36 Arguments for the Existence of God (38 page)

After that the Rebbe had made a long speech recounting the saga of the Valdener Hasidim, the story of one sect but also of one family, going back from the Bar Mitzvah boy to his father, the present Valdener Rebbe, to Azarya’s grandfather, who had brought a portion of his followers over to America in time to escape Hitler, though many had perished, and past that time to the other rebbes, fathers and sons with the occasional son-in law, ending finally back at the root of it all, the Ba’al Shem Tov himself. The story of the Rebbe’s family was the story of the Valdeners, which was the story of Hasidism, which was the story of the Jews. Azarya’s becoming a Bar Mitzvah was a triumph in a long, unlikely tale of survival.

The Rebbe had spoken of the vision of the prophet Ezekiel—Yechezkel in Hebrew. “The King of Babylonia, Nebuchadnezzar, threw Chananya, Mishael, and Azarya into the fiery furnace, and at the same time the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Yechezkel, ‘Go and restore the dead in the valley of Dura.’ And those bones came and slapped Nebuchadnezzar in the face!

“There is no resurrection of the dead greater than this! Our valley of Dura is the Hudson Valley. Here stands Azarya, a Bar Mitzvah! Azarya the Rav lives! Azarya
ha-Rav chai!
Azarya the holy one lives! Azarya
ha-kodesh chai!
The gematria adds up to 719. And the gematria of the sentence describing how Yechezkel breathed life into the dry bones is also 719!
Vatevo
ba hem ha-ruach vi-yichiyu
. And the breath came into them, and they lived!”

Cass and his mother’s Bar Mitzvah present to Azarya had been a subscription to
Annals of Mathematics
. Cass had consulted a mathematician at Frankfurter, Barry Fine, as to which mathematics journal to order. Barry had shown an interest in the story of the Hasidic boy with the unusual mathematical gifts, and he’d told Cass that if Azarya wanted he could write to him. Azarya did, and Barry and he were still corresponding. But at a certain point, Barry had suggested that Azarya needed a better mathematician than himself and had gotten in touch with Gabriel Sinai. Not only was Gabriel a legend, but he had also been a child prodigy, back in Augusta, Georgia. And he was also an Orthodox Jew, although with nothing like the insularity of the Valdeners. He’d become observant when he was an undergraduate at Harvard and, feeling lost on campus, had started eating his meals at the Harvard Hillel, liking the crowd he’d found there. Their lives were more ordered and restrained than the bacchanalia in his dorm, and he had felt comfortable. He liked that the religion was more about deed than creed. If you stopped eating Kraft cheese because you worried that the rennet from the stomach of an animal was the ingredient used to solidify the milk, you were a good Jew, whether you believed in God or not. Judaism was behaviorist. Carry out the behavior and the beliefs would take care of themselves. Or not. This seemed a sensible religion to Gabriel, a religion that freed you from having to waste brainpower on the mundane choices of your physical existence but didn’t bother you too much about your beliefs. And he continued to take his meals at the Harvard Hillel, which was as convenient as it was congenial, since at forty-one he still wasn’t married.

He had also found a certain solace in the idea of a day of rest. He liked to think that the 14.3 percent of the week in which he was conserving his mathematical activity might extend his productivity a few more years. Like many in his profession, Gabriel was sensitive about the premature senescence that hangs above the heads of mathematicians like the sword of Damocles. The Fields Medal, the highest accolade in mathematics, is restricted to mathematicians forty or younger, and many will tell you that’s because if a mathematician hasn’t produced remarkable work by
then, then he is never going to do it. The medal isn’t given for a single result but for a body of work, which makes the age restriction all the more telling.

Gabriel had won his Fields Medal at the age of thirty-one, and among the theorems that had gotten him the math world’s equivalent of a Nobel was a result concerning prime numbers, which had fascinated him since his days as a prodigy. For centuries, mathematicians have tried to find patterns in the way the prime numbers are distributed among the whole numbers. Is there, in that infinite sequence of primes, a stretch that is as long as you like and in which the difference between each prime number and its successor in the stretch is always the same number
n
? Mathematicians had long suspected there was, and Gabriel had proved a theorem that showed that their intuition was correct.

