Legends of the Lamed-Vav
Volume 1, Number 3
DESCENT INTO DARKNESS
By
Lable Braun
SMASHWORDS EDITION
***
PUBLISHED BY:
Lable Braun on Smashwords
Descent Into Darkness
Copyright © 2012 by Lable Braun
To stay in touch with developments regarding The Lamed-Vav Project, and with the series of stories about the Legends of the Lamed-Vav, please visit www.thelamedvavproject.org
Though influenced by historical events, this story is a myth. You may call it a work of fiction, if you must. But we must never let the facts stand in the way of a good truth.
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***
“It’s a shame.” Mrs. Pinsky declared to the other women of the village gathered at the river on wash day. “A real shame!” she avowed, and scrubbed her husband’s shirt harder against the washboard to emphasize how strongly she held her beliefs on the matter. All of poor Mr. Pinsky’s clothing was threadbare owing to his wife’s habit of using his laundry to make her points with such power and conviction.
“It truly is a shame,” Mrs. Levinsky agreed. She was gentler on her family’s clothing during the weekly laundry discussions than Mrs. Pinsky was. However, she often got so wrapped-up in the conversation that it was a long time before the wash made its way from the basin to the drying-line. Consequently, you could always tell that a Levinsky was coming, even before you saw them, by the slight smell of mildew.
“Nathan Shlimovitz is the best liked boy in town,” Mrs. Fidelowicz said and was gratified by Mrs. Pinsky’s nodding her head, in perfect synchronization with her beating her son’s underwear with a stone.
“I even wanted Nathan for a match with my Tamar,” Mrs. Fidelowicz revealed. “He is so smart and so pleasant a boy. He’s much too good for Shaindele Zuchermann.”
Mrs. Levinsky said nothing. Pondering as her laundry dipped into the mud, she thought to herself that Nathan was lucky that Mrs. Fidelowicz’ plan had never come to fruition. Shaindele was no prize, to be sure, but at least she didn’t come attached with Frieda Fidelowicz as a mother-in-law.
“What a sickly child that Shaindele is,” Mrs. Troutberg observed. “What kind of marriage could they possibly have?”
“A good question,” Mrs. Pinsky agreed, with emphasis, rubbing poor Yankele’s underwear raw. “It’s all that studying she does. That’s what makes her so sick.”
“Whoever heard of a girl studying the Torah?” Mrs. Levinsky asked, deep in thought about whether to let the bedsheets just dry a bit muddy or put them through the wash basin once more.
“It’s that father of hers,” Mrs. Fidelowicz thundered. “He teaches her Torah at night. I took him to task for it!” The other women shuddered. All of them had had occasion to be “taken to task” by Frieda Fidelowicz at one time or another. It was not a pleasant experience.
“So what was his defense?” Mrs. Troutberg wondered.
“He said that when God gives you such a treasure of a mind as his daughter Shaindele has, you must not question what kind of a body it comes in.”
“What kind of answer is that?” Mrs. Levinsky scoffed.
“He was adamant,” Mrs. Fidelowicz said. “He would not give it up. There is even a rumor, not started by me of course, but still a very credible rumor, that he teaches her Kaballah!”
Now all activity immediately stopped as the women took this in. This was serious. Teaching a girl the Torah was one thing. But … Kaballah! Even men were not permitted to study Kaballah before they met some very stringent requirements. Kaballah was the most secret, mystical knowledge of the Torah.
“No good will come of this,” Mrs. Pinsky moaned as she began forcefully wringing tears of soapy water out of Mr. Pinsky’s pants. “No good will come of this!”
***
As the washing women were bemoaning the state of a world in which girls studied Kaballah, across the village Nathan Shlimovitz was leaning his back against a tree stump, watching as his friend, Jacob, walloped his thumb with a tinker’s hammer. Nathan tried not to laugh as his friend yelped with pain, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Gotenyu, Jacob,” he said wryly, “you truly are a terrible tinker.”
“I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!” his friend said with tears of pain rolling down his cheek. “I never wanted to be a tinker. I hate being a tinker. May God only grant that some idiot come to be a tinker for this village and relieve me of this burden.”
“Nonsense,” Nathan said soothingly. “Without this work you would starve. We are your friends. If another tinker came here, we would run him out of town. You are our tinker, and always will be.”
“Why do you hate me so?” Jacob accused. “Would I condemn you to a life you hate?”
“No need to condemn me,” Nathan said with a sigh. “Fate has already done that.” Nathan saw no options for himself in life other than following the ass of his father’s plough-horse down one row of soil and up the other.
“Yes,” Jacob agreed. “We’re both trapped.”
“They may trap my body here,” Nathan said fervently, “but they can’t trap my mind.”
Nathan held up a pamphlet. “See! I can still read. I can still know what is going on in the world. Have you read this atrocious garbage by Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev?”
“Who in the world is Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev?” Jacob asked.
Nathan shook his head ruefully. “Every Jew in Russia, every Jew in the world should be reading this.”
“Well, maybe I would, if you told me who he was,” Jacob chided as he turned back to the samovar he was working on.
“Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev is the High Procurator of the Holy Synod. That makes him, in effect, the administrative head of the Russian Orthodox Church,” Nathan explained. “A very powerful man, indeed. He was the czar’s tutor when Alexander was a boy. Now he is the closest confidante of our fool of a monarch.”
“Nathan!” Jacob cried in alarm, looking furtively about for anyone who might have heard Nathan’s sedition. “You’ll get us all arrested.”
“Pfah!” Nathan spat. “In the last three years, since the idiot father of this idiot czar was assassinated in 1881, there have been more than 200 pogroms. What more can they do to us? Did we kill the idiot czar? No. But still they beat, rape, rob, and murder us. If we say something, they beat us. If we say nothing, they beat us. So we might as well say something.”
