Kaaterskill Falls

by Allegra Goodman

  The Mohican Road community could have saved things, if they’d invested in Kaaterskill; but the residents have retreated farther into their wooded estates, and there is no prying them loose now to help remedy the sorry state of things in town at the foot of their private mountain peak. Those rich introverts have no interest in the real people who live in Kaaterskill. As for the religious introverts in the town itself—they have their synagogue and their own day camp, and every summer they send up flags to attract more like them. It’s distressing. But it isn’t right or even useful to resent groups of people. The one Taylor blames is the Klein boy, Michael King.

  6

  ELIZABETH and Isaac and the girls watch the Fourth of July parade from Cecil’s porch. It’s a short parade, but a loud one. Every year the volunteer fire department polishes up the engines, two red, two canary yellow, and they set off, sirens blaring. Up and down Main Street they fly. Down Maple and around up Spruce Street in a loop back to the fire station.

  Cecil has his portable radio set up on the porch so they all can hear about the big parades for the Bicentennial in the city. “Thousands of people are thronging the bridge! The coast guard estimates thirty thousand yachts and small craft cover the river,” cries the announcer on Cecil’s tinny receiver.

  “Well, we don’t have throngs,” says Cecil. “But I think King’s dog puts on a good show.” The fire engines scream down the street, and King’s gray poodle chases after the last one, barking ferociously.

  “And the ships are beautiful!” screams the announcer. “The cruiser Wainwright leads a flotilla of warships from twenty-two nations. Each one covered with pennants, and rigged as they would have been two hundred years ago today!” The receiver begins to crackle.

  “Don’t you wish you were down there in the city?” Elizabeth asks as Cecil fiddles with the dial.

  “God, no,” Beatrix says. “It’s not my holiday. Nor yours either,” she points out to Elizabeth.

  The radio comes to life. “This just in,” says the announcer. “We have confirmation that in the small hours of the morning Israelis executed a daring rescue mission at Entebbe Airport, Uganda. One hundred five hostages of the Air France hijacking have been freed. We have unconfirmed reports that an unknown number of airborne Israeli commandos swept down on the airport in a predawn raid.”

  “Commandos!” Beatrix exclaims.

  “What happened?” asks Ruchel.

  “Sh.”

  “What was that?”

  “Allegedly they overwhelmed the pro-PLO hijackers who last week took over the Air France flight from Athens to Paris. There are no details on casualties.”

  “What happened, Daddy?” Chani asks.

  “I can’t hear,” says Cecil.

  They end up walking over to the Melishes to see if Andras is getting better reception. Chani, Malki, and Ruchel pedal in front on their bikes, and their parents and the Birnbaums trail after them with the little girls. They listen to the news on the Melishes’ stereo, and later, on the Melishes’ porch, they pore over Andras’s Times, even though it is already out of date. They spread it over the glider, drinking lemonade. The articles about the raid are sketchy, padded by interviews with foreign ministers, and speculations about the events of the night.

  “If they really pulled it off, it’s incredible,” says Andras.

  “Extraordinary,” Elizabeth says.

  “When you think of all the things that could have gone wrong,” Andras says.

  “But they had split-second timing,” says Cecil.

  “And luck,” says Andras. “There were so many variables. They all could have been killed.”

  “It was a nes min hashamayim”—a miracle from heaven, Chani says suddenly from where she’s sitting on the porch rail.

  There is a startled silence. Everyone looks up. “Yes, it was,” Elizabeth says at last.

  “And do you think Israel is a miracle too?” Cecil asks, grinning. Chani doesn’t respond, but Cecil folds his arms. “I think we have a Zionist in the family,” he says impishly.

  Elizabeth’s cheeks burn. It may be a joke to Cecil, but this is not something they talk about. There are no Zionists in their community.