“Sinai wants Azarya to come to MIT to meet with him,” Cass’s mother continued. “He’s prepared to sponsor him, or whatever the term is, to get him into MIT, even though he doesn’t have any of the conventional qualifications.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Cass. “He got a perfect 1600 on his SATs.”

Cass’s mother had used her connections as a school psychologist to arrange for Azarya to take the standardized exams.

“True. Even though your old girlfriend Roz was worried when she met him that he’d never learn to read.”

“So what does Azarya think about Sinai’s plan?”

“He’s excited. He wants to come up as soon as possible.”

“He’s told his father?”

“You know Azarya.”

“So how’d the Rebbe take it?”

“That I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

There was a heavy silence on both ends.

“He’ll stay with us, of course.”

“Of course. But maybe you should check with Pascale.”

“I know it will be okay with her. She loves mathematicians. She grew up with them. And you know how kind she is.”

“I think you should check with her anyway.”

Cass found Pascale perfectly amenable when he told her. He explained
that Azarya Sheiner was a sixteen-year-old prodigy, and that he would be spending a few days at MIT. “It will be better if he stays with us rather than at a hotel.”

“Why?”

“He’s a stranger in the world.”

“All mathematicians are strangers in the world.”

“He’s especially a stranger, even for a mathematician. He comes from an insular background, very religious.”

“Jewish?”

“Yes. In fact, he’s a distant cousin on my mother’s side.”

“I’ve never met a religious Jew. It will be interesting for me.”

“You’ll like him. He’s amazing.”

“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. It is annoying for one person to command another to like someone.”

“It was more of a prediction.”

“That is even more annoying.”

There was a flurry of telephone conversations between Cass and his mother. Azarya would take a New Walden Kosher bus to the Port Authority Terminal in New York, then a Greyhound to South Station in Boston. From there, the Red Line on the T would take him to Porter Square, and he could walk from there to Cass’s house. Cass would get back from Frankfurter as soon as possible, but Pascale would be there to let him in.

Unfortunately, Cass wasn’t able to leave his office as early as he’d planned, and on the drive home he worried about how Pascale and Azarya had interacted. They were both strangers in the world, which meant that they might hit it off fantastically, though also might not.

Cass drove back from Frankfurter fast, even through the speed traps that separated Weedham from Cambridge. It was true that Pascale was an extraordinarily kind person—he’d seen her hand over a sandwich she’d just bought at Au Bon Pain to a homeless man haranguing the passersby of Harvard Square—but the thick smoke of distractions in which she lived often obscured her vision of anything outside it, and sometimes her obliviousness could result in unintended rudeness. And she was right that a person couldn’t predict whom she’d like and whom she wouldn’t.

Pascale had taken an instant dislike to Roz when she had visited, to the extent that she had not sat down with them at the table when they ate, instead taking a tray with bread and cheese and fruit up to her study. Cass knew that Roz could come on strong and was an acquired taste, but he hadn’t understood what Roz had done that was so objectionable. Something must have passed between them that he hadn’t seen, and he suspected it must have been Roz’s fault. Were he to list Pascale’s attributes, he would put kindness first, even before her poetic passion and brilliance, her fierce and fragile beauty, that ethereality that was such a part of her essence that its scent emanated from her hair.

When Cass pulled up, he was surprised to see Azarya sitting on the steps with a suitcase next to him. It had to be Azarya, even though Cass would not have recognized him, because what other Hasid would be sitting on his front steps? Azarya stood as Cass got out of the car, and smiled, coming down the stairs to meet him at the front gate.

Azarya probably wouldn’t grow to be a tall man, though who knew? At sixteen, he could still shoot up. Cass had been one of the smaller kids in his class until around Azarya’s age, though he’d had unusually big hands and feet, and his mother had predicted he would grow into them. Azarya was reaching out to shake his hand, and Cass’s big mitt enfolded it completely.

“Azarya! At long last! But what are you doing out here? It’s cold!”

It was mid-March and still wintry, especially at this hour, the sun having disappeared over the horizon.

“I was waiting for you.”

“But why out here?”

Azarya smiled with a shrug.

