Kaaterskill Falls (33 page)

What will Isaiah say to them? How will he answer this? For it is a challenge to him, a direct challenge, pitting his father’s memory against his own new authority. Reb Moshe Feurstein is speaking now, a tiny man, no more than five feet three inches, the head of a small Hasidic community that vacations every summer in Kaaterskill. With his frock coat and great beard, his hands clasped behind his back, his face lifted up, Reb Moshe’s self-important voice belies his
little body. He is speaking of the great tree in the midrash from which, if you shake it, abundant fruit will fall. Was not the Kirshner Rav like such a tree, from which his fruit, his mitzvos, would fall for all to partake? Isaiah hears Reb Moshe talking, but his own questions course through him rhythmically. What will he say to them? How will he answer this? He will have to rise up and plead his own case. He will stand before them as his own counsel.

Rav Yaakov Guttman, Rachel’s brother from Brooklyn, is speaking about the Rav’s scholarship, about the deep friendship between the Rav and Rabbi Guttman, Yaakov’s father. The depth and breadth of the Rav’s learning and his precise rendering of the text, his devotion to truth and his ability to impart that truth to his students. Isaiah only hears half of what his brother-in-law is saying. Already the blood is rushing to his head; his cheeks are hot. He must speak next, and he must speak well. He has never spoken before such an audience, never stood before his people as their Rav. In the next moment his fate will be decided. When his brother-in-law finishes, Isaiah will stand to prove himself before his father’s community. And yet he is not afraid. Isaiah is not an experienced speaker or a charismatic man, but he knows what he knows. For years he has thought about the Kehilla and the role he would play in it if he had the chance. For years he has imagined this time—not, God forbid, his father’s death, but his father’s retirement. He has waited to come to his people, and say the words he has so long held in his heart.

When Rav Guttman takes his seat, Isaiah rises to speak as in a dream. He sees the men looking at him on this day of mourning with expectant eyes, with a kind of hunger in their grief, as if the death has set them loose, and all their reverence is now turned wild. But Isaiah is strong, as he stands before them. He opens his mouth and the words come.

He speaks about constancy despite change, and unity despite the pressures of the outside world. He talks of dedication to Torah, not merely as something learned, but as an instinct, so that there is no hesitation and no question about its teachings. He quotes the most famous of verses:
“V’ahavta et adoshem elokeha, b’kol levovcha, uv’kol nafshechah, u’v’kol me’odechah”
—And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might—and he
talks about this kind of love as deep within them, in their blood. That their observance should be a second nature to them, habitual. He talks about what must be inconceivable to them—that they should ever compromise their beliefs, that they should ever give way to any pressure or temptation.

“The world is full of false gods and enticements,” Isaiah says. “But it should be impossible even to imagine serving them. Our work is to build the Kehilla like a fortress, so strong that inside it each member can devote himself to God; not to struggling against the outside, but to striving within. Our energies should not be wasted on defense against what is false. What is false should be understood without saying; our energies should focus on what is true. Halacha permits no compromise and no negotiation, but if it is the center of our lives, then we are free. We are free to dedicate ourselves to God. This is what it means to love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. Nothing is wasted on the extraneous, or the evil, or the false.”

He talks about his father and the example of his life. His father as the architect of a community which is precious but also unfinished—a Kehilla left of necessity to the future, for all its members to uphold and perfect in each of their lives. And, as he talks, Isaiah feels his words charge the air; his voice penetrating the stifling room. He knows, as he talks, that he is not just speaking well, but with a sudden brilliance. It is not that his words are so powerful intellectually, but rather the way they come from him, with such force and clarity. They seem to catch fire in the room and flare before the Kirshners, dazzling their eyes.

