In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (30 page)

The fan had stopped its rotating, and though he got up and fiddled with it, it wouldn’t move. So throughout the night the fan blew only on his torso, leaving his head and legs to swelter in the heat.

The next day he climbed the difficult twisty stairs to Miss Tamar’s office. He was panting as he reached the top, and he leaned against a metal bookcase until he caught his breath. He looked across the sunny room. A girl with dark hair and pointy glasses sat behind Miss Tamar’s desk. He stammered, “Do you know where Miss Tamar is?”

She stared at him, as if at some unnatural thing that had dropped from the sky. “Oh, right,” she said. “She quit. She doesn’t work here anymore.” Her fingers tapped a nervous beat on the table. “I don’t know where she is.” He thanked her and started to leave. “She left some stuff behind. Tell her that if you see her,” she called after him.

Alone in his room, he banged his head against the thin wall until Ali shouted at him to go make music some place else.

A bunch of Jewish boys crammed in a room, Isaac thought to himself as the officer let him into the cell. How bad could it be? Right away he saw: bad. His eyes squinted against the onslaught of cigarette smoke. The shock of human smells made him reel. Five or six bunk beds were crammed in a space the size of a small kitchen. And what was that dried stuff on the walls? He grimaced.

A bug-eyed man with a zigzag scar on his cheek shouted at the officer, “I kill you, maniac!”

“You even breathe on me,” the officer Gilad said in a bored voice, “I will put you there.” He aimed a thick finger at the Arab cell facing theirs. “For the rest of your vacation here.”

At this, the man paled and instead fixed his bug-eyed gaze on Isaac. He let loose a stream of mangled sunflower seed shells, and a few landed on Isaac’s shoes.

Isaac ignored the man. But he couldn’t ignore the one in the corner, crouching over a hole, his densely hairy legs partly shielded by a green blanket hanging from the ceiling. He grunted and relieved himself. Isaac abruptly turned his head. “There’s no toilet here? Just a hole?”

Gilad said with a sarcastic edge,
“Slach lanu. Ze lo Beit Knesset po.”
Sorry this is no synagogue. Then he lowered his voice. “We don’t get many rabbi-types like you on this side of the bars. Just keep your head to the ground and your mouth closed. If there’s any trouble, call me.” With a hard clang, the guard was gone.

That clang sent a surge of panic through Isaac’s body. He lead-footed his way to the farthest corner from the hole, and squeezed between the bunk beds, his shoes crunching down on a carpet of sunflower seeds, chewed up pumpkin seeds, cigarette butts and who knew what else. Guttural curse
words flowed all around him. As Isaac pushed past a thicket of men playing cards, he saw them glance up at him and elbow each other. Two men hurled shoes at each other from the top of their bunk beds. “Is there a bed available?” he asked, ducking his head.

When no one answered, Isaac tentatively placed his bag under one bunk bed. Just then, the bug-eyed man shot out, “Mine, ya maniac!”

Isaac squeezed his way to another bunk bed. He found one that looked free and plopped his bag down. Stay small, keep to yourself, he kept thinking, don’t draw attention. All he wanted was to take out his matchbook-size
tehillim
and say psalms. But it was forbidden to utter holy words in a place that smelled so bad.

From the corner of his eye he saw the bug-eyed man watching him while picking lint and dirt from between his exposed, exceedingly long toes. The man—or boy—(he looked to Isaac like an aging adolescent) seemed perplexed as if deciding something. “You’re a shtinker!” he finally pronounced, and flicked a piece of toe lint onto the cement floor.

To this, Isaac had no idea how to respond.

“Shut up, you
madroob
,” said another man’s voice, grunting.

Isaac lifted his eyes and saw a brown-skinned young man in a tight purple T-shirt doing push-ups on a bunk bed across from Isaac’s. Although his arms and chest were powerfully built up, his legs looked emaciated and frog-like.

“A shtinker,” the bug-eyed man said more loudly.

The push-up man kicked out a leg and hit Isaac’s antagonist in the lower belly while maintaining his push-up rhythm. “
Debili
, it’s a rabbi!”

Isaac was about to correct him on that score, but the googly-eyed man got there first. “
B’seder
, fine, a shtinker rabbi,” the googly-eyed man amended, rubbing his lower gut. “But can’t you tell he’s an informer?”

A hollow, falling-through-air sensation came over Isaac. Two minutes in the cell and already he was suspected of being an informer.

The built-up man threw a few curses over his shoulder while he huffed his way into another set of push-ups. He counted, “Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty,” then said to Isaac, “Don’t let that
debili
get away with that.” He took another breath or two. “Crazy thing is,
he’s
the informer, so he points the finger to everybody. Once, he sang to the authorities and for that he got himself a Picasso on his face.”

“A Picasso?” Isaac repeated in a wondering voice.

“Yeah, that scar on his cheek.”

Isaac rubbed his aching forehead. He’d need a dictionary to navigate this place. And a lot more. “What’s your name?” he asked, grateful to his defender.

The frog-legged man, now sitting up straight, considered the question, as if sorting through an array of aliases. “Call me Nissim.” (A nice traditional Sephardic name, Isaac mused.) “And you’re Rabbi …”

“I’m not a rabbi. How about—Isaac?”

“
Zeh lo kavod
. You look like a rabbi. It’s not respectful to call you by your name,” Nissim said.

Definitely a Sephardic man, Isaac decided. Thank God. The Sephardim still had a lingering respect for Torah and rabbis.

“All right then,” Isaac said in a low voice. “Reb Isaac, if you must.” ‘Reb,’ he could handle, an honorific a notch above Mister, but less than a rabbi. He lifted his damp collar away from his skin. It was scorching hot on this summer day, though somewhere a fan blew. He finally lay down on his bunk bed.

