Forest Dark

  And so it went, so that it was not until much later—for the eating went on a long time, and then there was still the singing led by Klausner, who brought the group to finale with a loud, rhythmic thumping with his giant palm on the table, rattling the plates and silverware—that a full Epstein, unable to bear the churning in his gut any longer, rose and, groping down the dark hallway in search of a bathroom, came upon her.

  The door had been left ajar, and through it warm light tumbled out across the hall. Approaching, he heard the gentle ripple of water. He did not think of turning away. It was not his nature to turn away, he had always been too curious, had taken the world as something given him to see all of. But when he peered through the opening, what he saw sent a surge of feeling through him. He gripped his stomach and held his breath, but the young woman sitting in the bath with her chin resting on her knees must have sensed his presence, because slowly, almost leisurely, without lifting her head, she turned her face. Her black hair, cut above the nape, fell back from her ear, and her eyes came calmly to rest on him. Her gaze was so direct and startling that he felt it as a rupture. Along seams that had been waiting to come apart, but it hardly mattered. Shocked, he stepped back, and as he did, he lost his footing. Falling through the dark, he flung out his hands. His palms slapped the wall, and at the sound she jumped up with a splash.

  Only then did he realize that she hadn’t seen him at all. Couldn’t have in the dark. But for a moment he had seen all of her, the water streaming in rivulets down her body. Then the door slammed shut.

  He felt his gut convulse and fled back down the hall. Coming to the front door, he shoved it open and hurled himself outside. The temperature had dropped, and in the tremendous sky the cold stars had hardened and shone. He tore through the bristled growth, wild and knee-high. A dank vegetative smell rose, released by the broken weeds underfoot. Doubling over, he began to vomit. It came out of him and came out of him, and when he thought it was over, more came. Heaving, purged of his great effort, he saw the cloud of his own breath vanishing up.

  He wiped his mouth and straightened, his legs still weak. He should really call a doctor tomorrow. Something wasn’t right. He looked back at the house picked over by moonlight. What was he doing here? He wasn’t himself tonight. Had not been himself, it seemed, for some time. He had taken a rest from being himself. Was that it? A rest from being Epstein? And was it not possible that, resting from his lifelong logic, his epic reason, he had seen an apparition?

  He couldn’t bring himself to go back inside. Pushing through the nettles, he made his way he didn’t know where. Around the side of the house, where blocks of stone and roof tiles had been left in disorderly piles, and a shovel stuck up out of the stony earth. Nothing was ever finished here: the world built over and over again on the same ground, with the same broken materials. Epstein stumbled, and the loose earth poured into his shoe. Leaning against the house, he pulled off the Italian loafer and shook out the dirt. He still wasn’t ready to be buried. The wall retained the heat from the sun. Shivering, Epstein tried to absorb it, until a thought pierced him: What if she was not an apparition at all, but Klausner’s flesh-and-blood lover? Was it possible that Klausner could carry on like that about the spiritual realms and the revelation of the divine light, waving his mystical wand, when all the while he was just as controlled by the laws of this world as anyone? Or could it be that she was his wife? Had the rabbi mentioned a wife? Was it possible that she, a world unto herself, sat listening to Klausner in a long drab skirt and punishing stockings, her head covered with a lifeless helmet of hair?

  Coming around to the back of the house, Epstein saw light shining from a window. What more? He should go back to Tel Aviv, back to his hotel where he could fall asleep in the king-size bed, which was the only form of kingship he wanted, and wake up to his old understanding. The taxi was already on its way to him. He would go as he’d come: backward through the streets of Safed now settled in the dark, down the now-dark mountainside, through the dark valley, along the dark and shining sea, everything the reverse of what it had been, for that is what it is to live in a finite world, wasn’t it? A life of opposites? Of doing and undoing, of here and not here, of is and isn’t. All his life he had turned what wasn’t into what was, hadn’t he? He had pressed what did not and could not exist into bright existence. How often, standing atop the mountain of his life, had he felt that? In the glowing rooms of his home, while the cocktail waiters darted among the guests who had gathered to toast his birthday. Watching his beautiful daughters, whose every move was touched by their confidence and intelligence. Waking under sixteenth-century ceiling beams and a white eiderdown in a room with a view of the snow-capped Alps. Hearing his grandson play the small cello Epstein had bought him, the sheen on the rich brown wood the sheen of a good life. A full life. A life tirelessly wrestled from nonexistence into existence. There were moments when the elevator doors would open to the home where he and Lianne had raised their children like the curtains to a stage, and the world there was so fully wrought that he couldn’t quite believe it. Couldn’t believe what his belief in himself, and his huge desire, and his ceaseless effort had achieved.

  He was exhausted. He half wished to pick up his phone and find someone to yell at. But yell what? What was it that, so late, still needed correction?

