26 comments/ 106260 views/ 33 favorites A Heart Made of Branches By: dr_mabeuse Out in front of the Dov Y'Isroel farmhouse grew a big burning bush, and that's where Elly would go and have her cigarette after she'd helped prepare dinner and before she'd sit down with the rest of the women to eat. It was kind of a joke—a burning bush being what God of course had spoken to Moses from out in the wilderness, but this burning bush was so called because in the autumn its leaves turned flame red, although by now, in December just before Hanukkah, it was totally bare. Elly stood there against the house and within the embrace of the crooked bare branches and smoked and sometimes watched the vans full of visitors arrive to share the evening meal. She wasn't supposed to smoke where the guests could see her because that ruined the illusion of strict Jewishness Dov Y'Isroel liked to project, but really, the Jewishness was just that—an illusion. In reality, when the guests weren't there the residents fought and smoked and disagreed about every little rule and observance and Elly, who'd trained to be a rabbi for almost a year before dropping out and joining this commune, knew more law than most of the residents did so no one dared give her any grief. She could argue with the best of them and didn't mind doing so. And if any of the guests minded seeing one of the cooks standing outside in her apron smoking in the dead of winter, they didn't say anything. They continued to come in droves, and their money kept Dov Y'Isroel afloat and gratifyingly in the black. From her post under the burning bush on the top of the small hill Dov Y'Isroel sat on, she could see down the snow-sprinkled fields and the whole countryside looked like one of the quilts she worked on with the other women, a study in white and gray and brown, sober and tranquil and regular under the leaden skies, the stillness broken now and then by a flight of rooks or sparrows sweeping like a wave of surf from one copse of trees to another. The cigarette tasted good after the steam of the house, the silence sounded good after the din of voices and clatter of pans. Snatches of Hebrew prayer and verses of Torah ran through her head and now, in the eerie quiet of early winter sunset over the rolling Indian-haunted hills of southwestern Wisconsin, sometimes in the distance she would see beams of sun breaking through the heavy overcast, staining the undersides of the clouds golden orange and red and though she knew that heaven was just a metaphor and not a place above the clouds, and though she hated herself for responding to the corny cliché of light beams streaming through the clouds like God's searchlight, the sight still moved her. It made her horny too, made her thoughts turn to visions of sex and of a man's hands and mouth on her lips and breasts, holding her wrists down and having her. Sex was a gift of God too and a lot more definite than He Himself was, He being a hypothetical construct it had been necessary to create to pretty much keep from going mad back before science, but totally irrelevant and maybe even destructive today. Well, maybe the kind of sex Elly wanted wasn't a gift of God—that was yet to be determined—but sex itself was, of that there was no doubt. Even the sages of the first century had said so and written in down in the Talmud, the holy writings upon which all of Judaism was based. Whether being tied up and fucked was considered a gift of the Holy One, Blessed Be He, as far as she knew that was permitted, and Elly was very well-educated in Torah, but tradition advised that she still ask a rabbi, and in this case that meant David or Benjamin, the eldest members of Dov Y'Isroel, and so far she really hadn't been able to get up the nerve. As far as she was concerned, they were a couple of narrs or well-meaning fools. She might though. She'd gone six moths without any sex now but what her own hand supplied, and one of these days she just might be desperate enough and buzzed enough on shabbes wine to ask. After all, asking questions, doubting God, that was the basis of Judaism too. She turned to watch a van pull up the drive to the farmhouse, right opposite where she was standing, and as she did, she caught sight of a pattern made in the twisting branches of the burning bush. It was a heart, an absolutely perfect outline of a valentine heart, amazing in its symmetry, as big as she could make with her two fists, and it was made of two separate branches, one in front of another. She only had to move her head and the heart disappeared, but while she kept her head in the right place, the heart was so obvious it looked like the bush had been cut just to produce it. The branches that formed it were even of such a thickness that, with the perspective she had, they appeared to be one continuous line. And even more incredible, refocusing her eyes, there was an arrow that pierced the heart made of an unnaturally straight branch father back. It pierced the heart from upper left to lower right; a few remaining leaves even serving as the fletching on the arrow. It was absolutely freakish, almost a miracle, and Elly felt goose bumps on her arms, as most people do when faced with the miraculous. She looked around for someone to tell but there were only the old people getting out of the van and she couldn't really tell them. She laughed. No one would ever believe her. A heart of branches! It was just a coincidence. What else could it be? Or was that why God had originally chosen a dumb thing like a burning bush to reveal Himself to Moses in the wilderness in the first place, instead of using something grand and more fitting to the Master of the Universe? Because he knew something big would scare the shit out of Moses and send him running, whereas with the bush, Moses would just say, "Wow! Look at that! A burning bush that isn't consumed! That's pretty weird. I'd better go check this out!" Elly had often wondered about God's preference for small, funky miracles: a plague of flies? Frogs? Boils? What kind of God curses his enemies with zits? Maybe it was an omen. Maybe this burning bush was an omen as well? As if. She believed in God about as much as He believed in her. She turned her eyes to this new group getting out of the van. They were from a schul in the city, a study group in a synagogue, and they were a mixed lot of conservatives and liberals, some with the big black hats or shtremls and side locks, some clean shaven in jeans, all trying to reconnect to their Jewishness, whatever it was. She watched for the driver to get out because that would be Max Shavitz, the young, supposed wildly charismatic leader of the group, very learned, they said, especially in Kabbalah—a kind of Jewish mysticism—and very controversial. Some called him rabbi or honored teacher, and some called him apikoyros or non-believer—heretic. Elly was eager to get a look at him. David and the others had been talking about him for weeks, treating his visit like a great coup for the farm-commune, and Muriel and Sheila had talked about how sexy and attractive he was—and unattached. Elly wondered if he could possibly be as good-looking as the coatless, lightly bearded man who got out of the back of the van, his long black hair shot with gray, helping an older man down onto the walk. He had the head of a lion, the eyes of an eagle, the shoulders of a bull, and when he'd helped the old man down he stopped and put the man's hat on his head and turned around and smiled a smile that just about melted the snow. He looked like King David come again. He had that air of command. He saw Elly standing in the embrace of the burning bush and smoking, and he smiled at her too, an understanding, mischievous smile, and her heart just seemed to turn into paste under the warmth of that smile. It turned all gluey and stuck to him just like that. And of course, as if on cue the old man straightened the hat on his head and looked at this human Seraphim and said, "Thank you, Max." It was indeed as if a voice had spoke to her from the wilderness but it was not from the burning bush. It was from the vicinity of the Ford. She remembered what the voice had said to Moses: "Remove thy shoes for the ground on which you stand is holy ground." No, she wouldn't do that, but her nipples hardened, and not from the cold. ###### Dov Y'Isroel Farm was an anomaly—a working model commune that didn't work but did. It was supposed to be self-sufficient and wasn't; was supposed to live by the laws of the Torah and didn't; was supposed to be perfectly Jewish when no one could decide what that meant; and so it was twelve things to the twelve people who lives there, eight men and five women, which added up to thirteen, because they couldn't even decide on who really lived there or what "living there" meant, so they counted that as fourteen and counted the men as ten so they could have a minyon or quorum for prayers of at least ten men as the law demanded. They argued endlessly over the endless laws and rituals of Judaism, and some kept kosher while others didn't according to some who did. Four of the men prepared their meals separately to avoid contaminating their plates with non-kosher foods; four were vegetarians. There are 613 commandments in the Torah, what the Jews call the first five books of the Old Testament. All the commentaries on the Torah and the commentaries on the commentaries and the commentaries on the commentaries on the commentaries comprise the Talmud which Jews study to learn how to be good Jews, but what they understand and how they understand it is up to each individual Jew, so disagreements and arguments among them are as common as feathers in a henhouse. That's fine. Jews love to argue. That's why they make such good lawyers. The idea for Dov Y'Isroel was originally was to form a religious kibbutz on American soil, but that hadn't worked out because farming was harder work than they'd thought and didn't leave much time for the long sessions of study and argument the leaders, David Kaminsky and Benny Manuel with wives Muriel Sparks and Sheila Grossman, loved so much, so they'd switched over to