Legends полностью

In a bamboo cage set on a wooden stepladder next to floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a green bird with a hooked bill and bright red plumes between its eyes hopped onto a higher trapeze and declared, clear as a bell, “Loz im zayn, loz im zayn.”

Rabbi Shulman looked embarrassed. “My parrot speaks Yiddish,” he explained. “Los im zayn means let him be.” He smiled at his colleagues. “Maybe Ha Shem, blessed be his Name, is trying to tell us something.” The rabbi turned back to Samat. “I assume you wouldn’t come all this way without identification.”

Samat handed his Israeli passport to the rabbi.

“You are Israeli?” Shulman said, plainly surprised. “You speak Hebrew?”

“I immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union. I speak Russian.”

“The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore,” Shulman pointed out.

“I meant Russia, of course,” Samat said.

“Excuse me for asking,” the oldest of the three rabbis said, “but you are Jewish?”

“My mother is Jewish, which makes me Jewish. The Israeli immigration authorities accepted the proofs of this when they let me into the country.”

Stella explained the general situation while Shulman took notes. Her sister, whose Israeli name was Ya’ara, daughter of the late Oskar Alexandrovich Kastner of Brooklyn, New York, currently lived in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank called Kiryat Arba. Ya’ara and Samat Ugor-Zhilov, here present, had been married by the Kiryat Arba rabbi, whose name was Ben Zion; Stella herself had been a witness at the marriage ceremony. Samat had subsequently abandoned his wife without granting her a religious divorce. This same Samat, here present, had had second thoughts about the matter and is now willing to put his signature to the document granting a religious divorce to his wife. She stepped forward and handed the rabbis a scrap of paper which spelled out the terms of the divorce. Samat’s signature was scrawled across the bottom.

The resplendent parrot descended to the lower trapeze and cried out, “Nu, shoyn! Nu, shoyn!” Shulman said, “That’s the Yiddish equivalent of Let’s put the show on the road.”

One of the older rabbis looked across the room at Martin. “And who are you?”

“That’s a good question, rabbi,” Martin said.

“Perhaps you would like to answer it,” Shulman suggested.

“My name is Martin Odum.”

Looking straight at Martin, Stella said, “He has deeper layers of identity than a name, rabbi. Fact is, he’s not absolutely sure who he is. But so what—women fall for men all the time who don’t know who they are.”

Shulman cleared his throat. The three rabbis bent over Samat’s passport. “The photograph in the passport doesn’t look anything like this gentleman,” one of the rabbis observed.

“I did not have a beard when I came to Israel,” Samat explained.

Stella said, “Look carefully—you can tell by the eyes it’s the same man.”

“Only women are able to identify men by their eyes,” Shulman remarked. He addressed Samat. “You affirm that you are the Samat Ugor-Zhilov who is married to—” he glanced at his notes—“Ya’ara Ugor-Zhilov of Kiryat Arba?”

“He does affirm it,” Stella said.

The rabbi favored her with a pained look. “He must speak for himself.”

“I do,” Samat said. He glanced at Martin, leaning against the wall near the door with one hand in his jacket pocket. “I affirm it.”

“Is there any issue from this marriage?”

When Samat looked confused, Stella translated. “He’s asking if you and Ya’ara had children.” She addressed Shulman directly. “The answer is: You can’t have children when you don’t consummate the marriage.”

One of the older rabbis chided her. “Lady, given that he is not contesting the divorce, I think you are telling us more than we need to know.”

Shulman said, “Do you, Samat Ugor-Zhilov, here present, stand ready to grant your wife, Ya’ara Ugor-Zhilov, a religious divorce—what we call a get—of your own free will and volition, so help you God?”

“Yes, yes, I will give her the damn get,” Samat replied impatiently. “You guys use a lot of words to describe something as uncomplicated as a divorce.”

“Kabbalah teaches us,” Shulman noted as his two colleagues nodded in agreement, “that God created the universe out of the energy in words. Out of the energy of your words, Mr. Ugor-Zhilov, we will create a divorce.”

Stella smiled at Martin across the room. “It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that words have energy.”

Samat looked bewildered. “Who is this Kabbalah character and what does he have to do with my divorce?”

“Let’s move on,” Shulman suggested. “Under the terms of the get,” he went on, reading from Stella’s scrap of paper, “your wife will keep any and all property and assets that you may possess in Israel, including one split-level house in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, including one Honda automobile, including any and all bank accounts in your name in Israeli banks.”

“I have already agreed to this. I signed the paper.”