The Promise (16 page)

“He’s picking on you,” Irving Goldberg said mournfully. “Why is he picking on you?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” I said.

“You’re the best Gemora head in the class,” another student said. “He always picks on those he loves.”

“This isn’t something to joke about,” Irving Goldberg said.

I put on my coat. They crowded around me, waiting.

“All right,” I said. “You want a public announcement. Here’s a public announcement. I have not applied to the Frankel Seminary.”

There were embarrassed smiles.

“They didn’t believe me,” Irving Goldberg said somberly.

“An unreliable witness,” a student said in Hebrew, using the Talmudic term.

“You were really only working on your father’s book?” another classmate said.

I looked at them. They stared back at me. The overhead fluorescents were reflected in their glasses; their faces seemed pale.

“You are all practicing to become future Rav Kalmans,” I said.

There were more embarrassed smiles.

“He’s got the whole school infected,” I said.

“Not the whole school,” someone said.

“Don’t talk like that, Reuven,” someone else said. “He’s our Rav.”

“I’m tired,” I said. “I haven’t slept much this week. And I’ve got to go teach. I’ll see you all for the next musar message.”

I left them there, bought an afternoon paper in a candy store across the street, and caught a bus. Inside the bus I read the paper, dozed for a few minutes, then woke and looked out the window at the streets. Dense clouds covered the sky. I sat there and stared out the window at the gray streets and did not look at the clouds.

I was tense and weary to the point of near exhaustion by the time Shabbat came that week. I almost fell asleep at the Shabbat meal on Friday night. I went to bed immediately after my father and I chanted the Grace and I tossed all night with ugly dreams but they slid steeply out of me and evaporated when I woke in the morning. I found myself heavy-lidded and nodding into sleep during the services, and later, after the meal, I went back to bed and slept and there were more dreams, and I woke late in the afternoon and felt my pillow cold with sweat, but I could remember nothing. My father and I said very little to one another all through that Shabbat.

Because Sunday Talmud classes at Hirsch ended at one in the afternoon, the period of preparation ran from nine to a few minutes before eleven, and the shiur ran from eleven to one. The next morning Rav Kalman called on me again. I saw my classmates exchange grim looks. I began to read. He let me read and explain for a long time. All the while he paced back and forth, smoking. Then he stopped me on a passage I had struggled with during the period of preparation and still did not clearly understand.

I started to give him one of the commentaries on the passage. He stopped me again.

“I did not ask you for the Maharsha, Malter. What do the words mean? Explain the words. Can you explain the words?”

I tried to put the words together as best I could; they did not hang together properly; there was clearly something wrong with the text.

“Explain it again, Malter,” Rav Kalman said. “Make it clearer. It is not yet clear.”

I explained it again. Then I was silent. He stood stiffly behind the desk. “You cannot explain it better? No. I see you cannot. Can anyone explain it better?”

His question was answered with a stonelike silence.

He put his cigarette into the ashtray. “American students,” I heard him mutter to himself. Then he launched into a loud and lengthy explanation of the passage. It was clever; it was very clever. But it took no account of some of the grammatical difficulties in the text.

“You understand now, Malter?”

I hesitated.

“You understand?”

I nodded.

“Yes? Good. Now tell us what the Maharsha says.” And he paced back and forth as I went wearily through the explanation offered by the commentary.

At supper that night I mentioned the passage to my father.

“What do you think it means, Reuven?”

I told him I thought the text was wrong.

“And how would you correct it?”

I emended three of the words and rearranged a segment of the passage.

His eyes shone and he smiled proudly. “Very good, Reuven. Very good. The passage has been written on extensively.” And he cited some articles in scholarly journals in which the passage had been discussed at great length. Two of the articles, he said, had emended the text in precisely the way I had suggested. And my father agreed that this probably had once been the correct text.

At that point Manya, who had been standing patiently by the stove listening to us talk, told us in her broken English to eat, the food was getting cold. We ate.

After supper, my father went into his study to grade examination papers and I sat in my room at my desk and worked on a paper I was doing for a symbolic logic course. It was a complicated paper on epistemological assumptions and primitives in logistical systems, and I was enjoying it thoroughly. When the phone rang I looked at my watch and was surprised to discover it was almost eleven o’clock. The sound of the phone echoed shrilly in the hall of the apartment. I went out of my room, wondering who would be calling so late at night, and lifted the receiver.

“Reuven?” a voice said very faintly.

“Yes.”

“Reuven Malter?”

“Yes.”

“Hello, Reuven.”

“Hello. I can barely hear you. Who is this?”

“Is this Reuven Malter?”

“Yes. I can’t hear you. We must have a bad connection.”

“No. The connection is all right. I can’t talk loud. This is Michael. I’m not allowed to phone without permission.”

“Michael,” I heard myself say, and sank slowly into the chair next to the phone stand. I felt cold with shock.

“Do you remember me, Reuven?”

“Of course I remember you.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m surprised. I didn’t expect—should you be calling if it’s not allowed?”

“I need to talk to you, Reuven. I hate to be sneaky, but I need to talk to you. Can I talk to you, Reuven?”

“Sure you can talk to me.”

“You have to promise you won’t tell anyone. I don’t want anyone to know I broke the rules. Will you promise?”

I did not say anything. I found I was pressing the phone hard against my ear in order to hear him better. The cartilage of my ear ached. I moved the phone away slightly.

“Reuven?” I heard him say. “Reuven?”

“Yes.”

“You have to promise.”

“All right.”

“I don’t want anyone to think I’m breaking the rules. Some of the people here are very nice. I don’t want them to feel hurt.”