raising organic eggs and herbs and vegetables for the specialty market and, along with what they made from renting themselves out as a living museum of Yiddishkeit or Jewishness, they made a go of it. But no one was fooling themselves except the four founders. It was show-biz Jewishness. They adjusted their level of show to fit the tourists who came out to have dinner with them, and they paid the shokhet or kosher slaughterer in Chicago good money for their supply of frozen meat. They kept kosher for the guests, but it was kosher by law, not kosher by the heart as it was supposed to be. And now, at Hanukkah, business was brisk. Vans pulled up bringing visitors for lunch and dinner and sometimes after dinner as well for latkes, the potato pancakes that were the traditional Hanukkah treat. And meanwhile, kosher wasn't the only thing that ran wild in the hearts of the residents of Dov Y'Isroel. Calling on the powers of the Creator and the supernatural also opened the doors to other unseen influences. God isn't the only thing that lives in the human heart, even the Talmud concedes that. There are hosts of angels, some from heaven, some from the lower regions. There are feelings and desires, wishes and dreams and half-formed urges. Man is formed in God's image and so God must have these desires too, Elly though. Does God have sexual urges? According to Talmud, it's a fair question to ask. Since coming to live on the farm she'd seen the leaves fall in the autumn, the moon rise at night and shift from new to full, the sun come up in the east and burn the haze off the corn then sink into the purple west and she thought He must have sexual urges, these must all be sexual urges. Certainly she felt them as such, the things she felt inside when she contemplated them seemed sexual, and now, with Hanukkah here, with lighting the lights that gleamed with feeble but brave insistence against the great immensity of darkness she felt it even more. There was sexuality in the dark and the light, and she had no doubt that it was the Hanukkah lights that had set her spirit alive with the need for sex, like she was the darkness and a man would set the match to her that would fill her with illumination. Desire was everywhere and almost visible, sweeping like the clouds of birds that shifted by the farm in the afternoon dusk, visible in the ropes that Elly had hung from the rafters in the barn just because she liked them there, because she liked to tie her wrist up in them when she went out to cut organic herbs for the dinner and pretend that she'd been captured by a handsome man of good manners and evil intent who would force his light upon her. Her reveries were disturbed by a shaft of light as Muriel stuck her head out the door wreathed in a cloud of steam from within that smelled of chicken soup and home-made bread and potato pancakes frying, the very smells of Yiddish heaven. "There you are, Elly! Can you give us a hand? There's been an accident." "Sure. What's up?" Elly dropped the cigarette and crushed it out in the dirt. There was no snow near the house, just winter-blue shadows. The heat of the place kept the snow at bay, at least this early in the year. Later, in the depths of winter, the drifts would pile up against the very walls and they'd be under siege. "Oh, nothing really. Esther just dropped a tureen of soup in the kitchen. We need someone to serve while we get it cleaned up, that's all." Elly had cooked so she didn't have to serve, that was the unwritten rule, but an emergency was an emergency. "No problem." She was getting cold anyhow. Making herself tough it out without a coat was her way of punishing herself for smoking in the first place and she would have forced herself to stay outside until she started shaking with cold normally, so this was a reprieve. She walked inside and the warmth and kitchen steam enveloped her in a welcoming embrace. The farm had six kids and the Max's group had brought some unspecified number as well, and Hanukkah always made things feel heimish or homey, like a big family get-together, with the candles and lights and the kids all excited, the adults a bit schickered on the wine, so Elly liked it. Besides, she was curious to get a closer look at Max Shavitz, if he wasn't in the library arguing with David and Benny, and he wasn't. He was seated at the long table, at the very end, and he hadn't been served yet. His plate was empty and Benny was leaning across the table and talking his ear off about something, his hand gesturing earnestly, palm open, while David was leaning back in his chair holding a prayer book and reciting some benediction—always something to bless—and the kids were chasing each other around and under the table. A man without food was close to a sin as far as Elly was concerned and she swooped into the kitchen and filled a bowl with soup and thick home-made noodles and got a roll and immediately set it down in front of Max who turned and looked up at her and gave her that smile again but different this time, a remarkable smile as if he knew her, recognized her, had known her for years. It seemed to go right through her and meet her in some place private where she was quite surprised to be accosted. It was a place not far from where her sexual secrets lived. She was already in the midst of turning away from Max and heading back towards the kitchen when she got this smile and so she could only field it on the fly, awkwardly and inexpertly, tucking it next to her heart and taking it with her into the kitchen where she could at last examine it in private, quite bewildered and beside herself when she got a good look at it. "My God!" she said to herself after she had separated his handsomeness out from the rest of the smile and still found herself with quite a handful. "How does that man know me like this?" In the kitchen Esther and Muriel were down on their knees sponging up the last of the spilled chicken soup and Elly immediately fell to her knees and took the sponge from Muriel and said, "I'll sponge, you serve. I have to think!" and it Muriel took only a moment to look at her to understand what had happened, or to understand that a man was involved and that the man was almost certainly Max Shavitz. "Oy!" Muriel said. "Nu? Already? It's true what they say about him? Come on Esther. Help me serve. Elly's got problems." Elly sponged up the spilled soup and squeezed the sponge into a big pot. She was thinking, "Kabbalah masters can develop an extra soul with which they can travel about and meet other souls. Maybe he's met me like that?" Sponge, sponge, sponge. Squeeeeze Immediately that was followed by the usual thought: Come on, Elaine Greengau. You don't really believe a word of this crap, do you? You go along with it because you're very, very good at it and because there's an underlying esthetic that appeals to you, but to actually subscribe to the ontological reality of God or the veracity of scripture is nonsense and you know it. Life is random, meaningless, futile, and mostly painful. It's all superstition and that's why you left seminary. Sponge, sponge, sponge. Squeeeeeze. Yes, but if you want to get laid, stay with it for a while longer. Just put away your doubts for a bit. Muriel and Esther began the precise, controlled, panicked rushing back and forth that comprised dinner service at Dov Y'Isroel while Elly poured the pot full of ruined soup down the drain and washed out the sponge. Now that her moment of faith and doubt had passed, washed away by a flood of sexual hormones, she went to the kitchen door and opened it and peeked out, only to see Max Shavitz leaning forward in his chair and staring directly at her, or rather, staring directly at the kitchen door at which, until a scant second before, there had been no Elly. Her eyes met his through the wavering column of heat coming off a stand of Hanukkah candles, and she was reminded of the way the sages described the nearest man could possibly hope to come to getting a glimpse of God—that the entire universe we knew was nothing but the reflection of His shimmer. Max Shavitz was that handsome. He shimmered. The air shimmered around him with some sort of sexual magnetism, and yet there was a kindness or softness around him that said he didn't take himself all that seriously. A laugh was never far away, and what did they say? A man's wisdom is in his laugh. The domes of his shoulders were like crowns of muscle. His waist was lean, his ass was powerful and built for thrusting. His head was like an artist's conception of chokhmah, that Kabbalistic sephirah of wisdom, joined with its reflection binah, understanding, and yet both of these were alloyed with a lustiness she could sense or really taste in that sensual lower lip, ripe and insolent as Cupid's. Max Shavitz would not be too kind in his passion but would take like a lion or like a wolf, never spilling a drop of blood. No—he would take like a man, just like Elly dreamed of being taken, tied helpless to her bed and slowly undressed and laid bare before those eyes, those knowing, seeking eyes, stripped of her pride, stripped of her self-control, stripped of her very identity till she was no more than an object made for the satisfying of his desires—her breasts made for his mouth, her cunt made for his cock, her arms and legs made to hold that lean and sinewy body as he pounded against her like the hammer of desire. Elly quickly plated some pot roast and potatoes for the family-style service and wiped up the spilled grease with a towel. This wasn't her job. She'd cooked the pot roast and peeled the potatoes and she didn't have to serve but she didn't care anymore. Yes she did care. She cared a lot. A Heart Made of Branches She dropped the towel and went to the little bathroom off the kitchen. She looked at herself in the mirror. She didn't normally cover her hair like an observant Jewish maiden should because she just didn't believe that crap. Only in the kitchen, and only then because it was a health regulation. She pulled the kerchief off her head now and let her brown hair tumble around her face in wild tendrils, lank from the steam but