“Four generations.”

“And maybe before that, you don’t know,” said Rabbi Shemkin. “Before that they were butchers.”

“First they were slaughtering animals,” said the witness, observing the scribe’s work, “and now they slaughter people.”

“No,” said the scribe, not lifting his eyes from the lettering. “Now we’re helping people get on with their lives.”

When the writing was complete, it was checked and double-checked and read aloud twice by Rabbi Shemkin and the witness. Then they sat waiting for the ink to dry.

“It’s a hundred percent humidity today,” the witness said, shaking his head at the window. The bunch of keys on the ring clipped to his belt jingled whenever he moved. His tie clip was also a key. What he needed with all of those keys was anyone’s guess.

The scribe blotted the page. At last the paper was folded lengthwise, and twice horizontally, and one end was tucked into the other. Monica was asked to stand with Leonard opposite her.

“Cup your hands,” Rabbi Shemkin instructed her. “And you,” he said to Leonard, “repeat after me: ‘And now I do release, discharge, and divorce you to be on your own, so that you are permitted and have authority over yourself to go and marry any man you desire.’ ”

Noa held her breath. Next to her, Rachel sniffed.

“ ‘No person may object against you from this day onward, and you are permitted to every man.’ ”

She thought she heard Leonard’s voice quiver with “every man,” but wasn’t sure. Turning to Rachel, she saw the young rabbi with the blond beard staring at her, and only slowly did he avert his blue eyes.

“ ‘This shall be for you from me a bill of dismissal,’ ” Rabbi Shemkin continued, “ ‘a letter of release, and a document of absolution, in accordance with the law of Moses and Israel,’ ” and Leonard repeated that, too, now full-throated. He was difficult and commanding, it was true. His injuries were such that, just when it was most needed, he failed to see beyond his anger or pain to that of others. Once upon a time it had charmed Monica that Leonard darned his own socks. In one of the stories they’d liked to tell, Monica woke in his bachelor apartment to find Leonard bent over the sock, sucking on the ends of the thread as his mother had taught him to do. But over time Monica stopped being able to see the light that came through this small break in the stubborn monotony of character.

Following the rabbi’s instruction, Leonard laid the rectangle on top of Monica’s cupped hands. It was too big to fit into her palms, and reflexively she clamped her thumbs down so it wouldn’t slip.

“No!” the rabbis all shouted together.

Apparently the wife wasn’t allowed to move her hands to take the paper: it had to be given. The barbarity of the whole thing seemed not to bother Monica. Perhaps it seemed to her a fitting end to the rest of her wrongheaded marriage. She seemed to Noa already not there. Though where her mother had been, always, was a place that she, too, had found unreachable. Leonard gave it again, and this time Monica held her hands very still, as if she were receiving a stunned bird. Then she was made to hold the paper high over her head. Monica’s arms shot straight up, the hands clutched around the paper folded according to some ancient Jewish origami.