For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories

by Nathan Englander

  Proportion was the first thing to go. Even before the rumor had reached proper dispatch it ballooned past belief and had to be scaled back to an absorbable size. There were stylistic variations, of course, but one detail stuck, providing the rumor with unassailable authenticity. It was the addition of Liebman’s name as father of the child and Gitta’s secret man. It was a twist Liebman hadn’t thought of, an advantage of which Gitta hadn’t dreamed.

  From that instant on, no one needed it over more than Liebman. What parent would trust a matchmaker caught up in a scandal? How to let him judge a prospective son-in-law’s character if he can’t seem to manage his own? No, the deal was done. Liebman was fully involved.

  II

  Three windows faced the street in Gitta’s efficiency. The one over the dormant radiator was open a crack. On the other side of the long room was a kitchen area, the front door, and a panel with the buzzer in between.

  It was after the first beating, and Gitta sat in a chair in the center of her apartment. This was the best she could do.

  Berel was screaming outside. His voice carried up the three stories and made its way through the crack in the window. It was a terrible effect. Gitta’s blinds were drawn, and the voice, localized and harsh, taunted her from that corner, as if Berel were somehow floating outside her window and yelling in. Then he’d pause—a second’s silence—and the buzzer would start screeching on her other side. Again, this sense of his presence, Berel standing in the hallway leaning on a button right outside the door.

  She had no television and no radio. She couldn’t concentrate on her reading or the Psalms. So she had pulled a chair to the middle of the room as far as she could get from Berel on both sides.

  And she sat there, head in her hands, trapped between him.

  Lili flicked the switch on her machine and hit the side panel until the power light glowed.

  Gitta was spread out on the table.

  “Repetitive nightmares like my father used to have about Siberia. Sometimes Berel comes through the window and sometimes through the door. It’s an elopement. Berel is in a suit. I’m gowned and veiled and clutching a bouquet. Every night he carries me away, either by the door or down a ladder, always with the flowers in my arms. And always, whether from their windows or lining the hallway, the neighbors are watching and wishing us luck. From the outside it looks like perfect romance. And I can see why they confuse the bride’s weak moaning—all of them smiling and waving at my call for help. They stand there cooing while Berel rips my dress off, tears it all off right there in front of them, everything but the veil.”

  “Under the veil?” Lili wants to know. “What’s under the veil?”

  “Hairless,” Gitta says. “No prettier or uglier and can’t tell you my age. But hairless, hairless I am sure.”

  Lili smiles at that, goes after a stray follicle between Gitta’s eyebrows, lands the needle, strikes a nerve so that Gitta’s left lid flutters and she feels a strange comfort, as if her face has been split appropriately and magically in two.

  “He showed up again after the second beating, showed up out my window, buzzing at my door. This time he stayed longer. It was supposed to improve, Lili, but it’s made my life only worse. Every bit of punishment he gets, he takes out on me tenfold. Hard-hearted, my Berel. That’s what the matchmaker says. He keeps calling to tell me Berel will never give in.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “I say exactly as we practiced: ‘There are two ways to free an agunah. One is for the husband to give a get. And the other, to bring proof of his death. One way or the other, Liebman. One way or the other.’ ”

  “Oh, that’s good, Gitta. That last ‘one way’ is very good.”

  Berel was returning from a night trip to the supermarket. One moment he was walking and the next in a car with four other men—his groceries left spilled on the sidewalk.

  The men wore children’s plastic masks with tight swirls of yellow hair and red, red lips, little Queen Esther masks on each one. But the disguises did not sufficiently cover their grown-up faces. Black beards burst out from behind bulbous rouged cheeks. Sidelocks stuck out like pigtails from under elastic bands.

  They punched Berel and smacked him before anyone said a word.

  Then the one in the front passenger seat, the smallest by far, turned to talk to Berel, restrained between two Esthers in the back.

  “Hard to find people willing to beat you anymore, Berel. Not out of mercy, but because it’s become such a chore.”

