The
following is an excerpt from Gutke the midwife's journal,
after she meets a passing woman, Dovida, at a party in
Kishinev:
Dovida was such a pleasure to me that even when other
opportunities presented themselves — an unhappily married
woman reaching for my hand, a friend of Dovida’s from
Berlin trying to sweet-talk me — I was never tempted. The
way it was between Dovida and me was what I wanted, not
because it was the only possibility but because Dovida
absorbed my attention, even when I wasn’t sure I liked her.
The flame I saw the night I met her never left, though it
often changed shape, intensity or color.
But the words for what we were to each other? Every part of
the body has a name. Sometimes I lay in bed with Dovida—
she slept sound and late — and I would name each knuckle on
her hand. I named the crease behind her knee, I traced the
big muscles of her forearms, I called the left one Simcha
and the right one Latke, it was good enough to eat.
“What are you doing?”
“Just talking to Simchalle here.”
“Should I be jealous of my forearm?”
“Well, you, you’ve known so many women, I have to make it
up somehow. If I find twenty women in your body, will that
even the score?”
She was sleepy, chuckling, pulling her arm around me. “Are
we keeping score? You’re the one who gets to look between
other women’s legs. You can’t fault me for what I did
before I met you.”
Once something comes into being, shouldn’t there be a name
for it? I could call this love, like young girls dreaming
about who they’ll marry, but to call it love would be like
to call it God, no offense to the Creator. Everything is
God’s, isn’t it? And all pleasure in life is love. What is
between me and Dovida must be very close to God, because
even if there was a word for it you could not say it out
loud. Just like the name of God, you must not speak it. You
can look at it, written out, but not even a whisper should
cross your lips.
“So serious, my Gutke, always wanting to understand what
makes us love. Maybe it’s not such a serious thing. Don’t
your medical books tell you human beings are mostly water?
We are just water, moving towards each other. Like this —
.” She rolled towards me and took my lips in her mouth. Her
lips were soft and expanding, until I thought my entire
body was inside her. So much sensation — I had to pull
back, to look at her.
I have to pull back a little, so often she’s away on
business. Now we rent an apartment together in Odessa, as
if we are man and wife. But I keep my room at Golde’s in
Kishinev, so I can still bring new lives into the world
among the people who know me. Once in a long time when a
girl is born, I see that flare I saw when I first looked at
Dovida. This one, I think, will be like us.
Even if I have no words for it.
A Law of Physics
Saturday, March 25,1911
One body falling alone is its own weight
times distance.
Two bodies falling alone are their own but
if they hold hands
their weight is multiplied.
Here’s a for instance:
Two girls are on a ledge.
The building is burning.
There are nets below.
The girls are young and for the purpose
of this example
thin and frightened.
It is eight stories to the ground.
The net can hold 90, 120, 150 pounds
times the distance but
holding hands
they become 11,000 pounds on impact.
The net breaks.
No one knows the price
of comfort,
how much they loved each other
and expected, by jumping,
neither to live nor die
but fly
released
from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
