by Ragen, Naomi
He looked back at her, expressionless, then turned away. This small gesture landed in her stomach like a rock.
She looked at the fawning smiles of the women who surrounded her, women wearing clacking, pointed designer shoes, wildly expensive hats, and custom-made suits, suddenly remembering the bored eyes of the captains of the punchball teams when they finally turned in her direction, having no one left to choose. Finally on the team, she had fumbled the ball, let it drop, lost the point, and they had all turned their backs on her, pretending not to know her. Her heart froze. What did it matter how these women looked at her now, when her own husband looked away?
Why did everything she dream of, lean on, depend on, turn to straw the instant it came to fruition, collapsing beneath the weight of reality? she wondered. Was there truly no happiness in the world? Was everything, then, a lie? Love, faith, joy, constancy, sincerity? All those kissing her now, would they still love her tomorrow? Would they love her husband? Or was it a merry-go-round that constantly stopped and made you get off, forcing you to pay for new tickets if you wanted another little ride, another little taste of success?
She wanted someone to take her off the carousel, someone with strong firm arms who would lift her up and let her rest her weary head against his shoulder, whispering compliments and extravagant promises in her ear with unconditional love. She wanted to exhale and be safe and secure at last, she told herself, without conviction.
No, she realized, that wasn’t it at all. That would be supremely boring.
And then the truth finally hit her. As Emma Bovary had finally figured out in the end, there was nothing worth having, nothing that lasted: “Every smile hid a yawn, every happiness, a misery. Every pleasure began to curdle, and every embrace left behind a baffled longing for a more intense delight.”
An image arose in her mind: the neat little figure, the dark passionate eyes, a woman who had driven herself to madness and suicide, who had betrayed and been betrayed. An unfaithful wife, a bad mother, a silly self-destructive fool. And yet, a dreamer who was not afraid to envision a different life, no matter how others condemned her for it.
She took a deep breath and straightened her back. There would be a huge house. Her husband would be head of one of the largest synagogues in the area. People would point to her and say, “Rebbitzin Levi!” And all the punch ball captains and rabbi’s daughters who had lived in Tudor mansions in the Five Towns would think of her when they sat alone, divorced or on their way to teach special ed in hellholes in Brooklyn. And when her name and her husband’s popped up in the social columns with flattering pictures of her in dazzling dresses at charity events, they would envy her and be sorry they hadn’t been nicer to her. They would understand that all along she had been playing the game alongside them, that she had been a good player, a worthy teammate, and that she too had won. Even if she didn’t feel that way now, she told herself, she was sure she would feel that way tomorrow. After all, as someone much smarter and more successful than Emma Bovary had pointed out: “Tomorrow is an-other day.”
The bulldozers came the following week. All the furniture, the sacred Torah scrolls and the prayer books had been moved temporarily into the spare house on the Shammanovs’ property, where the synagogue would continue meeting until the construction ended.
People stood around in awe, a bit horrified, as the metal teeth bit into the side of the building, bringing down the concrete tepee with its ribbons of stained glass. With amazing ease, where the synagogue once stood, there was only a pile of chalky rubble, twisted metal, shards of brightly colored glass, and splintered wood. Billowing clouds of choking dust filled the air, fogging the windows and whitening the plants of the expensive homes in Swallow Lake. Maids and cleaning services would spend weeks of back-breaking labor erasing the evidence of the collapse.
Chaim stood outside, mesmerized, watching it fall, his heart filled with mixed emotions: horror, regret, and a tiny twinge of strange joy.
Delilah spent the morning at the country club, anxious to talk to Joie about the plans for the new rabbi’s residence. To her surprise, Joie wasn’t there. And when the congregation showed up at the Shammanov estate that Friday night to attend services, they found the gates locked and nobody home.
EPILOGUE
The collapse of the Ohel Aaron Congregation on Swallow Lake created a mushroom cloud reminiscent of those hovering over unlucky cities at the close of World War II, filled with controversy, heartbreak, and conjecture. The story, featured in every major newspaper and magazine in America, included photos of the bulldozed synagogue with a furious Solange Malin shaking her fist. Both News week and Time, on the other hand, chose to use photos of Viktor Shammanov at the airport, ushering his blond wife and baby into a private jet just before they flew off to God knows where.
The whole convoluted tale of Viktor’s business dealings—which turned out to be one huge international con job—was fodder for exposés in both Fortune and Business Week, which debunked all the facts, the same facts they had written about him earlier—which had convinced people to trust him in the first place. As it turned out, Viktor was selling shares in an oil company that the government of Turdistan declared belonged to them, denouncing Viktor and his company as worthless. But then, the entire government of Turdistan had also been declared a scam, the elections having been rigged and the opposition candidates fed disfiguring poison.