“Anyway, tell me about what this man, Pobedonostsev, writes in that pamphlet of yours,” Jacob said, more to deflect his friend’s tirade than out of any real interest.
“This man,” Nathan boomed, happy to be off on yet another tirade, “this man who is the czar’s friend, this man who is the head of the holy church, this man writes that his vision is that one-third of the Jews will convert, one third of the Jews will emigrate, and one third of the Jews will die - die with his help, I am sure. This is his answer to the ‘Jewish Issue’.”
“We have always had enemies in high places.” Jacob tried to shrug off the words he had just heard. But the truth was they chilled him to the marrow.
“Yes,” Nathan shot back, “and those enemies depend on idiots like you to lower their eyes to the threat.”
Nathan immediately saw how deeply his words had hurt his friend. “I am sorry,” he said, sincerely. “It just frustrates me that no one in this village but me takes any interest in the outside world.”
“That is because to us, the world is this village,” Jacob explained. “And we have plenty of things to keep us busy in conversation without reading the ravings of outside lunatics.”
“What in this village could possibly compare in importance to someone who has the czar’s ear and is threatening our very existence?”
“Well …” Jacob said with a sly smile and a mischievous wink, “… right now the topic on everyone’s tongue is how scandalized they are that you became betrothed to Shaindele Zuchermann.”
“What? How is that a scandal? Everything was very properly done,” Nathan assured his friend.
“You know why it is a scandal,” Jacob said wryly. “Because you could have had any girl in this shtetl.”
“So?” Nathan asked.
“So every mother with a daughter of a marriageable age is scandalized that you did not choose their daughter. Every father who has been saving for years to build a dowry for their daughter wants to know why you married the daughter of a penniless melamed. The few kopeks that Reb Zuchermann receives for teaching the little schoolboys couldn’t possibly be enough to have saved any sort of dowry.”
“I don’t need a dowry to marry Shaindele,” Nathan said flatly. “She is her own dowry.”
“Your father couldn’t have been very pleased that you married a penniless girl when you could have had your choice of the well-off ones,” Jacob observed.
“No,” Nathan agreed, “he was not pleased.” Nathan cringed at the memory of the row he’d had with his father over this very issue. “But I convinced him that I would have no other than Shaindele.”
“I did not think she was your type,” Jacob said.
“What you mean,” Nathan corrected, “is that you always thought she was your type.”
Jacob blushed. Nathan was right. Since they had been little children, Jacob had always been hopelessly in love with Shaindele. She was kind to him and generous with her affection, just as she was with everyone else. But it was clear that she was not attracted to him in that special way. Jacob had finally given up hope and married Bella Straussberger, but Shaindele’s frail beauty, her haunting other-worldliness, was never very far from Jacob’s thoughts, or from his heart. Nathan had never struck him as the kind of boy to be attracted to that sort of fragility and vulnerability, as entrancing as it was. Nathan was a more vital sort of person. Jacob had always though that Nathan would only be happy with a vibrant, passionate, earthy sort of woman whose hungers matched his own.
“Why her?” he asked Nathan directly. “Why Shaindele Zuchermann?”
Nathan averted his eyes. “She’s different. Unique. I’ve always wanted somebody special, and there’s no one like her in this little village.”
“But,” Jacob said knowingly, “unlike us, for you this village is not the world. Perhaps, for you, there is someone even more special out there somewhere?”
“What chance do I have to ever leave this village?” Nathan moaned.
“So you settled for Shaindele out of defeat?” Jacob accused.
“No!” Nathan insisted.
“Then what?” Jacob demanded.
Nathan blushed. “She told me we were destined to be together. She said it was God’s will. She insisted that she would never marry anyone other than me, that her world depended on it.”
“That appealed to your ego,” Jacob said knowingly.
Nathan blushed an even deeper red, discomfited by how well his friend knew him. He was enormously relieved when Simcha Fromowicz walked over and interrupted the conversation.
“Hey, Nathan,” Simcha hailed him. “I was just over in Zhebidov picking up some supplies and there was a letter there for you.” Zhebidov was the nearest town large enough to have a post office.
“A letter? For me?” Nathan was incredulous. Who in the outside world even knew he existed?
“Yes,” Simcha assured him, “for you. I can read can’t I?” He held out the letter. “See. Addressed to Nathan Shlimovitz, is it not?”
Nathan rose and grabbed the envelope, ripping it open immediately. He quickly unfolded the letter inside and began to read hungrily. As its contents revealed themselves to him, his hand began to shake. Then his entire body began to shiver with the enormity of it all.
“Nathan!” Jacob called with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Nathan answered with a laugh. He grabbed Jacob and embraced his friend with joy. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s finally right!”
The world had opened a door for him and he knew his life would never be the same again.
***
“University!” Shaindele said in amazement.
“Yes,” Nathan said, eagerly showing her the letter. They were seated on her front doorstep. The cool evening had a gorgeous full moon, with light bright enough to read by.
“Who is this mysterious benefactor?” Shaindele asked wonderingly.
“If I knew that,” Nathan gently chided, “he wouldn’t be mysterious, would he?”
“But paying not only for the university … and arranging for room and board … but also somehow getting you a permit to attend the School of Engineering, despite the Temporary Laws.”
“The ‘Temporary May Laws’!” Nathan spat. “They’ve been ‘temporary’ for the last two years. They’re only as temporary as this anti-semite of a czar will be, if God truly does listen to his people’s prayers. The area of the Jewish Pale reduced, while we are prohibited from living anywhere else but the shtetls and villages of the Pale! All real-estate contracts with Jews abrogated!”
