The Chosen

Chapter 8

When I got back to school the next morning, I found I had become a hero, and during the fifteen-minute morning recess my friends, and even some boys I did not know, all crowded around me, wanting to know how I was and telling me what a great game I had played. Near the end of the recess, I went over to the pitcher's position and stood on the exact spot where I had been hit by the ball. I looked – tried to look; the yard was crowded with students – at home plate and imagined Danny standing there, grinning at me. I remembered his grinning that way again yesterday, and I closed my eyes for a moment, then went over and stood near the wire fence behind the plate. The bench on which the young rabbi had sat was still there, and I stared at it for a moment. It seemed impossible to me that the ball game had taken place only a week ago. So many things had happened, and everything looked so different.

Sidney Goldberg came over to me and started talking about the game, and then Davey Cantor joined us and added his opinion about those murderers'. I nodded at what they were saying without really listening. It seemed silly to me, the way they kept talking about the game, they both sounded so childish, and I got a little angry when Davey Cantor started talking about 'that snooty Danny Saunders', but I didn't say anything.

I got out of school at two o'clock and took a trolley car over to the public library where I was supposed to meet Danny. The library was a huge, three-story, graystone building, with thick Ionice columns, and with the words BEAUTY IS TRUTH, TRUTH BEAUTY, THAT IS ALL YE KNOW ON EARTH, AND ALL YE NEED TO KNOW – JOHN KEATS engraved in the stone over its four glass entrance doors. It stood on a wide boulevard and there were tall trees in front of it and a grassy lawn bordered by flowers. On the right-hand wall of the vestibule, just inside the doors, there was a mural of the history of great ideas, beginning with a drawing of Moses holding the Ten Commandments, going on to Jesus, Mohammed, Galileo, Luther, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and ending with Einstein gazing at the formula E=mc2.

On the other wall there was a mural showing Homer, Dante, Tolstoi, Balzac, and Shakespeare engaged in conversation. They were beautiful murals, done in bright colors, and the great men in them looked alive. Probably because I had become so sensitive about eyes in the past week, I noticed for the first time that Homer's eyes seemed glazed, almost without pupils, as if the artist had been trying to show that he had been blind. I had never noticed that before, and it frightened me a little to see it now.

I went quickly through the first floor, with its marble floors, its marble pillars, its tall bookcases, its long reference tables, its huge windows through which the sun streamed, and its glass topped desks at which the librarians sat. I found Danny on the third floor against the far wall, partly hidden by a bookcase, wearing a black suit, a tieless shirt, and a skullcap. He was sitting at a small table, bent over a book, his long earlocks dangling down the sides of his face and almost reaching to the top of the table.

There were not many people on this floor; its stacks were filled mostly with bound volumes of scholarly journals and pamphlets. It was a large floor, and the closely set stacks gave it a mazelike appearance. They went from floor to ceiling, and. they seemed to me to contain everything of importance that had ever been written on any subject in the world. There were journals in English, French, German, Russian, Italian, and even one collection in Chinese. Some of the English journals had names I couldn't pronounce. This was the one floor of the three-floored library I did not know well. I had been up here once to find an article in the Journal of Symbolic Logic which had been recommended to me by my mathematics teacher, an article which I had only dimly understood, and once to meet my father. Now was the third time in all the years I had belonged to this library that I was on its third floor.

I stood near a bookcase a few feet away from the table at which Danny was sitting, and I watched him read. His elbows were on the table, and he held his head in the palms of his hands, the fingers covering his ears completely, his eyes staring down at the book. Occasionally, the fingers of his right hand would play with his earlock, and once they stroked the tufts of sand-colored hair on his chin for a few seconds, then went back to the side of his face. His mouth was slightly open, and I could not see his eyes; they were hidden by the lids. He seemed impatient each time he came to the foot of a page, and he flipped the page with a quick gesture of his right hand, wetting the forefinger with his tongue and turning the page by pushing upward with the finger against the lower right-hand comer, the way one does a page of Talmud except that with a Talmud the left forefinger usually pushes against the lower left-hand comer because it is read from right to left. He was reading with phenomenal speed. I could see him read. He would start at the head of a page, his head tilted slightly upward, and then his head would move downward in a straight line until he got to the foot of the page. Then it would tilt upward again and either move sideways to the right page or remain fixed in its upward position until the page was turned, and then start downward again. He did not seem to be reading from side to side but up and down, and, watching him, I had the distinct impression that he was reading the middle of the page only and was somehow able to ignore, or absorb without actually reading, what was written on the sides.

