Disobedience

by Naomi Alderman

And on the Shabbat, the priests would sing a song for the future that is to come, for that day which will be entirely Shabbat and for the repose of eternal life. Mishnah Tamid 7:4, recited during the Saturday morning service

Esti Kuperman watched the service from the women’s gallery. Each week a place of honor was reserved for her, in the front row, by the net curtain. In truth, the front row was never occupied at all, even at such times as these, when every seat was needed. Women would stand at the back of the gallery, rather than take one of those front-row seats. Each week Esti sat alone, never bending her thin neck, not showing by any word or glance that she had noted the empty seats on either side of her. She took the position in the front row because it was expected. She was Dovid’s wife. Dovid sat next to the Rav. If the Rav’s wife had not passed on, Esti would have been at her side. When, God willing, they were blessed with children, they would accompany her. As it was, she sat alone.

She felt a strange sort of disconnection. At times, when she was staring down, the movements seemed like some game played on a checkerboard—round pieces advancing purposefully but without meaning.

“Speech,” he said. “If the created world were a piece of music, speech would be its refrain, its recurring theme. In the Torah, we read that Hashem created the world through speech. He could have willed it into existence. We might read: ‘And God thought of light, and there was light.’ No. He could have hummed it. Or formed it from clay in His hands. Or breathed it out. Hashem, our King, the Holy One Blessed Be He, did none of these things. To create the world, He spoke. ‘And God said, let there be light, and there was light.’ Exactly as He spoke, so it was.”

“What a great power the Almighty has given us! To speak, as He speaks! Astonishing! Of all the creatures on earth, only we can speak. What does this mean?” He smiled faintly and looked around the room once more. “It means we have a hint of Hashem’s power. Our words are, in a sense, real. They can create worlds and destroy them. They have edges, like a knife.” The Rav brought his arm around in a sweeping motion, as though wielding a scythe. He smiled. “Of course, our power is not Hashem’s power. Let us not forget that, either. Our words are more than empty breath, but they are not Torah. Torah contains the world. Torah is the world. Do not forget, my children, that all of our words, all of our stories, can only, at best, amount to a commentary on a single verse of the Torah.”

“Mechalkel chayim b’chesed,” he said. (“He sustains all living things with kindness, He gives the dead life with abundant mercy.”)

“Call an ambulance and bring blankets!” The other men looked confused for a moment. The very words “call an ambulance,” uttered in the Rav’s synagogue, on the Sabbath, seemed unreal; it was as though they’d been asked for a slice of bacon, a pint of prawns. After a long moment, two of the young men started up and dashed toward the door, racing for the telephone.

She looked at her own bony fingers, curled around her siddur, the nails very white. And for an instant, she felt heavy damask wings stirring the air against her face. The beating wings might have surrounded her, moving more slowly, more heavily, circling and ascending infinitely slowly, bearing a far greater burden than the soul of one old, tired man with a shadow on his lung. The breath had gone out of the room, and the beating wings were a pulse, growing fainter and fainter.

And it was only when she was running down the stairs toward the men’s section that a thought awakened in her mind—a thought at once shocking and joyful, a thought of which she felt instantly ashamed. As she raced down the stairs, the rhythm of her steps echoed to the beat of her repeated thought: “If this is so, then Ronit will be coming home. Ronit is coming home.”

I dreamed about a huge room filled with books, floor to ceiling, the shelves stretching on and on farther and farther out, so that the harder I looked, the more that became visible at the limits of my sight. I realized that the books, and the words, were everything that was and everything that had ever been or would ever be. I started walking; my steps were silent, and when I looked down I saw that I was walking on words, that the walls and the ceiling and the tables and the lamps and the chairs were all words.

think that’s what most of us want, really, isn’t it? A challenge that’s just hard enough that we can accomplish it, but it’ll take everything we’ve got. So that there’s no room left in us for the doubt, the worry, the internal crises. We have to let it fill us up because that’s the only way to get the job done.

Chaim was wearing a sharp suit. The flyers were glossy. They’re probably doing well. Hundreds of sheep are probably stumbling back to the fold right now. It unsettles me, just a bit, to think about the business of it, about the expenditure-to-sales ratio and the probable returns. If you can put a value on a soul, there’s probably someone out there just like me, crunching the numbers on the religious-zeal biz.

the phone rang. I picked it up and there was a silence on the other end, then the sound of drawn-in breath. I knew it was Dovid before he spoke a word. He’s always done that on the phone—a silence. Like he’s trying to decide whether, after all, you’ll be glad to hear his voice.

