Then he walked out.
It was hard for me to swallow my pride, but eventually, I got out of bed and asked my mother’s pardon. After that, the two of us went to the homes of Feigel the rabbi’s wife, Dubeh-Dvoireh the butcher’s wife, and Chaya-Leah the rooster lady. I had to ask pardon and forgiveness from each of them. My mother whispered in their ears that people with a great spirit also have great passions.
And I sat abjectly, my fingers tugging at clumps of my hair close to my head.
My saintly father had always derided dreams, called them drops of burning oil from the cauldron of hell where limbs of the wicked were roasted. Of course this saddened me, for I loved my dreams, but I learned to keep them to myself, rolling them around my mind like small, secret marbles, until they became transparent and clear to me.
And now, a short time after the wedding ceremony, after the tears I shed in the closet and the long talk I had with my husband’s father, a large gathering of venerable elders came to me in a dream.
They were sitting in two long rows in the arched shape of the letter chet, , in a spacious and empty vestibule. I had come in carelessly, quickly, as if on the way to somewhere else. And when I saw where I was, I stopped short.
They looked at me, all of them with their gray and white beards, all of them dressed in radiant white robes. And I was the only one standing in front of them, in a simple gray housedress with my hands thrust deep into my pockets. I felt my face redden, my hands restless as small animals in my pockets. One of them began to speak in a deep, resonant voice.
“We wish to take your husband, Rabbi Avraham,” said the man. “There is no room for him where you are, and here he has a chair.” He tilted his head and his eyes indicated Avraham’s seat. I looked at the chair, empty like an open wound, and a shout escaped from me. My shout bounced around the chamber and splintered into echoes.
The chamber was lit with large candles on pedestals, and behind the illuminated part—where the old men sat—there extended an area of deep shadow I could not see the end of. One of the men rose with difficulty, leaning on his stick, and looked long and hard at me. When he started to speak, his voice quivered, and a cloud of dust bloomed from his throat, as if he hadn’t spoken for years.
“The soul of your husband, my daughter, is one of the highest and the lightest. Lighter than a feather it will rise up, dragging the body after it like a lead weight. Have pity on it and free it from the travails of the flesh. Let his soul bloom, let it rise up to its origins and disappear in flight. Think of the plight of a bird that is tethered to a bough. Think of the plight of a bird. Think of a root that takes flight . . .”
Although my husband was nicknamed the Angel, he did not behave like one. He was an unusual person, incorporeal, almost haunted by the spiritual visions that gave him no rest. But he was the husband that I had been given, and to defend him was to defend myself. I felt as if I had taken a blow to my stomach, the way my breath caught and then burst out again, red as fire. I spat out burning words, directing them at the shadowy part of the chamber behind the old men, for it was easier for me to speak to that faceless darkness. How long I spoke I do not know, only that the slightest tinge of white began to seep into the chamber.
Then the old man with the stick lifted his free hand and cut me off. The faces of the old men grew pale until they were as white as the robes that they wore. The flames of the candles also waned. The whole place slowly faded like fabric left in the sun, and I awoke from the dream.
I lay sweating in my bed, and I tried to remember what I had said to the elders. But I remembered nothing.
And the following night, the dream recurred.
Again the elders sat in front of me. Again the flames of the candles, and I stood and spoke and shouted. And again the white seeped into the room and the faces faded. In the end, I lay in my bed, very tired, with no memory of what I had said.
And on the third night, everything happened like on the previous nights, only this time the old man got up and waved his stick in the air. His body swayed from side to side until he almost fell. I looked at the shiny floor, with its webbed veins like blue marble, and I heard his dusty voice speaking.
He said that they were giving me my husband as a gift for another twelve years. That’s just what he said: “As a gift for another twelve years.” Then I started to shout and did not stop shouting. The dream began with me shouting and ended with me shouting. Apart from that, I remembered nothing. I buried my face in the pillow and the image of my husband rose before me, only instead of arms, he had wings.
