In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (14 page)

Isaac passed the bald Frecha, who was rambling: “If I find a shekel on the floor, I kiss it with two lips, but here nobody loves me, loves me like a shekel. Except maybe the army, maybe they will take me and love me.”

“Ah, yes, Frecha,” said Isaac, and moved on, here nodding to a blearyeyed soldier, and there making an appeasing gesture to a mother jiggling a stroller. Then he stood before Tamar at the rosemary bush. She gazed at him, her face radiant and settled somehow, at odds with the frenzied air in the courtyard. Obviously she hadn’t heard of the rebbe’s passing. Maybe she had met someone after all. Her hair hung like two curtains around her tanned, freckled face.

“Who is that?” Tamar inclined her head toward the bald woman.

“Frecha. Mazal’s daughter.”

“Oh!” She gave another look while she stroked Gilgul down to the soft orangy tip of his tail. He seemed to ease in her arms.

“So.” Isaac brought his hands together. Something was definitely up. The shine in her eyes was remarkable. “May I ask—how did the dating go? Did you meet your
basherte
?” He couldn’t bear to bring up the rebbe’s passing—not yet.

She glanced around at all the people, the noise. “You really want to hear? Now?”

“If not now, when?” He turned briefly and threw a “Sha!” at a noisy pack of men.

“What can I say?” A rueful smile played on her face. “I didn’t meet my soul mate. I didn’t meet anyone I wanted to marry.”

“What?” He stopped. “No one?”

She shook her head.

“I see.” His shoulders tensed, as if waiting for blame and recriminations. “So why so happy?” he ventured.

“Me?” Her green eyes turned into circles of surprise. “Happy?” As if on cue, Gilgul began purring in her arms.

“Well, you don’t look as though you’ve been disappointed. And this, the second time. You seem happy.”

She nodded. “I am, it’s true. At work, I just did my first major solicitation—by myself. It wasn’t a lot—two thousand dollars. But I pulled it
off.”

“Unbelievable!” he said, each syllable getting its due.

“And guess what? They’re talking about giving me a raise. These rabbis think I’m a crackerjack fund-raiser.” She glanced at Gilgul, his whole body click-clicking with purrs. “Can you believe it?” She was grinning madly at him.

“Of course,” he said. “What can’t you do? You are making your mark in the world.” He looked at Tamar. “How does it feel?”

A throng of sparrows flew out of a tall tree in a great big rush. The two faced each other, waiting for the noise to die down.

“I feel”—her eyes flicked upward, tracking a helicopter going by in the distance—“useful,” she said, and paused, as if testing the word and finding it sound. “It’s the best feeling in the world. In my own way, I can help students learn Torah, and pay teachers’ and cooks’ and janitors’ salaries.” She stopped, her eyes closing, as if fighting off a little lump climbing up her throat. “I can help people,” she said, and then he saw tears collecting under her lids. “Do you know how extraordinary that is?”

He stared, puzzled. Why the emotion? And then he remembered his old work at the haberdashery, the socks, the ties and hats, what it meant to have a job that meant little to him, that drained him and chafed against his soul, no matter which way he sold it to himself, and then to come to the courtyard and feel in some way he was coming closer to the work he was put on this earth to do. A tear hung at the tip of her pale eyelash and fell onto her cheek. She wiped the tear away with an impatient movement and turned toward the street, still holding the cat against her stomach. “I feel like such an idiot,” she muttered, “crying about work. After all, everybody works.”

A great wave of tenderness came over him out of nowhere. He scratched at his neck. “Sha, sha,” he said gently.

The air in the courtyard was thick with honeysuckle and jasmine, sharpened by rosemary.

“But where’s my
basherte
?” She swiveled around, her hair making a red fan against her neck. Gilgul lifted his head and stared quizzically at Isaac. “I’m not letting God off the hook, or you.”

Isaac stepped back, hands up, startled. “So that’s how it stands?”

She nodded smartly. “I prayed for forty days. I asked for only one thing,
just like you said to: my soul mate. It was the hardest thing I ever attempted, focusing like that. It was never explicitly guaranteed, of course, but to be honest, I’m disappointed. Bitterly so.” And she waited, her helmet at her feet.

He lifted his face toward the sky. Master of the Universe, what now? Then: “Maybe you were answered.” The words fell out of his mouth.