  He was about to reach the window when he heard a rustling in the weeds. The light had blinded him. And yet he sensed that whatever was moving in the dark was more human than animal. “Who’s there?” he called. All that came back was the sound of the faraway dog who, having not gotten back what he’d wanted, was still barking. But Epstein could feel a presence close by, and, not yet ready to give himself wholly over to the inexplicable, he called again: “Hey! Who’s out here?”

  “It’s me.” The deep-throated reply came from close behind him.

  Epstein spun around.

  “Who?”

  “Peretz Chaim.”

  “Peretz—” Epstein exhaled, and felt his knees nearly give way. “You almost gave me a heart attack. What are you doing here?”

  “I was going to ask the same of you.”

  “Don’t be a smart aleck. I came out to take a piss. The rabbi’s speech was heady. I needed some fresh air.”

  “And the air is fresher back here?”

  Epstein, not entirely himself, was not yet unhimself, and rose reflexively to the challenge.

  “What does your mother call you, Peretz?”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “But once upon a time she must have called you something.”

  “She called me Eddie.”

  “Eddie. Eddie, I can imagine going through the world as. I had an uncle Eddie. I would have stuck with Eddie, if I were you.”

  But Peretz Chaim was also quick, emboldened, perhaps, by the wine from dinner.

  “Would have stayed stuck, you mean?”

  Epstein now recalled how his own grandfather, whom he’d never known, had apparently changed names four times so that the evil eye wouldn’t find him. But the world was larger then. It was easier not to be found.

  “And how did you get here, Peretz Chaim?”

  But the moment offered the young man an escape, because just then the light in the window behind them went out, and they were plunged into darkness.

  “Bedtime,” whispered Peretz Chaim.

  A wave of exhaustion came over Epstein. He would lie down right there on the ground at the foot of her window and close his eyes. In the morning everything would look different.

  “The rabbi’s waiting,” Peretz Chaim finally said. “He sent me to find you.”

  Epstein sensed the disapproval in his words. And yet weren’t the two of them on the same side? Having both come late, unexpectedly, but of their own accord? Now, absurdly, he saw himself with a scraggly beard, donning the dark jacket, becoming a copy of a copy, so that he might brush against what was anciently original.

  He could smell the kid’s sweat. Reaching out, he laid his
hand on his broad shoulder. “Tell me, Peretz, I have to know—who is she?”

  But the young man sputtered a laugh, and abruptly turned and was lost to the darkness. His allegiances lay elsewhere. It was clear he didn’t think much of Epstein.

  The taxi that had come for him all the way from Tel Aviv was turned away—the 700-shekel fare handed to the driver through the open window, with another hundred on top. The driver, trying to decide if he should be annoyed, finally shrugged—what was it to him?—counted the money, and threw the taxi into reverse. Epstein waited until the sound of the engine died out and the night filled up again with its silent, immeasurable distances. It was a mistake, he knew. He should have gone back in the car, should have escaped while he could to the familiar dimensions of his world. Tomorrow he could have been drinking orange juice in the sun on the terrace. He should have gone, but he couldn’t.

  Back inside, Epstein followed the sound of voices to the kitchen. The one who’d wielded the carving knife was now making coffee with hot water from an urn, jabbering on proudly to whomever would listen about how Maimonides would turn in his grave if he could hear the rabbi. From the way she spoke, one might assume she had known the eleventh-century doctor personally. According to Maimonides, she said, God’s existence is absolute. He has no attributes, there has never been a new element in Him. She carried on until the somber Peretz Chaim, whose name, Epstein had been told, meant “explosion into life,” spoke up to say that, all the same, Maimonides still insisted on miracles. He was a medieval, Peretz was saying: he accepted both reason and revelation. But the girl didn’t give up, and had Peretz Chaim been true to his name, it might have come to blows. But the gentle guitar player who had yet to explode, but still might explode one day, gave up the fight, and at last the conversation moved on to the cheese maker a group of them were going to visit the following day, whose Orthodox husband grew marijuana behind the house.

  Epstein found the rabbi in his study, turned down his invitation to join him for a glass of brandy, and asked to be shown to his room. The rabbi was delighted. He would give Epstein a tour tomorrow, would show him how he had restored the walls and arches, had brought the place back from a century of neglect! He would show him the classroom, the small library with its collection of books donated by the Solokov family—did he know the Solokovs, from East Seventy-Ninth Street? Their son, who’d had no interest in Judaism, no interest in anything at all, had arrived in a state of lassitude and left to study philosophy, and then herbal medicine, and now, after backpacking across India, he had combined the strands of his enlightenment and opened Neshama Yoga in Williamsburg, out of whose storefront he also sold tinctures. From the depth of their thanks, the Solokovs had donated three thousand books. Epstein said nothing. And the money for shelving, too, Klausner added.

