“What are you studying for now?” I asked. He looked to be in his thirties at least.
“I am to be a concert pianist,” he said.
“What, classical?”
“Everything,” he declared. “Classical, romance, jazz, rock.”
“Rock.”
“Rock, ragtime, pop. Also harpsichord.”
I must have been looking skeptical, because he said, “I would show you now if they had not taken my equipment.”
“They took your stuff?” I looked down the hall to where the other two musicians had disappeared.
“The stuff was belonging to them,” he admitted. “However, they do not understand musicianship.”
“Do you do a lot of weddings?”
He reddened. “This is my first wedding.” He was starting to get that offended look on his face again. I don’t know what the rest of the band had told him, but it was probably something like You’ll never play in this town again. He said, “My wish is only to be a Bialystoker Hasid living as a concert pianist.”
For a moment I pictured the guy up onstage in white tie and frock coat. Then I tisked my tongue. I said, “It’s hard with Shabbes.” Meaning, it’s hard to play all those concert dates and travel internationally while still observing the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays. “You could always work in the studio like Glenn Gould,” I said.
“You know a studio?”
“Listen,” I said, “let me tell you something. Music is all about connections. Believe me, I know. These big stars work in a world of their own. They have whole staffs of people just to answer their mail. Music is just an industry like everything else—it’s just part of the human machine. But Hashem!” I said. “He is forever!”
“Baruch Hashem!” he declared.
“Hashem is the ultimate reality, and the rest—all the things of this world—they’re just illusions—that’s the one thing I know,” I said. “And all of us—all we can do is try to ascend nearer to His presence.”
Then he smiled at me such a quick smile, it was like a flash of light across his face. “In the past I feel that I have known you before.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“It could be possibly we knew each other before we were born.” I hesitated a second. I wasn’t sure whether that statement was part of Hasidic Judaism or a mystic pickup line. “What’s your name?” I asked. “Mikhail.” “I’m Sharon.”
He was looking at me intently. “I think yes I knew you before.”
“Seriously, do you think people’s spirits could float around like that? Do you think they’re like birds, and then they’re born into human bodies, but still they try to fly, and they ride prayers like updrafts … ?”
“Of course!” he said.
I stood there with my mouth open, I was so surprised. I whispered, “Do you think a soul could be like a molten fire, and you have to throw it in the furnace to be forged?”
“Oh, yes. Yes,” Mikhail said. “In mitzvos, and halachos.” In good deeds and Jewish laws.
Oh, my God, I thought to myself. Oh, Hashem, what is happening? He knows everything in my heart. He understands. He can see all the things no one else can see. “Do you like Blake?” I blurted out.
“What is Blake?” he asked.
Oh, well, I thought.
The two of us walked outside into the hot city night. The two of us walked along the dark streets where all the stores had their metal grilles pulled down and the shadowed houses were surrounded by herds of cars parked in alleyways. It wasn’t far to the Karinskys’, which was a good thing, since the neighborhood was not the safest. But we weren’t thinking about that. We were discussing the stars we could not see, and the way lights could be illusory or they could be true, and only God could help you tell the difference.
Since Mikhail didn’t really work, apart from teaching piano lessons, he stayed on in Crown Heights for three days with friends of his Brighton rebbe, so we could pursue more dialogues on theosophy. We talked about knowledge, and how you had all of yours before you were born and then you lost it at birth. And we spoke of music and how it came straight from Hashem, and how the rhythms and the melodies could carry you straight upward to the angels, and how the angels themselves were singing Holy! Holy! Holy! for everyone to hear, if only you would listen. If only you opened up your ears to their delight. And we talked of instruments, and my long-lost guitar, and Mikhail’s piano that had been something of a sticking point with his ex-wife, since he had found the money for the down payment by selling their car. His wife just didn’t get that. She called Mikhail selfish. As if a piano weren’t just as much a vehicle as any car could be—and more, given pianos can take you across time and states of consciousness, and cars only drive on the ground!
