The Mystics of Mile End (7 page)

An hour later, Lesley put a steaming bowl of orange soup in front of me. It looked creamy and bright, and it smelled delicious, but there was only one way to be sure. I picked up my spoon and brought it to my mouth.

That's when I knew for sure that God was real.

T
he next day, during lunch, me and Alex went back to the library. We had to do more research since we'd need to carefully calculate the space station's trajectory since it travels 240 miles above the Earth's surface at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour. As soon as Alex sat behind his fort of books, I picked one of the books out of his pile and flipped to a random page. Behind it, I
opened
Fruit of North America and Beyond
. I needed to narrow my list down a bit.

FRUIT THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN ON THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE:

                
1. Apples

                
2. Oranges

                
3. 
Peaches
(they came from China, and the Garden of Eden was probably in Israel)

                
4. Plums

                
5. Tangerines

                
6. 
Nectarines
(belong to same species as #3)

                
7. Bananas

                
8. Pears

                
9. 
Grapes
(probably not, since grapes make wine, which makes people drunk, not wise)

                
10.
Strawberries
(do not grow on trees)

                
11.
Cantaloupes
(same as #10)

                
12. 
Coconuts
(how would Adam and Eve break the shell, since tools were not invented yet?)

                
13. Pomegranates

                
14. 
Watermelons
(same as #10)

I was thinking about adding a new possibility to the list (
15. Dates
) when I heard a gasp behind me. I whipped around and saw Alex glaring at the page.

“You're supposed to be researching the space station!” he said. “And instead you're—you're— What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said, closing the journal fast. But he'd already seen the title of my list.

“The Tree of Knowledge? What's that supposed to be?”

“It's—it's the holy tree in the Garden of Eden. You know, the one Adam and Eve ate from? So they could get knowledge? I'm trying to figure out which fruit could've grown on—”

Alex snorted. “That's not how you get knowledge, all at once, by eating some fruit off a tree! You get it through the scientific method!”

“No, you don't understand, see . . .” I sighed. Alex was not Jewish, so I had to do a lot of explaining to get him to understand about the Tree. I told him about Adam and Eve and the fruit and the snake. But when I was done, Alex said that he was an atheist, which meant that he didn't believe in God because he believed in science instead. I tried to convince him that God was real, but Alex said, “I don't see any evidence, if God is real then where is He?”

“My neighbor Mr. Katz says He's everywhere.”

“No, but, where
exactly
is He?”

Waving my arms in all directions, I said, “Up, down, here, there—everywhere!”

But Alex still did not look convinced. So then I told him about how the Jews were slaves in Egypt and God took them to the Promised Land and they built the Temple in Jerusalem and then it got destroyed so they built it again and then it got destroyed again but they still write their prayers on tiny scraps of paper and stick them into the Wailing Wall and then God answers them.

“You really believe all that?” Alex asked.

“Sure I do. Why wouldn't I?”

Alex shrugged. He was watching Gabe Kramer, who had come running into the library, dribbling a basketball and laughing loudly. Then Alex leaned over and whispered, “If God exists, why would He always let Gabe beat us at basketball when we play in gym class?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but just then the bell rang and lunch period was over.

As we left the library, Alex said we should come back after last period, but I told him I couldn't because I had to go to Hebrew School. He looked disappointed, so to make him feel better I reminded him about our secret plan that we had come up with after spaghetti and meatballs, which was to set up his mom with my dad so that we could be related and live in the same house forever. I told him to come over to my place in a couple of hours so we could drop some hints about Lesley at the dinner table. His eyes shone a bit but he still looked very impatient, and once I got to Hebrew School I understood exactly how he felt.

All through class, I waited for the right moment to ask Mr. Glassman what fruit was on the Tree, but it never came. Then, when we were finally sitting at his kitchen table about to pick up where we left off in the Genesis story, all of a sudden Mrs. Glassman took a break from the dishes she was rinsing and the proof she was working out under her breath (“If
t
then
r
and if
r
then
t
entails
t
if and only if
r
. . .”) and brought us a plate of apple slices. Mrs. Glassman never brought us fruit and I had the idea that maybe God made her bring it so I'd have an excuse to ask my question. Here was my chance. “Take!” she said, so I took.

I said, “Is it true that the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge was apples?”

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Glassman said. “There were no apples in that part of the world at that time.”

So then I asked, “Maybe it was oranges?” I thought this sounded like a good guess because I'd heard of Jaffa oranges and I knew that Jaffa was in Israel. But Mr. Glassman shook his head no. So then I asked, “Maybe bananas? Pears?” He kept shaking his head until finally I said, “Pomegranates?” Jews eat pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah, which made me think there was a pretty good chance that pomegranates were a biblical fruit.

Mr. Glassman said, “Possibly.”

“What do you mean, possibly, don't you know for sure?”

“No, not even our ancient sages, blessed be their memories, knew for sure.”

He went to his library and came back holding a tall book with a brown cover that I knew was called the Talmud. He opened it up and read out loud, then translated into English.

“You see? There is disagreement amongst the sages. According to Rabbi Meir, it was a grape that Eve made into wine. Rabbi Nehemia says it was a fig. Rabbi Yehuda says, what are you,
meshuggeneh
? It was wheat! Other rabbis say don't be ridiculous, it was a pomegranate, everyone knows the Land of Israel was overflowing with pomegranate trees at that time!”

When I heard that, I was really disappointed, because I knew I had failed Mr. Katz. If the rabbis didn't even know what fruit was on the Tree, how was I supposed to figure it out? And how was Mr. Katz ever supposed to get Knowledge?

I looked down at the Genesis text, feeling sad and frustrated. “None of this Adam and Eve story even makes any sense,” I said. “Like this, here:
And they heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden.
How can you hear a voice walking?”

