Boswell (35 page)

Finally, during a pause, I gasped. He stopped talking at once, thinking it was the old business all over again. Out of a corner of a veiled eye I could see he was angry. I gasped a second time, but it was nothing like anything I had shown them before. There was terror in it, but the terror that exists before grandeur. The man could see
he
hadn’t caused it. He could see, as I meant him to see, that he was insignificant there. I pitched forward in my seat, the movement heavy, strained, as though I were being tugged by invisible hands. I trembled and there were tears in my eyes.

“What is it?” a student asked, frightened. “Is he sick?”

“Leave him alone,” the Doctor of Divinity said sharply. “Don’t touch him.”

Then, by a supreme effort—who says the will ain’t free? Free? Hell, it’s absolutely loose—I managed to bring across my face, like one leading a child to a fair, an expression of absolute beatitude, of a serenity so profound it could stand before Death. My face became a crazy quilt of intelligent joy. I looked exactly like someone who could do the job, taking instructions that weren’t to be questioned. I nodded gravely.

“I think he hears something,” a student whispered hoarsely.

My eyes opened slowly. They rolled up into my skull and my lips parted. Then I slumped back in my chair exhausted. It was over.

I shook myself. I pulled myself together. I looked around. I smiled compassionately, bravely. I looked at the Doctor of Divinity sadly, as if I knew his fate. (I do!) “What was it?” he said.

I stood up.

“What was it?” he asked again.

“I am not at liberty to say,” I said, and left the room.

As a matter of fact, this religion thing has taken a good deal of my time lately. Just a few weeks ago I read about a miracle rabbi who lives in the orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg, and I went to find him. It was very strange.

The lights shone redundantly from the windows of the apartment buildings even at noon, vaguely like some kind of public act, a candle-lighting ceremony in a large stadium, or perhaps some wartime measure. On one side of the street where municipal signs warned no parking was allowed on Saturdays, the curb was lined solidly with cars. Each had been ticketed. I thought of ancient taxes, old impositions. I seemed to be in a place under siege, where heroism was communal, vaguely timid. There was no life in the shops; the streets were deserted. Occasionally, in doorways, I saw clusters of old men in dark gabardine, their faces shadowed under black, wide hats. They seemed to add weight to the aura of helpless conspiracy about the place. As I went by they stopped talking to watch me. I might have been a centurion, some Roman fop. When I had passed they spoke again, talking in Yiddish. Arguing, quietly indignant with one another in the street, they had the air of persons anxious in minor causes.

In the apartment building I rang the rabbi’s bell. There was no answer. When I came out a group of old men was standing about outside the building.

“Where do I find the rabbi?” I asked one.

“It’s funny. To me you don’t look Jewish.”

“I’m looking for the miracle rabbi.”

“Italian he looks.”

“Italian looks Jewish. He don’t look Jewish.”

“But he looks for the rabbi.”

“To hit him on the head. See his size? Since when is a big one like that friendly?”

“It couldn’t happen.”

“I have to see the rabbi,” I said.

“Take advice. You don’t appear stupid. Listen to me. Don’t look for no miracle rabbis. Don’t seek to know mysteries which are beyond even big-shot Talmudic scholars,” said the first man.

“Do you need from a miracle rabbi in America? In America is Nature. Nature and Time. Let them take their courses.”

“You couldn’t go wrong.”

“I called his home. He doesn’t answer,” I said.

“On
Shabbos
he should come to the telephone? That
would be
a miracle. Am I wrong, Traub?”

“That would
tahkee
be a miracle,” Traub said.

“Tell him. Don’t pull him apart,” a tall old man said.

“Tell him yourself,” Traub said.

“This miracle worker you mention, this Jewish magician you seek to find, he is the Rabbi Oliver Messerman? The same Rabbi Oliver Messerman who makes the old women and the young girls and the children crazy with his hocus-pocus dominocus and his chants from the Cabala?”

“The fella written up in the
World-Telegram?”
another said.

“He don’t look Jewish to me, Rabbi Messerman,” the first man said.

“Yes,” I said. “Rabbi Messerman.”

“Let me ask you a question, young man. Where would a rabbi be on the Sabbath?”

“In the temple?” I said.

“The
shul,
he says.”

“Reasonable but incorrect,” the tall man said.

