For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories (14 page)

“Over here, over here. Follow my voice. Come to the light.”

Charles had taken the stairs until they ended, and entered what appeared to be an attic, slanted ceilings and dust, overflowing with attic-like stuff, chairs and a rocking horse, a croquet set and boxes, everywhere boxes—as if all the remnants of the brownstone’s former life had been driven upward.

“There is a path on your right. Make your way, it’s possible. I got here.” The speech was punctuated with something like laughter. It was vocalized joy, a happy stutter.

The path led to the front of the building and a clearing demarcated by an Oriental screen. The rabbi sat in a leather armchair across from a battered couch—both clearly salvaged from the spoils that cluttered the room.

“Zalman,” the man said, jumping up, shaking Charles’s hand. “Rabbi Zalman Meintz.”

“Charles Luger,” Charles said, taking off his coat.

The couch, though it had seen brighter days, was clean. Charles had expected dust to rise when he sat. As soon as he touched the fabric, he got depressed. More chintz. The sun-dulled flowers crawling all over it.

“Just moved in,” Zalman said. “New space. Much bigger. But haven’t, as you see”—he pointed at specific things, a mirror, a china hutch—“please excuse—or forgive—please excuse our appearance. More important matters come first. Very busy lately, very busy.” As if to illustrate, a phone perched on a doll-house set to ringing. “You see,” Zalman said. He reached over, turned off the ringer. “Like that all day—at night too. Busier even at night.”

The surroundings didn’t inspire confidence, but Zalman did. He couldn’t have been much more than thirty but looked, to Charles, like a real Jew: long black beard, black suit, black hat at his side, and a nice big caricaturish nose, like Fagin’s but friendlier.

“Well then, Mr. Luger. What brings you to my lair?”

Charles was still unready to talk. He turned his attention to a painted seascape on the wall. “That the Galilee?”

“Oh, no.” Rabbi Meintz laughed and, sitting back, crossed his legs. For the first time Charles noticed that the man was sporting a pair of heavy wool socks and suede sandals. “That’s Bolinas. My old stomping grounds.”

“Bolinas?” Charles said. “California?”

“I see what’s happening here. Very obvious.” Zalman uncrossed his legs, reached out, and put a hand on Charles’s knee. “Don’t be shy,” he said. “You’ve made it this far. Searched me out in a bright corner of a Brooklyn attic. If such a meeting has been ordained, which, by its very nature, it has been, then let’s make the most of it.”

“I’m Jewish,” Charles said. He said it with all the force, excitement, and relief of any of life’s great admissions. There was silence. Zalman was smiling, listening intently, and, apparently, waiting.

“Yes,” he said, maintaining the smile, barely jarring it to speak. “And?”

“Since yesterday,” Charles said. “In a cab.”

“Oh,” Zalman said. And, “Oh! Now I get it.”

“It just came over me.”

“Wild,” Zalman said. He clapped his hands, looked up at the ceiling, laughed. “Miraculous.”

“Unbelievable,” Charles added.

“No!” Zalman said, his smile gone, a single finger held up in Charles’s face. “No, it’s not unbelievable. That it is not. I believe you. Knew before you said—exactly why I didn’t respond. A Jew sits in front of me and tells me he’s Jewish. This is no surprise. To see a man, so Jewish, a person who could be my brother, who
is
my brother, tell me he has only now discovered he’s Jewish—that, my friend, that is truly miraculous.” During his speech he had slowly moved his finger back, and then thrust it into Charles’s face anew. “But not unbelievable. I see cases of this all the time.”

“Then it’s possible? That it’s true?”

“Already so Jewish”—Zalman laughed—“asking questions you’ve already answered. You know the truth better than I do. You’re the one who came to the discovery. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Charles said. “Different but fine.”

“Well don’t you think you’d be upset if it was wrong what
you knew? Don’t you think you’d be less than fine if this were a nightmare? Somehow suffering if you’d gone crazy?”

“Who said anything about crazy?” Charles asked. Crazy, he was not.

“Did I?” Zalman said. He grabbed at his chest. “An accident, purely. Slip of the tongue. So many who come have trouble with the news at home. Their families doubt.”

Charles shifted. “I haven’t told her.”

Zalman raised an eyebrow, turned his head to favor the accusing eye.

“There is a wife who doesn’t know?”

