry a harlot, which, under the same Law, his wife had now become. So he threw her out. Her face, which remained as clear as any around the chupah even though her name had been erased from everything but a memorial wall, stood as a haunting indictment of regulatory religion. At the thought, tears formed in her eyes and Etta discreetly passed her a handkerchief. She was grateful for the cloak of maternal happiness which allowed her to keep the horror to herself.

  The ceremony over, she followed the bridal party indoors. The Rabbi led the way to a small room where, after a day of fasting, Susannah and Zvi would be able to enjoy a light snack and, more importantly, some moments alone. Marta, appalled to learn that it was the first time they were permitted to touch, trusted that, as in the white weddings of her youth, they had come to some kind of compromise. Not that she herself had resorted to any such subterfuge; on her wedding night it had been the bridegroom who blushed rather than the bride. From the moment she arrived in England as a war-weary sixteen-year-old, she had been determined to taste every freedom her adopted country had to offer. Oxford, with its surplus of men, had passed in a haze of romance. Edwin, meanwhile, true to both his creed and code, had preferred to save himself for the right girl. She smiled at the memory, still vivid after more than half a century, of his rapturous conviction that he had found her.

  With similar conviction she took his arm, leaving him looking both comforted and confused. The surge of love she felt for him flowed out to Susannah and she longed to relieve her of a weight of responsibility which could only be increased by the presence of two sets of parents outside the door. Trusting that they would not spend too long on the tea and cakes, she wished them a cheery ‘Bon appétit’ and hurried out of the room.