“You have my promise, Michael.”

I heard a rustling, clicking sound in the phone. Then there was silence. But the connection did not seem dead.

“Michael,” I said. “Michael.” Then louder, “Michael.”

The silence of the phone was terrifying. I felt the skin prickle on my arms and on the back of my neck.

Then I heard a frantic whisper. “Someone is coming. Wait. Don’t hang up.” Then, again, silence.

The door to my father’s study opened slowly. My father came into the hall. He stood in the hall, looking at me. The hand with which I was holding the receiver began to tremble.

“There is news about Michael?” my father asked softly. “I heard you mention Michael.”

I put my other hand over the mouthpiece.

“Michael is on the phone,” I said. “He’s calling from the treatment center.”

“Reuven?” I heard Michael say. “Are you still there?”

My father stared at me.

I took my hand away from the mouthpiece. “Yes.”

“He’s gone. Whoever it was is gone. He didn’t come in.” His straining, whispering voice sounded tremulous with relief. “I don’t want them to catch me. Reuven, are you all right? Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes, I’m all right.”

“Why don’t you come to visit me? You’ve never once come to visit me.”

I gripped the phone tightly and did not say anything. My father walked silently past the door to my room and stood between me and the framed pictures of Herzl, Bialik, and Chaim Weizmann that hung from the wall.

“Reuven,” Michael said.

“I’m here, Michael.”

“Don’t you want to visit me, Reuven?”

“I asked if I could visit you. They said only your family was allowed to visit.”

There was a momentary silence. “Who said you couldn’t visit?” He was still whispering. But his voice had changed. It was hard, suspicious.

I did not know what to do. I did not know whether it would upset him more if I continued talking to him and answered his questions or if I told him I could not talk to him at all because he did not have permission to call me. I did not know how much I could tell him. I did not know whether I could tell him anything.

Michael’s tight whisper came clearly through the phone. “Who said that, Reuven?”

I felt it impossible to tell him we could not continue talking. So I told him Danny’s supervisor had not wanted me to visit until the period of adjustment was over. I did not know whether I was saying the right thing or not. I did not know what else to tell him.

I thought I heard a soft laugh and the muttered words “period of adjustment.” Then I heard him whisper, “He’s a jerk. I can’t stand him. Dr. Altman is a jerk. I’m driving him crazy. I thought
I’d be talking to your friend. But they want me to talk to Dr. Altman. Reuven, listen. Do you want to visit me?”

“Yes,” I heard myself say.

“I thought you didn’t want to, so I didn’t say anything. Now I’ll tell them I want to see you. They’ll let you come. Will you come, Reuven?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be glad to see you. I hate this place. Remember the times we went sailing? I think of them a lot. I hate this place.” The words were tumbling out of him in angry, rushing whispers. “Some of the kids I go to school with here are awful. We have school right here. I really want to see you, Reuven. I’m going to scream my head off. They’ll let you come.”

His voice was considerably louder than a whisper now. He sounded deeply agitated.

“Michael, take it easy,” I said. “Calm down.”

“Remember the roller coaster?” he said. “Remember the first time we went sailing?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still seeing Rachel?” he asked abruptly.

I hesitated.

“Reuven?”

“No,” I said. “But we’re still friends.”

“You’re not seeing her?” The agitation was suddenly out of his voice. He sounded strangely relieved.

“No.”

There was a pause.

“Reuven,” he said. “Listen. I want you to bring something when you come.”

I did not say anything. My father stood very quietly, looking at me.

“Promise me you’ll bring it,” Michael said.

“Bring what?”

“There’s a newspaper I want you to find and bring me. Promise me you’ll bring it.”

“What newspaper?”

He told me. I held the phone and said nothing.

“Reuven?”

“Let me think about it.”

“Please.”

“I want to think about it.”

“It’s only a newspaper, Reuven.” His voice was suddenly angry. “For God—” His voice broke off. Then I heard a barely audible whisper. “Please visit me, Reuven. Good-bye.”

There was a click. The line went dead.

I hung up the phone. The palms of my hands were icy with sweat. I looked at my father. “I’ve got to talk to you,” I said quietly.

He nodded and without a word walked quickly to his study. I followed. Michael’s whispered voice echoed inside my head. You
have to promise you won’t tell anyone. You have to promise
. My father went around the desk and sat down in his chair. The desk was large, with dark polished wood, deep drawers, and a green, leather-bordered blotter that covered almost its entire top. The blotter was piled high with papers. The room was dark, except for the goose-necked desk lamp, which cast a large, bright circle of light across the desk top and onto the gray-carpeted floor. My father sat behind the desk and regarded me intently. I told him about the conversation with Michael.

He was quiet a very long time after I was done talking. His eyes were dark and he seemed deeply troubled.

“That is the copy of the newspaper that contains Rav Kalman’s article,” he said.

“Which article?”

“The attack on Abraham Gordon.” I did not say anything.

“How did he find out about that article?” my father murmured. “It was published two weeks ago.”

I told him I didn’t know.

“I think you should call Danny,” my father said. “You cannot
undertake the responsibility of keeping this call a secret. You should call Danny.”

“I promised Michael I—”

“You should call Danny. You must not conceal this from Danny. Michael is ill. You are not bound by a promise made under such a circumstance.”

Michael’s frantic whispering was still in my ears. It was as if I were still listening to him over the phone.

“Call Danny,” my father said. “Immediately.”

“It’s after eleven o’clock, abba.”

“I know what time it is, Reuven. Call Danny.”

I got slowly to my feet.

“Tell him everything, Reuven. You must not conceal anything.”