I decided not to disturb him, and I sat down at another table a few feet away and continued to watch him read. It was frustrating to be sitting there surrounded by all those journals and not be able to read a thing myself, and I decided after a while to review by heart some of the symbolic logic I had been studying. I closed my eyes and went over the propositional calculus, trying to visualize the truth tables for conjunction, disjunction, equivalence, and material implication. They were fairly simple, and I had no difficulty. I tried to do some problems, but after a while it became complicated, I couldn't remember all the deductive steps, and I stopped. I was about to begin going over the steps of indirect proof when I heard Danny say, 'You're always sleeping! What a sleepyhead you are!' and I opened my eyes. Danny was sitting up in his chair and looking at me.

'I was reviewing my logic,' I told him. 'I wasn't sleeping.'

'Of course,' he said, smiling. But his voice sounded sad.

'I was just going into the indirect proof. Do you want to hear it?'

'No. I can't stand that stuff. Why didn't you tell me you were here?'

'I didn't want to disturb you.'

'You're nice. For a Mimaged.' He gave the Hebrew letter 'tof' its Ashkenazic pronunciation. 'Come over here. I want you to see something.'

I went over to his table and sat down next to him. 'I'm not allowed to read, you know.'

'I want you to hear this. I'll read it to you.'

'What is it?'

'It's from Graetz's History of the Jews.' He sounded unhappy, and there was a somber look on his face. 'It's about Hasidim. Listen. Graetz is talking about Dov Baer, who was the follower of the Besht. He just finished saying that Dov Baer invented the idea of the tzaddik.' He looked down at the book on the table and began to read aloud. '

'Baer's idea, however, was not meant to remain idle and unfruitful, but to bring him honor and revenue. While the tzaddik cared for the conduct of the world, for the obtaining of heavenly grace, and especially for Israel's preservation and glorification, his adherents had to cultivate three kinds of virtues. It was their duty to draw nigh to him, to enjoy the sight of him, and from time to time to make pilgrimages to him. Further, they were to confess their sins to him. By these means alone could they hope for pardon from their iniquities." That means sins,' he told me.

'I know what it means,' I said.

He went on. '

'Finally, they had to bring him presents, rich gifts, which he knew how to employ to the best advantage. It was also incumbent upon them to attend to his personal wants. It seems like a return to the days of the priests of Baal, so vulgar and disgusting do these perversities appear."

He looked up from the book. 'That's pretty strong language, "vulgar and disgusting".' His eyes were dark and brooding. 'It feels terrible to have a great scholar like Graetz call Hasidism vulgar and disgusting. I never thought of my father as a priest of Baal.'

I didn't say anything.

'Listen to what else he says about Dov Baer.' He turned a page. 'He says here that Dov Baer used to crack vulgar jokes to make his people happy, and that he used to encourage his followers to drink alcohol, so they would pray fervently. He says that Rabbi Elijah of Vilna was a great opponent of the Hasidim, and that when he died – let me read it to you.' He shuffled pages. 'Here it is. Listen. "After his death, the Hasidim took vengeance upon him by dancing upon his grave, and celebrating the day of his decease as a holiday, with shouting and drunkenness.'" He looked at me. 'I never knew about any of these things. You were in our shul yesterday. Did anyone look drunk to you during the service? '

'No,' I said.

'My father isn't like that at all.' His voice was sad, and it trembled a little. 'He really worries about his people. He worries about them so much he doesn't even have time to talk to me.'

'Maybe Graetz is only talking about the Hasidim of his own day,' I offered.

'Maybe,' he said, not convinced. 'It's awful to have someone give you an image like that of yourself. He says that Dov Baer had expert spies worthy of serving in the secret service. Those are his words, "worthy of serving in the secret service". He says they would go around discovering people's secrets and tell them to Dov Baer. People who came to see him about their personal problems would have to wait around until the Saturday after they came, and in the meantime these spies would investigate them and report back to him, so that when the person finally got to see him, Dov Baer would know everything, and the person would be impressed and think that Dov Baer had some sort of magical ability to look into his heart.' He shuffled some more pages. 'Listen to this. "In the first interview Baer, in a seemingly casual manner, was able, in a skillfully arranged discourse, to bring in allusions to these strangers, whereby they would be convinced that he had looked into their hearts and knew their past." He shook his head sadly. 'I never knew about anything like that. When my father talks about Dov Baer, he almost makes him out to be a saint.'

