A Book of Great Worth Read online

  After two months, she was summoned to her Aunt Ruth’s for Friday dinner. “And Aaron?” Aunt Ruth inquired after the dishes had been washed and Uncle Avrom had taken the dog and his pipe for a stroll in the late summer evening. The two women sat in the kitchen, drinking cool tea in the flickering candlelight.

  “Aaron? That name sounds familiar. Wasn’t he a fellow in the Bible?”

  “The Bible! You’ve heard of that, Miss Fancypants, what a surprise.”

  “My father mentioned it once or twice, said it was suitable for use as kindling, if dead leaves were not close at hand.”

  “Your father! God rest his soul. He probably did say that. You like him?”

  “My father? Of course I liked him.” Aunt Ruth had been her mother’s closest sister, and Rebeccah had a special affection for her, visiting often since her mother’s death. But this was the first time she’d known her to intrude.

  “Aaron! Oh, you know who I mean. Aaron Greenspun. The man is crazy about you and you don’t know who he is.”

  “Oh, Mr. Goldspun.”

  “It’s Greenspun, dear.”

  “I know, Aunt Ruth. That’s just a little joke.”

  “A joke! The man wants to marry you and you make jokes about his name that should be your name soon.”

  Rebeccah stared at her aunt for a moment, then laughed. “Marry me? Aunt Ruth, the man has only kissed me once, and that so softly it felt like a butterfly batting its wings against my lips. And that only because it was my birthday. When he escorts me home after an evening together he shakes my hand like it was the handle of a pump and he was dying of thirst.”

  “The man is a gentleman,” Aunt Ruth said sternly. “You don’t appreciate that, but you’ll learn to.”

  “The man is beautiful but hollow,” Rebeccah retorted. “He’s like that candle, flickering, precious, hypnotic if you let yourself look too long, but of no substance.” She leaned over and, as if to demonstrate her point, brushed her hand through the small flame, extinguishing it.

  “Candles!” Aunt Ruth snorted through her nose. “You’re burning yours at both ends, Miss Fancypants. Are you twenty-six now, or is it twenty-seven?”

  Rebeccah wrinkled her nose to show her displeasure, but kept her voice soft. “Twenty-five, thank you, just as of three weeks ago, as you well know, since you sent me that lovely crinoline robe.” She paused, tilting her chin up slightly. “You witch. I thought that was an odd gift to be coming from you. You’re preparing my trousseau, aren’t you?”

  “Your mother, God rest her soul, isn’t here to look after you. You’re incapable of doing it yourself, so someone has to. It’s a burden, but I take it happily, Bubala.”

  The two women stared at each other through the growing darkness that had pounced on the room when the candle went out. Finally, Rebeccah blinked. “What do you mean, he wants to marry me?”

  “Just that. Would it be plainer if I spoke in English?”

  “You’re crazy, Aunt Ruth. Forgive me for saying so. How do you dream of such things?”

  “There’s no dreaming, Miss Fancypants. The man said so himself.”

  “Said so. To whom? You?”

  “Not to me, of course, silly,” Aunt Ruth said. “To Uncle Meyer. He was a bit flummoxed, the poor man, his nose always in the store’s books, he hardly knows there’s a real world spinning around him, he asked me to have a word with you, and your Uncle Avrom to look after things. Oh, for goodness sake, Rebeccah, sit back down.”

  Rebeccah was on her feet, her hands closing into small, tight fists at her side. “He told Uncle Meyer he wanted to marry me? Aaron Greenspun did that?”

  “Of course he did, Bubala. Now sit down.”

  She was speechless, words spinning around in her mind but failing properly to lodge on her tongue, like gears in a machine that won’t engage. Worse, she felt, inexplicably, a profound sense of shame, as if she had been caught out in some disgusting betrayal, and blood rushed to her cheeks, making her feel faint. “Who...who...” she stammered.

