White Tiger on Snow Mountain (11 page)

The next few days felt like I had a fever. It was hotter than ever and my mind felt stuck, half melted and struggling to move. It would take me an hour to get through a page of
On the Genealogy of Morals.
Then I’d fall asleep, just for a moment, for a single breath, and have a long dream. Once I was in Turin with Nietzsche, when he was mad, walking in the town square. He put his arm around me. “
Cómo está?
” he asked, in Spanish I guess, but in my dream this was Italian. “I am God,” he said, happily. “I made this farce.”

I hadn’t seen Leah after the service. I guess the women left earlier, while the men stayed all day, and my vision of her reading the poem faded and became as unbelievable as my Nietzsche dream. I spent a lot of time out on the step with Merv, but I didn’t mention Leah, although my mind ceaselessly repeated her name. What would I say? The whole thing was better off forgotten. Still, when Wednesday came and I went to the rabbi’s house to get my pay, all my nerves were shaking
and a drop of sweat fell from my forehead as I knelt to tie my sneakers on his walk.

The rabbi lived just two streets west of me, on a block parallel to my own, but I had never been down it. The house was small, with a sloped shingle roof and a porch. The garden was rich but overgrown, a nest of wildflowers and vines and weeds, twining together without pattern. The rabbi answered the door himself. His arms were white as chicken in the short-sleeved white dress shirt, and I saw the knots of his tefillin hanging out. He sat me down in his book-choked back office and insisted, vehemently, that I drink hot tea with him, that it would cool me down. He served it in a glass with a lump of sugar on the side.

The floor was crooked, I saw sand and pennies glittering between the warped boards, and the stuffing in my chair was shot. I had to lurch forward to grab my tea, and a little splash burned my arm. I rested my eyes on the books. They were stacked everywhere, the desk, the floor, the couch, all Hebrew, and those rows of unknowable letters calmed me down. It was a relief to look at something beautiful without straining to comprehend it. There was a photo of a woman tucked between the volumes on a shelf. She was standing in the garden, which looked even more overgrown than it was now. It teemed with crazy flowers, blues and reds by her feet and the yellow heads of sunflowers nodding from necks taller than hers. She wore a head scarf and a printed apron over her dress. The sun blanched her face, made it indistinct, but the shape of the forehead and the dark smudges of the eyes were Leah’s.

“Is that your wife?”

“Yes, that’s my Miriam,
alav hashalom.
”

I must have smiled blankly because he leaned forward and patted my hand.

“In Hebrew this means she should rest in peace.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No, no. She’s been dead now twenty-four years.” Leah, he told me, had been a late last child, a surprise and they’d thought a blessing. But Miriam had died giving birth to Leah, who came with her twisted leg. Now the two lived alone in the house. His three other daughters, much older, were all long grown and married.

“You must miss her.”

He shrugged. “I see Miriam every night in my dreams. And I hear her in the garden, singing. I haven’t touched that garden since she died, but it just keeps blooming. Once, when I had a fever, she even made me one of her special teas. Better than this we’re drinking.”

“Sorry?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling at his thoughts. His teeth were chipped and yellow. “I was lying in bed, and Leah brought me a pot of tea. When I tasted it, I was amazed. It was the tea my wife made, a special mixture only she knew. I drank it, and in the morning I was fine. I asked Leah, how did you know to make your mother’s tea? She said, Daddy, you were dreaming. It was just Lipton’s. But when I checked the pot, there it was, the herbs in the bottom. And in the garden those plants were cut.”

“What did Leah say?”

“I didn’t tell her. It would make her sad.” He put his sugar
in his mouth and crunched it, then raised the steaming glass to his lips.

There was no sign of Leah, and by the time the rabbi escorted me out, I was in despair. Pushing my way through the garden—it seemed to have grown denser since I came—I felt something, a leaf, a bug, brush my neck and I turned. There was Leah, in a window, watching me from the curtains. The sun was high, and the sky’s reflection flashed on the glass. The truth was, all I saw clearly was blue air and clouds and a white gem of light with only the faintest silhouette of a girl behind it, a pale oval face framed by stirring lace. Still, I reached into my pocket and slipped out the page of Keats I had carefully cut out for her, “Ode to a Nightingale,” and had folded again and again into a tiny bundle. I waved blindly and, hoping she was watching me and the rabbi wasn’t, I dropped it in the tall grass.