'Did my father give you that book to read?'

'Your father said I should read Jewish history. He said the first important step in anyone's education is to know your own people. So I found this work by Graetz. It's a lot of volumes. I'm almost done with it. This is the last volume.' He shook his head again, and the earlocks danced and brushed against the ridge of his jaw and the hollow of his cheeks. 'What an image it gives me of myself.'

'You ought to discuss it with my father first,' I told him, 'before you go believing any of that. He told me a lot about Hasidism on Friday night. He wasn't very complimentary, but he didn't say anything about drunkenness.'

Danny nodded slowly. 'I'll talk to him,' he said. 'But Graetz was a great scholar. I read up on him before I started reading his history. He was one of the greatest Jewish scholars of the last century.'

'You ought to discuss it with my father,' I repeated.

Danny nodded again, then slowly closed the book. His fingers played idly with the spine of the binding.

'You know,' he brooded, 'I read a psychology book last week in which the author said that the most mysterious thing in the universe to man is man himself. We're blind about the most important thing in our lives, our own selves. How could a man like Dov Baer have the gall to fool other people into thinking that he could look into their hearts and tell them what they were really like inside?'

'You don't know that he did. You only know Graetz's 'Version of it.'

He ignored me. I had the feeling he was talking more to himself than to me.

'We're so complicated inside,' he went on quietly. "There's something in us called the unconscious that we're completely unaware of. It practically dominates our lives, and we don't even know it.' He paused, hesitating, his hand moving from the book and playing now with an earlock. I was reminded of the evening in the hospital when he had stared out the window at the people on the street below and had talked of God and ants and the reading he did in this library. 'There's so much to read,' he said. 'I've only really been reading for a few months. Did you know about the subconscious?' he asked me, and when I somewhat hesitantly nodded, he said, 'You see? You're not even interested in psychology, and you know about it. I have so much catching up to do.' He was suddenly conscious of the way his fingers were playing with the earlock, and he let his hand drop to the table. 'Did you know that very often the subconscious expresses itself in dreams? "The dream is the product of a transaction between conscious and unconscious wishes,'" he quoted, '

'and the results during sleep are naturally very different from those during waking hours."

'What's this about dreams?' I asked.

'It's true,' he said. 'Dreams are full of unexpressed fears and hopes, things that we never even think of consciously. We think of them unconsciously deep down inside ourselves, and they come out in dreams. They don't always come out straight, though. Sometimes they come out in symbols. You have to learn to interpret the symbols.'

'Where did you find out about that?'

'In my reading. There's a lot of work been done on dreams. It's one of the ways they have of getting to a person's unconscious.'

I must have had a strange expression on my face, because he asked me what was the matter.

'I dream all the time,' I told him.

'Everyone does,' he said. 'We just don't remember a lot of them. We repress them. We sort of push them away and forget them, because sometimes they're too painful.'

'I'm trying to remember mine,' I said. 'Some of them weren't very pleasant.'

'A lot of times they're not pleasant. Our unconscious isn't a nice place – I call it a place; it isn't a place, really; the book I read says it's more like a process – it isn't a nice place at all. It's full of repressed fears and hatreds, things that we're afraid to bring out into the open.'

'And these things rule our lives?'

'According to some psychologists they do.'

'You mean these things go on and we don't know anything about them?'

'That's right. That's what I said before. What's inside us is the greatest mystery of all.'

'That's a pretty sad thing to think about. To be doing things without really knowing why you're doing them.'

Danny nodded. 'You can find out about it, though. About your unconscious, I mean. That's what psychoanalysis is all about. I haven't read too much about it yet, but it's a long process.' Freud started it. You've heard about Freud. He started psychoanalysis. I'm teaching myself German, so I can read him in the original. He discovered the unconscious, too.'

I stared at him and felt a shock of coldness move inside me. 'You're studying German?'

He seemed surprised at my reaction. 'What's wrong with studying German? Freud wrote in German. What are you looking at me like that for?'

'Aren't his writings translated into English?'

'Not all of them. Besides, I want to read a lot of other things in German that haven't been translated yet. What's the matter with you? You've got the funniest look on your face.'

I didn't say anything.

'Just because Hitler speaks German doesn't mean that the language is corrupt. It's the most important scientific language in the world. What are you looking at me like that for?'

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'It just seems strange to me, your studying German.'

