The Righteous Men (2006) (37 page)

Slowly, the rabbi turned back a page. ‘Chapter 10, Verse 25.’

Instantly, TC reached into her bag and pulled out her pile of Post-it notes,
written after the text message clues had led them to Proverbs 10. She thumbed
through them until she found the one she wanted. She smiled and passed it to
Will.

Verse 25: As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more; but the
righteous is as an everlasting foundation.

‘A foundation,’ said TC quietly. Now looking at Will: ‘The
righteous men are the foundation on which the world stands. Without them, the
world collapses.’

‘Tova Chaya has summarized it well. There is some discussion about the
origin of the idea. Some scholars think it dates back to Abraham’s
argument with the Almighty over the people of Sodom.’

TC could tell Will did not know of any such argument and that Rabbi
Mandelbaum was not about to explain it. She stepped in. ‘Basically, God
was about to destroy the entire city of Sodom because they had become sinful,’
she said in a semi-whisper, keen to get this out of the way rather than opening
up a new discussion with her old teacher. ‘Abraham tries to make a deal,
proposing that if he, Abraham, can find fifty good people in the town, then God
should spare it. God agrees and then Abraham starts negotiating. In that case,
he says, if you’d save it for fifty, then what about forty? God agrees to
that, too. They keep haggling until finally Abraham has beaten God down to ten
good men. OK, God says, find me ten good people and I’ll save Sodom. So
that establishes the principle that, so long as there are some truly righteous people
around, the rest of us are OK. We’re saved because they are in the world.’

Rabbi Mandelbaum picked up the thread. ‘There is some dispute about
the exact numbers. Some say thirty, some say forty-five. But from the fourth
century or so, the number becomes settled on thirty-six. As Rabbi Abaye writes,
“There are in the world not less than thirty-six righteous persons in every
generation upon whom the
Shekhina
rests”.’

‘Sorry. What was that word?’

‘My apologies. The
Shekhina
is God’s radiance, the Divine
Countenance.’

Still in a semi-whisper, TC said: ‘It refers to the outward appearance
of God. It’s kind of like a divine light,’ adding with what Will
felt sure was pride, ‘it’s feminine.’

‘I want to be sure I understand this correctly,’ Will began, haltingly.
‘Jewish teaching holds that there are thirty-six people alive at any one
time who are truly righteous. They may be hidden away in obscurity, doing
humdrum jobs, living flawed, even sinful lives. But, quietly and in secret,
they perform acts of extraordinary goodness. And so long as they’re around,
we’re all OK. They keep the world afloat.’ Will finally understood
the last clue: the statue of Atlas at the Rockefeller Center, carrying the
whole universe on his shoulders.

‘Which means,’ he said, his voice slowing, ‘that if they were
not around, for whatever reason, it would, literally, be the end of the world.’

Heavily and slowly, the aged rabbi nodded. ‘I’m afraid that’s
exactly what it means.’

S
o this was why people were
dying. For nothing more than a bizarre, quasi-biblical legend. The waste of
life struck Will with new force: what insanity, what cruelty, for Howard Macrae
or Pat Baxter to be murdered in the name of a lunatic fantasy. The end of the
world indeed! It was obviously nonsense. Who could seriously believe thirty-six
people kept the world alive? Will had not breathed in the empirical, sceptical air
of Oxford for nothing. He had been taught to dismiss such bunkum out of hand:
it made more sense to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

And yet what he thought was surely irrelevant. Someone obviously did believe
it — with an intensity that made them ready to kill wholly innocent men,
all over the world. If this was the killers’ motive, what did it matter
whether it was rational or not?

That was what Will told himself. But still something nagged.

Something about this man and his books; something about the respect TC had
for him. Something about TC, Tova Chaya, herself. These people were not bug-eyed
maniacs. They were keepers of an ancient tradition which had endured since the city
of Sodom. The story of the thirty-six had been passed down quietly, generation
after generation, from the days of Abraham through centuries of wanderings from
Babylon to eastern Europe and, now, to America. Jews were not cranks, latching
onto fantasies; not as far as he knew. His conversations with TC had always
projected the same impression: that Judaism was not concerned with the
supernatural, so much as with the way real human beings treated each other in
the here and now. They did not seem to believe in flying saucers or cripples
throwing away their crutches. They were more grounded than that. So if they
believed in the hidden presence of thirty-six good men, maybe there was a
reason.

