I Am Forbidden Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Anouk Markovits

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  HOGARTH is a trademark of the Random House Group Limited, and the H colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-98475-3

  JACKET DESIGN BY DAVID J. HIGH, highdzn.com

  JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLA VAN DE PUTTELAAR

  v3.1

  To Larry Berger

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Book I

  Szatmár, Transylvania

  Maramureş, Transylvania

  Sibiu, Southern Transylvania

  Book II

  Fall 1947

  Paris

  Spring 1952

  1955

  Summer 1956

  September 1956

  March 1957

  Book III

  Williamsburg, Brooklyn

  1968

  Book IV

  Williamsburg, Brooklyn

  Book V

  October 2005

  Williamsburg, Brooklyn

  Manhattan

  2007

  2012

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Law’s parchment once was skin, the thread was sinew,

  the quill once flew and I—

  I am forbidden, so are my children and my children’s

  children, forbidden for ten generations male or female.

  Tell me, scroll of fire, how one learns to be already written.

  Tell me, scroll of ashes, how one begins anew.

  Szatmár, Transylvania

  LIGHT, fast, Zalman’s heels rapped the ground as he ran, naked, down the center aisle of the House of Prayer. His hand reached toward the Torah scroll raised above the altar, but the embroidered mantle slid up and out of sight. The scroll spread open, revealing a passage he had not memorized. There, supine on the black Ashurite script, her long braids undone, was Rachel Landau, the bride of his study partner. Her dark eyes smiled at Zalman. He ran faster toward her, his hips rose and fell, circling the heat in his ammah—

  Zalman awoke to a damp warmth on his thigh. He lay still, as the texts he knew so well descended upon him: You who inflame yourselves among the terebinths … who slay the children in the valley.… No, do not read shochtay, who slay, but sochtay, who cause to flow. Rabbi Yochanan says, Whoever emits seed in vain deserves death. Zalman tugged at the belt strapped around his wrists. If his roommates had not been there, he would have beaten his chest, heeding the command: Become angry and do not sin. He pressed the buckle against the pillow so it would not clang against the brass headboard. He disengaged one wrist, then the other. He had taken every precaution—neither Law nor custom commanded that he bind his hands. He unwound the string tying his ankle to the footboard to prevent him from turning onto his belly and rubbing accidentally during sleep. He reached for the water and washbowl. The clammy pajamas hugged his groin.

  Master of the universe, I have done this unwittingly.

  He pulled off the sheet.

  Every bed, whereon he lieth that hath the issue is unclean.

  He stole down the stairs, into the unlit, narrow alley where each slat of the closed shutters was an accusation. In the desert, he would have been barred from the Tabernacle’s camp and from the Levites’ camp.

  He pushed open the low door to the ritual bath. He would immerse himself three times and then he would be permitted to study the holy books that same day—born anew after the third immersion.

  He disrobed. The water nipped at his calves, his thighs; the chill shriveled his ammah. He spread his arms and let himself sink, to make sure his long sidecurls were submerged.

  It had happened in his sleep, Zalman reasoned; he was sure he had never run, naked, in front of a woman’s eyes, but he was guilty in other ways and the Lord was punishing him—surely his classmates were not visited by such dreams.

  He should have fled as soon as he saw Gershon holding a pushpin and a Talmud tome, as soon as he saw the assembled students. The metal point hovered above a line of text, careful not to scratch the holy letters, then it stilled above the word father.

  “Nu, Zalman?” the students coaxed.

  Zalman did not resist. “Strife.”

  Gershon held up the page of the heavy treatise and all the heads bowed to inspect which word was on the reverse side of the page, exactly where the pin was pointing: strife.

  Already the pushpin hovered above another word.

  “Two pages from here, Zalman?”

  He should have called it vanity and turned away but he knew the word to which the pin was pointing two pages ahead. “Behold.” Only when the pin hovered above a third word did Zalman put an end to the conceit, but even as he hurried away, he took pleasure in his classmates’ reverent whispers.

  Zalman’s head broke the surface of the water for one breath, then he sank a second time, drifting deeper into his past.

  Ezra the Peddler called out to him: “Six years old and you can name Adam’s offspring all the way to King David? What was the name of Adam’s twelfth-generation descendent?”

  “Arphachsad.”

  “The twenty-fifth?”

  “Amram.”

  “It’s true, the Stern boy is an ilui, a wonder of Torah knowledge.”

  Zalman had not known how to be modest. He blurted out the twenty-sixth name and the twenty-seventh as if the Lord’s gift were a personal achievement.

  Zalman lifted his head for a second breath, and sank under the water a third time.

  His father’s words boomed: “Five years old and our son plays marbles instead of studying?”

  When the teacher had left the classroom, Zalman had sprung up with the other boys to pitch walnuts and measure whose was closest to the wall.

  His father’s worry; his mother’s silence.

  Zalman sank toward the bottom of the small pool until he turned three, a child with a child’s set of obligations. His father sheared his hair, leaving two sidecurls. Then he began to float upward and he was two, spelling his first words while raisins and almonds rained from Heaven. He was one, licking Hebrew letters coated with honey while his mother smothered him in kisses. He rose out of the water.

