The Promise (25 page)

“The advance copies just came out last week. He didn’t even wait for the official publication date. He must have worked around the clock to write that.”

Danny was quiet.

“At least he doesn’t call my father a pagan.”

“It’s an honest article,” Danny said.

I looked at him sharply.

“You have to admit it’s honest. He knows what he’s talking about. He studied the book. It’s an honest difference of opinion.”

“Sure he studied the book. You know who he studied it with?”

“Who?”

“Me.”

He stared.

“That’s right. Me. Explain this to me, Malter. I want to understand better what your father is saying. Me. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. After class. Me. What kind of person does that? He
used
me against my own father. I wonder who he used when he was reading Abraham Gordon’s book. My God, I feel like I’m living in the Middle Ages. I need some fresh air.” I got to my feet and went to the window. It was open. “Why is it so hot in here?” I sat down. “I feel like I’m suffocating.”

“It isn’t hot at all,” Danny said quietly.

“It’s hot. Don’t tell me it isn’t hot.”

“All right.”

“Can I take that paper with me? I’ll want to show it to my father.”

“Yes.”

“It’s stifling in here. I wish it were the summer. I wish I could get in some swimming. Maybe I’ll go to one of those indoor pools in a Y and get in some swimming. I wish I could do some sailing. Have you ever gone sailing? No, of course you haven’t. In a good wind a Sailfish goes like a motorboat. But you have to watch the
center board. It gets warped and you have trouble with it in shallow water sometimes. You have to watch that center board, Danny.”

“Take it easy,” I heard Danny say as if from a distant part of the house.

I was quiet. I sat there quietly and took a deep breath. My head felt foggy. I took another deep breath. The fog was gone.

“I’m all right,” I said, and got to my feet. “I had better get home.”

“Please go in and see my father,” Danny said. “He wants to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m—splendid.”

I wished him Shabbat shalom and started down the hall to his father’s study. I saw the newspaper in my hand and stuffed it quickly into a pocket. I was about to knock on the door to the study when I remembered something and turned and went quickly back to Danny’s room. His door was closed. I opened it without knocking and came inside. He was at his desk, studying Talmud. He was bent low over the Talmud, swaying slowly back and forth, and the thumb and forefinger of his right hand caressed his cheek and played with an imaginary earlock. I stood just inside the room and watched him and felt the room swaying in rhythmic accompaniment to the motions of his body, the floor moving slowly back and forth, and I closed my eyes. The swaying ceased. I opened my eyes. Danny was looking at me.

“What is all this about the Kotzker Rebbe?” My voice sounded strangely loud. “What is this with Byrd and Zimmerman and the Kotzker Rebbe and solitude?” Easy, I thought. Why are you shouting? You don’t have to shout.

Danny looked as if he had been struck a blow. A look of enormous astonishment spread across his face. He opened his mouth and closed it immediately. He sat there, staring at me, and seemed incapable of responding.

“Is that all it is? A project for class? Solitude?” Stop shouting, I told myself again. It’s none of your business anyway what it’s all about … The hell it’s none of my business. But stop shouting. “Well?” I said. “Well?”

“How do you know about the Kotzker?” I heard him ask in a tight voice.

I told him.

“It’s got to do with an idea I’m working on,” Danny said very quietly.

“What idea?” My voice still sounded very loud.

Danny said nothing. But the lines of his face had hardened with annoyance.

“For class?” I said loudly. “A class project. Is that all it is? I know how your mind works. You don’t suddenly start pouncing on a bunch of books dealing with one subject just out of curiosity. What are you doing? Is it for class?”

“No,” he said.

“I know. It’s none of my business. But what are you doing?”

He was silent.

“It has Something to do with Michael. You’re dreaming up something for Michael. What are you doing?”

“Take it easy, Reuven.”

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t want to talk about it. Just like that. You don’t want to talk about it.”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“I got you involved in this whole thing. Don’t you owe it to me to tell me?”

“No. I can’t talk about it to anyone yet.”

“All right. Don’t talk about it. All right. More silence. That’s what I love about you Hasidim. You either don’t talk at all or you talk too much. Sneaky Kalman and silent Saunders. Everything is falling apart. Don’t you see it falling apart? Can’t you hear it falling apart?”

