In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (27 page)

Just then, Shaindel Bracha appeared. She swiftly walked over and stood before Mazal, her hands gently clasped, her turbaned head bowed. “It is a terrible, terrible thing to trespass,” she said in a voice full of grief.

Mazel stopped thrashing. “Is that really true?” she asked. “How terrible is it?” A creaky brown hand hovered over a shirt button.

“It is so bad, I can’t even talk about it,” Shaindel Bracha said in a low voice.

Mazal nodded to herself pensively. She blinked and a tear crept down either side of her beaky nose. She bent her head, subdued by the rebbetzin’s empathy, and buttoned up her blouse. Then she retied her red kerchief and waddled out of the courtyard.

Isaac slaked the sweat off his forehead. Shaken, he leaned against the olive tree and felt the rattle, rattle of his chest. Everyone began to talk among themselves. Even the intelligence plants near the rosemary bushes got into a huddle with the midwife and the concert pianist, apparently discussing what had happened.

Isaac picked up his discarded jacket, and dusting it off, walked toward the rebbetzin, his eyes taking measure of her. “Shaindel Bracha,” he said, and he thought of the rebbe, may he rest in peace, how he used to change his clothes after speaking with a person in distress—they had become soaked from sweat, the effort of throwing himself into another man’s situation. “How could—” Isaac started and stopped. “How did you know exactly what to say”—his fingers snapped—“in just the way you did? Not one in a thousand would’ve responded like you.”

Shaindel Bracha hesitated. “Well, the woman must have the
yenna machla.”

“You mean breast cancer?”

She nodded. “She probably will be having an operation soon. It must be that. Because what could be a greater trespass for a woman, to have these parts of her body taken away? To have them removed from her?” She fiddled with the amber brooch on the front of her dress. “I think she needed to hear from another woman.” She moved her head from side to side in a slow arc of sorrow. “Poor Mazal.”

He shakily slipped his arms into his jacket. To have responded in that way, on the spot, with an instinct, a hunch that had a piece of heaven and
earth in it. Why—even the rebbe couldn’t have done as good a job.

The rebbetzin was looking at him now, a small smile on her face. He thought of all the advice and tips she had passed on to him in the courtyard. He recalled the elopement incident with Mrs. Edeleman’s daughter. Could Shaindel Bracha have been the one—he shook his head. He couldn’t even complete the thought. No. How absurd. She didn’t know the Talmud, she had never studied it. He stared at her again, squinting, disoriented, dense clouds parting in his head, a fog just beginning to clear. “Maybe …” he lifted his eyes. Was she—? No, it couldn’t be. Still, the accumulated weight of experience hit him deep in his brain. “Rebbetzin,” he said hoarsely, “I must talk to you!”

Shaindel Bracha’s eyes shot wide open. She gestured toward the cottage, and he followed her inside.

They sat facing each other in the kitchen. He said, “You have been hiding from me!” Each word rose up in him, stunned.

“Hiding?”

“Hiding yourself!” He smacked the table and the ceramic salt shaker jiggled. “That’s what. You,” he said. “Just tell me one thing. Was it you all along, helping the rebbe, even when he was alive?”

“What are you talking about? How dare you insult my husband’s memory!” Her eyes from the paleness of her round face blazed at him from across the table.

“I have to know: Are you the real rebbe?”

“That’s ridiculous!” She stood and grabbed her apron from a hook. With sharp, quick twists, she tied it around her waist, her eyes searching for something to do.

“What’s ridiculous is that apron, your armor!” He gestured with his jaw at her faded lavender apron.

She sat back down, her head clasped in her hands. She was quiet. “Nothing and no one can detract from who my husband was,” she said. “A rebbe he was and always will be. But you’re not entirely mistaken,” she said, looking down at her intertwined fingers. “You know how my husband and I always did everything together. We ran a house together, we cooked and supervised volunteers together, and yes, we learned a little Torah together, and so why shouldn’t we have helped people together, too?”

A sigh came up from deep inside his marrow. “Why did you hide this
from me and everyone else?” His eyes burrowed into hers, trying to comprehend. “Why did the rebbe get all the honor? Why not you?”

“What are you talking about—honor? Does the right hand want more honor than the left hand? What nonsense.” She slid a stray napkin back into its filigreed holder.

“Tell me, Rebbetzin. Are you a Talmudist?”

