Why are you wearing a wig?
In that state!
I wanted to. I felt like a potato without hair.
The nurses had tried to take the wig off Wlibgis’s head as she fell asleep. They wanted to brush it and put it in the closet with all of her other belongings. Whether it was in the way of a cannula or bathing the patient, the hair was always unruly. But every time they touched her wig, Wlibgis snapped out of her morphine haze. She would cast an icy gaze at the nurses, and they would let go instantly, take a step back, and leave her hair alone, because that terrible gaze was not of this world. It came from the other side, where this miserable woman had apparently decided to take her wig. Let her take it. They didn’t want to touch the thing any more and tried to pretend it didn’t exist, but it was impossible because it blazed in their peripheral vision no matter what they were doing. If they tried to look Wlibgis in the face, there was only orange hair, hair hair hair, a demonic gleaming frame around all that pallor and gray.
My wig is from the best wigmaker in Zwolle, where all the local professional actors go.
. . .the Borough Park Hasids have much nicer ones . . .
What?
Pardon me, Wlibgis. Your hair is excellent, but it’s just a fact that the Hasidim have the best wigs in the world.
Who?
The Hasidim. Orthodox Jews. Their women have to hide their hair after they come of age. But they’re clever, so they hide their hair under magnificent wigs.
But is that . . . a little hypocritical?
It depends how you look at it. I think it’s just creative problem-solving. Have you heard of eruvin? An eruv is a ritual, symbolic enclosure that Orthodox Jews like the Hasidim use to surround the areas in which they live. They have them in New York, they have them in Jerusalem. It means that on Shabbat, Jews can move around in the area surrounded by the eruv wire and transport the things they need from place to place.
Where does the wire run?
On the ground?
No, it’s in the air. An eruv system vaguely resembles electrical poles. An outsider wouldn’t necessary notice the wires if she didn’t know to look.
Is it problem-solving if the problem is self-imposed?
It isn’t self-imposed. The Shabbat commandments are dictated in the Law. But interpretation is allowed.
You Jews are masters of that!
Evasion, circumvention, a little good-natured diversion . . . all within the framework of the Law.
And so inside the area outlined by that wire, you can do anything?
Of course not. For example, you can’t open an umbrella. That resembles pitching a tent too strongly. So it’s sort of like building.
But if it rains when you go outside you can still hold a newspaper over your head, right?
Yes.
Ridiculous!
You’re all insane!!
There are other limitations too. For example, you can’t play sports that require making holes or gouging ruts in the ground. So golf is forbidden.
And sledding on a sledding hill!
And on Shabbat you can only do a sport for the pleasure of moving, not to improve your health.
But with a sled you aren’t . . .
Tell me, Shlomith, who checks whether an athlete has the right motives?
The Law is the Law, and it resides within those who believe in the Law, the same way your heart resides within you.
Did you live inside of that kind of fence?
No, not that kind. My family wasn’t very religious.
Do you think that sort of thing is sensible?
Or those wigs. Why isn’t their own hair good enough? It’s a sin to pretend with things like that! Think about how it makes those of us feel who lose our hair because of disease!
There it is again: the wig. Wlibgis’s blazing, magic hair, which for a while has helped her be something other than sick and bald, something other than the old Wlibgis, a punching bag. So how does she feel about the idea that healthy women cover their own beautiful hair with wigs because of some silly tradition? It can’t be worse than how someone who lost a leg would feel about cosmetic amputation or a cleft lip patient about tongue splitting, but it still feels unjust and wrong, just like cancer in general.
Ladies. We’re in Wlibgis’s time now.
Suddenly from Polina’s direction an unusually heavy idea forms, which ends all the other agitation. The emptiness does not stay empty long since an observation, in the form of a sharp, indignant exclamation whose origin no one can quite be sure, soon sprouts from the silence. No one has time to perceive the direction from which it had come. It just erupts from somewhere, spreading and immediately feeling like their very own:
Haven’t you noticed that Wlibgis is able to communicate with us?
And truly: Wlibgis, ravaged by cancer and robbed of the power of speech, has been participating in the exchange of ideas for some time now, just like everyone else! For example, in the desert Wlibgis clearly, without faltering, expressed the following questions: Are you afraid? Is it coming from the ground? Now, Maimuna? In the ambulance, Wlibgis started arguing with Nina: If I were you, I’d close my eyes and let go. If I were you . . . If Wlibgis were Nina, she never would have run at that metro train. If Wlibgis had been Nina, she would have guarded her life to the last, because look at what Nina had been: young, healthy, two babies on the way, money to burn, and a man in the house. But Wlibgis is Wlibgis, and now for the first time she is an equal participant in the conversation. The women can ask her anything, and she can answer. She can talk, and they can listen.
. . . Wlibgis seems like a stick-in-the-mud . . .
Ulrike!!
I’m