“Yes,” Shaindele agreed, “and Jewish attendance at university limited to ten per-cent. So how did this benefactor get you a permit?”
“I guess I’m part of the top ten-percent in the country,” Nathan beamed.
Shaindele truly wished she could be more supportive of her fiancée. She loved him for his dreams, but knew his ego often tainted his vision of reality. She wanted to be his wife because there was no one else like him in the shtetl, no one who saw beyond the drab life of their everyday battle for subsistence. But his vision, always focused on the horizon, could lead to tragedy if he stumbled over what was right in front of him.
She knew that her next question would hurt him, deeply. But she felt she had to ask it. “Nathan, who outside of the village even knows you exist?”
She saw the anticipated pain in his face.
“No one …” he replied in a low voice, and then added, more emphatically, “ … yet!”
“Then who …” she began, but Nathan cut her off.
“I will not look a gift-horse in the mouth,” he said sharply. “Can you not simply be proud of me?”
Shaindele gently took his hands in hers and kissed them. He realized how much this cost her. Shaindele was traditional, and what she had just done was forbidden under Torah law. Yes, their betrothal was a half-marriage. They were now forbidden to other people. But, by the same law, they were not permissible to each other until they took their vows under the chupah. That Shaindele would violate her deeply-held beliefs to give him this act of kindness instantly melted his anger.
“I am proud of you,” she said, “and not just because of this piece of paper.”
Why did he always think he heard bells tinkling when she spoke?
But her next question once again spoiled the mood.
“What does the rebbe think of this?” Shaindele asked.
“What does that matter?” he shot back.
“But, Nathan, we always seek the rebbe’s counsel before making such momentous decisions,” she pointed out.
“It’s not his business, and there’s no decision to be made,” he said far more sharply than he intended.
Shaindele lowered her eyes. “I see. And your father?”
“It’s not his business either.”
“You’re his son, Nathan.”
“This letter,” he said, standing up and taking it from her hands, holding it up before her face, “is my ticket to freedom. I won’t ever again need the rebbe, or my father, or …”
“Or me?” Shaindele asked, her eyes downcast, afraid to see what might be in his face.
She exhaled only when she heard him sit down beside her once again, and could feel his mood softening.
“I will always need you, Shaindele,” he said with the tenderness she had come to treasure in his voice.
“You know I will not leave the shtetl,” she said.
“You can leave this place, Shaindele. We both can, now. And if these damned laws won’t allow us to live in the city, we’ll take my engineering degree and emigrate. With that degree,” he said almost breathless with excitement, “we can go anywhere. There must be somewhere in the world where they do not hate Jews. With an engineering degree we can even make a life for ourselves in America!”
“I will not leave the shtetl,” she repeated.
She could feel him deflate as he bitterly said, “That damned business about God having a purpose for you to be here.”
“No,” she corrected. “God has a purpose for us, both of us, to be here.”
“What does God need us for here in this village? Why would God even care about this forsaken little village?” he pleaded.
“God cares about this shtetl,” she said with certainty. “And I don’t know why God needs us here, but I do know that it will lead to tragedy if you try to fight it.”
“Nonesense!” he asserted.
“Jonah …” she began
“The bible!” he spat. “More antiquated nonsense.”
“Jonah,” she went on gently, but firmly, “tried to fight the purpose for which God had made him, and ended up in the belly of the beast.”
“Fairy tales!” he shouted.
“Nathan, if you go, I know you will return to me,” she said with annoying serenity. “But, please Nathan, I beg of you, don’t make God drive you into darkness to put you where you need to be.”
He stood up, his back to her, too fuming with anger to even look at her.
“Please,” Shaindele repeated in a very small voice.
***
The trip to St. Petersburg via the slow, rambling train route was arduous. While he was grateful to his mysterious benefactor, he wished that his patron had sent him a railway ticket that was at least one class hire. After the days spent on the train’s hard, wooden bench, Nathan could no longer feel his buttocks.
But the pain and hardship of the trip was quickly forgotten when the capital city of all the Russias came into sight. Nathan had never seen anything like it before, had never even dreamed that such a city could exist! The towering spires, the crowded streets, the all-consuming noise and bustle, these were all things his mind had never had to comprehend before within the confines of the shtetl. He knew who he was in the village, but who was Nathan Shlimovitz in this strange, wondrous place?
Of one thing he was certain. Nathan Shlimovitz still was, even in this city, a Jew. He tried to ask for directions to his place of lodging, but people took one look at his face, his clothing, heard his Jewish-accented Russian, and sneered in disgust and walked on. Three times he was stopped by police and forced to show his permits allowing him to be in the city. Each time, the policeman gave him a dirty look, but no directions.
Finally, Nathan came across a beggar who, for 2 kopeks, guided him to his lodgings. His landlady was Mrs. Kazantowicz, a Jewess who was allowed to live in the city because for generations her family had been servants to highly-placed nobility. She showed him to his small room, and gave him instructions on how to get to the university the next day.
“Can you tell me, please, missus,” he asked with deference, “who is paying for my lodging?”
“If you were not told,” she replied haughtily, “then I suppose your benefactor has no desire for you to know.”
“I … I just wanted to be able to thank him,” Nathan explained.
“If he needed your thanks,” Mrs. Kazantowicz pointed out, “he would have revealed his identity himself.”
“Yes, of course, but …”
“Dinner is in 15 minutes,” Mrs. Kazantowicz cut him off. “I expect you to wash before coming to table. Always.”
Did she think he grew up in a barn? He was about to give her a piece of his mind, but then thought better of it. If she put him out in the street, he would have no place to go in this wondrous and frightening city. He bit his tongue and poured some water into the wash-basin as she turned her back on him and marched out the door.