  “Such a tiny, tiny thug,” Berel said, “I was wondering. And then the familiar voice. Since when are you so bold, Little Liebman, as to place yourself at the scene of the crime?”

  “Maybe this time I don’t leave anyone to talk.”

  Little Liebman motioned to the two Esthers and they wrestled Berel onto his stomach and taped his hands to his ankles so that they might carry him like a bundle. The one on the right unlocked his door. “This ride,” Liebman said, “I’m making it clear. Tonight we make progress.”

  “You want progress, Liebman? I’ve got some of my own. As soon as you let me loose, I’m headed straight for the newspapers. I’m going to tip the goyim off to the injustice that goes on.”

  “The newspapers?” Liebman laughed. “Yes, have them report it. Just the kind of Jewish story the papers love.”

  “It will ruin you, Liebman.”

  “If only you heard the rumors. My name is already ruined. Let them run it on the front page. In New York you’ll find no sympathy for a man who enslaves his wife. The feminists will bring me a medal for beating you. The mayor will put me on a float in the Thanksgiving Day parade.”

  The car headed out on the highway, a change in rhythm. Every few seconds a seam in the road so that the smoothness of speed was broken, the constancy interrupted by a rhythmic thuck.

  The car door by his head opened and Berel was lowered toward the flowing script of road. He worried not over disfigurement but loss of senses, being rubbed clean of eyes or tongue, being rolled into the alley without his ears. Berel screamed into the wind and was pulled back in.

  “Now give the get or we head out to drown you at Jones Beach. Two to hold you under the water and two kosher witnesses to watch.”

  “You won’t do it,” Berel said. “You’re a matchmaker, not a murderer. You understand the sanctity of unions. Like in nature, Liebman. Like it says about pigeons. You kill one, you have to kill its mate. To make it kosher you’ve got to kill both, me and Gitta both.”

  Berel was once again lowered. Dangerously close. A pebble shot from a tire hit Berel in the cheek. He moved his tongue to try and find it in his mouth, sure the stone had cut through. They lifted him back in.

  “With arranged marriages,” Liebman said, “a good match is as difficult as separating the earth from the sky. Don’t you think? A wonder they ever hold.”

  Berel buried his face in the warmth of the right-hand Esther’s lap.

  “Gitta is desperate, Berel. Desperate. At this point she feels it’s your life or hers. And we can’t have another generation ruined by this marriage. Royal Hills doesn’t need another mamzer. No, we cannot have a bastard born because of you.”

  “A bastard?” This was too much. “If she’s pregnant, I’ll tear it from her womb.” Berel went mad, fought like a tiger, put on quite a show for a man with arms and legs tied behind his back. There was a struggle to control him. They slammed Berel’s head against the door until Liebman screamed for them to stop. He thought they might knock the life from the body, as if the soul were a filling to be loosed from a tooth.

  “Are you still with us, Berel?” Liebman held on to the back of his seat.

  Berel nodded, licking his lips.

  “Any chance you’re thinking clearly now? Might you reconsider before we kill you?”

  “That’s what you’ll have to do,” Berel said, perking up. “Like in the American ceremony. Till death do us part.”

  Liebman pulled off his mask and rubbed at his
eyes. He nodded to the men.

  This time when Berel was lowered out the door he felt the car speed up and the grip tighten on his hair. The one with his legs used maximum control. And like artisans attending to that final detail, Berel’s head was forced to the grindstone, his face to the road. For an instant. For a touch. The Esthers took off a perfect circle, a sliver—not deep—of Berel’s nose.

  Berel screamed outside her window, taunts and threats, declarations of a love he’d never shown. And his refrain, “Why do they beat me?” This—as if he couldn’t come up with a reason—he yelled again and again.

  Gitta had things she would have liked to scream. She’d have liked to stand under the window of every Jew in Royal Hills and scream at the top of her lungs, demand to know why her divorce needs an excuse or a consent, anyone’s help at all.

