The Mystics of Mile End (11 page)

ALL THE SILENCES I KNOW AND WHERE THEY CAN BE FOUND:

                
1. In libraries

                
2. In synagogues

                
3. Between sleep and waking

                
4. Right before something terrible happens

                
5. Right after something terrible happens

                
6. Inside the bodies of musical instruments

                
7. Anytime you want to say something nice to somebody but are too shy to say it

                
8. Anytime you want to ask somebody a question but are too shy to ask it

                
9. Between knocking over a glass bowl and seeing it hit the ground

                
10. Late at night, after everyone has gone to sleep

                
11. Early in the morning, before anyone has woken up

                
12. Between the letters on a page

                
13. On the other side of the telephone wire

                
14. 25,000 light years away

                
15. After the rain

T
he next day a miracle happened.

When I woke up in the morning, it was still early. The house was asleep but the sun was already shining. I walked outside in my pajamas. The rain had cleared everything away and the neighborhood smelled clean and fresh and blue like the inside of clouds. I started walking in the direction of Mr. Katz's house.

When I got there, he was standing in the middle of the lawn staring up at the Tree. He was also in pajamas, and his mouth was hanging open. I stood next to him and looked up.

In each one of the cradles sat a perfect yellow lemon.

The longer I squinted up at them, the more my eyes started to hurt, but I didn't want to look away. It was as if the lemons were giving off a light of their own, a bittersweet light. Mr. Katz pulled at my sleeve and said, “You see? When you have
emunah,
the Kadosh Baruch Hu answers your prayers.” His eyes were glowing like maybe he'd been staring into the light for too long. He went over to the Tree and picked the lemon from the lowest cradle. “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” He bit into it and his eyes popped open.

I got really excited to tell Mr. Glassman that I knew what fruit was on the Tree of Knowledge, so I ran over to his house. On the way I saw somebody disappearing around the corner and it looked a bit like Sammy but I couldn't tell for sure because the sun was in my eyes. I skidded to a stop in front of Mr. Glassman's door and knocked, my heart thumping like crazy.

When I saw his face, I remembered that Mrs. Glassman was sick a few days ago, and maybe she still was and I shouldn't be here, banging on their door so early in the morning. But then I heard her voice calling, “Lev,
boychick,
is that you?” Mr. Glassman smiled and brought me into the kitchen, which was full of the smell of fresh rugelach baking. Mrs. Glassman pinched my cheeks and said, “Skin and bones, sit and let me bring you what to eat!”

While I sat and waited, Mr. Glassman talked about Sammy's bat mitzvah reading. He couldn't stop saying how much she had touched him. His voice was relaxed and happy and I decided not to tell him about the things I'd seen her throwing into the trash can last night.

Instead, I put my hands in my pockets. In my right pocket I could feel Mr. Glassman's scrap of paper, the one with his name and his wife's name calculated out in
gematria,
which he'd let me keep the other day. I started to think about the story he'd told me and what it said about the tattoos they got in the camp. The more I thought about it, the more made-up and
meshuggeneh
it all sounded. What kind of Nazi officer would let you choose the number of your tattoo? It didn't work that way! Mrs. Glassman was wearing a shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and while she moved around the kitchen getting the tea and rugelach ready I tried to sneak a good look at the number on her arm, to calculate and see if it really did add up to her name, but she kept moving too fast and the sunlight was making everything fuzzy and all the numbers blurred together and I couldn't tell anymore what was what.

N
o sooner had I bolted awake than I spluttered the words, “Where is she?”

Above me, an unfamiliar face swam into view. A dark-skinned, dewy-eyed, thirtyish man was saying, “Mr. Meyer, please, try to calm down—”

“Where is she?”

“Who?”

“Samara. My daughter. Is it over?”

“Is what over?”

“Did she leave already? I have to tell her—to apologize—the bat mitzvah—”

“The what?”

“Bat mitzvah! I have to—”

“Dad,” said a small voice. “That was ten years ago.”

I looked to my left as someone moved into my circle of vision. It was Lev, my Lev, but it took me a second to recognize him. The little boy I'd just seen fidgeting in my mind's eye was gone; in his place, the grown-up version of my son. Here, in real life, he looked even more scared than he had in the dream—because it was a dream, I understood suddenly, the synagogue and speeches and Samara's downcast eyes, that was a memory—past, not present.

“Where am I? What happened?”

“You've suffered a myocardial infarction—a heart attack,” the
man explained. “Don't worry, you're in good hands now. You're at the hospital. I'm Dr. Singh.”

I squinted up at him. Something metallic swung in front of my eyes, catching the late-afternoon light and temporarily blinding me. The doctor applied a gentle pressure to my shoulders, making me lie back. Then he grabbed his stethoscope, pressed it to my chest, and asked, “Mind if I have a listen?”

Instead of replying, I stared out at eye level. My gaze fixed on Lev's hand. His finger marked his place in a leather-bound book, its spine stamped with Hebrew letters. I frowned. He'd been praying for me—reciting psalms, as if that would save me. Then I remembered that he was a yeshiva boy now and only doing what the rabbis there taught him to do. Still, it pinched: I'd gotten one kid off religion—at great personal cost—only to have the other turn.