Her eyes swung sharply toward his. She gazed at him. She stared and stared. He saw a smile gathering in her cheeks and eyes. A knock in his chest. A thump. He said, “Maybe it wasn’t even from this second round of prayers you were answered,” he said, “but the first time you tried.”

“Oh yeah?” she said, her voice hoarse, not taking her eyes off any inch of his face. She was grinning at him, and he couldn’t help grin back.

He nodded. “See what happened? You got fired from one job, and now you’re in another. And you’re making a great success of it. You have a calling,” he said, pointing a finger skyward. “Though this may not be the
shidduch
you’re waiting for, you are helping people. Money is needed to keep these institutions alive. ‘There can be no Torah without bread,’ ” he quoted the sages. “There’s something sacred about raising money.”

The cat toppled from Tamar’s arms. It took off with a yowl.

Mazal shook her can:
“Tzedakkah, tzedakkah.”
The wheelchairs circled the olive tree. The psalm chanting shot up an octave.

A man, armless, strode into the courtyard and demanded, “Where’s my paycheck?”

The bald Frecha was loudly addressing the courtyard, “Maybe I’ll go to America. But they take big money out of your paycheck just like here.”

Tamar clamped and squeezed her elbows, her eyes blinking.

He went on: “Maybe God intended, yes, you’ll get married; yes, you’ll have children and do the things fine Jewish women have been doing for centuries, but there are lots of other things in life that matter. You have a calling. Could I suggest—this work of yours is a form of
basherte
, too,” he ended quietly, struck, despite himself, by his own eloquence.

He blew his nose with feeling, then he glanced over at Tamar, who wasn’t saying a word. Why wouldn’t she speak?

“Maybe, you’re talking about you!” she blazed. “Not me.”

He took a step back, stunned. “Excuse me?”

“You never married, right?” she demanded to know.

He nodded tensely.

“This work you do in the courtyard, it’s all your life amounts to. You stick to your four cubits of space, you live your life”—she swung her arm toward the cottage—“here and nowhere else. You have no wife, no children. You’re all alone. This
basherte
business—you’re talking about yourself, Isaac.” She spoke harshly and with a tinge of pity. “You.”

Her
you
sliced into his solar plexus. What had he said to make her attack him like this? Did he deserve this? He was offended, even angry. Then it hit him. Did she consider
himself
the answer to her prayers? A woozy sensation came over him. He wanted to flee.

“You’re talking about yourself,” Tamar repeated, and he gazed at her, standing there so stiff and angry and forlorn.

“Maybe both of us,” he whispered.

She reached for her helmet. He could only see her back.

“Wait,” he said.

“I’m leaving.”

“Please don’t go,” he entreated. Her back was still toward him, the helmet in her hands. “I have something terrible to tell you.”

She stood absolutely still.

“Be prepared. Absolutely terrible. The rebbe fell into a coma last week and died.”

“Oh!” Her hands flew up. She whirled to face him, her eyes round with shock. “Awful, awful!” He heard her say softly, “Blessed is the true judge.” Then she asked, “Did the funeral already happen?”

“Yes, I’m sorry we couldn’t reach everyone. It was just before the holiday. That’s why there’s no shiva,” he explained.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her head fell forward and her hair hung loosely over her face. “Let me know what I can do to help.”

“I will.”

She bent and snapped on her helmet.

Frecha, the bald daughter, had taken up a new chant. “Maybe I’ll go to Haiti instead. They let you keep your money over there.” The men in wheelchairs had started circling the tree in a kind of race. The psalm criers’ pleas had risen. “Heal him, You who heal the broken souls.” The cans shook:
“Tzedakkah, tzedakkah.”
A saying came to Isaac, his mother’s words, “It’s not good to be alone, even in Paradise.” Alone, alone. That’s
what he was, what he always would be. His breath chilled in his chest.

Mazal rushed up to Isaac. “You see how crazy my daughter is? And now there’s no one left I can squeeze a blessing from,” she lamented.

Isaac raised his arms and addressed the courtyard. “Please. Everyone should go now. We’re starting to bother the neighbors. It’s time to go home.” The wheelchairs stopped. The prayers ceased. The courtyard began to empty.

“Will you come back to the courtyard?” he called after Tamar as she strode toward the gate

“Come back to what?” she said, and then she was gone.