Viktor, of course, had done it all through a tangled web of companies incorporated in places like the Cayman Islands, the Seychelles, and other accommodating sun-kissed shelters. The Four Seasons Hotel in Maui was suing him, as were the cruise line, the catering services, the Lakers cheerleaders, Mick, Christina, Michael, and hundreds more, many of whom were forced into declaring bankruptcy.
And then, just as the dust was about to settle, the true, horrifying dimensions of the scam came to light. It was not just the synagogue that Victor Shammanov had bulldozed in Swallow Lake, but the lives of its most prominent inhabitants as well. From quiet conversations between accountants, lawyers, and financial planners, who shared the painful truth back and forth on cell phones and over alcohol-soaked dinners, the story came out. Unbeknownst to one another, the wealthiest residents, those who had been courted by Victor and his wife, invited to their home and their Bar Mitzva, had one by one persuaded Viktor Shammanov to overlook the rules and allow them to purchase shares in his company. Swearing each to secrecy, and with a great show of reluctance, Viktor had done them the great favor of accepting the substantial investments they pressed upon him.
Many of those defrauded were too embarrassed to admit it. And those who tried to claim a tax deduction on their losses aroused the interest of the Internal Revenue Service, who wondered where all that money had come from, prompting them to do a thorough audit going back many years, resulting in huge reassessments, fines, and even criminal charges.
Soon after, many FOR SALE signs began to appear on Swallow Lake’s largest estates. Many were quietly repossessed by the banks or sold at auction. The kind of people who bought the homes were quite different from the original residents—local small businessmen and white-collar workers who smelled a fire sale and lined up for bargains.
The land where the synagogue had once stood became embroiled in lawsuits and countersuits because Viktor had managed to sell it several times over. The legal wrangling kept it a pile of weeds and rubble, an eyesore, for years to come. Eventually it was rezoned, and some builder put up condos and then a Baptist church.
In the beginning, Ohel Aaron members used the auditorium in the day school for services, until the dwindling student body forced the school to close its doors. Without a synagogue or a day school, the remaining Jewish families trickled out of the community to places like New York, Boston, and Hartford. Solange and Arthur wound up in San Diego, where they started a new day school. Ari and Felice quietly divorced. Ari is now working in a high-tech company in Ramat Aviv and was recently drafted into the Israeli army.
Amber and
Stuart, who were hit worst of all, having invested every penny they owned with Viktor, declared bankruptcy, losing control of their teddy bear empire. But they managed to bounce back, designing a new doll that shakes its behind when you press a button, and reportedly have made countless millions with it.
Only Joseph and Mariette stayed behind in Swallow Lake. She stopped wearing her hats, and they no longer call themselves Orthodox. Her house, they say, is as beautiful as ever, and so is she. Still, she is alone much of the time.
As for Chaim and Delilah, they’ve become somewhat of a legend, the subject of rabbinical sermons from Johannesburg to Jerusalem and all points in between. Someone even made a movie about a hapless rabbi and his scheming wife, which everyone knew was based on all the newspaper articles about them. It poked a lot of fun at Orthodox Jews and was roundly condemned by embarrassed congregations everywhere, who accused the screenwriter and the producers of being “Jewish anti-Semites.” It got Reese Witherspoon another Oscar nomination.
As for what really happened to Chaim and Delilah, stories—like Elvis sightings—continue to surface every few years, claiming to be the true, the only, authoritative version. What everyone agrees on is this: Immediately after the Sabbath when they were turned away from the ornate gates of Uspekhov, a furious crowd of shul members showed up at the home of their rabbi and rebbitzin, who, fairly or unfairly, were held entirely responsible for the disaster. Holding buckets of concrete, glass, and wooden rubble, they poured the contents on Rabbi Chaim’s front lawn, all the while waving flashlights and screaming insults. Someone marked their front door with an X, and others ran after their speeding car with a bucket of tar and feathers.
After that, it all depends on whom you want to rely. One widely circulated report, published in the Jewish Daily Press (known by all as the Jewish Mess) had them driving directly to Tijuana, where they got a quickie civil divorce and an even quicker religious divorce, or get. Never did anyone get a get as fast as Delilah Levi, the story claimed. And Chaim, instead of gently tossing the scroll into her hands, as is the custom, pitched it so hard she wound up having to duck. Subsequent reports in that same paper had Chaim remarried a year later to a short, dark-haired Torah teacher with whom he went on to have other children in addition to little Abraham, over whom Delilah was only too happy to relinquish custody. Years later, another story about a Rabbi Chaim Levi appeared, describing the life of the Orthodox rabbi of a large, prosperous synagogue in Bogota, Colombia. It described how he had learned Spanish and how he and his wife—a second marriage for both—lived in luxury with their eight children, surrounded by an adoring, respectful congregation and full-time personal bodyguards, who protected them from drug-crazed kidnappers.