It is exhilarating to hear Rav Isaiah talk this way. In the sweating, dark-suited audience of men, Isaac listens intently, and he is proud of the new Rav’s drash. The message is strict, perhaps even harsh. Isaac himself would never express himself this way, and yet the drash is everything he could hope for. A rallying cry, a call for unity and strength. There is a sense in which Isaac expects his Rav to be a soldier and to maintain a defense against the outside world. For the Rav stands guard over the bulwarks his followers take for granted. It is he who provides the security that allows for dedication from within, and that is why so much depends on his presence, his powerful stance,
a voice strong and confident, ideas unwavering. Rav Isaiah is going to maintain the community; he will ensure its safety and consistency. That is what he has come before them to declare. Isaac listens, and he is relieved.

But Elizabeth hears the Rav differently from where she sits. She has come late with the girls, and there are not enough seats for all of them in the women’s section. There are beads of sweat on her face as she sits with Brocha on her lap. She feels the heat in the shul; and, within her, the familiar waves of nausea. The Rav’s drash goes on and on. His voice is bright and strident, shrill, and he repeats himself often. Again and yet again he underlines his point. There is no room for compromise, there is no sustenance outside the community.

“Our strength comes from within, from our own convictions, our own families, and our own institutions. There are those who argue for leniency, for making exceptions. There are those who maintain dealings and friendships with Jews who do not observe Shabbes, or who intermarry or eat treife. What, then, is the message that they send to their children? That these people are still good; that they are still worthy of attention and uncritical friendship. This is what our children learn: that we will tolerate this kind of behavior. Is this the lesson we want to teach them? How then should we explain it? That it is wrong for us, but right for other people? Or that it is wrong for anyone, but that people who do wrong are still worthy of our respect, and of our friendship? Is this what we want to teach? Only consistency will sustain us. Only consistent thoughts and actions will keep Judaism alive.”

Of course, Elizabeth has heard all this before. This is Rav Isaiah’s first major drash, but the message is familiar. She is used to these formulations, and although she listens to them, she does not believe them. She has never seen the Kehilla as a fortress. Now, more than ever, the outside fascinates her: the people there, the way everyone moves about, the complexity of a world with such loose days and weeks, the time never delineated between work and Shabbes, the food never separated, the men and women mixed together as well; so many decisions made rather than received. Where to live, what kind of work to do. She sees it now; it was never the poetry she was after, never the secular books, the paintings, or the plays; it was the diversity
of choices. The quick and subtle negotiations of the outside world. Elizabeth listens to the Rav, but she hears him from a distance. Deep within her she knows that she has scaled those bulwarks of which he speaks. She has scaled the Kehilla’s wall and softly lowered herself down to the other side.

When Rav Isaiah finishes, a surge of voices rises from the men surrounding him. They push forward to shake his hand and follow him out of the synagogue, a mob of black, hundreds and hundreds of men. The people are relieved. They leave the synagogue with a fierce joy, the women streaming out in their dark dresses, the children dancing into the sunshine. Isaiah has drawn them to him. He has proven himself his father’s son.

Elizabeth hurries out with Brocha and scans the crowd for Isaac and the other girls. Nausea rides up the back of her throat, but she pushes forward anyway.

“Elizabeth,” Isaac calls out as she reaches him, “are you all right?”

“Tired,” she says. “A bit queasy.”

“Let’s go home. There’s Chani. Chani, get your sisters.”

“Mommy, what does
queasy
mean?” Brocha asks.

“A little sick. Not very. Really nothing,” Elizabeth answers.

“He spoke well,” Isaac says as they walk home. “Didn’t you think so?”

“I suppose so,” Elizabeth says. “I was so uncomfortable for most of it.”

“Could you hear?”

“I heard him,” she says.

N
INA
bursts in from the memorial service, the metal screen door snapping shut behind her. She is dressed in a dark green suit, tailored and crisp, and she wears a hat with a matching green band. “He gave a brilliant drash,” she says to Andras, who is sitting in the living room. “He spoke for an hour and it felt like a few minutes. It was a—a brilliant thing. Such an experience. Rav Yaakov Guttman was there, the rebbetzin’s brother—”

Andras looks up from his paper at Nina, and she sees suddenly that something is wrong.