She picked up a ceramic salt shaker and rolled it between her palms. “Why do you ask?”

“Tell me.”

“Ach, you’re being ridiculous, Isaac. I know a little Torah, so what.” Some grains of salt fell on the table and she gathered them to one side.

Of course she knew Talmud. How else could she have figured out what to do with Mrs. Edelman’s daughter? Unless she had a knowledge that went deeper than the Talmud. Shaindel Bracha must be a kabbalist, and he sat back and let out a shocked grunt. It was too much. He had heard of such women in history. They drew flocks of people seeking counsel—Chanah Rochel, the Maiden of Ludmir, Yente the prophetess, Feige the miracle worker, Chava of Prague, Udel the daughter of the Ba’al Shem Tov, and others. But he had never met one in his own time.

Old courtyard “cases” streamed through his mind, all the cases he had witnessed since he came more than a year ago. “Remember the Arab lawyer who claimed his villa was haunted? Who figured out the villa was buried on the site of an ancient kohein’s grave?”

She looked puzzled. “My husband and I worked together. Who knows who said what anymore?”

“And the artist who couldn’t stop crying, who was it who made him stop?”

“Isaac, really. ‘I said’—‘my husband said’—it’s all a mishmash.”

He pressed on. “The scholar who couldn’t or wouldn’t learn Torah anymore.” Pause. “And the woman who hated her ugly baby?” Silence. “Mr. Sternboich and his collapsing pickle business? Who put it back on track?”

She exhaled in exasperation. “What difference does it make?”

He leaned forward, eyes intent. “Why are you being so slippery with me now? The cat’s already out of the bag. I know who you are, so stop the charade! Why do you hide yourself?”

“Hide schmide,” she said softly. “ ‘What is hidden is blessed,’ ” she
quoted from the Talmud. Then she tossed out, “Do you think people would have come to a courtyard with a woman at the head?”

Aha. Of course. A female rebbe? In Jerusalem? People wouldn’t accept it. “I understand why you hid yourself from the others,” he said in a hurt voice. “But why did you hide yourself from me?”

She tucked a tendril of white hair under her turban. “You were the one person I did try to tell. Ah, Isaac.” She shook her head. “You wanted no help from me.”

“What are you talk—” He broke off. He remembered how there in the kitchen she had told him she’d help him. He had practically laughed in her face. There were the times he had dismissed her as arrogant, or worse, crazy. He colored deeply. It was true. In the end, his own prejudices had gotten in his way of seeing clearly.

“I was an idiot. What can I say?” He slumped in his chair. He had no words left. The thin red hand of a brass wall clock slashed the seconds away. “But now you should step to the front,” he said finally. “I’ll stand behind you. When people know who you really are, everyone will come flocking.” In this way he would make amends and the courtyard would have a rebbe.

“You don’t understand.” She smiled wryly. “I’m not interested.”

“Oh?” He straightened abruptly. “Why not?”

“I like my privacy,” was all she would say.

“You utterly confuse me.” He sat back, exhausted. “So what was your plan?” He drummed his fingers on the Formica table. “You would feed me the answers, unbeknownst to me, through your … eh … promptings?”

She made a helpless movement with her hands.

“But how long could that’ve lasted? What were you hoping—eventually I’d transform into a rebbe?”

Her head bobbed up and down, a slight bobbing.

He stood up so abruptly the chair fell backward. He righted the chair. He picked up a colander off the counter and set it down. “You shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble. I’ll never be more than an assistant.”

She tsked at this. “Where’s your faith in yourself, Isaac?”

Faith? He had gotten a bit of love, a bit of faith, from his mother, and less than nothing from his father. And now with the rebbe dead, he had lost his last bit of steam—an eight-cylinder car going on four cylinders.
“What is faith anyway?” he said, as if he could live without it.

“Isaac, you must believe in your goodness.” Her light brown eyes looked with a warmth into his own. “The good in you is there all along. It doesn’t go away.”

He wrapped her words around him like a fine cloak. In the word
rebbetzin
was the word
rebbe
. She had been his rebbe and more, but he had been too blind to see. Anyone could have seen the signs. His skin, though, must have known all along. He’d hardly had an eczema attack in the past month. He’d had her close by, helping him, guiding him. As the sages wrote, the greatest charity was enabling a person to stand on his own feet, to the point where assistance was no longer necessary.

