The Righteous Men (2006) (38 page)

‘How would anyone work out where to find them?’

‘Now, this is the kind of question Tova Chaya used to ask — a
question Rabbi Mandelbaum cannot answer!’ The two exchanged warm smiles,
like an old man with a favourite granddaughter. ‘I wish I knew, Mr
Monroe, but I don’t. For this, you would need to talk to others. Those
who have penetrated the deepest secrets of the kabbalah.’

Will could see the rabbi was getting tired. And yet, Will did not want to
let their conversation end. In the last thirty minutes he had got more answers
than he had had in the previous forty-eight hours. At last he understood not
only the barrage of clues that had arrived by text message, he now could see
the wider picture, the ancient story unfolding. Surely this wise old man held
the key to why Beth was a captive. If only Will could think of the right
question.

There was a buzzing sound, the low vibration of a cell phone. TC, so used to
wearing combat trousers with multiple pockets, seemed flummoxed by the
realization she was now in a long, pocket-less skirt: she did not know where to
look.

Eventually she remembered. She had borrowed a smart leather handbag of Beth’s
— more grown-up than anything TC owned herself. The phone was in there.
Mouthing an apology, she stepped out of the room to answer it.

Will was scrambling to absorb everything he had just heard.

Wild theories about the end of the world, dire warnings of a cataclysm
foretold. He put his head in his hands. What on earth was he caught up in here?

Suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder.

‘It is a terrible thing for a man to be without his wife. Mrs Mandelbaum
has been dead three years and I carry on with my life. I still study, I still
pray. But if, occasionally, I dream of her at night — ahhh, now that’s
a
shabbos
.’

Will felt his eyes soaking with tears. To break the moment he cleared his
throat and collected himself to ask a question.

He did not know if it would help him find Beth, but he wanted to know
everything he could. ‘What counts as good?

What counts as such a good deed that it marks you out as righteous?’

I’m not sure it’s as simple as this. One has to think of the soul
of the
tzaddik
. This is a soul of such purity, of such goodness, that it
cannot help but express itself. The deeds are merely the outward manifestation
of a goodness that is within.’ The rabbi began to haul himself out of his
chair as if on a book-hunting expedition. ‘The key Hassidic text is known
as the
Tanya
. In that book, there is a definition of the
tzaddik
.
It explains that in each person there are two souls: a divine soul and an
animal soul. The divine soul is where we have our conscience, our urge to do
good, our desire to learn and study. The animal soul is where we have our appetites,
for food, for drink; lust. This is all from the animal soul.

‘Now, these two souls are usually in conflict. A good person works
hard to control his animal soul. To restrain his desires, not to give into
every longing. That’s what it is to be a regular, good person — to
struggle!’ He gave a creased smile, as if in recognition of the frailty
of man. ‘But a
tzaddik
is different. A
tzaddik
does not
just tame his animal soul. He
transforms
it. He changes his animal soul
into something else, turning it into a force for good. Now he is firing on two
cylinders, so to speak! It’s as if he has two divine souls. This gives
him a special power. It equips him to save the world.’

‘And would one act be enough?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, if a man had performed one act of extraordinary goodness, would
that be enough to say he was a
tzaddik
.’

‘Perhaps you have some example in mind, yes? My answer is that it may
seem to us as if the
tzaddik
performed just one holy act. But remember,
these men hide their goodness. The truth may be that this is the only act we
know about.’

‘And what might such an act look like?’

‘Ah, this is a good question. You know, in that story about Rabbi
Abbahu and the man in the whorehouse—’

‘The story from the third century?’

‘Yes. In that story, the
tzaddik
has done something very small.
I forget the details, but he makes some small sacrifice to preserve the dignity
of a woman.’

Will heard himself gulp.
Just like Macrae
.

‘And this seems to be the common thread. Sometimes it is an act on a
very large scale—’ Will thought of Chancellor Curtis in London,
diverting precious millions to the poor ‘— perhaps a
tzaddik
will save an entire city from destruction. Sometimes it is a tiny gesture to one
individual: a meal when they are hungry, a blanket when they are cold. In each
case, the
tzaddik
has treated a fellow human being justly and
generously.’