Soon after that, someone who looked exactly like Delilah surfaced on the cover of a California business journal. She wore a very chic and modest black suit as she smilingly accepted an award for running the most successful new eBay venture, a Web site selling “gently pre-owned designer handbags.” In the article, the woman accepting the award—who called herself Marlene Gold—talked about how she had begun her business after surviving a devastating divorce and losing custody of her only child to her vindictive ex.
She described how she’d started at the bottom and worked her way up. She talked about her mansion in Beverly Hills with its pool, her shopping trips to Paris and Milan for the shows, her fabulous vacations in sunny spots all over the globe. Despite the fact that she wore a magnificent wedding ring, she refused to give any details about her personal life, saying only that “she had a very handsome young husband, and two beautiful blond daughters.” She had everything she wanted in life, she said, and moreover, she had earned it herself. Someone scanned the magazine cover and article, and for a while it circulated through the Internet to millions. Everyone who saw it and who had known Delilah agreed that, if it really was her, she looked fabulous and thin, and sexier than ever.
But the most recent article, which you must have read—everybody did—was the one in New York magazine. The reporter, a crack investigative journalist and a Gentile, tracked down a former classmate of Chaim’s who had sent out the following shocking revelation to everyone on the Bernstein alumni e-mail list.
Dear Friends:
In light of the terrible sin of gossip and scandalmongering of which we have all been guilty over the years concerning our friend and colleague Rabbi Chaim Levi, who defied the ban on the Swallow Lake congregation, I would like to set the record straight once and for all. Chaim and Delilah Levi are still married, baruch Hashem, and the parents of five children. They are the rabbi and rebbitzin of a tiny shteibel somewhere in North Dakota, consisting of thirteen families, who all meet in the rabbi’s basement for Sabbath and holiday prayers. Because the town is snowed in most of the year, the entire congregation regularly has not only kiddush but lunch and holiday meals at the rabbi’s house, which the rebbitzin prepares, although congregants often bring homemade contributions. I know because I spent the Sabbath with them.
In the magazine interview, the classmate tried hard to convey the great joy and serenity the Levis had found in living in such a tiny Jewish community, as well as the great love of the congregation for their rabbi and rebbitzin. He described Rebbitzin Levi as
the picture of the matriarch of an older generation, dressed in the modest clothing one would expect of a pious wife and mother, her dress loose and midcalf, her hair completely covered by a snood where only her blond bangs were visible, like those pious women of Boro Park and Meah Shearim. Numerous small children tugged at her dress as she ate with a healthy appetite from the heaps of cholent, kugel, and potato salad arrayed in plastic serving plates on a plastic tablecloth. There was much sincere laughter and the singing of many Sabbath hymns, as the children played board games and the adults conversed.
She looked, the classmate claimed, perfectly content.
The reporter, however, was not convinced. He wrote:
The classmate, a very pious Jew who lowers his eyes when he meets other men’s wives, is a man who seems to be defending the Orthodox world. It is not impossible that he views the creation and publication of this fairytale ending to a scandalous tale that has rocked the religious world for years as a good deed, a mitzva.
Furthermore, the classmate could not, or would not, provide an address and phone number for them, claiming he wished to protect their privacy, as they had “suffered so much from public scrutiny.”
The reporter’s cynicism produced a furor. Hundreds of letters to the editor arrived at the magazine. Those who defended the classmate’s tale said they found it perfectly feasible that the Levis, having undergone such terrible trials, had stayed together and learned to love each other. Delilah’s repentance and reformation further confirmed to them the beauty of the Jewish religion, which allows people to change and grow and learn from their mistakes.
But most people, including a good number who had actually known the Levis, were inclined to share the reporter’s skepticism. They said they found the classmate’s story hard to believe, either because they couldn’t bear to think of Chaim still saddled with Delilah or vice versa. They also took issue with the idea that anyone, particularly a weekend house guest, could possibly know if someone was perfectly content.
But the best letter of all, people agreed, was from a woman claiming to be Delilah’s former roommate and the rebbitzin of a large congregation. Her sentiments spoke to many when she wrote:
It is not easy to be a rebbitzin. There are so many demands on your time, such a constant intrusion into your private life, and sometimes not much appreciation. Some people are just not suited to it. Wherever she is, we hope that Delilah has come to terms with the limitations of our lives and the impossibility of having all our dreams come true. If she has been forced, or has chosen, to live a simple pious life, we hope that the serenity to be happy with such a choice has come her way as well. And if she really has found the overabundance she craved, we hope that it doesn’t give her high cholesterol
or make her mean-spirited and that she is nice to her household help and takes care of her own children, at least some of the time. And that she remembers to say her prayers as sincerely and as often as she can.