“Your sister,” I whispered to my son's hand, “is she coming?”

“Of course!” Lev said. “I called her a few minutes ago, and she said she was getting on the Metro from McGill right away, so she should be here soon.”

I nodded weakly, unsure whether to believe him—Samara almost never came home of her own volition—and disoriented by the recollection that she was now college age, a university student more than halfway through her undergraduate degree. Moments ago, in my dream, she'd stared down at me from a synagogue
bima
with a young girl's hopeful, vulnerable eyes.

“Are you okay, Dad?” Lev asked. “Do you need anything?”

Dr. Singh smiled. “Oh, he'll be all right. What he needs now is lots of rest. Lev, why don't we go into the hall and let your dad sleep for a bit? You and I can talk later, Mr. Meyer.”

Exhausted, I dozed off.

When I next awoke—it could have been minutes or maybe hours later—the shadows in the room had lengthened. Someone was hov
ering in the same spot Lev had occupied when I'd first regained consciousness. Samara. As soon as she saw me recognize her, she flinched. I looked into her face and she looked into mine and we held a silent moment between us. I opened my mouth and she ran from the room, too scared to talk to me, too scared to see me in this weakened state. And then I knew that the news of my collapse had terrified her, and I cried. Not because I was sad that she wouldn't come closer. But because I was happy that, despite everything I'd done wrong, she still loved me enough for my mortality to fill her with a fear so strong she couldn't quite look it in the eyes.

F
our days after the heart attack, I was ready to be released. Stooped over my hospital bed, Singh pressed his stethoscope to my chest one last time. He listened intently, as if a Verdi opera were playing beneath the metal, then straightened up and handed me the instrument. “Have a listen.”

“Why?”

“I think you'll want to hear this.”

I placed the buds in my ears, the disc to my chest. It was not Verdi, or Scarlatti, or Mozart, but something like music was happening inside me. “What is that?”

“A heart murmur.”

“Is that—dangerous?”

He raised his palms apologetically. “Not usually. Yours is a bit unusual.”

“Unusual?”

“Well, as you can see—hear—it's audible. The murmur occurs during systole—that's the phase of the cardiac cycle in which the tissue experiences contraction—”

At that word, I sat up straighter. The opening chapter of the academic manuscript I'd been writing came back to me:
The great kabbalists taught that God began the process of creation by contract
ing His infinite light. He poured it into ten vessels—each representing one of His qualities—that together form the Tree of Life. As the light trickled down through these vessels, it condensed into physical matter and gave rise to the world as we know it . . .

“And the volume is, you might say, irregular. Once you're stronger I may ask you to come back for a few tests. But for now, try not to think about it. No work, plenty of rest, and minimum physical exertion over the next few weeks. Do you have any questions?”

“I assume it's all right for me to go running?”

“Well, a little bit of exercise is fine, yes, but don't overdo it. Remember that running is what landed you here in the first place, so steer clear of anything strenuous or prolonged. Jogging might be better. Or walking. Okay?”

I nodded, though it was not. “And what about, you know, sexual activity?”

Singh smiled. “It's not nearly as risky as many patients seem to think. You can safely resume sexual activity in a couple of weeks. Okay?”

I hadn't seen Valérie since I'd been in here, though she'd repeatedly called to check up on me. I'd asked the nurses to assure her there was no need to visit. The kids had been here pretty much nonstop—especially Samara, who, though she didn't say much, stalked the hospital with a haunted look and insisted on sleeping in a chair in the hallway—and I didn't want them running into Val. But I knew I'd want to see her before long.

“Okay,” I said.

“Your daughter and son are here to take you home, then. Take care, Mr. Meyer.”

Singh left and a nurse materialized at my side to transfer me, despite my protestations, to a wheelchair. She smiled at me with bright green eyes—oblivious to my rage at that traitor, my body—
then offered to wheel me into the hall. I told her I could take it from here.

The first person I saw was Samara, her arms crossed against anxiety or the artificial cool of the hospital wing. Behind her Lev was frowning nervously, but even that could not detract from the luminous quality of his boyish face, a face just saved from too-beautifulness by the tiny scar etched above his blue eyes and below the dark wisps of his hair. It was a sight that never failed to make me smile, and so, approaching him, I smiled—but only for an instant. In the next instant I realized that, just a few feet away, still and silent in an old-fashioned black dress, was Valérie.

The kids came toward me and said their hellos. I hugged them both, all the while signaling at Valérie behind their backs, trying to convey through subtle dilations of my pupils that she should keep her distance. She must have understood my code well enough, because she just stood there, eyeing me darkly with a gorgeous torment in her face and hands.

Lev wheeled me toward the elevator, chattering happily. Samara followed at a distance. Craning my neck backward, I saw her flash a glance at Val but couldn't catch the meaning of her expression. Did she know? The elevator arrived, its doors opened, we were swallowed up. Probably not.

The second we got outside, we were struck by a wave of humidity so powerful as to wipe out any higher functions of the brain. The pills I had taken were making me tired and woozy, and because the June air had a stickiness that made any movement whatsoever, speech included, seem gratuitous, I was silent as I watched the dark clouds rolling in overhead.