“That’s why I’m here. For guidance.” Charles put his feet up on the couch, lay down like at Dr. Birnbaum’s. “I need to tell her, to figure out how. I need, also, to know what to do. I ate milk and meat last night.”

“First history,” Zalman said. He slipped off a sandal. “Your mother’s not Jewish?”

“No, no one. Ever. Not that I know.”

“This is also possible,” Rabbi Zalman said. “It may be only that your soul was at Sinai. Maybe an Egyptian slave that came along. But once the soul witnessed the miracles at Sinai, accepted there the word, well, it became a Jewish soul. Do you believe in the soul, Mr. Luger?”

“I’m beginning to.”

“All I’m saying is that the soul doesn’t live or die. It’s not an organic thing like the body. It is there. And it has a history.”

“And mine belonged to a Jew?”

“No, no. That’s exactly the point. Jew, non-Jew, doesn’t matter. The body doesn’t matter. It is the soul itself that is Jewish.”

They talked for over an hour. Zalman gave him books,
The Chosen, A Hedge of Roses
, and a copy of
The Code of Jewish Law
. Charles agreed to cancel his shrink appointment for
the next day, and Zalman would come to his office to study with him. There would be payment, of course. A minor fee, expenses, some for charity and ensured good luck. The money was not the important thing, Zalman assured him. The crucial thing was having a guide to help him through his transformation. And who better than Zalman, a man who’d come to the Jewish religion the same way? Miserable in Bolinas, addicted to sorrow and drugs, he was on the brink when he discovered his Jewish soul. “And you never needed a formal conversion?” Charles asked, astounded. “No,” Zalman said. “Such things are for others, for the litigious and stiff minded; such rituals are not needed for those who are called by their souls.”

“Tell me then,” Charles said. He spoke out of the side of his mouth, feeling confident and chummy. “Where’d you get the shtick from? You look Jewish, you talk Jewish—the authentic article. I turn Jewish and get nothing. You come from Bolinas and sound like you’ve never been out of Brooklyn.”

“And if I’d discovered I was Italian, I’d play bocci like a pro. Such is my nature, Mr. Luger. I am most open to letting take form that which is truly inside.”

This was, of course, a matter of personal experience. Zalman’s own. Charles’s would inevitably be different. Unique. If it was slower—the change—then let it be so. After all, Zalman counseled, the laws were not to be devoured like bonbons but to be embraced as he was ready. Hadn’t it taken him fifty-five years to learn he was Jewish? Yes, everything in good time.

“Except,” Zalman said, standing up. “You must tell your wife first thing. Kosher can wait. Tefillin can wait. But there is one thing the tender soul can’t bear—the sacrifice of Jewish pride.”

Sue had a root canal after work. She came home late, carrying a pint of ice cream. Charles had already set the table and served dinner on the off chance she might be able to eat.

“How was it?” he asked, lighting a candle, pouring the wine.

He did not tease her, did not say a word about her slurred speech or sagging face. He pretended it was a permanent injury, that it was nerve damage, acted as if it were a business dinner and Sue were a client with a crippled lip.

Sue approached the table and lifted the bottle. “Well you’re not leaving me, I can tell that much. You’d never have opened your precious Haut-Brion to tell me you were running off to Greece with your secretary.”

“True,” he said. “I’d have saved it to drink on our veranda in Mykonos.”

“Glad to see,” she said, standing on her toes and planting a wet and pitifully slack kiss on his cheek, “that the fantasy has already gotten that far.”

“The wine’s actually a feeble attempt at topic broaching.”

Sue pried the top off her ice cream and placed the carton in the center of her plate. They both sat down.

“Do tell,” she said.

“I’m Jewish.” That easy. It was not, after all, the first time.

“Is there a punch line?” she asked. “Or am I supposed to supply that?”

He said nothing.

“OK. Let’s try it again. I’ll play along. Go, give me your line.”

“In the cab yesterday. I just knew. I understood, felt it for real. And—” He looked at her face, contorted, dead with anesthesia. A surreal expression to receive in return for surreal news. “And it hasn’t caused me any grief. Except for my fear of telling you. Otherwise, I actually feel sort of good about it. Different. But like things, big things, are finally right.”

“Let’s get something out of the way first.” She made a face, a horrible face. Charles thought maybe she was trying to bite her lip—or scowl. “OK?”

“Shoot.”