  Born anew.

  Now he could put on his phylacteries, now he could beseech Him: Remember the binding of Isaac and Your promise to Abraham. In their merit not mine, subdue, kill, uproot the Lilin that were spawned through these drops that left me in vain.…

  • • •

  The Lord heard Zalman’s supplication. There were no nocturnal emissions during the Days of Awe leading to the Day of Atonement, nor from the Day of Atonement to the Feast of Tabernacles. Once more, Zalman looked every man straight in the eye. On the night of the Festival of the Law, Simchath Torah, Zalman danced. Never had Zalman felt His presence with such immediacy.

  UNTIL SUNDOWN the previous eve, the Hasidim had discussed Hitler and Stalin marching across the newspapers; they had argued about the fall of Warsaw ten days earlier, and about Poland partitioned, but on the Festival of the Law, the Hasidim danced. Their right arms rose, folded, unfolded, drumming the air that circled the scroll that cir
cled their years. Each round heaved their bodies closer to their souls.

  Leading the dance, the Rebbe tossed his head from side to side. Eyes closed, the Rebbe saw wonders words could not convey. He skipped and the heart of the whole congregation leapt.

  “Shaddaï! Melech! Netzach!” the Rebbe cried out.

  The circling stilled, the Hasidim shuddered as the Lord’s names hovered above their lifted faces.

  “Aye yaï yaï,” the Rebbe called.

  “Aye yaï yaï yaï,” his Hasidim responded. They sang tune after tune, they hummed melodies unconstrained by word or meaning, and their sidecurls were silver streams twirling in front of Heaven’s gates, which surely, tonight, would swivel open on the seventh round.

  His assistant whispered into the Rebbe’s ear, the Rebbe nodded, the assistant called, “ ‘Adir Kevodo’ will be sung by Zalman Stern!”

  It was a great honor to lead an anthem in the Rebbe’s court, an immense distinction for an unmarried youth, but Zalman was not only a wonder of Torah knowledge, he also had the most beautiful voice east of Vienna.

  “Shaah! Quiet!” the assistant hollered.

  Zalman’s voice rose, focused, from his belly, as taught by his father, the cantor of Temesvár. “Splendid is His honor.…”

  The notes plunged deep and then kept climbing, spurring the men’s longing to break free from their bodies. They joined for the refrain, startled to hear their unruly modulations cover the perfect pitch.

  Then Zalman’s voice soared again.

  Long after the last note had lingered and died, all were still, until the Rebbe let out an “Aye mamale aye!”

  They leaned into the dance—the boys, the men in their prime, the men with white beards; hugging the Torah scrolls, they skipped along the ring that wheeled their past into their future; entwined by their sidecurls, they wound themselves back to In the Beginning.

  Dawn was breaking when the men left the synagogue.

  Zalman Stern and his study partner, Gershon Heller, left together. The two youths walked in a fashion that showed respect for the Lord’s presence: not too proud, shoulders back and chin out, but not bent over. Their steps tapped lightly through the fog. They parted before reaching Piaţa Libertăţii. Zalman entered the large square alone. Strips of haze swathed the façades, but Zalman saw sparkling gems: If, on Simchath Torah, dancing was akin to prayer; if, on Simchath Torah, angels gathered every step danced by every Jew and wove them into crowns, then the Lord’s splendor, this morning—

  Something pulled at Zalman’s collar, hard, from behind.

  A muffled pop. A receding clink as a button ricocheted against the cobblestones.

  Soldiers.

  A tug on Zalman’s sleeve. Two more buttons snapped.

  A muzzle lifted his hat. His hand came to his head.

  Blunt thump on his fingers. Zalman’s hand retreated, but not before tapping the skullcap to make sure it had remained in place.

  The muzzle pointed to the ground. “Pick it up!”

  Zalman picked up his hat, held it with both hands, not sure whether to place it back on his head.

  A pair of black leather boots advanced. Two leather fingers pinched the hat, lifted it, slowly. A palm flattened the hat onto Zalman’s skull. The boots stepped back.

  A bayonet pointed to his belly.

  Zalman closed his eyes. If he was to die, then let him meet death in the manner of Rabbi Akivah, uttering the word One. Like the martyrs before him, Zalman intoned: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is—”

  “One, two, three. Stand still!” a voice in front commanded.

  A click. A flash.

  Zalman’s shoulders were hunched. He was looking to the pavement, coat gaping, hat crushed on his forehead as the soldiers around him held a triumphant pose.

  The same voice in front: “Nice. One more. Don’t move!”

  Click, flash.

  The soldiers relaxed their rifles, the photographer folded his tripod, the squad stepped into the fog that still blanketed the façades of Piaţa Libertăţii.

  Zalman’s eyes opened wide. His heart soared.

  He had been ready, ready to die in the Lord’s name.

  *

  A FEW MONTHS later, Zalman Stern married Hannah Leah Shaïovits and the guilty dreams never returned. Emitting his seed as commanded, Zalman begat his first child whom he named Eydell Atara—Eydell in memory of his mother’s mother, Atara for the crowns he saw the morning his life was spared.