My birdlike husband went on living and keeping silent and evading me and his father. He continued to escape outdoors, to fields and rivers, and I after him, like a shadow. In the early years, I went out to bring him home, but later, I no longer went out for his sake, but for mine.
I was barely twelve years old when I dreamed that dream, and I slept alone in a room that was just mine. At the end of the corridor from my room was his, and sometimes, during the night, sounds would come from it like the growling of a large animal. I would cover my ears with a pillow and cry.
It has been years since I’ve wept tears. Tears are an ornament to sorrow, and I have detached myself from any form of ornament. Now sorrow has become a cavern that fills up my body. And in the morning, when I rise, I grope my way with aging hands, which are growing more and more mottled with brown spots. Sometimes, my hands get confused and believe they are young. Then the fingers leap, as light as butterflies, and on those days, I can heal and do all kinds of favors, good things, for people.
But on the sad mornings, the mornings that I feel really old, I know that what lies before me are long days, as hollow as dead tree trunks. And that I can do nothing, not even a drop of good.
Running back and forth restlessly, that’s been my life since I was a child. Only now, everything is more intense, more powerful, by which I’m trying to say that the happiness and the sadness are also more powerful. And today it is not the big things, but the small ones, the really tiny ones that bring me happiness.
Once it was different. I was happy to be a heroine, to be doing things that no other women around me were doing. May God forgive my soul’s arrogance.
On the morning after the dream in which I vanquished the elders, the Maggid sat by himself at the dining table, humming a tune. In the corner stood his aide, Rabbi Feilet, his hands crossed over his chest and his eyes almost closed. When Froumeh came from the kitchen, she called me, “My young mistress!” When the Rebbe wanted me to come sit with him, he also called me this, patting the cushion of the chair next to him. He laid his hand on the back of the chair and, with his free hand, tapped his knees.
“I bless you, my daughter, for the beautiful things you said. You have won the gift of twelve years for my son! My dear one, there is no one like you.” He stroked my small child’s back. He leaned over to me, his blue eyes radiant, and the sweetness of his words mingled with the porridge I had eaten. I sat up straighter and felt warm and good and sweet.
“How did my master know what I dreamed?” I asked in a voice laden with the chocolate porridge.
“You and me”—he winked—“we already have our past.”
I felt the blood rush to my face when I recalled the conversation next to the linen closet.
“And we will yet have the future,” he added. A smile suffused his lips and radiated to his cheeks and his eyes. “A splendid future awaits you, Gittel, and it is my voice and eyes that will follow you every moment.”
I laughed, reminded of none less than God himself. He enjoyed my laughter, and took up humming his tune once more.
On that morning, a bond was formed between the Maggid and me. I was now one of the ladies of the house. And he was waiting for me the next morning too. So it was every morning: he and I, our chairs next to each other. I had my porridge and he had his tea. I said whatever came into my mind, and he smiled at me with his wide, radiant gaze.
I was his little daughter, his little
friend. Rabbi Feilet bowed to me when I passed by, signaling that he was aware of what had happened that night. Rivke’leh kissed my hands and said that I was an incarnation of the biblical prophetess Devorah.
Only my husband—the husband given to me as a gift—knew nothing. And if he knew, he did not say anything. He was silent, always silent. The more silent he was, the more I fluttered and chattered. I learned to flutter from the butterflies in the garden that passed from flower to flower, from one person to another, aimless but for curiosity. As for the chattering, I did not learn that from anyone; the words simply burst out of me like little hummingbirds.
The house was large and always filled with guests. Solitary followers and bands of Hasidim came to us; gentlemen descended from their carriages wrapped in their shiny silk robes; and the poor arrived on foot, their shoes full of mud. They stood in the yard facing the entrance and waited. Rivke’leh offered bread and water to the poor and I helped her. I would catch a whiff of the wagon drivers, the stench of leather, mud, and water, and the scraps of stories—stories that had made them come here—reached my ears, along with glimpses into the lives of the unfortunate, those who dreamed dreams.
