680
PARTISAN REVIEW
until she married were things that her family would understand better
than Marvin.
Marvin says the clay tablets were placed in clay envelopes, the papyrus
or parchment was rolled up, tied with a string and sealed by placing soft
clay on the knot and pressing these very same seals over it.
Victoria and Marvin, for the past three years, have been loyal pen pals
and she is always excited to think that the letter leaves his hands in
Jerusalem, travels across land and lakes, countries and continents to arrive
in her hands a week later in New York City, exactly the same as when it
began its journey.
Breaking open the licked envelope was tantamount to breaking a
hymen. She was allowed entry into the world of another, and her con–
nection to the sender was comparable to Buber's I-Thou relationship - a
direct communication.
Marvin never understood how she could be so knowledgeable on
things she had no experience of, like sex. Ariel, too, the man she had
loved and left in New York, was similarly confused. Neither man under–
stood that she believed she must save herself in order to be saved. Even
though Ariel, as the son of an Orthodox cantor, said he understood her
past and that their pasts were in a strange way similar, as a Jew he would
never understand that were she
to
allow him
to
break open her hymen,
she would close the door to her place in God's kingdom.
She and Marvin move into the weapons room. They are alone.
Marvin stands Victoria in front of him, holds her shoulders and says,
"Tory, I have to say it again. You really do look marvelous!"
Victoria had taken care with her appearance, his impression of her
being in a way important. She wanted
to
show him that in three years,
she had grown up, lost some of her baby fat and wasn't the cute twenty–
year-old co-ed he had known.
Marvin looks the same: brown wavy hair, now speckled with gray.
Glasses. Tweed jacket. Beige sweater. Brown slacks. Now, when he
smiles his wide, warm smile, Tory's heart does not skip a beat, her stom–
ach does not turn over, her bowels do not loosen, yea, verily, she is fairly
calm. She remembers how drawn to him she had been when she first saw
him entering the lecture hall. She had been rummaging through her
daypack for a pen and her finger stabbed into a sharpened pencil. She
winced, "Shit!" and triumphantly pulled the pencil out. Marvin, or Dr.
Rabinowitz as she called him then, was standing at the podium. When
she looked up at him, his eyes twinkled. She half smiled and he returned
that overture with a broad grin.
During the lecture, he moved back and forth across the front of the
auditorium as he spoke about how Biblical law differed from
Mesopotamian law. When he came to a point that was close and dear to
