The Chosen (20 page)

He looked up from the book. ‘That’s pretty strong language, “vulgar and disgusting”.’ His eyes were dark and brooding. ‘It feels terrible to have a great scholar like Graetz call Hasidism vulgar and disgusting. I never thought of my father as a priest of Baal.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Listen to what else he says about Dov Baer.’ He turned a page. ‘He says here that Dov Baer used to crack vulgar jokes to make his people happy, and that he used to encourage his followers to drink alcohol, so they would pray fervently. He says that Rabbi Elijah of Vilna was a great opponent of the Hasidim, and that when he died—let me read it to you.’ He shuffled pages. ‘Here it is. Listen. “After his death, the Hasidim took vengeance upon him by dancing upon his grave, and celebrating the day of his decease as a holiday, with shouting and drunkenness.’” He looked at me. ‘I never knew about any of these things. You were in our shul yesterday. Did anyone look drunk to you during the service? ‘

‘No,’ I said.

‘My father isn’t like that at all.’ His voice was sad, and it trembled a little. ‘He really worries about his people. He worries about them so much he doesn’t even have time to talk to me.’

‘Maybe Graetz is only talking about the Hasidim of his own day,’ I offered.

‘Maybe,’ he said, not convinced. ‘It’s awful to have someone give you an image like that of yourself. He says that Dov Baer had expert spies worthy of serving in the secret service. Those are his words, “worthy of serving in the secret service”. He says they would go around discovering people’s secrets and tell them to Dov Baer. People who came to see him about their personal problems would have to wait around until the Saturday after they came, and in the meantime these spies would investigate them and report back to him, so that when the person finally got to see him, Dov Baer would know everything, and the person would be impressed and think that Dov Baer had some sort of magical ability to look into his heart.’ He shuffled some more pages. ‘Listen to this. “In the first interview Baer, in a seemingly casual manner, was able, in a skillfully arranged discourse, to bring in allusions to these strangers, whereby they would be convinced that he had looked into their hearts and knew their past.” He shook his head sadly. ‘I never knew about anything like that. When my father talks about Dov Baer, he almost makes him out to be a saint.’

‘Did my father give you that book to read?’

‘Your father said I should read Jewish history. He said the first important step in anyone’s education is to know your own people. So I found this work by Graetz. It’s a lot of volumes. I’m almost done with it. This is the last volume.’ He shook his head again, and the earlocks danced and brushed against the ridge of his jaw and the hollow of his cheeks. ‘What an image it gives me of myself.’

‘You ought to discuss it with my father first,’ I told him, ‘before you go believing any of that. He told me a lot about Hasidism on Friday night. He wasn’t very complimentary, but he didn’t say anything about drunkenness.’

Danny nodded slowly. ‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said. ‘But Graetz was a great scholar. I read up on him before I started reading his history. He was one of the greatest Jewish scholars of the last century.’

‘You ought to discuss it with my father,’ I repeated.

Danny nodded again, then slowly closed the book. His fingers played idly with the spine of the binding.

‘You know,’ he brooded, ‘I read a psychology book last week in which the author said that the most mysterious thing in the universe to man is man himself. We’re blind about the most important thing in our lives, our own selves. How could a man like Dov Baer have the gall to fool other people into thinking that he could look into their hearts and tell them what they were really like inside?’

‘You don’t know that he did. You only know Graetz’s version of it.’

He ignored me. I had the feeling he was talking more to himself than to me.

‘We’re so complicated inside,’ he went on quietly. “There’s something in us called the unconscious that we’re completely unaware of. It practically dominates our lives, and we don’t even know it.’ He paused, hesitating, his hand moving from the book and playing now with an earlock. I was reminded of the evening in the hospital when he had stared out the window at the people on the street below and had talked of God and ants and the reading he did in this library. ‘There’s so much to read,’ he said. ‘I’ve only really been reading for a few months. Did you know about the subconscious?’ he asked me, and when I somewhat hesitantly nodded, he said, ‘You see? You’re not even interested in psychology, and you know about it. I have so much catching up to do.’ He was suddenly conscious of the way his fingers were playing with the earlock, and he let his hand drop to the table. ‘Did you know that very often the subconscious expresses itself in dreams? “The dream is the product of a transaction between conscious and unconscious wishes,’” he quoted, ‘

‘and the results during sleep are naturally very different from those during waking hours.”

