An Orphan's Tale (28 page)

Also: If God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, how did Dr. Fogel explain who wrote the last 8 parts, after Moses dies?

I asked Charlie why he didn't want to give reasons for his feeling and he got angry with me and told me not to feel so proud because I knew how to use words. He surprised me and quoted the saying about God being concerned above all with what is in a man's heart.

This is what he asked me: Where in the Bible does it say that Abraham knew how to read and write?

Mr. Mittleman said that God was too smart to have ever put his promise in writing.

Sol said, God bless the state of Israel!

Then it was time for Minchah and Maariv. When I finished praying I went outside and when I saw 3 stars I went back inside and I lit the lanterns for Havdalah and sniffed salt and pepper from the palm of my hand. I kissed the backs of both my hands and wished myself a good week.

I sat on the step of the cabin making myself think of nothing until it became chilly, when I came back inside and had supper.

If I had enough food and money, could I go on forever like this, filling my days with nothing but prayer and study and eating and washing and sleeping?

The answer is no.

SUNDAY

It's the middle of the afternoon now and here I am, sitting next to my own pond and thinking how lucky I was to have thought to come here instead of staying in the city. I wonder if Dr. Fogel sat here when he was a boy and his father was the leader of the colony.

I just gave myself my 1st music lesson on the Tonette, learning to read notes and how to blow to get a good pure tone. I bought one in a drugstore this morning.

My promise: to practice music one hour every day. This will give me a start for when I come out and can take up a real instrument. I think the sweet fragrance of the Sabbath is going to stay with me all week long, because when I realized this morning that Charlie was not going to come today it didn't make me unhappy. Sunday is his big day for selling houses.

Charlie's fatal trouble: He's too good. If he had the ability to reject me he wouldn't be worried the way he is now and I wouldn't be able to make him do what I want. Mr. Mittleman would agree with me. This is what he would say: If you want to get ahead, learn to be bad! Too many people like Charlie, even after what he did to Murray, whether by accident or not.

My question: Why is he so good? If he were less good, would I have seen that in his eyes also, even in the photos, and would that have kept me from trying to find him? And if I hadn't wanted to find him and if everything hadn't happened the way it had and if I hadn't just thought what I thought about him being too good, would that have made him something else, and would anybody else ever have thought the same about him?

If I think the thought he will too!

Does that mean there's hope?

A fact: THE JEWISH PEOPLE ARE LESS THAN ⅓ OF
1%
OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION, INCLUDING CHILDREN.

To do: list the great contributions of the Jews to civilization, including not only those of people everybody knows like Einstein and Spinoza and Freud, but also others. In America, for example, find out if Jews really run the publishing industry and garment industry and movie industry and diamond industry and Democratic party and radio and TV and universities.

Some examples I remember of things even Jews don't know about famous Jews: Emil Berliner invented the gramophone and the microphone. A Jew discovered petroleum in Galicia in 1853. The International Postal Union was invented by Joseph Michaelson. The telephone was really invented by Philip Reiss in 1864. Nahum Salamon was the 1st man to manufacture bicycles. Bubonic plague serum and typhus fever serum were invented by Jews. The repeating rifle was invented by a Jew. In 1854 in Germany a Jew made and drove the 1st electric automobile. (Look up names I forgot!)

The question: What would happen if the whole world were Jewish?

The answer: There would be a shortage of Rabbis.

If I'm feeling so good now, is Charlie feeling the opposite?

Things that are not in my notebook: what I dream about when I dream. What each person I meet looks like. What I think between the time when I finish writing in my notebook until I go to sleep on that day. What I eat at every meal and/or between meals.

Also: I don't put down every single detail of what people look like, or everything they say, or what rooms I'm in are like. I don't put down what kinds of shoes people wear or what color the pants and shoes and socks and underwear and shirt I'm wearing now are. I don't put down how each thing I eat tastes and every time I drink water or go to the bathroom.

I don't put down only the important things either. Sometimes I forget the important things.

How different am I when I write things down from when I do the things I'm writing about?

I don't put down the stories I see all the time when I think of how people's lives, like Charlie's or Dr. Fogel's or Hannah's, would be so different with small changes and when I follow their lives along different lines, coming from them saying things or making decisions or having things happen to them that are different from the way things are.

When I imagine how their lives might become different lives from the ones they have I always see them in my head as if they're walking away from me on a path covered with leaves and I'm seeing them from behind. Then I see them come to places where there are several directions they can go in, including straight ahead. I imagine what lies ahead on each road. Each road has new turning points and I see them making choices or being forced on to paths and I see them in the future with different lives being led right there on the paths, and when I look from behind I can see 8 or 10 or 12 or more different lives being acted out by them at stopping points on the road, as if on theater stages. Sometimes I see all the lives being led at the same time and I can see which ones would have been the best choices. But sometimes a good choice at 1 point leads to a bad choice later and vice versa. And sometimes the paths intersect and the people shake hands with themselves and kiss themselves in delight at meeting themselves.

Now I'm going to do what I mean, in an opposite way, going backward.

Do I really know everything my mind went through during the instant in which I had the idea to do what I'm going to do and during which it sped backward in time even while it was writing in time right now and saw everything that happened in time back then and which I'll now put down?

What did my mind do with all the years in between??

Without further ado, Danny Ginsberg presents:

One bright day in the 3rd quarter of the century in which we now live, a young boy of indeterminate age chanced to be walking through a deserted section of some woods in upstate New York, where he had been sojourning, on his way to freedom (for the boy was an orphan who had run away from the orphanage which had held him—and in those days there were still orphans, though they were forgotten by the public at large), when he spied a tree trunk that attracted his attention by the strange light flickering from it. Upon closer examination the boy discovered that the strange light came from sunbeams dancing upon the filaments of an intricate spider web, which web covered a hollow in the old tree, and below which web the boy saw what it was that was causing the marvelous light to glisten at him.

He stuck his fingers through the sticky web and took out the box. It was made of highly polished metal, and though the boy could tell that it was very old, it still shone as if it were new. Upon the lid of the box was a Star of David, and the initials, in Hebrew
.

The brass hasp of the box gave way easily to the pressure of the boy's fingers, and inside he found an envelope addressed as follows:

The boy, looking around stealthily to be sure he was not being spied upon, for he was fearful of having his whereabouts detected before he could establish a new existence for himself (he had, upon quitting the orphanage which had held him in bondage, made sure to destroy all records of himself, including fingerprints and photographs, so that, when he had come to some new town which was not hostile to children like himself, he would be able to start anew), then made his way to a bold rock beside a pond, where he sat himself down.

As he was wondering whether or not he had the right to look within the letter, a shaft of bright light seemed to fall upon his hand where he held the letter, and the boy was so transfixed by the nature of the curious light that he did not even realize for a while that it was burning his knuckles. When he released the letter with a cry of pain, it floated to the ground, but though it fell upon mud, when the boy lifted it, it showed no signs of dirt, and his hand too had no mark from the burn.

Was the boy religious? Did he believe in signs from above? Did he believe that the same light which had attracted him first to the tree was now offering him the letter as his own?

Alas, dear reader, we shall never know what went on inside him! All we know is that, without any seeming thought, he did in fact reach inside the envelope and from it he plucked the letter.

The paper was remarkably well preserved, and showed no signs of aging, not even at the corners. The script was quite legible, the boy was pleased to see, and he looked around once more, to assure himself of his privacy amidst Nature (did a frog croak? did birds twitter above him? if they did, would he even have noticed, so lost was he in contemplation of his treasure?) and then he read: