36 Arguments for the Existence of God (24 page)

“How many sisters do you have,
tateleh?”
Roz asked, even though it had been impressed on her that the rules of female modesty required her to render herself as close to nonexistent as possible.

The boy stared at her, wide-eyed. It wasn’t the endearment that had startled him: it was her question.

“Don’t you know, sweetie? Don’t you know how to count?”

“He knows to count,” the Rebbe said forcefully, “Believe me, miss, that he knows how to do!”

Klapper turned back to where Roz was standing against the wall, gave her a glance, and then turned back.

“There is an ancient prohibition against the counting of people, which
we learn from the account of the sin of King David recorded in both Samuel and 1 Chronicles. King David ordered his lieutenants to count the men of fighting age and displeased God with his action, and God began to smite Israel. David repented of his sin and asked for God’s forgiveness and was given his choice of punishments, either three years of famine, three months of being vanquished by enemies, or three days of ‘the sword of the Lord,’ which would consist of a deadly plague that would sweep through the land. David chose the latter, and a great many of Israel fell dead.”

Klapper might have been answering Roz, but his response was directed to the Valdener Rebbe, and it had impressed him.

“That’s some good head you’ve got on your shoulders, Rav Klapper! No wonder you’re an Extreme Distinguished Professor! That’s a first-class
Gemara kop
, a head for Talmudic study. Do you have scholars in your family perhaps, rabbinical scholars?”

“I’ve always assumed I must. It is more than possible to be of a plebeian family with no discernible learning and still have towering Talmudists and Kabbalists in one’s lineage, whose erudition one carries in one’s genetic memory.”

Leave it to the Klap, Roz thought, to mangle the math and science in the most self-aggrandizing way possible. Everyone is guaranteed to find famous people in his family tree, since the number of ancestors explodes the farther back you go. Every Jew is going to find some legendary rabbi, every Wasp is going to find some aristocrat. Throw in intermarriage and the Jew will find an aristocrat and the Wasp a Talmudic sage. And could even the Klap believe that erudition was transmitted in one’s genetic memory?

Suddenly the boy piped up from his father’s lap.

“The number of my sisters is special.”

“Of course it is,” said Roz in that sudsy voice some women get when they talk to children, though it was a surprise to Cass—and to Roz—that she was one of those women. “Your sisters are special.”

“Ask him what he means,” said the Rebbe. “Tell our guests what you mean,
tateleh.”

“If you put my sisters in a group, then there’s no way to make equal groups of them.”

All three visitors stared at the boy. The Rebbe was stroking his beard and smiling.

“Go on,” he said to Cass and Klapper. “Ask him what he means.”

“If I have a group of six things, could I make equal groups out of it?” Cass decided to ask, seeing that Jonas Elijah Klapper was sitting there impassively, and Roz was supposed to keep all manifestations of herself to a minimum.

“Yes, two ways. You could make two groups with three things, or you could make three groups with two things.” He had a way of gesturing with his hands, very Hasidic.

“What about six groups with one thing?” Roz asked.

The child looked at her and laughed. He seemed to think she’d made an uproarious joke.

“You can always do that!”

“You’re right,” said Roz. She didn’t know much developmental psychology, but having the concept of a prime number seemed pretty advanced for a child this age. It was touching to see the Grand Rabbi’s face, irradiated with love. Mystic shmystic, this guy was a proud papa.

“Do you know what we call the kind of numbers that you can’t make any equal groups out of?” she asked him. “We call them prime numbers.”

“Prime numbers,” the boy repeated, carefully. And then he smiled at Roz. The look of bliss was baffling, moving. Why did he look as if she’d just given him the present he’d secretly wished for as he blew out the candles on his last birthday cake, if Hasidic children engaged in such practices?

“Yes, prime numbers. And they’re exactly as you said. You can’t divide them up into groups that have equal numbers, except of course groups with one thing in them.”

“Groups with one thing in them!” he repeated, smiling. “And as many groups as were in the first big group.”

“That’s right. You said it just right.” She smiled back at the boy.

