The Pacific and Other Stories (21 page)

Rabbi Eisvogel said, “Ah, I see. Is it kosher?”

“How would I know?” asked the Cheshire Cat, disappearing into the semidarkness, where, amidst chanting and singing weakly illuminated by the light of only a candle or two among the coal-black sateen robes and dark sable hats, a passage had opened to the East, and such questions disappeared in a dim whirlpool that shattered time and revived the life of a hundred generations rising like a bonfire. The black coats, sable hats, and hallucinatory prayer were a stage setting in which light and darkness were intertwined for the coaxing, temptation, and entreaty of countless spirits that, somewhere in the closed and darkened rooms of time, existed still. And though these were as shy and delicate as fawns, they did come, in the mind’s eye. And, when they did, they floated before the speechless scholars, not in whitened afterimages but with the strength and color of figures in Renaissance paintings, for it was not death that had been summoned but life, and life came as if the sun had risen and shone through the blackness of night.

•   •   •

R
OGER THOUGHT
that only he knew the Saromsker Rebbe to be imperfect. Though the Saromsker Rebbe was constantly making protestations of imperfection, Roger now understood that these were only a cover to shield from the eyes of his followers the real imperfection. The Saromsker Rebbe had lied, directly and by omission, and with what the Sage of Minsk, the Koidanyev
Gaon
, called “dreadful unholy serpentines.” Lying was an unsolicited insult to the divine order.

And he ate something that wasn’t kosher—not once, not twice, but over time. He concealed sin. He hid evidence. He misled his followers. Although because of the nature and scale of the offense all these things may have been morally forgivable, aesthetically they were not. The balances of the universe are precise and delicate. Depending upon the consequences, lying may be morally condemnable in varying degree, but aesthetically it is impossible in the absolute. One uncourageous lie destroys the core of the imagination. Roger hated lying, and knew that it was the outrider of malevolent forces, which come first with a lie so that they might not have to fight to subdue you. They declare what is true, how to order the elements of truth, and what is false. They ridicule, oppress, and—if you do not bend to them—they kill you. Roger would never yield to pressure, to false commandments, or to threats, for he had something for which he could gladly die, something that he would proclaim without embarrassment, that was the root, the rock, and the holy place of his life. This was the truth of the death of his mother and father and of so many other people’s mothers, fathers, children, wives, husbands, brothers, and sisters, in the holocaust into which he was born and to which he would, until the end of his days, bear witness—even as others might forget, ridicule, dismiss, or demean it.

This was the hook with which the small, slight Roger Reveshze grasped at the robes of God in the hope of holding Him accountable. And though he was told not to, though it was illogical, a presumption—perhaps a blasphemy and a sin—Roger Reveshze knew his position and held fast. For him, this holocaust was a barrel in which the whole universe rolled. He cared little but to look forward to a life that might in a single place touch upon perfection
as confirmation that blind persistence and love would lead to eventual reunion.

T
HERE WAS
no great consequence in defying the Saromsker Rebbe: Roger had his compass, and nothing could turn him. But now he could no longer trust the Saromsker Rebbe to sense an impending holocaust, which was part of the rebbe’s responsibility as the leader of a community immersed in the study of ancient texts and without the time to read newspapers and journals. Perhaps the rebbe’s regular reading of the
New York Times
, the
Herald Tribune
, and the
Forward
had led him to nonkosher chocolate, but, despite the risk, now Roger had to read them, and to study the politics of nations, as he could no longer trust the Saromsker Rebbe to do so honestly. This required as well occasional listening to the radio. What radio? And the newspapers, being so thick, were almost impossible to conceal. You could hardly slip them between the pages of a book. Why was so much space given to advertisements for malted milk balls and brassieres—the claims for which obviously were self-serving lies—when a psalm or the Ten Commandments could be written on a diaphanous piece of parchment the size of a postage stamp?

For a boy who was used to four-hour exegeses of a paragraph, a sentence, a line, or even a single word, the prospect of reading every day a newspaper the size of a life jacket was terrifying. Perhaps, to ease his way into such things, and so he would not be faced with the problem of hiding such a big bundle of paper, he would start with the radio. He had heard radios when he passed by open apartment windows. Once, he had stopped short before an unattended parlor as a Brahms string quartet flowed like an invisible river past curtains lifting in the wind. He had not been allowed to listen to the radio, because nothing on the radio stayed still, and a lie could appear and disappear before anyone could know. A country that listened to the radio would have no way of knowing, therefore, what was true. Roger understood the reason for the prohibition, but now he had his own dispensation. And not only did he have a dispensation, he had a mission.