'What's so strange about it?'

'Nothing. How are you teaching yourself?'

'There's a grammar book in the reference library. I'm almost done memorizing it. It's an interesting language. Very technical and precise. It's amazing the way they put nouns together. Do you know what the word for" mysterious" is in German?'

'I don't know any German.'

'It's geheimnisvoll. It means "full of secret". That's what the subconscious is, geheimnisvoll. The word for "sympathetic" is teilnahmsvol – literally "full of part-taking". The word for charity is Niichstenliebe -literally, it means-'

'All right,' I said. 'I'm impressed.'

'It's quite a language. Yiddish is a lot like it. Yiddish was originally Middle German. When the German Jews came into Poland, they brought it with them.'

'You mean in the thirteenth century, when Poland encouraged the Jews to come in?'

'That's right. You know about that?'

'I didn't know about Yiddish being German.'

'My father doesn't, either. At least, I don't think he does. He thinks Yiddish is almost holy. But it's really from Middle German.'

I was going to ask him what the Middle meant in Middle German, but I decided not to push the conversation any further. I was upset enough as it was about his learning German. And it had nothing to do with Hitler, either. I kept remembering what my father had told me about Solomon Maimon. It all sounded so weird. I almost had the feeling I was talking to Maimon's ghost.

We talked some more about Graetz's version of Hasidism, and then somehow we got onto the subject of Danny's brother. He had been examined by a big doctor that morning, and the doctor had said he would be all right, but that he would have to be careful, no strenuous studying or exercising. He had gone with his father, and Danny said his father was now very upset. But at least his brother would be all right. It had something to do with his blood chemistry, Danny said, and the doctor had prescribed three different pills for him to take. He hadn't been very optimistic about the condition clearing up, either. He said he would have to take the pills as long as it persisted. 'It might persist his whole life,' Danny said sadly. Again, I got the impression that he loved his brother very much, and I wondered why he hadn't said a word to him during all the time I had seen them together yesterday in the synagogue.

Finally, we decided it was getting late, and we started down the wide marble staircase. When we were about halfway down the staircase to the second floor, Danny stopped and looked carefully around. He did the same when we were going down to the main floor. He replaced the Graetz book, and we went inside.

It was cloudy and seemed ready to rain, so we decided to take a trolley car back rather than walk. Danny got off at his block, and I rode the rest of the way alone, my head full of what we had talked about, especially his teaching himself German.

I told my father about it over the supper table.

'What does Danny want to read in German?' he asked me. 'He wants to read Freud.'

My father's eyes went wide behind their spectacles.

'He was very excited about it,' I said. 'He was talking about the unconscious and dreams. He was also reading Graetz on Hasidism: 'The unconscious and dreams,' my father muttered. 'And Freud. At the age of fifteen.' He shook his head gloomily. 'But it will not be possible to stop him.'

'Abba, was Graetz right in what he said about Hasidism?'

'Graetz was biased, and his sources were not acurate. If I remember correctly, he calls the Hasidim vulgar drunkards, and he calls the tzaddikim priests of Baal. There is enough to dislike about Hasidism without exaggerating its faults.'

I met Danny again in the library later that week, but he wasn't too enthusiastic when I told him what my father had said about Graetz. He told me he had read another book on Hasidism, and while the author hadn't accused the tzaddikim of encouraging drinking, he had accused them of almost everything else. I asked him how he was coming along with his German, and he said he had finished memorizing the grammar text and was reading a book he had borrowed from the German section of the library. He said he hoped to start reading Freud in a few weeks. I didn't tell him what my father had said about that. He looked upset and tense, and he kept playing with an earlock all the time we talked.

My father told me that night that there had been a serious question in his mind about how ethical it was for him to give Danny books to read behind his father's back.

'How would I feel if someone gave you books to read which I believed might be harmful to you?'

I asked him why he had done it.

'Because Danny would have continued to read anyway on his own. At least this way he has some direction from an adult. It was a fortunate accident that he stumbled upon me. But it is not a comfortable feeling, Reuven. I dislike doing this to Reb Saunders. He is certain to find out one day. It will be an uncomfortable situation when he does. But he will not be able to stop Danny from reading. What will he do when his son goes to college?'

I pointed out to my father that Danny was anyway reading on his own now, without direction from an adult. My father certainly hadn't told him to read Freud.