We talked music. We talked about my songs that I had once composed. We discussed the folk movement in America, and how there were these divisions between so-called high culture and low and middle, just to keep some people out. And we talked about how even democracies can be so exclusionary and voices can be silenced and people’s self-expression unheard, because they might not have the right connections or the money or education—or their vision might be just different! But most of all we talked about Hashem and how he had taken hold of each of us and how when that happens you just want to dance and sing. And how we were both impatiently expecting any day for the Messiah to come—how we expected his arrival even right that second, even at that very moment, which is what we as Bialystokers devoutly believed. And I said how I imagined it would be when he came—how the night would turn to day, and the dirt swept away. How the stars would dance and every plant and animal and insect and human and spark of fire and particle of dust would rise and proclaim, “The Lord God is King! His majesty rules forever!” And Mikhail said people would play the music of the angels, and angels would play human music! Because there would be no gaps anymore between the two. The people would play music they had never heard. But the angels would play Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms.
“Why that piece?” I asked.
“I personally should not predict,” he said, philosophically. “I myself couldn’t say. But if I have to mention one candidate for them to play, Symphony of Psalms would be the one.”
“I’ve never even heard it,” I said.
“You will,” he said.
We were sitting outside on the Karinskys’ brick steps, and the sun was setting. The sky was growing pale, and above the buildings the sun was even shinier than an apricot satin dress. For a second there the two of us could barely breathe. For a second there we could almost imagine the Messiah actually coming forth out of that sunset, illuminating the brick and fake fieldstone and corrugated metal storefronts. We heard a roaring like the depths of the ocean! Yet then we saw the roaring was just a delivery truck breathing down the street, and a bus fwishing its hydraulic brakes. Which was kind of prosaic, yet did not ruin our mood at all, which I attribute now to the fact that the two of us had found each other. When you think about it, isn’t that practically as miraculous as the Messianic age? The two of us were both in thrall of music and of angels, and the miracles performed by the rebbes of Bialystok. We were full of lore and piety, yet still, somehow, even then, when I looked at Mikhail, I didn’t just see another Bialystoker. I saw someone who was questing and seeking and searching and yearning. I saw someone on a pilgrimage, and with the kind of soul that asks a lot of questions, and the kind of imagination that loves God to pieces. Except his imagination was calmer than mine, so when I was with him I felt like I was just gliding into cool pools. As opposed to splashing around all the time.
We walked into the Karinskys’ air-conditioned living room, where the last of the relatives were sitting among suitcases, and poring over photos, and sipping iced tea, and Mikhail and I sat there with them. We ate bialys with soft shredded onions at the center. We ate a whole bagful that we’d bought at the bakery, and we licked our fingers. And still we talked and talked. The main thing we discussed was why does the Me
ssiah tarry? What is he waiting for?
“He waits for all Jews to celebrate Shabbes,” Mikhail said. “If every Jew would rest and worship on the Sabbath, then he will come.”
“I don’t buy that,” I said. “Because he cares about the whole world, not just the Jews. I think he’s holding out for world peace.”
“Stop that,” Mrs. Karinsky said in passing as her little four-year-old boy knocked his one-year-old brother down.
He let go, yet the baby was crying.
“The baby’s crying,” I called to Mrs. Karinsky in the kitchen. “Nu, pick him up,” she called back.
Gingerly I picked him up. He was sticky, not to mention loud.
“He waits,” said Mikhail, “for the solution of the divisions within man’s mind and heart. The question therefore is not why he is waiting but why we delay to receive him. Why are we not ready?”
“But I am ready!” I exclaimed. “Oh, my God, I am so ready.” At which point the baby started screaming like he was about to die, and I ran into the kitchen, where Mrs. Karinsky was already making a bottle. Her brow was beaded all over with sweat, and the sleeves of her house-dress were pushed up from doing dishes, her forearms soapy. And more kids were running around, and all the counters were piled with boxes and bags of paper plates and plasticware, and a soup was simmering in a giant stockpot. And I’d been intending to hand over the baby but I just meekly took the bottle and turned back to the living room.
