The Wanting (12 page)

“Well, that’s where the old Church of the Ascension used to stand, but then Stalin tore it down. You may not have known that the decorative element around the bell tower was the Star of David atop a seven-branched menorah.”

“I did not know that,” she admitted.

“Well, there you are.”

“Isn’t there anything else you like to talk about?” she asked. “Other than palaces and houses?”

“I like constructivist architecture as well,” I replied.

“Ah.”

“I’m joking,” I said.

I looked to see if she was smiling, but her scarf covered her lips, and her eyelids were closed. When she looked up again she said suddenly, “I’ve applied for Israel twice already. That makes me a refusenik. Does that bother you?”

“No.”

“I think it does. Your crew isn’t political, I know that.”

“Why should it bother me?” I said.

She slipped her arm through mine. “Never mind. Look at the sky. See how peaceful it is! It’s almost morning, isn’t it? The dawn has crept up on us, like a thief.”

“I think we still have a few hours yet till dawn,” I said.

“Even so …”

Razina is a tiny street, very famous for tourists and architects, that runs more or less easterly from the southern tip of Red Square toward Nogina Square and Kitay Gorod. It lies somewhat lower than the modern street level, as if you were walking through a little gully of antiquity. The old houses are preserved, as are a series of small, beautiful churches. I wanted to tell her about these churches in some detail, but I resisted, and in the quiet that followed she said, “I used to come here as a child.” And then, out of the blue, she told me her story.

But a bright greenish light interrupted my memories, the headlights of a truck, which I could hear rolling toward me across the long miles of desert road. It was soon upon me; its great brakes squealed under the weight of its huge tires. The driver leaned out his window and shouted, “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Just taking a leak.”

“All right then. Good night.”

“Good night.”

“Be careful out here.”

“I will.”

He set the truck in gear and continued his way south. I also started up my engine. I would be home in an hour and a half. Anyusha would be angry, of course, disappointed in me, which
was hard to bear, but it would pass quickly because—well, she was Anyusha. It was so easy to visualize her face—the crazy haircut, the onyx eyes that always blazed with troublemaking, the goofy smile with teeth still too big for her face, the white, doll-like skin—but then, down by the horizon, rising like a second moon in an alien sky, I saw it, blotting out every pixel of Anyusha’s face, its Cheshire fangs grinning, the gore of its torn neck forming a crescent of blood, a smirk, a wink, a suggestion, a dare—and just like that I turned the car about and headed toward Bethlehem.

I lied to Shana’s mother and told her Babushka was coming to stay with me. I still call her Babushka, the Russian way, I can’t stop myself. But I just wanted to wait for Dad by myself, and also I was already bored with them, well not bored, because Shana’s not boring, but they don’t really talk about anything. I’m not saying they’re not fun or they’re not nice, because they are and I love them, but I have been thinking about things lately. I have been thinking about what’s going on and why things seem so difficult for me. I have been thinking about my problem a lot, which I have never actually written about in my diary. So I came home to the empty house. Everyone is very worried about Pop, but Daphne, Shana’s mom, keeps saying he’s just dealing, by which she means he’s basically psycho right now. I feel that sometimes I am, too, but I always have been. I’m just psycho. So what?

I like our house, I do, but it’s not like normal houses. It’s sort of bare. Actually barren would be the word. Everyone else has all these photos of their family on their refrigerator, or they put up all the drawings of their kids from the time they were two, stuff like that. But this is against Dad’s aesthetic. He’s a postmodernist or a neomodernist, I’m not sure which, only I know he’s not a modernist, because everything modernist is so straight lines and he doesn’t
believe in straight lines. He is what he calls a minimalist. One picture all by itself on the wall. One chair all alone in the middle of the room. And
nothing
on the refrigerator! On the other hand, the place currently is a total complete gross-out. Dad threw out all the flowers people sent, but aside from that he just stopped picking up, and crap is piling up everywhere. Dishes, clothes, newspapers, everything. This is called
entropy
. (Greek.) You can’t blame me, because I’ve barely been home.

Anyway, I decided to call Yohanan. I’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately, but it’s not what you might think. We’re not
doing
anything. It’s completely platonic, totally intellectual. Plato of course was a homosexual, so it’s not clear to me what “platonic” really means. I have not yet read too much Plato, but he is on the list. Yohanan and I discuss our graphic novels and manga, and then we study things Rabbi Keren has given us. We do the graphic novels at my house and the Rabbi Keren stuff at his house. I can’t tell Pop, and I also can’t stop the reading and the talks with the rabbi because if I did, well, I think I truly would go psycho. So maybe I am a liar. But I don’t think it’s so awful that I don’t tell my father everything I do. It was too late for Yohanan to come over anyway. I could hear his mother screaming at him to put the phone down, who would call at such an hour? It was only nine, but they’re religious.

Actually I’ve hidden some of my religious stuff in my room. I made this secret compartment in my dresser. A little box attached with Velcro under the bottom drawers. When I want what’s in it, I reach my arm underneath and pull it off. That’s what I did this evening. I started reading, taking notes, which is what I like to do, because otherwise nothing makes sense. But I didn’t get very far. In the middle of it Yohanan shows up at my window. I thought you couldn’t come out, I said. I can’t, he answered. In that case, I told him, come in.