They came for a miracle, always for a miracle; the air around the house brimmed with yearning for a miracle. Sometimes, they brought women with them for the Rebbe to help. Paralyzed or mute or afflicted with shaking spells. I would hold their hands and chatter away about the things that I wanted to do or about my dreams or the beauty of the fields beyond the fence. I thought that a yearning for distant things would certainly be familiar to sick women.
And one night, it happened. My husband came into my room, came into my bed, and then I saw clearly that he was very tall and that next to him, I was very little. Lost beneath his body, I bit my lips until they bled.
We did not speak at all, neither of us. He did what he did to me and then he was gone.
His visit was in the dark, and when he left, I was wet and in pain. I lay with my eyes open and I sucked my thumb like a baby. Is that what people do in the darkness so that there will be children? I wondered. There was the smell of his body, of sweat, and pain down below as if I’d been cut with a knife. And pain where his beard had chafed my skin.
I lay in the darkness like a corpse and went over and over the thing that had happened. The sounds of my thumb sucking went on in the darkness and the lower part of my body stayed as he had left it, naked and gaping open. A warm and sticky liquid flowed from there and made the linen sheet wet. I sucked my thumb as hard as I could so as not to shout. I didn’t light a candle, because I was afraid to see the sheet. He had come to me by stealth, had come in the dead of night, his long, slender body trembling like a feather, and I heard my voice in a low rumble, like a growl, for an instant, I had growled beneath his body. He was shaken by that and his hand had sought out my mouth; he covered my mouth and I bit down. I bit his fingers and he let out a sharp sound. After that he mumbled some things and breathed heavily. And I beneath him, beneath him, hardly able to breathe, drowning.
Why did he hurry to slip away, without any words, like a thief?
The next day, I felt ill and buried myself in bed. Rivke’leh entered my room, wiped my burning forehead, and became very excited. “Now you’re a woman!” she said.
I raised my hand and slapped her across the face. Furious that she was happy, I didn’t allow her to change the bloody sheet.
“I was robbed!” I shouted.
“You’re burning up,” she replied.
And it seemed to me that she said, “It’s the fever of love.” Then I burst into tears.
I said that I wanted to die, and I really wanted to die and really was burning up with fever. I was a child whose body a demon had entered. He was my husband, and yet still a demon.
I shouted, “Demon! Demon!” and smacked myself on the head. My throat was dry, and strange grunting and braying sounds came from it.
Froumeh’s red face hovered over me, as did Mistress Sarah’s moon face. Women’s hands and soft, hushed voices taking care of me, talking around me, falling silent, whispering. I was ill for a long time.
One day, the feather-light hand of my husband touched my hand. He stroked my fingers one by one and said in a hoarse, trembling voice, “By and by you’ll be a mother, Gitte’leh, and we will name our boy Yisroel-Chaim.” And he said that he had seen it in a dream: me and the boy. I was sitting on a tree trunk that stuck out of the river, the child on my lap.
I did not open my eyes, but I seized his shoulder with my feverish hand and whispered to him that he should never again be silent with me like he was on that night. And I held on until he promised he would not.
Lying there, I went over images of my childhood. And I saw the house, my brother, our journey to Jerusalem together and what had happened after it, and my father and me when he was teaching me to read and the two of us sitting together, poring over Bible stories, and Dasha the servant girl with her stomach that kept growing round and then getting flat again. And the more I recovered and the stronger I grew, the more blurred the images of my old world became. Then it was time to get up, to return to my new life and to throw my heart into it. I was about to swell up, to become as heavy and pale as a goose’s egg, and the master of our household, the great Maggid of Mezeritch, was solicitous about me drinking a full glass of milk each morning. With his own hands, he would mix an egg into the milk, hand it to me, and say, “That’s for the rabbi that will come out of your stomach, Gitte’leh, so he should be as strong and handsome as our king the Messiah.”
