The Poison Tree (17 page)

The nights were glorious, and felt like something out of
Huckleberry Finn
, one of the few books I actually completed in eighth grade English. But instead of floating down the Mississippi, we were walking along dark country roads in search of a way back home. On our odyssey, we got to know one another in a very different way. There were no interruptions for campers, laundry, or even basketball. I felt an intimacy I had never shared with anyone else before.

I found out things about Adar I would never have suspected. He lived in a high-rise building in a section of Brooklyn called Canarsie. He was considering becoming a vegetarian. More than that, he had a whole philosophy about food. After walking several miles, we came upon an old-fashioned country store. They sold sandwiches, vegetables, and fresh fruit. With the little money we had, Adar bought some fruit and cheese, and I bought a ham sandwich and a bag of Wise potato chips. We sat down beside the road together to enjoy our meal. I looked around at the lovely view and began eating my sandwich. I don't think I'd ever felt so happy or contented as I did at that moment. My parents had vanished; I was with someone whose soul I shared. I looked over at Adar, smiling, but there was no question about his expression—he was disgusted.

“What's wrong—what is it?” I asked.

“How can you … put that filth in your body?”

“Filth?”

“That …,” he said, his mouth frowning. He picked up a pebble and flung it into the distance.

“I didn't know you kept kosher,” I said. Then it occurred to me that the camp served only kosher food, and I felt embarrassed at my own tactlessness. “If I had known—”

“I don't keep kosher either, but there's a reason why the Bible has a prohibition against eating cloven-hooved animals,” Adar said, his voice firm with conviction. “And it doesn't have anything to do with religious belief. Muslims don't eat pork, and they don't keep kosher, do they?”

“I guess not,” I said.

“Have you ever watched a pig? They actually swallow their own feces. I think that, as much as anything else, is why the Old Testament speaks against eating the flesh of the pig.”

I had taken a big bite out of my ham sandwich, but now I put it away. I still had a small piece of hard gristle in between my teeth; I couldn't swallow it, but was afraid to call attention to it by spitting it out. It would have to wait until I could dispose of it unseen. I wrapped up the rest of the sandwich. “I'll finish this later. I'm not too hungry right now,” I said.

Adar continued, “The thing to remember is that whatever you put in your body becomes who you are. If you put that in your body, that's you. That's why I've decided to become a vegetarian. I only eat pure things. You'll notice that I do eat fish and cheese and eggs. Eventually, I intend to cast these things off and reduce my food intake so that only pure fruit juices enter my body. What do you think of that?”

I'd never heard of such a thing, and wasn't exactly sure how to answer. “I think that's … great.”

Adar bit into an apple, and I watched his jaw muscles grinding the fruit into pulp with mechanical precision. Unlike me, he was dark complexioned, with powerful arms and legs. His face looked like it might be carved out of stone. His voice was quiet, even soft; but everything he said carried weight and authenticity.

He swallowed the bite of apple, and then continued. “My goal is to eliminate food altogether. Abstinence. I want to reach a level of spiritual perfection so that all food becomes superfluous. Does that sound incomprehensible? I can read faces, and yours says you think it is, but I believe it's possible. First, I will do without fish, then cheese. Then eggs. One day, no more bread, rice, or potatoes. No dairy. Only fruit juice. Then one day—nothing, nothing at all.”

“That's impossible!” I said, much too loudly. Then, recalibrating: “How is that even possible?”

“I've been studying
The Fountainhead
,” Adar replied, “and I believe that one strong, deeply centered, supremely selfish individual can remake the world in his own image. The world around us is diseased and impure—look at your home if you need an example. We only heal it by purging ourselves of our impurities. This means not only cleansing the body, but purifying mind and soul. The body is important as a place to begin. And finally, of course, we purify ourselves of other people too.”

“Other people?” I shuddered with fear and excitement. Here we were, in the middle of nowhere changing the world, purifying ourselves, doing
without others. “Do you think this is something … I might be able to do, too?” I asked.