  The Kirshners are waiting for the perfect Israel, as the Rav puts it. They won’t settle for less. No Israeli jets for them, no modern Hebrew newspapers. Hebrew is a holy language. The Kirshners are anti-Zionist. They are not militant. They don’t campaign for an end to Israel like that tiny community near Jerusalem that actually allies itself with the PLO. The Rav would never countenance such actions against fellow Jews. Nevertheless, his people stand apart from Israel with its atheist socialists. They haven’t softened, like the Lubavichers. The Rav’s yeshiva remains in New York. He rarely speaks of Zionists, and when he does, he merely remarks that they are a troubled lot. Elizabeth actually had a cousin who left England and went to Israel; that was a terrible thing, a scandal, and a great heartache for her grandmother.

  Sitting in his chair on the porch, Andras watches the unease settle on his neighbors in the wake of Cecil’s remark. Much as he disagrees with, and even disparages, the Orthodox in his mind, Andras hates to see them provoked. It seems unfair, unmanly. Like hitting a girl. He looks at Isaac and Elizabeth and feels protective of them, almost proprietary of their narrow experience and messianic politics. He feels concerned, somehow, for the integrity of their quaint closed worldview. Smooth, small, delicate, useless as a robin’s egg.

  Nervously Nina flits from one person to another, offering more lemonade, more ice. “Well, Cecil,” says Andras, “it’s about time for us to go to the Lamkin Camp’s opening day.”

  “You’re going to that?” Cecil asks quickly.

  “Of course,” says Andras. He knows it angers Cecil even to hear the camp mentioned. As Cecil says, his father had bought the land as an investment for the synagogue and not as a free gift to a third-rate rabbi. He puts it that way, as if the camp were just poor financial judgment. But Andras knows Cecil’s true feelings: that leasing the land to the Lamkins for their camp is an insult to his father’s memory. “You’re going, I take it,” Andras says to Elizabeth and Isaac.

  Cecil reddens to the edges of his ears.

  Andras just sips his lemonade and says coolly, “Of course, it’s easier to boycott a summer camp when you don’t have children.”

  For once Cecil doesn’t know what to say. For a long moment he is silent.

  They are all surprised at Andras. He is usually so controlled. Even Elizabeth and Isaac don’t fully understand his motivation: his irritation at Cecil for provoking them about Zionism. His motive was too complex. And here is the mystery of Andras’s character: he is cold, but deep, too deep, within him, his heart is chivalrous.

  THERE are so many people at the camp opening that Elizabeth and Isaac are lucky to squeeze in at a picnic table. A crowd of sixty, maybe even seventy, fills the park above the falls. A mixed group, some Kirshners, some not. At one table, clustered together in dark trousers and white shirts, sit the five teachers Rabbi Lamkin has brought up from the city to instruct the children. They look pale and a little worried in the gold summer light. All this commotion bothers them. They bob back and forth respectfully, trying to hear Rabbi Lamkin’s speech.

  Elizabeth can’t hear Lamkin well either. He’s standing up on a rock, talking excitedly, although few are paying attention. He wanders between topics, and quotes profusely from the Torah and the prophets, but without much art in the quotation, so that instead of embroidering his drash he seems to bury it. The feeling is there, the knowledge is there, but he seems unsure of his direction. He just flits from one idea to the next, weaving like a drunken bee; mixing up the events of thousands of years of history, tangling up texts and commentaries. At first Elizabeth thinks he’s talking about youth, “bonayich, your builders,” but, suddenly, he is speaking about the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of Israel. He takes a turn back in time to speak about the encampments of Israel in the desert, only to jump forwar
d to the Maccabees in their rebellion against Antiochus. He skids back again to Biblical times, and at last he settles, heavy with quotations, on the blessings of the prophet Balaam, “who was at first unwilling to bless the people of Israel. But Balaam saw, finally, after three times he was warned, that he had no choice but to say: ‘Mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov, mishkenosechah Yisroel’”—how beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel.

