A Curable Romantic (94 page)

I had no idea where Loë was. Even Ita seemed to have forgotten all about me.

How’s that for eternal love?

Floating to the bottom of the tiled pool, I doubted that even God could find me here. Despite His fabled omniscience, I knew He’d look for me in the only place I ever looked for myself, which was inside my father’s gazebo, reading my forbidden books while the pink cherry blossoms shimmered in the cool Galician breeze.

I IMAGINE MY
powers of spiritual discernment were not as sophisticated nor as subtle as the rebbe’s, and yet, as far as I could see, his piety had moved Heaven not at all. In the days after we’d emerged from the mikve, the world, or at least our small portion of it, only seemed greyer. People were hungry, if not hungrier, and the streets were filled with even more corpses than before.

Even the rebbe seemed to have lost heart. “But none of this makes any sense,” he insisted to me. “It’s one thing for the Holy One to rebuke us with suffering, quite another for these rebukes to destroy everything in the world that’s holy.”

It was a Sunday morning, and though it wasn’t the thick of winter, the day was frozen solid. A heavy snow had fallen during the night, the temperatures had plummeted. We’d finished our work earlier than usual, and the rebbe saw me to the door. As we stepped out onto the landing, our breaths steaming forth in great cottony puffs, we were confronted by a terrible sight. All along the street, at various points, either huddled together or alone, were children, some barefoot, most bare-kneed, many of them lacking a winter coat, this one cradling a book in his hands; that one, a doll.

When I looked closer, I realized that none of them was moving. My
first thought was that they must be playing at some game, at statues, perhaps, but then of course I realized they’d frozen in the night.

A cry erupted from the rebbe’s throat.

Plastered to the sides of buildings were posters designed by the Judenrat, celebrating the Month of the Child. Each bore the legend
A CHILD IS THE HOLIEST THING
.

“Dr. Sammelsohn, help me!” the rebbe said, and before I knew it, he’d ripped one of the posters down and was using it to cover the child nearest him. For some reason, I couldn’t move. I felt as though I were frozen to the ground as well. Instead, I watched as Reb Kalonymos ran from one wall to the next, pulling down poster after poster, covering each child with the tatters.

“Forgive me, children,” he told them. “It’s all that I have.”

“Master of the Universe!” he screamed. “This far? this far?”

Then: “Dr. Sammelsohn! Help me!”

Then: “Children, forgive me!”

Then: “Master of the Universe, this far?”

I remember roaring when I was next conscious of myself. I knew what I looked like, but a madman shouting indecipherable names as he sank to his knees in the middle of a city square wouldn’t, in those days, have attracted any special attention, and no one seemed to bother about me.
I continued to call, until my voice grew hoarse and the two stood before me,
in his woolen overcoat,
in his leather one.

“What kind of angels are you, anyway?” I demanded of them.

“Doctor, please! You pierce us to the quick!”
said.

“What does he mean, what kind of angels are we? We’re angel angels,”
said, pounding his fist with his truncheon. “And whatever we are, I can assure you we don’t have time for these sorts of theological speculations with a man who owes his continuing existence to — ”

“Brother!”
silenced him.

“When the Romans were martyring Rabbi Akiva,” I jeered, “what did your forefathers do?”

spat. “You see, that shows you how little he understands!”

“He doesn’t literally mean our forefathers,”
told him, attempting, it seemed, to keep the conversation on a politer keel.

“ ‘This far, Master? This far?’ That’s what your ancestors said, that’s what the angels of that era had the nerve to say, and to the Holy One Himself!”

“Yes, and you heard what the Holy One said back to them. If they didn’t stop complaining, he’d return the universe to chaos and desolation! Is that what you want, Dr. Sammelsohn? Chaos and desolation?”

Given the chaos and desolation in which we lived our daily hours, the question couldn’t have seemed more irrelevant. All three of us realized this, I think.
sighed. Flicking his glasses onto his forehead, he rubbed his eyes.
let his truncheon drop and stared at his gleaming boots. I looked down at the mud and at the snow dampening my trousers. My bare hands were raw and freezing. At that moment, rain began to fall in dense, windy sheets. “Oh, wonderful! That’s just wonderful!” I said, crossing one leg beneath the other and sitting in the mud.