‘What’s this about dreams?’ I asked.

‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Dreams are full of unexpressed fears and hopes, things that we never even think of consciously. We think of them unconsciously deep down inside ourselves, and they come out in dreams. They don’t always come out straight, though. Sometimes they come out in symbols. You have to learn to interpret the symbols.’

‘Where did you find out about that?’

‘In my reading. There’s a lot of work been done on dreams. It’s one of the ways they have of getting to a person’s unconscious.’

I must have had a strange expression on my face, because he asked me what was the matter.

‘I dream all the time,’ I told him.

‘Everyone does,’ he said. ‘We just don’t remember a lot of them. We repress them. We sort of push them away and forget them, because sometimes they’re too painful.’

‘I’m trying to remember mine,’ I said. ‘Some of them weren’t very pleasant.’

‘A lot of times they’re not pleasant. Our unconscious isn’t a nice place—I call it a place; it isn’t a place, really; the book I read says it’s more like a process—it isn’t a nice place at all. It’s full of repressed fears and hatreds, things that we’re afraid to bring out into the open.’

‘And these things rule our lives?’

‘According to some psychologists they do.’

‘You mean these things go on and we don’t know anything about them?’

‘That’s right. That’s what I said before. What’s inside us is the greatest mystery of all.’

‘That’s a pretty sad thing to think about. To be doing things without really knowing why you’re doing them.’

Danny nodded. ‘You can find out about it, though. About your unconscious, I mean. That’s what psychoanalysis is all about. I haven’t read too much about it yet, but it’s a long process.’ Freud started it. You’ve heard about Freud. He started psychoanalysis. I’m teaching myself German, so I can read him in the original. He discovered the unconscious, too.’

I stared at him and felt a shock of coldness move inside me. ‘You’re studying German?’

He seemed surprised at my reaction. ‘What’s wrong with studying German? Freud wrote in German. What are you looking at me like that for?’

‘Aren’t his writings translated into English?’

‘Not all of them. Besides, I want to read a lot of other things in German that haven’t been translated yet. What’s the matter with you? You’ve got the funniest look on your face.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Just because Hitler speaks German doesn’t mean that the language is corrupt. It’s the most important scientific language in the world. What are you looking at me like that for?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It just seems strange to me, your studying German.’

‘What’s so strange about it?’

‘Nothing. How are you teaching yourself?’

‘There’s a grammar book in the reference library. I’m almost done memorizing it. It’s an interesting language. Very technical and precise. It’s amazing the way they put nouns together. Do you know what the word for” mysterious” is in German?’

‘I don’t know any German.’

‘It’s geheimnisvoll. It means “full of secret”. That’s what the subconscious is, geheimnisvoll. The word for “sympathetic” is teilnahmsvol—literally “full of part-taking”. The word for charity is Naechstenliebe -literally, it means-‘

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘It’s quite a language. Yiddish is a lot like it. Yiddish was originally Middle German. When the German Jews came into Poland, they brought it with them.’

‘You mean in the thirteenth century, when Poland encouraged the Jews to come in?’

‘That’s right. You know about that?’

‘I didn’t know about Yiddish being German.’

‘My father doesn’t, either. At least, I don’t think he does. He thinks Yiddish is almost holy. But it’s really from Middle German.’

I was going to ask him what the Middle meant in Middle German, but I decided not to push the conversation any further. I was upset enough as it was about his learning German. And it had nothing to do with Hitler, either. I kept remembering what my father had told me about Solomon Maimon. It all sounded so weird. I almost had the feeling I was talking to Maimon’s ghost.