‘And in that way, even a small gesture might redeem a whole life?’

‘Yes, Mr Monroe. The
tzaddik
may have lived as if he was drenched
in sin. Think of Chaim the Watercarrier, drinking himself to oblivion. But
those acts of righteousness, they change the world.’

‘So goodness is not about rules. Or wearing a hair shirt. Or praying
hard. Or knowing every word in the Bible. It’s about how we treat each
other.’

‘
Bein adam v’adam
. Between man and man. That is where goodness,
even divinity resides. Not in the heavens, but right here on earth. In our
relations with each other. It also means we have to be careful. We have to
treat everyone we meet with great respect because, for all we know, this man
driving a cab or sweeping the streets or begging on a street corner, he might
be one of the righteous.’

That’s pretty egalitarian, isn’t it?’

The rabbi smiled. ‘The equal value of every human life. This is the
preoccupation of Torah. This is what Tova Chaya studied each day at the
seminary. And what she studied here with me, before …’ The rabbi
looked wistful and, suddenly, very old. He did not finish his sentence.

Will felt guilty. Not personally — he knew he was not to blame for TC’s
leaving all those years ago. But he felt guilty as — he struggled to
articulate it — as a representative of the modern world. That was it. It
was modernity, America, that had lured young Tova Chaya away from the routines
and rhythms that had shaped Jewish lives for centuries, whether in rural Russia
or Crown Heights. It was Manhattan, shimmering glass buildings, K-ROC on the
radio, tight-fitting jeans, Domino’s Pizza, blockbusters at the Cineplex,
The Gap, HBO,
Glamour
magazine, Andy Warhol at MOMA, rollerblading in Central
Park, AmEx cards, one-click shopping, Columbia University, sex outside marriage
— it was all that that had drawn TC away. How could the medieval
conformity of Hassidic life compete? The drabness of the clothes, the
regimented calendar, the countless limits — on what you could eat, what
you could study or read or draw, on who you could love. No wonder TC had had to
escape.

And yet, Will could see that TC had lost something by leaving. He could hear
it in Rabbi Mandelbaum’s voice and he had seen it in TC’s eyes. He
had experienced it for himself in those few hours before he was grabbed and
grilled on Friday night. This place had something Will had hardly known, either
growing up in England or living as an adult in America. The bland word for it
was ‘community’. People fantasized about that often enough. Back
home, the myth of the English village, where everyone knows everyone else, still
exerted a powerful hold, though Will had never seen it for real. In America,
suburban picket-fence neighbourhoods liked to think they were communities
— with their car pools and block parties — but they did not have
what Will had seen in Crown Heights.

Here, people were as involved with each other as one large, extended family.
An elaborate welfare system meant that each provided for the other as if they
were drawing from a common pot. Children were in and out of each other’s
houses. No one seemed to be strangers. TC had explained that the claustrophobia
could be choking: she had had to get out to breathe. But she also described a
warmth, a shared life, she had never known again.

Rabbi Mandelbaum had his head down, turning the pages of yet another book. ‘There
is one more thing. I don’t know if this will be useful or not. According
to several legends, one of these thirty-six men is even more special than the
others.’

‘Really? What kind of special?’

‘One of these thirty-six is the Messiah.’

Will leaned forward. ‘The Messiah?’

‘“If the age were worthy of it, he would reveal himself as such.”
That’s what the scholars say.’

‘The candidate,’ Will said softly.

‘Someone explained this to you already?’

‘TC told me that in every generation there is a candidate to be
Messiah. If now were the Messianic time, then that man would be it. If it’s
not the time, then nothing happens.’

‘We have to be worthy. Otherwise, the opportunity is lost.’

Almost involuntarily, Will looked at the photographs of the Rebbe, gazing
out from every wall and every angle. Dead more than two years, his eyes still
shone.

‘Exactly,’ said Rabbi Mandelbaum, following Will’s eyes. And
the two men looked at each other.