“Where is he, then? Please, I have to find him. It’s a matter of life or death.” It was a strange phrase. It thrilled me to say it, as shouting “Remain calm” in a burning theater might have thrilled me. Even as I said it I thought of all the times it had been spoken to telephone operators, to policemen, to airlines reservations clerks— always somehow to strangers. It underwrote one’s need.
Emergency
was a password, a universal language. Yet all those times it had been said, just as now, there was something spurious in it, as though the language of urgency undercut urgency, as though it was understood that it could never be
our
life,
our
death.

Perhaps they heard the evasion. “Life and death?” one said.

“A very important matter,” Traub said.

“We are his congregation,” the first man said.

“His
minyan.”

“He is our spiritual leader forward march,” Traub said.

“A Messiah.”

“King of the Jews.”

“God’s small son.”

“All right,” I said, “where is he?”

“In his house is where he is,” the tall man said.

“You can see him through the window. He stands in a white sheet and makes prayers for the world. Go, you’ll see.”

“See? He’ll hear.”

“Three days this time.”

“Messerman,” Traub called, “it’s enough already!”

“Where?” I asked. The man pointed to a basement window.

I went to the window. It was barred and screened, and only about a third of it was above the street. I squatted on the pavement and looked in. Through a crack I could see someone moving about. I went back to the men. “He didn’t answer when I rang the buzzer before. Is it broken?”

“What broken? Can a miracle rabbi that gets pilgrims from all over afford to have a broken buzzer? If he doesn’t answer it’s because it’s
Shabbos.”

“Listen,” someone said seriously, “he’s crazy. He’s a very crazy person. For three days we need him for services in the
shul.”

“He knows we’re here,” another said. “Don’t kid yourself.”

“Some miracle rabbi.”

“Some
rabbi,”
Traub said.

“If you ask me, Messerman don’t look Jewish,” the first man said.

“Why don’t you get rid of him?” I asked.

“There’s a law,” one of them said. “A rabbi is like a captain on a ship. You can’t go up to a captain on a ship and say, ‘We don’t like the way you’re running the ship. You’re not the captain no more.’ This is a mutiny, you understand. You must make first a report to Cincinnati.”

“Are you from Cincinnati?” one of them asked excitedly. “Maybe he’s from Yeshiva in Cincinnati to question the rabbi.”

“Him?”

“I’ll tell you the truth, I never seen him in the neighborhood.”

“Excuse me but he don’t look Jewish,” the first man said.

“Nobody looks Jewish to you, Plotman. How is that?”

“Excuse me but that’s not true,” Plotman said.

“Yeah? Yeah? Name one person who looks Jewish to you. Name one.”

“You look a little Jewish to me,” Plotman said.

“Are you from Cincinnati?” the tall man asked me.

“No.”

I moved away from the men and entered the building a second time. A card by the bell listed Messerman’s name but didn’t give his apartment number. I tried the hall door, knowing it was locked. I went back to the mailboxes, found the superintendent’s bell and pressed it. In three minutes I went back outside. “Look,” I told the men, “the super doesn’t answer.”

“It’s
Shabbos,”
one of the men said.

“Well, is there anyone in the damn building who isn’t Jewish?”

“In this neighborhood, young man, you’re the only one isn’t Jewish.”

“There’s Mrs. Helferman on six,” Traub said. He turned to me. “She’s Jewish, but she lost her husband and her son on the same day in two different car accidents. Maybe
she
would press the buzzer.”

“Yeah, yeah, Mrs. Helferman,” the tall man said.

I rushed back into the building. One of the name- plates said “Marvin Helferman”; I pressed the button. The men came inside to watch. In a moment I heard a voice through the speaking tube.

“If you’re look for Marvin Helferman,” it said, “he’s dead eight months Tuesday. His son Joe ain’t alive either. This is Bess.”

“I knew she would,” one of the men said behind me.

“Apostate,” said another.

“Bess,” I said, “ring the bell. I must get inside.”

“Do you mean to rob me?”

“No. Please, Bess. I’m an honest man.” This is ridiculous, I thought; this is the most ridiculous thing that has ever happened to me.

“How do I know you don’t mean to rape me?” Bess asked.

“Rape her?” Traub said. “She should live so long.”

