The Promise

  “He’s a great scholar. Why do you say he’s vicious and deceitful?”

  “You won’t be angry at me? He’s your teacher and I don’t want to talk about him if it will make you angry at me.”

  “Well, I might get a little angry at you, Michael. But that doesn’t mean I won’t like you.”

  He looked at me and a peculiar questioning frown came across his face, as if he were trying to understand what I had just said. After a long moment, I heard him say, “Rav Kalman is very religious. Isn’t he fanatically religious?”

  “He’s very religious. Yes.”

  “Then why does he go around using slander against people who disagree with him?” He used the Talmudic term “lashon hara” for slander.

  “Where did you ever hear Rav Kalman use slander?”

  “He uses it all the time.”

  “You’re talking about the way he attacks your father and his school. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  His face darkened and turned sullen. “You know what the Talmud says is the punishment for lashon hara? Leprosy. There’s a rabbi in the Talmud who even says there’s no atonement for lashon hara. How can Rav Kalman be so religious and use lashon hara?”

  “How do you know so much about Rav Kalman?”

  “I know. I read what he writes in those Orthodox magazines and newspapers.”

  “He writes about your father and his school?”

  “He writes about them all the time. Don’t you read those newspapers?”

  “No. They’re not too interesting.”

  “You’re a funny kind of yeshiva student. You swim and you sail and you’re tanned and you don’t read your own Orthodox newspapers. I’ve never met a yeshiva student like you.”

  “How many have you met?”

  “I meet them all the time. I go to a yeshiva.”

  “I thought that was a very modern yeshiva.”

  “There are a lot of Orthodox students in that yeshiva.”

  “You don’t like Orthodox students?”

  “They’re vicious.”

  “The Orthodox students in your yeshiva are vicious?”

  “I hate them.”

  “Why?”

  “I hate them,” he said. I was silent.

  “They’re vicious and I hate them.”

  “They can’t all be vicious, Michael.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I know you can’t call a whole group of people vicious.”

  “You don’t know anything about it. I go to that school.”

  “Why do you go if they’re vicious?”

  “My parents want me to. Especially my mother. She says it’s a good school.”

  “It’s one of the best yeshivas in the country.”

  “I hate it. I can’t wait to get out of it.”

  “Because the Orthodox students are vicious?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean by vicious.”

  “You’re Orthodox. What do you know about it? You can’t even see it. You have to be outside to see it.”

  “Outside what?”

  “Let’s drop the subject. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just drop the whole subject.”

  “All right.”

  “I feel very tired when I talk about it.”

  “We won’t talk about it any more. What are you going to study in college?”

  “Astronomy.”

  “I would never have guessed.”

  “I had a telescope in my room once. My father helped me build it. I used to be able to look up at the sky at night when there weren’t any clouds. I really liked that telescope.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I—broke it. It was an accident. My father said he would help me build another one as soon as he comes back from the trip. He’s on this trip to Europe and Israel now. You know about that. He had to go to a big conference and my mother always goes with him when he takes long trips. That’s why I’m staying with Rachel and her parents.”

  “Couldn’t you go?”

  “No.”

  “Because of the nosebleeds?”

  “Our doctor said I shouldn’t go. Have you ever read any of my father’s books?”

  “All of them.”

  “He writes all the time. Mostly at night. He’s probably even writing now while he’s traveling. My mother helps him. She keeps encouraging him. He gets pretty sad sometimes because of the way he’s attacked. But she keeps encouraging him.”

  “Is he writing another book?”

  “Yes. He’s always writing books.”

  “What is this one about?”

  “I don’t know. God and revelation and things like that. I don’t understand his books too well.”

  “I used to have that problem with my father’s writing. Why don’t you ask your father to explain some of it to you?”

  “He does sometimes. But it’s very complicated. I’m not really interested in that stuff.”

  “Is your father religious?”

  “What do you mean religious?”

  “Does he keep the Commandments? Does he put on tefillin every day?”

  “Of course he puts on tefillin. I put on tefillin. We’re pretty religious. We keep kosher and everything.”

  “Do you observe the Shabbat?”

  “Sure. Can we sail some more now?”

  “In a little while.”

  “Did you take me out sailing so we could talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you want to talk?”

  “Why not?”

  “I thought you just wanted us to have a good time.”

  “Aren’t you having a good time?”

  “I don’t like being asked questions.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like it, that’s all.”

  “All right. I won’t ask you any more questions.”

  He lay back on the Sailfish and was quiet a very long time. Then he said, “I should have listened to Rachel last night.”

  “We both should have listened to Rachel.”

  “I wanted that radio.”

  “Yes, you certainly did.”

  “I was terrible last night. Did I throw anything at that old man?”

  “No.”

  “I remember I wanted to throw something.”

  “You were going to throw the dice cup.”

  “I didn’t throw it?”

  “No. I stopped you.”

  “I remember wanting to throw something and then I can’t remember anything until my uncle said he was calling a doctor.”

  “You don’t remember anything at all?”