While Samara went to bring the car around, Lev's overbright voice filled the space between us, babbling about how glad our neighbors—Glassman, Katz—would be to see me back at home. I
didn't bother to remind him that these were his friends, not mine. When the car appeared, Lev asked, “Do you need help getting in?” and I grunted, “Yes,” feeling like a pathetic child as he eased me into the backseat.

Samara turned on the air conditioning, and her long, dark hair billowed around her shoulders, just as her mother's used to do before we married and she started covering up. Look how adult she seems behind the wheel, I marveled, as though years, not weeks, typically passed between sightings of her. I wished she would say something. Banalities like Lev's, questions like Singh's—something, anything. She said nothing.

On the seat beside me were a couple of hastily packed oversize purses, a sleeve and a hairbrush peeking out of one of them. “Are you going somewhere?” I asked her.

She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Oh, that. No, I'm going to move back home for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh?” I whispered.

“It's no big deal. Classes are over now anyways, so.”

“Right,” I said, more casually. “Summer break.” But the idea that she was concerned enough to come back, even if only temporarily, even if she insisted on minimizing the gesture, touched and surprised me.

As we turned onto Côte-Sainte-Catherine, the humidity finally broke. The downpour was slow at first. Then, before you knew it, it was a flood. That was how it always happened in this beautiful, lunatic, impossible city. A cold rain fell down like manna into the gaping mouths of potholes, and, overflowing these, cascaded into the sewers. Samara turned on the windshield wipers. They swished back and forth with that small clicking sound that most people found comforting but that I, for reasons that were now opaque to me, had come to detest.

I took a deep breath and placed a hand on my chest. Beneath the sounds of the rain and the cars, beneath the clicking of the windshield wipers, I thought I could now detect another sort of noise entirely. The sound of my own heart beating. The sound of a murmur. I closed my eyes and listened. Opened them and smiled. Closed them again and prayed for traffic.

T
he morning after I got home from the hospital, everything looked different. The framed photographs, the mounted diplomas on the walls—they all bore a certain
unheimlichkeit,
an uncanniness that set me on edge.

In my bedroom, opening a small trunk that had not been cracked in several years, I thought I smelled Miriam's perfume lingering in the clothes. This was doubly ridiculous; not only had she been gone for more than fifteen years, but the scent I imagined myself to be picking up was that of a very ancient perfume, one she'd worn when we were both newly religious yeshiva students—she at the women's seminary and I at the men's. It was a pale vanilla scent that clashed absurdly with the perfumes I'd encountered since her death: the bold musk and spicy cardamom notes favored by my grad students were so strong they'd soaked into my shirts, making me worry that my kids would one day ask why I kept coming home smelling like the fragrance aisle of a department store. Luckily, they never seemed to notice.

Between the strains of prayers drifting toward me from the living room—Lev's joyful, nasal voice singing out one psalm after another—I heard my heart murmuring again. A rush of blood moving back and forth, back and forth, and behind it all a subtle whistling or whispering, like wind through a flute or breath through a harmonica. There was an empty space in there, as if the tissues of my heart were contracting, making room—for what?

Struck by a sudden memory, I got up and snuck across the hall.

Lev's bedroom, with its pale blue walls and neatly made bed, felt peaceful even in his absence. It was as if, simply by living here, he had rarefied the air around him. I scanned the titles on his bookshelf until I found the volume I was looking for: one of Lev's early primers on Hasidism, a sort of religious digest that cobbled together the ideas of various mystics, recasting them in language simple enough to entice new followers. I picked it up sheepishly—years ago, I had tried to warn Lev off this proselytizing genre—then flipped to the passage I remembered:

You must make your heart like an empty instrument so that the spirit of God can blow through you. Any blockage at all will prevent the making of this divine music. Even something that is traditionally considered good and worthy can constitute a blockage: knowledge, for instance. What is required is a certain emptiness, or quietness, of mind.

I gaped at the page. As much as I had always found the anti-intellectual approach to God distasteful, wasn't this kind of right? Knowledge
was
a blockage, or at least it sometimes could be. After all, birds didn't fly by studying the laws of aerodynamics; any brain capable of carrying that type of knowledge would be too heavy to stay up in the air. Flights into the Godhead called for weightlessness—that seemed like the main, if not the only, mystical prerequisite. And it was a prerequisite that I—weighed down by the cumbersome luggage of a graduate-level education—could never attain.

Taking Lev's book with me, I returned to my room and laid myself carefully on the bed. A haze descended on me; I fell asleep.

I
woke to a persistent ringing that filled the house. After a moment, I realized it was the telephone. Shuffling into the kitchen in bathrobe and slippers, I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

Silence.

I hung up, but my hand remained on the receiver for a long time, as if contact with the plastic would allow me to divine, through osmosis perhaps, the identity of the mystery caller with the blocked ID. For the thousandth time in the past ten years, I found myself wondering who it could possibly be. It was not a wrong number, prank call, or simple coincidence; a decade of repeated calls had ruled those three options out. But who, then, did that leave?