“Do you know what I call prime numbers?” he asked her, the only one of the males in the room who didn’t seem to hold it against her that she was a woman who spoke. “I call them
maloychim
. Special
maloychim.”

“Angels,” the Rebbe translated. “The heavenly hosts.”

“And I call
you
an angel!” Roz said.

The child stared at her as if she’d just announced that she thought he could fly. That’s probably what he did think that she’d announced. And then he laughed out loud in a high soprano. The kid’s amusement amused her so much that she couldn’t resist. Klapper bristled, but the Valdener Rebbe tolerated the tainted noise of a woman’s laughter with surprising sangfroid. Unlike his Hasidim, he was often exposed to the outside world, meeting with politicians, agency heads, social workers, medical specialists, and building contractors. The Rebbe had to know how to talk to a variety of people whose assistance his community required. He had developed a level of worldliness to save his Hasidim from having to deal with the world.

“So,
tateleh
, can you tell our visitors any more of your special
maloychim?”
he asked his son, lightly glancing the back of his hand over the child’s cheek.

“I’ll start with one. And then there’s two, and then three, and then five.”

“That’s good!” Roz said, enjoying both the look of pride on the Rebbe’s face and the look of exasperation on Klapper’s. She’d edged around the side of the room, still hugging the wall, just so that she could get an angle on Klapper’s face and still keep the child and his dad in her sights.

“After five, there’s seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three, forty-seven, fifty-three, fifty-nine, sixty-one, sixty-seven, seventy-one, seventy-three, seventy-nine.…”

“Exactly how long does this go on?” Klapper broke in testily.

Lord knew, he had the patience of a Job, but it was beginning to wear thin. He hadn’t risked his life by driving down from Boston with that wild Rastafarian so that he could listen to an infant perform like a circus seal.

Meanwhile, the Valdener Rebbe was chiming in with “I told you the boy knew to count!” and Cass and Roz were exchanging looks of incredulity.

“Who taught him this?” Cass asked.

“Who taught him? The angels!
Min ha-shamoyim
—from the heavens.
This is nothing. He likes to play with numbers. For him they’re toys, and we let him play. He can learn a page of Torah or Talmud like
lamdin
—like scholars—three, four, five times his age. The way he learns now, at six years old, most men will never catch up.”

Meanwhile, the child had settled on Klapper, staring at him wide-eyed. The visiting rav had asked an important question, and he was waiting to hear the answer. He thought that he knew the answer, a wonderful answer, but he would have liked to hear it spoken by this rav. He whispered his own rendition of the question softly, so softly that no one caught it.

“Have you ever had him tested?” Roz asked. “His IQ must be off the charts.”

“We don’t need to test. For the other special children, those who need the government’s help, for them we have testers coming. We take care. But for a child like this? Why do we need to test? All our children are special, one way or the other.”

“Tata?”

“Yes,
tateleh.”

“Tata, I know someone who isn’t special.”

“Is it possible?”

“Yes and no.”

“Why yes and no?”

“If he’s the only one who isn’t special, so then he’s special for not being special.”

“So he’s special. Everybody is special, one way or another, and this one, too.”

“But no, Tata.” The Rebbe’s son squirmed off of his father’s lap and turned around to face him, gesturing with his two hands in the motions of explanation. “He can’t be special anymore if he’s special for not being special. If he’s not special, then he’s special, and if he’s special, then he’s not special.
Du siest
, Tata?”

“You see,” the Rebbe said, in either translation or demonstration, “this is the way the child is. There are children who are born as if knowing. He can go on like this all day long.”

“No doubt,” Klapper remarked dryly.

But Roz was relishing the spectacle and was determined to keep it
going. The Rebbe’s son was astounding, as everyone in the room was aware, with the exception of the child and Jonas Elijah Klapper.

“So the number of your sisters is a prime number. What if you add one to the number? Is it still a prime number?”

The boy walked around the desk and came over to where Roz was standing against the wall. He looked at her tenderly, a little sorrowfully, as if he worried that she might be one of those special people who needed his
tata’s
government funds.

