The Autograph Man (40 page)

At the synagogue, morning service had just ended. Alex could see a milling congregation and a plain concrete building in which a Star of David window sat flush with the wall, a shul without decoration but not without charm. A corridor of greenery led down to it, accompanied by a depressing and necessary security system complete with cameras up on their poles like berthed periscopes. Alex rang the bell and waved at the videophone. He was buzzed through.

Rabbi Burston was outside in the sun, chatting with a gaggle of women, or at least that was Alex’s guess. There was definitely a gaggle of women and they were in a circle, talking and looking downwards. As Alex approached, the circle broke up and, although extremely small, it was the unmistakable figure of a pushy rabbi that came striding towards him. Alex felt any residual nerves evaporate; this was a reassuring comfort, this was the one thing you could count on: a rabbi is never shy. Alex had met those cringing vicars who seem mortified by their own existence—how can you get faith from a man ashamed of faith? In comparison, Alex had to admit to a grudging admiration for the rabbinical vocation. They always, always, gave as good as they got.

“HI!” shouted Rabbi Burston. He was about forty and quixotically handsome for a man no bigger then a nine-year-old child. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt. Now he was up close, at Alex’s waist, and Alex began what he expected to be a long struggle to try not to stare at Rabbi Burston any more than one would if he were normal height. He failed at once, full of wonder at the incredible barrel chest and curly black beard, the strong man physique, radically caricatured in this tiny man.

“Hi.”

“ALEX-LI, IS IT?” shouted the rabbi again. The circle of women were smiling at Alex indulgently, and a child was pointing.

“Yes.”

“YOU WANT TO TALK OUTSIDE OR INSIDE?”

“Outside’s fine.”

“GOOD. OUTSIDE DOES IT FOR ME. HOW ABOUT THAT BENCH?”

“Okay. Is there a reason . . . I mean . . . why you’re shouting?”

“I TRY AND DO THIS SOMETIMES, TO DISTRACT FROM”—he took himself in from head to toe with a flick of his wrist—“JUST FOR THE FIRST FEW MINUTES. I FIND IT HELPS SOMETIMES. IS IT HELPING?”

“Not really.”

“Oh,” said Rabbi Burston, scratching his beard and smiling. “Well, it’s not for everyone. Please, Alex, come into my office.”

The rabbi skipped past a tree and hoisted himself up on the bench, his swinging feet far from the ground.

“So. Alex. Let’s get right to it. Kaddish. Do you get it? I mean, do you really
get
it?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Okay. Explain.”

“Well, when I say . . . I mean, I believe I’ve got the basic—”

“TO SANCTIFY GOD’S NAME PUBLICLY IS THE HISTORIC DUTY OF THE JEW!” screamed Rabbi Burston with both his little hands shaking in the air. He brought them down again and smiled placidly at Alex. “That’s what the books say, right? And it’s true. But I don’t want you to think of this as a duty. It’s a
pleasure.
It’s a
gift
you’re giving to your father. You’re walking into a shul and you’re giving a gift. And sometimes, when you were small and incapable, if you were giving a gift to someone, your mother would buy it for you, do you remember that? And just get you to sign the card—or just dip your hand in red paint and squish it on there. Did you ever do that?”

To this Alex offered a noncommittal shrug.

“Okay!” cried Rabbi Burston, and then fell silent. Still trying to avoid staring, Alex looked up to where the rabbi was looking, at the first cautious buds of a cherry tree, presently being fooled by the clement weather.

“You know what?” said the rabbi, after a minute of nothing. “Let’s walk. Let’s walk around the shul and back, till we’re back at this tree. Deal?”

The rabbi put his arms up, and Alex, nonplussed for a moment, realized with some horror that he was waiting to be lifted down.

“What? Never picked up a rabbi before? Joke. It’s a joke,” said Rabbi Burston, and slipped nimbly from the bench to the ground. “Okay, let’s perambulate. Let’s get Socratic.”

Alex had made an earlier pact with himself to walk very slowly if any simultaneous walking-with-midget-rabbi was called for, but in fact, the rabbi overtook him from the first and it was Alex who had to keep the pace.

“The thing is,” said the rabbi, as a crowd of children scattered from his path, “Kaddish was never composed for shul. It’s a study hall prayer, it’s informal. It’s a prayer that came out of a
need.
Now, that’s very rare. This is not being forced from above, from the rabbis. This is being
cried out for
by the people as a
need,
as a human need. I take it you believe in human needs—we’re not that far gone with you?”

