The Place Will Comfort You (8 page)

Blessed are you, Adonai our God, King of the world, who formed man wisely, and created in him perforations upon perforations, hollows upon hollows.

The tinny sound of the piano swelled when the secretarial classroom door swung open. A girl in blue passed him on her way to the toilet. He stuffed the paper towel into his back trouser pocket, confident she wouldn't recognize what he was mouthing when their repertoire of prayer here was so grossly abridged.

It is apparent and known before Your Honor-throne, that should one of them become ruptured or one become blocked, it would be impossible to exist and stand before you.

She leaned in, mistakenly attending, trying to determine: a rebuke, a directive, a pleasantry? He closed his eyes to her. One did not move until the blessing was done.

Blessed are you, Adonai, healer of all flesh and wondrous originator.

When he was done he was pleased to find that the girl had understood her lack of relevance and left. He returned to class.

The Mishna classroom hissed with the scratching of pens. He smacked his palms together and every head jerked up.

“Agreeable,” he said. “Worthy. The class will continue this good work extended to include the following three Mishnayot as well, the synopsis amounting altogether to no less than six pages. In the meantime I will confer with Shifra, who is awaiting me now in Mrs. Adeena Plyer's office. Each class member will continue her work in complete silence unless she desires to join me and Mrs. Adeena Plyer in a conference of her own. Conversely, the writer of the most serious essay will be permitted to retain the medal for the rest of the day, assuming responsibility and some sharing.”

Back in the dim corridor Mr. Durchschlag pulled at the lobe of his left ear, a little too hard, and broke into a brisk stride, sweeping every corner with his eyes, leaning in by every door and, hearing lessons in progress, moving on. Any silent door he opened. In one room Mrs. Zeidish the textile design teacher was holding an exam, but she was knitting a cocoa-colored baby boot and did not notice him, or the door slowly shutting again.

When he had inspected every alcove and recess from the top flight to the ground level, Mr. Durchschlag approached the graphic arts display cases at the entrance to the school. He pressed both his palms against the glass. He watched the hand-shaped fog contort and disappear. Not disappear. Faint, oily imprints hovered over advertisements for fictitious products executed in clashing colors.

He would have to alert the principal to the situation. Girl missing. He pushed his forehead and nose against the cool glass. What he had said to the girl he had said to open her eyes and sometimes to open the eyes of the insensate acrid vapors are required. When one has lost her wits sometimes only a slap brings her to. The earrings were repulsive. Granted, she wasn't the most scandalously errant, also already an accomplished student well-regarded by the faculty, a neat painter apparently, a daughter to educated parents. The greater the urgency, then, to extricate her at once from the ill-chosen path.

Thirty-five girls had heard what he had said, gabbers and squawkers, one word of his unleashing forty. He should speak to the child. If she was nowhere in the building she must have gone into the dunes. As timid as she was, she wouldn't have strayed far from the road. He would find her. He would bring her back with her purple earrings. From now on, Shifra'leh, maybe a little paint on the face if so much you want to be like your friends, but no lollypops stuck through the ears, agreed? Agreed. The sorts that visited these dunes, though, their intentions on the fringe. He must find her right away or it could be a tragedy to her future.

“You need an Akamol for your headache, Mr. Durchschlag?”

With one hand Meshulam Banai, the janitor, who had emerged from the ground-level rest room, pushed a giant garbage canister across the lobby floor, the scrape of heavy plastic against stone tile masking the echo of his Moroccan accent. The
Girls
plaque of the rest room kept rattling on loose screws as the door, swinging heavily on its two-way hinges, gradually lost momentum. With his free hand the janitor dug into the pocket of his sagging brown trousers and by the time he had reached the graphic arts display cases, he had extracted a linty white pill, which he offered to Mr. Durchschlag upon a black-whorled pointer finger.

“Take it, take,” Meshulam said. “I got more in my other pocket and a whole box in my closet. With four hundred girls clucking all day long you have to take precautions, not to mention the chemicals they use to set the dyes in the textiles give me sinuses and pressure on the chest. Make saliva in your mouth, you won't need water.” Meshulam pulled a spray bottle from his belt, bespattered the display case with white foam, and wiped away Mr. Durchschlag's prints. When Mr. Durchschlag swallowed the pill, Meshulam reached over and thumped his shoulder, then slipped his hand below the small of Mr. Durchschlag's back, dove swiftly into his back pocket, and produced the crumpled brown paper towel.