  “No. But I remember that old man. I remember thinking he was like Rav Kalman and some of the others. You trust them because they’re supposed to be decent and very religious and then they turn out to be vicious. They have crazy ideas, especially the ones who came here after the war. They think they’re God over Judaism. They stamp on you like you’re a bug if you don’t agree with them. They’re going to poison all of us with their crazy ideas.”

  “They’re fighting for what they believe in.”

  “They’re vicious. I really hate them. They’re disgusting.”

  “All right, Michael.”

  Again, he was quiet a very long time. He lay with his eyes closed and I thought he had fallen asleep and then I saw him open his eyes and look up at the sky.

  “It’s beautiful out here. Look at the trees and the sky. It’s really beautiful. I don’t mind it so much talking out here.”

  “Sailing and talking. What could be better?”

  “I wish it were night. Then I could see the stars.”

  “We couldn’t sail if it were night.”

  “I wish it were night and we could sail anyway and I could see the stars.”

  “You could give me a lesson in astronomy.”

  “Do you know anything about astronomy?”

  “I know how to find the Big Dip
per.”

  “That isn’t very much.”

  “That isn’t anything at all.”

  “I wish it were night. It’s easier to talk at night with the stars.”

  “You haven’t done so badly talking now.”

  “No,” he murmured. “It’s easy to talk to you.”

  “And I’m a yeshiva boy.”

  “Yes …”

  “I’m of the nonvicious variety.” He smiled.

  “Would you like to swim?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll get in some more sailing.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll race you to that rock.”

  We raced and I won and we swam a while in the cove and then sailed back out toward the middle of the lake and Michael lay on the Sailfish, moving back and forth with the thrusting of the wind. His eyes were narrow and his face was to the sun and he kept his hands tight around the rail of the craft—and he talked. “Can you feel the sun, Reuven? Can you feel how hot it is? Did you know Giordano Bruno was burned alive in Rome in 1600 for writing that the stars were suns? Did you know the gases in the interior of the sun are more than ten million degrees Kelvin? That’s hot. They burned him alive because he wrote that the stars were suns. I wonder what it’s like to be burned alive. Fire on your feet and around your legs and the pain as the fire creeps up. When do you die when you’re burned alive? I think about that sometimes. They cheated Bruno. They killed him for the truth. But he didn’t cheat. He wrote the truth. You have to get killed sometimes but you can’t cheat. The cheating never hurts the stars but your eyes get clouded. I really believe that. Your eyes get clouded and you can’t see through the telescope, any kind of telescope. There are different kinds of telescopes. Did you know that? There are refracting telescopes and reflecting telescopes and there’s the Schmidt telescope. I read about them in a book. Refracting telescopes are okay but you have to watch out for chromatic aberration. Reflecting telescopes don’t have that problem. But they have other problems, lots of other different problems. God, listen to me talking. I can’t stop talking. Why can’t I stop talking? What was I saying? Problems. The Schmidt telescope has problems too. everything has problems. There’s nothing anywhere without problems. There’s no one without problems. Look at the clouds. They’re beautiful. God, they’re beautiful. There’s one that looks like someone burning. Yes. Someone is burning. Who doesn’t have problems?” We sailed and he talked and then we were near the shoreline and he talked and I could make out clearly the trees and the boulders and summer homes and people on the lawns and a deer at the edge of the woods and still he talked. Then, quite suddenly, he was silent. We sailed in that silence the rest of the way to the dock.

  I collapsed the sail and tied up to the dock. I climbed the ladder and put out my hand to help Michael but he went up by himself, moving carefully from the Sailfish to the ladder and then up the rungs, and he stood next to me on the dock looking out across the lake, his hair blowing in the wind, his eyes blue and dreamy and moist behind his large glasses. He did not look at me. He looked out at the lake and his voice was soft.

  “I wanted the radio for my parents. I wanted to give it to them as a coming-home present.”

  “You’ll find something else to give them.”

  “Our old radio keeps breaking down. My parents like to listen to radio broadcasts from Europe. Especially my mother. She understands and speaks a lot of languages. French, Spanish, Italian, German, Hebrew. Then there are other languages she can only read but can’t speak.”

  “That’s a lot of languages, all right.”

  “Reuven.” He was looking at me now.

  “Yes.”

  “Did we lose much money last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “My father will pay you back what you loaned me.”

  I did not say anything.

  “I wish we had never gone.”

  “Well, we went.”

  “I wouldn’t have minded it so much if we had gambled and just lost.”

  “It doesn’t do much good to keep talking about it, Michael.”

  “We gambled and were cheated. You have to fight when you’re cheated. But I can’t fight.”

  “Come on. I’ll walk you to the house.”

  “You don’t have to come in with me. We’ve been out a long time. The boat will cost you a lot of money.”

  “All right. Tell everyone I said hello.”

  “I wish it had been night. I could have shown you the constellations.”

  “Another time.”

  “Clouds have strange shapes sometimes. That one looks like Rachel. But if it had been night there would have been no clouds … Reuven?”

  “Yes, Michael.”

  “I gambled I would enjoy sailing with you. I didn’t really know you at all until today. I gambled.”