  Lamkin looks out at the picnic gathering. “And the question is—was Balaam seeing the tents of Israel in the valley, the camp of Israel? So we know that was not what he saw. This vision”—he pauses, drawing the words out—“this vision was not about the physical tents. It was at the deepest level the Torah that was meant. That’s what the tents were. We know that the tents were Torah, and the camps in the desert were places of Torah. For forty years in the desert, as the midrash says, the children of Israel were learning Torah and mitzvos. Was it any wonder they didn’t want to give this up—this life of learning—to enter the land promised to them? These were the years they were learning intensively, having unbelievable insights and understanding. All the books of Mishnah and Talmud and all the commentaries were spread out before them. This was a yeshiva of spectacular learning in the desert that was going on for forty years. That was what the camps of Israel were. Now, when we look at our camp”—Pesach glances at his wife, but quickly turns back to his speech, anxious not to lose his point—“we look at our camp, now, and hopefully what we are going to see is what Balaam saw, a whole yeshiva of learning outdoors. A whole wonderland of Torah. Which is for us lofty like the wild ox, strong like the lion….”

  “Like the wild ox? That’s the wrong verse. That’s not very apt,” Elizabeth whispers to Isaac, at the picnic table.

  “I didn’t hear,” Isaac says. “It’s all right.”

  Elizabeth just shakes her head. Lamkin’s words seem to her hopelessly muddled.

  When Rabbi Lamkin is finished, Beyla’s promised feast begins. There are platters of cold cuts, plastic tubs of potato salad and coleslaw, attracting wasps; pickles, potato chips, and scores of hot dogs curling up on the Lamkins’ brand-new grill.

  The parents are gathering together to talk. The children are screaming under the trees, clambering over rocks, skinning their knees, dripping ketchup onto the grass. And above all the waterfall roars, rushing down into the gorge below them. In this din Elizabeth feels a little sad. It occurs to her that she doesn’t particularly like Rabbi Lamkin, and she isn’t happy about his running the summer camp. He isn’t the sort of rabbi she respects. She and Isaac are different this way. Isaac knows very well that Lamkin isn’t well spoken or intelligent or practical; but he believes the young man has a good heart, and so he won’t think ill of him. Elizabeth often thinks ill of people. She is critical; she resents them, and she can’t help it. She accuses herself sometimes of being a snob, or even slightly mean-spirited. She hates incompetence. On Yom Kippur in the city, for example, there is one old codger who always leads musaf, and he sings out of the side of his mouth in such a harsh and tuneless way that Elizabeth burns with indignation. On Yom Kippur of all days! But she can’t help herself. She stands there fasting and exhausted, and when she hears this man sing she actually wants to do him harm. Isaac, who davens beautifully and has a lovely voice, never leads the services on Yom Kippur. He is not a big macher in the community by any means. In fact there is not a single great rabbi in his family.

  The problem isn’t that people show Lamkin undue reverence. No one accords him great respect; and yet, for that very reason, it seems wrong to entrust him with the summer camp. It seems a kind of mutual exploitation. Community baby-sitting in exchange for rabbinical power.

  “What’s wrong?” Isaac asks her as he comes up with a plate of food. “You’re not enjoying it?”

  “Lamkin jumbled everything together,” Elizabeth says.

  “He was nervous.” Isaac makes allowances, as he always does. “It’s going to be a good camp. And you’ll have some time to yourself.”

  “All right! All right!” Beyla Lamkin is announcing. “All children come here to get ready for the treasure hunt. One, two, one, two—if you’re a one, you’re on team one; if you’re a two, you’re on team two. One, two, one, two …” She taps each child lightly on the head. The Lamkins’ new campers mill around for the treasure hunt. “Pinchas! Stop that!” Beyla calls to her youngest son.

  Elizabeth remembers the summer three years ago when Brocha was just a newborn. Brocha and Pinchas had the same birthday, and Beyla joked about making a shidduch between them. Pinchas is three now, a little monkey running around with his shirt untucked, and the fringes of his tallis katan flying. With his long, pale face and wispy black hair, he looks just like his father. Elizabeth would not be happy to see her daughters marrying Lamkins. Although, of course, they are good people; they are a pious family.