Thursday, Mikhail figured he should go home, so his piano students wouldn’t forget about him completely. He had dinner at the Karinskys’, and then afterward we stood on the brick steps in front of their house, and he gave me his address and he said he would write me a letter, and he invited me to come visit him and his aunt Lena in Brighton. I could stay with nieces of his rebbe. We stood there some more, even though he had to go or else miss his ride to the bus station with his rebbe’s friend, and I wished I could just give him a hug, and I think he wished he could do the same to me, yet in the Bialystoker community that was not done. Instead, I said to him, “I feel as if we are standing on the exact same step of the same staircase….”
“It is bashert,” Mikhail said. “We are on one plane.” It was such a serious moment; I was half afraid the guy would get down on his knees and propose to me! Yet he said, “I will wait for you to come to Brighton, and I will play for you. Do you know Scott Joplin? I will play him for you by heart.”
And then something inside of me woke up. Some resonance began to sound inside of me. All my instincts were telling me: Go with this guy. Go to Brighton with him. Don’t go back inside the house. Go now. There is nothing for you back inside. There are only air-conditioning units. There are only large numbers of children. Go with Mikhail. All my instincts were telling me this, and I would have gone. I really would have taken off right then, except for one thing, which was that my instincts in the past had proved to be so unerringly terrible!
So Mikhail went off to catch his bus back to Boston, and I went back inside the house and helped Mrs. Karinsky reorganize the refrigerator and freeze the mini-knishes from the reception. A deep melancholy began to envelop me, along with a headache, and I thought to myself, Well, now I’ve lost Estie and Mikhail both.
Well, I thought, for once in my life I’ve actually held back. For once I’ve learned from my behavior in my past relationships, i.e., following Gary, and running off with Kekui, and hooking up with Wayne (twice!), and loving Brian so much I could never believe he was married. Now I have reached a point where I am in control of my feelings and I don’t actually do the first thing that comes into my heart. Self-control. That was my thing now. I’d stood there on the steps and I had actually experienced self-restraint, and it tasted so strange. Like anise.
But what was my reward? Two entire weeks went by and Mikhail never once wrote to me! Every day I’d check the mail, and no letter had arrived. Every day I’d wake up and pray in the bedroom so full of beds there was hardly any floor space, and I’d help the little kids get dressed, and do a couple of loads of laundry, or at least try to clear the toys from the stairs, and then I’d sit like a lady from olden times wondering silently—how much longer till I hear from him? If I’d carried a handkerchief I would have twisted it up in my hands, just helplessly waiting for the mail.
Mrs. Karinsky, however, was acting quite cheerful. She seemed to think all my prospects lay before me. In her mind my path was clear. She said to me at Friday-night dinner, “We will talk to our family in Brighton. We will mention Mikhail’s name and discuss him. God willing we may make a match.”
A match! I thought at the other end of the table. I don’t even like him anymore!
Yet Mrs. Karinsky brushed all this aside. She and the doctor, her husband, were delighted, because my bashert had come to play at Estie’s wedding. Dr. Karinsky sat at the table and tucked into his brisket, and tickled any of his kids that came within arm’s reach, and he said to me enthusiastically, “There are maybe possibilities.”
“Hee, hee, hee!” squealed one of the toddlers, whose name was Moshele.
“I’m not even touching you! Look at this!”We all looked. Dr. Karinsky wiggled his fingers in Moshele’s direction, and the kid went into hysterics, even though his dad was just waggling his fingers in the air. The kid was on the floor. He was going to lose his dinner. Along with eating everything put in front of him, that was one of the doctor’s specialties: phantom tickling. You had to admire his prowess.
As soon as Shabbes was over, Dr. Karinsky got on the horn to his brother and his brother’s cousin, who was related to Mikhail’s rebbe. Within days the Karinskys were full of glowing things to say about Mikhail’s learning and his character, and his strivings, and the parallels between us in our spiritual journeys and our growth toward Hashem.