“One, two, three. Three
maloychim
, holding hands. But after three, they can’t hold hands. Because, if one number can’t make two groups, then the number after it, that one can make two groups. Back and forth they go. Do you see?” he asked her gently, and he took her hand as if to help lead her.

“Now I do. You explained it very well to me.”

He smiled at her. She felt strangely grateful to the tot for singling her out in this room of males who were all conspiring to pretend she wasn’t there. Even Cass was keeping his eyes resolutely away from Roz.

“But the number of my sisters and me is still special. Sometimes you take a number a certain number of times. You repeat it the number of times of itself. So take two two times over and you get four. Or you take three three times and you get …”

“Nine!” Klapper shouted out the answer, actually raising his hand as if he were back in P.S. 2.

“Good!” the child commended the visitor, making Roz start to laugh, though she hastily tried to make it sound like a cough. “So those numbers, like four and nine and sixteen and twenty-five and thirty-six, they’re also special.”

“Are they angels, too?” Cass asked, smiling.

“Yes, also,” he answered, so seriously that Cass felt a pang for the patronizing tone he’d taken. “There are different kinds of angels.”

“Indeed,” said Klapper. “The
malach
, translated as the ‘messenger’ or the ‘angel,’ is only one variety of numina. Psalms 82 and Job 1 refer to an entire
adat el
, or divine assembly. There are Irinim, who are Watchers or High Angels; Sarim, or Princes; Seraphim, or Fiery Ones; Chayyot, or Holy Creatures; and Ofanim, or Wheels. The collective terms for the full array of heavenly beings, those who straddle the sphere between the
human and the ultimate divine principle, include Tzeva, translated as ‘Host’; B’nei Ha-Elohim, or B’nei Elim, or Sons of God; and Kedoshim, or Holy Ones. And of course there is some, albeit limited, migration between the sphere of Adam and the Kedoshim.”

The person who seemed most intrigued by Klapper’s words, in addition to Klapper himself, was the little boy. He was staring at his father’s guest with a smile.

“What is numina?” he asked softly.

Klapper ignored him, staring around the room in an unfocused sort of way, his nose slightly wrinkling.

“Can you tell us about more?” Roz asked the child. “Some more special angels?”

“Yes. You take two two times, like before, and then another two times. That’s eight. Eight is special. Or three three times, like before, and then another three times. That’s twenty-seven. Twenty-seven is special. Or four four times and then another four times. That’s sixty-four.” His gestures, with his little palms turned upward, must have been in imitation of the rabbis he had watched, his father and teachers. “Those are special numbers, too. Also angels,” he said turning to Cass, anticipating his question. “My sisters and me together have a number like that.”

“Wow. You sure do have a lot of sisters, sweetie,” Roz said.

The child looked stricken, as if he’d just been slapped across the face. His cheeks immediately blazed red, as if they bore the bruise. Cass and Roz understood right away what was going on. If the number of his sisters was prime, and he together with his sisters made the number a perfect cube, then the number of his sisters had to be seven. He had given out too many clues, and so, in essence, had announced the number straight out, which was forbidden.

“It’s okay,
tateleh,”
said the Rebbe gently. “You made a mistake, but it’s okay. Only take a little more care. So, with the numbers, his
maloychim
, he sometimes forgets himself. Only then. Come here,
tateleh, kumma hier.”
He indicated his lap.

Klapper could no longer control himself. As far as he was concerned the situation had long passed the point of the abidable.

“Why don’t you and the child continue your conversation outside, young lady?”

The little boy was still holding her hand, having ignored his father’s summons.

“I can, Tata?”

“Tell me, please, what is your name?” the Rebbe said to Roz.

“I’m Roz. Roslyn Margolis.”

The Rebbe cocked his head a bit to the side and regarded her for a long moment.

“We will have other chances to speak together, Miss Margolis.”

“I hope so.”

“Yes, Azarya. You can go with Miss Margolis. This is a very nice lady, Miss Margolis. A pearl.”

Cass was tempted to ask if he could go along with them. Half an hour ago, he would never have dreamed that anything could upstage the meeting between Jonas Elijah Klapper and the Valdener Rebbe.

“How old was he when he began to think about numbers?” he asked the Rebbe.