Kaaterskill Falls (21 page)

From above, Elizabeth watches the three men make their way up the aisle. Such a strange triumvirate. The Rav and his two sons flanking him, an unmatched pair. And she sees, as everyone else must, that something is changing. Jeremy is a presence again at the Rav’s side. What could it mean but that the Rav’s mood is shifting? Clearly he is honoring Jeremy, bringing him out to be near him. Perhaps whatever divided him from Jeremy, the traveling, or the career at a secular college, is now less important to the Rav. Or perhaps it is Jeremy who has come back to his father’s side. Perhaps, as his friend Cecil did, he has suddenly decided to marry. Perhaps he’s had a change of heart. Jeremy is a mystery. But the service is joyful with the Rav’s presence. The whole community buzzes with delighted speculation, so that every prayer and song is fuzzy with whispering.

Elizabeth’s in-laws speak about the Rav at dinner. Isaac’s younger sister Pearl and her husband, Moshe, have come with their two girls.

“Wasn’t that wonderful? The Rav back in shul,” Pearl says.

“I heard he’s going to be teaching again,” says Moshe.

“Really?” says Isaac.

“He’s having his shiur on Wednesday.”

“It’s wonderful,” Pearl says again.
“Baruch hashem.”
Blessed be His name.

“And what about Jeremy Kirshner?” Elizabeth asks.

“I heard at the Kollel,” says Moshe, glancing at the children, “that the Rav has asked him to lead the shiur next month as his guest, and Jeremy said yes.”

“Really!” Isaac says.

“But I don’t know if it’s true,” Moshe hastens to add.

“It’s just talk,” says Pearl.

L
ATE
that night with the girls in bed, Elizabeth and Isaac clean up. She clears the table and Isaac stands at the sink, washing the dishes with his sleeves rolled up. For a long time they work in silence, except for the spray of water and the clink of silverware in the dish rack.

“Isaac,” Elizabeth says finally, “if the Rav is going to hold his shiur, could we find out if he’s seeing people?”

Isaac doesn’t answer.

“Never mind.”

“You know—” Isaac begins.

“I know how you feel,” Elizabeth says. “I don’t think you know how I feel.”

He looks up from the sink where the water runs over his hands.

“What is it?” she asks.

“I’ll finish cleaning,” he says. “You go to bed.”

“There are all the pans, still.”

“I’ll do them,” he says. “Go.”

Alone in the kitchen Isaac scrubs the pans. She’s wrong about him. He does know how she feels. He knows how she does things, so passionately, so well. But this plan of hers. It isn’t that he objects to Elizabeth working outside the home. Many Kirshner women work—in schools, and stores, and even office buildings. But to start her own business. That’s something else. To plunge into something like that! And yet he knows why she wants to do it. He sees what it is—her desire to make something from scratch.

He knows he’s right. They don’t have money to throw away. Elizabeth has a little from her grandparents, but she and Isaac also
have five daughters. There will be five weddings to pay for, and they must help each of the children set up house. There will be china and furniture, and presents to buy. There will be the customary set of Seforim for each bridegroom. A whole bookcase full of sacred texts. It will be very difficult financially, but there is no way around it. He knows he’s being sensible, but he hates disappointing her. He hates being the one to stand in her way. He tells himself he’s right, but as he turns it over in his mind he admits to himself it isn’t simply prudence guiding him; it’s pride.

Isaac cares little about external things—money, status, advancement in his job. He works hard at the office, but his job is only that to him, simply a way to earn a living. It isn’t creative work. It doesn’t define him, doesn’t express his inner self. The core of his life is his religion, the practice and study of halacha. Isaac is modest in his work, unassuming in the world, because he has so little at stake in it. Inside, spiritually, he is an ambitious, driven man, exacting in his standards. Uncompromising. He is proud of his observance. He cares infinitely about the details of his religious life, the manner in which he prays, the exact timing of each blessing and each fast. The less visible the act, the more he cares about it. His pride is in everything hidden, everything private.