My father nodded his agreement. 'But he will come to me to discuss what he reads,' he said. 'At least there will be a balance. I will give him other books to read, and he will see that Freud is not God in psychology. Freud yet. At fifteen.' And he shook his head gloomily.

Danny and I arranged to spend Shabbat afternoon together with his father, studying Perkei Avot. When I turned off Lee Avenue that Shabbat and started up the sunless street on which Danny lived, the feeling of having crossed into a twilight world was only a little less strong than it had been the week before. It was just after three o'clock, and there were no bearded, caftaned men or kerchief-wearing women on the street, but the children were outside, playing, shouting, running. Except for the children, the sidewalk in front of the three-storey brownstone at the end of the block was deserted. I remembered how the black caftaned men had parted for Danny and me the week before, and I remembered, too, the tapping of Danny's capped shoes on the pavement as we had gone through the crowd and up the wide stone staircase. The door in the hallway that led into the synagogue was open, but the synagogue was empty – except for the echoes it contained. I stood just inside the synagogue. The tables were covered with white cloths, but the food had not yet been put out. I stared at the table where I had sat, and I could still hear the gematriyot tumbling out of Reb Saunders' mouth and then his question to Danny, 'Nothing more? You have nothing more to say?.' I saw the idiot grin spread itself slowly across Danny's lips. I turned quickly and went back out into the hall.

I stood at the foot of the inside stairway and called up, 'Hello! Anybody home?' After a moment, Danny appeared at the head of the stairs, wearing his black caftan, black pants, and a black skullcap, and told me to come on up.

He introduced me to his mother and sister. His sister 'was almost as tall as I, with dark, vivacious eyes and a face almost exactly like Danny's, except that the sculptured lines were a good deal softer. She wore a long-sleeved dress, and her dark hair was combed back severely and dangled in a thick braid behind her. She smiled at me and said, 'I know all about you, Reuven Malter. Danny never stops talking about you.' His mother was short, with blue eyes and a roundish body. Her head was covered with a kerchief, and there were faint tufts of sand-colored hair on her upper lip. They were both sitting in the living room and had apparently been reading or studying what looked to me to be a Yiddish book when we had interrupted them. I told them politely that it was nice to meet them and was rewarded with another smile from Danny's sister.

We left them and started up the stairway to the third floor.

Danny explained that the third floor contained his room, his father's study, and a conference room. The second and third floors were completely separated, just as they were in any three-story brownstone. They had thought once of moving the family to the third Floor, Danny said, so as to avoid the noise made by the people who were constantly climbing the stairs to see his father. But his mother wasn't well, and a three-Floor climb would be too much for her.

I asked him how his brother was feeling.

'All right, I guess,' he told me. 'He's asleep now.'

Danny took me through the third-floor rooms. They were identical with the ones in which my father and I lived. Danny's bedroom was located exactly where my father's bedroom was, the kitchen had been left intact – to serve the visiting dignitaries tea, Danny said with a grin – the bathroom was next to the kitchen, the study was where my father's study was – except that one of its walls had been knocked out so that it also included what in our apartment was my room – and the living room contained a long glass-topped conference table and leather chairs. Danny took me into the conference room first – we went through the outside hallway door – then into his room, which had a narrow bed, a bookcase full of old Hebrew and Yiddish books, and a desk cluttered with papers. A Talmud lay open on top of the papers. The walls were white and bare. All the walls were white and bare. I saw no photographs or paintings anywhere, neither on the floor where his family lived, nor here on the floor where he lived and his father worked.

We stood outside his father's study, and Danny knocked softly on the door. 'He doesn't like me to barge in on him when he's in there,' he whispered with a grin. His father said to come in, and we went in.

Reb Saunders sat behind a massive, black wood, glass-topped desk, wearing a black caftan and a tall, round, black skullcap. He was sitting in a straight-backed red leather chair with intricately carved wooden arms. A single light bulb glowed white beneath its ceiling fixture. The study, with its additional room, seemed enormous. A thick red carpet covered its floor, and its walls were lined with glass-enclosed wooden bookcases jammed tight with books. There were books everywhere – on the two wooden chairs near the desk, on the desk itself, on the wooden file cabinet that stood near the door, on cardboard boxes piled in a comer, on the small wooden stepladder, on the black leather easy chair that stood in another comer, even on the window seat. Many of the books were bound in black, red, and brown leather. One book had been bound in white, and it stood out prominently on a shelf among the black-bound books around it. Danny told me later that it contained the sayings of the Ba'al Shem Tov and had been presented to his father as a gift on his fiftieth birthday by the members of his congregation. All the books seemed to be in Hebrew or Yiddish, and many of them were very old and in their original bindings. There was a musty odor in the room, the odor of old books with yellow leaves and ancient bindings.

