“Page twenty-six,” Solomon whispered, and when Mullaney had found the page, he pointed to a line in the English text.
“Thou wast the same,” Mullaney read silently, “before the world was created; thou hast been the same since the world has been created; thou art the same in this world, and thou wilt be the same in the world to come,” a premise he could not buy because it seemed to negate the motivation for taking any gamble; if nothing ever changed, if you remained the same now and always, then what was the sense of — and then, reading back, saw that the passage was prefaced with the words “Blessed be the name of his glorious majesty forever and ever,” and realized they related to God, and thought again of the incense flooding over the altar railing and wafting back over the pews, et cum spiritu tuo.
It had been so simple then to accept without question, why does the world get so complex? Mullaney wondered. Well, he thought, it gets complex because sooner or later you’ve got to say No, you have got to shake your head and say No, I will not accept this, I will not be bound by this, I will be free. And so, despite your mothers sorrowful look (oh those soulful brown eyes, I think she’d wanted in her heart of Irish hearts for me to become a priest like my Uncle Sean in County Wicklow) you must break the old lady’s heart by saying No, my dear Mother darling, I do not wish to accompany you this Sunday to St. Ignatius, I am terribly sorry but this Sunday I would like to sleep till noon, and then write myself a sonnet or two and then stroll in the park by the river and build a castle on the further shore, that is what I wish to do — you must say No sometime in your life. And, perhaps, I don’t know because I am new at this game of Taking the Gamble, I have only been at it for a year now, and losing steadily, but perhaps you have got to take the gamble more than once, turn your back more than once, say No, and No again, rush out into the wind and find whatever it is out there that’s beckoning you. Because, you see, you’re not really his glorious majesty, you are only Andrew Mullaney and you were not the same before the world was created, nor will you be the same in the world to come. Say No to Irene who begged you to stay, with her mascara running down her face and looking very much like a little girl who had put on her mother’s heels and makeup, weeping in the chair as I took a last look back at her and started to say something, but could not because Goodbye is very final, and I loved that woman, you do not say Goodbye to someone you love, and yet not sufficiently debonair to say au revoir or ciao (I have never yelled Banco! in my life, how could I even pretend to say those other things) and knowing that So long was far too casual for a woman who had given me seven years of very happy times — but you’ve got to say No sometime, you have got to say No or die, and I could not die, not even for you, Irene my love.
So Solomon, where are we now? where are you pointing now with your old and withered finger? what are you showing me in your ancient book, is this the Siddur, does Siddur mean prayer-book or missal or some such, what are the words? let them speak to me, Solomon, because I am, and always have been, a sucker for God, though a gambler besides.
“Here,” Solomon said.
Here, Mullaney thought, and read On your new moon festivals you shall offer as a burnt-offering to the Lord two young bullocks, one ram, seven yearling male lambs without blemish, numbers again, Mullaney thought, and a partridge in a pear tree, he thought and remembered the third Christmas they were married, he and Irene, when he had given her the Twelve Days of Christmas, carrying each of the days in his head for a month before the twenty-fifth, he could still remember each and every damn word of that song, it had driven him crazy for the better part of December. But oh the joy on that Irish phizz of hers when she opened them all on Christmas morning, each package wrapped and appropriately numbered. “One,” of course, was the partridge in a pear tree, he had bought her a small flowering pear and a tiny cotton-stuffed bird whose wire feet he had attached to the uppermost branch. For “Five,” he had bought five gold rings in Woolworth’s, enormous rings with rubies and emeralds that looked like the real McCoy, and diamonds every bit as genuine in appearance as the collection that had been stolen on Forty-seventh Street Thursday night — “Lots of money involved here,” Bozzaris had said — the whole thing had cost him two dollars and nineteen cents, Irene’s face worth a million dollars when she opened the box and the rings came tumbling out. For “Eight,” he had bought eight paperback novels with the bustiest half-clad beauties he could find on the covers, maids with milking breasts bursting out of peasant blouses, unimaginable titles like Up in Mabel’s Cooze or whatever; he had felt like a complete pervert buying the novels in a Times Square bookshop where scurvy characters thumbed photographs of long-legged girls in black lingerie, and he a respectable encyclopedia salesman. The Twelve Days of Christmas, one to twelve, each box numbered and each gift clever, if he had to say so himself, though inexpensive because that was a prime requisite in those days, clever but cheap. He had hated that bloody song ever since because in order to remember that “Nine” was nine drummers drumming, for example, he always had to sing the whole damn thing from the top, oh, what a Christmas that had been.
“They want you to hold up the Torah,” Solomon said.
The men had parted the red velvet curtains under the hanging caged candle and had taken from the wooden cabinet there a large — well, he didn’t know quite what it was at first, a red velvet case or cover with two carved silver handles protruding from its top. And then someone removed the velvet cover, but Mullaney still didn’t know what it was until Solomon said, “The Holy Book, they wish you to hold it up.”
“Why?” Mullaney said.
“It is an honor,” Solomon said.
“I appreciate it,” Mullaney said, “but no. Thank you, I don’t think it would be right. For a stranger,” he added hastily. “Thank you, Mr. Solomon, but it would not be right.”
Solomon said something in Yiddish to the old man who was anxiously leaning over them. The man smiled, and nodded, and then chose someone else to come to the front of the temple. The man walked to the altar, seized the Torah by both silver handles and held it up for the congregation to see the holy words. The service was coming to a close. Someone was reading more Hebrew, Mullaney no longer tried to follow even the English translation, some of the older men were impatiently beginning to take off their talliths (See, Mullaney thought, I learned a word). And then the Torah (another word) was rolled up and put back into its cover and carried back into the wooden cabinet behind the velvet drapes, and the drapes were closed, and there were more words in Hebrew, and the men were rising, and Solomon said, “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it, Melinsky?”
“No, that was very nice,” Mullaney said.
“Not like maybe at a big fancy temple,” Solomon said with a wink, “but not bad for a bunch of old Jews, huh?”
“Not bad at all,” Mullaney said, giving him a wink of his own, and following him toward the left-hand side of the temple where the other men were taking off their prayer shawls and carrying them to the scarred wooden rack on the wall. The flickering light on its long chain hung motionless from the low ceiling, casting dancing shadows on their faces as they folded the shawls over the long wooden bar. Mullaney followed Solomon to where the others were standing, being careful to imitate the exact way Solomon draped his tallith, the Hebrew lettering to the right, though he wasn’t at all sure this was part of the ritual.