The Beautiful Possible (14 page)

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

“I don’t know what I believe,” she says.

From his perch behind the lectern, Sol peers down at Rosalie in her front-row seat. He raises an eyebrow and delivers the words
written for him, because of him, and despite him. When he needs to conjure an impromptu comment, Sol tosses his head, and Rosalie meets him at the steps to the bima and whispers words into his good ear.

Rosalie gives Sol an explanation for everything. She invents proverbs and interpretations with the ease of Madame Sylvie dispensing little astonishments. She doesn’t need Walter to invoke pockets of wisdom. After he runs through the contents of the binder, Sol asks Rosalie to deliver a sermon of her own. She talks about the true meaning of their congregation, and she refers to the Briar Wood loyalists as her extended family, joined together in prayers and in hope. She asks them to look around the paneled sanctuary and behold one another. “Every one of you is a perfect work of nature,” she says. “Together we create a magnificent garden of dignity and courage. Together we will bravely strip away what clouds our inner joy. We will stand beside each other in this modest holy space, allow our time together to wipe away every pinch of sadness, every fleck of confusion.”

The local Jewish weekly runs a story about the charismatic Kerems who have brought a synagogue to life through their teachings. A single photograph takes up a double-page spread: Sol sitting behind his desk, Rosalie in a slinky wrap dress, perched cross-legged at the edge, both of them beaming at the camera. She mails a copy of the article to Walter and he responds with a postcard:
My work is complete then. The two of you have found your calling.

Rosalie writes back:
Don’t ever say that again.

July 1971

Walter runs his fingers over the stamped cover of his latest book:
Religious Themes in Tagore’s Poetry
, Paul Richardson and Walter Westhaus, coeditors. He leafs through the pages he and Paul wrestled over for years. When Paul had translated a line from
Gitanjali
to read:
“Thou art the sky and Thou art also the nest,”
Walter changed it to read: “
You are the heavens and You are the home.
”
Our partnership is impossible
, Paul had said to him.
I understand Bengali better than you ever will and I can’t revise your work. You are closer to the source than I am.
Walter believes that he will always be Paul’s lost man, the refugee who followed him off the ship, the Jew who accepted an offer in India that was better than no offer at all.

When he finishes reading Walter calls Paul.

“Namaste.” The lilt of a sitar plays in the background.

“I was rereading our Tagore,” says Walter. “We created something wonderful, didn’t we?”

“That we did.”

“I want to thank you for everything—”

“Enough with the propriety, Walter! When are you coming to the ranch? Be my scholar in residence, comfort my more intellectual students with your prowess and reputation.” Walter doesn’t want to be Paul’s sidekick, but he is grateful for the offer. Since Rosalie’s last visit to Berkeley, Walter has felt bereft. He needs to get away from the confines of the studio that he now thinks of as their lovers’ den, their beit midrash, their hideaway sanctioned by the peacocks that now annoy Walter with their night cries and putrid droppings.

“Think of Eden Ranch as a new Shantiniketan,” says Paul. “You can lie under a tree and dream your life into possibility.”

The ranch is a seventy-acre desert wilderness overlooking a canyon, dotted with a single house, several tents, outhouses, and a trailer. Paul has set a circle of stones in a clearing and he calls this the amphitheater, the place where his students gather and listen to him speak about the power of juice fasting and the teachings of a Baba he met on his last trip to India. Over the years, Paul has morphed from a scholar into a guru. He has grown his hair long and after years of meditation practice, his left eye no longer twitches. His students call him a maharishi, and he lays marigold garlands at their necks.

At dawn Paul and Walter patrol the perimeter of the ranch.

“I don’t get it,” says Paul. “All these years later and your head is still in that spice sack. You’ve built an illustrious life and you’re still the vagabond I found in Bombay. There are ways to work through trauma, my friend.”

“That was a long time ago,” says Walter.

“Then why do you remain so disconnected? You carry on with models in your little studio and do nothing to secure your future.”

“I wrote five books,” shouts Walter. “One of them with you! Find a tenured professor who’s published five books in ten years and still sketches and makes love to women with generosity and care and—”

Paul laughs. “You don’t need to tell me the details of your prowess.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You have scattered yourself. Nothing perpetuated from those bones.” Paul stops walking and strokes Walter’s cheek. “I have always loved you,” he says.

“I know,” says Walter.

“And I saved you.”

“In a way, yes. I’m grateful.”

“We go back a long way. Longer than you may even realize. And when you are gone from this world, the university will keep your name alive in an archive and the library will stock your books, but you pass nothing down. It’s such a loss.”

