The Promise (37 page)

I took the chair next to the desk and watched as he read the paper carefully and made an occasional correction, then graded it with the words “very good” in Hebrew and placed it on the pile of papers he had already read. He screwed the cap back onto the pen and sat back in his chair.

“Did you have a good day, Reuven?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“They are very fine people.”

“He asked what was happening in your school.”

He looked at me and blinked his eyes. Then he smiled sadly. “I do not recognize my school these days. I am afraid that the good reviews of the book that are beginning to appear now in the scholarly journals have added to the anger of my opponents. The shouting drowns out the learning. The school has become almost—intolerable.” He spoke softly. I had expected raging anger to accompany those words. Instead he seemed strangely at ease. His next words jarred me. “I will probably be leaving my school,” he
said quietly. “I am too old and too tired to continue teaching in such an atmosphere of repression.”

I stared at him, and again there was the feeling of a world coming apart and rage against silent walls.

“Inquiries are being made in my behalf,” he went on with a smile, his eyes twinkling suddenly behind their steel-rimmed glasses. “You will be surprised when I tell you.”

“What inquiries?”

“Hirsch University is planning a graduate department in rabbinic studies. I was informed by telephone this morning that there are those who are interested in having me on that faculty.”

I felt amazement and the sudden steep mounting of joy. “At
Hirsch
?”

My father laughed. “Yes,” he said.

“With Rav Kalman around?”

“Your Rav Kalman is not the only voice at Hirsch.”

“I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. A graduate department in rabbinics with Rav Kalman around.”

“It will be a very small department. But they want to begin in September.”

I was so overjoyed that I sprang from the chair and made a quick circle of the study. There was happiness and, deep inside me, a sense of vengeance too. What incredible irony! My father teaching at Hirsch University! I sat back down again and stared at my father.

He laughed again, softly. “It is all very secret and only at the very first stages of negotiation. We will see. It will be interesting to see what can be done at your school with modern Jewish scholarship. Now, will you join me for a glass of tea, Reuven? I think I would enjoy a glass of tea.”

That was the first night in weeks that I slept deeply and without dreams.

Two days later, Rav Kalman asked me to remain behind after class. He waited until everyone was gone, then lit a cigarette and sat down behind his desk. I sat across from him, waiting, feeling uncomfortable and eager to get away.

“It has come to my attention,” he said, “that you have been seeing Gordon ”

I was surprised at how calm I felt as I told him yes, I had been seeing Professor Gordon.

He stroked his beard. “You are aware of my feelings toward Gordon?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” I said.

“I have told you that Gordon is in cherem.” His voice had risen. But he seemed to be making an effort to control himself.

I did not say anything.

He stared down at his closed Talmud. His short, thick-shouldered body seemed suddenly to shrink into itself. I thought I heard him sigh.

“You will continue to see Gordon?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, very quietly.

He regarded me in silence a moment, his eyes dark. “You are seeing Gordon for—personal reasons?” he asked.

“He is a friend,” I said.

“And the cherem means nothing?”

I told him I did not consider the cherem valid. He began to stiffen. I could see his mouth fall open and his eyes flashing with sudden anger. Speaking very softly, I added that there were also medical reasons involved. My decision to disobey the cherem had been based on a medical reason, I said. I was giving Rav Kalman the legal sanction found within Jewish law that permits one to disregard the strictures of excommunication.

The anger died away immediately. “A medical reason?” His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

I told him I could not discuss it.

“I have heard that the young son of Abraham Gordon is ill. You are involved with the son?”

I told him again that I could not discuss it, and wondered where he had heard about Michael.

He nodded briefly. I glanced at my wristwatch. He sensed my impatience but ignored it.

“Malter,” he said quietly, “you are planning to leave the yeshiva?”

I looked at him and realized I was no longer frightened of the truth and told him that I had not yet made up my mind.

He seemed to cringe at that. His dark beard quivered and he closed his eyes a moment, then opened them quickly.

“You are reading the books of Gordon?” he asked.

“I read them last year.”

“You told me you have not read them.”

“I did not tell you the truth.”

He blinked his dark eyes. “Why?”

“I was afraid.”

He blinked his eyes again. “You are no longer afraid?”

“No.”

He smiled at that. He actually smiled. I saw his lips curve upward behind the dark beard. He seemed pleased.

I glanced again at my wristwatch and shifted impatiently on my chair. But he would not let me go.

“Malter,” he said quietly. “You are influenced by the books of Gordon?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t like his answers.”

“And the questions?”

“I ask the same questions.”

“You have answers?”

“No.”

“Where are you looking for answers?”

“Everywhere.”

“In the books of the goyim too?”

“Yes.”

He seemed about to say something but the door to the classroom opened and closed quietly and I turned to see who had come
in and it was Danny. I stared at him and closed my eyes and opened them again, but it was still Danny. He had on his coat, and his hat was tilted backward on his head, and he gave me a brief smile across the length of the room and came quickly toward us. I sat frozen to my chair and when I turned back to Rav Kalman I saw he had gotten to his feet and was standing behind his desk, a respectful look on his face as he gazed at Danny. That look on Rav Kalman’s face surprised me almost as much as Danny’s sudden presence in the room. I felt dazed and cold and found myself unable to do or say anything except sit there and watch what was going on in front of my eyes.

They shook hands. Rav Kalman nodded and smiled and seemed a little tense as he asked Danny to sit down.

“Excuse me for being late,” Danny said to him in Yiddish. “A teacher kept us longer than usual.”

Rav Kalman glanced at me, then looked back at Danny and asked him again, in a respectful tone of voice, to have a seat. Danny nodded, but waited. Rav Kalman sat down behind his desk. Then Danny sat down alongside me. His coat was still cold from the outside air. I could feel the cold coming off it and moving against my face and hands.