Reb Saunders told us to clear the books off the two chairs near the desk. The desk stood in almost the exact spot where my father had his desk. Danny sat at his father's right, I at his left.

Reb. Saunders wanted to know about my eye. I told him it wam't bothering me at all and that I was supposed to see the doctor this Monday morning. He understood I was not permitted to read. I nodded. 'So you will listen,' he told me, playing with an earlock. 'You are a good mathematician. Now we will see what you know about more important things.' He said it with a smile on his lips, and I did not feel it as a challenge. I knew I could not match him and Danny in the breadth of their knowledge, but I wondered if I might not be able to keep up with them in terms of depth. Rabbinic literature can be studied quantitatively or qualitatively – or, as my father once put it, horizontally or vertically. The former involves covering as much material as possible, without attempting to wrest from it all its implications and intricacies; the latter involves confining oneself to one single area until it is exhaustively covered, and then going on to new material. My father, in his classes and when he studied with me at home, always used the latter method. The ideal, of course, was to be able to do both, but none of the students in my school had that kind of time available to him because of the school's heavy emphasis on English studies.

Reb Saunders had a text ofPirkei Avot open in front of him.

He began to read from it, stopping at the end of each passage. Danny and I took turns explaining. each alternating passage. I realized soon enough that the Pirkei Avot text was merely being used as a sort of jumping-off point for them, because they were soon ranging through most of the major tractates of the Talmud again. And it wam't a quiz or a quiet contest this time, either. It was a pitched battle. With no congregants around, and with me an accepted member of the family, Danny and his father fought through their points with loud voices and wild gestures of their hands almost to where I thought they might come to blows. Danny caught his father in a misquote, ran to get a Talmud from a shelf, and triumphantly showed his father where he had been wrong. His father checked the margin of the page for the textual corrections of Rabbi Elijah – the same Rabbi Elijah who had persecuted Hasidim! – and showed Danny that he had been quoting from the corrected text. Then they went onto another tractate, fought over another passage, and this time Reb Saunders agreed, his face glowing, that his son was correct. I sat quietly for a long time, watching them battle. There was an ease about them, an intimacy, which had been totally lacking from the show they had put on before the congregants last week. There was no tension here at all but a battle between equals, with Reb Saunders losing only a little less frequently than his son. And I soon realized something else. Reb Saunders was far happier when he lost to Danny than when he won. His face glowed with fierce pride and his head nodded wildly – the nod beginning from the waist and including the entire upper portion of his body, with the beard moving back and forth against his chest – each time he was forced to acquiesce to Danny's rendition of a passage or to Danny's incisive counter-questioning. The battle went on for a long time, and I slowly became aware of the fact that both Danny and his father, during a point they might be making or listening to, would cast inquisitive glances at me, as if to ask what I was doing just sitting there while all this excitement was going on: Why in the world wasn't I joining in the battle? I listened to them for a few minutes longer, and then I realized that though they knew so much more material than I did, once a passage was quoted and briefly explained, I was on almost equal footing with them. I had this time been able to retain hold of the chain of the argument – probably because there was no tension now – and so when Reb Saunders cited and explained a passage that seemed to contradict a point that had just been made by Danny, I suddenly found myself on the field of combat, offering an interpretation of the passage in support of Danny. Neither of them seemed at all surprised to hear my voice – I had the feeling they were surprised they hadn't heard it sooner – and from that point on the three of us seesawed back and forth through the infinite intricacies of the Talmud. I discovered that my father's method of teaching me Talmud and his patient insistence that I learn Talmudic grammar – I had painfully memorized an Aramaic grammar book – was now standing me in good stead. I saw allusions in passages that Danny and his father overlooked, and I resolved a contradiction with an appeal to grammar. 'Grammar!' Reb Saunders threw up his hands. 'Grammar we need yet!' But I insisted, explained, cajoled, raised my voice, gestured with my hands, quoted whatever proof texts I could remember from the grammar book, and finally he accepted my explanations. I found I was enjoying it all immensely, and once I even caught myself reading aloud from a Talmud – it was the grammatical discussion of the gender of 'derech' road, in the tractate Kiddushin before Reb Saunders realized what I was doing and told me to stop, I wasn't allowed to use my eye yet, Danny would read the passage. Danny didn't need to read the passage – he quoted it by heart with mechanical swiftness. It became clear quickly enough that though I was unequal to Danny in breadth, I was easily equal to him in depth, and this seemed to please Reb Saunders enormously. Danny and I were soon involved in a heated discussion concerning two contradictory commentaries on the same passage, and Reb Saunders sat back quietly and listened. Our argument ended in a draw; we agreed that the passage was obscure and that as it stood it could be explained either way.