“That I should get rid of this for you?”

The thin smell of artificial peaches insinuated itself into Mr. Durchschlag's nostrils. The man was as attuned to him as to a spill on the floor. He was hoping to sop up a conversation. Mr. Durchschlag could not expend the time. “It's yours,” he said.

Meshulam tossed the paper into the barrel and used a longhandled dustpan to compact the garbage, which released in the process a complicated smell, overwhelming that of peaches. Mr. Durchschlag disguised his distaste with a cough.

“Is it working on you?” Meshulam said.

Mr. Durchschlag looked quickly away from the barrel. He must
disengage. Something in his demeanor was indicating interest to the old man.

“I can give you another one if it's not working on you,” Meshu-lam said, digging a hand into his trouser pocket again to find a second pill.

To judge by this Meshulam's expectations, his primitive faith in medicine had medicinal value in itself. In that case Mr. Durchschlag would authenticate this faith and the man would be satisfied and go away. “There! It began,” Mr. Durchschlag said. “No need for a second dose. Quick action.”

Meshulam let his pocket be and pressed down the garbage again. He examined the bottom of the dustpan and peeled off something thick that he let drop into the barrel. Next he began picking at a residual clingage. It seemed that no matter how Mr. Durchschlag strove to present himself as a finished project, the man would find another one near.

“The students aren't waiting?” Meshulam said.

“The students?”

“Your students in your class that you teach, they aren't waiting for their teacher to teach them?”

“The girls are taking a test,” Mr. Durchschlag said.

“They won't copy?”

“They're taking the test on the honor system.”

“If you want I can check they won't copy.”

“You have my full admiration for your fine work in area maintenance,” Mr. Durchschlag said. “I'll thank you to leave the teaching to me. I trust the girls.”

“The principal allows this new system testing since when?” Meshulam said. “They had a meeting and I didn't hear? It's no problem for me to check,” he said. “My next stop is the toilets room upstairs.”

The men observed each other.

“Listen, Meshulam.” Mr. Durchschlag pressed his fingers into
the janitor's upper arm, which was large and layered, soft but underneath inflexible with muscle. The man liked to eat but had been mopping many years. “You are a religious man, Meshulam, true?”

“Banish the evil eye.” Meshulam spit into the barrel. Mr. Durchschlag removed his hand. “Of course, yes, with God's help, a believing man. Every Shabbat eve, healthy or sick, at the synagogue. They already asked me when they hired, ten years before they hired you.” He inhaled to continue. “Adeena was maybe only a young bride,” he said, “but even then no problem for her to ask the questions, questions she always has but for sixteen years never again that.”

He had finished. “Tell me then,” Mr. Durchschlag said. “The way the girls dress in this school, Mr. Banai, do you think it's becoming?”

“Some girls more than others. A man sees but he also remembers his age and his position and the family at home.”

Mr. Durchschlag moved to massage his temples, but caught himself before he would incite another bid for medication. The message hadn't crossed yet but it would. He tented his raised palms in a contemplative gesture with which he prodded the space between himself and the janitor. “There it is in your own words,” he said. “You shouldn't have to
see.
Do you see? And how well our teachings provide, for if they were followed to the full you would in fact not see. What I mean to tell you is that here you find yourself compelled to strive beyond your job description.”

For a moment the man looked startled but in a flash he chose relief and took on a jocular aspect. “What, Adeena gave me the wrong numbers? Sixteen years I'm cleaning some rooms twice?” He slapped the side of the barrel like the rump of an animal and laughed. “I have no complaints,” he said, becoming serious. “In nine years they retire me with pension. My work respects me.”

“And likewise I, Meshulam,” Mr. Durchschlag said, welling indeed with a poignant charity towards the man. “But, Meshulam. I speak not of the job assigned to you by our esteemed vice principal,
Mrs. Adeena Plyer, but of your duty as a member of the sacred congregation of the Holy One, blessed be He. Your duty as a Jew, a Jew and a man.”