  “Who does he think he is? A gentleman, that’s who.” Aunt Ruth put her hand on Rebeccah’s wrist and tugged at it until she sat down. “Let me ask you this, Miss Modern Woman, Miss Artist and Literary Type. If your father, God rest his soul, were alive, and if Aaron Greenspun or any other man, I mean any other man of breeding and manners, this isn’t your friends like Morgenstern or that actor I’m talking about, but men who still have the old country in their minds and hearts, if such a man wanted to marry you and your father was alive, wouldn’t you expect such a man to have the courtesy of talking to your father. Not” – she held up a silencing hand – “to ask permission, just to inform. Wouldn’t you expect that? Wouldn’t you even, maybe, be hurt, just a little, if such a man didn’t do that, Miss Head-in-the-Clouds?”

  Rebeccah allowed that maybe she would, “if it was that type of man, yes, maybe. Not if Morgenstern didn’t do it.” And she laughed at that thought, of my father paying a courtesy call.

  “Well, what an admission! But Mr. Greenspun is that sort of man. He’s a gentleman and an old country man. And wait, wait just a second, darling, let me ask you one more thing. Since your father, God rest his soul, isn’t here, wouldn’t it be proper then for Mr. Greenspun to talk to some other member of the Kristol family, if there was one nearby? Your father’s brother, Mort, maybe, except that he lives a thousand miles away?”

  Rebeccah nodded slowly.

  “So, all right. Your father, God rest his soul, isn’t alive, nor, God rest her soul, is your mother, my darling Rebeccah, and your father’s brother and other relatives are a thousand miles away. So whom should Mr. Greenspun talk to about his intentions but your Uncle Meyer. Woolly headed though he is, he is the head of the Williams family, your mother’s people.”

  “He could have talked to me, damn it,” Rebeccah said in English.

  Aunt Ruth smiled and patted Rebeccah’s hand, which had grown cold. “He will, Bubala, he will. As soon as I tell him you’d like him to. Oh, come on, come on. He’s a gentleman, I keep telling you. And maybe just a little bit shy, too.”

  Rebeccah went home and, over the next three days, as she brushed her teeth and combed her hair, as she steamed her vegetables for dinner, as she painted, standing nude under the skylights of her loft, she contemplated her life. She was, in fact, twenty-five years old, and, as her father had died at sixty-eight, her mother at sixty-three, she was well into what was likely the second third of her life. There had been no money left after her mother’s illness, so her father’s wispy promises that maybe, someday, she would go to art school had entirely evaporated. She had delayed her departure to New York and points further on so long that, now, the thought of leaving Cleveland terrified her. And, worse yet, the paintings she had done, piled up like neatly stacked picket signs waiting the next strike in her father’s old office at the union hall, even the painting she was working on now, were shit, no other word for it, in Yiddish, English or any other language. She sighed, lit another cigarette and went to stand in front of her one concession to vanity, a full-length mirror she had justified when she bought it as essential to her study of anatomy. She stood there, in the bright, white northern light streaming down from the ceiling window, for a long time, observing the beginning sag of her breasts, the little puckering of skin along her belly.

  On the third day, Monday, when Aaron came to call for her at the store, she found herself looking at him more closely than usual, examining him, with her painter’s eye, as if looking for defects to match the ones she had found in herself. He had shaven within the hour and there were tiny pinpricks of dried blood clustered along the firm line of his jaw, but his cheeks and neck, when she reached across the table suddenly to stroke them, taking him aback and bringing a pleased, bashful smile to his strong mouth, were smooth as a baby’s. His yellow eyes glistened like those of a cat watching the progress of a mouse across the room, and she had to admit he was simply beautiful, as flawless as a baby that had not yet begun to punc
ture its possibilities. But, at the same time, he was hollow, as she had told her aunt, filled with vapid observations about the weather, the people who worked for him in his shop, the politics of the city. Two weeks before, she remembered, after the theatre, an Ibsen play, his only comment had been a vague “What a way to live.”

  “You don’t have an idea in your head, do you?” she asked suddenly, surprising herself that the thought had translated itself into words, slipping out of her mouth before she could stop them. Aaron blinked, looked surprised but not particularly displeased, as if her comment had referred to his new jacket, a grey seersucker he had taken off the rack that afternoon.

  “I have an idea that I’d like to get to know you better. How’s that?”