Cass suddenly recalled the complicated Jewish laws about a man being alone with a woman who was not his wife. How stupid of him to have forgotten! Of course, he wasn’t sure what he could have done about it anyway. He couldn’t very well have ordered Pascale not to be in her own house when Azarya arrived, while leaving the key with a neighbor.

“Come on in. Let’s warm you up.”

But when Cass got inside the house, it was dark and empty.

“Where’s Pascale?” he asked Azarya.

Again Azarya smiled and shrugged.

“You were sitting out there because there was nobody home?”

“I didn’t sit here the whole time. I walked around. I saw Harvard. I walked to MIT. It was good.”

“What did you do with your suitcase?”

“I carried it.”

Cass smiled, a bit confused. Should he start worrying about Pascale? They had only the one car, so she couldn’t have gotten into an accident, but she could have been hit crossing a street, or been a hostage in a bank robbery, tied up in the vault, her small hands helplessly trussed. Before he could get going, he heard the key in the door, and Pascale was running up the front stairs as swift and light as a child, wiggling out of her black sheepskin coat, and hanging it in the hall closet.

She came into the living room and stopped short, looking from her husband to the strange young man standing next to him. She had seen pictures of people who looked like this, but she was shocked to see one in her own house.

“Pascale,” Cass said. “This is Azarya. Azarya, Pascale.”

Fortunately, Pascale was not in the habit of extending her hand at introductions. Cass didn’t know how Azarya would have handled that. He was, of course, not allowed to touch a woman.

Pascale stared. She was dressed in her usual narrow black slacks that hugged her round little derrière, and had on a fuzzy sweater, vividly rose. Her white skin had a faint wash of color from the cold outside, and there was the slash of red over her mouth.

“Here, Azarya. Let me take your coat,” Cass said to break the silence.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll keep it on.”

“But you’re staying here. Make yourself at home!”

Azarya smiled.

“It’s so kind of you both. I hope I’m not putting you out.”

“Are you kidding? This is great! Pascale, if it’s okay with you, I’ll just show Azarya his room and let him get settled. Then I’ll start dinner. Azarya, don’t worry about food. I went to Brookline yesterday and bought everything from a takeout place that’s strictly kosher. I have paper plates, plastic utensils, everything. I got the strictest instructions from my mother, and I followed them to the letter. She even called Cousin Shaindy
to make sure that the takeout place met the Valdener standards, but I bought a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables in case you don’t feel completely comfortable, not knowing the place for yourself.”

“Ah, so that is what that food is!” Pascale murmured.

Azarya smiled at her voice. She did have a charming voice, thickly accented, smoky soft.

“Yes. And I threw out all the food that wasn’t kosher, so you don’t have to worry about contamination.”

Azarya laughed, turning red as he did so.

“You didn’t have to go to all that trouble. It’s enough that you let me sleep here.”

“Would our food really contaminate his?” Pascale asked. “This I do not understand. How would the contaminants be transmitted? Like spores in the air?”

“No, I was exaggerating. I just didn’t want anything to get mixed up.”

“It is strange,” Pascale softly observed.

Azarya laughed again, and again you could see the flush creeping along his translucent cheeks. He didn’t look as if he had started shaving. No, of course he hadn’t, or he would have a beard.

His hair had darkened since he was a little boy, at least judging by his
payess
. They were no longer the color of flax, but of baked whole wheat.

“You sure you don’t want to give me your coat?”

“It’s okay.”

It occurred to Cass that Azarya just wanted to warm up first. He’d probably been freezing, sitting on the porch waiting for them.

“Come, you’ll be staying here on this floor.”

Cass led him into the bedroom that was off the living room.

“It’s private here. There’s your bathroom. Pascale and I are upstairs.”

“It’s good. Much more space than I have in my own home, with all the sisters.”

“How many is it now? Oh, I’m sorry! I’d forgotten.”

“No, no, it’s okay. I have eleven sisters. But the five oldest are already married and have children of their own—so far all of them girls, eight of them!”

“So you’re still the only boy. What are the odds of that?”

“One in 524,288.”

Cass smiled.

“And you still have a prime number of sisters. And your nieces are a perfect cube.”