Ratner's Star (33 page)

“We come from the stars,” Ratner said. “Our chemicals, our atoms, these were first made in the centers of old stars that exploded and spread their remains across the sky eventually to come together as the sun we know and the planet we inhabit. I started out with binoculars, viewing the sky. It seemed remarkable to a boy like me, underfed and pale, with a small mental vista, that there was something bigger than Brooklyn. In those days of no television, the stars could be awesome to a boy, the way they swarmed, thin as I was, growing up, with binoculars. Later I got a telescope, my first, bought from a junk dealer, with a tripod, borrowed, and I stuck it out the window, top floor, and gazed for hours. Star fields, clusters, the moon. I read books, I learned, I gazed. Knowledge made me punch my fists against the walls in awe and shame. Our atoms were formed in the dense interiors of supergiant stars billions of years ago. Stars millions of times more luminous than our sun. They broke down and decayed and began to cool. Atoms from these stars are in our bones and nervous systems. We're stellar cinders, you and me. We come from the beginning or near the beginning. In our brain is the echo of the little bang. This is science, poeticized here and there, and this you can compare with the kabbalistic belief that every person has a sun inside him, a radiant burst of energy. Try to reach a mystical state without radiant energy and see what happens.”

“Secondhand telescope,” Billy said to the others. “Gazed at the stars and learned we're made of them. Pale and thin for his age.”

“When I go into mystical states,” Ratner said, “I pass beyond the opposites of the world and experience only the union of these opposites in a radiant burst of energy. I call it a burst. What else can I call it?
You shouldn't think it's really a burst. Everything in the universe works on the theory of opposites. To see what it looks like outside the universe, you have to go into a trance or two. According to Pitkin, G-dash-d could live anywhere. He doesn't need the universe. He could set up headquarters east or west of the universe and not miss a thing. But this is Pitkin. A rare attempt to interpret. The mystical writings. The mystical oral traditions. The mystical interpretations, oral and written. These exist beneath the main body of thought and thinking. You don't go into a trance reading the everyday writings. The hidden texts, try
them
. The untranslated manuscripts. The oral word.”

Billy looked at the laureates, then shrugged from his position atop the shield.

“Written, oral,” Ratner said. “Black, white. Male, female. Let's hear you name some more.”

“Day, night.”

“Very good.”

“Plus, minus.”

“Even better,” Ratner said. “Remember, all things are present in all other things. Each in its opposite.”

Billy turned and shrugged once more.

“I gazed constantly, learning, a young man, top floor still, gaining weight. Finally I realized a portable telescope no longer suited my needs and aspirations. I married a woman whose father had a house with a backyard. I thought here I could build what I truly needed, a ten-inch reflector with rotating dome. So with his permission and blessing we moved into his house.”

“In the desert, I bet, for the clear air.”

“In Pittsburgh,” Ratner said. “There we lived and built. Halvah helped me, my wife, grinding the mirror, assembling the mount, measuring and cutting wood, sending away for instructions, pasting and hammering. I started to accumulate academic degrees, to go beyond amateur ranking. All that reading, it was paying off. I continued to gaze. It was awful, Pittsburgh, in those days. Smoke, soot, particles of every description. There was a steel mill two blocks away. I had to gaze between shifts. Many times Halvah's father tried to read to me
from the writings. I paid no attention, acquiring my degrees, corresponding with leading minds in the sciences and technologies. He would hum as he read, a sound of piety, fear and shame. Smoke came pouring over the backyard. Thick black ash fell all over the dome. I had to stand on a chair and sweep off the top with a broom. I gazed whenever possible, I ate the cooking, I corresponded with the leading minds. Sometimes I punched the bedroom door, plentifully replete as I was with knowledge of the physical world. My father-in-law hummed, Fish, my father-in-law. I asked Halvah what kind of writings these were that her father never ceased to read from. I said Halvah what writings are these? I inquired of her what manner of writings her father so incessantly read. The mystical writings, she said. I resilvered the mirror, these being the days before widespread aluminum. He tried to give me instructions, Fish, in the secrecy of things, the hiddenness, the buried nature. Did I listen or did I sit in my dome, rotating, gazing, an occasional belch from the food?”