  Rebeccah smiled despite herself. So it was out, the overture that, from almost any other man of her acquaintance, likely would have come on the first night, certainly on the second, but from Aaron Greenspun had taken two months. She wondered if he had spoken with her aunt over the weekend, whether something she had said had emboldened him. Well, it didn’t matter. The next step was up to her.

  “That would be very nice,” she said. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  That was all there was to it. So simple, that small exchange, but now there was an understanding between them, and that night, for the first time, when he had escorted her home, he kissed her good night, and she knew the inexorable journey to their marriage had begun.

  The engagement was announced within weeks but the marriage itself didn’t take place until the following spring, after a suitable period of adjustment to the idea and an opportunity for Aaron to purchase and, with Rebeccah’s guidance, furnish a house, in the growing suburb of Shaker Heights, where streets lay like quiet ribbons beneath tall canopies of leaves. The honeymoon was to include an overnight trip on a paddlewheel schooner that plied Lake Erie, taking them from Cleveland to Buffalo, from where they would go by train to Niagara Falls, there spending several days admiring the scenery. It would be aboard the ship, on its first night out, in their stateroom, that their marriage was to be consummated. It was not a fit topic for conversation between betrothed, but Aaron, always a gentleman, did have this observation to make, three weeks before the wedding, when Rebeccah was still assembling the items for her trousseau: “And as to the rest...what will come afterwards...well, I just want you to have no concern. I’m not entirely without experience” – here he offered her his shyest smile, while his eyes blazed with boldness – “and I can promise you that I’ll be gentle. It will be something wonderful, the two of us, don’t you agree?”

  Rebeccah awaited that something wonderful with a great deal of concern, in fact, since she was not without some considerable experience herself. The subject of virginity was not discussed, but it became clear to her, both from Aaron’s manner and occasional small things he said, that he assumed he would be the first man to share sex with her – although he knew she had many male friends, most of whom he disapproved of – and that it was important to him. Honesty seemed out of the question, and the strategy of deception appeared to be inevitable.

  “That will be no trouble at all. Don’t worry your head about it,” her friend Belle told her. She was a woman of indeterminable age but at least beyond forty to judge from the wealth of experience she had crammed into her life, a Romanian who had travelled for several years in France and England on her way to America, a friend, so she said, of Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman, a painter of note who had benefited Rebeccah with encouragement and gentle criticism, a lesbian, though that was not a term then in vogue, who had buried three husbands already, one in each of the previous countries where she’d lived. “Men are such children, it’s easy to deceive them. Flatter them and they’re only too happy to believe anything, no matter how unlikely.” She puffed on one of the slim black cigars she had developed a taste for in Paris and raised her magnificent eyebrows. “When it comes to sex, it’s all the easier since, in bed, they are so helpless. So strong, they think they are, just because blood rushes to one pathetic portion of their anatomy and makes it stiff. At the same time, the rest of them turns to jelly.” She shrugged her shoulders and gestured with a slim, black-gloved hand, as if uncovering some vast expanse. “Men are such children, take it from me, darling Rebeccah. They preen and swagger, they bellow and fight, they spend money like it was water and let compliments flow from their tongues like honey from the rock, they even marry you, so desperate are some of them, all to get you in bed, then a little kiss, a little pat, a jiggle, a thrust, another jiggle and it’s all over. They roll over and lie there like exhausted warriors who have single-handedly defeated great armies, a beatific smile playing about their lips like a butterfly among flowers. No, don’t worry your head, darling, it will be easy to deceive your Mr. Spun-From-Gold. We’ll devise a plan.”

  The deception was remarkably simple, consisting of an easily mixed douche of water, vinegar and alum, guaranteed, Belle promised, to give Rebeccah the rasping friction of a thirteen-year-old girl, and a small quantity of chicken blood, concealed in a pink balloon, the sort that children blow up at birthday parties. The rest, Belle explained, was merely a sleight of hand, a bit of acting and, she said, “that famous guile we women are supposed to have in such abundance. Let’s see if it’s true.” And, on the couch in Belle’s studio, not far from Rebeccah’s own loft, they practiced the weary motions, with Belle taking Aaron’s part.