sensual and seemingly dangerous. She needed lipstick and eye make-up against the blanching heat of the kitchen but she was still a pretty girl. She was a very pretty girl, dark and seductive. Intelligent. Very intelligent. She was wearing a bra and a two-strapper and an Onion tee-shirt over that and then a rugby shirt with broad blue and green stripes, and over that an apron spattered with gravy but she recognized the curves of a woman underneath—a girl hungry for raw love and the crush of a man's hands and the pressure of his body, the flame of his own intelligence licking into her and sucking up her sweetness and changing it to something hard and hungry for him. It was that hunger she'd been feeling in the image of the small birds flying over the snow and the bare trees scratching against the leaden gray of the winter evening, of the searing light of the little Hanukkah candles straining against the dark that pressed against the ancient windows of the old farmhouse, a darkness as old as the earth. She needed that light within her. She needed to glow from within with some sort of supranatural light. Turning away from the mirror, the image of Hebrew letters flashed by her eye, the line of a prayer. The letters flowed like the tips of flames, hysterical with meaning. She could read Hebrew as well as anyone in the house and she did of course. She studied on her own and entered into discussions with David and Benny and even John Isaacs and Lester Hammachor who'd been to seminary as well but it was all unreal to her now, all some kind of game. She was not here to perfect her Jewishness. She was hiding here, playing a game of it, a game she was very good at, waiting to see which way life would lead her. She was here recovering from religion, going through the motions after a crisis of faith led her to leave the rabbinical training her family had paid for. And what she seemed to be becoming was some sort of whore to her body, and that was all right with her—amusing in its way, even exciting—playing the scullery maid and toiling away at her obscure theophilic lusts in the wintry shadows of the farm and the barns till she got some other kind of call. And maybe this was it. Maybe this was what she'd been waiting for, this particular blue-shadowed, candle-lit Hanukkah night. When Elly came out of the bathroom, Mark and Jason were in the kitchen making up the large platters that would be passed around the tables for the home-style service. There was little for her to do, and normally it would be time for her to take a mug of cider and wander out and watch the glow of sunset in the west as she sipped the sweet autumn taste through the cloud of fog and savored that spiritual ache that was as close as she came to religion these days, but she felt a different kind of ache now, a need for that beating of her heart and body that could only come from a man's love, delivered with the roughness that passion could give it. She wanted to be mishandled, manhandled, and by Max Shavitz. Or at least she thought so. She thought so enough that she wanted to investigate further. He was definitely worth getting a better look at, so she picked up the next full platter and when Esther came in, Elly neatly stepped into her place and picked up the tray of food and smiled sweetly and said, "I'll get it Ess. Why don't you see to the coffee?" Esther made a mock pop-eye. "Muriel was right. You've lost your mind." Elly backed out through the swinging door and into the cooler world of the dining room—cooler, but right into the laser beams of Max Shavitz's eyes, which picked her up like a pair of searchlights and didn't let her go. Amazing eyes, intense with a touch of humor, and yet hot enough to give her chills on her arms and make her nipples stiffen and make her throat feel tight with an excitement she couldn't swallow. She was being appraised. She knew it. In the privacy of his mind she was being undressed. She was being led about and walked, her clothes removed, her legs inspected, breasts weighed, she was being put first on her knees and then on her back and she was being fucked, her legs spread, her mouth filled with cock. He might be a rabbi, learned in Kabbalah and know the ways of the holy Sephiroth, the emanations of God, but he was a man as well and she could tell by the feel of his eyes on her that he was entirely liberal in his thoughts and she knew when she was being fucked in a man's mind's eye. And she knew he was doing it well too, enjoying her, his big cock showing her no mercy, his hands testing her thighs and finding them firm, finding her ass tight, her hips strong and fully capable of pushing back at him and giving as good as she got. She hoped he saw that in her—that she might like to be tied and broken but that she was still a dynamite piece of ass, that she would light him up on this Hanukkah as well. For a moment she was so lost in her own thoughts of lust she forgot where she was going with the food, forgot what it was she was serving and had to look on her platter to see what she carried (pot roast and vegetables for the visitors' table), then she wove her way between the chairs, found a spot down the table a ways from Max that was missing a platter and deftly leaned in between an elderly man and woman and placed it in the empty space, feeling the weight of her breasts pressing against her bra and her shirt as she did, the sweat trickling between her tits. Her eyes glanced up to find Max's eyes sliding up to find hers, shining appreciatively, then looking away as he leaned over to ask David a question. Was it about her? Probably not, because David kept his eyes down and nodded in understanding. She lingered a moment, cleavage showing, straightening the platter. She'd caught sight of Max's hands. They were strong, the fingers sculptural, with beautiful, almost feminine nails. A pianist's hands, or a scholar's. The kind of hands that Jacob must have had, he who wrestled with an angel. That story had always excited her, the idea of a man locked in combat with another man who represented the masculine powers of heaven, the thought of them tearing at each other's clothes. Jacob would have had hands like Max Shavitz. His eyes would have glowed the same way. He would have had that same strength of jaw, the same proud hair. His lower lip would have needed to be bitten just like Max's did. She straightened up and turned to let him see her ass, one of her best features, high and proud as the Queen of Sheba's, even in her jeans. Muriel was watching her from the kitchen door and smiling a giant smile. Let her smile. Elly thought. Muriel hadn't been alone for six months immersed in books and cooking, studying rituals she no longer believed in. Muriel had a husband, bulvan though he might be. Elly felt more alive now than she had in half a year, and what harm was there in flirting? Hanukkah was the holiday of hope and what Elly needed now was hope. She was celebrating in her way. She went back into the kitchen where there was some confusion now with three women handling the waitressing chores. Esther was leaning against the sink, picking thoughtfully at her thumbnail. "Really, Elly, if you want to take my shift, I'll just go lie down. It's fine with me." "Sure. That's fine. Suddenly I'm full of energy" Muriel smiled knowingly and shrugged. "If that's what you want, Elly." "Yeah. I said that's fine." "I don't think he's all that hot, though," Esther said. Muriel hushed her. "No one asked for your opinion about anything, Esther." "Besides," Esther pouted. "He's not going to make a move on you. He's a guest here." "Did you hear what I said? Elly, take out the latkes. Esther's just jealous." "Ha!" "Go." Mark and Jason were staring at them, the big pans bubbling away with the latkes swimming in the hot oil, which supposedly commemorated the miracle of Hanukkah, that when the Maccabbees recaptured the Temple in Jerusalem, they thought they only had enough oil to light the holy lamp for one day and instead it burned for seven. To Elly—to all of them really, though they'd never discuss it—this had always seemed like a very dubious miracle, about as cheap as you could get, on a par with a having a piece of gum whose flavor lasted an unusually long time, hardly the kind of thing you created a major holiday over, and the truth was, Hanukkah was by no means an important religious holiday on the Jewish calendar. But Jews didn't have a lot to celebrate in their mostly miserable history, so they didn't ask questions. Though Elly suspected the Jewish leaders had probably assigned a committee to find some miracle to create a winter holiday around and this was the best they could come up with, she didn't say anything. She loaded herself with four plates of latkes, each with its complimentary applesauce and sour cream as tradition demanded and backed out through the kitchen door. The real spirit of Hanukkah was the celebration of light in the darkness of winter. That's what mattered. And it gave Jews something to do during Christmas. Christmas, if left unopposed, might have caused the conversion of untold millions of Jews just for the presents and mistletoe, such is man's devotion to religious truth. Elly knew what Esther meant about Max's not making a move. Unfamiliar with the confused kind of Judaism the went on at Dov Y'Isroel, visitors always assumed they were strictly conservative and behaved that way, which meant absolute segregation between men and unmarried women, no speaking, no touching. A wall of tradition would stand between her and Max and how was she going to break it without coming across as a kurveh, a whore? A man could look (though he wasn't supposed to), but he couldn't touch, he couldn't speak. If she could maybe get word to David that she was interested, would he say anything to Max? But what would he say? He certainly wasn't going to play matchmaker! And Benny was even worse. She spun out into the dining room and there he was, looking at her again, his head inclined to field David's question, no doubt on some point of Jewish mysticism, his eyes fixed on hers. Oh, he knew her! He knew her soul. He knew how she