The church bells at the Maryam Magdalia clanged: Nine o’clock in the morning. It was a perfect Al-Quds sky, blue for this world and the next. He had shined and scrubbed and swept and gathered garbage since dawn. Maybe today Sheikh Tawil would notice. The sheikh would take his hand and say, “Well, Mustafa, it is time to give you that promotion.” Maybe today it would happen. He had stopped looking for old things in the ground. No more treasures in the dirt. It would only anger his boss.

His eyes scanned the Noble Sanctuary for any little thing that might offend the eye and could barely find a leaf or stray twig. The Noble Sanctuary was ready for all the worshippers. The air smelled fresh, no one slipped on garbage, everything looked clean and beautiful. A person could use the bathroom and not catch any infection. All thanks to him. He wiped his eye with the tip of his kaffiyeh and breathed in deeply, letting the Koranic mountain air fill each lung. Ah.

Later, when he took his break near the cypress trees, he heard a moaning tune down below, where the Jews prayed at their wall. He stopped crunching his pumpkin seeds a moment and listened hard. Ah, yes. The koheins were singing their prayer again. He checked to see if his boss was around and sidled closer to the Magrabeh Gate to better see and listen. He cracked a few pumpkin seeds while gazing at the koheins in their white prayer shawls thrown over their heads. They looked like ghosts. Their hands reached outward toward the worshippers, the fingers spread apart, a space like a triangle in the middle. Then the koheins began to sway, gentle mountains moving here and there, and Mustafa swayed a little, too. Then—just like that—the koheins removed the shawls, put their shoes on, and became like all the other praying Jews, the ones who would never be koheins.

He hurried back toward the Gray Lady mosque (the floors underneath the rugs needed washing), his head dizzy with all the Jew prayers. How he wanted to enter the mosque and pray like a proper Muslim, surrounded by his brothers, the strength of many waters coming together. But he didn’t go inside. Somebody would yell at him. One time he entered, took off his shoes, and knelt down, and the man beside him said, “Brother, why are you looking at me? Turn away.” But Mustafa’s head refused to face the ground. It would always point at his neighbor’s when he prayed. The man got so angry he would have beaten Mustafa if he hadn’t grabbed his shoes and scooted out. He had never gone into a mosque to pray after that. But maybe one day soon, he would try again.

The sun shone bright enough to turn the whole world into yellow butter. He mopped his neck. In the distance, a tall man circled the fountain. Mustafa watched him as he opened a spout, shut it, wrote something down, and moved to the next spout.

“Who is that?” Mustafa asked a thickly bearded worker passing by.

The worker paused. “Ah, that’s Waleed,” he said and blew his nose fiercely. “The new supervisor, didn’t you hear? He’s been on the Noble Sanctuary the past two days.”

“The new supervisor?” Mustafa blinked rapidly as if to dispel dust.

A look of disgust contorted the worker’s face. “They brought him in from the outside. Not one of us,” he said in a plaintive voice.

A lash against his back. A supervisor? It couldn’t be! But he was the one who had been promised.… He would ask Sheikh Tawil himself.

While the workers took a break, Mustafa found the sheikh at the Dome of the Chain, paring his nails. The sheikh tried to hide his nail clipper inside the folds of his robe. His face relaxed when he saw it was only Mustafa, and he went on snipping. “Yes, Mustafa?”

“Excuse me for any disturbance.” He stood before his boss, his hands trembling slightly. “I wanted to know—is Waleed the new supervisor?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?” Sheikh Tawil asked slowly. He lifted his patient, sleepy eyes to stare at the custodian.

The words wouldn’t come to Mustafa. They got stuck in his throat like cotton.

Sheikh Tawil said, “Did you think I was going to give you this job?”

Mustafa was too shamefaced to admit, yes, he had hoped. He stared
down at his left shoe, the one with the hole at the tip.

“Don’t think greater than yourself, Mustafa. It will only lead to sadness and frustration,” he said in a well-meaning, gentle tone. He gazed down at his right hand and clipped off a straggler from his thumb. Then he added, “Do you think it’s so easy to watch over men, make sure they work hard, don’t steal or hit each other and do their work well? Did you really want this burden?”

Mustafa smiled miserably and shook his head. A thought darted through his mind. “Maybe I could be in charge of ordering supplies. I could look at the figures.”

“It’s more complicated than you think.” He assessed his right hand and began to work on his left, starting with the index finger. “You’re a good worker, but you never went to school, did you? How could I make you a supervisor?”