“What are you waving for?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing. I just saw Leah.”

He laughed again. “Go lie down. You’re dreaming. Leah’s at the market.”

But I couldn’t rest. I rolled around on my mattress until the damp sheets were strangling me. I went to the sink and splashed water on my head. I watched moths bounce against my screens. After two nights like this, I decided to stalk her. I knew I was acting crazy, but I didn’t care. I had to get this thought out of my head. I crouched behind a parked car up the block, where I had a clear view of their house. After an hour, the car’s owner appeared and I had to pretend that I was looking for a lost necklace.

“I’m sure it was here,” I told the guy in the Lakers jacket and cap. My legs were asleep, and I stumbled around, head bowed low over the strip of grass by the curb. “You didn’t see it?” I asked him. “It had a little charm shaped like a dog? It was my mother’s.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Good luck.” When he drove off, I saw Leah standing on the sidewalk by her house and staring at me. She turned abruptly and headed down the block.

“Wait,” I called and went after her, but my legs were still numb and she moved surprisingly fast, considering her jerky, off-center sway. She was appalled, of course, to see me hobbling behind her, but I caught her by the corner, where she had to stop for the light.

“Leah, wait, please.”

“What?” she demanded, catching her breath. “What are you following me for? It’s Shabbos tonight. I’ve got to get to the bakery.”

“It’s Friday?” I’d completely forgotten. I could’ve waited to see her at the shul. I had to shower and get ready myself. “What time is it now? My watch stopped.”

She sighed with exasperation and, checking both ways, undid a button on her blouse. She reached in and pulled out two folded pages, wrinkled and pressed flat like flowers in a book.

“Here,” she said. “Take these.” She pushed them into my hand—the Keats odes, still warm.

“You found this?” I asked. “How did you know I left it for you?”

She glared at me. “What do you mean? It was sitting on my front step when I got home. Thank God my father didn’t find it first.”

“But how did you know you’d see me today?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how did you know to bring them now?”

She blushed. Her throat turned crimson, and the blood rose quickly to her cheeks. “I didn’t. I was afraid to leave them anywhere, in case my father saw. Now just please leave me alone. My God, if he saw us.”

“No, wait, you don’t understand. If you knew the truth about me . . .”

“I know enough,” she said and turned to go. I wanted to grab her hand, but restrained myself. I wanted to shout, “I’m a Jew. A Jew!” but now that seemed even worse: I’d denied my people and desecrated the Sabbath just to make a little cash. I watched her race away from me, her dark hair coming undone, her hips rising and falling.

Leah didn’t come to shul that night. The rabbi arrived alone and said she was sick with the flu, a fever and a headache. “I guess it’s going around,” he said. “How are you feeling? Better?”

“Fine,” I blurted guiltily, but I felt like I was dying. I hoped I was, anyway. I sat through the service and actually paid attention for the first time, keeping my eyes on the rabbi and off the balcony. It helped a little. The sound of those words I couldn’t understand relaxed me, the prayers like songs, beautifully meaningless.

Leah wasn’t there the next day either, and when I got out of synagogue, I went straight to the Saloon. There was a line of people waiting, but when she saw me, Olga squeezed me in.

“Darling, you look awful,” she said, easing me into the chair and resting my head on the sink. “You need a nice shampoo.” I
sighed as the hot water washed over me. “You know what else you need?” Olga whispered as she lathered me up. “A manicure. Sonya over there gives a great manicure.” I opened one eye. A buxom girl with long dark hair was polishing an old lady’s nails. “She just moved from Russia,” Olga went on. “She needs a nice Jewish husband.”

“Maybe next week,” I said, eyes closed.

Again that night I paced in my cage, thinking, thinking. I went by Merv’s, but he was out. I sat on his step and was trying, with the help of a cigarette, to breathe, when I thought I heard a voice come from the bushes.

“Larry?” it whispered.

I looked closely. No feet were sticking out tonight. The shrub just looked at me like I was crazy, mad as Moses in his desert.

“Larry?” it called again, softly, and I answered, softly, “What?”

Leah stood up and pushed her way out, brushing the twigs from her hair.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her. She threw her arms around me and began kissing me randomly, blindly, kissing my cheeks, nose, chin.

