The Promise (45 page)

“I really would have liked you as a student,” Abraham Gordon
said to me at one point. “But I’m glad you’re remaining where you are. God help us all if Orthodoxy becomes dull-witted with fundamentalists like Rav Kalman. We’ll never be able to talk to each other. But I don’t envy you the fights you’ll have on your hands.”

“There are fights everywhere,” Ruth Gordon said.

“Yes,” Abraham Gordon said, nodding. “Indeed there are.” Then he said, “It took courage for you to do what you did. I would not have thought Rav Kalman would give you smicha.”

“He almost didn’t. The others had a difficult time convincing him.”

“That’s not why he gave you his smicha. You can’t convince someone like Rav Kalman to give smicha to a person he feels doesn’t deserve it. You know what smicha is to people like him? It’s the link between them and Moses at Sinai. And that business about the Song of Songs—that wasn’t the reason, either.”

“What was?”

“Maidanek,” he said.

Before I left, Ruth Gordon asked me if I would have dinner with them the following Sunday. I accepted. She shook my hand warmly.

The next day I arrived at the yeshiva at five minutes before three and waited outside the door to Rav Gershenson’s classroom. Rav Kalman dismissed his shiur first, and my classmates came out and crowded around me, loud with their congratulations. Irving Goldberg’s solemn face beamed as he shook my hand and pounded my back. Even Abe Greenfield, the shy and suddenly explosive rebel of months back, found the courage to say a few nice words before he retreated back into his silent world. Then I saw Rav Gershenson’s students beginning to leave their room, and I went quickly inside.

There was the usual group of students around Rav Gershenson’s desk. But he saw me and asked them to leave. A moment later, we were alone.

He took my hand in both his hands. Then he asked me to sit
down. He sat back in his chair and peered at me and smiled and shook his head.

“I do not know how many smicha examinations I have given in this yeshiva,” he said. “But I have never given an examination like that one. Tell me, Reuven, did you know the chance you were taking?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head again. “You came close to losing. You even almost lost with me when you began to talk about—nu, what difference does it make? It is all over. But we had a very difficult time with Rav Kalman. Tell me, Reuven, will you write articles on the Gemora using this method?”

“Yes.”

“I am not sure Rav Kalman will like that.”

I did not say anything.

He smiled. “It is hard for an old tree to bend, Reuven. Be careful in your articles. Be very careful. Do not be afraid to write.” He smiled sadly. Years ago, I had looked up his name in the English and Hebrew catalogues in the school library and discovered he had never published anything. “No,” he said. “You should not be afraid to write. But be careful that you know what you are saying. Rav Kalman and others like him are—difficult opponents. They would be impossible to bear if they were not such great scholars. Nu, I am glad you succeeded. Give my regards to your father. Tell him—tell him it would have been a pleasure to have both Malters in our school. But I am grateful for winning at least half a victory.”

And again he took my hand in both his hands and held it a long time.

I went home and spent the rest of the day working on my Master’s thesis. I finished it that Friday, half an hour before it was time to begin to prepare for Shabbat.

The phone call from Danny came four days later, on Tuesday morning in the first week of May. He wanted me to come immediately to the treatment center. His voice was soft and very tight.
He needed my help, he said. It was very important that I come immediately. Could I come? Sure I could come. Michael’s parents would be there too, he said. I was to give my name to the person at the desk in the foyer and someone would take me downstairs to the isolation room. He was expecting me to be there in about three quarters of an hour, he said. I took a cab to the treatment center.

The guard at the gate recognized me. He was the one who had helped me stop Michael from setting fire to the leaves in the pagoda. He nodded as I went by. There were tiny green leaves on the trees now and I heard the warm wind in the branches. I could see the pagoda through the trees. Its slanted red roof gleamed in the sunlight.

I went quickly up the wide stone stairway and into the foyer. The man behind the desk spoke briefly into the phone after I gave him my name. A moment later another man came through the living room. He wore a tweed suit and horn-rimmed glasses and looked to be in his thirties. He asked me to go with him. We went into the living room and along the corridor past Danny’s office and then through a heavy metal door at the end of the corridor and down a flight of stairs to another corridor with a cement floor and cinder-block walls. An overhead bulb burned dimly from an old ceiling fixture. Near the end of the wall to my right was a door. The man tapped on it softly. It opened and Danny came out and closed it immediately behind him. The man nodded at Danny and went away.