“Do you feel you have the calling as well?”

“I've never heard of anything like what you just described. I've never heard anyone speak so beautifully of … it's … I don't know. Noble. Something to aspire to.…” It was like a wave breaking across me, this conviction. “I would like to take this journey with you.”

Adar smiled gently. He was subdued, supremely confident that I would accompany him on his great quest. I wanted him to embrace me, or at least clap me on the shoulder to congratulate me. But Adar's belief in himself and the inevitability of his choice made it inconceivable that I would choose any other path. “You know, there are many religions which believe in self-purification. Most are eastern religions,” he said, voice lowering. “There is something else I have come to believe that I hesitate to tell even you about. You might think I'm crazy.”

“Crazy! Of course not! How could that be, Adar? Tell me about it, please.” My heart was bursting against my chest.

Adar took a few steps away as he began. His walking away at that moment reminded me of an archer, the muscular strain of pulling hard on the taut bowstring the moment before release. “Well, once you've reached the point of complete spiritual independence, complete purification of both body and soul, you acquire certain … I don't know exactly how to describe it. I call it the Law of the Spirit. It's amazing the things the human spirit is capable of when freed of its earthly constraints. Things you would not believe possible.”

“What things are they? I want to know, Adar!”

“I'll tell you only if you promise not to dismiss it or discuss it with anyone else. You are the first person I've ever told this to. You must first promise never to repeat this to anyone unworthy of what I'm going to tell you right now.”

“I promise.” I felt like we were about to become as close as two human beings could be: Brothers of the Spirit.

“Well, once the body has been freed from its earthly dependence on food, it is possible to become entirely free of the earth that holds us back; what I mean is, it is possible to do anything. Anything.” Adar was sitting
beside me as he said this, but I wanted to see him, to turn and look into his eyes and watch his lips formulate whatever it was he might say next. As I slid around to face him as he spoke, my body shivered as though touched by something cold in the small of my back. But there was nothing but the electricity of our words and bodies in close proximity.

I was facing him now. “What do you mean by ‘anything'?”

His voice was soft against the purple sky; I had to lean over to hear, my face inches from his, my knee brushing his. “Levitation,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I mean that it will be possible, in time, to learn to levitate the body; to fly unassisted!”

“What!” I said again, unable to keep the incredulity from showing on my face.

He rose from the ground, jaw muscles working again, this time in anger. “I knew you wouldn't believe me, not even you. I knew it! But I meant what I just said. Once people are freed from appetite and the dependence on physical matter, they can live in a different sphere. Anything is possible, even flight without the slightest benefit of machinery or assistance of any kind. However, that's not what I'm doing this for. It's really not that big a deal.”

“I can't believe what I'm hearing, Adar.”

“I told you, this is not a journey that is for everyone. This is only for the few, the elect, Henry.”

It was like being in Mr. Herman's class at school, only this was not high school, this was friendship. This was love.

I stood up and studied the night sky. I thought about what Adar was saying—the impossibility of it, the unimaginable difficulty. About being one of the elect. I thought about what it would mean if I were not one of this few—if I were to go back to my old life, my prison of self-loathing and fear. To my mother and Bobby and Uncle Lee. A world of empty tuna fish cans and boxes. I bent down and laced up my shoes.

Ever since Mr. Herman began fueling my interest in art, I visited museums whenever I could. Instead of seeing friends, I coveted my solitude
and ran to the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and the Frick Collection. The Frick was a particular favorite; in time I found myself contemplating the subjects of the paintings in this intimate collection as though they were real people with whom I could share my deepest thoughts and dreams. I even communicated aloud with some of these works as I stood before them. Nevertheless, the paintings at that isolated (but never lonely!) time in my life, along with my books, completed my acquaintance. They were important to me for different reasons: Titian's
Man in a Red Cap
seemed to mirror Mr. Herman's own aloof manner and expression; the dimly lit interior in Georges de la Tour's
Education of the Virgin
blended the quiet homeliness and transcendent spirituality I longed for; Giovanni Bellini's
St. Francis in the Desert
suggested the very religious ecstasy I myself awaited; El Greco's brooding, ascetic
St. Jerome
seemed to conceal a profound secret; Rembrandt's
Polish Rider
mirrored my own adolescent quest, depicting a shy, sensitive youth upon the back of a white horse drifting toward who knew where.