***
Nathan’s first day at university was not much better. He caught sneers and outright expressions of disdain as he registered for his courses. Every registrar perused his papers in minute detail, clearly indicating disbelief that this peasant Jew had been allowed entry to their cherished university. One registrar even said, “It’s bad enough that we have to put up with the ten-percenters, but at least they are the cream of the Jewish crop. Educated city boys, all of them. But you!”
Nathan kept his counsel and just lowered his eyes as each registrar reluctantly stamped his curriculum card.
The only high point of the day was finding a philosophy course among the offerings in this school of engineering. He had feared that all the courses would be purely technical, but the Russians love their philosophy. The registrar tried to dissuade him, “Are you sure you want this one? Professor Grebizhevsky can be a hard-ass even on true Russians, but he has even more of a dislike for people of your kind.”
“Yes, please, I would like to register for this course,” Nathan answered in a low voice. This was the first time that a registrar smiled as he stamped Nathan’s card, but it was the smile of a man anticipating a particularly savory dinner.
***
“What is the purpose of Philosophy?” Professor Grebizhevsky boomed to the amphitheatre full of students. But he did not wait for an answer. “Its program is to guide us in how we live. You may think of it as contemplative science, a leisure activity, something one does while sitting with friends by a blazing fire and sipping vodka, or worse yet wine!”
The professor actually spat on the floor as he dismissed the wine-sipping dilettantes. “No!” he thundered, and Nathan swore that he could almost feel the large room shake. “Philosophy without action is mental masturbation.” Nathan was shocked, and thrilled. He had never heard such open speech before. He was truly in a new world now.
“So the question on the table is,” Professor Grebizhevsky challenged the young minds sitting raptly before him, “given the state of our times, what must the program of Philosophy be now, here in our beloved motherland?”
The students, believing that this was simply another rhetorical question, sat in silent awe. But the professor remained equally silent. After a minute or two he leaned forward over his lectern and glowered at them. “Well, don’t be sheep. What do you think?”
Hesitantly students stood up and declared what they thought the current program of philosophy in Russia should be. As the momentum built, the conversation became more robust, with many students standing and stating in the most intensely impassioned terms their answer to the question on the table. It was the most exhilarating moment in Nathan’s life. Yes, the Talmudic conversation in yeshiva had been equally energetic and emotional, but the question then had been what God thought, or perhaps what some ancient rabbi thought. No one had ever cared what he thought.
Nathan could not contain himself. He leaped out of his chair and almost shouted, “I think the program of philosophy must …”
“Young man,” Professor Grebizhevsky cut into the conversation for the first time. “When I want the opinion of a peasant Jew, I will ask for it.”
Nathan felt as if he had been physically slapped in the face and he recoiled. Lowering his head, Nathan tried to sheepishly protest, “But, professor, you asked the class …”
“The true Russians in the class will now continue the discussion,” Grebizhevsky said calmly and dismissively.
There was a moment or two of embarrassed silence in the classroom until Grebizhevsky growled, “By this lack of discussion, am I to take it that there are no true Russians in this class?” Slowly, the students began offering their opinions, the conversation gradually returning to its former volubility. It was as if Nathan had never said anything.
So here too, Nathan thought, no one cares about what I think.
He gathered up his notebook and pencils and left the lecture hall. Standing in the hallway outside the scene of his humiliation, Nathan stared out the window and fought back tears. He looked at the intimidating buildings of the city with their menacing spires. He had thought he could be accepted here, could find a world beyond the shtetl, a new world that welcomed him. How foolish he had been!
“Is that it then?” Nathan was startled to hear the woman’s voice break in upon his moment of self-pity. He turned around and found himself face-to-face with the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her hair blazed golden-red. Her green eyes were on fire and penetrated into his soul. She was clearly angry with him. Why? What had he done to her?
“Wh … what?” was all he could manage to stammer.
“Is that it then?” she repeated. “By the looks of you, you’ve been brave enough to cross into a new, different world from the one you’ve always known. Why? To give yourself a chance at a better life I assume. That took courage. I admire courage. I admire people who want a better life, for themselves and others. I do not admire people who when a pitiful dog barks at them they turn tail and run away.”
“But he … he is the professor!” Nathan objected.
“He is a dog,” the woman repeated. “You think it is any easier being a woman than being a Jew in this university? He tried to make my life miserable as well, at first. And then when he came sniffing around my skirts, just like a dog, and I sent him packing, well then, he doubled his efforts to break me. But I’m still here. But you! He barks at you once and you are out here sniveling. Having thoughts of running back to your little village in the Pale? Well, I won’t have it!”
He was stunned. Stunned and confused. “You won’t have it?”
“Any time they succeed in intimidating one of us it just makes them bolder in going after the rest of us. And I just won’t have that!” she said emphatically. “We’ll pull you through this.”
“We?”
“There are others here, in this university, in this city, in this nation, who want to see a new world,” she explained, “a world that is not run by the Grebizhevskys. We, I and the others who want to see this new world, we will pull you through this. Together.”
“It sounds like a nice world that you and the others want,” Nathan said.
At this, she softened a bit. “Yes, it is a beautiful world we envision. But it will not happen on its own. Will you help us build it?”
“Me? How?”
“Well,” she replied, “you can start by walking back into that lecture hall.”
Walk back in there? He was horrified by the thought. The lecture hall held nothing but humiliation for him. They’d all laugh at him. They’d deride him. He would die of embarrassment. But when he looked into the woman’s green eyes he knew he had no choice. He walked back into the hall.
“Ah,” Professor Grebizhevsky said, eyeing Nathan’s return, “I see the wandering Jew has returned.” And as the woman re-entered the hall and headed to her seat, the professor added, “And it seems he has not been alone out there. I suppose, Miss Markov, that you are attracted to beards and earlocks?”