wanted to be touched, how she wanted to be kissed. He knew how she wanted to be held down in bed and bruised by a man's love, how she wanted to feel his hands on her wrists, ropes on her ankles, how she wanted to give up her pride to him, that pride that made her so lonely. She wanted a teacher and friend, someone she could respect and serve, and for that she'd pay with her body, with everything she had as a woman. Max knew it all. How he knew it, she didn't know, but he knew it. At Max's table an old man was lighting the Hanukkah candles and already they were arguing about when to light them—after dinner or during. That one said they should have already been lit. Voices were raised, fists pounded the tables. What did they say? Two Jews, three opinions! Max sat and watched with amusement. God, he was gorgeous! He wore a tie. It made him look like a wild thing captured. He had the look of a stallion about him, and he was so far above the petty questions of David and Benny. It was only out of the goodness of his heart that he didn't shred them to ribbons. He was too polite. He kept his virility in check. She saw him through the wavering heat of the Hanukkah lights like God must have appeared to Creation. David beckoned to her. Wine, he wanted wine. He was pointing to their cups. Elly looked at him in confusion. Normally they had a glass of wine with shabbes supper so they could say the blessing and that was it. Now he wanted wine on Thursday? He was trying to impress Max. Wait. Now he was making drinking gestures too—holding his fingers apart as if tossing one back. "Uh oh," Muriel was at her elbow. "He wants brandy. Do we still have brandy or did Mark get into it?" They had Brandy. Four bottles of it from the time it was on sale at Minska's liquors. Benny had thought it would be nice if they tried what the Lubavitcher Rebbe had done with his followers in the seventeen hundreds where they'd sit around the table drinking brandy and discussing Torah. But when they'd done it at Dov Y'Isroel they'd rapidly gotten drunk and red in the face and started arguing and calling each other dumb sons of bitches and assholes. Muriel even knew where the decanter was in the basement. She got it and washed it. She loved the decanter and it wouldn't do to show the label on the brandy, which had some industrial name like Westinghouse or Servicemaster. "Let me," Elly asked. "Please?" She'd changed into a fresh apron, snow white, and wiped the sweat off her face and put on eye makeup and lipstick. Muriel smiled. "Okay. Take the good tray." They didn't have any snifters but that was all right, because that's not the way Jews drank brandy. They were Ashkenazi, or Eastern European Jews, as opposed to Sephardic, or Spanish or North African Jews, and they treated brandy as schnapps, to be tossed back as a shot, so juice glasses would do. Elly carried the tray out with the decanter and six glasses, which was all they had. Elly approached the table from the side opposite the men and placed the tray down, not daring to meet his eyes. The candles were blazing and she felt the heat on her face. She knew he was looking at her and she prayed she wasn't blushing. She was wearing her war paint now and he surely must know why. She'd left the room in a dirty apron with no make-up and look at her now—surely he'd know why. Strangely enough, the fact that they couldn't speak and couldn't touch and weren't even supposed to look made every tiny thing that much more significant. The fact that she'd put lipstick on while Muriel was washing the decanter seemed tantamount to scrawling "FUCK ME" on her face. She made herself look at him and as her eyes came up, his slid away, not without a lingering trace of humor that burned like a brand on her skin. He knew how foolish this all was. He wanted to look and would have if David and Benjamin hadn't been sitting there. Elly turned over three glasses, pulled the glass stopper from the decanter and poured three splashes of brandy into the glasses, pushing her breasts out as she did, as if the brandy were coming from her. Max's hand was resting on the table, right under hers, tanned, masculine. It didn't move. Muriel slid plates of latkes down on the table where they weren't any and stepped back, looking up and down to make sure everyone was served: they were. Everyone was just about finished or was groaning in satiety, and now the waitresses could sit down and grab what they could, sitting at the woman's end of the table, marked off from the men's section with a ceremonial rope. Max had arranged for himself to be sitting next to the Great Divide and Muriel took the seat one place over, meaning that Elly would have to sit next to him, and this time she did blush, she couldn't help it. It was ridiculous. She was a grown woman and considered herself something of a sexual athlete, certainly well-experienced. The fact that she should blush from the mere idea of sitting next to a man was preposterous, but there it was. She was red as a schoolgirl. The heat she felt in her face and chest wasn't from the Hanukkah candles, warm though they were. She pulled out the chair, squeezed herself between the wall and the table. "Sit, sit," Muriel called to her, shoving her own chair in to make room. She was eager to eat before they had to start clearing the dishes "I'm sitting, I'm sitting, Muriel! For Christ's sake!" The word was out before she realized it. David's jaw dropped. Benny looked at her through his thick glasses, stunned. Max stared directly at her, as shocked as the rest of them, then he covered his face with a napkin and his shoulders heaved with silent laughter. Elly's face got even redder. "Well I'm sorry, but 'Holy Moses' doesn't quite cut it." "Muriel, what's wrong with Elly?" By tradition, David couldn't speak to Elly since she was an unmarried woman, but he could speak to Muriel, who was his wife. The whole thing was just nonsense anyhow, this not talking to unwed women. It was positively medieval, Islamic. They didn't act this way when guests weren't here. It was all bullshit, just a show they put on. "Nothing's wrong with Elly, okay?" Elly said. "She just put in a twelve hour shift and she's beat, that's all. She's tired." "She shouldn't work that hard," Max said. His voice was like baritone silk. Elly wanted to roll in it and rub it against her face. "You guys kill yourselves with this show you put on. It really isn't necessary." Benny was caught in mid swallow, Elly expected him to do a spit-take and spray the table with brandy. "What are you talking about?" David leaned forward, offended, eager to make things right. Max smiled and waved a hand dismissively. "Nothing. Never mind. I was kidding. It's lovely. Hanukah's a great time of year, isn't it?" "No, what did you mean?" "Nothing. It's just— You adhere to the letter of the law, Rebbe David. The spirit of the law? That's something else. But I'm sorry. I shouldn't be criticizing." "You don't have to worry about me," Elly said. "I'm fine, really." "Elly..." David warned. She had made the mistake of addressing Max when she spoke, and that wasn't allowed. "No, forgive me," Max said. "It's your home and I'm a guest. I shouldn't have said anything and that was very rude. I apologize. I just hate to see these young women working so hard." Elly blushed again and looked down at her hands. What was wrong with her? "Think nothing of it. You should live and be well, Rebbe Shavitz!" David said in the stock combination toast and acceptance of apology. He raised his glass and tapped it against Max's. Benny joined in and they all drank. "Your candles, Rebbe Shavitz! Surely you want to light them now?" "Ah. Of course." It was the second night of Hanukkah and there were three candles before him, one for each night and a third to light them with. He lit the third—the shammes— with a lighter, then picked it up. He said the Hebrew blessing, then in English he added, "The lights dispel the darkness and let us see. Let us pray we use the light to see what it's good for us to see, and that we use that knowledge in our mission of tikkon olam." Tikkon olam, "repair the world", mend the perfection that was torn during creation. That's what the Kabbalah taught, that for creation to exist apart from God it had to surrender some of God's perfection. That was the price of free will, and all of humanity's job now was to repair it through acts of compassion, charity, prayer, and beauty. As he lit the candles Elly had the uncanny feeling of being naked before him, of being entirely undressed. As he lit the first candle it was as if her apron and her shirt, her tee-shirt and undershirt and bra had all disappeared and she sat there exposed for him, and as he lit the second her jeans and panties slid from her legs and she was sitting there naked, naked before him, a woman hungry for him, his to do with as he pleased. The sensation was so vivid she couldn't believe he didn't notice. She couldn't believe everyone at the table didn't notice. She felt like her clothes were somehow invisible in the light of the three small candles. How they seemed to blaze! There was a moment where no one moved. They all sat there staring at each other, basking in the childish delight of flame on their faces. Then Muriel fell upon her pot roast and David laughed, apropos of nothing. Max smiled and Elly remembered the saying, that when a sudden lull of silence falls over a group, an angel is flying over their heads. A Heart Made of Branches Elly had no appetite. Sitting next to Max gave her the illusion that they were together, and though her head told her this was a foolish and dangerous game to play, her heart ran with it. She couldn't ignore the presence of the ceremonial rope between them. It seemed like an omen, as if it were drawing them together rather than keeping them apart and she wanted to pick it up and give it to him, just wrap it around her wrists and hand it to him. Surely he'd know what to do. Though she wasn't hungry, she was drawn to the wine as if the rim of the glass were his lips, and Muriel seemed to be goading her on, pouring again and again, keeping her glass filled. The