  After Berel left, Gitta carried her chair back to the table, put on a sweater, and wandered over to the bridge. She followed the walkway, gazing out at the river, the traffic speeding by on her other side. This was the old decision Gitta had pondered. Not life or death for Berel, but traffic or river, traffic or water, to which side should she dive?

  Little Liebman handed Gitta an apple and leaned against the file cabinet. “Showing already,” he said, looking at her stomach.

  She stared back at him, the corners of her mouth turned down. She didn’t appreciate the familiarity and didn’t trust Liebman’s invitation. It was the first time he’d asked her over since the beatings began.

  “Every nightmare has its end, Gitta. Berel has come to his senses.”

  “Nonsense. What, he promised a divorce while you twisted an arm? He came to my house after, same as always. Floated outside my window screaming in my ear.” Gitta lowered herself onto the couch as if she were indeed carrying extra weight. She sniffed at the apple. “When he throws the get in my face, Little Liebman, then I’ll know it’s done.”

  “We put a fear into him and he wouldn’t budge. We dumped him in the alley half dead and still swearing he’d never see you free. Then three days ago he shows up here, then yesterday, and again this morning. Each time more remorseful, each time clearer in what he had to say. It’s the little mamzer that got him,” Liebman pointed at his belly. “Not for you or himself does he have any mercy, but only for the unborn. The suffering of the father, he said, should not be borne out on the son.”

  “Suddenly there is sense?”

  “He’s never lied before. Stubborn and coconut brained, he runs around spouting nonsense. But never has he agreed falsely to a divorce. He too, like you, thinks there is some trick. He says meet him once and tell him to his face that you carry another man’s child. He doesn’t ask for the man’s name. He doesn’t want to hear a tiny heartbeat or see a note from a doctor. He says, after the degradation of how he learned, he will only bring you a divorce if you tell him about the baby yourself.”

  Lili bent a needle. She put down the wand and fished around for a replacement, talking all the while and working herself into a rage.

  “Eighteen years it takes you to build up the courage and then you buy into nonsense like this. I’m coming with you, Gitta. I’m going to strangle that bum myself.”

  “The matchmaker is right. Berel’s never lied.”

  Lili slid the magnifying light out of the way and moved her face right to Gitta’s so that crooked eyes crossed.

  “You’re meeting in a hotel, fine, perfect. But let me tell you something, Berel’s not offering you a divorce, Gitta, he’s offering an alibi. Why not have it so, when he leaves, a gypsy cab jumps the curb and runs him down? You can be the first to scream, to yell in a lobby with one hundred witnesses, while Berel is hit-and-runned right outside.”

  “I lived with him for too long not to know what goes on in that miserable mind. Berel is finally tired. He is going to give me my divorce. Soon I’ll have my life back and then who knows what I’ll do? Get to work on those roots, Lili. I might yet find romance.”

  Yes, she is bitter. Her second date in fifty-four years and again with Berel. Again in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel. Her corpse will rot, she is sure, without ever having anyone hold open a door.

  Gitta stepped down the three stairs into the deep, narrow lobby, chose a couch and a chair unoccupied by any of the long-legged, knife-chinned men and women—so smartly dressed and fortified.

  Before she had sunk fully into the chair a waitress approached. Gitta ordered a crème de menthe which she would not touch. Her way of paying rent for sitting.

  Over the years, Gitta had crossed the street more than once to avoid Berel, hurried into the women’s section or out a side door to escape a confrontation at shul. This wasn’t the first time she’d laid eyes on him since, but as he made his way down those three steps, her only lover in a lifetime, her husband and tormentor, she realized that she’d not uttered a word to him since she’d left.

  He’d gotten old. His beard was full of white and his cheeks hung loose on his skull. And then there were the bruises. She could see the blood-black of one under his beard and the more shocking perfect scab on the end of his nose.

  “I came to ask you,” he said, in a voice detached, as if sending a message with this Gitta to take back to his wife, “if you’ll give me the child.”

  Gitta chewed at her bottom lip, lowered her chin. Despicable from the start.