  “Did you win?”

  “Yes,” he said. Then he turned and I watched him go slowly along the dock and up the stairway and into the house.

  I climbed back down onto the Sailfish. The wind moved me away from the shoreline. I sailed alone on the Sailfish. There were clouds in the sky. The sun felt hot. I sailed alone and looked back at the dock and saw it off in the distance, a deserted sliver of white-painted wood thrust into the heaving darkness of the lake. The clouds were mountainous. The sun felt very hot. I sailed alone on the Sailfish and moved back and forth to keep the boat level in the water. The wind took me swiftly across the lake.

  Three

  I called Rachel the next morning. She was in a bad mood. Her passion for James Joyce was undergoing a severe test as she made her way through Ithaca. Michael was in a splendid mood, she said. He had gone swimming earlier and was now buried in an astronomy book. Yes, he had loved the sailing. His parents had cabled from Jerusalem. They were flying in from Israel on Thursday and would be up for the weekend. She had to get back to her Ithaca catechism. She was working on an idea in connection with Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom and Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen. It was a splendid idea, she said. I wished her luck. It rained all of Wednesday.

  I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday alone, studying Talmud. I had brought along Quine’s Methods of Logic and used my evenings to go over the sections on polyadic problems and Löwenheim’s Theorem. My father continued working on his book. On Thursday morning the galley proofs arrived for the revised part of the manuscript, which he had sent to his publisher some weeks ago. His hands trembled as he opened the package. He looked at the galleys and his eyes shone and he seemed to be looking at a newborn child.

  That afternoon I took a sailboat out on the lake. There was a strong wind and I sailed toward the dock of Rachel’s house. I wanted to surprise Michael and take him sailing again. The dock was deserted. The house seemed empty. There were tall white clouds in the sky. I tied up to the dock and climbed the stairway and knocked on the door to the kitchen. No one answered. The door was locked. I realized they had probably all gone to the airport. I took the sailboat back across the lake.

  Later that evening I called Rachel. The phone rang a long time before I hung up. I came out to the back porch. My father had completed his revisions of the last part of the manuscript that afternoon and had sent it off to his publisher. Now he was checking the galleys. The wind moved loudly through the branches of the maple near the edge of the back lawn. I sat for a while and watched him. Then I went inside to my room.

  I talked to Rachel early the next morning. They had gone into New York to meet Michael’s parents at the airport. The plane had been an hour late. Yes, Michael’s parents were at the house now. They were resting. No, it wasn’t a good idea for me to come over on Shabbat. The family wanted to be alone. They had a lot to talk about. Her voice sounded subdued. How were Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom? I wanted to know. Bloom was alone in the cold of interstellar space, she said. “That’s cold,” I told her.
r />   She was about to hang up. Then she asked me to wait a moment. The phone went silent. Then I heard a loud, deep voice. I had been holding the phone close to my ear. The voice made my ear tingle.

  “Reuven Malter,” the voice said.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Abraham Gordon.”

  A lot more than just my ear began to tingle. I gripped the phone tightly.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Is your father in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  I called my father in from the porch. He took the phone. They talked briefly. “Sunday morning at ten,” my father said. “Yes. It will be good to see you again, Abraham. You were shown the Dead Sea Scrolls? We must talk about that. How is Kaufmann? I am glad to hear it. Yes. Sunday. Fine. Shabbat shalom.”

  He handed me the phone and went from the room.

  “Reuven,” I head Abraham Gordon say.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “ ‘Verbal fraud is worse than monetary fraud.’ ” The words came out in a rapid Sephardic Hebrew. “Is that statement familiar to you?”

  “Shimon ben Yochai in Baba Metzia,” I said, giving the Talmudic source of the quote he had used.

  “You are David Maker’s son, no doubt of that. You experienced both kinds of fraud last Sunday night, I understand. We’ll discuss it on Sunday. Michael enjoyed sailing with you. Shabbat shalom. What?” He spoke away from the phone. “Yes.” He came back on the phone. “Michael says to tell you Shabbat shalom for him.”

  His voice echoed inside my head for quite a while after I hung up the phone.

  The next morning my father and I prayed at the small synagogue a few blocks from the cottage, then returned to the cottage for our Shabbat meal. We studied Talmud together for a while after the meal, and then my father went into his bedroom to rest. I took a blanket out to the back lawn and lay in the sun reading an Agnon novel in Hebrew. Clouds drifted overhead, huge balls of white cotton moving against the brilliant blue of the sky. A cardinal disappeared into the maple and for a while it seemed the leaves were singing. I fell asleep on the blanket in the sun. I thought I heard a deep voice call my name. I opened my eyes. The grass shivered faintly in the warm breeze. I was alone on the lawn.

  Rachel called that night a few minutes after the end of Shabbat. They had had a good Shabbat, she said, sounding very subdued. They had talked last night until two in the morning and all of today. Was Danny still due up tomorrow? Yes, I said. He hadn’t called to say he wasn’t coming and I hadn’t called to withdraw the invitation. How had James Joyce fared during Shabbat? I asked her. “He rested,” she said.