So while he was saying “Hello, is that Ronit?” I was already thinking of witty remarks to make, of ways to point out how unusual this call was, how unexpected. I was already gathering my armor around me, so that no message he could give would hurt me.

Each month, when a woman is bleeding, she is forbidden to her husband. They may not have marital relations, may not touch, may not even sleep in the same bed. And when her flow ceases, the wife must count seven clean days, as is written in the Torah. And at the end of those clean days, she must visit the mikvah to immerse herself completely in natural water: rainwater or river water or seawater. And once she has immersed herself, she may return to her husband’s bed. The mikvah is a sacred place, a holy place. More holy, perhaps, than a synagogue, for we learn that when a new community is founded, the mikvah should be built first, the synagogue second.

A small headache began to pulse at his temples. He spoke to the headache, asking its nature. The headache answered with a single, light touch. Very well, not serious then, merely a symptom of fatigue.

Levitsky was a small man, with a mustache and thick glasses. He and his wife, Sara, had four sons, each as blinking and molelike as Levitsky himself. But the man had deft, quick fingers and a lightness of touch. Newman, in his late thirties, was rotund, thoughtful, and calm. He was strong; it fell to him often to lift and carry, to support the dead or to move them. Rigler was taller, thinner, and easily angered. His cheeks were perpetually red, his eyes darting here and there. He was observant, though, and had often accomplished a task before the others saw that it was necessary.

Levitsky bent to tie the last knot in the belt. He paused. His fingers hovered, trembling, over the final fastening. Still bent over, he raised his head to look at Dovid. “Dovid,” he said, his voice clipped, “it would be right for you to fasten the belt. You are his nearest family here.” Levitsky moved away from the white-clad body, and Dovid moved toward it. He took the ends of the white linen belt in his hands. This was the final knot, in the shape of the three-pronged letter shin, the first letter of one of the names of the Almighty. Once this knot was made, it could not be undone. He had tied such knots many times before, for many men, but felt oddly unwilling to begin this time. This knot would be the end of it, this knot that could never be untied, this thing that could not be undone. Once this was done, there could be no denying it; something would change. Well, he said in his heart, so be it. Nothing could remain the same forever. He tied the belt.

It’s difficult to work out the meaning of life in Hendon. I mean, it’s difficult to work it out for yourself, rather than allowing other people to tell you. Because in Hendon there are plenty of people just dying to explain the meaning of life to you.

You need that disagreement, we all do, so that we can realize that the world isn’t smooth and even, not everyone agrees with everyone else. You need a window into another world to work out what you think of your own.

Strangely, though, I find there’s no magazine called Death. You’d think one of them would at least run an article. Some helpful household magazine could do a feature: “Homemade Coffins: A Cheaper Alternative.” Cosmo could do: “Grieving: Do It Better, Faster, and More Often.” Even a Vogue special on funeral outfits would be some help. But no, nothing. It’s like this essential feature of human beings simply doesn’t exist in the full-color magazine world.

So, this is what you do, this is what I ought to be doing, the Jewish mourning ritual for close relatives: parents, children, siblings, husband or wife. In the first week, you tear your clothes, you don’t cut your hair or wash in hot water, and you cover your mirrors (because this is no time for vanity). You sit on a low stool and you don’t leave the house, unless you really have to (because grief needs space and time). And you don’t listen to music (because music will remind you that somewhere in the world, someone is happy).

But I’m here, and I’m not that anymore. And somehow it wouldn’t work to call up a friend and say: “I would now like to participate in the ancient Jewish grieving ritual. For this, I will need some volunteers.”

Tohu vavohu. Higgledy-piggledy. Upside down. Inside out. Hither and thither.

In the beginning, therefore, the most important work is of separation. It is of pulling apart the tangled threads. It is of saying “This shall be separate from that. This shall be water, this shall be sky, and this shall be the line between them, the horizon.” It is of setting a line between them.