“Luba,” he whispered to one of his classmates, another lamb-and-owl combination, “where is a radio?”

Luba found this entrancing. “You want to listen to the radio?”

“If I could ask a Jew a question, and not have it answered with a question …,” Roger began.

“You would be the czar. There’s a radio in the butcher shop,” Luba said like a Roman conspirator. “Schnaiper can’t turn it off.”

“He’s possessed?”

“The switch is broken. It plays day and night.”

“Why doesn’t he pull the plug?”

“It’s plugged in behind the giant refrigerator where he keeps the liver. If he pulled the plug he would have to move the refrigerator, and if he moved the refrigerator he would have to take out all the liver.”

Roger nodded. “It’s on all the time?”

“Day and night. The cats listen to it when he leaves the store. And he can’t change the station, or he doesn’t want to. Roger, he listens to …
boogie voogie.
”

“The tubes will burn out,” Roger said authoritatively.

“No, they won’t,” Luba answered. “It doesn’t have tubes. It has new things called
trahnzeestores
, which never burn out. It will go forever.”

“He’ll sell the liver.”

“Not as fast as he puts new liver in.”

“How can that be? Eventually the refrigerator would expand until it was as big as the universe.”

“No, sometimes he puts in an onion,” Luba said. Luba had been born in a town, recently wiped from the surface of the earth, where logic was not held in the highest esteem when it was held at all.

“How do you know all this?” Roger asked.

“On
erev Shabbos
I get the
gribenes
and other chicken stuff from Schnaiper. In the morning the truck gets the meat, but the
gribenes
is never ready then, so in the afternoon Rabbi Eisvogel sends me for it. I carry twenty-five pounds of it in a wicker basket strapped to my back.”

“That’s what that is,” Roger said, “and that’s why it smells that way.”

“Yeh,” Luba said.

“Can I take your place?”

“For how long?”

Roger thought. “Five years.”

Luba’s eyes crossed, and he rocked his head from left to right.

“I’ll give you all my hamentashen.”

Luba raised his eyebrows and looked to the side.

“And half my jelly doughnuts,” Roger added.

“All of them.”

“Three-quarters.”

“Okay,” said Luba, “but you’ll have to wait until May. I have a subdeal with gizzards. I bring them to Rabbi Glipsin of Foin, but in May he’s going to Neshville.”

“Where’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

S
CHNAIPER THE BUTCHER
looked up. “Why suddenly a new boy? Where’s Luba?”

“He’s in training.”

“For what?”

“To become a polar rabbi.”

Schnaiper narrowed his eyes.

“Canada,” Roger said, pointing straight up. “Completely full of ice.”

“So?” asked Schnaiper. “We have winter, too. What would a polar rabbi have to know?”

Roger slowly and intolerantly moved his head, as if to say, “What an idiot,” but, then, instead of jumping forward with an explanation, he said nothing, and let the butcher beg for it.

“What? What would a polar rabbi have to know?”

Roger laughed.

“Tell me,” Schnaiper commanded.

“You’re a butcher, right?” Roger asked. This was a carefully plotted question to ask a man, in a white apron, with a huge knife in his hand, standing at a giant butcher block next to a case filled with ten tons of chicken liver.

“What do you think?”

“So, tell me, Mr. Butcher,” said Roger, “walrus.”

“What walrus?”

“Walrus. Kosher for Passover, or not?”

Schnaiper’s eyes darted. “How am I supposed to know?”

“I’ll tell you.” Roger beckoned for him to lean forward, and the butcher did. “Ask a polar rabbi. He would know. At this very moment, Luba is deep in studies of precisely this kind of question. Penguins.”

“Who’s his teacher?”

“Rabbi Eisvogel.”

“Eisvogel. Good man. Still wants twenty-five pounds of
gribenes
?”

“Yes.”

“It’ll be fifteen minutes. I apologize for the radio. I can’t turn it off. It’s
goyisheh
, but if you daven you can drive it out of your mind. I myself like it. It has pretty music called
boogie voogie.
” He went to package the
gribenes
, taking the wicker basket with him like an alpine guide.

