guesswork.'
'OK, I promise I won't run anywhere. Just tell me.'
'You can't make that promise. And I don't blame you. Trust me, Will. Please.'
'So when am I going to find out?'
'Soon. Tonight.'
'You'll tell me tonight?'
'You'll find out tonight. It won't be me who tells you.'
'Look, TO. Seriously. I've just about had it with riddles. What do you mean, it won't be you who tells me?'
'We're going to Crown Heights. That's where the answer is.'
'We? You mean, you're coming with me? 'Yes, Will. It's about time.'
'Yeah, that's true, I mean it makes sense-' Will stopped himself. TO was staring at him expectantly. It took him a while to realize what her expression meant. She was waiting for him to ask another question.
'What do you mean, 'it's about time'?'
'Haven't you guessed, Will? This whole weekend, everything we've been doing? You really haven't guessed?'
'Haven't guessed what?'
She was turning away, avoiding his gaze. 'Oh, Will. I'm really surprised.'
His voice rising: 'What are you surprised at? What are you talking about?'
'This is very hard for me, Will. I don't quite know how to say it. But it's about time I went, you know, back.'
'Back? To Crown Heights?'
'Yes, Will. Back to Crown Heights. I thought you'd guess ages ago. And I've been meaning to say something, but the moment never felt right. There's been so much to think about, so much to work out. The Hassidim, the kidnapping and… Beth. But you have a right to know the truth.
'So here is the truth. My name is Tova Chaya Lieberman.
I was born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I am the third of nine children. There's a reason I know this world, Will. I've always known it, inside out. It's my world. These crazy Hassidim? I'm one of them.'
Will could say nothing. He sat pressed against the back of the sofa, as if pinned there by a fierce wind. He listened hard, his mind trying to absorb everything TO was saying. But it was also racing, rewinding wildly through the events of the last forty-eight hours, seeing each moment in a new light.
And not just the last forty-eight hours, but the last five or six years. Every experience he and TO had shared now looked utterly, entirely different.
'You saw those families with a dozen children. That's what my family was like. I was number three and there were six more after me. Me and my older sister, we were like mini moms: cleaning and preparing meals for the babies from the day we were old enough to do it.'
'And did you, you know, look like that?'
'Oh yes. The whole business: long dresses brushing the floor, mousy hair, glasses. And my mother wore a wig.'
'A wig?'
'I never explained that to you, did I? Remember, the women with 'unnaturally straight' hair you saw, and how they all seemed to wear their hair in the same style? Those were sheitls, wigs worn by married women as an act of modesty: they're only meant to show their real hair to their husbands.'
'Right.'
'I know you think it's weird, Will, but what you've got to realize is, I loved it. I lapped it all up. I would read these folk tales in the Tzena Arenna, old legends of the Baal Shem Tov-'
Will turned his face into a question mark.
'The founder of Hassidism. All these stories of wise men journeying through the forest, paupers revealed as men of great piety and honoured by God. I loved it.'
'So what changed?'
'I must have been about twelve. I would doodle in my exercise books a lot. But at that age I started surprising myself with what I could do. Even I could see the drawings were becoming more elaborate and, you know, quite good. But there were so few pictures to look at. You see, ultra-orthodox Jews are not that big on graven images. There were hardly any around. And then, one day at sem — sorry, seminary; kind of the girls' school — I found one of those 'Introduction to the Great Painters' books. On Vermeer. I stole it and hid it under my pillow. I'm not kidding, for months I would wait till my sisters were asleep and then, under the covers, I'd stare at these beautiful pictures. Just staring at them. I knew then that's what I wanted to do.'
'You started painting.'
'No. There was never any time. At sem, it was just study, study, study. Holy texts. At home I had to clean, cook, change diapers, play with the baby, help the younger ones with their homework. I shared my room with two sisters. I had no time and no space.'
'You must have gone out of your mind.'
I did. I'd dream every day how I could get out. I wanted to go to the Metropolitan Museum. To see the Vermeer. But it wasn't just the painting.'
'Go on.'
'I know this sounds funny, given what I'm like now, but I was really good at religious studies.'
'No, sorry, I don't find that surprising at all.'
'I was top of my class. I found it easy. The texts, all those multiple meanings and cross-references, they just seemed to open up to me. Once a rabbi told me I was as good as any boy.'
'Oh dear.'
'I was furious. It was like, girls are only meant to go so far. Once you're seventeen or eighteen you become a woman — and that means getting married, having babies, keeping house. Men could carry on at the yeshiva forever, but girls were only allowed to acquire the basics. Then we had to stop.
Those were the rules. Five Books of Moses, a bit of Gemara maybe. That's a kind of rabbinic commentary. But that was it.'
'So all this kabbalah, you never studied that.'
'Wasn't allowed. Only men over forty can even look at it, remember.'
'Christ.'
'Exactly. You know me, if there's a forbidden zone, I want to go there. I found the odd book among my father's things, but I knew I couldn't do this on my own. I needed a guide.
So I asked Rabbi Mandelbaum.'
'Who?'
'The one who told me I was as good as a boy. I told him I wanted to study. I came to him with all the relevant texts that proved I had the right, as a woman, to know what was in those books.'
'And did he agree? Did he teach you?'
'Every Tuesday evening, a secret class at his house. The only other person who knew about it was his wife. She would bring a glass of lemon tea for him, a glass of milk for me and rugelach, little pastry cakes, for both of us. We did that for five years.' She was smiling.
'What happened?'
'He got worried. Not for his sake — he was too old to care what people thought — but for me. I was approaching 'the age of marriage'. He told me, 'Tova Chaya, it would take a very strong man not to feel threatened by so learned a wife'.
I think he was worried that he had ruined me: that, thanks to him, I would not be happy keeping house. I wouldn't be a good wife like Mrs Mandelbaum. He had lifted my sights.
In a way he was right.
'But he needn't have worried; by then I had planned my escape. I applied to Columbia; I gave a PO Box address so that no one would see the correspondence. I applied for tons of scholarships, so that I could afford a room. I presented myself as an independent adult; as far as the college were concerned, I had no parents.
'So when the day came, I gave the kids breakfast, as always, called out goodbye to my mother, as always,