Billy reported to the others: “Telescope in a dome in the backyard. Marriage to the man's daughter owning the house. Science pays off. He gazes between shifts.”

The metallic lilt of Ratner's voice, when again he spoke, seemed to possess an extra shading, a suggestion of querulous tremor.

“You know what you remind me of?”

“What?”

“Somebody who's giving only one side of the story,” the old man said. “Don't think I can't hear that you're reporting only science, leaving out the mystical content, which they could use a little exposure to, those laureates with their half a million Swedish kronor. It was less in my day. And don't think I didn't notice all that shrugging when I was saying black-white, male-female, a little bit of everything present in its opposite. Because I noticed.”

“Some things are hard to summarize.”

“Give the whole picture,” Ratner said.

“I'll do better.”

“If you want to repeat, repeat both sides.”

“From now on you'll see improvement.”

“How many sefirothic emanations did the
en-sof
emanate?”

“Ten,” Billy said.

“In words, what can we say about the
en-sof
?”

“I don't know.”

“Something or nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“There is always something secret to be discovered,” Ratner said.

“A hidden essence. A truth beneath the truth. What is the true name of G-dash-d? How many levels of unspeakability must we penetrate before we arrive at the true name, the name of names? Once we arrive at the true name, how many pronunciations must we utter before we come to the secret, the hidden, the true pronunciation? On what allotted day of the year, and by which of the holiest of scholars, will the secret pronunciation of the name of names be permitted to be passed on to the worthiest of the initiates? And how passed on? Over water, in darkness, naked, by whispers? I sat in my dome, rotating, knowing nothing of this. Nor of the need to exercise the greatest caution in all aspects of this matter. Substitution, abbreviation, blank spaces, utter silence. The alphabet, the integers. Triangles, circles, squares. Indirection, numerology, acronyms, sighs. Not according to Pitkin, however. If you listen to him, everything means exactly what it says. Not one ounce of deviation. Interpretation isn't one of his strong points, Pitkin. He's not so good, Pitkin, when it comes to interpreting.”

Ratner's toy voice hissed and crackled through the chambered slot. The laureates were silent, standing in size places. Pitkin sat nearby on a large stone, silent, one hand covering most of his face, the mink fedora well back on his head, legs crossed and white flesh showing between the top of his black socks and his hitched-up trousers. The doctor and nurse were silent, respectfully set back about ten yards from the biomembrane, one on each side. Sandow was sitting on the edge of the organ bench, silent. Somewhere beneath them the hidden stream moved over smooth rock, making a faint smacking sound. From the boy's viewpoint the decals on either side of the tank appeared to be lettered in reverse. He looked closely at the old gentleman, tiny inside his prayer shawl, face gleaming with polymerized sweat.

“Go into your own bottom parts,” Ratner said. “Here you find the contradictions joined and harmonized. This is a good place to look for the secrets you didn't even know existed. If you think I'm lying, knock once on top of the tank.”

“I do not knock.”

“The writings have a substructure, a secret element of the divine. Kabbalists delving into esoteric combinations of letters widened the meaning of particular texts. I allowed this much to flow from Fish's lips, progressing as a man, winning prizes in the sciences, sharing the marriage bed with my Halvah, stinky feet or not, ashes raining down. The way Fish hummed as he read. It began to get to me. What is there in these writings, I asked myself, that this man should hum? A noise of shame, fear and humiliation, my Halvah's father's humming. I refitted the tracks under the dome so it could rotate more smoothly. I learned physics to go with astrophysics. Radio astronomy to match my astronomy. I punched the walls with knowledge. Halvah gave birth, a baby, born screaming. The only nonmystical state where the opposites are joined is infancy. So perfect they often die, babies, without cause. What's your opinion?”

“I was an incubator baby.”

“Then you know what it's like, living in a tank. Look who I am. Someone whose air is cleaned every four hours. A face that collapses at the slightest provocation. Climb in for a minute. Come, lift the shield. I want to whisper in your ear.”