“Leah,” I said, guiding her back across the dirt yard to my place. “I can’t believe you came.”

“I had to. I couldn’t stand it. I snuck out. But I didn’t know which house was yours.”

“Leah, I have to tell you, you don’t understand about me.”

“I know, I know everything, my love. I know you’re not Jewish and you don’t even believe in God. I know you don’t care about my father. You don’t care about anything. Good. I won’t
either. I’m glad you’re a goy and an atheist who lives like an animal and doesn’t care about what God or people think.”

Animal! This was news to me. I looked at my dusty mattress, my cardboard carton of clothes, and the bigger carton I used as a table.

“Who said animal, your dad?”

“I know it because that’s me too. I knew it all my life. I was just waiting for a reason to go. For you. I want to run away with you. I want to live and work and go to school and read books with you. And I want to have sex.”

After that I said nothing because she took off her clothes, everything, she just peeled it all off and stood before me completely naked, looking me right in the eye and smiling, with her fists at her sides, like she was going to enjoy this fight. She looked so happy and brave. Afterward, we fell asleep, still clutching each other tightly, as if in fear, but my sleep was calm and without dreams. When I woke up, I felt as if I’d slept for a week.

Being careful not to wake Leah, I found my shirt and pants, stepped into my shoes, and went to see the rabbi. Halfway down the block, I realized that I hadn’t brushed my teeth. Fuck it, I thought. There’s no turning back now. The sun was out again and the morning smog was crystalline. The leaves and the grass blades were lit and blurred, the car windows like dusty mirrors. I found him in the study in the back of his house, head bent, beard in a book.

“Excuse me, Rabbi. Can I talk to you?”

He looked up from the book, his beard keeping the place. He smiled. “What are you doing here on Sunday? Today you should be resting and I should be coming to turn on the air.”

I smiled back. “But I came to you for advice.”

“Ah, you’re not hot enough? You want my hot air too? OK, good, sit, sit.” He waved impatiently at the worn chairs. “You make me nervous standing like a soldier.”

I sat in my chair. A feather jumped out of the cushion with a little sigh. My hands were sweating. Those brown eyes, the same as Leah’s, were beaming at me from the photo. Or did they look mad? I took a breath and said it: “Rabbi, I’m in love with a Jewish girl. She’s from a very pious home, so I’m sure her family will be upset. I don’t want to hurt them, but I love her. What do you think I should do?”

The rabbi’s face showed nothing. “The girl, she feels the same?”

“Yes, Rabbi.”

“How can you know it’s love?”

“Because from the moment I saw her, I’ve felt sick all the time. No, that’s not what I mean.” I waved my hands, as if to erase that line, then slumped back in my chair. “I don’t know how I know. It’s a mystery.”

He didn’t speak, but his fingers and his lips moved a little, tapping the book, chewing his beard. His eyes focused on the space above my head, as if the truth were there in a cartoon bubble. Suddenly, he leapt up and came around the desk. I thought he was going to hit me. With that withered little body and those soft, white hands, it would’ve been like a child throwing a fistful of rose petals at me, but still, I would not have been able to bear it. Instead he sat on the other chair, which gasped and then exhaled deeply.

“Let’s talk turkey,” he said. “We’re in Los Angeles here. It’s not Minsk, thank God. If she goes with you, I can’t stop her.”
He shrugged. “This one I could never control anyway. She’s wild. Like her mother was. But you, you think you can do better? How will you support her? How long do you think she’ll be happy, living on air? She’s a princess. Raised to be a queen. No offense, but she’s stronger than you are, believe me. She’ll crush you.”

“It’s true,” I said. “She’s a queen.”

“Like her mother,” he said again. I said nothing. We both looked down, and a moment passed there between us.

“Why don’t you convert?” the rabbi said mildly, as if suggesting fish for lunch.

“What?” I looked up, to see if he was smiling, but he wasn’t.

“Become a Jew,” he told me, calmly. “Become a Jew and I’ll give you my blessing. Then I’ll help you with the money. I’ll send you to study. To become a rebbe.”

“Me?”

“Why not you? I knew it when I met you, that God had sent you to me for some reason. Maybe this is it. Who can understand God? We can only follow the path that he has written in our hearts. Now, I think I can see what he wrote in yours: ‘Become a Jew. Marry Leah.’ ”