Questioning Return. Beth Kissileff

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СКАЧАТЬ as the knife in his hand as he chopped. She looked at him from the side, noting the tautness of his body, the way his perfectly sized butt filled his black cotton dress pants nicely.

      “Do you have a bowl for this?” he asked, stepping back, task completed.

      Wendy stopped her admiration of his carving skills and opened the cabinets to find a simple clear-glass bowl. She handed it to him. “Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t know how to deal with the tough rind.” That sounded stupid, she thought to herself. Why am I worrying? I don’t like him. I’m just being polite.

      He scooped the chunks of fruit from the cutting board with his hand, dripping their pink juices into the bowl. He handed her the bowl, smiling, and rinsed his hands under the sink. “You just need to know the technique. Do things as simply as possible, expend the least amount of effort. Make the fewest cuts in the rind and work the soft flesh.” He dried his hands on a dish towel, fished out a piece from the bowl, and started to hand it to her. She moved closer to him, and opened her mouth. He reached to her mouth and inserted the watermelon directly in her mouth, instead of placing it in her hand as she’d expected. She clenched her teeth around the fruit and he took his hand away without having touched her, as the laws of shomer negia, not touching a member of the opposite sex before marriage, would demand. She put her hand to her mouth to take the remainder of the piece, and when she was done with the first part, chewed the rest. “Mmm, you try some,” she said, handing him a piece. As she did, he moved close enough to take the piece in his mouth. She held it in his mouth; he made no motion to put his hand up to take it. Her hand was close to his mouth, though the fruit was between them so they were still not touching. After swallowing the first bit, he slowly reached his mouth around the fruit and her fingers. She held them there, enjoying the sensation of juices mingling with his tongue on her flesh.

      She licked her lips, the sozzled feeling from the glasses of wine at dinner making her bolder than she was otherwise. She stretched another piece towards his mouth. He kissed her fingers as she positioned the watermelon between his lips.

      Then, he put a piece of watermelon in his mouth and walked closer to her, close enough that she could take it from him with her own lips. They were standing so that only the piece of watermelon, clenched in both their mouths, was between them. Now, drops of pink juice were scattering the floor as they stood facing each other, watermelon between them. She moved closer, pink flesh mingling as lips and fruit met. They were kissing. He put his arm on her waist tenderly and leaned in.

      Wendy felt surprised but pleased by this turn of events. She wouldn’t have pegged him a good kisser, but he was, knowing when to smooth over her lips and when to apply pressure. So different from Matt, the crew rower, who, though so suave in most arenas, was totally awful as a kisser, unaware of how to hold his lips on hers. I am going to enjoy this year more than I thought, she joyfully intoned to herself as she leaned closer to Donny.

      He pulled back. “I shouldn’t. I’ve been shomer negia more than a year . . . I don’t know, something happened. Having that knife in my hand . . . Part of the appeal of the restaurant was the proximity of others; I had so many girls there . . . I’m sorry.” He put his head down to the ground in shame and began walking to the door. His manners got the better of his shame and he added, “I . . . you’re a nice girl. I . . . can’t just go kiss a girl every time I find her attractive. You . . . you’re not . . . I want to find my basherte. I wish I could stay . . . Forgive me.” He scuttled out of the room as quickly as he could in light of this confession.

      Wendy stood in place, watermelon juice still dripping off her mouth. She found a dish towel on her counter, and wiped her lips and chin, still staring at the door. What just happened here? Did he seduce me and leave, or did I seduce him and he left? Did I want it or was I playing along, flattered as always at any attention? Did he take advantage of me, thinking secular women are easy? I felt like he was weak and lacked confidence, but then something happened; he was different with the knife; he had this kinetic energy whirling about him. Were we equal participants or was I playing a game of corrupt the yeshiva student? The rules may not have been fair, but she wanted to play. He didn’t seem averse; after all, he came into her apartment even if the door was open, and drew close to her to hand her the watermelon. But still, she shouldn’t have let herself play; he wasn’t someone she had any interest in, and it wasn’t fair to toy with someone else’s feelings. That was it: they each had an attraction for the other, but there was no feeling on either of their parts. She wasn’t religious enough for him and he wasn’t academically inclined enough for her; there was absolutely no reason for the allure between them. She could say she was slightly inebriated, or disoriented from the dislocation of being in a new place, both throwing her usual restraints off. Those excuses were false; she knew the kiss happened because of the attraction, which existed like so many other things in life: illogical, irrational, preposterous, but present and enticing. Like the gorgeous male voice in the synagogue, something she was drawn to without knowing why. How many more gaffes would there be this year? How many times would she be drawn elsewhere than expected with unknown consequences? Her desire was like a surging current; once she had thrown herself into the water after it, she would be buffeted to and fro until the waters finally ceased foaming. I want to find a guy worthy of risking the battering and buffeting of the current of desire, who would similarly want to hold on to me as we journeyed the risky course together, avoiding the shoals that could force a vessel ashore.

      She imagined a big warning sign from the anthropology department: Never kiss a member of your subject population or you will be unable to write objectively ever again. Would this kiss derail her dissertation? Wendy was determined to have a good time this year and to get her research done—clearly neither was a simple task in Jerusalem.

       FOUR

       Bayit Ne’Eman

      People are walking in the counterfeit city / whose heavens passed like shadows, / and no one trembles. Sloping lanes conceal / the greatness of her past.

      —LEAH GOLDBERG, “Heavenly Jerusalem, Jerusalem of the Earth”

      On Sunday, after her first ulpan class at the university on Mount Scopus, Wendy took the number nine bus through the center of town. She was glad to have the intricacies of Hebrew verb conjugations and new vocabulary to focus on to get the sensation of Donny’s kiss and her surging desire, kissing him back, out of her head. It would come back at random moments for the next few weeks she guessed. It wasn’t the biggest misstep ever, or the worst, just yet another thing she shouldn’t have done. Hopefully she wouldn’t see him again and wouldn’t have to feel like a sleaze; she’d been involved with guys in ways she regretted in high school, but not recently, and thought that was in her past.

      After the bus left the center of town, it crawled down Aza Street. She asked another passenger about the stop and got off before the corner of Rav Berlin Street. The café From Gaza to Berlin was there at the intersection, as Avner Zakh, the Fulbright advisor, had told her. She was proud of herself for getting around in this new place; that only lasted until Wendy entered the air conditioned café and realized that she had no clue what Zakh looked like.

      As she gazed around the room, she saw in her peripheral vision a tall man with mostly dark hair, bits of gray jutting out here and there. He was wearing a navy kipah seruga, knit headcovering of the modern Orthodox, and jaunted over to her athletically, bouncing as though he were on a basketball court.

      “Wundy?”

      Israelis couldn’t pronounce her name. Her ulpan teacher this morning had СКАЧАТЬ