wine was thick and sweet and ruby red, the Hanukkah candles were bright with dancing yellow flames. The winter night pressed down outside like cold blue velvet. She took a bite of her latke and the crispy morsel dissolved on her tongue like something unctuous and sensual, salty with a masculine musk. It dissolved away with a taste of the earth, a memory of sin. After dinner the children gathered at one table and played with dreidls, betting nuts and candy against one another, and Muriel and Elly jumped to their feet and started clearing away the dishes from the two tables, and so did Max, taking his own dishes into the kitchen and helping them fill the totes. He maintained the rule of silence out of respect for David and Benny, talking to Muriel, because she was a married woman and therefore safe, but not Elly, and though he held the kitchen door for her, he wouldn't look her in the eye, nor would he look at her as he handed her more dirty plates and glasses, and her heart began beating wildly as he bussed in such obvious disregard of her, paying her a kind of negative attention that began to arouse her in the strangest fashion, making her feel as if she were just too sexually charged to even look at. She felt explosive, lethal, and she toyed with the idea of touching him, of taking his hand, maybe licking it, or getting him alone in the kitchen and grabbing his cock. What would he do? Would he explode back at her, pin her arms behind her and rip her jeans open. Surely beneath these laws of no touching and no looking there were currents of insatiable, unstoppable lust and cruelty. She stole a look at his crotch. Was he hard? Did he want her that much that just having his hand on the same plate as hers was enough to make him hard? It must be her imagination but she thought she could feel some sort of vibration through the plate, some sort of animal vitality that shook the very molecules of porcelain. Meanwhile David was upset that his prized guest was acting like a busboy. Benny said, "Come, come, Rebbe Shavitz! You shouldn't be carrying dishes!" But Max just replied, "No, I don't mind either, and if that's the rule of this house, then I'll follow it. This is a pleasure to me and the least I can do to repay your kindness, and these lovely girls can use the help. They shouldn't be working like this. It pains me, like using flowers for straw." "But Rebbe Shavitz, we were hoping you could give us some time for a lesson on Kabbalah," Benny said. "It's rare that we have an expert of your stature," David added. "To waste your time bussing dishes is a shame." Max stopped what he was doing and looked at them. Elly was just coming into the kitchen with a tray full of plates. Max went and took hold of them. At first she didn't know what he was doing. The men didn't help the women with the dishes. The men studied, the women cooked and cleaned. That's the way it was. Max had a hold of the tray and he wouldn't let go, His hand touched hers. His hip touched hers. "What's your name?" he asked. In a panic, Elly looked up at David and Benny. Shocked, they looked back at her. "This is pitiful," Max said. "You do have a name, don't you? Or do they just call 'dish girl'?" "Elly," she said. "I'm Elaine Greengau." "How do you do, Elaine. I'm Max Shavitz. How'd you like to show me around the farm?" She looked back at David and Benny who were still standing stock still, their mouths hanging open. "Sure," she said. "I'd love to. I'll get my coat." ***** The night wasn't black, but a deep, dark grape-jelly purple, rimed with cold, and their breath hung in the air like clouds of spun sugar as she showed him the outbuildings, the guesthouse and the greenhouses they'd built out of old windows. She was sad it was winter and that nothing was growing. She felt responsible for the deadness, and she wished she could have shown him the place wild with life and growth, the greenhouses reeking of tarragon and chervil and basil and thyme. She had her own greenhouse now too, and rosebushes she'd planted but they looked all sick and scrawny in the cold. They weren't at all the image she wanted to convey. He didn't seem to mind, though. He hardly seemed to notice. He seemed instead to be terribly intent on listening to her. Whereas before he was all eyes, now he was all ears, asking her questions, digesting her words as if they were in deep in dialogue about Torah. "So you were studying to be a rabbi for just a year?" he asked. "Yes. A month shy of a year." "What happened?" She decided to tell him the worst. "I lost my faith. I stopped believing in God." He didn't flinch. "It comes and goes," he said. It comes and goes? "The miracle is, we're here, with our little candles and our human hearts. That's the miracle. That and the things we feel for each other. The incredible complexity. " He said that and kicked at the snow. In the moonlight he blew a breath into the air and it hung there like a cloud in the sky, a miracle of warmth in the cold. He smiled at her and his teeth gleamed white and she thought he was the most handsome man she'd ever seen. What a miracle, she thought, That we are warm things in this wilderness of cold! That's when she decided to show him the ropes hanging in the barn. Just two ropes, three feet apart, hanging four feet off the floor. "They're ropes," he said. "So?" "So, I use them," she said. "I like them." She looked at him so he had to know. "Oh," he said as he caressed them. "Oh!" He picked up her arm. It was the first time he'd touched her directly. He put his hand on her wrist and picked up her arm and wrapped one of the hanging ropes around it. She was wearing her big winter coat and mittens and it was about the unsexiest thing she'd ever seen but the feel of the rope taking possession of her wrist as his dark eyes looked directly into hers was like being pierced by the arrows of his will, like being fucked by his intent, and with the state she was in, it was almost more than she could stand and her body seemed to swell with excitement. She leaned forward of her own accord until he stepped forward to press his body against hers and contain her and keep her from expanding forever in that cold and wintry barn. He grabbed hold of her other wrist and now she was caught—trapped—one wrist lashed in the rope that hung from the rafter and the other caught in his hand and with her wrists caught like that her breasts were exposed and vulnerable, his for the taking, but he ignored them now and instead took hold of her hair and pulled her head back and kissed her and it was just what she wanted, to be kissed like that. Oh, it was just what she wanted! To be kissed and taken by his rough lust in the complicated shadows of the vast space of the barn with his lips hot upon her, searing on her lips. "Ahhh!" Her helplessness drove her wild and drove him wild as well. She was meat on the spit of desire roasting in the heat of his lust and she tried to reclaim her wrist but the rope allowed her only to swing that arm in a futile arc so she tried to move her other arm and found Max to be gratifyingly strong, holding her with adamantine male power, his hardness turning her into a swamp of cloying need. His lips were hot and the air was cold and she was steaming inside her coat and then shivering, then his free hand was down at the crotch of her jeans at the heart of her softness where she had no defense and six months of need and she felt like she might open up and bite him she needed him so much. Max backed away. As suddenly as the madness had started, he backed away from her, let go of her wrist, smiled wryly, his eyes suddenly sharp and knowing as the devil's. "We slip so easily from one way of being to another, and all of them are holy," he said. "All of them are holy." Elly used her free hand to unwrap the rope. What was he saying? That he was done with her? She had to know, and without playing games. "Say what you mean," she said. "Is it wrong? Is it a sin?" "Of course not," he answered. "Tying knots on shabbes. Now that would be a sin. That would be work and work is forbidden. But I lashed you, just wrapped the rope around you. That's no sin. Sex is a mitzvah (blessing). It's not a sin." She doubted that. It as beyond the bounds of marriage. These were just animal lusts. She no longer cared, but she no longer believed. She couldn't believe that he didn't care though. "Then do me," she said, and she couldn't believe the words that came out of her own mouth "Tomorrow night I'll come back. Then I'll 'do you'." "Tomorrow is shabbes." "So?" She looked at him and didn't know what to make of him. Did he believe or not? How could he be a Jew and not believe? But wasn't that what she was? "The male and the female," he said. "Are always fighting, always struggling. They're two different words, more opposite than you imagine. We know that in Kabbalah. And do you know what the struggle is about? You think it's about mastery, about trying to subdue the other, but it's not. It's a struggle to surrender. Remember that, Elly. It's a struggle to make a bed in the other one's soul, to find a home there. It's the same thing we do with God." She heard what he said but all she felt was bitterness that he wouldn't take her tonight. She felt the coldness of the air in the barn, the harshness of the light. She started to walk past him when he grabbed her, grabbed her arm, grabbed her and pushed her up against the wall and kissed her hard, bruising her mouth, pulling her hair to tilt her head back and reaching beneath her coat to take her possessively between the legs, squeezing her selfishly. It hurt and it felt good to be taken so callously and with such disregard for what she wanted. She struggled against him and pressed against his shoulders but he was wonderfully strong, like steel, and she was just about to give up when he let her go and stepped back. "Let's go," he said. "I have to get my people back to town. I'll arrange things with David and Benny. I'll come out tomorrow afternoon. They've already offered me a room in the guesthouse." Elly felt cheap and naked and absolutely on fire. She knew he was right. She wanted to be made