“I hear you shouting,” Danny said softly. “That’s what I hear.”

I stared at him. He was looking at me and blinking his eyes rapidly.

“Have fun,” I said bitterly. “Enjoy your solitude. Give my love to the Kotzker and Admiral Byrd. Let me know when you’re ready to talk about it.”

I went out of the room and closed the door and went quickly down the hall and out of the apartment to the stairway. Halfway down the third-floor stairs I remembered that Reb Saunders wanted to see me. I went back up and knocked on the door to his study and heard him say in Yiddish, “Come in.”

He was seated behind his desk over an old Hebrew book. The room was cluttered with books; it was always cluttered with books. I wished he would open a window. The musty odor of old books was suffocating. He shook my hand and waved me into a chair. He looked old and weary. He closed the book and moved it aside. He asked me how my father was feeling. Then he asked me how I was feeling. Then he told me he had read Rav Kalman’s article about my father’s book. He did not say whether he approved or disapproved of the article; he merely said he had read it. But his voice was thick with sadness as he talked. Then he was silent for a while and his hands trembled faintly on the desk. I noticed there was a slight tremor to his head now too. He sighed softly and began to play with an earlock, curling it around the bony forefinger of his right hand.

“A telephone is a mighty thing,” he said softly in Yiddish. “A mighty thing. An invisible messenger.”

I stared at him.

“A wire. Two instruments. And human beings who are far apart are suddenly close together. We have been given a world full of wonders by the Master of the Universe. People whose lives are separated come together because of a wire. Is it not a mighty thing, Reuven?”

I nodded and wondered what he was talking about and had a moment of black dread that he had become senile.

“Where I grew up in Europe it would take days sometimes to deliver an important message. Lives would be lost because there would be no way to call a doctor. I remember my father, of blessed memory, once fell on ice and hurt his hip and was in pain for a day and a half before someone could bring a doctor. Now a man can pick up a telephone. It is a wonder, a mighty wonder. We should thank the Master of the Universe every day for such a wonder.”

I glanced at my wristwatch and squirmed on my seat and was quiet. I wanted to get home and talk about that article with my father. I wondered if that colleague of his in the yeshiva might have told him about the article. I wanted to be home when my father came in. But I did not move.

Reb Saunders seemed unaware of my discomfort. He went on talking. “The Master of the Universe has so created the world that everything that can be good can also be evil. It is mankind that makes a thing good or evil, Reuven, depending upon how we use the wonders we have been given. A telephone can also be a nuisance. But if it is used wisely, it is a mighty thing.” He stopped playing with the earlock and put his hand on the desk. “My Daniel receives many telephone calls when he is here. Sometimes they are from his friends in school. Sometimes they are from the hospital where he works. It is not so big a house, Reuven, that telephone calls can be easily concealed. Tell me, Reuven, Daniel has a patient by the name of Michael Gordon?”

I was beyond surprise. I was too tired and drained to feel surprise. I simply sat there and looked at him.

“Nu, Reuven?”

I nodded.

“This is the son of Gordon, yes?”

“Yes.” Why do they all call him by his last name like that? I thought. Why do they make it sound as if he were the only Gordon in the world?

“And who is Rachel Gordon? His daughter?”

“His niece.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding his head slowly and sounding a little relieved. “His niece. Rachel Gordon is his niece … Tell me, Reuven, the family of Rachel Gordon observes the Commandments?”

I was beginning to feel that I had no business answering questions about Rachel and her family. Let Danny answer them. Let Reb Saunders ask Danny. The days when he talked to Danny through me were over. Let him talk to Danny himself. I wanted nothing of that part of the past repeated.

I told him quietly that I thought he ought to talk about it with Danny.

He ignored me. “The family observes the Commandments?” he asked again, his voice somewhat sharper now.

“Yes.”

“And the girl, is the girl also an observer of the Commandments?”

I told him respectfully that I did not feel comfortable talking about Rachel and that he ought to ask Danny.

