The Mystics of Mile End (29 page)

Alex felt himself blushing. “Samara.”

“She is . . . climbing the Tree of Life?”

He nodded.

“This is why you wanted to study with me?”

He nodded again, the blush creeping up his neck.

“You want to help her?”

He nodded a third time, the tips of his ears burning.

“How?”

“I don't know exactly,” Alex confessed. “But I have this feeling that, once she's gotten high enough, something bad might happen. Because, I mean, it's dangerous, what she's trying to do—isn't it? I remember this story Lev told me once, about these four rabbis who got so obsessed with kabbalah that it drove them insane. What if Samara—” He took a breath, trying to edge the fear out of his voice. “I just think that if I understand exactly what she's trying to do, and exactly how it works, I might be able to help her once she's ready to come down again.”

Glassman brushed his hand across his eyes. “All right.”

“All right, what?”

“I will teach you.”

Alex gaped. “But, what about that whole thing about needing two students in the room? Just a second ago you were—”

“Well, the sages do not say anything about the second student being awake!” Glassman interrupted. “Am I right? Awake, asleep,
it doesn't matter, yes?” he asked Alex, as though Alex knew best what the sages had to say.

Incredulous, but not wanting to push his luck, Alex said, “Yes.”

And Glassman, as if glimpsing in him the solution to some all-consuming problem, looked back at him—and smiled.

The next day their lessons began.

I
f Lev had seen Katz's face in the window, he would have made a detour, turning around on the sidewalk and taking the long way home to avoid running into his old friend again. But, seeing only an empty front lawn, Lev dared to pass right by—and immediately regretted it.

“Lev!” Katz called as he dashed out of his house, wrapping a scarf around his neck and toddling up the walkway at the same time.

Lev marched on, head down.

Quickening his pace, Katz seized Lev's arm and wheeled him around. “Hello!” he said joyfully, his shining face—slow to anger, quick to forgive—rousing in Lev a confusing mixture of ire and scorn and sadness. Such innocence! Such simple faith!

Katz was watching him intently, as if he could tell that a violent upheaval was taking place within him. “Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked. “Should you not be praying with the others right now?”

Lev looked up at the man whose faith had so enchanted him as a boy. He could feel a strange grin twisting his face, even as Katz's face filled with dismay.

“So,” the man said, his voice sorrowful. “So quickly you lose your faith in the Kadosh Baruch Hu?”

Lev shrugged and, still without answering, turned to walk away.

But again Katz laid a hand on his arm. “You must be patient! Be patient and have some
emunah,
and the Kadosh Baruch Hu will
make a miracle, wait and see!” he cried, but Lev didn't want to hear it anymore, couldn't hear it anymore, and with one jagged motion he threw the man's hand off his arm, sending him stumbling backward.

Katz teetered for a second, arms windmilling in the air, before regaining his balance.

Lev walked away, fast, faster, his vision blurry, his heart sick, the strange grin still twisting his face.

W
hen he got home, Lev didn't bother to take off his coat but stood, not moving a muscle, in front of the two framed photographs on the credenza. Thinking, remembering.

His mother: young, married, her beautiful dark hair tucked under a scarf. Her modest dress covering up every inch of skin. Her shining face—like Katz's face—lit up with belief.

His father: bearded, seated at his desk, the deep crease between his eyebrows a sure sign that he was annoyed at having been interrupted. Open books lay in front of him—books he was obviously anxious to return to. He seemed sure that in these scholarly tomes the antidote to all his ills awaited him.

Lev ran a finger over the photo of his dad and found it coated in a thick layer of dust. He hadn't picked it up in years. But he'd picked up his mom's photo a thousand times. Faced with these two models—complete faith or complete lack thereof—he had chosen hers. And had always believed in the rightness of that choice—until now.