“Where is this coming from, Paul? What happened to your karmic perspective?”

“Giselle is pregnant.”

“Giselle?”

“A student. Like you were once. I found her in India.”

“Another stray you adopted?”

“Giselle is my life, Walter. As are you. And yes, our child is my future.”

Sol’s contract has been renewed. Nathan tells him that he has become a good enough rabbi and that the congregants will fill in the gaps between what he provides and what they need.
It’s not perfect, you’re not perfect, but we have a history together and we’ll work it out.
Sol wakes early and jogs through the streets of Briar Wood before morning services. As he runs Sol tests his memory of the words in the purple binder:
What is the body? Endurance. What is love? Gratitude.
He laces the invented Hasidic stories with his own proverbs and tries his hand at writing little astonishments.

Sol imagines Walter beside him, playing a round of she’elah and teshuvah.

Who is an inadequate rabbi?

An illusion cannot be measured. There is only inadequate faith.

Is there any illusion greater than faith?

One cannot ask this of a rabbi. The rabbi will say,
“
Yes, of course faith is an illusion.
”
But no one will believe him.

Can a man love a woman and a man?

Only a fool would ask to measure the depths of a human heart.

Many nights after Sol and the children are asleep, Rosalie sits alone in the dark kitchen, but instead of calling Walter, she waits until it is late enough for Madeline to be waking up in London. She speaks to Madeline in a rush of words and emotions, telling her everything about Walter and the sermons, about the congregation, and about Sol and the state of her marriage. If she holds back, Madeline says, “I want the full report, pussycat. Tell me more.” As Rosalie delivers the details to her best friend, she talks
faster and faster, the story of her life bubbling to the surface like the froth in a Champagne flute. Since they met in Jerusalem, Madeline has divorced her husband; she tells Rosalie that if she had a Walter of her own, perhaps her marriage would have survived.
It takes three, sweet pea,
she said
. A man and a woman and a living spark that keeps all the desire in motion.

It has been almost two years since Rosalie’s last trip to Berkeley. When she phones Walter, she doesn’t speak with the same emotional rush that she reserves for her calls with Madeline. Walter believes Rosalie is holding back. Their ghostwriting project was too much of a success; the sermons saved Sol’s pulpit and preserved their marriage too. The Kerems are complete, he thinks; the inner circle of their family is nestled safely within the orbit of their congregation. Rosalie yammers on about the exploits of her children.
Charlie this, Philip yesterday, and Lenny, oh Lenny
.
He is the one who breaks me to pieces, who asks me to linger in his room and read every volume of Tintin’s antics until he is fast asleep and dreaming himself into the story.

“And the fruits of our little project?” asks Walter.

“At times I see the synagogue as a holding place for tenderness. A random group of Jews pausing together, engaging in an orchestrated conversation about the meaning of life.”

Walter wonders if her gauzy remarks are a mask, a way to render their affair into a continuous conversation about religion. In the past year she has mailed him sporadic postcards with quips that read like outtakes from the purple binder.

Holiness is another word for dignity; dignity is a synonym for presence.

In the World to Come, each of us will wear a coat sewn from the days we lived on earth. The brightest threads of this coat are woven from love.

Faith is the trump card in the deck of life.

If a student had written these, Walter would have called her into his office and cautioned her against writing soft-brained cupcake theology. But he and Rosalie created this project together and the words she writes belong to both of them.

The desert air and canopy of stars coax Walter into a long, deep sleep and he wakes at dawn with a start, reviewing the filmstrip of their reunions: their rendezvous in the American Colony Hotel, their visit to Madame Sylvie’s courtyard, and her visits to Berkeley. The last astonishment Sylvie dispensed for him was about Sonia, of course, but his fiancée has become a distant ghost over the years; she no longer hovers at the edge of his thoughts, waiting for attention. And Rosalie—when will he see her again? Paul is right; his head is forever mired in a barrel of spices in a foreign land. He may have become a well-published tenured professor but he is a man without a future.

Walter phones Rosalie on a Sunday morning and she picks up on the first ring.

“You came to Berkeley twice because Sol sent you. And now it’s my turn to ask you for something. The first time and the last.”

“Hold on, Walter. I was just making sandwiches—” She rests the handset on her shoulder and counts the slices of bread lined
up on the counter waiting to receive slabs of peanut butter. Ten slices, five hikers, one hour left, not enough time to buy ice for the cooler, pick up Sol’s tallit from the dry cleaners, wake the boys—

“Come to Eden Ranch.”