to surrender to him. She wanted a bed in his soul. She wanted to be his pleasure, his bliss, She wanted to do whatever it took to make his eyes gleam with hunger and see the look of rapture ripped like pain across his wise and handsome face. ***** After Max left with his van, David and Benny were beside themselves with excitement, talking about the coup they'd scored by getting Max to come back and give them a free shabbes lecture on Kabbalah and spend the night at Dov Y'Isroel. Muriel listened with half an ear, a smile on her face, studying Elly as they loaded the dishwasher. She knew something of what had happened. While the men were jabbering she came up to Elly. "We should put him in the guesthouse, nu? He'll want privacy." Elly, who was staring out the window, jerked out of her reverie. "What? Oh, yes. Thank you, Muriel. I think he would. That would be very thoughtful." "And I'll see if I can keep these schmendricks from talking his ear off all night. The lecture stops at ten. He's not really coming out here for the talmudic scholarship, is he?" "No. Not exactly." Muriel nodded and hung up her apron. "Leave it to me." ***** The next afternoon Elly was again out at the burning bush, her cooking done, a coat on this time, one eye on the road, one eye on the heart made of branches. She'd made special arrangements with Muriel so that she could eat with the other women and the seating had been arranged. She watched the light begin to fade, watched the sparrows and rooks shift in shoals across the bleak and medieval-looking landscape as they sought a place to roost for the night. A wind came up, thin and bitter as the sun sank and snow began to fall in little pellets. Soon the wind died and the snow was falling in clumps, thick enough to stick to her eyelashes and obscure the abandoned barn across the road. It was beautiful, beautiful in a forlorn and lonely way, and as always, her thoughts turned to God, or rather to his absence. There was a blessing for every occasion: one to be said on seeing the new moon, on taking a trip, on seeing a king, on seeing a sight of natural beauty, and she mumbled this latter now out of habit, though she knew no one heard. Who but a Jew went though with rituals when he didn't believe? It comforted her that "Israel" itself meant "Contends with God", "struggles with God." It was the only religion that did, that fought with him and argued, complained and swore at him, and even took him to trial. In the 1600's a bunch of rabbi's had called God to trial to see if he'd been irresponsible in creating a world in which there was so much suffering. Elly didn't know what the results had been, but she knew God hadn't shown up. She knew of another rabbi who'd complained that a human father who was as negligent with his children as the God of Israel was would have been thrown in jail long ago. Arguing with God was a Jewish pastime. It grew darker and soon she'd have to go inside for the lighting of the shabbes candles, and then she saw Max's van coming up the highway and her heart rose in her chest. "I thought you weren't coming!" she said as she ran to his window. "How could I not? Didn't I give my word?" She took his hand and pressed it against her breast. "Hurry," she said, they're going to light the candles." There were two other vans pulled up, the guests already inside and seated, but Muriel had been waiting for her and gave Elly the honor of lighting the shabbes candles on account of Max. Elly covered her head with a scarf and said the blessing in Hebrew, then lit the shabbes candles. She closed her eyes and passed her hands over the flame as if gathering the light to her; the light that comes from woman, the light that returns to her. David blessed the wine and the bread and they sat down to eat, segregated again, and again with Elly sitting next to Max, the rope between them. But this time the tension was almost unbearable. She was aware of his maleness like a perfume in the air, like a pheromonal musk. His movements, the way he used his hands, everything about him was so masculine, so possessive and full of mastery. When he tore the challah she watched how the crust crumbed and the doughy inside stretched and pulled apart like flesh, as if he were rending her own heart. The stab of his fork into the meat was sure and true and he devoured his food with a sensual pleasure that made her feel that it was she who was on his tongue. She had dressed nice tonight, in skirt and sweater, clothes she hadn't worn in six months, and her own availability thrilled her. The topics of conversation were inane—sports mostly, basketball, of which Max knew quite a bit, though he hardly seemed interested. Under the table his thigh pressed against hers and Elly almost died. After dinner the Hanukkah candles were lit and small gifts were handed out to the children who had come with the visitors. There was wine and schnapps and coffee and latkes, and the kids played dreidl. Elly helped clean up and Max was soon involved in conversation with David and Benjamin. Kabbalah. The Sephiroth. Everything in the universe could be understood in terms of the ten or eleven Sephiroth or emanations of God: Kether, the crown, the highest human understanding of God, the great "I Am"; Chokhmah, intuitive wisdom, the start of the Male, or Right Hand Pillar, the Pillar of Mercy; Binah, its reflection, active understanding, the start of the female or Left Hand Pillar, or Pillar of Severity; Chesed, mercy or love, comfort, lovingkindeness, on the right hand path, paired with Geburrah, or Justice, severity, discipline on the left. Below and between these is Tiphareth, like Kether, it's of the middle path and signifies beauty and balance, perfect harmony, the place where the soul dwells. Then, on the right again is Netzach, victory or emotion, sentiment, paired with Hod, splendor or glory, which is the power of the mind on the left. Below and between these is Yesod , foundation, the seat of psychological forces, and below Yesod is Malkuth, the physical world in which we dwell. There was an eleventh Sephirah, Daath, or some said it was the absence of a Sephirah, occurring below Chokhmah and Binah, the shadow of soul. It is our job to understand our lives in terms of these Sephiroth, and by so doing, to climb from one world to another. This is what he told David and Benny and a few others including Elly as they sat in a small bedroom on the first floor heated by a woodstove as the snow fell silently outside. They'd heard it before, but now Max went into it in detail, explaining and expanding on the Sephiroth so that their qualities formed a grand net that could encompass every kind of event and occurrence, a kind of all-inclusive grid that would fit over life and give meaning and structure to everything that might happen, cradle to grave. Problems with running Dov Y'Isroel's finances? Perhaps too much Chesed and not enough Gebburah, to much mercy in letting things slide and not enough rigidity, decisions made relying on Netzach rather than Hod. There were ways to find out using gematria, substituting numbers for letters and calculating their values and comparing these to the values of other words. The results were often uncanny, but sitting there, Elly had to remind herself that while the Tree of Kabbalistic Life was an awesome and fantastic structure, gematria was holy bullshit, a learned parlor game, superstition. "Yesod is where we start from," Max said. "In the body, Yesod is the genitals, the ground of our being. Some say this is a symbolic relationship, but I say no. Its literal meaning is important too. Our sexuality is the center of our energy, our creative engine, and it's from here that we launch ourselves into the search for God, with the same passion, the same expectation of ecstasy that we launch ourselves in a search after our lover. Our esthetic sense, that physical hunger, the need to be embraced and conquer and be conquered—those are all sexual feelings and religious feelings as well, and they originate in Yesod, the well of yearning. Here we bind them, and we harness them. Here we illuminate them, and they light up the whole Tree, the ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two paths." He had them spellbound, leaning over the desk, the diagram of the Tree of Life behind him, the snow falling gently outside the window. Hanukkah lights burned in the window, reflecting themselves back into the room in the darkness of the glass so that it seemed like there were indeed two worlds, the world of the lights inside the room, and the mysterious reflected room outside in the darkness, a world of spirit in which Elly could see herself and the men hanging in space, the snow falling through them. This is what they were, she knew, empty space, collections of atoms and molecules, tiny bundles of dumb meaningless energy that felt and had consciousness that burned in the unfeeling universe like the flames of the Hanukkah candles. A Heart Made of Branches "And that is all I have to say, gentlemen...and lady," Max concluded. He sat down and drank his wine. "But Rebbe—" David began "Max, can you explain—?" chimed in Benny. But Muriel opened the door and stood there holding a ridiculous little gong on a wooden stand which she struck with a wooden knocker. It made a surprisingly impressive sound. "Ten o'clock," she said. "The lecture must end as agreed! Our guest has had a grueling day and has expressed a wish to retire early to the pleasures of Torah study in the guesthouse. David, Benny, Isaac, don't opportune him!" She successfully closed the men's mouths and managed to hustle them up and out of the room before they could object, leaving Max and Elly alone. Muriel stepped back in and handed some keys to Elly. "You'll show Max to the guesthouse? I already turned on the heat and cracked a window to air it out. We took his bags over before sundown." "Of course, Muriel." "Take an oil lamp. Shabbes, you know," That meant they couldn't strike any fires, which was considered work. Muriel smiled. "Then good shabbes to you both." She withdrew. Max and Elly looked at each other and smiled. The laws of what