“How is your father?” Rav Kalman asked quietly.

“My father is well, thank you.”

“And your mother and brother?”

“They are as well as one can expect,” Danny said.

They were talking as if I were not in the room.

Rav Kalman’s cigarette had been reduced almost entirely to a smoldering stub of gray ash. He put it out in the ashtray and lit another cigarette immediately. I could see Danny watching him closely. Rav Kalman put the match into the ashtray. His voice was soft and respectful when he spoke.

“Nu, Rav Saunders. You said on the telephone you wanted to speak to me about the son of Gordon and your friend Malter.”

I stared at Danny. But he did not look at me. He was sitting on the chair, still wearing the coat and hat, his eyes looking very
calm but alert. Rav Kalman had addressed him as Rav Saunders because a year and a half ago Danny had received his smicha from the Hirsch Yeshiva. But I had never heard him called by his title before, and I had an uncomfortable sensation for a moment, because I thought he had been called by his father’s name—Reb Saunders.

“The son of Gordon is very sick,” Danny said quietly.

“It is permitted to ask what is the matter with him?”

“I am only able to tell you it is not a physical sickness.”

Rav Kalman’s eyes opened very wide and his face paled. “How do you know this?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“I know because I am treating him.”

Rav Kalman stared. “You are treating the son of Gordon?”

“Yes.”

“He is very sick?”

“We have failed with everything we have tried until now. We are now experimenting with a new way to help him.”

Rav Kalman stiffened. The fingers holding the cigarette went rigid, pinching the cigarette flat between them. “Experimenting?” he said in a loud, hoarse voice. “Experimenting?”

“Yes.”

“You are experimenting with the son of Gordon?”

I stared at him. His face was ashen and his body was quivering.

“He is very sick,” Danny said. “There is no choice but to try this new way.”

“Master of the Universe,” Rav Kalman breathed. “Master of the Universe.” His eyes closed. I thought he had fainted. But he opened his eyes immediately and put the cigarette into the ashtray with an abrupt gesture of his trembling hand.

“Reuven Malter knows this boy,” Danny went on softly. “It is important for the health of the boy that he continue to see the father.”

“You know this?”

“Yes.”

“You are sure of this?”

“Yes.”

“You are telling me this as a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Experiment,” Rav Kalman breathed. “Master of the Universe, what do you want from us?” He was staring down at the closed Talmud on his desk.

There was a momentary silence. Outside a bus went by, its tires loud on the asphalt-paved street.

Then Danny said, speaking gently, that in his judgment the cherem could not apply in my case and therefore he had not attempted to dissuade me when he had learned I was planning to see Abraham Gordon. He cited a passage of Talmud from the tractate
Moed Katan
, quoting it by heart. Rav Kalman nodded and said hollowly, “I know, I know.” Then Danny cited a passage in
Sanhedrin
about one of the Rabbis of the Talmud who had been excommunicated and had become seriously ill, and Rav Kalman nodded again. Then Danny quoted some passages from Maimonides about the laws of excommunication, and Rav Kalman quoted a passage from the code of laws written by Joseph Karo—and then the two of them became involved in a lengthy and involved discussion about the laws of excommunication and under what circumstances they could be abrogated, and at one point Rav Kalman said that a law Danny had referred to had been used elsewhere in the Talmud to make a point in an altogether different situation, and they went on from there to something else, and soon they were moving all through the vast span of Talmudic and post-Talmudic literature, discussing, debating, arguing about a complex variety of subjects that had nothing to do with excommunication or anything even remotely related to it. I sat and listened and remembered another time and other Talmudic discussions between Danny and his father, and it seemed the years had vanished and it was Reb Saunders sitting behind the desk, and then Rav Kalman was quoting from a passage of Talmud and I saw Danny smile and shake his head and say no, he had not quoted the passage accurately, and Rav Kalman stared at him as
Danny repeated the passage and indicated Rav Kalman had given the version found in one of the early medieval commentaries, and Rav Kalman smiled and nodded, looking very happy to have been caught in an error, and I stared at him and found myself strangely and deeply relieved to see the grief and the sadness gone from his face. I listened to the seesawing dialogue between them, and realized that the excommunication issue was over with now, they were no longer bothering with it at all, it had been resolved, and I felt a weight of darkness fall from me, and sat watching them, hearing their voices fill the room. They went on like that for a long time, and then I saw Danny lean forward and give me a glance and nod, as if to say, “Now, listen!” and he waited until Rav Kalman finished giving his explanation of a very difficult passage in a Mishnah and then said quietly that the explanation seemed to him a little difficult because there was another Mishnah that appeared to contradict it, but he thought the following explanation was something worth considering. I knew that Mishnah and its difficulties and I also knew how tortuously—and, it seemed to me, unsuccessfully—the Gemara had attempted to resolve them, but Danny’s explanation was simple and brilliant, and ran absolutely counter to the words of the Gemara. In a traditional Talmudic disputation you never offered an explanation of a Mishnah that contradicted the Gemara. Nothing could contradict the Gemara. Rav Kalman looked astonished. But before he could say anything, Danny added that he had offered the explanation given by the Vilna Gaon. Rav Kalman’s mouth fell open. He smiled. Yes, yes, he knew of that explanation. Now that the son of the Dubrover—he was referring to Reb Saunders by the name of the Russian town Dubrov where he had once served as rebbe before bringing his people to America—now that the son of the Dubrover mentioned it, he remembered the words of the Gaon; but he did not really think the Gaon’s explanation went against the Gemara—and he launched into an involved and hopeless attempt to reconcile the two explanations. Danny listened and
nodded and smiled and said nothing. With that, the discussion came to an end.