Something else dulled Will’s usually sceptical instincts. If he had
not discovered it for himself, he would never have believed it. But Macrae and
Baxter, Samak in Bangkok and Curtis in London had fitted the rabbi’s
description perfectly. They had indeed performed acts of uncommon goodness and had
done so entirely in private. They had shunned publicity, just as the legend
demanded. (Will’s strong hunch was that, until he started digging, the
righteous acts of Baxter and Macrae, at least, had been entirely unknown.) The
four people he knew about had even disguised themselves as sinners, people who
would be reviled rather than revered. A pimp and a politician, for heaven’s
sake!

What if he accepted the existence of these
lamadvavniks
, just for the
sake of argument? That allowed a new thought to encroach. until that moment,
his sole interest had been in discovering how this strange, ancient story might
lead him back to his wife. Now he felt his hands go moist at a different notion.
If this myth had any grounding in reality, then the pursuit of the righteous
men was not just a cruel crime. It would also bring disaster upon the world.
For the first time he understood Rabbi Freilich’s words to him on the
telephone the previous evening.
Your wife matters to you, Mr Monroe, of course
she does. But the world, the creation of the Almighty, matters to me
.

Thirty-six
, thought Will. It was so few. Just thirty-six people on
the whole of this crowded, cramped planet, teeming with, what, six billion
people? Four men were dead, he knew that. Did that mean there were another
thirty-two dead, or dying, in far-off corners of the world, all but unnoticed?

He remembered again his conversation with Rabbi Freilich.
An ancient
story is unfolding here, threatening an outcome that mankind has feared for
thousands of years
. So this is what he meant. The ancient story was the
legend of the
lamad vav
, the thirty-six righteous men. The outcome
feared for so long was nothing less than the end of the world.

Whoever had been sending those text messages knew all this, Will now
realized. While Rabbi Mandelbaum stretched for another book, Will stole a
glance at his cell phone, to look at the last message he had received. A
four-line poem, a quatrain.

Just men we are, our number few
Describable in digits two
We’re halved if these do multiply
If we few perish then all must die.

Just men … describable in digits two
. The two digits were three
and six.
If these do multiply
. Three times six was eighteen, half of
thirty-six: We’re halved. And the texter understood what was at stake.
If
we few perish then all must die
.

Will tried hard to compose himself. He wanted desperately to produce his
notebook, to start ordering all this information.

Still, he had to ask some questions.

‘These thirty-six? Are they all Jewish?’

‘Usually in’ Hassidic folk lore the
tzaddikim
are Jewish.
But this is more sociology than theology: who else did these
yidden
know? They knew only Jews. That was their entire world. In the early rabbinic
writings, there are different views on the identity of the
tzaddikim
.
Some believed they all lived in the land of Israel, some said that a portion
lived outside it; others said that the righteous men emerged from the
goyim
,
the Gentiles. There is no settled view. It could be all Jews, all non-Jews or a
mixture.’

‘But they’re always men?’

‘Always. On that the sources all agree. No doubt about that at all.
The
lamadvavniks
are all men.’

TC could read Will’s mind.
So why are they holding my Beth?

The truth was, Will was disappointed. Since the rabbi had first started
talking, Will had been trying to trace a path back to his wife and her
abduction. Even before he came here he had accepted that Macrae and Baxter were
connected, but he could not fathom their link to Beth. This theory of the thirty
six seemed bizarre and far-fetched, if not completely loopy, to Will, but at
least it might explain what was in the Hassidim’s mind. Perhaps for some
deluded reason, they had decided Beth was one of the righteous ones. Now he
knew that could not be true: she was the wrong sex. He was as mystified as ever.

A new question surfaced. He asked it as soon as he had thought of it.