There was a pause.

Reb Saunders suggested quietly that Danny might go down and bring us some tea.

Danny left.

The silence that now replaced our loud voices was almost uncomfortable. Reb Saunders sat quietly, stroking his beard with his right hand. I heard Danny's capped shoes in the apartment hallway outside the study. Then the door opened and closed. Reb Saunders stirred and looked at me.

'You have a good head.' he said softly. The Yiddish phrase he used was, literally translated, 'an iron head'. He nodded, seemed to listen for a moment to the silence in the study, then folded his arms across his chest. He sighed loudly, his eyes suddenly sad. 'Now we will see about your soul.' he said softly. 'Reuven, my son will return soon. We have little time to talk. I want you to listen to me. I know that my Daniel spends hours almost every day in the public library. No, do not say anything. Just listen. I know you are surprised that I know. It is not important how I found it out. The neighbourhood is not so big that he could hide this from me forever. When my son does not come home in the afternoons week after week, I want to know where he is. Nu, now I know. I also know that he is sometimes with you in the library and sometimes with your father. I want you to tell me what he reads. I could ask my son, but it is difficult for me to speak to him. I know you do not understand that. But it is true. I cannot ask my son. One day perhaps I will tell you the reason. I know the mind he has, and I know I can no longer tell him what he's to read and what not to read. I am asking you to tell me what he reads.'

I sat frozen and felt a long moment of blind panic. What my father had anticipated was now actually happening. But he hadn't anticipated it happening to me. He had thought Reb Saunders would confront him, not me. My father and I had acted behind Reb Saunders' back; now Reb Saunders was asking me to act behind Danny's back. I didn't know what to say.

Reb Saunders looked at me and sighed again. 'Reuven,' he said very quietly, 'I want you to hear me out. No one lives forever. My father led his people before me, and my grandfather before him, and my great-grandfather before him. For six generations now we have led our people. I will not live forever. Daniel will one day take my place' His voice broke, and he stopped. He put a finger to one of his eyes. Then he went on, his voice a little hoarse now. 'My son is my most precious possession. I have nothing in the world compared to my son. I must know what he is reading. And I cannot ask him.' He stopped and looked down at an open Talmud on his desk. 'How did he come to meet your father in the library?' he asked, looking down at the Talmud.

I sat very still and said nothing. I realized I was sitting on top of a possible explosion between Danny and his father. How long would Reb Saunders remain silent about his son's visits to the library? And I didn't like the way my father seemed to appear in all of this – as if he were conspiring behind Reb Saunders' back to contaminate his son. I took a deep breath and began to talk slowly, choosing my words with care. I told Reb Saunders everything, how Danny had met my father, why my father was suggesting books for him to read, what he was reading, how my father was helping him – omitting that Danny was studying German, that he planned to read Freud, and that he had read some books on Hasidism.

When I finished, Reb Saunders just sat there and stared at me.

I could see he was controlling himself with great effort. He covered his eyes and nose with his right hand and leaned forward, his elbow on the open Talmud, the upper portion of his body swaying slowly back and forth. I saw his lips move beneath the hand, and I heard the words 'Psychology. Master of the Universe, psychology. And Darwin.' They came out as a soft, whispered moan. He took the hand away from his face and let it drop to the Talmud. 'What can I do?' he asked himself softly. 'I can no longer speak to my own son. The Master of the Universe gave me a brilliant son, a phenomenon. And I cannot speak to him.' He looked at me and seemed suddenly aware again of my presence. 'The pain of raising children,' he said quietly. 'So many troubles. So many troubles. Reuven, you and your father will be a good influence on my son, yes?'

I nodded slowly, afraid now to speak.

'You will not make a goy out of my son?'

I shook my head, feeling numb at what I was hearing. His voice was an ache, a plea. I saw him stare up at the ceiling. 'Master of the Universe,' he almost chanted. 'You gave me a brilliant son, and I have thanked you for him a million times. But you had to make him so brilliant?'