  “Ah, my darling, my sweet cheri, don’t be frightened, I weeell be gentle,” she sing-songed in English rich with French resonance, and the two of them burst into schoolgirl giggles, rolling together on the sofa like young athletes, though it went no further than that. “Ah, my darling,” Belle gasped, breathless with laughter, “you are so, how they say? Wonderfully...tight.”

  Rebeccah herself went to the pharmacist for the alum, and prepared the mixture as to Belle’s instructions, starting its use two days before the wedding, to be sure. “I feel like the inside of a pickled egg,” she reported.

  “Ah, how wonderfully tasty,” Belle retorted, arching her brows.

  But Belle, on the day of the wedding itself, so it would be fresh, attended to the blood, visiting at the slaughterhouse a kosher rabbi she was acquainted with, who provided what she needed, no questions asked.

  The wedding was small, by the standards of the community, with only family, from Akron as well as Cleveland, and a few of Rebeccah’s and Aaron’s closest friends attending. Rebeccah had doubted most of her café friends would be interested, or would approve; besides, she had found herself, in recent months, drifting away from them, with the exception of Belle and a couple of other women. Uncle Meyer, as head of the family, and the wealthiest, hosted the party at his home in the Heights, though Uncle Avrom, as the favourite uncle, played the part of the surrogate father, standing up to give the bride away. Aaron broke the muffled glass with one determined stomp, there was dizzying music, crowded tables of food that all seemed to be flavoured with honey and glasses of sweet wine that couldn’t be emptied. Then, as her head spun, Rebeccah was led by the hand to a waiting motorcar by Aaron, her husband – her husband – and they were off to the docks.

  Her head was still filled with spinning wafts of wool when they were shown to their cabin, and as soon as the porter was gone, Aaron had her in his arms, covering her mouth, nose, ears and neck with moist, indistinct kisses. She extricated herself, took her overnight bag and locked herself in the small bathroom where she made one final application of the douche before putting on her nightgown. Then, with the balloon cupped in her palm, she made her entrance.

  “You look wonderful, darling,” Aaron said in English, his yellow eyes seeming to dance in the soft glow of the kerosene lamp. “You get into bed. I’ll just be a minute.”

  She did as he said and, as soon as the door softly shut behind him, slipped the balloon under her pillow. Then, with her eyes gradually slipping into a sharp focus on what was either a stain or a shadow on the ceiling, she waited, her breath ragged, her h
eart pounding, just as if she really were a virgin.

  Afterwards, as Aaron slept, Rebeccah put a robe over her gown, slid her feet into slippers and crept from the cabin to walk along the deserted deck. The night was thick and dark, like an old woollen cloak, and cold. She stood against the rail, shivering and clutching her arms, staring down at where, from the choppy roll of the deck beneath her feet, she could tell the foaming waves of the lake were splattering against the ship’s hull. But she could see nothing and even the sound of the waves was absent, drowned out by the whining of the engines, which must have been close by where she stood. She could have just as easily been aboard one of Jules Verne’s fantastic ships, sailing through the darkness of space, as on the paddlewheeler Albany, somewhere in the middle of Lake Erie, suspended between two countries and two worlds. The deception had been so simple, so absurdly successful, just as Belle had promised. Aaron had been still a little drunk, his shining eyes excited but only half open as he slipped into bed and turned to her, and he’d been hasty, clumsy, needing, despite her pretense of innocence, her discreet hand to guide him. The alum had done its job almost too well, and there’d been pain, for him as well as her, and then it was over, almost before it had begun, leaving her barely enough time to reach back beneath the pillow for the balloon, sliding it down along her sweaty side, before he rolled away. She clenched it tightly in her palm, pricking it with the nail of her index finger, and smeared the tepid blood along her thighs and into the dripping wet hair covering her aching vulva. She had lain there for a moment, feeling like the victim of some bizarre religious ritual, waiting for him to lift the sheet, seeking the evidence for himself, but as it happened he was already drifting off to sleep, one hand tossed lightly across her breast like a statement of trust and possession, and he never did look.