Danny took my arm and led me away from the door back to the staircase. He seemed exhausted. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles of sleeplessness and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead and upper lip.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m tired. But I’m all right. Listen, I want to talk to you before you go in there.”

“You said his parents would be here.”

“They’re inside.”

“How are they?”

“Very badly shaken.”

“Is Michael talking to them?”

“Michael isn’t talking.”

I looked at him.

“We had a fine session yesterday and he asked to see them. I finally got him to ask for them.” He was tense and nervous and his eyes blinked repeatedly. “Early this morning he was fine. Now he’s back into one of his catatonic withdrawals and has stopped responding. I want you to go in and visit with him as if he were upstairs in his own room.”

“Catatonic?” I heard myself say. “Michael is catatonic?”

“He’s been in and out of it for weeks. All I want you to do is go in and talk to him the way you did before.”

“What do you want me to say?” The news that Michael had been catatonic all these weeks had filled me with horror. I was trembling inside. “I don’t know anything about all this. What should I say?”

“Say anything. Treat it like a normal visit. Say anything that comes into your head. I have no idea what will finally get him to talk. He has got to be able to tell his parents what he told me or it won’t mean very much. So say anything.” His voice was tight. He ran a finger across his perspiring upper lip. He had not had a haircut in a long time. His sand-colored hair was thick along the back of his neck and over the tops of his ears. “He’ll hear you. A catatonic hears and sees and remembers everything that goes on around him.” He stopped and looked at me. “I have got to get through to him,” he said, softly, urgently. “Altman is beginning to have his doubts about this whole thing. I have got to get through to this boy.” There was desperation in his voice and a plea for help. “Come on,” he said. “And don’t worry about the way he looks. He’s lost some weight, but he’s physically all right.”

“Can I say anything to his parents?”

“Say whatever you want to anyone you want. Just be yourself.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

He gave me a grim look. “I’ve been scared for weeks,” he said. “Come on.”

We went back along the corridor to the door. It was a heavy wooden brown door with large brass hinges, a brass knob, and a small circular key insert that was flush with the wood. Danny took a key ring from the pocket of his jacket. The keys jangled softly in the silence of the corridor. He selected a key and inserted it into the lock. There was a soft click. He pushed the door slightly open and held it for me and I stepped inside and he came in and I heard the soft click of the door as it closed behind us.

We were in a small dimly lit room. The walls were white and bare. The wooden floor was a dark brown. Set high in the wall opposite the door was a small narrow window. It was closed and the panes had been painted white. The ceiling was white. Silence, utter silence, filled the room, dense, thick, pressing against the window and the walls. I could feel it, I could actually
feel
it pushing against me. Directly below the window, Michael sat on a mattress, his legs folded Indian-fashion beneath him, his back to the wall. A white sheet and a brown blanket covered the mattress. He sat on the mattress and stared at the floor. He wore dungarees and a pale-blue polo shirt. His hands lay limply across his thighs. He had lost a great deal of weight. He seemed reedlike now, gaunt, his face almost as white as the sheet, his dark-brown hair thick and wild, falling across his forehead, his blue eyes wide and blank behind the glasses that had slipped down along the bridge of his nose, his narrow face devoid of expression. I looked at him and felt a shock of terror move through me. A few feet to his right, Abraham and Ruth Gordon sat on chairs near the wall with the high window, their coats across their laps. They looked at me as I went slowly toward Michael, their faces tortured, bewildered, white with fear and pain. They said nothing. Ruth Gordon held a handkerchief in her hands. She twisted it slowly. I saw her twisting it slowly on her lap, twining it around her fingers and twisting it. Abraham Gordon sat very still, his huge body curved forward on
the chair, his round face and balding head covered with perspiration. I stood in front of Michael and looked down. I could see the top of his uncombed hair and the glasses on the bridge of his nose and the arms limp on his thighs and the curve of his shoulders and back, all of it very still, frozen, matching the dark silence of the room. Danny was alongside me. I glanced at him and he nodded briefly. I removed my coat and hat and put them on the floor in front of the mattress. I sat down on the floor. Danny sat down beside me. I sat there, staring at Michael and did not know what to say. I listened to the silence. It moved against me like something alive, and I found myself trying to reach beyond it for a sound, any sound, the tick of a clock, the tapping of shoes on a floor, the soft clearing of a throat, the wind in the branches of a tree, the skittering of leaves across the ground, anything. But there was nothing—only the silence, like a giant hand around the room. I was trembling and sweating. Danny sat beside me, gazing at Michael, and there was on his face a look of pain and anguish and suffering, as if he were somehow inside Michael, peering out at me through Michael, and I had come to talk to him in his entombing silence.

