Free The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris Page B

If it got too much, he left the house.
    In the kitchen, she clattered the pots and pans, banged down the food on the table and stirred the soup with unusual venom so that it spilled over the sides and congealed in olive splodges. In front of the children, they tried to maintain an edifice of normality, their voices falsely cheerful, but their eyes no longer met. The children were adult enough to sense the unease lurking between them; it surged like an electric current fuelled by their mother’s unspoken anger. Meal times had the surreal quality of a farce but no one was laughing. Even sixteen-year-old Moishe behaved himself, relenting from his adolescent sullenness. Between her husband and Avromi a grudging, unspoken truce had been established.
    Her pain poisoned her cooking, burning the chollah and souring the cheesecake. Her gefilte fish, usually sweet and delicate to the palate, left an acidic aftertaste. Her tzimmes that had given guests so much pleasure now gave them indigestion. But nobody dared complain. The family chewed and swallowed with difficulty. Moishe would sometimes ask to be excused only to spit out the gristly lumps of goulash hidden in the pouches of his cheeks.
    Over the space of a few weeks the initial fury receded into a seething contempt and finally a cool indifference. She returned to her teaching, but the irony of teaching girls like Chani to use the mikveh every month as part of her wifely duty made her feel deeply uneasy.
    The Rebbetzin stared at herself in the mirror. It all seemed such an effort. She felt she was drifting at the bottom of the ocean. The bedroom walls seemed to close in on her. Shabbes was due in four hours. She couldn’t think clearly in the presence of their separated bed. The Rebbetzin decided to take a walk in the park and return in time to prepare.
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    Rabbi Zilberman missed his wife. He ached for her and his yearning formed a knot in his stomach. His chest felt constricted and his heart seemed to beat faster. It was a kind of pain he had not felt before.
    When she bent to unload the dishwasher, he gazed at her soft, round rump. Her skirt clung to her hips and he longed to grasp them and press himself up against her, his hands roaming over her belly and across her breasts. But he restrained himself, seeking distraction by sorting out the cutlery, checking each tine for rust or stubborn food particles. He would polish them vigorously with a tea towel and throw each utensil into the meat drawer so that they crashed against each other – which was more than he did with his wife these days.
    They had not touched for so long. How much longer, HaShem? A man must wait. He was tired of waiting. It was his own fault – he should have talked about things when she had approached him. But once again he hadn’t been able to face it.
    It was another Friday afternoon. He sat in his dusty, grey office and thought about the young hossen who had just left. He heard his footsteps clump down the stairs to the street below. Last week, he had spoken to Baruch Levy and the week before to another young man. Marriage was a never-ending business. The young men wore the same dark suits and white shirts, and the same anxious, fearful expression. They sat on the edge of the plastic chair and listened intently to his words. He was a broken record, intoning the same advice each week.
    Rabbi Zilberman wanted to lunge across his desk and grab each young hossen by the lapels, look him in the eye, and say: ‘Love her, listen to her! When she needs you, run to her. Give to her with your whole heart for in time, if you’re lucky, she will be more than a helpmate. She will be your best friend. Forget about talking too much to her! Talk to each other all day and all night if you need to. You must give even when you don’t feel like giving. For this is what it means to truly love another.’
    But he restrained himself. Instead he spoke of duty and moderation. And felt like a