Yet it is not only his inner life that matters to him, but the community as well. And this is where his pride does get the better of him. Isaac can’t help considering what the others think, the men in the minyan and in shiur. His neighbors and friends. In his most secret thoughts, self-critical and self-indulgent, he is painfully aware of the hierarchy within the community, the levels defined by scholarship and rabbinic ancestry. He is aware, because in those terms he has so little. His father was a pious man, but not a learned one. He was a CPA and worked long hours. He was a member of the Kehilla’s burial society and a loyal member of the synagogue upkeep committee until he died. But he was no scholar. Neither a descendant of a great rabbi, nor—he realizes this about himself—a great scholar in his own right, Isaac has none of that kind of capital. He had wanted a son to teach and learn with, a son to be his scholar, partner, protégé, a son who could dazzle where he could not, but it is not to be, and so Isaac learns alone and davens alone in shul, driven, exacting, careful, wary
of standing out, afraid of making mistakes. It is this in him that flinches at Elizabeth’s idea, this self-conscious pride in being unexceptionable. His vanity is in self-effacement.

Isaac does not want to consider this, but he forces himself just the same. He admits to himself that his objections to Elizabeth’s idea have as much to do with his own fears as money. As so often, he looks inside himself, and he is disappointed in what he sees. Disappointed especially in his old grief and longing for a son.

He dries his hands and sweeps the floor. On the bookshelves Elizabeth has arranged the Rosh Hashanah cards the family has received. Cards decorated with drawings of shofars, pictures of Jerusalem, reproductions of the designs in medieval manuscripts. “May You Be Inscribed in the Book of Life.”
“L’Shana Tova.”
“Best Wishes for a Sweet New Year.” The messages are not clichés to Isaac. Not simply lines of greeting-card verse. These are the fateful days of the year. This is the precious time before Yom Kippur, when God considers the actions and the souls of men. As it is written, on Rosh Hashanah our fates are inscribed, and on Yom Kippur they are sealed. Only repentance, and prayer, and charity, will cancel God’s stern decree. Isaac finishes sweeping and throws away the crumbs from the dustpan. He feels a certain urgency. This is the time to take stock. This is the time to change.

T
HE
phone rings a few weeks later, and, when he picks it up, Andras hears Isaac’s voice, sounding a bit rushed, a bit blurry. “Hello, this is Isaac Shulman.
L’Shana Tova tikatevu.
How are you?”

“Isaac,” Andras says. He is surprised, even a little alarmed. Could there be some emergency? Isaac never phones him after summer ends.

“How is Nina? How are the children?” Isaac asks.

“They’re all fine,” says Andras. “How are you?”

“Thank God. Enjoying the weather—last year it was so cold for the haggim. Listen, I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.” Andras puts his paper down on the coffee table in his high-ceilinged apartment. It is twice the size of Isaac’s, but Nina isn’t entirely happy with the place. The kitchen doesn’t suit her, and
the children’s bedrooms are small. She’d like to move out to New Rochelle, but Andras doesn’t want to commute.

“We’ve been thinking more about Elizabeth’s idea for a store in Kaaterskill,” Isaac says, “and I wanted to ask you what you thought—since it would be a kind of importing. Importing from the city to the mountains.”

She must have talked him into it, Andras thinks. He assumes that Elizabeth told Isaac to call. “Well,” Andras says, “I have to say I wouldn’t get started with something like this—”

“No, of course not. But if she did—”

“Well, she’ll lose some money,” Andras says. “Or you can think of it as spending money, or even investing. It’s just a question of how much.”

“How much do you think …” Isaac begins to ask.

Andras hesitates. Isaac is embarrassed, and yet he’s pushing on. He must think Andras knows what kind of losses or possible gains a store in Kaaterskill will accrue.

“It all depends,” Andras says. “You know, it depends on how much you have to play with. For something like this I wouldn’t spend money I didn’t have. I certainly wouldn’t do that. You’ll have to sit down and figure out the numbers. Getting the stuff, transporting it, renting a place in town, storing it, of course …” He goes on talking, answering Isaac’s questions, and in the back of his mind he is thinking about all the things he has to do the next day. “You know, as a matter of fact I have to go up to Kaaterskill tomorrow,” he says.

“Tomorrow?”

“Someone broke into our house.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Well, it happens,” Andras says. “I’ve got to take off the day and drive up.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Nina is very upset about it, but apparently they didn’t take much.”

“I wonder who would do such a thing,” says Isaac.

“I think it was just a couple of kids,” Andras says. “But now I’ve
got to go up and meet with the claims adjuster, get the window repaired. It’s a nuisance.”