We sat in that silence a long time and then I began to feel myself choking and drowning in it, felt a need for a voice, and I heard myself say, softly, “Hello, Michael. Mr. Saunders said I could visit you and I came right away.” The words sounded inane. But I did not know what else to say.

Michael sat very still on the mattress, his eyes staring fixedly at the floor. He did not move. He said nothing.

“You’ve lost more weight,” I said.

Michael said nothing.

“You’ll be able to gain it back this summer,” I said.

Michael said nothing.

“You’ll visit your aunt and uncle and we’ll do some more sailing.”

Michael said nothing.

“Would you like that?”

Michael said nothing.

“You’ve really lost an awful lot of weight,” I said. Then I said, “Don’t you want to talk to me any more?”

Michael said nothing.

“We had some good talks. Do you remember the time we went sailing and we tied up in the cove and you told me what the clouds looked like? Do you remember that?”

Michael said nothing.

“Do you remember the roller coaster ride and the nosebleed and that old man?”

Michael said nothing.

“Michael,” I said. “Please, Michael.” My God, I thought. He’s dead. There’s nothing there. He’s turned to stone. What have they done to him? They’ve killed him with silence. At least before there was something there. He’s dead. He’s alive and dead and they’ll take him out of here and put him into the back ward of an asylum somewhere and he’ll be alive and dead the rest of his life. What have they done to him? What has Danny done to him with his crazy silence? They’ve killed him inside. He’s breathing but he’s dead and they’ve killed him. I looked at Danny. His eyes were fixed on Michael. I looked at Abraham and Ruth Gordon. They were staring at Michael in terror. Say something, I thought, looking back at Michael. Say something. Do something. Anything. Blink your eyes. Move a finger. Talk. Scream. Cry. Anything!

Michael said nothing.

I panicked then and heard myself begin to babble. I did not really know what I was saying, but I talked. I talked on and on, quietly, my voice shaking, using the words to push away the silence and fill the room with something that was truly alive, with words, driving out the silence with words, beating against the silence with words, pouring the wind and the lake and the memories of the summer into the emptiness of the room. I talked about the first time we had gone sailing together and how frightened he had been but how quickly he had learned to handle the balancing of the Sailfish. I talked about the way we had overturned
and the trouble he had had with the center board. “Those center boards warp sometimes in the water,” I said. “Do you remember my saying that? Do you remember, Michael? And we lay in the cove and talked about Rachel, and your father’s books, and all the attacks against your father, and Rav Kalman, and the students in your school. Rav Kalman is an angry person,” I said. “But he suffered. He lost his whole world and people who are suffering sometimes take out their suffering on others. They defend what the ones they loved died for. They become angry and ugly and they fight anything that’s a threat to them. We have to learn how to fight back without hurting them too much. We can talk about that next summer. We’ll sail again and talk about it,” I said. “But you have to tell us you’re all right. Tell me you hear what I’m saying. We’ll sail again and you’ll read some more clouds for me. Or maybe you won’t have to read the clouds any more. But tell me you hear what I’m saying. Michael. Please. Michael. I know what it’s like to be inside a small room, fighting. I was inside a small room too. But I talked. I fought back. You have to learn to talk and fight back. You have to learn how to do it even if it hurts people you respect or love. You’re not anything unless you can learn to do that. I fought them but I respected them and I won and I’m getting my smicha and I’ll be teaching at Hirsch next year and when I get my doctorate in philosophy I’ll take a pulpit but I’ll be able to continue teaching. Do you hear me, Michael? I fought them and I won. You can win too if you learn how to fight. You have to talk if you want to fight. I fought Rav Kalman and he’s giving me smicha. I tried not to hurt him too much. I fought with words, Michael. And sometimes you have to fight even if it means hurting people terribly. Sometimes you have to hurt a person you love if you want to be yourself. We can talk about that too in the summer. We can go sailing and you can take the tiller and the mainsail and we—”