The door bell rang. Shaindel Bracha excused herself. Isaac got to his feet, and bending over the kitchen sink, washed his face. He fumbled through the drawers, looking for a fresh hand towel. He heard Shaindel Bracha’s footsteps coming back. “Isaac, it’s the police.” He turned. What? Her face through his watery eyes showed a peculiar bright calm. She opened a drawer and handed him a dish towel.

He held it against his cheeks and eyes, his heart rattling in the kettle of his chest

“Go out, and I will pack some things for you,” she spoke in Yiddish. “We don’t have time to get your tefillin. I’ll lend you my husband’s.” She kneeled under the sink, sorting out plastic containers.

He thrust aside the dish towel. “They’re probably just going to ask me a few questions. Why do you think they’re taking me anywhere?”

Still kneeling, she made a shooing motion. “Hurry, they’re waiting.”

Isaac walked to the front door. Itai Shani stood before him with his bountiful dyed black hair and cupid baby lips. He was shorter than Isaac recalled, yet handsome and distinct as he stood in the doorway. “Sorry to disturb you in the midst of your”—he glanced back mockingly at the courtyard—“workday, but you must come down to the Russian Compound.”

“The Russian Compound? What’s wrong with here?”

“It’s going to take longer than you think,” said the commander with a fixed expression.

Isaac stared at the design on his blue cap. “You came down yourself to get me. Unusual for someone in your high position.”

“Yes.” The police commander’s eyes blinked rapidly, as if coarse particles of dust had flown inside. “It is unusual, Rabbi,” he said, with ironic intonation on the last word.

“I told you, I’m not a rabbi. So tell me: What’s my crime?” Isaac asked. “Why have your people been following me, listening to my conversations?”

“You’ve endangered the State of Israel. You went against my explicit orders not to contact the press.” Shani jabbed an upright finger close to Isaac’s eye.

They were now standing outside the cottage. “The press contacted
me
,” Isaac said, just as it dawned on him that Shani must have sent that bogus reporter his way.

“And you opened your big mouth.”

“I never would’ve done so if you had tested the pomegranate like you said you would. Frankly, I didn’t trust you ever would.”

“Who are you to trust me or not trust me?” Commander Shani said, bringing his head so close, Isaac smelled the unhappy combination of coffee and falafel on his humid breath. “I’m protecting the security of the State of Israel. What are you doing?”

Just then, Shaindel Bracha appeared outside and handed Isaac a bag. “There’s a kugel here, too, and other things.”

The commander squinted at the rebbetzin. He stepped back a few feet, his thick arms crossed, granting them their moment or two.

“Apparently they’re taking me in,” Isaac said quietly to the rebbetzin, “though I can’t see how they could detain me.” A sadness overwhelmed him even more than his fear.

Shaindel Bracha looked at him with eyes of such gentleness and concern, it was painful for him to look back. Instead, he snuck a look up the street. He saw a figure in a long skirt swishing her way up Ninveh Road. Was it Tamar? Lovely, sweet Tamar. A current of feeling rushed through him. He strained to glimpse her. Where had all this yearning sprung from? Now he saw her unlatching the iron gate. It was a woman in a purple head scarf pushing a stroller into the courtyard. Not Tamar. He sagged with disappointment.

“Let’s go, Mr. Markowitz,” he heard Commander Shani say brusquely.

Gilgul was licking his paws and stopped to coolly regard the procession.

“
Nu
 …?” Commander Shani gave Isaac a short shove, and Isaac began to walk. He threw a look at the woman in the scarf in sad disbelief. How could it not be Tamar?
Tamar
meant a date tree in Hebrew. A person had to climb high to get its fruit. But he hadn’t even been willing to make a phone call. He still had her number in his suit pocket. In that instant he grasped the toll it had taken, not having a woman in his life. Once the rebbe had said—about a mere insect—“Maybe you should consider letting it live.” Hadn’t he let too much life slip away? He had the pomegranate and let it slip through his hands. He had the rebbetzin at his side all these weeks helping him, and he had been too much a fool to realize her worth. And Tamar—he felt for her, and still had been inclined to let it drift. He was devastated with loss.

All he said as he passed the rebbetzin was, “Call Tamar.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket and gave her the number. “Tell her what happened.” He threw in, “Please help the people here. The courtyard needs you now. Didn’t you once say the same thing to me?”