As Nathan feared, the other students began to laugh. “Well, then, professor,” Nathan shot back, “perhaps you’d have had more luck if you grew them as well.”
Grebizhevsky was non-plussed, speechless. The class was stone silent. As Nathan took his seat he added, “And it wouldn’t hurt you to take off a few pounds as well.” He was astonished at his own brashness. If it had only been him, he knew he would have shriveled. But the professor’s attack on Miss Markov had been too much for him to swallow. Perhaps there was something to her idea of standing united.
Grebizhevsky regained his composure and was about to fire back at Nathan, but then seemed to think better of it. Perhaps he thought about what kind of tale Miss Markov could tell his wife. “Let’s continue the discussion,” was all he said. Across the room, Nathan and this amazing woman he had just met exchanged glances and smiles. Yes, there was definitely something to this idea of being united.
***
Over tea at a little café that afternoon, Nathan discovered that her name was Irina and that she was the daughter of a very important civil engineer with connections in the right places. Having no sons, but determined that a child of his would follow in his footsteps, her father had used every one of those connections to secure Irina a place at the university. But it bothered her that she should be able to attend university because her father had friends among the elite, while millions of other women were consigned to a life of diapers and dishes.
“But, Irina,” Nathan protested. “That’s the way of the world, isn’t it? Those with power and position get the best the world has to offer.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Irina said fervently. “We can change it. We can make a difference. And we are making a difference. Look, it’s 1886 and here we are an upper-class woman and a peasant Jew both attending university and actually having a cup of tea together. We will keep at it until there is total social equality.”
“You keep saying ‘we’,” Nathan challenged, “how many of you are there? It’s going to take a lot of ‘we’s’ to make the kind of difference you’re talking about.”
“Oh, there are enough of us,” she responded coyly. “And when the time is right they will understand just how many of us there are.”
“‘They’, ‘we’, it all sounds too mysterious for me. I am just a simple peasant.”
“A simple peasant with a lot of courage,” she replied. “Yes, you were crushed at first. That is understandable. But you went back, and you challenged the dog. That took courage. As I said, I admire courage.” She smiled at him. It bothered him a bit to think of how much it meant to him that she smiled at him.
She leaned in close to him and dropped her voice to a confidential tone, “Do you want to know who my heroine is?” He nodded. She whispered, “Sophia Perovskaya.”
“Who?” Nathan had no recollection of the name.
“Sophia Perovskaya,” Irina repeated. “Do you not know of the Pervomartovtsy?”
Nathan was confused. Pervomartovtsy was a date, not a name. The first of March. What did that have to do with this Sophia Perovskaya? And then it struck him. The First of March! Five years earlier Czar Alexander II had been assasinated on that date by terrorist organization called The People’s Will. The Pervomartovtsy, The First of March, was the faction that had carried out the assasination.
Nathan was terrified. No good had ever come of assasinations, especially not for the jews. It was that murder of the czar that was responsible for all the repression his people were suffering now under the May Laws. And one of the assasins was Irinia’s heroine. Who was this beautiful woman he was having tea with? This was too dangerous.
“We could get sent to Siberia just for mentioning the Pervomartovtsy,” Nathan hissed.
“What happened to the courage I so admired in you?” she pouted.
He felt trapped by how much he wanted this woman to admire him.
“Tell me about this Sophia Perovskaya,” he capitulated.
Delighted, Irina went on, “Like me, Perovskaya was from an aristocratic family. Her grandfather was even the Minister of the Interior. Yet, when she went to university she came to espouse the radical movement which meant to overthrow the very class she belonged to. She believed in social justice, you see. She is the reason I wanted so much to go to university.”
“And she was a member of The First of March?” Nathan asked. “She was involved with the assassination of the czar?”
“Yes! Isn’t it glorious?” Irina glowed. “Oh, she knew she would die for it. She once said to Kropotkin, ‘We have begun a great thing. Two generations perhaps, will succumb in the task, and yet it must be done.’ What courage, what conviction, to give your life for something you know only later generations will benefit from. And she didn’t mind dying. It was dying because of a coward she had trusted that caused her anguish in her last moments.”
“Are you talking about Nikolai Rysakov?” Nathan asked.
Irina looked at Nathan with fresh admiration. “I see that even in your little village you managed to keep informed about the events in the world. That must have been very difficult to do.”
He felt warmed by her aknowledgement of what he’d had to overcome to see beyond the boundaries of the shtetl.
“Yes, Rysakov,” she went on. “At first he was considered a great man. He was the first to throw a bomb at the czar on that glorious First of March.”
“And was immediately arrested for it on the spot,” Nathan observed.
“Yes,” Irina confirmed. “At that point he would have gone down in history as one of the greatest heros of the social justice movement. He could have been a legend. But fear proved his undoing. The pig tried to pander to his captors by informing on his comrades.”
“But I thought Rysakov was executed,” Nathan interjectied.
“He was,” Irina agreed. “Those who have power are merciless. They used his information to round up all the conspirators, but they hanged Rysakov anyway with the rest of his betrayed friends. Perovskaya was magnificent, facing her death with unbounded courage. On the gallows itself she walked up to each of her comrades and gave them a kiss. When she came to Rysakov she just turned her back. Perovskaya knew how to treat a coward. I know that I, myself, could never feel anything for someone without courage.”
“Neither could I,” Nathan agreed, wanting desperately for her to feel something for him, even if it meant he would have to exhibit a courage he did not really feel.
“Even the czarist puppet executioners had disdain for Rysakov’s craveness,” Irina said emphatically. “They hung him last so that he would have to watch every one of the friends he had betrayed die a horrible death right before his eyes.”
“Such are the wages of betrayal,” Nathan obeserved.