I listened to his voice and felt myself go cold. There was so much pain in it, so much bewildered pain.

The apartment door opened and closed. Reb Saunders sat up in his chair, his face quickly regaining its composure. Clearly, almost like an echo in a cave, I heard the tap-tap-tap of Danny's metal-capped shoes against the linoleum hallway floor. Then he was in the study, carrying a tray with three glasses of tea, sugar, spoons, and some of his mother's cookies. I pushed some book aside on the desk, and he put the tray down.

From the moment he entered· the room and saw my face, I knew he was aware that something had happened during his absence. We sipped our tea in silence, and I saw him glance at me from over the rim of his glass, He knew, all right. He knew something had happened between his father and me. What was I supposed to tell him? That his father now knew he was reading forbidden books and was not going to try to stop him? Reb Saunders hadn't said anything about not telling Danny what had gone on between us. I looked at him for a clue, but he was sipping his tea calmly. I hoped Danny wouldn't ask me today. I wanted to talk to my father first.

Reb Saunders put his glass down and folded his arms across his chest. He was acting as though nothing at all had happened.

'Tell me more about grammar in the Talmud, Reuven,' he said to me, with a gentle hint of mockery in his voice. 'All my life I have studied Talmud and paid no attention to grammar. Now you tell me a person must know grammar to know Talmud. You see what happens when you have a father who is a Misnaged? Grammar yet. Mathmatics – nu, all right. Mathematics I can understand. But grammar!'.

The three of us sat there and talked until it was time for the Afternoon Service. Danny found his father's deliberate mistake easily, and I was able to follow the ensuing Talmudic discussion without too much difficulty, though I did not join in.

After the Evening Service, Danny said he would walk me part of the way home, and as we turned into Lee Avenue he asked me what had happened between me and his father that afternoon.

I told him everything. He listened in silence, not seeming at all surprised that his father somehow had learned of his secret visits to the library.

'I knew he would find out about it sooner or later,' he said softly, looking very sad.

'I hope you don't mind my telling him, Danny. I had to.'

He shrugged. His eyes were moist and gloomy. 'I almost wish he had asked me instead,' he said quietly. 'But we don't talk anymore, except when we study Talmud.'

'I don't understand that.'

'It's what I told you in the hospital. My father believes in silence. When I was ten or eleven years old, I complained to him about something, and he told me to close my mouth and look into my soul. He told me to stop running to him every time I had a problem. I should look into my own soul for the answer, he said. We just don't talk, Reuven.'

'I don't understand that at all.'

'I'm not sure I understand it myself,' he said gloomily. 'But that's the way he is. I don't know how he found out I was reading behind his back, but I'm glad he knows about it. At least I don't have to walk around in that library scared to death. I just feel bad having had to fool my father like that. But what else could I have done?'

I agreed with him that he couldn't have done anything else, but I told him I wished he could somehow get around to talking about it with his father.

'I can't,' he said, shaking his head. 'I just can't. You don't know what torture it was talking to him about organizing a ball team. We just don't talk, Reuven. Maybe it sounds a little crazy to you. But it's true.'

'I think you ought to at least try.'

'I can't!' he said, a little angry now. 'Don't you listen to what I'm saying? I just can't!'

'I don't understand it,' I told him.

'Well, I can't explain it to you any better than I have,' he said angrily.

When we stopped in front of the synagogue where my father and I prayed, he muttered his 'Good night,' turned, and walked slowly away.

My father seemed astonished when I told him what Danny had said to me.

'Silence? What do you mean, Danny is being brought up in silence?' His eyes were wide.

'They never talk, abba. Except when they study Talmud.

That's what Danny told me.'

He stared at me for a long time. Then he seemed to remember something, and his eyes narrowed suddenly.

'Once in Russia I heard something,' he murmured softly, speaking to himself. 'But I did not believe it.'

'Heard what, abba?'

He looked at me, his eyes somber, and shook his head. 'I am happy Reb Saunders knows now about his son's reading,' he said quietly, evading my question. 'I was concerned about all this subterfuge: 'But why can't he talk to Danny about it?'

'Reuven, he has already talked to Danny about it. He has talked to Danny through you.'

I stared at him. He sighed softly.

'It is never pleasant to be a buffer, Reuven.' he told me quietly.

And he would say nothing more about the strange silence between Reb Saunders and his son.