“Golda Meir was a
sharshucha
, the ugliest slut in the world!” a man in the cell screamed at the top of his lungs.

Isaac jolted and sat up, banging his head on the bunk above. He looked around. “What was that?” he asked Nissim.

“S’nothing.” Nissim jerked a thumb backward. “The Arabs in the cell facing ours.” Isaac lifted his eyes and made out a pack of rangy-looking men in kaffiyehs and work clothes. “Well, if no one will stick up for Golda, then I will,” Nissim said, and he stood and yelled out from between the bars, “Yasser Arafat is a castrated stinking donkey with bad breath!”

The cells on either side got electrified. Isaac watched the Israelis and the Arabs face off behind the jail bars. They kicked and banged the bars, hurled curses at each other, and blew shrieking whistles. Isaac pressed his hands against his ears, squeezed his eyes shut. God in heaven, what was he doing here? He silently prayed, “From a narrow place, I called out to you, oh—” He broke off from the psalm midway. “No prayers, no prayers,” he muttered. The stench of excrement prohibited it.

A loud honk of laughter erupted. The men had gotten bored and returned to their thin, torn foam mattresses. A few reclined, eating
candy bars. Flies whizzed and bugs crawled among the debris. Isaac considered taking out the kugel Shaindel Bracha had made (Gilad had pronged it to make sure no contraband was hidden there, even while eyeing it longingly), but decided not to add to the mess. He would wait for supper in the cafeteria with his cohorts. Thieves, drug peddlers, rapists, and who knew what else. These were his associates.
Gottenyu
. Or maybe just innocent men like him. He doubted it.

“Rabbi, where you from?” asked a man sitting diagonal to him.

Isaac saw a wiry fellow in a sleeveless T-shirt with a tattoo. “New York. Now from Jerusalem. I’m not a rabbi,” he added reflexively.

“If you look like one and sound like one,” the tattooed man observed, “maybe you are one.” He was stone bald, his skull pear-shaped and compact-looking, his skin darkish. Maybe another Sephardi. Isaac examined the tattoo on the man’s right arm—a round pig’s head, he saw. Why, Isaac asked himself, shaking his head. Why? He could still feel the tattooed man’s eyes on him, and to be conversational, he leaned slightly and asked, “Do you know what the visitation rights are here?” Though he couldn’t imagine Shaindel Bracha or Tamar stepping foot into this place.

“No rights,” said the tattooed man, and he gave a dry spit over a shoulder. “We’re not even in a prison, y’understand? We’re in a police jail. Like a detention camp. The lowest of the low.”

The lowest of the low. The unholy of the unholies. Isaac got to his feet and wedged between the bunk beds to finally reach the sink, brown with rust stains. Scooping a handful of water, he splashed the back of his neck while holding onto his pants with his free hand. (They had taken away his belt as a potential hanging device, and his
tefillin
straps, too.)

“Ya maniac!” the bug-eyed man shouted for no reason Isaac could discern. “Shtinker!”

The men were completely immersed in their card game, shouting and elbowing each other, and paid him no attention. Isaac picked up a newspaper on the floor. It was a week old, July Fourth. Independence Day—but not for him. An eczema itch like a warm dull needle bore deep into his calf.

A few feet away, a man with an abundance of blond hair was ranting, “Gehenna, I’m going to Gehenna, I’m going to burn in hell.” His eyes twitching, he held a candy bar in each hand and ate both bars at the same time.

“Excuse me, who’s that?” Isaac asked Nissim in a low tone.

“Tommy the Penitent. Used to be a drug lord, rich like you wouldn’t believe.” Nissim kissed his pursed fingertips. “But then the poor guy repented—big time
teshuva
—and now he’s a total wreck.”

Isaac mulled that one.

Hours later, lying on his mattress after a supper of noodles, cheese, and limp string beans in the most dingy cafeteria he had ever seen, Isaac urgently needed the bathroom. He lay utterly still. One move and he’d lose control. His eyes met Nissim’s dark brown ones.

“What’s the matter, Reb Isaac?” Nissim was at his side in a flash.

“I need the bathroom but …” He nodded in the direction of the elimination hole. “People will …” he trailed off. Most of the men were bedding down, but a few still milled around.

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” Nissim lowered his voice. “It’ll be a bigger shame if you have an accident here. You do your thing, and I’ll stand in front so no one will see.”

Isaac choked up. To find kindness here, in this miserable place—he hadn’t expected …

Nissim then assumed his stance, facing outward, his built-up upper body acting as a broad protective wall. He stood stoic and alert, like a soldier guarding a person of high office, while Isaac crouched over the hole. Nissim was shorter than Isaac had expected. And why the emaciated legs? The imbalance was odd.

“You were looking at my legs, right?” Nissim said, after Isaac had finished and was washing his hands.

“No, I-I …” he stuttered, “well, I mean, yes,” he admitted with a touch of fear.

“My girlfriend likes big chests. That’s all. So that’s where I concentrated my efforts.”

Isaac quickly held up two palms. “Fine.” Who was he to interfere with a preference?

“The thing is,” Nissim lowered his eyes “I had polio as a kid. This is the best my legs will ever be.” He seemed to ponder this, then added, “She said she didn’t care about my legs.”

A few feet away, the tattooed man was telling a priest, rabbi, imam joke to a few men who were still awake.

“Said?” Isaac quietly noted Nissim had used the past tense—his girlfriend must have dumped him—then abruptly covered his mouth. What a fool he was. Why antagonize his only jail friend?

Color rushed into Nissim’s face. From a foot away, Isaac heard him swallow as if in shame. It was an awful sound.

“You know, Nissim,” Isaac said, after a few moments, “a man can develop not only his body but his other parts, too. A man has many parts.”