  “Not this way,” Gitta said. “I say what you want to hear and you give me what’s left of my life.”

  “I’m allowed to ask, no? Denied so many things, you couldn’t expect I wouldn’t ask.” He was sad, suddenly. She could see. Amazing. How many crimes produce only victims, Gitta wondered, everyone claiming innocence and everyone hurt.

  The waitress put down a napkin and set a glass in front of Gitta.

  “You’ve fallen so low that you eat in a trayf hotel? So adultery is not your only sin?”

  “It’s only a drink, Berel, and I’ve yet to touch it. And what I do is none of your business. I want from you only one thing.”

  “And I wanted from you only one thing. The duties of a wife fulfilled.” He did not change his tone, but the old, loose skin began to tighten, his rage, as from an organ ruptured, began to seep into cheeks and purple tongue, spread through the broken veins of his nose. “All I wanted. To see my name live on.”

  “Wasted energy, Berel. You hear me say it and then you give me a divorce. Agreed? Just as you told Liebman.”

  Berel snorted at that.

  “What is my word to Liebman who beats and degrades me and is said to be the father of your bastard child?”

  “What is this, Berel? This is not what was planned.”

  “No, neither did I plan a life of misery because of you. I was about to give you a divorce, you should know. Thought it out, talked to my rebbe, I was literally on my way over to arrange it the first time they pulled me into that car. Later, even with those Nazis hounding me, I saw it was time to give in. Then Liebman told me you were pregnant.”

  How he knew her, understood how to tear her in half, not Lili’s peaceful, electric-needle magic, but how to tear her whole being apart, rip her brutally in two.

  “You weren’t ever going to give anything,” she said. “This is another of your tortures.”

  “Shaming me, making me a shame in my community, and you talk of torture. What does a whore need a divorce for when she sells herself either way?”

  Gitta went hot with panic. Her recurring reality was as bad as her nightmares. It was supposed to improve. Somehow, sometime, her life was supposed to get better. She grabbed at Berel’s sleeve and pulled him close.

  “There is no baby,” she said. “My own trick. I’ve been loyal all these years.” Gitta tried for a smile but got tears. “Now you must,” and she was crying, “must,” and she was yelling, “must give me a divorce before I die.”

  “I only came for the truth,” he said. And like that he was up, shaking her hand free, and taking the three stairs in a stride.

  Gitta stood and watched Berel
push his way round the revolving door, saw a handsome young man pop out in his place.

  She tried to imagine the high-pitched screech of brakes, the car hitting and thumping, the gypsy cab racing off into the night. Gitta could call Lili from a phone booth and see it over with before morning. She could wake up knowing he was gone and say her prayers with fervor. Because she could take it, she could live with his murder.

  Gitta unzipped her wallet and shook her head.

  How close he comes, her Berel. His whole life a near-death experience, teetering on the blade of her courage.

  She thought too of Liebman, who said he knew, he felt, suffered right there along with her. Even when she makes a denial, even when no baby comes, he will still be tied to the rumors. Royal Hills would make it fit, with an adoption, a miscarriage, a hairy dwarf child not well and locked away. Let him know from it, she felt. She did not feel generous. Did not at all care.

  Then Gitta thought of herself, the years remaining, the end of this life. Let it be short, she thought. Though she knew she would see a hundred and twenty years. It would be like in the old wives’ tales, corpses laid to rest still growing thick, yellow nails and wiry hair. And this Gitta knew, folktale or not, would be her doom—buried, waiting, the wrong man’s ring going loose around her finger, and a scholar’s beard growing and growing. Roots buried deeper than even Lili had dreamed. Hair growing from bone.

  For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

  The beds were to be separated on nights forbidden to physical intimacy, but Chava Bayla hadn’t pushed them together for many months. She flatly refused to sleep anywhere except on her menstrual bed and was, from the start, impervious to her husband’s pleading.

  “You are pure,” Dov Binyamin said to the back of his wife, who—heightening his frustration—slept facing the wall.