EZRA. Well do something!
SOPHIE. My father do something!
(She laughs sarcastically)
LANDSMANN. That’s right. I failed you. (To EZRA) She has never forgiven me for not shooting down the biggest bear in the Budapest amusement park when she was five years old. We know what that means. (Recalls Lear) “A serpent’s sting is not sharper than a daughter’s ingratitude.”
SOPHIE. Have you ever thought of becoming a character actor in Hollywood?
CLERK. (Announces) Blind vs. Blind. Lawyer for the prosecution: Bloom. Lawyer for the defense: Miss Evelyn von Koenighof. Silence in the courtroom.
(The members of the jury enter and take their places. The LAWYERS enter, followed by the JUDGE.)
JUDGE. The court is in session. Will Mr. Bloom present the case for the prosecution.
RABBIS. We claim the deceased. We protest this trial.
EZRA. She is mine. My legal wife. You have no case.
RABBIS. She is a whore. We declare her unworthy of the honor of bearing her husband’s name. You have no case.
EZRA. As her husband I protest the charge that my wife was unchaste. I have brought fifty witnesses to testify to my wife’s chastity. They are all young men of high standing. Native Americans, my best students. All have at some time tried to seduce my wife and failed. (The fifty young men rise) Your Honor, in view of limitations of time, ask any one of them to testify in behalf of all.
RABBIS. We protest. They’re his disciples. They swear by him. Their testimony cannot be accepted as valid.
EZRA. Your Honor, I object. I may teach my disciples that love transcends the law. But not perjury!
(The rabbis move up and surround the coffin)
RABBIS. We charge you with acts of sacrilege, blasphemy, uncleanness and with practicing sodomy, buggery and other forms of loathsome and unnatural copulation.
SOPHIE. It’s true.
EZRA. I protest. My wife is very naive.
SOPHIE. I’m sick of all this fuss. Go ahead, you dodoes, and condemn me for eating fried octopus, cock sucking, animal worship. I touched the mezuzah when I was menstruating, put that down. I confess to all your charges. I recommend to all Jewish women semen drunk straight or mixed with beef blood. Now feed me to the dogs as is your custom. (She lies down in the coffin and invokes the gods of the deep) Gorgons, my sisters. Poseidon, where are you? Homer, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Joyce, comfort me! I am on fire Apollo, come!
EZRA. (To LANDSMANN) Na ja. You told me she was meshuga. I didn’t believe you.
RABBIS. She has condemned herself by her own mouth.
JUDGE. (Bangs) Overruled. Her confession cannot be accepted. The death certificate presented at our preliminary hearing was shown to be invalid. Since then the court has had no further proof of her death, nor any evidence for her existence.
RABBIS. We are not impressed by your sophistries. The marriage is void. We take her.
EZRA. Then take us both.
(He steps into the coffin)
SOPHIE. If you don’t get out of my coffin this instant, I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell them with all the details.
(JUDGE bangs for order)
EZRA. My wife is distraught. I appeal to the rabbis. The great granddaughter of Reb Smuel deserves a fair trial. Sophie was raised by an atheist father. She read the books of Moses for the first time in a literature course at Bryn Mawr. When I met her she had left college to be an actress. She lived on tea bags and Ritz crackers in a confused revolt against the hollowness of the secular world. She was a virgin. I read to her the book of prophets Hosea: the parable of the sacred marriage between God and Israel, spoke of the sanctification of life, explained to her the paradox of the law Credo quia absurdum. Sophie Landsmann took the leap into Judaism when she became engaged to me. I promised her an orthodox Jewish wedding with fiddlers and dancing and the ceremony of the bride walking around the groom seven times—she insisted on all the archaic details. But I couldn’t go through with it in this age of ambiguity and the eclipse of God. I short-changed her on the wedding: I arranged a mishmash compromise package at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She had to listen to an anthropological lecture on the smashing of the wine goblet by the groom—the one traditional element I managed to sneak in. The reception was a banal cocktail party with cheese sandwiches from a kosher caterer. (He weeps, then collects himself) I am not ashamed to confess. I am prepared to take the witness stand and speak under oath. The court must wonder what abominable acts my wife performed. It’s...
MISS KOENIGHOF. As Ezra Blind’s lawyer, I protest.
EZRA. Please, Evelyn, let me...
JUDGE. Protest overruled.
MISS KOENIGHOF. I urge that the jury take note that sodomy and buggery do not constitute grounds for divorce except in the state of Virginia.
EZRA. It’s all written in sacred texts (from which all pornographic handbooks are copied). It is depicted in the masterpieces of Hieronymus Bosch. I asked her to assume obscene postures. To crawl on all fours and lift her leg like a dog pissing; to bark, moo, bray, bleet, hoot—I wanted her to howl like a demon. I wanted her to be a sacred whore. She was magnificent in her moments of complete abasement. I confess I was not equal to the highest sacrilege. One night when she was performing the sacred office of fellatio I ordered her to say the Pater Noster in my arse hole. Or a Hail Mary at least. Instead she started bellowing the S’ma Yisrael up my bowels. I couldn’t go through with it. “Shame on you,” she said, “doing sacrilege with other people’s religion. Isn’t yours holy enough?” She was a great woman. Sophie Blind remains my wife till the Messiah comes. Brothers, sons of the Torah, we are all awaiting the day of Judgment, united in the hope of the coming of the Messiah. We are children of calamity. What has been joined in this world cannot be
