Read Online Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg - Free Book Online Page B

rather that she refused to win on any terms but her own. She was stubborn but right, he reasoned, exactly like his own father.
    During his first week on his own Joseph had removed the kipa from his head and the tzitzit fringes he wore under his shirt, shoving them to the back of a drawer stuffed with socks. He had watched the sun set, commencing his first Sabbath away from home, and flicked the lights on and off to see what would happen. It took several weeks for him to use a pencil or turn on a gas flame; until then he found excuses for why he had no need to write or cook on the Sabbath. He was still separating milk from meat and keeping treyf food out of his apartment so that, he hoped, his sons could one day eat a meal in his home.
    The triumvirate of rabbis shuffled papers, sucked on their beards, sighed. The eldest of them spoke up, addressing no one in particular. “And you have done everything in your power to make peace between yourselves? You have made every effort at shalom bayit for the sake of those five boys?” And to Joseph, quietly, as if it were only the two of them in the court-room together: “Surely this madness is behind you. A lovely wife, a lovely family. You are a religious man and a learned man. You know what the Torah says: a punishment of immense proportions.” The fist behind Joseph’s eye had swollen to the size of a small boulder and was pressing his nose, his ears, threatening to break through the top of his skull.
    “Excuse me, Rabbi,” said Rebecca’s lawyer, “but this divorce was initiated by my client. Mr. Licht has no choice in the matter.”
    The rabbi stared hard at Rebecca’s lawyer and then at Joseph, but said nothing. Joseph felt the rabbi was willing him to refuse to sign the get , urging him to use this divorce document to make his wife his prisoner. A ceiling fan whirred over Joseph’s head, and he shuddered. He signed. The proceedings ended and they were divorced. The lawyers shook hands and chatted amicably while Joseph and Rebecca stood on opposite sides of the courtroom.
    It was barely eleven o’clock when they emerged from the building together. “I’ll call you about arranging a visit with the boys,” Joseph told Rebecca. She stared blankly ahead. Divorced, severed, that was what they were now. He knew the reality: he was lonely, but free and unencumbered in Tel Aviv; she was saddled with five young boys and a father-in-law in a rural village. He looked closely at her, trying to see her from another man’s perspective. Quietly attractive. Composed. Relaxed. The reality again: she looked haggard and defeated, hardened, a woman deprived of love. He knew this was his fault. He looked away.
    Rebecca and the lawyers headed toward a nearby parking lot. Joseph’s headache had lifted. He was feeling better and did not wish to return to his lonely apartment on this significant day. On an impulse he caught a taxi to the Central Bus Station. A bus would be leaving for Jerusalem in twenty minutes. He bought a ticket, then ambled past the merchants’ stalls, fingering fabrics and dried fruit and cigarette lighters as he went. He stopped at a falafel stand to buy a cold drink.
    The man at the register smacked the change into his palm and pulled him closer, meeting his face halfway across the counter. “Brighten up, pal,” he said. “Tomorrow’s another day.” Joseph longed to tell him he had been divorced less than an hour earlier, but instead he pulled his hand away and shoved the straw into his mouth, sipping greedily at the sweet juice. He backed away from the stand, catching a brief glimpse of himself in a small mirror. Did he really look that glum, that miserable? He wound his way through the crowd and reached the bus just as it was beginning to load. In a few moments he was off.
    How different this trip to Jerusalem felt, as the bus sped past the tiny settlements and their furrowed fields. There was no longer the tingle of anticipation at seeing Yoel, no longer