  When Elizabeth thinks about her daughters, she thinks of them living extraordinary lives. She can’t speak of it aloud—all that she wants for them. She doesn’t have one simple idea, only a fervent, unarticulated wish. The girls’ future is just something Elizabeth imagines, nothing whatever to do with reality. They’re very good children. They expect to marry scholars and then support them while they learn. But Elizabeth imagines someday her daughters could be scholars themselves—not of Talmud, of course, but perhaps Tanach. Or at other times she thinks one of them could become a writer, or an artist. Perhaps a journalist. It would have to be a Jewish newspaper, so that she could keep Shabbes. Naturally, becoming a mother, keeping a Jewish home, is the most important thing. But somehow she can’t see it as the only thing for her girls. There must be, there ought to be, something else as well, a second purpose. Perhaps Elizabeth’s dreams for the girls are really only what she desires for herself. She is by nature discontented, she thinks; by nature the opposite of Isaac. For he never had money, never had a great family name, and he seems happy anyway.

  “Mommy, can we go down to the water?” Chani asks her.

  “And can I come?” Ruchel asks.

  “I’ll come down with you,” Elizabeth says.

  Carefully, she and the girls climb down the long dirt path into the gorge. They climb all the way down from the park to where the falls pour louder and louder into great pools of rippling water, green and brown. The rock pools are cool under the waterfall. Elizabeth and Chani and Ruchel take off their shoes and socks and stand in the shallowest water, smooth mossy pebbles stroking the soles of their bare feet. The wet hems of their skirts slap against their legs. In the distance they hear the cries from the treasure hunt, a confused yelling about team one and team two, and then Elizabeth hears Isaac as he comes down the path to the falls. He waves at them, and laughing, calls out the line from the Book of Isaiah: “Kol tzameh l’chu lamayim.” Let all who thirst come for water. The water of Torah, the thirst-quenching truth of God’s law.

  “ISAAC,” Elizabeth asks that night in bed, “how are you so content? I try, but …”

  He smiles at her in the dark. She can make out the shape of his quick smile, the curve of his cheek, the parting of lips. “How are you so patient?” she asks. “Tell me.”

  “Just habit,” he whispers. “It’s only habit.”

  “Tell me how,” she says. “So I won’t want things.”

  “I couldn’t teach you that,” he tells her.

  He has had his disappointments. Because he wasn’t a particular favorite of the Rav, and had no distinguished relatives, he didn’t get a stipend from the yeshiva to continue his studies. No one wanted him to leave, but his family didn’t have the money to support him for so long. And yet, for all of this, Elizabeth can see that his private learning outside the yeshiva sustains him. He doesn’t want a second purpose. His life is all one. His books are part of him. Truly, his books quench his thirst; he is more than satisfied, while Elizabeth’s reading only whets her appetite, fills her with confused longings for change and new experiences. She sighs. Too often reading makes he
r feel incomplete, impatient.

  “Here’s the trick.” He kisses her. “You have to want what you have.”

  She props herself up on one elbow. “Really, Isaac, are you such a fatalist?”

  “No,” he says, and already, as he touches her, his hands erase her words. How can there be room for questions? He is her whole landscape, his body next to hers, his arms around her. She lies in the valley of his arms.

  7

  THE picnic over, Renée sits at the piano under protest. She’s been ordered to practice an hour before she can go to the Fourth of July barbecue at Stephanie’s. Her mother hadn’t wanted her to go at all. She’s seen Stephanie, and the girl looks wild. Nina doesn’t know much about the Fawess family, but they aren’t Jewish, she knows that. They don’t belong to Nina’s circle of acquaintances, and it hurts her that with all the Jewish children to choose from, Renée runs around with this Arab one. Nina isn’t racist exactly; it’s just that she remembers such isolation as a child. She had so few Jewish friends. Her own parents in Buenos Aires sent her to a Catholic school. Even then, she hated sitting alone, different from the others though she wore the uniform. She begged to go to the Jewish school, but it was far away, and her parents wouldn’t let her board. They hired a Hebrew tutor for her instead and pretended they were like their neighbors, living in the suburbs with servants and big gardens.

  The world is very big, very dangerous. Full of enemies of Israel and of Jews. There are people who make crime and hate their business. These terrorists, these hijackers. Naturally, Nina wants her daughter to be safe, and to be sheltered by the kind of community she herself had longed for as a child: the Jewish school in which Renée can know her whole class, the summer place where she can play with the neighbors.