One day, I stood in front of a painting by the sixteenth-century Italian painter Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano, also known as Bronzino. The painting was of a young boy around my age (sixteen) with pale skin and heavy-lidded eyes topped with delicate, arching eyebrows. He was dressed in a black doublet with white sleeves and stood in front of a background of different shades of green. In his left hand, he held a pair of leather gloves; in the other, a small cameo, which I assumed was a portrait of his beloved. The extraordinary thing was that no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't make out the image on the cameo; its face was deliberately covered by the boy's right index finger.

When I told Mr. Herman what I had seen, amazingly, he knew exactly which painting I meant. He ordered me to go look at the painting again. I did, of course, but told him I still felt confused. He told me I wasn't looking hard enough, to go back again. This time I noticed that the boy's hands were separated by an elaborate silver codpiece. I did notice that his right hand formed a “V” between his right index and middle finger, and was pointing upward toward his heart, while the left hand holding the leather gloves was directed down toward the codpiece. Suddenly—I understood! The painting was a kind of allegory, a dialogue between his heart's desire and what my mother would have called his baser inclinations.

“Bravo! Bravissimo!” Mr. Herman said, rolling his R's like he was speaking in Italian, a language he spoke fluently, of course. He looked at me deeply. “A noble response. The slaves and peons who surround you would never have noticed such things. You have discovered much.” Then he told me that the young man's name was Lodovico Capponi, and that he had fallen in love with a girl whom the Duke Cosimo had intended for his own cousin. After three years of vain pleading by Lodovico, the Duke relented and let the boy have his desire, with one proviso—he had to marry her in the next twenty-four hours! And he accomplished his goal; the boy's love had been vindicated! And, if I looked closely, Mr. Herman said, I would notice the word “sorte” written just above the obscured face on the cameo, signifying that the boy's fate was to search for—and find—his heart's desire. I was deeply moved by this story, and returned the next day to find the magical word engraved in the cameo precisely as he said I would.

While I told Adar the story, he moved toward the painting, so close he nearly brushed it with his cheek. I was afraid one of the museum guards would see him and would ask us to leave. Then Adar muttered to the boy in the painting: “You're smarter than the others; they who don't understand. Just keep following the Law of the Spirit, that's all.”

As I listened to Adar's words, I felt chills. I was moved by his passionate response, but also a little frightened.
The Law of the Spirit
. The words spilled from his mouth like gold coins. He could do anything, and with his blessing, I could too. It was an honor to be one of the chosen. Maybe I, too, could become one of those superior beings who did not need to conform to rules like other people. I looked closely into Adar's eyes as he spoke; they were exactly the same shade of emerald as the velvet background in Bronzino's painting, and they flashed with fire.

When my father left, my mother stopped reading (except for the Bible and
The Daily News
), and spoke mostly in proverbs, usually by Shakespeare. She was able to spout a saying for nearly every occasion. When she found out I had returned early from Surprise Lake, she quoted Walter Scott, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” I wasn't sure
exactly which deception she thought I had been guilty of, but assumed that if I did ask, I would only be answered with additional quotations from the classics.

My return proved conclusively to her that I never should have taken the job in the first place. Why did I need to traipse upstate to pick up after a bunch of sweaty Jewish kids since Bobby was right here at home, wasn't he? And if I absolutely needed a job (although she couldn't see why, since my father was still obliged to pay for tuition and school supplies), I could work for Uncle Lee at MacLaren's Men's Wear.