And at last, the thing came out of my stomach—that’s what I called it, “the thing.”
The room was as hot as the fires of hell, and the women sweated and bustled around with bowls of water, and the thing moved inside me, rose and descended and tore my body to shreds. I screamed as I had never screamed in my life. I vomited up my soul as I screamed over and over. I was gasping for breath.
Then they poured water over me and they called out to the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He. And the Holy-One, blessed be His name, He restored my soul to me again. So that I could scream again and my body could writhe, and the whole room would lurch with me, rising and falling like the wheels of a wagon. A prayer went up from the room that the wagon not get stuck, with me shouting for snow, if only there was snow, if only they could bring me some snow. My throat was parched, my lips dried up, and my arms and legs fell limply, helplessly to my sides.
And then, in the blazing, deadly quiet, it shot out of my body like a ball from a cannon. My head was spinning, and I felt the thing lying there between my legs, making a noise, a kind of mewing sound, and the women sighed with relief. “You have a son, Gitte’leh,” they called loudly so I would hear them.
And the thing was there, in the room, among the jubilant women. Only I didn’t see; I didn’t open my eyes. I lay there, my stomach hollow, my mind empty and hollow. And the thing that was to be my child, that was to be my firstborn son, Yisroel-Chaim, was passed among the women and I was as nothing.
As if from a pit or from a well, that’s how the sounds echoed far above me. Weakness enveloped me and I was like a tiny speck within it. I did not open my small eyes, I could not move, and I did not want to move. “You’re a mother, you’re a mother!” The voices whispered from the top of the well. But I was a little girl, and my mother did not come. I wanted to cry but I did not cry. I was afraid but I did not shout.
I was a tiny grain borne aloft on a strong current, and everything that happened to me, to the grain, was frightening and annoying and not right at all. And the main thing was that I didn’t want it and I didn’t agree to it. No, I didn’t want it and I did not consent to it. Not now, when the thing had come out of my stomach, and not on that night. And not on the nights yet to come. I did not want it and I did not consent to it.
Every night, I was afraid that he would suddenly appear and lie on me. In my eyes, he was a shadow, a spirit that came from the night, and even during the hours of day, he looked lik
e a shadow and behaved like one. We never sat down to eat or talk like a couple. Not even later, when we were a family, did he sit with me and the children like a man does with his family. On the Sabbath and on holy festivals, he would suddenly appear at the table, his eyes veiled, throwing evasive, sideways glances so as not to meet my eyes. And he would cut the Sabbath loaves and whisper, lower his head and whisper the blessings, as if he were in some other place, far from us.
His face was gaunt and sunken, and his red-rimmed eyes protruded. He always looked tired, shut away with his books, his silence, and something secret and blurry hung about him like a cloud.
My husband Avraham was a bird, a bird of passage, who had been fettered to the ground. And I had imposed much suffering upon him when I extended his life.
My births were hard and lonely. The women of the household were there, but it was not my household. Rivke’leh was my friend, but her mother Froumeh kept busy with housework. It was a Hasidic house, and rabbis, disciples, and simple folk came and went all the time, which meant there was always much work. As for Mistress Sarah—she was the queen of ice! And Froumeh reeked of sweat and cooking; and there was a fat midwife, who kept sighing and blowing her red nose on the white towels that she used for the birth. They kept touching me, watching over me, arranging the linens around me. All the while, my head just stuck out from beneath the white sheet as if it had been severed from my body and left there to cry and shout.
And when my stomach gaped open, my heart did not open but rather closed. At my first birth, my heart hardened and closed. At the second birth, it seemed to lock completely because I was so weary of being nothing but the bearer of my husband’s sons.
When I held my firstborn son, Yisroel-Chaim, I knew that he would be neither king nor messiah. He was a large, quiet baby who liked to eat. He sucked dry my small nipples and then went happily on to the nipples of the wet nurse.
Trail of Miracles Page 6