Rosalie glances at the clock.

“Are you there?”

“It’s been too long, Walter. And I can’t get away now: the shul, the children, Sol, who is actually well—
more or less—
and can you believe the five of us actually go hiking on Sunday afternoons? And Charlie, Charlie is applying to college—”

“Stop hiding behind your family. I need to see you.”

Rosalie is silent.

“Are you there?”

“Yes, Walter. I’m here, always here. It’s a big life. More than I ever imagined. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Don’t mock me. Your playboy refugee understands the power of the tribe.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Look. Paul has a following here and he’s brought me in as a guest teacher. You could work with me; we can teach together. You might even like it.”

Rosalie laughs. “I’ll be a guru!”

“I’m here all summer. Waiting.”

She sends Walter a postcard:

Rosalie is the last passenger left in the airport van. She wishes she had gotten off at the Lawrence Welk Resort with its uniformed doorman in nearby Escondido, rather than barreling up this mountain road with a driver who tells her that the area is saturated with Western diamondbacks and that she needs to carry a big stick to scare them off. She rubs her ankle, trying to imagine the icy sting of a snakebite, the cold poison coursing slowly up her leg. She could ask the driver to turn around, take her back to the airport. Sol didn’t ask her to see Walter this time, and she could have refused the invitation. This visit belongs to her alone.

Rosalie drops her bag at the gate and finds Walter standing in the middle of a circle of stones, addressing a motley group of students who look like teenage runaways. A girl taps her on the shoulder and hands her a copy of
Be Here Now
and she thinks of Nathan’s line,
be less remote.
Except for Walter, everyone’s hair looks unwashed and Rosalie thinks about buying a family-sized bottle of shampoo. Paul sits beside his pregnant girlfriend and massages her filthy neck. Rosalie shudders and focuses her gaze on Walter.

“In Varanasi,” he says, “people use their bodies to understand life and death; they immerse in the ghats of the river that bear the ashes of their loved ones. In the West, we use words to understand life and death and our language is imprecise, distancing. This affects our karmic balance.” Rosalie stares at Walter and smiles. She hasn’t heard him lecture before and she follows the stream of his words as if she is listening to a symphony. How did he learn all this and how can he teach some of it to her?

At the end of his talk Walter takes questions. Rosalie moves closer to the group and raises her hand.

“Do you think karmic balance can be achieved in one’s lifetime?”

“Ah! Excellent question!” He smiles. “Many spiritual teachings are rooted in this inquiry. Karmic balance cannot be achieved, only readjusted on a cosmic plane. And even if one lives an examined life, the ultimate meaning of the journey may not be obvious.”

“So it is impossible to know if your answer is correct,” she says.

Walter leads Rosalie to his tent and they make love with a level of deliberation and care that feels new to both of them. This tenderness, thinks Rosalie, marks the end. From the geniza to Eden Ranch, a perfect arc from youth to middle age. Our swan song to savor for the rest of our days.

She tells him this is the last time.

“I didn’t expect you to come,” he says. “We completed our assignment, accomplished our mission, and saved your husband.”

“You pleaded with me to meet you here. What choice did I have?”

“Everything we’ve done together has been your choice,” he says.

Meals at the ranch are eaten in silence; Paul calls this the practice of meditative digestion. “The holiness of food,” he says, “cannot be experienced through the cacophony of conversation.” The students
eat sparingly at long tables and then gather outside in the circle of stones where Paul delivers lectures and Giselle crouches before him, her belly dragging on the ground like a giant gourd. Walter and Rosalie teach a class together on Hindu and Hasidic parables. The students ask them for a blessing and Walter says, “Paul Richardson is your holy man; we have no power to bless anyone.”

The night before Rosalie is to leave, they lie in the middle of a field, staring up at the stars. Walter asks if she remembers the last line of the Song of Songs.

“Quick my love over the mountain of spices,”
says Rosalie. “Not an exact translation, but it’s mine.”

“Sonia loved the Song,” says Walter.

“The woman in your astonishment.”

“My fiancée. Before India. Before you.”

Rosalie turns on her side and faces him.

“My father wouldn’t leave. Those last weeks Sonia and I were always together in my bed, fucking like bunnies, drunk on vodka, making plans. She only wanted to go to Palestine. Sure, she was a Zionist, but she also loved the poetry of the Bible. The Song of Songs. The Prophets. She was a singer.”

“And she loved you.”

“She had a curtain of long blond hair that smelled like cardamom. Made me swoon.”