We talked some more about Graetz’s version of Hasidism, and then somehow we got onto the subject of Danny’s brother. He had been examined by a big doctor that morning, and the doctor had said he would be all right, but that he would have to be careful, no strenuous studying or exercising. He had gone with his father, and Danny said his father was now very upset. But at least his brother would be all right. It had something to do with his blood chemistry, Danny said, and the doctor had prescribed three different pills for him to take. He hadn’t been very optimistic about the condition clearing up, either. He said he would have to take the pills as long as it persisted. ‘It might persist his whole life,’ Danny said sadly. Again, I got the impression that he loved his brother very much, and I wondered why he hadn’t said a word to him during all the time I had seen them together yesterday in the synagogue.

Finally, we decided it was getting late, and we started down the wide marble staircase. When we were about halfway down the staircase to the second floor, Danny stopped and looked carefully around. He did the same when we were going down to the main floor. He replaced the Graetz book, and we went outside.

It was cloudy and seemed ready to rain, so we decided to take a trolley car back rather than walk. Danny got off at his block, and I rode the rest of the way alone, my head full of what we had talked about, especially his teaching himself German.

I told my father about it over the supper table.

‘What does Danny want to read in German?’ he asked me. ‘He wants to read Freud.’

My father’s eyes went wide behind their spectacles.

‘He was very excited about it,’ I said. ‘He was talking about the unconscious and dreams. He was also reading Graetz on Hasidism: ‘The unconscious and dreams,’ my father muttered. ‘And Freud. At the age of fifteen.’ He shook his head gloomily. ‘But it will not be possible to stop him.’

‘Abba, was Graetz right in what he said about Hasidism?’

‘Graetz was biased, and his sources were not acurate. If I remember correctly, he calls the Hasidim vulgar drunkards, and he calls the tzaddikim priests of Baal. There is enough to dislike about Hasidism without exaggerating its faults.’

I met Danny again in the library later that week, but he wasn’t too enthusiastic when I told him what my father had said about Graetz. He told me he had read another book on Hasidism, and while the author hadn’t accused the tzaddikim of encouraging drinking, he had accused them of almost everything else. I asked him how he was coming along with his German, and he said he had finished memorizing the grammar text and was reading a book he had borrowed from the German section of the library. He said he hoped to start reading Freud in a few weeks. I didn’t tell him what my father had said about that. He looked upset and tense, and he kept playing with an earlock all the time we talked.

My father told me that night that there had been a serious question in his mind about how ethical it was for him to give Danny books to read behind his father’s back.

‘How would I feel if someone gave you books to read which I believed might be harmful to you?’

I asked him why he had done it.

‘Because Danny would have continued to read anyway on his own. At least this way he has some direction from an adult. It was a fortunate accident that he stumbled upon me. But it is not a comfortable feeling, Reuven. I dislike doing this to Reb Saunders. He is certain to find out one day. It will be an uncomfortable situation when he does. But he will not be able to stop Danny from reading. What will he do when his son goes to college?’

I pointed out to my father that Danny was anyway reading on his own now, without direction from an adult. My father certainly hadn’t told him to read Freud.

My father nodded his agreement. ‘But he will come to me to discuss what he reads,’ he said. ‘At least there will be a balance. I will give him other books to read, and he will see that Freud is not God in psychology. Freud yet. At fifteen.’ And he shook his head gloomily.

Danny and I arranged to spend Shabbat afternoon together with his father, studying Perkei Avot. When I turned off Lee Avenue that Shabbat and started up the sunless street on which Danny lived, the feeling of having crossed into a twilight world was only a little less strong than it had been the week before. It was just after three o’clock, and there were no bearded, caftaned men or kerchief-wearing women on the street, but the children were outside, playing, shouting, running. Except for the children, the sidewalk in front of the three-storey brownstone at the end of the block was deserted. I remembered how the black caftaned men had parted for Danny and me the week before, and I remembered, too, the tapping of Danny’s capped shoes on the pavement as we had gone through the crowd and up the wide stone staircase. The door in the hallway that led into the synagogue was open, but the synagogue was empty—except for the echoes it contained. I stood just inside the synagogue. The tables were covered with white cloths, but the food had not yet been put out. I stared at the table where I had sat, and I could still hear the gematriyot tumbling out of Reb Saunders’ mouth and then his question to Danny, ‘Nothing more? You have nothing more to say?.’ I saw the idiot grin spread itself slowly across Danny’s lips. I turned quickly and went back out into the hall.