‘Who would want to do such a thing? Who would want to bring about the
end of the world?’

‘Only one who was in thrall to the
Sitra Achra
.’

Will’s brow furrowed.

Rabbi Mandelbaum realized he needed to say more. I’m sorry, I’m
forgetting. The
Sitra Achra
means literally “the other side”.
In kabbalah, it is the phrase used to refer to the forces of evil.
Unfortunately, these are present all around us, every day and in everything.’

‘A bit like the devil, like Satan?’

‘No, not really. Because the
Sitra Achra
is not some external force
we can blame for everything that goes wrong. The power of the
Sitra Achra
derives from the actions of human beings. It is not Lucifer who brings evil
into the world. I’m afraid, Mr Monroe, it is us.’

‘Why would religious people, men of God, want to do such a thing
— to kill the righteous men?’

‘I cannot imagine why. You know, we Jews say that if you save a life
it is as if you have saved the whole world. So to kill any human being is a
great crime. The ultimate crime. To kill a
tzaddik
? That would be a
further desecration of the name of the Almighty. To kill more than one? To aim
to kill all of them? I cannot even contemplate such wickedness.’

‘No motive we can think of?’

‘I suppose it’s conceivable that someone very misguided might
want to test this belief to its limits. To see if it’s really true, that
the
lamad vav
maintain the world. If the
lamad vav
are all gone,
all not here, well then we will know, won’t we?’

‘Or they could believe it already,’ said Will. ‘Believe it
so much that they want to bring about the end of the world.’

In the silence that followed, Will was struck by something he had
half-noticed but had not thought about properly till now. For someone who had
just been confronted with such news, Rabbi Mandelbaum looked remarkably calm.
He remained in his chair, thumbing his books. As if this was a purely
theoretical problem.

Now it was the rabbi’s turn to read Will’s mind.

‘Anyway, no one could ever do it,’ the old man said, sighing as
he adjusted himself in his seat. ‘Because no one ever knows who the
lamadvavniks
are. That is their power.’

Will was ashamed to realize this was the one thing he had never thought of.
Thirty-six people, living in humble obscurity across the globe: how would
anyone know who they were? How had the killers of Macrae and Baxter found them?

‘The
tzaddik
is hidden, sometimes even from himself; he may
have no idea of his own nature. If a man does not know himself, who else can
know him?’

‘So no one has any idea who the thirty-six are? There’s no
secret list?’

The rabbi twinkled. ‘No, Mr Monroe, there’s no list. Tova Chaya,
behind you, can you pass me the book by Rebbe Yosef Yitzhok?’

Will started. He had heard so few familiar words since he had arrived in
this room, but this was a name he knew. TC caught his expression and whispered
a clarification.

That’s the name of a previous Rebbe. YY was named after him. He died
fifty years ago.’

‘All right the rabbi said, now fallen back into his chair. ‘This
is a kind of autobiography of the Rebbe. Here he describes the
tzaddikim
as if they were a secret society. He doesn’t refer to them explicitly as
the
lamadvavniks
, but that’s what he’s talking about. He
suggests these people, each stationed in a different city, were somehow the
founders of Hassidism.’ He turned away from the book, his eyes closed, as
if reading a text written inside his eyelids. Will realized he was dredging something
from his memory. ‘There is also the great Rabbi Leib Sorres. From the
eighteenth century. It was said of him that he was in secret contact with the
hidden just men, that he even made sure they were fed and clothed. They said
the same about the Baal Shem Tov, the recognized founder of Hassidism.’
His eyes opened. ‘But these are the exceptions. Generally, it is
understood that the hidden
tzaddikim
remain hidden. There are stories of
near misses, of
tzaddikim
about to meet another of their own kind, only
to miss out. And it’s assumed that one righteous man would have the
wisdom to recognize another. You know, he would somehow “feel the glow”.’
The rabbi cracked the smile Will had seen earlier, the one that belonged to the
playful, mischievous young man it seemed Rabbi Mandelbaum had once been. ‘But
generally, these men are out of view, from themselves, from each other, from
the rest of us.’