Mr. Glassman's clear gray eyes got very serious. “Do you really want to know, Lev?”

“Sure I do.”

“It will take me some time to explain.”

“I've got time.”

“I will have to tell you a story.”

“I like stories.”

He paused. “The answer to your question lies in the story of my wife's brother.”

Out of the corners of my eyes, I saw Mrs. Glassman's hands lose
control over a soapy bowl. It slipped out of her fingers and clattered into the sink. She snatched it up again and kept on rinsing. But she didn't take up her mumbling proof again.

Mr. Glassman glanced at her back and then started to talk in a quiet singsong voice. “Once upon a time, you see, my Chayaleh had a brother. A big, beautiful brother with big, beautiful eyes. Yankel, his name was, but she called him Yankeleh. He was everything to her then, sun and moon and stars. But he was a strange boy. When he was young, he didn't laugh. He was . . . grave. A very grave and silent little person.”

Mr. Glassman was rocking back and forth as he talked. “At first, they thought maybe he was a simple soul—sometimes the Kadosh Baruch Hu makes them like that—but no, no. After a few years her parents realized what he really was: deaf. And he had never learned to speak.

“Thirteen years old, he was, when they moved to the village, and still he had not spoken one word all his life. But Chayaleh, she didn't care, little things like that did not matter to her, she loved him. His big, dark eyes and long, dark lashes. Like a prince, he was. And a writer—Kadosh Baruch Hu, save us from writers! A writer of strange stories that he would scribble by the river, birds singing in the sky, sunlight in the trees . . . this was before all the
tzures
started.

“She followed him there once. She was ten years old. A little
nudnik,
she was. Couldn't leave him alone even for two seconds. She found him standing in the water, his feet bare, his ankles blue with cold. And a smile on his face—ah, what a smile! But what did it mean? What did it mean, she asked herself, dancing from foot to foot, hidden behind the trees.

“First he was still. Then his lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. Then he was still. He was listening, she thought, only he could not be listening because he could not hear. And then his
lips were moving again, smiling almost, inviting almost, and then! Then, all of a sudden, a fish was leaping out of the water! She saw it, the flash of color against his ankle, big and bright and blue before it disappeared. He had called out “Hello!” into the river and the fish had answered, the fish had kissed his ankle, the fish was saying, “Hello! I heard you.” Her brother, he was
talking
to the fish. He was talking to them and listening to them and she could see this, with her ten-year-old mind, already she understood this. And it stole her heart.

“She ran out of her hiding place, splashed into the water, bent down in the river. And what did she do? She grabbed his ankle—and kissed it! And then got very shy. Shy and scared, too scared to look up. What if he was angry? What if he hated her for spying? She closed her eyes and waited for judgment to fall. But, what? Did he punish her? Did he hit her? No. He bent down in the river, grabbed her ankle, and kissed it. And ah, that was it, it was all over for her. She stood. He gave her a kiss, a small kiss, right in the corner of her mouth. She gave him a kiss, a small kiss, right in the corner of his mouth. He pressed his finger to her lips. She pressed her finger to his.
Sha,
he told her without words.
Quiet, be quiet, listen.

“Was it then that it happened, Lev? So fast, just like that? Or did it take her many more lessons, days, maybe, or weeks, to hear what the fish were saying? And the birds and the flowers and the trees and the sunlight and the wind? His secret language, his silent laugh?”

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again.

“Ah, how she loved him. He did not have anymore to write his stories for her—he could speak them to her now, in his own way, and she would hear him. How happy they were in their two-person world! How much taller they were than the rest of the village! All the poor people going about their little businesses, using pathetic spoken words—how sad and silly they all were! Didn't they see that
the language of silence was the most beautiful, most precise language of all? The only language that did not need to be invented by humans—the language that was actually spoken by God?
And the voice of the Lord was walking in the garden . . .
They did not see. And ah, how she pitied them. Because the tiny footfalls of silence, its tiny levers and pedals, you could feel them pressing on your skin if you learned how to open yourself to their music . . .”

I sat up a bit straighter. So that was it! The “voice of the Lord” was the silence all around you, and if you listened carefully enough, you could feel it “walking” all over you . . .

Mr. Glassman cleared his throat. “That was the happiest summer of her life. That summer of pity and music.” He sighed. “But her brother, his stories were sad. And she did not like this. She wanted he should be happy, she wanted he should make pretty things! ‘Make the world pretty,' she begged him. So, for her, he tried. For a few weeks he told happy stories. Talking animals—giraffes, lions, birds—that sort of thing. But these stories were all failures. They did not tell the truth, and she, already, at ten years old, could feel that these stories were lies. ‘Make true things,' she told him. She gave her permission and in return he gave his most beautiful, serious smile. And then, at the end of that summer, he told her another story. Ah, but what a story! The Kadosh Baruch Hu should guard us from such stories as that . . .”

The kitchen was now weirdly quiet. The only sound was the water rushing into the sink. But Mrs. Glassman wasn't rinsing dishes anymore. I didn't know how long she'd just been standing there, with her mouth hanging open like she'd had the breath knocked out of her. I watched her stay still a few seconds longer. Then, even though there were still dirty dishes left and even though the water was running over them and even though her hands were dripping wet, she turned away and walked out of the kitchen and slowly, maybe painfully, climbed the stairs.

Mr. Glassman let out a deep sigh. Seconds slipped by. Outside the window, a bird flew across the sky and cawed. Finally, he said, “I have kept you too long, you will come back another time and I will tell you Yankel's story, yes?” I said, “Yes, sure,” and then I added, “Thanks for the lesson, Mr. Glassman!” before racing out the door into the fresh night air, which I gulped down into my lungs like a person who's just been rescued from a shipwreck, and then I ran down the sidewalk and up the path to my house and turned my key in the lock.