Irina grabbed his hand excitedly. “I knew you would understand,” she gushed. “I knew you were someone I could admire!”
Nathan felt a spark in his blood that he had never before experienced, not even with Shaindele. Again, he was terrified by just how far he knew he would go to gain this woman’s admiration … and her beautiful smile.
***
Nathan and Irina began seeing a lot of each other. He thrilled at how vibrant she was, how she seemed to grab every moment of life and demand that it yield to her everything it had to offer. How everything always seemed to be so immediate and so important. So different than Shaindele.
Shaindele! He hated the pang of guilt he felt whenever he thought of Shaindele. But he hadn’t been unfaithful to her. Of course, the opportunity to be unfaithful had not yet presented itself. What would he do if it did? But he had no reason to feel guilty, he assured himself. Nothing had happened. Yet. And it was all Shaindele’s fault. If only she had not been so stubbornly determined to stay in the shtetl. Could she not see that he was meant for bigger things than the tiny village? Irina clearly understood that Nathan had a destiny that did not involve a horse and a plow. Why couldn’t Shaindele see who he really was?
As the weeks passed he began to feel more and more certain that he had made the right decision in coming to the university. His classes were going very well. Irina inspired him with confidence and energy. She told him repeatedly that he was meant to be something great, to do something significant. Under her influence he, for the first time, allowed himself to truly believe that his future as an engineer was assured.
Studying with her was a major advantage as well. She was brilliant. Almost every night they met at the tea-house and reviewed the day’s course-work. The only nights they did not study together were when she attended meetings that she would not discuss. He had a pretty good idea what those meetings were about, and it terrified him. Her dangerous political leanings were the only fly in the ointment in their friendship. She would not tell him anything about them, which worried him even more, and his need to know irritated her.
One night at the tea house the distance between them seemed particularly unbearable. She had been to a meeting the night before and he could see that something significant had happened. She was irritable, distracted, tense.
“Irina, isn’t it time we talked about these meetings you go to?” he asked as she returned from the samovar with a steaming cup of tea.
“You know it’s something I cannot discuss,” she said preemptorially. She saw the deep concern etched on his face and she softened a bit. “Nathan, if there was anyone outside the circle I would want to talk to about this it would be you. I even …”
She caught herself and abruptly stopped speaking, taking a long sip of her tea.
“Yes?” he urged her.
She decided to plunge forward. “I even have this dream that you would join us. I’ve talked about you to … to the circle.”
“You talked about me to your circle?”
She could see he was uncomfortable with this and so she took his hand reassuringly. “I’ve only told them what a wonderful man you are. They are very impressed.”
This appealed to him, that this secret, mysterious circle would be impressed with Nathan Shlimovitz from the shtetl.
“Perhaps I could have a glass of tea with your friends sometime?” he asked, dipping his toe into the water.
Irina’s face turned hard again. “Nathan, this is something you do not toy with. There is no interview. There is no making acquaintance. You know nothing or you know everything. And you cannot know anything until you have fully committed.”
“This is madness,” Nathan said irritatedly. “You expect people to just commit to something like this without knowing anything?”
“It is not usually a problem,” she said resignedly, standing up. “People usually come to us, in fact. They do not need to ask anything because, you see, they know who they are and where they stand. I see now that you do not know who you are or where you stand. I have wasted my time with you.”
She turned to leave. It was too much for Nathan to take. In moments he had gone from being impressive to being of no interest whatsoever. The fall from grace made him feel dizzy. “Irina,” he called out, “please wait!”
She turned to face him. “Please,” he said, “I know where I stand.”
“And where is that?” she demanded.
He stood and walked to face her. “With you,” he said and was surprised at how fervently he meant it. “I stand with you.”
No words could have touched her more deeply. As a woman in a man’s world, all her life she had been expected to be the follower – to stand with her father, her professors, her circle leader, and eventually her husband. That this man would unreservedly stand with her made her feel something she had never experienced before.
She reached up and took his face in her hands. Pulling him to her, she kissed him deeply. He tried to resist. Later on he would often remind himself that he had tried hard to resist. But it was useless. The feel of her, her scent, her touch, those full, soft lips. He tried to want to resist, but he really had no desire to do so. His desire was all for her, to know what lay beyond that kiss. He kissed her back. And again. And again.
“Hey,” the owner of the tea shop called out, “I run a decent place here.”
They both laughed, laughter of pure joy, laughter of liberation, laughter of love. Irina grabbed his hand excitedly. “Come,” she said. “Come with me.”
***
When they came to the townhouse door Irina nervously fumbled through her bag for keys and then got the door open. Nathan hesitated at the doorstep.
“What’s the matter?” Irina asked
“Your landlady,” Nathan said, “she allows you to have visitors? I mean, male visitors?”
Irinia laughed heartily. “Nathan, you are looking at the landlady. I own this house.”
Nathan was stunned. He knew that Irina’s family was upper-class, but for her, a university student, to own a house here in the capital! What did such a woman see in him?
He tentatively crossed the threshhold.
He held out a book. “Well, shall we resume studying?”
“Nathan,” she chided, “do you really think we are here to discuss engineering?”
He shook his head, but could not make himself move, could not make himself speak. He knew exactly what they were there for. And it paralyzed him. He knew there was no stepping away from what was about to happen, and once it did happen there was no stepping back for him to his old life.
Her face lit by a smile whose meaning he could not penetrate, she took his hand and gently stroked his beard.
“Why?” Nathan croaked
Irina giggled. His even-greater nervousness seemed to have a calming effect on her own nerves. “Why what, dear Nathan?”
“Why me?” was all he could respond.