This, too, was a form of communication. The wordless order of the kitchen, the separation of milk and meat, which was not forced but seemed to emerge naturally from each utensil. Of course, each item seemed to say, meat will be cooked in the red pots, and dairy will be cooked in the blue. It is natural, in the same way that trees remain rooted in one spot, that water runs downhill, that the walls of a building do not dance. Such order, Dovid thought, is the simple voice of God, whispering softly in the world.

For us, who have been swept from the dust, who have been taken and formed out of all that is less, our work is of understanding the subtlety of the boundary. It is of tracing it, ever finer and finer. It is of accepting and learning what must be separate and what must be mingled.

that synagogue full of small, cramped minds, grown twisted through lack of sunlight. That world of silence, where Jews must remain more quiet than non-Jews, and women more silent than men.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Skin-drenching regret, blisters of misery.

The more powerful a force, the more holy a place, the more truth there is in wisdom, the more these things should be private, deep, accessible only to those who have worked to attain them.

We should not rush to throw open doors, to allow light to shine on quiet places. For those who have seen the secret mysteries tell us not only of the beauty, but also of the pain. And certain things are better left unseen, and certain words unspoken.

Lying in his bed, finding himself too dizzy to stand up, Dovid considered himself in a new light. He could not feel these experiences as a gift or a blessing; the pain was too great. He thought of his four brothers at home, considering how long a thing like this could be kept secret from them. He imagined fainting in front of them, or at school, or in synagogue among the other boys. He had always been a quiet boy, not one of those who ran along corridors or fought, but this was something quite different. For the first time, Dovid felt afraid of seeing others, or being with them.

What is the shape of time? On occasion, we may feel that time is circular. The seasons approach and retreat, the same every year. Night follows day follows night follows day. The festivals arrive in their time, cycling one after the other. And each month, the womb and the moon together grow fat and fertile, then bleed away, and begin to grow once more. It may seem that time leads us on a circling path, returning us to where we began. In other moods, we may view time as a straight and infinite line, dizzying in its endlessness. We travel from birth to death, from past to future, and each second that ticks by is gone forever. We talk of managing time, but time manages us, hurrying us along where we might have wished to linger. We can no more halt time than the moon can halt her nightly journey across the sky. As is so often the case, these two seemingly irreconcilable observations combine to form the truth. Time is spiral. Our journey through time may be compared to an ascent around the outside of a round tower. We travel, it is true, and can never return to the places we have left. However, as each revolution brings us higher and farther, it also brings us around to encounter the same vistas we have seen before. Every Shabbat is different from the Shabbat before; nonetheless every Shabbat is Shabbat. Each day brings evening and morning, yet no day will ever be repeated. The moon, waxing and waning in accordance with the wishes of her Creator, is our example: always changing...

Esti spread her mind wider and wider around the synagogue until she inhabited every space of it in her slow breathing. She was in the puckered ceiling plaster and the tired blue carpet, in the grilles that covered the windows, in the red plastic of the chairs, in the electric wires within the walls, and in the throat-pulse of every man and woman. She breathed and felt the synagogue inhale and exhale with her. Dwelling within the congregation, she noted the familiar soup of thought and emotion. There were angers here, bitter hatreds, fear and boredom and resentment and guilt and sorrow. She saw herself from outside herself. Am I really? she thought. Can that be me, that person who appears so strange to all these others? She saw herself through a dozen pairs of eyes, each one registering her oddness with fear or disgust or confusion. She smiled at the people as she passed through them, saying, ah yes, you think I’m strange. But I know something you don’t know.

Esti knew—she had an acute sense, always, of rectitude. She tried to imagine how Ronit might react to such a conversation and found it impossible. In her mind, she couldn’t even get beyond the first line of discussion. She had already begun to love her. Not as she would do later, but in a fashion that made this conversation, the possibility of breach and separateness impossible. Loving Ronit seemed, already, to demand some denial of herself. Or perhaps, she reflected later, all love demands that.

Those were the best moments, the ones they waited for, the ones for which Esti was willing to bear the risk that her mother would look up at the wrong moment and notice her behavior. Once or twice, Esti’s mother noticed and, after synagogue, spoke to her quietly about behavior appropriate to a girl, about the quiet calm that she expected from her. At these times, Esti would listen and nod, but in her heart she knew she would disobey again.