I made him sneak in through the window, I don’t know why. Yohanan is a little chubby, to say the least, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy for him to squeeze in. His kippah fell off his head. He had
to go back outside to get it. I had calculated this would happen. Now I had to decide whether to make him go back out through the window again.

Of course when he found out my dad wasn’t even home, he got pissed off. But then I asked him how come he came over when he wasn’t supposed to. Were you worried about me? I asked. No, why should I be worried? he said. Because my dad didn’t show up tonight. For what? he asked. (I’d forgotten that Yohanan wasn’t even in my school, so when would I have told him?) Where is he now? he asked. I don’t know, I told him. He just went off in the car and isn’t back yet, he probably has some business, and just got stuck. Probably, he said. Then he said, There’s a special class tonight, wanna come? Right now? Yeah. At the rabbi’s? Yeah, it’s supposed to be great. You have to sit with the girls, though. Sure, I said, let’s go.

Rabbi Keren is different because he teaches boys and girls together, but not exactly together. The boys are in front and the girls are all in the back. He’s American, maybe that’s how they do it. Anyway, I stuffed my pillows under the covers so Pop would think I was asleep when he got home.

“But we have to go back out the window,” I said to Yohanan. “I don’t want anyone to see us.”

When I got home it was very late. This time I knew I really
would
have to sneak in the window. But there was something wrong from the first moment. I could feel it. The house was telling me. Pop wasn’t home. He’d never been home. He wasn’t coming home. I picked up the phone because there was a message from him. It was kind of garbled. He said he was on his way to some business thing. I knew it was bull. He never went anywhere on business or anything else without tons of planning and having Yehudah drive me everywhere and Babushka moving in. Even when he had a hot date, he never stayed out all night, not once, never, ever. But tonight, obviously, something was fishy in Denmark.

Which is funny because I usually know things already. I don’t see the future or anything like that, but I do see things around me. I mean, I hear it, sort of. That’s the problem I wanted to tell you about. For instance, Daphne is not healthy. I don’t know what she is sick with, but I know that she is. She just isn’t aware of it yet. Or when I look into a tree, I can see all the birds and insects hidden in the leaves. I can see them talking to each other. I can tell that they are frightened all the time. Or I can look into a car and know if the people inside it are happy or not. I can be on a bus, and I can pass a grocery store, and I can know if there is a mother in that store who hates her children even though she’s smiling at them. I can see a soldier, and I can know if he has killed someone. I can look at a rock, and I can know whether it is willing to shelter a snake or a family of worms, or if it prefers only dead things, like other stones. I have been this way for a while now. It just suddenly started, I’m not sure exactly when. And then everything was speaking to me, telling me secrets.

I told Yohanan about it. He said maybe I should go see Rabbi Keren. This was, like, a year ago at least.

I don’t know why, but I told Rabbi Keren much more than I told Yohanan, and he said, Don’t worry, the world is not as it appears. The truth is not really visible to any of us. Sometimes we get little glimpses of reality, little tidbits like your bug. As long as you don’t forget to live in the world as it is given to us, it’s OK. He asked me if I heard voices, and I said no, and he looked relieved. So no one is telling you to do things in your head? he said. I guess
he was worried I was schizo. And honestly, I had to ask him, Am I crazy? He said, You think you’re crazy? I said, No. He said, I don’t think you’re crazy, either. I just think you are a highly sensitive person. Sensitive? I said. Yes, very sensitive. It’s a blessing. It’s a good thing. It is? It is. Then he laughed. If you think
you’re
nuts, he said, you should read Ezekiel! And then we both laughed, but I had no idea why I was laughing. (Now I do, because I’ve read Ezekiel, and believe me, he
is
a nut.) One time Rabbi said to me, All these words in the Bible, these words are for you, just for you. What about you? I said. For me, too, he said, but the way you read them, the way you understand them, the things you see and you hear, this is a message meant just for you. It was written that way from the beginning. From the beginning of time. Before Moses. Before Abraham. Before Adam. Moses didn’t write the Torah. He just wrote it down. Same for crazy Ezekiel and the Psalms and all of it. It was written before time began. It has a million, million hidden meanings, and what you are seeing was written just for you. And since the world was created through Torah, what you read in the world is also a message just for you. Put there from eternity for your eyes.
Your eyes
. You merely had to choose to see it, he said. But I didn’t choose, I said. Then it was chosen for you. Those were his exact words.

I don’t know. He’s a little weird, and maybe I don’t like him so much, but I decided it was something I wanted to do, studying the religious stuff. I asked him once about not telling my father. I asked him, What about the truth? Doesn’t God want us to tell the truth? I don’t know, he told me, what about when it will hurt someone? He then described this thing from the Talmud, where there is a story of the ugly bride. Is it better to tell the husband, oh, you have an ugly bride, or to look through the husband’s eyes and say, oh you have a lovely bride? He told me to think about that. I said, I think you shouldn’t say anything at all. I asked him, Am I right? He answered, Are you right? That’s how they teach this religious stuff.

I just wish Pop would come home. I checked all the doors and windows about twelve times. I was a little cry-y before, and I almost called Babushka, but now I’m totally fine.