The Promise (7 page)

“Halfway,” I said. “Okay. Now leave it. We’ll need it up all the way in a minute. Wait. All right. Pull it up. Can you manage it?”

The center board came up without difficulty. Michael sat back on the Sailfish. His face was pale.

I collapsed the sail. The prow scraped against the bank. I tied up to the branch of a fallen tree that lay in the water.

Michael sat stiffly near the center board.

“It was stuck,” he said. “I couldn’t get it up.”

“I had trouble with that board myself before.”

“Why was it stuck?”

“The water warps them sometimes.”

“I got it up by myself though.”

“You did all right.”

A smile flickered across his face. He lay back on the Sailfish and closed his eyes.

We were in about two feet of water. The cove was narrow, with tall banks of dark moist earth that broke the force of the wind and huge trees and water lilies that grew along the shoreline. The sun shone through the water to the bottom of the lake and I could see schools of small fish and the dark mud of the lake bed. Tiny waves lapped with soft sounds against the Sailfish and the shore.

We lay on the Sailfish and rested. Then we swam for a while,
stirring up the muddy bottom of the cove with our feet. Michael did the crawl and back stroke and side stroke and tried very hard to show me he was a good swimmer. With his glasses off, his eyes had a dreamy, distant look to them. We swam around and had a fine time and when we came back to the Sailfish I smiled at him and he smiled back tentatively and I said he was all right as a swimmer but he needed to put on some weight, he was too skinny. He put his glasses back on and lay on the Sailfish with his face to the sun.

“I’m chronically underweight. My mother keeps taking me to doctors and they all say I’m chronically underweight.”

“You’ll outgrow it. I used to be a little underweight.”

“That’s what the doctors say about my nosebleeds. I have nosebleeds when I exert myself too much or get too excited. Did you used to have nosebleeds?”

“No.”

“I have them all the time.”

“Like last night.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. He did not say anything. He looked away and placed the palms of his hands under his head and stared up at the sky. His arms formed sharp angles on each side of his head, the elbows jutting upward.

“Your nose isn’t bleeding today. You did plenty of hard work out there on the lake and your nose didn’t bleed at all.”

“That’s right,” he said.

“How do you explain that?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t bleed every time.”

“I’m glad it didn’t bleed out there.”

He turned his head and looked at me. “Let’s not talk about that any more. Okay? Let’s just not talk about that.”

“All right.”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

“All right, Michael.”

I lay back on the Sailfish. We were silent. I could hear the wind in the trees. The boat lay still in the water.

“It’s very nice out here,” I heard Michael say quietly.

“I’m glad you like it.”

“I really enjoyed the sailing. I was a little afraid at the beginning. I had to get used to it.” He was silent for a long time. I saw him staring intently at the sky. Then he said, very quietly, “Can you read clouds?”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s a game I play sometimes.” He gave me a sidelong glance, then looked back up at the sky. “It shows you how you see things.”

“How do you play it?”

“You look at the clouds and you say what their shapes remind you of. See that big cloud over there? What does it look like?”

He was pointing to a large fleecy cloud that lay above the high line of trees along the northern side of the shoreline.

I told him it looked like a large fleecy cloud.

He looked disappointed. “Don’t you want to play? It’s really a serious game, Reuven.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sometimes I feel better after I play if I tell myself the truth about how they look. You have to tell yourself the truth.”

“All right. Let me try again.”

I looked at the cloud. “It looks like a camel with a lot of humps on its back.”

He was quiet for a moment, his face turned to the sky. “It looks like a roller coaster,” he said, very quietly.

I looked up at the cloud and didn’t say anything.

“The one near it, the one that’s a little above it and to the right, that one looks like the face of an old man.” He paused. “Does it look like that to you, Reuven?”

“A little,” I said, still keeping my face turned to the sky.

We lay on the Sailfish and were quiet. A flock of birds soared high overhead, heading west away from the sun. The Sailfish floated smoothly in the calm water of the cove.

