Chapter 26
The Gospel According to Michael
Around five in the afternoon, Serge dropped me off at my parents’ house.
I had parted with my wife – my Lily – earlier outside her parents’ home. We agreed to meet later at the apartment, after I carried out the “mission” which seemed more and more impossible the closer we got to Tel-Aviv.
All the way from Jerusalem, I imagined how I would tell my parents they could set aside one more worry. That I was already married.
Eli, my brother, their eldest son, had married two years earlier, and now their younger son was following suit. True, in a rather strange way, and certainly not in a very family-oriented one.
I went into the building, skipped the elevator, and climbed the stairs to my parents’ apartment slowly, deliberately. With each step, I bought myself a few more seconds to reflect on what exactly I was about to do, and how they might react.
I rang the bell several times. No answer.
Maybe they weren’t home? Maybe something had happened? Maybe Max had already interfered, called Rachel, and she’d told my parents I had gotten married – and an ambulance had already taken my mother to nearby City Center Hospital. My imagination was getting ahead of me.
Couldn’t be!!!
“Who’s there? Who’s there?” My mother’s voice came from behind the door.
“It’s me.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
“Who?” The door opened wide. My mother stood in the doorway, trying to brush the sleep from her eyes. Clearly, she hadn’t recognized me yet.
“Oh, it’s you. Come in, what a surprise.”
I stepped inside and stood in the entryway.
“Want to eat something?” she asked, already turning toward the kitchen before even shutting the door.
“I’ve already eaten.”
“There’s gefilte fish that you love, and schnitzel, and…”
“Mom, I’ve eaten, I’m full.”
“Then compote, I know you love that.”
“Mom, I want to tell you something.”
“Maybe some good ice cream, or cheesecake, or poppy seed cake which I baked just for you, I know you love them.” She was laser-focused.
“Mom, Mom, stop,” I finally gathered the courage. “I got married.”
“I didn’t hear you. What do you want to eat?”
“Mom, I don’t want to eat,” I answered loudly and clearly, emphasizing each word.
“You’re like Eli, you don’t like my food.”
“Mom, I got married!” I repeated.
“What are you saying?”
“I got married.” I said for the third time.
“Moses, Moses, what is he talking about?” She turned toward the bedroom. Silence.
“Moses, Moses, Michael’s here, and he’s talking about a wedding, he says he got married. Did you know about this? I don’t understand… Bring me a glass of water. I need to sit down. Where’s a chair?”
I held her hand and led her to an armchair in the living room.
My father appeared in the doorway of their bedroom.
He looked as if he had just woken from a restless nap, sheet creases still marking his bare arms. He went to the bathroom sink to wash his face.
Silence filled the air.
A thin wail came from my mother’s direction.
“Who did you marry?” she asked between sobs. I was astonished by the question. What did she think – that I’d married Daniela, the nurse?
“Lily.”
“When?”
“Today, a few hours ago.”
“How? Jews don’t marry on Saturday.” My father remembered it was the Sabbath.
“I sanctified her with a ring in the presence of two witnesses – three, actually.”
“Guta, stop crying, let’s hear him out,” my father tried to be pragmatic, hiding the storm inside him.
“How can I stop crying? I’ve suffered all my life, since age two, when my father died.” My mother sobbed harder. “What would he have said about this?”
“Dad, I decided to get married. I wanted to take the burden of the wedding off you, so I just got married, simple as that.”
“Don’t think what you did is so simple.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure it isn’t a sin.” His answer shocked me. My atheist father, talking about sin? It confused me completely.
I sat down. The last thing I had wanted was to commit a sin – not against Lily, not against my parents, and certainly not against God. Who knows…
“Dad, I checked with two religious guys in the army, and it’s fine.”
“Not sure. Tomorrow I’ll check.” he said firmly.
“Don’t check, please Dad, don’t.” I nearly begged.
“And you won’t have a wedding? No chuppah? All my life, I dreamed that you, the son everyone envied, the one they thought I doted on, would marry properly.” My mother cried bitterly.
“Eli married ‘properly,’ isn’t that enough for you?” I shot back.
“Yes, but you – who was always sickly and always with me. I worried so much about you. I don’t deserve this!”
Her sobbing shook me. Tears filled my own eyes. It was clear I had sinned, at least against them. If only I could turn back the clock.
Amid the chaos, I promised my father that no matter what, we’d have a proper wedding, according to all the rules. My mother was beyond listening by then.
Suddenly I realized my parents might blame everything on Lily. That was the last thing I wanted.
“I want you to know that this was my idea – entirely mine – from beginning to end,” I declared loudly.
“Just yesterday you were here, what happened overnight?”
“Nothing. I’ve been carrying this with me ever since enlistment. Even then, I decided she’d be my wife.”
“You barely know her.”
“I know her well enough to want to marry her and live with her.”
“So you just got up and married her, like that?” my father demanded.
“Dad, not just like that. I married for love. I love Lily.”
“We haven’t even met her parents.”
At that moment, I understood I had erred, that there was no choice, and that what had been done would have to be corrected. I promised them I’d do everything possible to keep it within the family.
For a moment, oppressive silence filled the room.
“You realize, according to Jewish law, if you sanctified her, you’ll have to divorce her first before marrying again?”
My father stunned me. He insisted that if there had been a ceremony and sanctification, there was a halakhic obligation to divorce before remarrying.
We agreed that everything would stay within the family, and that we’d quickly arrange a proper wedding by the book.
The joy I’d felt barely two hours earlier was replaced by confusion and sorrow.
An atmosphere of chaos, tinged with anger and disappointment, filled my parents’ apartment. On the very day of my marriage to Lily, I had to think about divorce…
I felt trapped in a snare entirely of my own making.