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Laughing out loud, he turned and looked at his image in the gilt hall mirror. My, how shaggy! Wet! How disheveled! But happy! Happy! He found himself possessed of an excited and yet cautious confusion.
He had taken great pleasure outside the baker's door and yet there were so many sins and so much shame growing on the fields where this kind of pleasure bloomed. Where was his anger? He could not feel it now. Where was his litany, his sour prayer? Yochanan loved his wife and trusted her too. Strangely, he still trusted her. The image of Esther in the baker's arms was an excruciatingly beautiful flower. Vicarious, criminal, devastating, and yet thrillful. He ached with every petal, leaf, and fresh-cut stem of it.
Once again, he imagined the baker's dark hands thrusting upward into Esther's body, her mouth half open, lips wet. Yochanan imagined and imagined, and grew once again aroused while standing alone in the antechamber still dripping from the rain. But he didn't touch himself this time. He was in his own house and the walls were lined with holy books. Yochanan could not bring such odd illicit flowers home with him. Rubbing his hands together, he put them once more through his beard. As if he could comb out the confusion. A servant walked into the antechamber.
"Oh, sir, I didn't hear you . . . come in, sit by the fire, take off your wet clothes and eat some fresh rolls just come from the baker. Esther, the lady, your wife, she has just brought them in through the kitchen courtyard door."
My father writes:
In 1837 there was a horrible earthquake in the northern city of Sefat, home to devotees of the mystical branch of Judaism called Kabbalah. More than five thousand people were killed and those that escaped left the city and wandered throughout Palestine. Many half-mad old kabbalists made their way to Jerusalem. The streets were full of their ragged and deranged numbers. Yochanan and Esther, working with the British Consul, set up a charitable foundation to aid their cause. Amongst other projects, they raised money for an orphanage. Once the money was raised, Esther became its de facto director.
I write:
While her husband had come in wet, Esther had arrived home soaking. She had gotten caught in the brunt of the squall. And although both her color and her spirits were still lifted from her doughy tryst, everything else about her dragged. Her hair had come loose under her hat and lay in sopping tendrils all about her face. And her long maroon cloak, drenched at the bottom, hung heavily around her feet.
In the kitchen she threw off her floppy hat and stepped out of the cloak, gratefully peeling its wetness off of her body. The only dry thing about her were the rolls, which were curled into a cloth that she had stuffed under her cloak and which she had held tight into her chest as she made her way home. Suddenly laughing, she thrust the rolls away from her body and into the hands of the servant who laughed along with her for no reason at all. They continued laughing, Esther and the servant girl, as Esther unconsciously ran her hands up and down her bodice. Her nipples were cold and hard. And they stung a bit too. Esther dropped her hands and walked upstairs to change into dry clothes for dinner.
When she saw Yochanan standing in the front vestibule she stopped, gave him a smile. His look was neither vacant of affection nor full of any familiar warmth. She didn't know how to respond. Again, she tried to smile. And this time was successful. But the smile brought another shiver. As if there were a bit of cold contained in the subtle upturn of her own lips, which, with her smile, spilled out of her whole body. She hugged her arms about her. And she needed to speak. It was odd to stand there not speaking.
"One of the Sefat men begged to be--let into our house, out of . . . ," she began.
Excerpted from The Family Orchard by Nomi Eve. Copyright© 2000 by Nomi Eve. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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