  The story of the photograph was the only one Zalman would tell his children, to stand in for the next five unphotographable years.

  Maramureş, Transylvania

  A HUNDRED kilometers east of Szatmár, on the morning Zalman’s life was spared, five-year-old Josef Lichtenstein sat on the kitchen stool and watched his mother tie a ribbon in his little sister’s hair. He tried to follow Mama’s fingers as they folded the ribbon under, over, as they pinched a curl, but he could not puzzle out how the strip of fabric bloomed into a four-loop bow atop Pearela’s head.

  A branch brushed the pane, the frames of the half-open window tapped lightly, a leaf—flame shaped and autumn red—twirled into the kitchen. Josef scrambled down the stool and twirled after the leaf.

  In her high chair, Pearela leaned to the side, reaching for Josef.

  “Jossela, why don’t you play with your little sister in the hall while I get breakfast ready.”

  Mama lifted Pearela out of the high chair. Josef took hold of his baby sister’s hand.

  “Leave the door open so I can see you.”

  Sitting cross-legged on the hall’s parquet, Josef raised the hinged lid of a cardboard box and held up a Hebrew letter carved out of wood. “Look Pearela, la-med, l-l-lamed.”

  Pearela reached for the letter. “La! La!” She fell back, bounced up, and chirping like a sparrow, toddled down the corridor.

  Josef rushed to close the door to the dining room with the overhanging tablecloth, which Pearela had already pulled down, twice. “Mama said you mustn’t!”

  The catch of the lock did not hold. Pearela pushed open the door, reached toward the table, toppled onto the carpet.

  “Jossela! Pearela! Milk, walnut roll!” Mama called from the kitchen.

  Leaning to help his sister up, Josef saw a wooden letter he had thought lost. He crawled under the table and clasped the letter’s branch. “Beth! Look Pearela”—he laid out the two letters on the carpet—“lamed, beth.”

  “La!” Pearela chirped.

  “Tatta says lamed is the last letter of the Torah, beth is the first letter, together they make the word—bring back the letter, Pearela!”

  Springing up in pursuit of his little sister, Josef whacked his forehead against the edge of the table. He fell back under the table, held his breath, reminded himself that a five-year-old boy was old enough not to cry.

  “Jossela! Pearela!” their mother called again.

  Heavy steps. Not Mama. Not Tatta. Not Florina.

  A smell of hog and swamp. Mud on the carpet.

  Frayed shoes splayed inches from his nose.

  One prong pierced Pearela’s cheek, the other split her chest. The green-and-pink checks of Pearela’s dress turned red. Screams rose in the yard. The shoes stepped to the window, spattering. A gritty throat clearing, a ball of spit hit the sill. The shoes left the room, precipitously.

  The screams in the yard intensified. They stopped.

  The heavy steps, hairy shins.

  Mama’s shoes dangling from the string belt that held the tattered trousers.

  The hayfork leaned against the table, prongs glistening red. A drawer creaked. All the drawers creaked. Dirt-rimmed nails clamped the foot of a chair, which soared out of sight. The sideboard glided away. The hayfork leaned against the wall. The table lifted above Josef’s head, an inch.

  A grunt, the table dropped; lifted and dropped, three times. A swear word. Josef recognized the man’s voice: Octavian the smith with the armband, who often bragged about
joining the Romanian Iron Guard.

  The hayfork lurched away.

  Josef waited for his sister’s soft warble. He clutched the remaining wooden letter and did not move. Pearela’s dress grew darker.

  It was night, then it was day. A gold curl escaped the crusted, maroon sheath that now encased Pearela.

  The chant of harvesters leaving for the fields.

  A soft tap-tap, dusty black shoes, men from the Jewish Burial Society, stepping onto the carpet, removing Pearela, gently.

  The chant of harvesters returning from the fields.

  Florina scrubbing the carpet on her knees, which meant that Mama would be there to pay her weekly wages.

  The brush was inches from Josef’s feet when Florina lifted her eyes. She saw him under the table, alive. Her jaw dropped. She crossed herself.

  The fat bolt slid in its socket, the windows banged shut. Florina reached for him and took him in her arms.

  She removed his velvet skullcap. She cut his sidecurls. She wrapped him in his mother’s eiderdown and carried him to the horse cart. She lifted a cloth bundle from the driver’s bench, dropped it onto the cart bed, set him on the bench, hauled herself next to him.

  Wind gusting through dry leaves spurred the horse’s trot and Florina’s Ave Marias, all night long.

  FLORINA had known the boy since before he was born. She had watched over him in his parents’ backyard; lying on a soft blanket, she had dug her nose behind his ears to smell his clean skin and good clothes. She had gazed into his eyes, green and prickly topside, gray and downy underside—wood-nettle eyes, she called them.

  When the boy was three, his father had shaved his golden hair, leaving the two devilish sidecurls. Still, she had daydreamed she would baptize the boy, where the river looped round the willows.

  The sun was high in the sky when Florina turned to Josef. “Your name is Anghel. Your father left for the Odessa front before you were born. You are my son.”