The Promise (20 page)

Half a dozen of us waited near the coat rack for almost twenty minutes until he came back into the synagogue. There was a grim look on his face.

“Well, he didn’t cripple you,” I said.

He reached for his coat.

“What happened?” someone asked.

“I apologized.”

“For twenty minutes?”

“He gave me a musar message.”

“Are you still in the class?” someone else asked.

He nodded gloomily.

“What did you do that for? You were crazy to do that.”

Abe Greenfield put on his coat and hat. “I got a math exam,” he said. “I got to go.”

“What did you do that for? Why didn’t you say you were sick?”

“I don’t lie,” Abe Greenfield said with dignity.

“What was the musar message?” I asked.

“Respect for teachers. And to make choices for Torah.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah. He was very nice about it.”

“
Nice
?” someone said. “Nice?”

“I got to go,” Abe Greenfield said.

We watched him walk from the synagogue.

“What a jerk,” the one next to me said. He used the uncomplimentary Yiddish word.

“Don’t talk like that,” Irving Goldberg said. He had been standing there all the time, silent and solemn.

“He’s a jerk.”

“That’s dirty talk,” Irving Goldberg said, using the Talmudic term “nibul peh.”

“He’s still a jerk.”

“Rav Kalman was nice,” someone else said. “Did you hear, Reuven? Rav Kalman was nice.”

“I heard.”

“He wasn’t thrown out of the class, so Rav Kalman was nice.”

“Maybe the Messiah has come,” another student said. “Maybe we ought to look out the window. Does it say anywhere the Messiah will come when it rains?”

I was suddenly weary of their talk. I put on my coat and hat. I wanted to get away from there. I wanted to sit in my logic class and forget Rav Kalman. I went quickly from the synagogue. Passing Rav Gershenson’s classroom, I glanced through the small window in the door. He was sitting behind his desk and as usual about half a dozen students were standing intimately around him. I could hear his gentle voice through the door.

Outside I felt the cold winter rain on my face and raised the collar of my coat. The asphalt street was black and glistening. There were puddles on the sidewalk. A bus went by close to the curb and sprayed water onto my shoes. I turned into the adjoining brownstone and started up the stairs to my logic class. I was ten minutes late.

I sat near the window and listened to the rain and stared at the blackboard, which was being rapidly covered with symbols by my logic professor, a tall, dignified-looking man in his forties. He had a brown mustache and wore a tweed suit, and he spoke softly as he wrote on the board. I listened to him talk and copied symbols into my notebook and thought of Rav Kalman. I was sick of Rav Kalman, sick of being picked on, sick of watching him pick on others, sick of the oppressive Eastern European ghetto atmosphere of his class, sick of his fanatic zeal for Torah. I had about four months left until the smicha examinations. That was a long time. I would control myself and be very careful. I would take the examinations and be done with him. But I would have to be very careful in class. I sat there and thought a while longer of Rav Kalman, and then began to forget Rav Kalman because an interesting problem in logic was being put on the blackboard, and soon I had forgotten completely about Rav Kalman and was lost in the convolutions of set theory.

There was a message for me on the telephone stand in the hall when I got home that evening. Danny had called a few minutes earlier and wanted me to call him back at the apartment. The message was in my father’s handwriting. I could hear his typewriter going in the study. He had begun working on another article. I put away my hat and coat and dialed Danny’s number. The phone was picked up after the first ring. Danny had arranged for me to visit Michael next Sunday at three o’clock. Was that okay? It was okay, I said.

“How is he?” I asked.

“You’ll see for yourself.”

“Are you working with him?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I’ve only had him once.”

“How was it?”

“He talked about you the whole hour.”

“Are you seeing him again?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Will you be there on Sunday?”

“No. Look, I’ve got to run. I’ve got a seminai in half an hour.”

I hung up the phone and stood there a long time, staring down at it. Manya called us in to supper. I washed my hands and sat down at the kitchen table. My father was lost in thought, his mind on the article he was writing. I was not hungry. But I ate. With Manya inside that kitchen I always ate, whether I was hungry or not.

The next day Rav Kalman came into the classroom, arranged his books neatly on the desk, lit a cigarette, peered intently at our faces, and called on Abe Greenfield. There was a jubilant quality in Abe Greenfield’s voice. He had expected to be called on and had come superbly prepared. He read excitedly for three quarters of an hour, showing off what he knew, and Rav Kalman paced and smoked and did not interrupt. Then he came up to Abe Greenfield’s desk and stopped him.

“Very good, Greenfield. You came prepared and you know the Gemora. Very good.”

Abe Greenfield’s face shone with joy.

“Tell me, Greenfield. How did you do in your mathematics examination?”

Abe Greenfield’s face darkened a little. “Okay,” he said, guardedly.