Indeed, she wondered, why him? Was it simply because Daddy would die to know that this peasant Jew was about to make love to his daughter here in the family’s own house? Was Nathan simply another milestone on her revolutionary evolution? She supposed that was all part of her attraction towards him. It would be futile to deny that becoming involved with this Jew was the strongest break she could make with the life that the circumstances of her birth had trapped her in.
But it was more than that. He was so clearly out of his element here in the great city. His vulnerability touched her. All her life the her gender had been at war with her natural robustness and thirst for experience. Always she had been out of place, threatened. In every setting she had ever known she had felt the most vulnerable one there. Her outward assertiveness was a mask of defense against the life-long alienation she’d had to deal with. Even among her comrades within The People’s Will she lived in fear that they would one day discover that her strength and fortitude were all a sham. And now, finally, here was someone even more vulnerable than she was, someone who truly needed her. He touched her heart in a way no one else had ever been able to.
“Why?” she finally responded, “Because you are unlike anyone I have ever known.” Then squeezing his hand tighter, she eagerly led him to her bedroom.
She lit a lamp when they entered the room and turned the flame down low. Then for a long moment they stood awkwardly still, unsure of the next move to make. Irina decided that her ability to feign decisiveness, to make the first move even when it terrified her, had always served her well. Time to pretend to be unafraid once more. Slowly, she began to disrobe.
Nathan was mesmerized. He had never seen so much as a woman’s ankle, and now this gorgeous body was being uncovered, being put on display for his benefit. It all had a dreamlike quality. So that’s what a woman’s leg looks like! So much sleeker, more appealing than a man’s. He had never imagined. And then, after a sharp intake of her breath and a barely noticeable moment of hesitation, she revealed her breasts. They were mythic creatures to him. He had heard about them, but had no conception what they really were. So round, so full, so perfect.
Irina gently pulled him to her and, with trembling fingers, she guided his mouth to her bosom. He kissed her right breast gently, suckled the nipple and she moaned. He had made a woman moan! There was something so basic, something primitive, something that reached down to his very core that he could do something to make a woman moan. He was dumbstruck with the wonder of it.
“Now I want to see you,” she said in a hoarse voice.
At first he had no idea what she meant. See him? He was right there. Then he realized she wanted him to undress. He was panic-stricken. She would see his shoulders, rounded from years behind the plow, his hairy back, his knocked knees, and she would be repelled. He had no doubt about it.
“I want to see you,” she repeated, more urgently.
He stood up and began unbuttoning his shirt. That was when he remembered that he was wearing tzitzit, the traditional fringed shawl worn by orthodox Jews, under his shirt. For reasons he could not even name, he was desperately embarassed that she would see this. He froze.
Irina stepped forward to continue undoing the buttons of his shirt and she caught sight of the tzitzit. The garment seemed infinitely dear to her, a symbol of how different he was, and how far she was traveling in making love with him. She pulled the shawl off his shoulders and over his head. The tenderness and care with which she folded it and placed it lovingly upon the dresser touched him deeply and told him that, as unfathomable as it seemed, she truly loved him, loved him for whatever he was. The last of his reservations melted away. When she reached out again to undo his pants, he touched her hand gently and said, “I can finish this myself.”
With that strangely seductive smile she removed the rest of her underclothing as he removed his own clothes. They went under the covers and she embraced him. The feeling of her arms around his bare body took him to a different world in a different universe than he had ever known existed.
“Wait,” he managed to croak through a throat choked with desire. “There is something I have to tell you first … so you are not disappointed. I have no idea how to do this. This is my first time.”
Her smile grew conspiratorial as she replied, “I have a secret to share with you. It is my first time as well.”
He could not believe it. He had thought she was so worldly, such a free spirit. He had assumed … And here she was, choosing him to give herself to for the very first time. His heart, his whole being was filled with her. There was no reason to hesitate. This would surely be the greatest moment of his life.
It was a disaster. He knew what was supposed to go where, but that was the limit of his knowledge. He had no idea what, if anything, was supposed to happen before what was supposed to go “there” was applied to the task. He rolled over on top of her and, driven by an untamable desire, shocked her by immediately thrusting forward and entering her. Initially, he felt a moment of resistance. That was all right. The talmud spoke about the hymen, and he knew that was supposed to happen. She shrieked as he broke through past the barrier and, even worse, the moment he was fully in her he felt himself explode and release all the liquid fire that was inside him. The talmud said nothing about this, but he was fairly certain this was not supposed to happen.
As he shuddered uncontrollably, he heard the sound he most dreaded he would hear – her laughter. He immediately shriveled and fell out of her. He wanted desperately to flee, to get out of the bed, fly into the street and never see her again. But she locked her strong arms around his back. Why was she holding him here? And then somehow he realized, somehow he knew that her laughter came not from derision, but from relief.
“Well, thank god that’s over with!” she exclaimed. Purringly she added, “Now, let’s do this right.”
***
The second time that night went much better than the first. And the third … well!
Afterwards, Nathan lay with his head towards the foot of the bed, propped up on his elbow, his free hand gently stroking the outside of her thigh as she lay back and smiled at him. She was a wonder! A revelation. Who could have imagined that under all that clothing lay this … this great and mysterious beauty! What was it about the shape of her thigh that made him wish eternity could be spent just touching it, just worshiping it? Were people insane? Why do we hide such things?
“I’ve crossed a line and I can never go back,” he said, more to the world at large than to Irina.
“Are you sorry?” she asked.
“No!” he responded immediately. “I never want to go back to a world where I cannot lie with you like this.”
She moved so that she could reward him with an appreciative kiss.
“Now that I’ve crossed this line,” he said, “there are no more boundaries that frighten me.”
“Mmmmm …” she said as she continued kissing him … “that may be dangerous my dear one. A man who lives without boundaries does not know where he stands.”