“What you’re really trying to tell me is: Honey, I’m having a nervous breakdown and this is the best way to tell you. Correct?” She plunged a teaspoon into the ice cream and came up with a massive spoonful. “If it’s not a nervous breakdown, I want to know if you feel like you’re clinically insane.”

“I didn’t expect this to go smoothly,” Charles said.

“You pretend that you knew I’d react badly.” Sue spoke quickly and (Charles tried not to notice) drooled. “Really though, with your tireless optimism, you thought I would smile and tell you to be Jewish. That’s what you thought, Charles.” She jammed her spoon back into the carton, left it buried. “Let me tell you, this time you were way off. Wrong in your heart and right in your head. It couldn’t have gone smoothly. Do you know why? Do you know?”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because what you’re telling me, out of the blue, out of nowhere, because what you’re telling me is, inherently, crazy.”

Charles nodded repeatedly, as if a bitter truth were confirmed.

“He said you would say that.”

“Who said, Charles?”

“The rabbi.”

“You’ve started with rabbis?” She pressed at her sleeping lip.

“Of course, rabbis. Who else gives advice to a Jew?”

Charles read the books at work the next day and filled a legal pad with notes. When the secretary buzzed with Dr. Birnbaum on the line inquiring about the sudden cancelation, Charles, for the first time since he’d begun his treatment fifteen thousand dollars before, did not take the doctor’s call. He didn’t take any, absorbed in reading
A Hedge of Roses
, the definitive guide to a healthy marriage through ritual purity, and waiting for Rabbi Zalman.

When Charles heard Zalman outside his office, he buzzed his secretary. This was a first, as well. Charles never buzzed the secretary until she had buzzed him first. There was a protocol for entry to his office. It’s good for a visitor to hear buzz and counterbuzz. It sets a tone.

“So,” Zalman said, seating himself. “Did you tell her?”

Charles placed his fountain pen back in its holder. He straightened the base with two hands. “She sort of half believes me. Enough to worry. Not enough to tear my head off. But she knows I’m not kidding. And she does think I’m crazy.”

“And how do you feel?”

“Content.” Charles leaned back in his swivel chair, his arms dangling over the sides. “Jewish and content. Excited. Still excited. The whole thing’s ludicrous. I was one thing and now I’m another. But neither holds any real meaning. It’s only that when I discovered I was Jewish, I think I also discovered God.”

“Like Abraham,” Zalman said, with a worshipful look at the ceiling. “Now its time to smash some idols.” He pulled out a serious-looking book, leather bound and gold embossed. A book full of secrets, Charles was sure. They studied until Charles told Zalman he had to get back to work. “No fifty-minute hour here,” Zalman said, taking a swipe at the psychologist. They agreed to meet daily and shook hands twice before Zalman left.

He wasn’t gone long enough to have reached the elevators when Walter, the CEO, barged into Charles’s office, stopping immediately inside the door.

“Who’s the fiddler on the roof?” Walter said.

“Broker.”

“Of what?” Walter tapped his wedding band against the nameplate on the door.

“Commodities,” Charles said. “Metals.”

“Metals.” Another tap of the ring. A knowing wink.
“Promise me something, Charley. This guy tries to sell you the steel out of the Brooklyn Bridge, at least bargain with the man.”

There had been a few nights of relative quiet and a string of dinners with nonconfrontational foods. Among them: a risotto and then a blackened trout, a spaghetti squash with an eye-watering vegetable marinara, and—in response to a craving of Sue’s—a red snapper with tomato and those little bits of caramelized garlic the maid did so well.

Sue had, for all intents and purposes, ignored Charles’s admission and, mostly, ignored Charles. Charles spent his time in the study reading the books Zalman had brought him.

This was how the couple functioned until the day the maid left a pot of beef bourguignon.

“The meat isn’t kosher and neither is the wine,” Charles said, referring to the wine both in and out of his dinner. “There’s a pound of bacon fat in this. I’m not complaining, only letting you know. Really. Bread will do me fine.” He reached over and took a few slices from the basket, refilled his wineglass with water.

Sue glared at him.

“You’re not complaining?”

“No,” he said, and reached for the butter.

“Well, I’m complaining! I’m complaining right now!” Sue slammed a fist down so that her glass tipped over, spilling wine onto the tablecloth she loved. They both watched the tablecloth soak up the wine, the lace and the stitching, which fattened and swelled, the color spreading along the workmanship as if through a series of veins. Neither moved.