Divorcing by Susan Taubes

Author:Susan Taubes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2020-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

(The courtroom is filled with orthodox Hungarian rabbis and their families. EZRA, a skullcap lying insecurely on unruly hair, stands by the Judge’s table with his father-in-law, RUDOLF LANDSMANN. LANDSMANN is wearing a gray fedora. A rabbi is delivering vehement invectives in Hebrew. The CROWD roars in approval.)

LANDSMANN. Why are they screaming? The place stinks. My God! Dissolve the marriage!

EZRA. They’re your people, Landsmann, these Hungarian fanatics. In Poland we called them Calvinists.

LANDSMANN. (Sighing) It’s true. The disciples of my grandfather, the holy Reb Smuel of Nyitra. We called them the Dushensky gang. My beautiful sister married to one of those brutes, gassed in Auschwitz. She is there, I see all of them: Papa, Mama, Grandfather. But why do they want my daughter?

EZRA. They want your daughter because she is the great granddaughter of the holy Reb Smuel, your mother’s father.

LANDSMANN. But why? What has she done? What are they screaming? I don’t understand. What! They charge her with uncleanness, holding heretical doctrines, practicing abominations, loathsome and abominable forms of copulation. (He laughs) My daughter? Ezra, did you know about this? Are we back in the Middle Ages? My daughter practicing loathsome and abominable forms of copulation? With you perhaps!

EZRA. Narrischkeit. The point is your wife—I mean my wife, your daughter—has no legal status. (Furiously) These people mean business, Landsmann. If you had listened to me we wouldn’t be in this mess.

LANDSMANN. (Offended; bitterly) You’re crazy. Everybody is meshuga. I’m taking my daughter out of here. All I need is the signature of two analysts to have her declared insane and placed under our professional custody.

EZRA. Landsmann, you agree the most important thing is the marriage.

LANDSMANN. The marriage must be saved. That’s why I insist on having her under my custody. A divorce at such a moment! It’s terrible. I refuse to be present at marital squabbles. I am not going to listen to any more “he says” and “she says”—I can’t stand it. All my life, in my marriage, in your marriage, in my consulting room, in fifty years of analytic practice that’s all I hear. People should learn to live with each other and devote themselves to science.

EZRA. Landsmann, where did your daughter get money to run away with the children?

LANDSMANN. I didn’t approve of what she was doing.

EZRA. You can’t handle her.

LANDSMANN. She married you without my approval—I’ll never forget that three a.m. long-distance call confronted with a fait accompli.

EZRA. There you have it. And I took a plane to visit you the same week. Alone. Your daughter was in a play, you recall? And did I get her out of the theater?

LANDSMANN. You did.

EZRA. And did I see that she finished college? And got a doctorate? Did I show her half the world? And did I give her children?

LANDSMANN. With my money.

EZRA. Landsmann, you didn’t know what to do with your daughter or your money.

(The coffin is brought in)

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