He sat up and put her hands on her arms to command her attention. “I said I stand with you, and I mean it now more than ever. I do not need to know anything more about your circle than the fact that you are in it. I want to join you in that circle.”
“Nathan, do you mean it? It’s not something to be taken lightly.”
“I do mean it,” he confirmed.
“I’ll still make love with you even if you don’t,” she assured him.
“Our bodies are not enough,” he said fervently. “I want to be one with you in every way.”
“Nathan,” Irina warned, “you must understand what Sophia Perovskaya understood, what I understand - that being part of this circle may likely mean our deaths.”
“Then we will die together,” he said, “and we will be one even in that!” As he said it he found himself pleased with how romantic it sounded.
Irina beamed, “I will arrange for you to meet Alexander.”
“Alexander?”
“Alexander Ulyanov, our circle leader.”
He was amazed at the speed of this. A scant few hours ago she would not tell him anything about her circle. Now she was revealing the name of its leader. So simple! All it took was a commitment.
Their bodies entwined on the bed and she clung to him more fierecely than even in the moments of their greatest sexual passion. Yes, he thought, shared commitment, even unto death, will join us more certainly than anything else could. And he desperately wanted to be joined to this amazing woman. He needed to be one with her.
They lay in each other’s arms for a while, Irina beginning to drift off into sleep, Nathan basking in his own heroism. Suddenly he sat bolt upright. Startled and frightened, Irina immediately came fully awake.
“What is it?” she demanded.
“Irina,” he responded excitedly, “I’ve come to a decision.”
“Have you not already made enough life-changing decisions for one night?” she asked, her fear now replaced by a coy smile.
“One more will make it complete,” he said with a real firmness. “Do you have scissors?”
“Scissors?” She was bewildered.
“Yes, scissors,” he said a bit impatiently, as if there was a decision he was afraid he would go back on if too much time passed. “Irina, do you have scissors?”
“Yes, of course I have scissors.”
“I want to cut off my beard, crop my hair.”
“Nathan!” She was shocked and she did not know why.
“A new life should have a new face. And, in a very literal way, this will cut my ties to my old life.”
“I like your beard and your earlocks,” she said, gently stroking his hairy face. “It’s part of what makes you so different.”
“If we are truly to be one,” he insisted, “we will have to share a world. Please understand. I need to cross into your world. I will always be me, always be different. I know. But I must look like someone from your world, not mine.”
Irina understood, only too well, the need to appear different than one really felt on the inside. She got up and pulled out the chair in front of her vanity. “Here,” she said. “Sit.”
“What?”
“I will cut your hair for you,” she said. “After all, we are one.”
He sat in the chair. She pulled out a pair of scissors and tenderly, lovingly she began clipping his hair. As lock after lock fell away from his head he felt himself liberated from the chains that held him to the little shtetl. Then as Irina started working on his beard, his face started to re-emerge in the vanity’s mirror. He had almost forgotten what he really looked like. And how different it now seemed from the boy’s face he had worn just before growing the beard.
When Irina got down to the stubble she ordered him, “Wait here.”
She went into a little bathroom next to the bedroom and he heard some running water. She returned holding a razor and a cup of lathered shaving soap. He felt the solid earth fade away from beneath his chair and his heart was rent by a pain he had never before experienced. “Whose things are those?” he demanded
She smiled saucily. “Oho! Jealousy! So soon in our love affair?” She laughed.
“This is no laughing matter,” he said – half angrily, half pleadingly. “You told me I was your first.”
She stroked his stubbly face gently, teasingly. “And so you are my first, my darling. And my last.”
His heart melted. “But … but that’s a man’s razor.”
She giggled. “My parents owned this townhouse before they moved permanently to their dacha. Daddy left his shaver behind. And good thing for you he used to let me shave his face when I was a young girl.”
With stroke after tender stroke, she attacked his stubble and removed the last vestiges of who he had been before tonight.
“Now all ties to my past are gone,” he said as she finished. “Only our future remains.”
“Only our future,” she agreed with tears of joy and love lining her sparkling eyes.
Only our future. How he loved the sound of that. And then his stomach sank. Only our future! Only our future? Only our future???
“Oh my god!” he shouted impulsively. “Shaindele!”
“Who?” Irina asked, startled.
“Shaindele,” he repeated, and then added sheepishly, “my betrothed.”
Fire lit Irina’s face. “You get jealous because I have a man’s shaving razor in my house, but you somehow neglect to mention that you have a betrothed?”
“She’s nothing,” Nathan pleaded. “She’s part of my past, in the shtetl. I’m never going back there. Never!”
“If she’s your betrothed,” Irina shot back, “then she’s damn well part of your present, not your past.”
“Not for long,” Nathan said, trying to reassure her. “Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll send her a letter telling her it’s over. Then I’ll find a rabbi. Somewhere. I’ll get divorce papers.”
“Divorce papers!” she bellowed. “Do you have a wife as well as a betrothed? Wife, betrothed, mistress! Do I now complete the set?”
“No, no,” he pleaded. “Please calm down. For Jews the breaking of a betrothal requires divorce papers. It’s just a formality.”
Irina began to regain control of herself. And when she did, she began to feel compassion for the poor woman whose world would be shattered by tomorrow’s letter. “Breaking a woman’s heart is not a formality, Nathan.”
He nodded. She was right. He owed Shaindele something. How could he make it clear to her how much he had changed, how different he was now, how clear it was that they did not belong together?
As he pondered, he caught a sidelong glance of a stranger’s face in the vanity mirror. It was a moment or two before he remembered the face was his.
“That’s it!” he exulted. “Tomorrow we go to a photographer’s shop. I will send her a picture along with the letter.”