Pretending he hadn't heard these last few words, Billy looked away to make his report.

“The mystical humming of his father-in-law. A child is born. Punching the walls. The dome rotates with added smoothness.”

Reluctantly he turned once again to the figure in the biomembrane.

“Don't look down your nose at esoterica,” Ratner said. “If you know the right combination of letters, you can make anything. This is the secret power of the alphabet. Meaningless sounds, abstract symbols, they have the power of creation. This is why the various parts of the mystical writings are not in proper order. Knowing the order, you could make your own world from just reading the writings. Everything
is built from the twenty-two letter elements. The alphabet itself is both male and female. Creation depends on an anagram.”

“It's hard to picture.”

“We have acrostics too.”

“Do you have numbers?”

“Is Mickey a mouse?” Ratner said. “Of course we have numbers. The emanations of the
en-sof
are numbers. The ten
sefiroth
are numerical operations that determine the course of the universe. Constant and variable. The
sefiroth
are both. I could go into sefirothic geometry but you don't have the awe for that, being mathematical.
Sefiroth
comes from the infinitive ‘to count.' The power of counting, of finger-numbers, of one-to-ten. We also have gematria, which you probably heard about, assigning numerical value to each letter of the alphabet. I won't even tell you about the hidden relationships between words that we discover in this way. It would be too much of a feast to set before someone who isn't ready for it, a lifelong eater of peanuts, by which I refer to myself as viewed in the face of Fish's revelations, gazing, a man, backyard, night upon night, galaxies and nebulas, my head filled with NGC numbers. The steel mill went on strike. I gazed like a madman. You couldn't get me out of the dome with threats to my child. I decided to study the sun. Adjustments, new equipment, unsilvered mirror, precautions. The sun is a frightening thing to view through a telescope, solar wedge or no solar wedge. I thought ahead to the helium flash. The final expansion. Having come from the stars, we are returned. The sun within us, the source of all mystical bursts, is perfectly counterbalanced by the physical sun that presses outward, swallowing up the orbits of the nearest planets.”

Beneath the beret, Ratner's face sagged a bit. The lustrous muscles went slack and there was a suggestion of reinforced flesh about to melt.

“Picture this,” he said. “From that great unstable period, the sun collapses drastically. It becomes the same size as the former earth. Now we're right inside it, mongrelized with three other planets, compacted down to a whiff of gas. The sun proceeds to cool, white dwarf, red dwarf, black dwarf, a dead star, dark black. No energy, no light, no heat, no twinkle. The end.”

“Can I get off now?”

“We come from supergiant solar bodies, great hot ionized objects, and we end in the center of a dead black sphere. We're part star, you and me. Our beginning and end are made in the stars. Light, dark. High, low. Big, little. Go ahead, take it from there.”

“East, west.”

“Up,” Ratner said.

“Down.”

“In.”

“Out.”

“Give me a few, to test my fading powers.”

“Love.”

“Hate,” Ratner said.

“Innocence.”

“Kilt.”

“Very good,” Billy said after a thoughtful pause.

The old man lay back, panting gently. A few minutes passed. Finally he stirred himself.

“When the strike ended I went back to gazing by night. I studied eclipsing stars, flare stars, variables of every kind, reading star catalogues in my spare time, memorizing star tables, taking the cooking into the dome with me, a real fanatic. Also I feared the sight of Fish, always with the writings in his hand. He took books and folios into the toilet with him and stayed for hours. We could hear the humming from his bedroom half the night. He pushed his armchair into a corner and sat with his back to the room. This kind of transcendence I feared, a scientist, still young, pledged to the observable, welcomed into organizations, reaching a peak of knowledge, Pittsburgh, the backyard, my own dome, handmade, that rotated. The night sky was sensational. I made charts and calculations, identifying novalike variables, Cepheids, cool and hot stars, egg-shaped doubles. The child developed putative diarrhea, terrible, a living diaper. Did I realize I was being punished for knowledge without piety or did I sit in the observatory, scanning, light from the universe entering my eye?”