Reb Saunders sat in his straight-backed red leather chair surrounded by books and the musty odor of old bindings. His face seemed lined with pain, but his voice was soft when he greeted me. He was, he said quietly, very happy to see me. He hesitated, looked at me, then at Danny. His eyes were dark and brooding. Where was I keeping myself, he asked, and why wasn't I coming over anymore on Shabbos afternoons? I told him my father and I were studying Talmud together on Shabbat. His eyes brooded, and he sighed. He nodded vaguely. He wished he could spend more time talking to me now, he said, but there were so many people who needed to see him. Couldn't I come over some Shahbos afternoon? I told him I would try, and Danny and I went out.
That was all he said. Not a word about Zionism. Not a word about the silence he had imposed upon Danny and me. Nothing. I found I disliked him more when I left than when I had entered. I did not see him again that July.
Chapter 17
Our last year of college began that September. Over lunch one day I told Danny a mild anti-Hasidic story I had heard, and he laughed loudly. Then, without thinking, I mentioned a remark one of the students had made a few days back: 'The tzaddik sits in absolute silence, saying nothing, and all his followers listen attentively,' and the laughter left his lips as suddenly as if he had been slapped, and his face froze.
I realized immediately what I had said, and felt myself go cold.
I muttered a helpless apology.
For a long moment, he said nothing. His eyes seemed glazed, turned inward. Then his face slowly relaxed. He smiled faintly. 'There's more truth to that than you realize,' he murmured. 'You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all it's own. It talks to me somtimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it.'
The words came out in a soft singsong. He sounded exactly like his father.
'You don't understand that, do you?' he asked.
'No.'
He nodded. 'I didn't think you would.'
'What do you mean, it talks to you?'
'You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes – sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.'
I felt myself go cold again, hearing him talk that way. 'I don't understand that at all.'
He smiled faintly.
'Are you and your father talking these days?' He shook his head.
I didn't understand any of it, but he seemed so somber and strange that I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I changed the subject. 'You ought to get yourself a girl,' I told him. I was dating regularly now on Saturday nights. 'It's a wonderful tonic for a suffering soul.'
He looked at me, his eyes sad. 'My wife has been chosen for me.' he said quietly.
I gaped at him.
'It's an old Hasidic custom, remember?'
'It never occurred to me,' I said, shocked.
He nodded soberly. 'That's another reason it won't be so easy to break out of the trap. It doesn't only involve my own family: I didn't know what to say. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. And we walked together in that silence to Rav Gershenson's shiur.
Danny's brother's bar mitzvah celebration, which I attended on a Monday morning during the third week in October, was a simple and unpretentious affair. The Morning Service began at seven-thirty – early enough to enable Danny and me to attend and not come late to school – and Levi was called to recite the blessing over the Torah. After the service there was a kiddush, consisting of schnapps and some cakes and cookies. Everyone drank l'chaim, to life, then left. Reb Saunders asked me quietly why I wasn't coming over to see him anymore, and I explained that my father and I were studying Talmud together on Shabbat afternoons. He nodded vaguely and walked slowly away, his tall frame somewhat stooped.
Levi Saunders was now tall and thin. He seemed a ghostly imitation of Danny, except that his hair was black and his eyes were dark. The skin on his hands and face was milky white, almost translucent, showing the branching veins. There was something helplessly fragile about him; he looked as if a wind would blow him down. Yet at the same time his dark eyes burned with a kind of inner fire that told of the tenacity with which he clung to life and of his growing awareness of the truth that for the rest of his days his every breath would depend upon the pills he put into his mouth at regular intervals. The eyes told you that he had every intention of holding on to his life, no matter what the pain.
As if to emphasize the tenuousness of Levi Saunders' existence, he became violently ill the day following his bar mitzvah and was taken by ambulance to the Brooklyn Memorial Hospital. Danny called me during supper as soon as the ambulance pulled away from in front of his house, and I could tell from his voice that he was in a panic. There wasn't much I could say to him over the phone, and when I asked him if he wanted me to come over, he said no, his mother was almost hysterical, he would have to stay with her, he had only wanted to let me know. And he hung up.
My father apparently had heard my troubled voice, because he was standing now outside the kitchen, asking me what was wrong.
I told him.
We resumed our supper. I wasn't very hungry now, but I ate anyway to keep Manya happy. My father noticed how disturbed I was, but he said nothing. After the meal, he followed me into my room, sat on my bed while I sat at my desk, and asked me what was wrong, why was I so upset by Levi Saunders' illness, he had been ill before.
It was at that point that I told my father of Danny's plans to go on for a doctorate in psychology and abandon the position of tzaddik he was to inherit one day from Reb Saunders. I also added, feeling that I ought to be completely honest about it now, that Danny was in a panic over his brother's illness because without his brother it might not be possible for him to break away from his father: he did not really want to destroy the dynasty.
My father's face became more and more grim as he listened.
When I was done, he sat for a long time in silence, his eyes grave. 'When did Danny tell you this?' he asked finally.
'The summer I lived in their house.'
'That long ago? He knew already that long ago?'
'Yes.'
'And all this time you did not tell me?'
'It was a secret between us, abba.'
He looked at me grimly. 'Does Danny know what pain this will cause his father?'
'He dreads the day he'll have to tell him. He dreads it for both of them.'
'I knew it would happen,' my father said. 'How could it not happen?' Then he looked at me sharply. 'Reuven, let me understand this. Exactly what is Danny planning to tell Reb Saunders?'
'That he's going on for a doctorate in psychology and doesn't intend to take his place.'
'Is Danny thinking to abandon his Judaism?'
I stared at him. 'I never thought to ask him,' I said faintly.
'His beard, his earlocks, his clothes, his fringes – all this he will retain in graduate school?'
'I don't know, abba. We never talked about it.'
'Reuven, how will Danny become a psychologist while looking like a Hasid?'
I didn't know what to say.
'It is important that Danny know exactly what he will tell his father. He must anticipate what questions will be on Reb Saunders' mind. Talk to Danny. Let him think through exactly what he will tell his father.'
'All this time I never thought to ask him.'