Katz's voice echoed in his head.
So quickly you lose your faith in the Kadosh Baruch Hu?
He felt a surge of guilt, but also a surge of anger. He knew he'd been cruel to Katz and regretted the way he'd treated him—and yet he couldn't help it. He couldn't stomach the man's simple faith anymore, just like he could no longer stomach his mom's. And it wasn't even for the reasons Katz suspected.

Losing his dad a few months ago had been bad enough. But did he have to lose his sister, too? They had vanished one after the other with no explanation, and no matter how many times Lev turned it over in his head he couldn't come up with a story to help make these losses livable. Now he was forced to consider the possibility that there was simply no meaning underlying any of it. They were gone. Just gone.

And God, God was still there—Lev wasn't so reactionary as to stop believing in God—but clearly, he thought, clearly this was a God without a plan.

G
lassman was sitting very still in his darkening bedroom. The sloping walls and his wife's breathing made him feel that he was trapped inside a giant muscle. A lung, perhaps, or a heart.

Rousing himself, he opened the desk drawer and pulled out
King Lear
. Though this was the book he had grown to treasure above all others, it also inspired in him a fair amount of guilt. Samara had forgotten it in his classroom after one of her bat mitzvah lessons. He'd made a mental note to return it to her. But then he'd picked it up and started reading it. And, once he started, he found he couldn't stop. Later, after she had abandoned him, he'd kept the book as a memento of his favorite student. A few months ago he had finally made an effort to return it to her, but her resentful father had slammed the door in his face. And really, who could blame him? When Glassman first agreed to those after-school lessons, he hadn't known Samara was contravening her father's wishes. But the more information little Lev let slip about the man's views on religion, the more he began to suspect it. And yet. He hadn't stopped.

Now, gripping the worn copy of
Lear
in his pockmarked hand, he was grateful for that slammed door. More and more these days, Glassman found himself appealing to the pleasure of carefully
measured, beautifully proportioned words to stave off the specter of the old mistake that encroached on his mind when everyone else in the world was asleep.

If only, if only he could understand what the old lunatic was raving about! Because these Shakespearean words, beautiful as they were, were horribly confusing. Their meaning was gray and dim, like a dream that slipped away at the first signs of daylight. Glassman hated that night after night he kept brushing up against the limits of his own abilities. He wanted to
understand
. But he had no method, no teacher or friend who could help him push those limits further out.

Which was why it was so exciting when Alex showed up the next Tuesday bearing a volume that looked distinctly different from the science textbooks he usually toted around.
King Lear
.

Throughout that afternoon's lesson, Glassman struggled to concentrate. He and the boy were seated side by side at the rolltop desk in the second-floor bedroom, where his wife also lay, inert in bed, helping to fulfill the Talmud's two-student requirement. They had finished their study of Ani and begun their study of Yesod.

“Foundation,” Glassman translated from the Hebrew text in front of them, “is the first meaning of Yesod. Without this vessel, our world would be empty of balance and stability.”

“Wait—the first meaning? As in, there's a second one?”

“Well, yes, each vessel has more than one association. In kabbalah, there are always meanings within meanings. But this is really the most—”

“So what are the other meanings?”

“The other—?” Glassman stalled. “Oh, nothing for you to worry about.” He moved his finger surreptitiously down the page. “As we were saying, foundation—”

“Hey, you skipped a part! What do these lines say?”

“Which lines? Ah, these? Nothing—not important.”

“Mr. Glassman, please. If I'm going to know what Samara's up to, it's all important.”

He sighed. “Very well. You see, each vessel is also associated with a part of the body. In this case, Yesod . . . it is a part that only men have. The ‘foundation' of all future generations.”

Alex looked embarrassed, then confused. “But Samara's not a man, obviously, so—so how's she supposed to get access to . . . ?” His face clouded over.

“I am afraid our sages never intended for a woman to make this climb. Samara, she may be the first. She will have to find her own way . . .” He trailed off. Just as he'd feared, Alex now looked completely miserable. To distract him, Glassman said, “I see you have a new book?”