  Looking around the room, Epstein saw that it was as simple as promised: bed, window, chair, and a small wardrobe, empty but for the smell of other centuries. A lamp cast warm shadows across the wall. In the corner stood a triangular sink, and beside it a hard, stiff towel hung from a peg on the wall; who could say how many pilgrims had already dried themselves with it? Hovering behind him, Klausner had moved on to the subject of the Descendants of David reunion. With a small endowment, they might be able to get Robert Alter as the keynote speaker. It wasn’t his first choice, but Alter had mainstream appeal, and was already scheduled to be in town that week.

  And what would the rabbi’s first choice have been? asked Epstein, who could once make conversation in his sleep.

  David himself, Klausner said, turning sharply, and in the now-familiar gleam in Klausner’s eyes Epstein thought he caught something else, something he might have mistaken for a glimmer of madness if he hadn’t been all too aware of his own haziness and fatigue.

  “So you think I go all the way back to him?” Epstein asked softly.

  “I know.”

  At last, unable to stand any longer, the pilgrim Epstein hung his jacket and sank down onto the bed, swinging his legs up. For an absurd moment, he thought the rabbi might bend to tuck him in. But Klausner, having gotten the point at last, bade Epstein good night, promising to rouse him early. Just before he pulled the door closed, Epstein called out to him.

  “Menachem?”

  Klausner poked his face back around, flushed with enthusiasm. “Yes?”

  “What were you before this?”

  “What? Before Gilgul?”

  “Something tells me you weren’t always religious.”

  “I’m still not religious,” Klausner said with a grin. But, remembering himself, his face became serious again. “Yes, there’s a story there.”

  “With all due respect, I’d like to hear about that more than the restored arches.”

  “Whatever you want to know.”

  “And something else,” Eptein said, remembering. “Why did you call the place Gilgul? It sticks in the throat a little, if you ask me.”

  “Livnot U’Lehibanot—to build and be built—was already taken by the place down the street, along with an endowment from the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach.”

  “And what do they do there?”

  “Hitbodedut. Hasidic meditation. At the end of every retreat, they send the students alone into the woods. To contemplate. To sing and shout. Experience elevation. Occasionally it happens that someone goes astray, and the emergency rescue unit has to be brought in.” But Gilgul was better than it sounded, Klausner said, and explained that the word meant “cycle” or “wheel,” but in kabbalah it referred to the transmigration of the soul. To higher spiritual realms, if one is prepared. Though sometimes, naturally, to more punishing ones.

  Switching off the bedside lamp, Jules Epstein’s soul stirred under the stiff sheets and he was returned again to the intractable dark that he had stared into on countless nights when he couldn’t sleep, when the arguments continued in his head, the great assemblage of the evidence of his rightness. And did the unyielding dark look different to him now, in the cease-fire that had arisen in him during these last months?

  The word came to him unbidden, full of meaning. For it was only in the arena of this cease-fire—in its eerie silence, its suspension of a former directive—that he had become fully aware of what he must now think of as a war. An epic war, whose many battles he could no longer name or recall, except that he had mostly won them at a cost he did not care to explore. He had attacked and defended. Slept with his weapon under the pillow and woke into argument. His day had not officially begun, Lucie once said of him, until he had taken issue with something or someone. But he had felt it as a form of health. Of vitality. Of creativeness, even, however destructive the consequences. All of the meshugas! Embroiled, horns locked, in a permanent state of conflict—it had only ever energized him, never depleted him. “Leave me in peace!” he had sometimes roared in arguments with his parents or Lianne, but in truth peace had not appealed to him, for in the end it had meant being left alone with himself. His father used to take the belt to him. To lash him repeatedly for the smallest errors, driving him into the corner as he pulled the black leather from the loops, and laying into his bared skin. And yet it was the specter of his father lying inert in bed with the curtains drawn at ten in the morning that stirred his own rage. The fear he felt as a child tiptoeing past his father’s bedroom door later turned to fury: Why didn’t he rally forces and rouse himself? Why didn’t he stand and come out swinging? Epstein couldn’t bear being around it, and so he began to spend all of his time out of the house, where the bright energies hummed busily. When his father wasn’t laid out with depression, he was another form of impossible—stubborn and fixed in his ways, easily set off. Between Sol and Edie, who went perpendicular to everything and parallel to nothing, who couldn’t let be and had something to say about everything, Epstein developed in a solution of extremes. Either you were lying listless or you came out armed and loaded. Out in the fresh air and sunlight, he threw himself into the fray. Threw the first punch. Discovered that he could
be ruthless. Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands! So large did he grow, so taken with his power, that one night he came home, and when the father, standing in the kitchen in his stained robe, started in on the son, the son turned, swung, and delivered a clenched fist to the father’s face. Punched him, and then sobbed like a child as he held a slab of ice to the fallen father’s grotesquely swelling eye.