“You have to ask yourself why,” Isaac says again wonderingly.

His tone annoys Andras. “Well, why not?” he counters.

A
FTER
all, Andras thinks, as he drives out of the city, the house was there, the things were there. Why not take them? The burglary isn’t so hard to imagine. He can’t help but feel the irony that Isaac sits there in Washington Heights in the little Kirshner enclave besieged by drug dealers, muggers, rapists, and yet he can’t imagine why someone would steal. Of course Andras is bothered that someone got into the house, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Obviously in the off season, the townies decided to take a little for themselves.

The October leaves flame over the mountains, more and more colorful as Andras makes his way up. He can’t help slowing to look at them, trees turned to gold, green dyed garnet. Somehow he had forgotten about the leaves this time of year. The leaves are changing in the city, too, but you can’t see the full effect, the thousands all together. Here the color is so deep, so bright; the forests seem for a moment much greater than the city he’s left behind, the worries, the little grievances, and problems. The day off from work, the wasted day, is so beautiful. As he drives, the claims adjuster and all the little errands seem to fade away.

But the insurance claims and the repairs really are a nuisance when Andras gets to town. After the police came and found the broken window, they were supposed to board it up against the weather, but nothing was done on that score. The dining room is wet from the last rainstorm. The rug will have to be replaced. The new window is still on order, and the adjuster has not yet completed his paperwork. The whole business is a mess, one tale of incompetence after another. Andras paces through the cold, damp house impatiently. He’d come up determined to take care of everything at once, but in Kaaterskill neither the adjusters, nor the police, nor the workmen, have been in such a rush. They fully expect him to take off another day of work and drive back up later in the season. When it’s clear that there isn’t anything more he can do, Andras gets into his car and slams the door.

The leaves are even more beautiful in the late afternoon light. Dusty gold. Andras drives along Mohican, staring out at the thick woods. Then he stops by the side of the road just to sit in the car and look. Slowly he opens his car door and gets out to stand at the edge of the road where it cuts into the forest. The air is cool, but surprisingly mild. Piled high on the ground are yellow leaves still fresh and new, like a river of gold through the trees. Andras stands and looks at them, the masses of leaves like a shifting stream, then walks in a little way, just to see how deep they are. He wades in up to his knees. Slowly he begins to feel the quiet of the woods. He reaches down and touches the golden surface carpeting the ground. Something cracks, then cracks again. A shot breaking the air. In numb terror, Andras scans the trees, but all is still.

The tree trunks stand around him black. The leaves are still golden, but the place is not beautiful anymore. “Andras,” he hears faintly. He starts at the sound. He spins around and he sees Una in the trees, holding a long rifle.

“You!” Una exclaims. “What are you doing here? I thought you were a hunter.”

Andras stands motionless for a moment, riveted by the sight of the old woman holding the gun. Then he strides toward Una. He towers over her, his fear flaming into rage.

“What the hell are
you
doing?” Andras fairly screams at her.

“I thought you were a hunter,” she says. “I’m scaring them off the land.” She looks up at him and she speaks calmly. She has regained her composure. “The hunters are attacking my friends, and I won’t have it anymore.”

Andras wants to shake the old woman by the shoulders. He wants somehow to shake some sense into her. “You’re going to kill someone,” he tells her.

“And what do you think the hunters do?” she demands. She stands straight and taut before him, her features sharp, gray eyes fierce and clear.

He turns away, disgusted with her, afraid in his anger that he will hurt her. “You’re spiteful, cruel—” he spits the words out.

“I’m just the way I always have been,” Una says mildly, and she walks away and leaves him there with no apology.

He knows she fired high, but he is still trembling, even with the knowledge that she shot in warning. Even if scaring hunters with a rifle is like her, consistent with Una’s stubborn, misanthropic opinions. Trembling, he walks out to his car, clumsily; he fumbles for his keys. Those summer afternoons he had not listened carefully enough to what Una said. He had only appreciated her detachment and independence, her voluble solitude, her more picturesque eccentricities. He had made Una crusty but softhearted in his imagination. And when she suggested to him that she did not cherish life he couldn’t believe she was completely serious. He had imagined her a kindred spirit; proud, as he was, so that last summer he left the blanket on a tree stump for her even after she refused it. He was sure when he was gone that she would change her mind.