Meshulam Banai stared at Mr. Durchschlag. Mr. Durchschlag stared back and nodded.

“Modesty of dress and modesty of voice, by these measures a woman protects a man. That is her job. Her very fortification keeps a man advised of his, let's call it, potentiality. It is a partnership. Now, ask yourself: If one partner shirks her duty, who is to blame when the whole business falls apart?”

Meshulam wrapped an arm around the barrel and hugged it to his hip. “Rabbi,” he said, tightening his grip on the long-handled dustpan. “With all due respect, Rabbi, these are young religious girls.”

“Religious. Religious?” Mr. Durchschlag underscored each repetition of the word with a wallop of the garbage barrel rim. “Religious?” His next question in store had been did Meshulam have a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a niece, a granddaughter? They would have named their female kin and reached a convergence in their viewpoints regarding strong words in crucial times. Meshulam would have helped him comb the dunes and recover the girl.

But now he saw that the tortuosity of argumentation required to lead this character towards the first glimmers of insight would require such an expenditure of time as would altogether preclude the finding of the girl intact.

“Meshulam, if you think I am ordained, Meshulam, if you think I am ordained to the rabbinate simply because of my clothing, just because of the hair sprouting from my face am I a rabbi, then you are liable to be the tail to any bearded head and you are more a pagan than a Jew. You are a primitive.” Mr. Durchschlag stopped hitting the rim of Meshulam's barrel and rubbed his smarting palm on his pants. “You will not, Meshulam,” he said, “you will not, however, interfere with my educational methods. You will not so much
as touch the door which stands between you and my girls whom I am testing on their honor. Go wipe women's toilets.”

Shoving open the lobby doors, Mr. Durchschlag shouted to the janitor that he was going out to recite the afternoon prayers in the open air. His thin soles banged over the concrete pavement of the enclosed front yard. The heavy gate was chained for safety, so he scaled it, catching his pants cuff on one of the pointed posts as he came down the other side, barely escaping injury. He clung to the gate as he slid down it. For a moment after his feet had touched the asphalt he remained in this embrace. Then he let go and ran. He had taken only a few bounds outside when the black pavement dove under the gray sands and disappeared.

It would be easier to walk on the road but he could not risk being seen. The sands sucked at his footsteps and slowed him as he climbed over the first dune. Standing in the cleft between it and the next he could see nothing but ungenerous soil, pebbled, briery. When he looked down he saw that even he blended in. His black trousers had paled, his white shirt darkened. He resumed his climbing, scaling the next rise. He would tell his wife they had sent him on a field day. She would wash his clothes tonight, press them, starch his collar, and drape the garments, restored, over his chair for the next morning. He would like an egg sandwich for tomorrow's lunch. He must mention that before she had fixed yellow cheese and margarine again.

His thighs ached from the battle with the sands. On the fourth or fifth peak he stopped again to look around. The sky was whitened with the glare of a late spring sun. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and his hand came away damp and gritty. He could hear the sea, still distant. He could smell it, seaweed and tar. He was an idiot for thinking he could find her. Through the window of a bus the dunes did not disclose their sprawl as they began to, now. But she would keep to the road. She wouldn't dare stray very far off the road. He moved on, wresting his feet again and
again from the hungry sand, keeping his eyes trained on the road, which exposed itself between the dunes in black wedges glistening with illusory puddles. The sound of the sea rose to a dull headachy rumble, or else his own blood pounded in his ears.

When a hand touched his shoulder, he fell. A bale of brambles pierced the soft skin behind his knees through his trousers. Shards of seashells cut his palms.

“Shifra,” he said.

“I can be a Shifra,” said the woman. “Whatever you want, Rabbi. I can wear my skirt like a kerchief on my head. I'll say a blessing. I remember lots from Grandma. Want to hear one?”

Mr. Durchschlag looked up and directly looked down again because her shimmering skirt hijacked the eye with a green bird-feather shimmer, which evanesced to reveal everything else. Where her thighs would rub together walking a prickly pink rash had erupted. Above the rash the skin was smooth as a boiled egg.