Rav Kalman tugged at his beard and nodded. “In Europe I had a student who was a great mathematician. But he never came to class unprepared. In America students come unprepared because of mathematics. He died in Maidanek. The student. They killed all my students in Maidanek. But he was the best.” He stood stiffly in front of Abe Greenfield’s desk and looked out at the class. “I do not expect that American students will be like my students in Europe. But I expect that everyone will come to the shiur prepared. If there is a choice, I expect everyone to choose the Gemora. I received my smicha from one of the greatest scholars and saints in Europe. It is not only my name I will place on your smicha. My name carries the name of my teacher, Rav Zvi Hirsch Finkel, of blessed memory, and the name of his teacher—all through the generations of great teachers who handed down the smicha. Do you understand? If you must make a choice, make it for Torah. I cannot give you my smicha otherwise. I have a responsibility.” He looked at Abe Greenfield. “You were angry at me yesterday, Greenfield. I made you angry, yes? You lost your temper at me and I accepted your apology. Now I must apologize for shaming you before the class. A teacher has a right to be angry at a student if he does not come prepared. Your mathematics professor would also be angry at you if you came unprepared. But I went too far with you, Greenfield. I apologize.”

The class sat very still. I saw dust motes dancing in the rays of sunlight that came through the windows. Abe Greenfield’s mouth had dropped open. A lot of mouths had dropped open.

“I did not want you to be so angry, Greenfield. I wanted you to understand what it means to make a choice for Torah. You understand now, yes? All right. Enough. We have spent enough time away from the study of Torah.” He looked at me. “Are you prepared, Malter?”

I nodded.

“Yes. You are always prepared. You study philosophy but you are always prepared.” He looked straight at me. “Schwartz, read the Gemora.”

Stanley Schwartz, the tall heavy-set student who sat to my left, looked startled for a moment. Then he bent over his Talmud and commenced reading.

Half an hour later, Rav Kalman called on me to read. It was another difficult passage and I gave him all the major commentaries on it and sat there, listening to him ask me for the fourth time to explain the words again.

I took a deep breath and told him I couldn’t explain it any better than the commentaries and that I didn’t understand what was being gained by going over and over the same passage. I said it quietly and respectfully, though my voice quavered a little as the words came out.

Rav Kalman gave me a sharp look and for a long moment said nothing. Then he said, “You cannot explain the words?”

“I explained the words.”

“You cannot explain the words better?”

I told him I didn’t understand what he meant. Did he want me to explain them better than the Maharam and the Maharsha? I asked. Was he saying that the explanations given by the Maharam and the Maharsha were wrong? I spoke very respectfully. What did he mean by better? I asked. How could I explain them better than the commentaries?

He seemed a little startled by my words. He stood in silence for a moment, his face dark. Then he blinked his eyes and cleared his throat. “Go on, Malter,” he said in a low voice. “Continue to read.”

He had not answered my question.

I had no classes the next day, Friday, and I spent the morning and early afternoon at home working on a paper for one of my philosophy courses. A bulky package arrived in the mail from my father’s publisher. It was addressed to my father and I would not open it. My father came back from his teaching shortly before two
o’clock. His hands trembled as he tore open the package. It contained ten copies of his book.

They lay on the desk in his study, covered with pale-blue dust jackets, and we looked down at them, and my father picked up one and held it in his hands and opened it and peered at the title page and riffled the pages and closed it and put it back down on the desk. His eyes were moist and his face shone and he stared down at the books and shook his head in disbelief. “So much work,” he murmured. “So much work in those pages.” Then he picked up a copy and turned pages quickly and read and nodded. “Yes, they made the correction,” he said, smiling. “You caught it just in time, Reuven. They were able to correct it.” He put the book down and sat behind his desk. “A book,” he murmured. “It is only a book. But what it means to write a book.”

I took a copy into my room and lay down on my bed and opened it. I held it close to my face and smelled the ink. I have always loved the smell of ink in a new book. I hoped I hadn’t overlooked any errors while checking the galleys. I began to read. I was halfway through the fourth page when the phone rang.

It was Danny. He was calling to remind me of my visit to Michael on Sunday.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Home.” Home meant five blocks away in his parents’ brownstone. “You want to come over tomorrow?” he asked after a moment.

I told him I planned to spend Shabbat reading my father’s book which had just arrived in the mail.

He sounded very happy to hear that and asked me to send him a copy. I said I would bring a copy over during the week and leave it with his father.

“Bring it over next Friday afternoon,” he said. “My father won’t enjoy having to receive a book filled with scientific criticism.”

“How is Michael?” I asked.

“So-so,” he said. “He talked about you again the whole second hour. You never told me you were that good at sailing.”

“Does that mean he’s not resisting therapy any more? I mean the fact that he’s talking so much about me.”

“I don’t know what it means yet.”

“How’s Rachel?” I asked.

“I’m seeing her tomorrow night.”

I did not say anything.

“Have a good Shabbos,” Danny said.

“Shabbat shalom,” I said.

Later, my father and I went to the small synagogue on Lee Avenue where we prayed the service that welcomes the Shabbat. It was dark when we returned home and a winter wind blew through the naked sycamores on our street. After dinner I took a copy of my father’s book into the living room and sat by the light we kept burning all through Shabbat, and read. I read until late that night and all of Shabbat afternoon. I read very carefully, on a nervous hunt for errors that might have slipped by us but at the same time reading in order to study again what my father had written. I found no errors and more than half a dozen places where my father’s words took on meanings I had not seen in them before. I marveled at his scholarship. I never ceased being amazed at his scholarship. It was a beautiful book, and I told him so as we sat down to supper.