“No, no—I’ll go with you as far as human needs. I have them. I see them around.”

“Okay.
Good,
that’s good. Now. Notice, in the mourner’s prayer, there’s no Adoshem, there’s no Elohim, there’re no formal names for God. There’s only in Kaddish the informal, the intimate—
kudsha Brich Hu,
the Holy One, blessed be He, and then
Avihun di bi’s;hmaya,
their Father in heaven. You’ve even got HaShem, the Name, turned into Shemo, His Name. The Kaddish is a conversation between Jew and God, son and absent father, are you with me so far? It’s one-on-one, though the community is still essential—when I say Jew, I mean
Jews
—but it’s still
quality time.
”

Rabbi Burston jumped up unexpectedly and gripped the edge of a low wall that went around the shul’s small backyard. He swung his body round, put his feet flat on the brick and stood up. Now he was about five seven to Alex’s six one.

“What else do you want to know?”

“Um . . . Okay . . . practical stuff. Like, I speak first—”

“You speak first and then the minyan responds. By the way, I know you’ve only got eight so far, but I have two volunteers—they’ll be strangers to you and your father but not to Him, and that’s what matters. So: you speak, you speak, you speak, you speak, and then we respond. You recite again, we respond, one more time, and then everybody speaks together. Do you know your lines?”

“Almost. Basically.”

“Then we’re more than halfway there,” said the rabbi happily, and clapped his hands.

“But how does that work? I don’t
feel
anything,” blurted Alex, and was glad that he had said it.

“Lift, please. Seriously this time—to the next bit of wall.” Alex grabbed the rabbi in his armpits and hoisted him over the gap. Safely on the other side, the rabbi put both hands behind his back and continued his elevated stroll.

“Good. So you don’t feel anything. That’s honest. So you want me to convince you, is that it? Do we have to go through the Akiva story? Really? The father and the wood-carrying and the fiery torment?”

“No, no. I get the bit about I can bring my father eternal rest et cetera—but that’s not really relevant, because he wasn’t a Jew.”

“Ah, but you
are.
But you’re not an idiot, you know that—that’s why you’re here.”

Two children raced past them playing a noisy game of tag and then, seeing Rabbi Burston, felt silent and hit each other surreptitiously, passing the blame.

“Alex, no need to look so miserable,” said Rabbi Burston, tutting. He reached the end of his wall, sat on it and then launched himself at the ground. He landed rather awkwardly this time, sliding a little in the gravel, but still there was nothing comic about him, nothing ignoble. This was irritating to Alex, who wanted and expected deflation in people above all things. Without it, as with Adam or Esther, your attachment grew too strong. The possibility of future pain only multiplied.

“Rabbi, I still . . . I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t see the point of it. Not with regard to me.”

Rabbi Burston kicked some pebbles across the yard.

“Uh-huh,” he said, nodding keenly. “It’s depressing, not seeing the point of things, I know that. It’s like being fifteen all the time. That’s not a great age.”

“I had better years.”

They stepped together through a large indistinct Star of David, shadow of the window, moving slowly across the yard as the sun climbed.

“Alex. Your friend Adam told me you collect autographs for a living. You see the point in that?”

“No, not particularly. But—”

“But it gives you pleasure.”

“Some.”

“So you collect, you get things. Famous things from big-shot people. Anything in that business have the status of a gift?”

“How do you mean, gift?”

“I mean, does anything in your daily life have the status of a gift?”

“Well, I aim towards it,” said Alex, thinking, with defiance, of Kitty. “That’s the secular dream, isn’t it? Love, art, charity, maybe. All gifts.”

“Yes,” said Rabbi Burston, smiling. “That’s the secular dream.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. I’m talking about ritual.”

“Okay, then,” said Rabbi Burston, shadowboxing. “Give it to me. Talk about ritual.”

“Well,” said Alex, sheepish, “well, okay, so I said it yesterday, the Kaddish, as a sort of practice. . . .” They stepped into a gloom cast by the roof of the shul, and without the superficial warmth of the light, the temperature plummeted. He shivered and drew his coat around him. “I said it and I didn’t feel a thing. I mean, I was feeling something anyway, but the Kaddish didn’t help.”

“You were by yourself?”

Alex nodded.

“Come
on.
Do you play football by yourself? Hockey? You watch a play by yourself? Do the tango by yourself? You make love by yourself? Actually, don’t answer that.”

Alex laughed, glumly.