She wondered, sometimes, how Ronit grew all these ideas, if perhaps they sprouted in the darkness of her head like mushrooms, fostered by the “motherless atmosphere,” as certain plants need greenhouses and special soils. She wondered if she placed her head very close to Ronit’s some of the spores of them might travel into her. She imagined Ronit’s thoughts, light and downy, coming to rest in her brain, sending out first one exploratory root, then another, sinking themselves deep down into the spongy tissue, becoming matted and brain-logged. She would not know at first, as they grew, until the new thoughts began mushroom-popping inside her skull and she would find herself, without warning, different. She would belong to Ronit. Their ideas would be one. She did not know whether this idea pleased or frightened her.

The moon was absent, a circle of darkness denoting the possibility of presence, the inevitability of return.

She looked up at the stars. They were brighter here, away from the streetlights. The sky was almost cloudless, with only one long streak of thin cloud smudged across the blue-black. Beneath the heavens, she thought. This is where we are. Always, but especially here, with the heavens looking. She spoke to the stars silently. She said, “Can you still love me, after what I have done?” The stars were quiet, but they continued to shine.

Ronit said, “Esti, are you all right?” Yes, Esti wanted to say. I am better than I have known myself to be.

She wondered if she should have explained herself more clearly. She could not explain herself at all. There were no words, no permitted words, to explain anything that she wanted to say. All the words that could have communicated it had been banned, not only from her mouth but even from her mind. She was reduced to mere actions, which are both more and less than words.

I had forgotten how it had been between us. But I could see she hadn’t forgotten. For just a moment, she made me remember it, too. For just that little piece of time, standing in a field in Hendon in the middle of the night, underneath the stars and the moonless sky, I remembered the taste of her. It was like a connection, a completed circuit linking the past to the present suddenly, unexpectedly, and for that instant I knew where I was but not when.

She said, “Sometimes I think that God is punishing me. For what we did together. Sometimes I think that my life is a punishment for wanting. And the wanting is a punishment, too. But I think—if God wishes to punish me, so be it; that is His right. But it is my right to disobey.”

What could I do? She didn’t need me right now. She needed a whole bunch of friends who’d take her out for margaritas and tell her that I was a bitch. She needed my life in New York, just like I’d needed hers in Hendon the night my father died. There’s no solution to these things.

And I thought about what it is that I know, which isn’t much but might be something. I thought about God. I hadn’t thought about Him for quite a while but I remembered His voice then. I thought about how, whatever you do, once you’ve heard it, it continues to mutter in your ear, with its inexplicable certainties and unacceptable justifications.

I thought about how God, belief in God, in this God, has done violence to these people. Has warped them and bent them so that they can’t even acknowledge any longer that they have desires, let alone learn how to act on them.

I sat down and ordered a large slice of chocolate cake from a tired-looking waitress. When it came, I thought of all the nonkosher things that could be in it: gelatin holding the filling together, made of boiled pig bones, colorings made from dead insects, beef lard to grease the cake tin, shellfish extracts added to the flour to make it softer. I saw the plate full of dead, decaying, unclean things. Things that the Rabbis tell us will harden our hearts and make us less able to hear the voice of God. I took a bite. The cake was dry, the filling greasy. I ate it anyway. Bite after bite.

One of our sages rebuked a woman who had spread gossip. He gave her a pillow and instructed her to take it to the top of the highest building in town and shake out its feathers to the four winds. The woman did so. Then the sage said to her, “Now go and gather up all of those feathers which you have scattered.” The woman cried out that the task was impossible. “Ah,” said the sage, “how much easier, though, than gathering up the tales you have spread.” Easier to cause a mountain to skip like a lamb than to retrieve an evil story once it has passed the guard of our lips.

I said, “You mean you don’t work? But you were always so good in school, so academic! What happened?” This was a nasty thing to do. She didn’t really deserve it. Except insofar as they all do, for their collusion in the silence, for simply accepting that things must be thus and so, for never stopping to consider that this little protective world can damage as much as it cushions.

To answer this question, we must first understand that this world exists to teach us. It is to be enjoyed, true, but also to be studied and pored over, as is the Torah, which is also the world. Just as every tiny stroke that goes to form a letter in the Torah contains an infinity of meaning, just so does every aspect of creation. Nothing is arbitrary, nothing has been left to chance. All has been foreseen and all has been intended.