“I’m a widow. My husband and son,
alla sholem,
are dead. The one lays in Portland in Oregon I didn’t have what to ship back his body. Robbers. Marvin came back from Chicago on the train. Did you ever hear? I didn’t go to my own son’s funeral.” Her voice over the speaking tube was broken, her sobs lost in the brassy static.

“Bess, please. I have to get inside to see the rabbi. He won’t answer the ring.” I turned to the men. “Does she know any of you?”

“Sure. Marvin was a good friend.”

“Bess,” I said, “there are some men here who could vouch for me.” I looked at the men. “Tell her it’s all right.”

The old men looked at each other uneasily. “It’s a sin,” one of them said shyly.

“I dassn’t,” another said.

“It’s
Shabbos,”
said someone else.

“Superstitious old men,” Traub said scornfully. “You expect superstitious old men to help you?” He moved two or three steps closer to the speaking tube. He was still half the distance between it and the door. “I say the young man is all right,” he said, raising his voice. “Traub says Bess ought to ring the bell.” He was almost shouting in the small hallway.

Another came up beside Traub. “Al Frickler says so too.”

“Al, do you miss Marvin?” Bess’ voice said.

“Everybody misses Marvin,” Frickler said. Though he was shouting he managed to make it sound kind.

The buzzer sounded brokenly, like a machine gun in the distance. I rushed to the door before it stopped.

“Which apartment number?”

The men shrugged.

I took the elevator down to the basement. When the door opened I was near the incinerator. Two days’ garbage was piled high in the bin; there were empty wine bottles, chicken bones, the rinds of oranges. I moved through the corridor trying to orient myself with the window outside the building.

I knocked on a door. “Who?” someone said immediately.

The abrupt response startled me. Throughout the building people seemed not so much celebrating or observing the day as besieged by it. I could see them in their apartments, in the redundant glare of the unnecessary electric, not answering their phones, their bells, not using machinery, not resting so much as marking time until the sun went down.

“Rabbi Messerman’s apartment?”

“Further down.”

“To my left? My right?”

“Further down.”

I continued in the direction I had been going in. I saw a
mazuzah,
the prayer cylinder, nailed to the doorway like a tin whistle. When I put my ear against the door I could hear a voice.

I knocked. “Rabbi Messerman,” I called. “I’m James Boswell.” The voice inside stopped. “Rabbi Messerman, let me in. I’m James Boswell and I’m here to find out the meaning of life.”

The little metal loop slid aside and I saw an eye stare out at me. I had an impulse to push my finger through the hole and touch it.

“What do you want?”

“I’m James Boswell and I want to learn the meaning of life. Let me in.”

The eye jiggled up and down behind the fixed peephole on the door. It was as though the pupil were somehow loose inside the eye socket.

The door was opened by a man dressed in a dirty white silk robe which hung in loose, heavy folds about his body. On his head was a white skullcap. I was startled to see that he was barefoot.

There were pictures everywhere, as in Lazaar’s apartment. Faces I had never seen but which were somehow familiar stared out of ten-cent-store frames. They were the relatives that should have been behind Lazaar’s frames, the cousins and fathers and uncles and brothers and mothers and aunts and grandparents and sisters, their faces stretching away in time to the very beginnings of photography. In strange ways, behind the alien fashions and notions of cosmetic, a queer resemblance emerged— as though they had all been painted by someone who had found his “style.” They offered a weird, elaborate genetic testimony. A certain shadow beneath an old woman’s eye would suddenly appear in some young boy, or a chin, like some flesh heirloom, made its way down the generations, sometimes recessive, sometimes dominant, as though it reflected the fortunes and attitudes of its successive owners much as a proper legacy, a house perhaps, might go through periods of repair or disrepair depending on the diligence and luck of its inhabitants. I much preferred. Lazaar’s pictures—movie stars, pastless, ghostless, one- shot beings who dwelled in an eternal present, like gods who sprang from some private conception of themselves. It was difficult to imagine that the rabbi and I were both men, that we were both human beings. He, so familied, so clearly the sum of his parts, related to the past as a model of one year’s automobile is related to a model of the next. At least I was not the incarnate nose, ears, hands, mouth of some primal Boswellian despot. Or at least I had been spared the knowledge. Who we didn’t know didn’t hurt us.