could and couldn't be done on Sabbath—what was considered work and what wasn't—were terribly complicated and arcane. Keys could be carried in the pocket but not in the hand. A door could be unlocked with a key but not locked. A light could be turned off but—because an electric switch involved creating a spark and that was considered starting a fire—lights could not be turned on. How far one subscribed to these laws was up to one's devotion and understanding of Judaism. Max, for all his learning, was very liberal. He helped Elly on with her coat. He didn't care whether that was work or not. It wasn't as far as he was concerned. They went out the side door into the velvet dark night. The wind was up, the snow gusting in whirlwinds by the dead bushes near the back porch. Max was wearing an Irish fisherman's sweater with a windbreaker and Elly had her NorthFace parka that swirled around her and they laughed as they leaned back into the heel of the wind and Max shielded the kerosene lamp from the draft, the flame reaching high. It was dark out here and forlorn like the wilds of creation but the guest house wasn't far, a small tack house and saddlery converted into a cozy two-story cottage painted blue and dull yellow, one of the farm's more successful renovation projects, Elly let them in and closed and latched the door behind them (since it was a gravity latch, that was allowed. All the doors had gravity latches for just that reason). Max closed the window in the little kitchen (allowed) and lit some candles from the lantern (also allowed—no fire had been struck). He took off his coat and Elly did the same and they faced each other in the candle-lit room as the wind howled outside. They were in the kitchen—a table, four chairs, a day bed, a stove and fridge. "The bedrooms are upstairs," Elly said softly. Max nodded. He took his suitcase and took her hand and Elly grabbed the lantern and he led her up the steep stairs to the second floor where there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. He stopped, uncertain which one to choose. "Does it matter?" he asked "This one's away from the house." "Good." He led her into that one and put his suitcase down on a chair. Elly put the lantern down on the nightstand and turned on the space heater in the room and the gas caught with whoosh. She stood up. "Tell me about Yesod," she said. Snow spattered the dark windows. The outside burned with darkness. "Yesod. Foundation. The roots of desire, the sexual engine, that which drives us. It's the urge that can be simplified no further, like basic hunger, the bones of who we are, the reason the baby cries when it's born and what we stretch our arms out for and grasp at as we die. It's our thirst for God, our need for each other." He put his suitcase on a chair and sprang the locks. Inside Elly saw coils of rope, whips, crops, thin metal chains, sexual implements. "What Kabbalah is, is meaning we lay over the rawness of existence. That's what God is too. All these things happen to us, all these feelings impinge on us. We don't know what they mean. Kabbalah is how we find out what they mean. Kabbalah is the lens we see life through." The space heater was large and the room was rapidly becoming warm. The metal of the heater ticked as it heated and expanded. Max picked up a crop and walked over to Elly and put his hands on her shoulders. He looked into her eyes, dark and filled with fire. "We are elemental," he said. "We are perfect." He kissed her, and the kiss was worth her six month's wait, incandescently hot yet restrained as if he were leashed. He held himself back by an act of will, burying his hand in her hair and holding her head so she could get but the barest taste of his lips while he fed on hers like a tiger, bending her head back, exposing her throat. She was strong but he was stronger and he wanted her more. He had her mouth till she had to open her lips to breath, and then his mouth was at her throat, sucking her, licking, threatening to bite and devour, and his hand was on her breasts, filling themselves with her flesh, squeezing her, crushing her as if she contained a rare sweetness that he could squeeze out of her. Elly moaned. She could feel that sweetness inside of herself as well and it ached. It needed to be pressed out. Her breasts were swollen with it, her whole body was filled with this thick liquid sweetness that was starting to gather and seep from her pussy like honeydew. "Mmmm!" Max groaned. He still had one hand in her hair and had her bent back and almost off balance, now his other hand left her breasts and went between her legs where he touched her through her skirt, pressing the fabric up against her mound, a rude, sudden assault that made her gasp. She wore no stockings, nothing on her legs, and he worked his hand beneath the skirt and touched the warm, soft skin of her thighs and followed it up till his hand was against the crotch of her panties—the warm, humid flesh behind the thin nylon. Elly held on to his shoulders, her eyes closed, reveling in the feeling of being taken by a man, of being violated, her clothes pushed aside and the naked vulnerability of her body exploited. It was wrong of course, but it was the wrongness that gave it its erotic power, the fact that a rabbi was doing it, that she could bring him down into the simple world of carnal sin. Max pushed her down onto the bed so she was sitting and he lifted her sweater over her head. He kissed her neck, her chest, kneeling on the bed as the snow swirled outside the window, then he went to his suitcase and got the rope. "You wanted this, didn't you?" he asked. She just nodded, too breathless to speak. The darkness seemed to close in around on them with a kind of formlessness, as if it were filled with potential, shadows gathering. He lashed the rope around her wrists, binding them together, wrapping it around them five times then passing it around itself. He tied no knots. The shabbes angels that stood at everyone's shoulders would approve. He laid her down and lashed her wrists then to the headboard. The mattress was a thick featherbed and Elly sank down into it as he drew the rope tight, her elbows standing out so that she could almost touch them together. She felt exposed and vulnerable, just as she'd dreamed, a creation to be acted upon by her creator, and unfinished sculpture awaiting the chisel. Max took a moment to lean over her and massage her breasts and kiss her and Elly felt the full power of her helplessness. She was his captive, his prisoner and neither her pride nor her refusal could save her now. The things she felt, the elements of Netzach, had been taken down to the realm of Malkuth, the material plane, and the rope was the sign of the feverish emotions that bound them together. She fought his kiss at first but the excitement was too much, and soon she opened her mouth to him and admitted his muscular tongue. She pulled at her bonds and opened her fingers wide but the ropes held and there was nothing she could do. She was his. His hands slid under her bra and he lifted it over her breasts, reached behind her and unhooked it so it lay there useless and defeated over the pale globes of her breasts. Her nipples spiked urgently into the air crying for attention. He quickly opened her skirt and pulled it off, lifting her roughly off the bed to get it past her hips. Her panties followed and Elly held her breath. The room seemed very still; so quiet she could hear the snowflakes falling against the window as he peeled the garment down her hips. She had a moment of trepidation appearing naked before him like this, but Max hardly looked. He was already fumbling with more rope and lashing it to her ankles, tying her feet to the foot posts of the bed and drawing them tight, stretching her out so that she was tied like a hammock in the soft trench of the mattress. It was so warm that she was perspiring now, the lantern and candle shining off her naked breasts and thighs as she waited for his next move. He was still fully dressed and he was sweating too, the formed meeting the formless, her nakedness waiting for his touch to give her shape and meaning. Max turned back to the case and picked up a crop. "This too is part of it," he said. He smiled. "My magic wand" He stroked the tip down between her breasts and over her belly, over the top of her thigh and then down, up the inside of her bound leg till it neared her sex, then brought it up to the top again, the small square of leather at the tip licking over her skin like the nib of a pen that had been dipped in flame, inscribing her with holy words of desire and arousal. She felt the evil in the whip, the potential for pain as it quivered in his hand and left her skin then slapped down lightly on her mound, on the insides of her thighs. She tried to close her legs but couldn't. The ropes pulled tight; the bedposts creaked. Elly whimpered softly. The whip left her lower body and dragged along her belly and she looked up at Max. His eyes were bright and feverish with control, with the power of creation. He tapped the end of the crop against the fullness of her breasts, slid the leather against her stiffened nipples and circled them and Elly arched up toward the whip's caress, needing more sensation, as if sensation would hide her nakedness or would excuse her somehow. Max stood up. "Open your mouth," he said. Elly fixed her eyes on him and opened her mouth and Max set the shaft of the whip between them. "Now hold it and don't let go till I tell you." She bit down and watched as he lifted his sweater over his head then removed his undershirt. He was lean, well-muscled, covered with a sprinkling of black hair that excited her. He took the whip. "Now let go," he said. Elly released the whip, giving it back to him like a dog releasing a stick for her master. What was this? They were two Jews, two civilized people on the Sabbath night. While sex was a mitzvah, what they were doing was wrong, perverse. Tying her, using a whip, that might even violate the Sabbath commandment against doing work. Didn't he care? Didn't she? No, she didn't. She no longer