Michael broke the silence. “Look at how the roller coaster is changing shape,” he said, his voice very soft. “It’s becoming round.
You see that? It looks round now. Does that remind you of anything?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What does it remind you of?”

“A ball.”

He looked at me slowly.

“A giant of a ball. Like the balls we played with last night multiplied thousands of times.”

He looked at me and nodded and was silent.

I scanned the sky. The cloud Michael had said resembled the old man was changing now, moving slowly along its edges, parts of it drifting off, other parts flowering and re-forming.

“The old man is smiling,” I said. “Can you see him smiling?”

“Yes,” Michael said as if from very far away.

“But he has a mean look. I don’t like him.”

“Neither do I.”

“He reminds me of the old man at the carnival.”

Michael did not speak for a long time. He lay very still, staring up at the cloud. Then he said, in a low voice, “I like Rachel. I like her a lot.”

I did not say anything.

“Are you and Rachel in love?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to ask her to marry you?”

“It isn’t anywhere near that yet.”

“Do you and your father come here every summer?”

“Yes. In August.”

“It’s strange you didn’t meet her before. She’s been coming here every summer since the end of the war.”

I did not respond. He was quiet again. Then he said, looking up at the cloud, “It reminds me of the old man too. The cloud, I mean. It reminds me of the old man at the carnival and of others like him.”

“Which others?”

He was silent.

“Which others, Michael?”

“You won’t be angry? I don’t want you to be angry.”

“Why should I be angry? Which others?”

“Some of the rabbis in your school.” He glanced at me, then looked quickly away.

“Which rabbis?”

“Rav Kalman.”

“Why does it remind you of Rav Kalman?”

“Because he’s vicious and deceitful like that old man.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he is.”

“I don’t think he’s vicious and deceitful.”

“Do you know Rav Kalman?”

“I’m in his Talmud class.”

He looked startled. “I didn’t know that,” he murmured. He sounded afraid and very apologetic. He was quiet for a moment. “Is he a good scholar?”

“He’s a great scholar. Why do you say he’s vicious and deceitful?”

“You won’t be angry at me? He’s your teacher and I don’t want to talk about him if it will make you angry at me.”

“Well, I might get a little angry at you, Michael. But that doesn’t mean I won’t like you.”

He looked at me and a peculiar questioning frown came across his face, as if he were trying to understand what I had just said. After a long moment, I heard him say, “Rav Kalman is very religious. Isn’t he fanatically religious?”

“He’s very religious. Yes.”

“Then why does he go around using slander against people who disagree with him?” He used the Talmudic term “lashon hara” for slander.

“Where did you ever hear Rav Kalman use slander?”

“He uses it all the time.”

“You’re talking about the way he attacks your father and his school. Is that what you’re talking about?”

His face darkened and turned sullen. “You know what the Talmud
says is the punishment for lashon hara? Leprosy. There’s a rabbi in the Talmud who even says there’s no atonement for lashon hara. How can Rav Kalman be so religious and use lashon hara?”

“How do you know so much about Rav Kalman?”

“I know. I read what he writes in those Orthodox magazines and newspapers.”

“He writes about your father and his school?”

“He writes about them all the time. Don’t you read those newspapers?”

“No. They’re not too interesting.”

“You’re a funny kind of yeshiva student. You swim and you sail and you’re tanned and you don’t read your own Orthodox newspapers. I’ve never met a yeshiva student like you.”

“How many have you met?”

“I meet them all the time. I go to a yeshiva.”

“I thought that was a very modern yeshiva.”

“There are a lot of Orthodox students in that yeshiva.”

“You don’t like Orthodox students?”

“They’re vicious.”

“The Orthodox students in your yeshiva are vicious?”

“I hate them.”

“Why?”

“I hate them,” he said. I was silent.

“They’re vicious and I hate them.”

“They can’t all be vicious, Michael.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know you can’t call a whole group of people vicious.”