The door opened. TC was standing there, clutching her phone. There was no
colour in her face; her eyes were glassy, like an animal stunned for slaughter.

She bent down and whispered in Will’s ear. ‘The police are after
me. I’m wanted for murder.’

T
he music had stopped, that
was why he had gone in. He kept this up throughout his shift, whether it was
day or night — tip-toeing into the room to take out the finished CD and replace
it with a new one. The bedside cupboard was full of them, Schubert mainly, left
there by the old man’s daughter. The family had not asked Djalu to do it,
but he knew it was what they wanted.

He put on the record. He could hear wailing from the next room along; he
would have to be there in a second. But he wanted to stay a while with this
resident, Mr Clark, the man who loved music. Djalu had only seen him awake for
an hour or two each day; the sedative kept him asleep the rest of the time. But
in those conscious minutes, Mr Clark seemed healed by the sounds of violins and
cellos which uncoiled from the CD and into the room like stretches of fine thread.
His aged lips parted as if to taste the melodies; his mouth sometimes made the
same tiny movement even when he was in deep slumber.

Djalu would seize on those moments to take the small sponge, mounted on a
stick, dip it into the bedside glass of water and brush it onto Mr Clark’s
mouth. The old man, nearly eighty-five, could no longer eat or drink, not
without vomiting. So this was the only way to give him sustenance. He was
dying, like so many of the people in this place, not from the disease that had
assailed him for months but of starvation and eventual dehydration. Once it was
clear that the patient could never be cured, the organs would be allowed to
pack up, one by one until death finally arrived.

It seemed a cruel way to let a person die. Djalu’s father denounced it
as typical of ‘white man’s’ medicine, all science and no
spirit. Sometimes Djalu thought he was right; after all, he had seen some
terrible things in this place. Old women lying in pools of their own urine; men
crying out for hours to be helped to the toilet. Some of the nurses quickly
lost patience, shouting at the residents, telling them to shut up. Or
addressing them by their first names, as if they were babies.

In his first few months, Djalu had gone with the flow. He did not want to
draw attention to himself, one of only two aborigine care assistants in the
home. His position was hardly secure, not with a resume which included two
spells in jail — one for burglary, the other for shoplifting. So he said
nothing when the senior staff would hear moans or screams from down the
corridor — and would turn up the TV to drown out the noise.

Even now he said nothing. He made no complaints to the matron or the
manager; he wanted no fuss and no hassle. Sometimes he even joined in the jokes
about the ‘crinkly old buggers’. But he did what he could.

So when he heard a resident crying out, he ran. He was part of what the
nursing home called Team Red, responsible for about two dozen beds. But if he
saw a light flashing for a resident in Blue or Green, he went anyway — often
sneaking in, hoping none of the staff would see him. He made sure Mr Martyn
sipped some water or that Miss Anderson was turned over. And if they had soiled
themselves, he would clean them up, wiping them gently, afterwards stroking
their hair, trying to soothe away their shame.

He heard how some of the residents referred to him. ‘Matron, I don’t
want that boong touching me,’ one had said when Djalu had first appeared
at his bedside. ‘It’s wrong.’ But Djalu put that down to
their age. They did not know any better.

Mr Clark had not been much friendlier. ‘Which one are you?’ he
had asked.

‘Which one, Mr Clark?’

‘Yes, there’s that other abo, whatisname? Which one are you?’

But Djalu could not feel angry, not with a man who was in the last days of
his life. So he brought tea and biscuits when Mrs Clark visited; brought her a
tissue when he found her quietly sobbing; and when she fell asleep in the chair
by the bed, he draped a blanket over her.

Maybe his father was right that European medicine was a cold, metallic
discipline. So he, Djalu, would give it a warm, human face — even if that
face seemed to scare so many of these dying white folks.

This was his favourite time to work, late at night when he could have the
corridor to himself. He would not need to explain his presence in the rooms,
would not need to make up excuses for why he was reading the newspaper out loud
to a woman on the second floor, not on the Red list, or simply holding the hand
of a man who craved the touch of another human being.