“What is it?” she asks him. “What is it? Eva? What did the doctor say?”

“She has cancer,” Andras tells her.

“Andras!” Nina rushes to his side. She wants to know if Eva and Saul are going back to the city early, and whether Maja and Philip are going with them. She wants to know if they should all go back early, if Eva needs help. Andras tells her what he knows, but Nina keeps darting around and around with her questions. Will she have surgery? When will it be?

In the evening Alex comes in from outside with his hands dirty, and Nina makes him wash with soap. And then Renée comes in, clean and wistful, as if there is nothing to do in the summer without Stephanie. They sit down to dinner, and Nina serves them. All the time she is talking, asking Andras what will be and whether there is a second opinion yet. She is worrying, she is concerned, but her chattering grates on Andras. He leaves the table as soon as he can.

When the children are asleep Nina comes to Andras in the living room and says, “I think we should talk about it.”

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not now.”

“Not ever,” she says. “Not with me. Not ever.”

“I’m just not … talkative,” he says with a weak smile.

“You are with her,” she tells him, “and with Maja. You talk to them every day. You talk to them for hours.”

There is nothing to say to this. It’s true. With his sisters Andras feels free. They are like him, part of him. They have been parents, friends, and teachers to him. To lose them … he cannot imagine living without either of them.

That night Andras drifts in and out of sleep, and restless in the bed, he begins to dream. He walks in the forest in the evening, wading through piles of leaves. He hears a woman calling him. Faintly he hears someone calling his name. He recognizes Eva’s voice and hurries on, past lichen-covered boulders and the dry, empty beds of streams. He hurries toward the voice, and finally he sees Eva crouching down, hurt. He sees her familiar plump figure, her reddish-brown
hair, her reading glasses fallen at her side, and he struggles to lift her in his arms. Only then does her face reveal itself. It is not Eva at all, but Una, her face a mask of white with slits for eyes.

Andras wakes with a start. His breath comes quickly, but the dream does not leave him. He is afraid, but he can’t stop looking at it. Una’s face, the white face, the object that is death.

He lies for a long time, stricken. Next to him Nina is sleeping, oblivious, her face buried in her pillow. How trivial their life is. How insignificant. It is all put on. Tomorrow the week will begin. He will go down to the city and mind his business. He will work the days away, and the days will be light and inconsequential. They will slip through his fingers. They will mean as little to him as a handful of loose change. Now it is the nightmare that is real. The fantasy that is fact.

Two o’clock. Two-thirteen. Two twenty-seven. Andras gets up and puts on some clothes. He walks down the hall and down the stairs, treading carefully on the edges, where they won’t creak. He steps outside and begins walking along the silent street. He walks up and down Maple. All the way up, and all the way down. Rhythmically, he walks and walks. He looks at the houses under the trees. The Birnbaums’, the Curtises’, the Landauers’, the Erlichs’, the Shulmans’, the Knowltons’, the Kings’. How small the houses are in the darkness. Up and down the street all the lights are off. He can only just make out the shape of a bike lying on the grass at Joe Landauer’s place. There is the tire swing, hanging in front of Isaac’s house. Andras cannot see but he knows there is a clothesline tied farther up on Isaac’s tree, the Shulmans’ metaphoric wall marking off the property so that the children can play ball in the yard on Shabbes.

What would it be like to live like that? To mark off the yard for the Sabbath? To speak to God morning, noon, and night. To believe in God—and not only to believe in him, but to believe that he listens to prayers. What would it be like to have that reassurance? That God would take an interest, and approve or disapprove one’s life. How comforting to believe that one’s life is significant in that way. That it is guided by God’s will, and not left to chance. Andras has none of
this reassurance. He has only the conviction that there is nothing in heaven but cold space and stars, and that if there is a God, he scatters his creation and lets lives fall where they may, seeding good and barren places alike.