“You don’t know anything about it. I go to that school.”

“Why do you go if they’re vicious?”

“My parents want me to. Especially my mother. She says it’s a good school.”

“It’s one of the best yeshivas in the country.”

“I hate it. I can’t wait to get out of it.”

“Because the Orthodox students are vicious?”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by vicious.”

“You’re Orthodox. What do you know about it? You can’t even see it. You have to be outside to see it.”

“Outside what?”

“Let’s drop the subject. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just drop the whole subject.”

“All right.”

“I feel very tired when I talk about it.”

“We won’t talk about it any more. What are you going to study in college?”

“Astronomy.”

“I would never have guessed.”

“I had a telescope in my room once. My father helped me build it. I used to be able to look up at the sky at night when there weren’t any clouds. I really liked that telescope.”

“What happened to it?”

“I—broke it. It was an accident. My father said he would help me build another one as soon as he comes back from the trip. He’s on this trip to Europe and Israel now. You know about that. He had to go to a big conference and my mother always goes with him when he takes long trips. That’s why I’m staying with Rachel and her parents.”

“Couldn’t you go?”

“No.”

“Because of the nosebleeds?”

“Our doctor said I shouldn’t go. Have you ever read any of my father’s books?”

“All of them.”

“He writes all the time. Mostly at night. He’s probably even writing now while he’s traveling. My mother helps him. She keeps encouraging him. He gets pretty sad sometimes because of the way he’s attacked. But she keeps encouraging him.”

“Is he writing another book?”

“Yes. He’s always writing books.”

“What is this one about?”

“I don’t know. God and revelation and things like that. I don’t understand his books too well.”

“I used to have that problem with my father’s writing. Why don’t you ask your father to explain some of it to you?”

“He does sometimes. But it’s very complicated. I’m not really interested in that stuff.”

“Is your father religious?”

“What do you mean religious?”

“Does he keep the Commandments? Does he put on tefillin every day?”

“Of course he puts on tefillin. I put on tefillin. We’re pretty religious. We keep kosher and everything.”

“Do you observe the Shabbat?”

“Sure. Can we sail some more now?”

“In a little while.”

“Did you take me out sailing so we could talk?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you want to talk?”

“Why not?”

“I thought you just wanted us to have a good time.”

“Aren’t you having a good time?”

“I don’t like being asked questions.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like it, that’s all.”

“All right. I won’t ask you any more questions.”

He lay back on the Sailfish and was quiet a very long time. Then he said, “I should have listened to Rachel last night.”

“We both should have listened to Rachel.”

“I wanted that radio.”

“Yes, you certainly did.”

“I was terrible last night. Did I throw anything at that old man?”

“No.”

“I remember I wanted to throw something.”

“You were going to throw the dice cup.”

“I didn’t throw it?”

“No. I stopped you.”

“I remember wanting to throw something and then I can’t remember anything until my uncle said he was calling a doctor.”

“You don’t remember anything at all?”

“No. But I remember that old man. I remember thinking he was like Rav Kalman and some of the others. You trust them because they’re supposed to be decent and very religious and then they turn out to be vicious. They have crazy ideas, especially the ones who came here after the war. They think they’re God over Judaism. They stamp on you like you’re a bug if you don’t agree with them. They’re going to poison all of us with their crazy ideas.”

“They’re fighting for what they believe in.”

“They’re vicious. I really hate them. They’re disgusting.”

“All right, Michael.”

Again, he was quiet a very long time. He lay with his eyes closed and I thought he had fallen asleep and then I saw him open his eyes and look up at the sky.

“It’s beautiful out here. Look at the trees and the sky. It’s really beautiful. I don’t mind it so much talking out here.”

“Sailing and talking. What could be better?”

“I wish it were night. Then I could see the stars.”

“We couldn’t sail if it were night.”

“I wish it were night and we could sail anyway and I could see the stars.”