“In the end,” said the rabbi, as they closed in on the confused cherry tree, “it’s a
tzidduk hadin,
an acceptance of divine judgment. Instead of cursing God for our loss, we rise and praise him. We accept the judgment. He gave, he took away. We accept.”

“But I don’t. I don’t accept it,” mumbled Alex, feeling a familiar depression envelop him. “It doesn’t work for me. To me, it’s obscene. All the suffering. I can’t sign on that line, I can’t.”

A woman, who had been lingering nearby this last minute shuffling some sheets of paper, now said Rabbi Burston’s name quietly.

“Yes, Mrs. Bregman, I’m coming, one moment, please.”

The rabbi turned back to Alex and angled his head all the way back, braving the bright sun to look Alex straight in the eye. “Alex. I’m pretty busy, you know? Do me a favor. Turn up here at six and say what you’ve been asked to say and give the gift. Your friends and I have written the card, bought the present, and painted your hand red. Just turn up with your red hand, okay?”

3.

On Adam’s outdoor walkway, in deference to the unlikely sun, brunch was being eaten. Chairs had been placed so plates could rest on the wall and the Brunchers were seated in a line with their beers like truck drivers in a diner. Joseph and Rubinfine had their napkins tucked facetiously into their collars, while Adam hovered over them with a griddle pan of scrambled eggs laced with pink flecks of smoked salmon. Without a word Alex hitched himself up onto the wall next to Rubinfine and sat, legs dangling.

“And before you ask,” said Joseph, looking straight ahead over the rooftops, “this is the first sick day I’ve taken off work in six months.”

“He’s thinking of quitting,” explained Adam, “but he’s still blowing his wages. He paid for the salmon. Want a plate, Al?” Without waiting for an answer, he went indoors to fetch one.

“I’m thinking of quitting,” confirmed Joseph languidly, picking a sinking fly from his eggs. “Sun did it. Sun gave me a weird epiphany.”

“That’s the trouble with this bloody sun,” said Rubinfine, frowning and pointing to it with his fork.

“What was the epiphany?”

“Umm . . . something like: can’t spend rest of life in total misery.”

“Right. Good one.”

“I thought so.”

“What will you do instead?” asked Alex, accepting his plate and a generous portion of egg and toast.

“Be irretrievably unemployable. That’s the plan so far.”

“I had that plan once,” said Rubinfine wistfully. “Didn’t come to anything, though.”

“That’s because you’re a quitter.” Joseph raised a beer to the sky. “I’m in this for the long haul. Bloody
hell,
” he said, turning to look at Alex for the first time, “You look
terrible.
”

“I think,” said Alex, looking over Joseph and Rubinfine to Adam, seeking him out, his understanding, “Esther might be leaving me.”

Adam looked alarmed and then averted his eyes as from an intimacy between parents. Joseph opened a beer and passed it to him. Rubinfine said, “Everyone leaves everyone in the end.”

Alex scowled.

“Yes, but this
isn’t
the end, you Gaylord. That’s the point, isn’t it? I think she might be leaving me
midway.
”

“Only God is constant,” affirmed Rubinfine, and snatched the pepper from Joseph’s hand while the man was in mid-sprinkle. “The thing he gave us is endings. Things end, here. They don’t end
there.
” He pointed to the sky. “That was his gift to us, endings. Now, you might say to me:
Yeah, nice gift, but can I take it back to the shop and exchange it?
At which point, I would say to
you
—”

“Roob, please save it, will you?” groaned Joseph. “Who’s that speech for?”

“For my cheder group. I’m giving it on Saturday,” said Rubinfine, chewing a nail off and spitting it over the wall. “Ten- to fourteen-year-olds. You don’t like? I mean, there’s a lot more to it than—”

“It’s not that I don’t
like
. . . . Roob, if someone had spoken to you like that when you were fourteen . . . No, look, it’s not that bad. It’s just that you express everything so damn clumsily—look, do you have a pen? Let’s go over it, let’s tidy it up.”

“We need more egg,” said Adam ruminatively. “Alex, come and help me make more egg.”

He walked straight past the kitchen, though, and Alex followed him into the lounge. In front of the alphabet Adam gripped him by the shoulders. His eyes were an essence of Adam: the look you always hoped he’d give you, the one that turned up now and then and that you waited for. Clear, agonizingly honest, puckish, joy-seeking and full of the determination to take your pains on as his own. Alex put his hands in his pockets like a schoolboy embarrassed by unexpected praise.