believed. She believed nothing but what her body told her, that being tied like this and threatened by Max with the whip was just what she wanted. The Sephiroth of the Tree of Life spun in her head. She was Chokhmah and Binah; Chesed and Gebburah, and she was the formless void before the spark of creation, and Max was going to give it to her, going to fill her with light. He lifted the crop and Elly strained upwards in the darkness of the room, wanting it, pushing her hips up at it, reaching for it, straining after it like a flame. "God, you're beautiful!" he said. He brought the whip down across her thighs. She moaned as fire shot through her body and she collapsed into the bed, pulling at her bonds. He struck her again across the thighs and again she writhed, tossing her hips. It was his lust she felt, his desire for her; the hot, searing stroke, melting into her skin so close to her sex and yet not touching her there. He punished her and her face twisted into a rictus of pain, the look of a woman in orgasm. He hit her again, this time on the bottom of her upturned arms, and then on the bottoms of her breasts, and by now Elly was moaning, twisting on the bed, digging her ass into it, trying to force some friction against her pussy, some pressure against it. Her breasts jiggled, her mouth was open as she sucked in hot breath. Max slid his hand up the inside of her leg to her pussy. She was wet, soaking, on fire. Elly moaned and ground herself against him, tightened her buttocks and began to pump urgently, tightening her stomach, gripping the rope over her head for leverage. Max sat down on the bed and kept one hand between her legs, pressing against her, guiding her, coaxing her, and with the other, he began to beat her pussy, bringing the crop down in sharp little strokes against her clit. "Come on now, Elly! Come on now, my little bitch! I know what you've got for me. I know what you've got inside, whore. It's mine and I want it. It belongs to me, your master, and I want it. I'm going to beat it out of you, slut! You beautiful whore. It belongs to me and I want it! Give it to me! Give it me now! Now! Now!" With every word he hit her with the crop and curled his fingers up into the wet swamp of her pussy till she was febrile with need, till she was dissolving in front of him like ice before a fire, falling apart and it felt like only his hand and the sharp reports of the whip against her cunt were holding her together and keeping her concentrated. The darkness of the night was closing in, deep blue and loud with silence, and the a flame was burning within it, a flame was rising up as he dug between her legs and Elly was groaning, gasping, moving her hips, whimpering, pressing against his hardness. The flame was growing, expanding and devouring her into the liquid light at the heart of it. The slap of the whip was calling her to attention, was making her see. Heat was streaming from her head and shoulders and then pleasure was crashing down upon her and she was lost, spinning off in a thousand directions with only the ropes holding her in place, only the ropes and then Max's arms and body on top of hers, seizing her and holding her, holding her together with his strength and his desire and she was crying with relief and ecstasy at the brilliance of the light and his lips were against her face and his cock was pressing against her and he needed to come into her, he needed to come in. She wasn't ready, she wasn't ready. She needed to pull herself together. She wasn't ready! God— He was in her! He was in. His prick just pressed through all her defenses of which there were none and he was up inside her, filling her, his weight on top of her and she was full of him, stretched with him, entire with him, the flame guttering inside her as he pushed hard, hard, making the ropes tighten around her ankles. She was spread open so lewdly, so completely, and Max had her so utterly that for a moment she felt like nothing but his container, like the Sephiroth that had contained the divine light, so she contained Max's inchoate energy and gave him form and purpose, something to strive against, and he reached beneath her, grabbed her buttocks in his hands and began to fuck her, to drive her into the softness of the featherbed with his wild yet willful thrusting, plunging into her, opening her and making her take him. "Oh God! God, yes!" Elly cried. She pulled at the ropes but to no avail. She couldn't get free nor did she want to. She wanted to be captive, she wanted to be forced, she wanted to be opened and plundered and all her secrets discovered; all her shame and embarrassment and fear burned away in his lust and his feverish desire for her, and that's just how he fucked her, as if there could be nothing between them. He was closer to her than her own skin, deeper than her own heart. He was in her very bones. He ground against her, his lips finding hers, his tongue thrusting into her mouth so that their nostrils flared in feverish breathing and they could both hear the soft, wicked squish of his cock stirring inside her, the liquid thrill of his flesh in hers. He pushed, pushed hard, grinding against her clit, and Elly moaned into his mouth and bit his lip, that over ripe lower lip that so needed biting. She bit him now, she had the right. He was between her legs and fucking her and she had the right to bite his mouth, tied and helpless as she was, and she did, as his big cock ground inside her. Max snarled. He moaned and began to fuck her harder now, and faster, his hips lifting, plunging his cock into her, making the mattress bounce. He tore his lips from hers and began to gasp for breath and Elly gasped too, and her hips began to snap up at his, meeting him thrust for thrust, her pussy opening to take him inside, her legs splayed to make a saddle for his desperate ride. "Fuck me!" she gasped. "Fuck me! Fuck me!" But Max knew what he was doing, his ass rising and falling with trip-hammer precision, putting all the strength of his ass and thighs behind it, driving it into her so that Elly clung to the ropes as if she were in a hurricane, holding on for dear life as the maelstrom of feelings swept her up and away. She tried to lift her feet but the ropes held her, tried to close her hands around his back but the ropes held her. She hung in the ropes, helpless, being fucked by a wild man possessed by the passion of creation, hammering out his will upon her, and suddenly Max was groaning, sweating and swearing, his motions even more exaggerated, his toes grabbing for purchase in the sweaty sheets. "God, yes! Coming, Elly! Coming!" "Oh yes! Yes! Give it to me! Give it to me! All of it!" He levered himself up on his hands and arched his back, threw back his head and gritted his teeth in a look of agony but his brows lifted in the fineness of pleasure, then dropped in a glower of ferocious lust and he started to growl, "Yes! Yes! Yes! God, yes!" Each word punctuated by a deep, hard thrust of his loins against her and a blinding splatter of hot fluid deep within her secret confines. Elly felt him, felt him losing himself inside her, flexing hard and that was enough to take her up and over the edge. She bore down on his cock and felt herself go over the edge as well, a brilliant orgasm, lit with the lights of Hanukkah, the flames burning against the dark blue of the invading night, warm, enveloping, wild and joyous. Max held her till her shuddering stopped, then untied her and held her still until even her trembling subsided, and then he turned down the heater and blew out the candle and still he held her as their breathing slowed and they looked for words but found none and touched instead, their hands caressing beneath the heavy blankets. He got up just to turn down the lantern and then laughing jumped back into the warm, humid bed, hot from their bodies and they tangled up in each other again and watched as the snow continued to fall. "If God has sex with the world, it must be something like this," Elly thought, then she pressed back against Max and they soon were asleep, asleep in the darkness of the Hanukkah light. ***** In the morning they took a walk. Elly was frank and asked him, "How can you stuffy Kabbalah if you don't believe in God?" "Did I say I didn't believe in God?" "Didn't you?" "I don't know," he said. "'Does God exist' you mean? Like that?" "Yes." They walked on in silence. "Well?" she asked. "Does he or doesn't he? It's a simple question. It's what I asked them at rabbinical school and no one would give me a straight answer. I don't see why not. You're talking about God, does he really exist or not? What's so hard to say?" A Heart Made of Branches He shrugged. They walked on further. The birds for once did not speed over the wintry landscape but rose from the trees and circled and landed again in the self same tree like a thought that couldn't get started. Max took her hand to hold her close. Elly was going to come back with him to his place in the city for a few days just for a visit, to see how things worked out. She was happy and wanted to show him something, so she pulled him over to the burning bush. "It's a heart made of branches," she said, leading him around to the house side. "Pierced by another branch that looks like an arrow. I saw it on the day you came, and I knew that day would be special. But I never knew it would be like this, Max." She showed him the burning bush and looked for the heart, but no matter how she looked or in what position she stood, she couldn't see it any longer. "Something must have changed," she said. "It's gone." Max stood and looked too. He saw her cigarette butts on the ground, and he stood up and squatted down and leaned from side to side, but he couldn't see it. "But you saw the heart that day?" he asked. "As clear as I'm seeing you," she said. "Like someone built it intentionally. It was amazing." He nodded. "I believe you. Let's go inside. It's cold." They turned and walked towards the house and he stopped. He said, "Then tell me, Elly. It's Hanukkah. We're talking about that heart made of branches, does it really exist or not? What's so hard to say?"