Left by himself in the ice-white interior of the butcher shop, Roger lifted his eyes and listened. The radio had been on of course, as it was an eternal radio, when first he had walked in, but it had been just noise. Now he cocked his ears to listen and decipher. He expected to hear, perhaps, an interview with a famous rabbi. No. He thought the next most likely thing would have been an interview with the Pope. No. News about wars, Germany, ships at sea, the president’s health. No. Whatever it was, however, it was as slow and deliberative as a Talmudic exegesis. In fact, he was pleasantly surprised by the unhurried pace, for he had expected thoughtless gushing, and this was careful, tranquil, with long calming spaces between the words.

“Two on,” the voice said. “Two and one … Miller at bat. You know, Mel, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen … the pitch, low, ball three. It’s been a long time … since a rookie, like Miller … winding up … ball four, he walks. Bases loaded.”

This desultory conversation, the epitome of a summer afternoon, and one of the most soothing things Roger had ever heard, went on and on. “A three-two pitch to Hollins … line drive … base hit. The pitch was up and Stanky jumped to get it. So he has a lead single in the bottom … in the bottom, of the third. He was zero for four … in last night’s game. The pitch,
swing … on the way to Allen. Foul over the Yankee dugout. Allen came to the majors by way of Richmond, Virginia—a good place to play ball. … The pitcher winds up. Ball, low on the outside.”

In the spaces within the narrative Roger heard a lovely and persistent sound, like the sound of the ocean, and within that sound were others. Sometimes the speaker would get excited and the ocean would roar, and then, uncharacteristically, he would yell numbers and say how great it was, or how dangerous. For fifteen minutes, Roger listened to this, mesmerized, with absolutely no understanding whatsoever of what it was. Then Schnaiper returned, his pluglike body hauling the alpine basket of
gribenes
.

“What is that?” Roger asked, pointing up.

“On the radio?”

Roger nodded.

“That? That’s the best part. You could listen all day. I do.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s baseball,” said Schnaiper, “from the House That Ruth Built.”

“From the House of Ruth?” Roger asked, stunned.

“Live,”
Schnaiper said.

“Where is it?”

“The Bronx.”

E
VIDENTLY
, rabbis kept certain things from their students. Wonderful things. Exciting things. If Schnaiper could be believed—and never had he overweighed a chicken—there was a place in the Bronx that—Symbolically? Actually? Miraculously?—was a direct link to the Israelites. Roger knew that such places could be found in
Eretz Yisrael
, but never had he heard that they existed in the Bronx. Immediately he wanted to go there, to see. The problem was that he did not understand its language, which seemed as dense and impenetrable as his studies in the Talmud, which, after all, had not come on the instant.

So he inquired of Luba, because Luba had been fetching
gribenes
from the outside world for so long, “Luba, what is the House of Ruth, that’s in the Bronx?”

“The House of Ruth?” Luba closed his lamblike eyes. He had no idea what Roger was talking about, but as a direct descendant of Rabbi Vogelsblume of Hivnis, he didn’t have to know. He closed his eyes, spread his arms, and waited for the answer. This was the way of the Jews in countries where for lifetimes they had been forced to the ground, where fact was never better than dreams. Later rationalists, even among the Jews themselves, mocked this, because they had never been so long in extremis, and did not understand art, ecstasy, or the parting of seas. They did not understand that, for those who have nothing, dreams are real. Luba began to speak as if possessed: “The House of Ruth … is in the Bronx.”

“I told
you
that,” Roger protested.

“Did I say you didn’t? It’s a palace bigger than the temple or the baths of Babylonia. People dance in the aisles, and its four-hundred-foot-high walls are hung with gold and purple draperies. Lit by divine light that showers down from heaven, beautiful women work in a field in the middle, harvesting wheat, like their great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Ruth. In galleries as high as the Empire State Building, legions of rabbis read the Talmud, and klezmer bands in the vast celebration areas play for dancing as in Simchat Torah. And the food! The food! Vegetables! Roasts! Fat pieces of halvah! Poppyseed cakes! Wine. Every day at sunrise and at sunset the rabbis dance on the wheatfields with the Ruths, like daughters. And, someday, the students will marry the beautiful Ruths, and have babies.”