The Book of Changes
A lake is something limited. Water is inexhaustible. A lake can contain only a definite amount of the infinite quality of water: that is its peculiarity....Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man: if they existed, his life would only dissolve into the boundless.
I Ching (The book of changes)
He does Tai Chi like a Chinaman, looks like one, hairless and lithe. He is balding and older than me. I do not expect that he will talk to me.
I am a little startled, really, on the day. He admires my necklace with the Star of David. �Are you Jewish?� he asks. Were he not my Tai Chi teacher, I�d have taken him for a dirty old man. Out of context, I would never have agreed to that after-lesson coffee. When he told me he�d been living with his girlfriend, celibate, for seven years, I would have got up and left the smoky cafe, gone back to the university. �I am Catholic. Waiting for my marriage to be annulled. Then I will marry her. I am Jewish, too, you see,� he adds.
The Tai Chi teacher is fascinated by my Jewishness. Even more by my plans to move to Israel. Fascination tripled by the spectre of kibbutz and the boyfriend he�s never met; but I don�t want to go. �Just like the story of Ruth,� he marvels, quoting my namesake. �Whither thou goest I will go.� Except that Ruth followed her mother-in-law and not a man.
It�s the last breath of summer. Everything is the colour of straw. Hair hangs in strands, dreadlocked by sand; faces are tanned by the sea-spray.
And I follow him. Is it really in the name? I follow him out of some thirst for the desert, unknown. Drenching me in softest bluest of winds. Or so I imagine.
It is the point just before. Everything is mine. The moment, hanging, still, between his leaving and my meeting him. All the men leave the house and women fill it. The world offers possibilities, endlessly. Finally.
I opt for the one that will strangle me.
The Tai Chi teacher visits my house with his fiancee. His annulment is final, now: you can see that he�s getting laid. You can see why he waited all this time, too. Sabina is beautiful. Loveliness oozes like wine from her pores. He is drunk on her dark, smooth skin and her hair hanging, long shiny swathes.
They come to my house which is warm, summer still - the men have all only just left. My boyfriend, in China now, writes about food - �they eat roaches!� - and it seems he is fast losing weight. Not a bad thing, I tell myself, putting out the freshly baked bagels and salmon, smoked. This is their pre-wedding party. We wish that your boyfriend could be here, they say unconvincingly.
Everyone who says it doesn�t mean a word. I am too different without him here, the house smells fresh, like flowers and newly baked dough. Men want to court me. I find scented notes on my door. It is easy - they know I am leaving. They know I will go.
And I know it, too. I know that this is the point just before. Real life doesn�t happen this way.
The Tai Chi teacher is courting me too, in his way. We go out for lunch: he tells me I�m wise. I like that. King Solomon was wise - and he had 300 concubines.
All of them count on my leaving, though: the flat mate who tells me she�s gay, the friend with the heroin habit who steals. Ex-lover, leaving me notes; new lover, holding me tight while he calls up his girlfriend in Spain. My life is populated and I revel in it. Everything is mine.
He writes to me from the Holy Land. There is milk here, he says. There is honey. We can make egg nog. All he ever thinks about is food.
All I ever think about is leaving, it is like a death, I act like a woman doomed to die. I take everything that is offered me. I never feel guilt. I block out the truth like the sun that is starting to wane.
�Ruth felt like that leaving Moab,� the Tai Chi teacher says. �Imagine: edges of desert, her husband has died. She doesn�t know anything about Bethlehem; Jesus hasn�t been born.�
I think about how she must have felt: your people will be my people, she says, sounding more sure of herself than she is. Clinging to the old woman, mourning for her past.
�If I�d met you before...� he starts to say, but he feels my cringe. The cafe is full - lecturers and students, steam wafting past from the coffee machine and out of the oversize windows that spill to the street. �Sabina is pregnant,� he starts again. �We are calling the baby Ruth.� I look at him, shocked this time. I don�t know what I should say. That�s quick, I think. �And if it�s a boy?� I say to him.
�My father�s sister was Ruth,� he says quickly. �She was killed in Auschwitz.�
I go back home to the house I am going to leave. It is beautiful. Ivy stretches itself through the roof. Stones crumble listlessly from the front yard porch. The key is in the door and no one robs us. Friends drift in and out when we�re not here.
I go to the post box nestling grey in old red brick. There is only one letter. My flat mate is in love with me, it says.
I can�t go home.
I can�t go home, can�t go to my lover�s house - She might find out. Can�t go to my friend�s. Not to the Tai Chi teacher, so I call the ex-lover hastily, from a phone booth on the street. �If you don�t sleep with me I won�t be able to stand it,� he says. �Please don�t come here.�
It is the end of summer. Everything is the colour of straw and I will follow him. Perhaps I am doing it because of love. I really can�t think of anything else.
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