Isn’t this a little quick? I kept thinking. Aren’t you all a little bit eager? Particularly when the man in question, my supposed match made in heaven, has not once picked up a pen to write me a letter. Even after he promised he would! I was disillusioned with my fine musical friend, to say the least. Out of sight, out of mind, was what he had turned out to be. Deeply philosophical on the spur of the moment, yet thoughtless and fickle in the long haul. I trudged over to the preschool every morning, and I was feeling somewhat hurt that everybody wanted to match me up so fast to such a fly-by-night. In my white stockings and my dirndl skirts and long-sleeved blouses, I sang the children to sleep. I watched them on their rest mats in the shadowy blue light of the classroom’s blue curtains. To the Karinskys, every little act was going to bring on the Messiah. One by one you took all the jumbled-up pieces and people of the world—then you snapped them together to complete the picture. And that was what I believed, too, or so I’d thought. It’s just that I’d never considered that I was just a puzzle piece myself to slide in place. Just a little bit of foliage. A piece of sky. Nobody wants to be part of the twig on the third tree on the left. You want to be Eve, or the tree of life, or an angel in the picture. It’s true: just as Harrison and Margo said all those years ago at their workshop: you want to be a whole.
THEN that Wednesday a letter did come for me, and it was from Mikhail.
My Dearest Sharon,
Many times I have thought to write a letter to you, yet three difficulties prevented me: 1. I have little time from learning 2. In your person I prefer to speak to you 3. I do not know what to say.
Patiently I have been waiting for God’s will to show himself: whether we are to be intended for each other. Each day I asked of him this question, yet he did not speak to me about this subject until today he spoke into my ear. This is how it came about: I was sitting at my table, and in front of me my holy books I was reading. All at once a musical tune began to play inside my ear. Twice I tried to ignore it, yet each time the tune returned. When a third time it came back, I went to the piano and played the melody.
The tune was nothing I had before heard, nor my aunt. Yet I could not stop it singing in my ear. Therefore I aske
d my Rebbe to come to the apartment. I played for him the music. One moment my Rebbe listened. He then exclaimed, “Mikhail, but this is the third Bialystoker’s wedding niggun! This is the wedding tune composed by that Tzadik of Bialystok in the years of the eighteenth century! Yet very rarely now is it sung—only on a few occasions.” My Rebbe said, “Mikhail, you have never before heard this tune?”
“Never, indeed,” I told him, “until today I heard the music humming in my ear!”
“This is astonishing!” exclaimed my Rebbe.
“This is surely a sign or miracle,” I said.
“There is no doubt,” said he.
For it was a sign from Hashem I should be married. Two times I tried not to listen, yet the third, I have realized what the divine One through the Rebbe’s own melody is telling me. Namely that I make a proposal to you for a marriage. Therefore this is what I propose. Will you answer me?
Well, I looked at the letter, and I looked at it, and I thought, Oh, my God; I thought, Sweet Jesus (if you’ll excuse the expression), what is happening here? I felt such a rush and a confusion of emotions. Awe, and wonderment, and joy, but also, I’m ashamed to admit—a tiny bit of jealousy that Mikhail had been the one to hear the music. That Hashem, through the spirit of the third Bialystoker, had chosen to whisper in Mikhail’s ear. It was so petty of me, so small minded, yet I couldn’t help feeling—what about my ears? What about me? Yet I squashed down that feeling. I forced back down the jealousy that I was just the object, and not the instrument, of divine revelation. Grow up, I told myself. You can’t traipse through life hogging all the epiphanies. And I went to the kitchen and ate maybe half a pound of assorted cookies, just turning and turning in my mind everything Mikhail was asking me. A proposal of marriage! That was wild enough. But a proposal at the behest of Hashem himself! One inspired and directed by the Lord God. At that point I just had to go upstairs to my bed and lie down.