“Hm?” Alex said. “Oh, that. Yeah, I picked it up at The Word on my way home.”

Glassman took the book and, with strenuous casualness, asked, “What is it about?”

“
Lear
? Oh, well, it's the story of this king and his three daughters. Two of the daughters are real pieces of work, and they totally betray the king, who eventually goes kind of mad. But the third daughter, her name's Cordelia? She's sort of okay, I guess.”

“Yes? And what happens to her?”

“Oh, she dies.”

“And the evil sisters?”

“They die, too.”

“And the king?”

“He dies, too.”

“I see.”

“That's Shakespeare.”

“That's life.”

Alex's eyes veered toward Glassman's wife—pale, motionless, shrouded in blankets.

Glassman flipped, as if by chance, to the scene where Lear goes raving into the storm. He poked Alex's shoulder to get his attention, then jabbed at a line in the text. “What does this mean? ‘Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, that make ingrateful man!' Why is the old man talking about Germans all of a sudden?”

“He's—he's not actually talking about Germans. He's talking about, um . . .” Alex's cheeks glowed red. “He's talking about the seeds from which human beings grow.”

Glassman frowned, then nodded. This explanation reminded him of another perplexing passage, and he flipped to it now with a speed that smacked of familiarity. Alex regarded him curiously. But Glassman was too excited to turn back.

“Look at this, here. What do you make of this?” he asked, and read: “‘Dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful! . . . From her derogate body never spring a babe to honor her! If she must teem, create her child of spleen . . . that she may feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!'”

Alex cleared his throat. “He's asking the gods to make his daughter, you know, sterile.”

Glassman stared.

“Childless.”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

“Well, because he hates her. Why else would you inflict childlessness on someone?”

Glassman winced. He closed the book, stood up, turned away. He adjusted the pillows beneath his wife's head. He took her hand.

Alex cleared his throat again. “It's getting late.”

“Yes,” Glassman said absently. “Late.”

“I'll see you on Thursday?”

“Yes. Thursday.”

“Good-bye,” Alex said, leaving the bedroom and shutting the door quietly behind him.

W
hat's that bright star over there?” Lev asked.

Alex looked up from his telescope and followed Lev's finger to a patch of sky. They were standing on Alex's balcony, where they sometimes spent time stargazing on clear winter nights like this one. He grinned. “That's not a star, actually. That's a planet.”

“Oh. Which one?”

“Venus.”

Lev was quiet. He seemed to be in a brooding mood that night. Earlier, over dinner with Alex and his mom, Lev had been uncharacteristically terse. He nodded now, blowing into his hands to keep them warm.

To make conversation, Alex said, “Know why they called it Venus?”

“Why?”

“Because, a long time ago, they looked up at it and thought that it was so beautiful and bright and wonderful-looking—kind of like a goddess. And up until pretty recently, scientists thought that Venus had conditions similar to Earth's. They thought it could be our sister planet.”

Lev's shoulders stiffened at the word
sister
.

Alex could have kicked himself. “Sister”—what a stupid thing to say! Being an only child, he knew he couldn't fully understand Lev's connection to his sibling, but he still had a pretty good idea how miserable Lev must be feeling in her absence. Alex was feeling pretty miserable himself. And to think—if he and Lev had succeeded in bringing their parents together years ago, that's what Samara would be to him now—“sister”! He had never confessed this to Lev, but he'd been glad when it became clear they'd failed in their matchmaking efforts. He would've loved to become Lev's
brother. But the more time he spent around Samara, the more he realized that, when it came to her, a sibling relationship was not exactly what he had in mind.

Anxious to cover up the awkward moment, Alex rushed on. “Of course, later scientists discovered that Venus is pretty much a hellhole. The surface is over four hundred and sixty-two degrees, and it's bone dry, and the atmosphere is full of poisonous gases and sulfuric acid rain. So, not really that goddess-like after all.” He laughed.