He blinked his dark, deep-socketed eyes and nodded heavily. “I understand,” he murmured. “You are remembering what was once between us and you do not want it again. But how can it be the same, Reuven? My Daniel is a man now, and men hesitate to talk to their fathers. A boy always wishes to be able to talk to his father. And a father waits for the boy to become a man so they can talk as men. And then the boy becomes a man and no longer needs the father. It is a strange thing. I worry myself about my Daniel. I worry that the girl he will find will not be an observer of the Commandments.”

“She observes the Commandments.”

“Yes?” His lined face lighted up.

“They all observe the Commandments. The whole family.”

“Gordon observes the Commandments?”

“Yes.”

“You know this by yourself?”

“Yes.”

He seemed really surprised. “How do you know?”

“I know Abraham Gordon.”

“You know Gordon?”

“I know them all.”

“Daniel tells me nothing.”

I was quiet.

“It may be he is afraid to upset me. The niece of Gordon …” He lapsed into brooding silence.

I told him I had to go home.

He nodded. Then he sighed and leaned forward against the desk. “I have been asked to write about your father’s book,” he said softly. “There will be trouble with that book. When a scholar as great as your father writes such a book it cannot be ignored.” His voice was heavy with sadness. “Rav Kalman is an influential man. There will be trouble. But I will not write about it. I will say nothing. I owe your father—too much. You will tell your father this for me.”

I felt myself nodding.

“There will be great trouble with that book. Rav Kalman has taken it upon himself to combat it. No one will stop him. But I will not help him. Please tell your father that, Reuven. Have a good Shabbos. It is always good to see you. Give my good wishes to your father.” He spoke very quietly and seemed visibly fatigued. “Nu, at least she is an observer of the Commandments … But the niece of Gordon … Ah, what a world we live in …”

I came out of the room and stood near the door a moment. A melody floated thinly through the hall. It was a Hasidic melody, wordless, set to the syllables bim bam bim, and it moved through the hall from Danny’s room. I stood there, listening to the melody. It seemed filled with quiet joy, its syllables, carried by Danny’s faintly nasal voice, rising and falling to the gentle, lively notes of the tune. Birn bam bim. Bim bam bim. It followed me through the hall to the head of the third-floor stairway, soft, thin, barely audible now, but its happiness unmistakable, a thin thread of joy in the silence of the house. I stood at the head of the stairs and
listened to it. Then I turned and went quickly back into the hall and up to Danny’s door. I knocked. The melody ceased abruptly. I went inside.

Danny sat at his desk in front of the open Talmud and stared at me in surprise.

“The suffering son of a heathen writer is back,” I said. “The silent one is surprised. Yes. I can see he is surprised. I bear a message from the king. A telephone is a mighty thing. It can also be a nuisance, but used wisely it is a mighty thing. Don’t look at me like that. I do not as yet need your services. I am quoting the words of the king, the messenger of the Lord. Your father knows about you and Rachel. He asked me and I told him. I didn’t want to tell him. But the king has a relentless way about him sometimes. So I told him. He heard you on the phone. He knows about Michael. The king knows all. Have a merry Shabbos. Give my—give my regards to Rachel and her parents. I am going home to my heathen father.”

I closed the door and went quickly through the hall. I heard the door open behind me, but I was out of the apartment and going down the stairs. On the second floor I stopped and listened. The house was silent. I went downstairs and was passing the door to the synagogue when a dark figure came suddenly out of the shadows.

“Reuven.”

It was Levi. He stood alongside the synagogue door, thin and wraithlike in the dimness of the hallway.

“It’s late,” I said. “I’ve got to go home.”

“A minute,” he said in Yiddish. “Only a minute.”

“What do you want, Levi?”

“My brother,” he said, looking a little uncomfortable. “He will be a great psychologist, yes?”

I looked at him.

“Yes, Reuven?” he asked softly, eagerly. “Tell me. Yes?”

He needed the assurance. He needed to know that the years
the tzaddikate would eventually take from his frail life would be worthwhile.

“Yes,” I heard myself say.

I saw him nod. “I am glad,” he said quietly. “Have a good Shabbos, Reuven.”