The Promise

by Chaim Potok

  “Give me a minute,” Danny said to me, and went inside. He came out shortly and we went up the corridor to the stairway. As we started down the stairs, I turned and saw the woman go along the corridor and into Michael’s room.

  “Let’s go into my office,” Danny said. “I want to talk to you.”

  “The pagoda is red and white,” I said. “The board in that gambling game at the carnival was red and white.”

  “I know about the board.”

  “Why did you give him the article about my father?”

  “So he would have something to talk about when I saw him again.”

  “He had something to talk about, all right. It could have been a disaster.”

  “Nothing would have happened tonight if you hadn’t come. He connected you with the article and himself with you, and that did it. I didn’t think he would react that way.” We were outside his office. He was putting a key into the door and giving me a grim look. “That’s what I meant,” he said. “You can’t afford to make mistakes with human beings. Let me turn on the light. Come on in and sit down. We have a lot to talk about. But first call your father again and tell him you’ll be here about half an hour longer.”

  I looked at him.

  “I’m going to need your help,” he said.

  I dialed the phone. Manya answered. My father was at a meeting and had not yet come home. She sounded upset. That was very unusual for my father; he never missed supper; his doctor had ordered him to avoid an erratic eating schedule. I told her I was not sure when I would be home. That upset her even more. I hung up.

  Danny was sitting in the wooden swivel chair behind his desk. The office was small but very clean and neat, with white walls and a beige tiled floor and a filing cabinet and bookcases. There was a single window covered with light-brown drapes. On the wall on either side of the window were color prints of New England winter scenes. An easy chair stood in a corner and there were two wooden chairs against a wall. Danny’s desk was a small brown metal affair, with papers neatly piled on top of it. One of the piles consisted of monographs. He sat behind the desk, his hat tilted back on his head, and gazed at me calmly.

  “Did Michael say anything at all before that he hadn’t said to you earlier?”

  I thought about that a moment. “No. Except the part about where he got the matches.”

  “What are black clouds?”

  “Cosmic dust. He rambled about red giants and white dwarfs and cosmic dust when we were in the pagoda. He said he had been looking through his telescope last night.”

  “It poured last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “That telescope is very important to him. Freud would probably say it’s a sex symbol. He’s using it to assert his manhood.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I think Freud is right. I also think the sky is the only thing Michael feels is safe. It’s constant and far away and it never attacks you even when you’re poking around in it. You can also be angry at the sky if you want to without worrying about hurting it or being hurt by it.”

  “Is Michael afraid of hurting someone?”

  “I think that’s what it’s all about. He’s terrified of his rage. He’s so terrified he doesn’t really know what he’s angry at. You get through to him up to a point. He really trusts you. But you don’t know what to do with it. Then he comes to me and repeats what he’s told you because I’m your friend. But when it gets to something crucial he turns it off. That’s called resisting therapy. He’s terrified of going any further. So he instinctively blocks everything out and turns himself off. Or he simply lies and invents dreams and fantasies. He has incredible defenses.”

  “What does Rachel have to do with all of this?”

  “His rage is all mixed up with sex fantasies about her. That’s not too unusual for someone his age. But it complicates things.”

  “Does he know about you and Rachel?”

  “No. I’m not sure he would want to talk to me again if he ever found out.”

  “What’s going to happen? Is he just going to lie around here forever?”

  “No. This place doesn’t keep children for too long unless there’s some indication of improvement.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “We’ve got to try something. We’ve got to take some kind of a gamble and break this impasse.”

  I stared at him. “What sort of a gamble?”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this.” He was leaning against the back of his chair, speaking calmly and quietly. “I’ve talked it over with Altman. He’s willing to go along if his parents approve. If I can convince you and you can convince them I think we’ll be able to go ahead with this.”

  “Go ahead with what? What are you talking about?”

  Danny was silent for a moment. He leaned forward against the desk, his face calm, his eyes very bright. “Let me ask you something,” he said softly. “Do you remember when my father wouldn’t let us talk to each other and your father was in the hospital recovering from his heart attack and you were all alone?”

  “I remember,” I said. “God, I remember.”

  “What did you want most then?”

  I was quiet.

  “Can you remember?”

  “I wanted to smash your father.”

  Danny smiled. “What else?”

  “I wanted to be able to talk to you.”

  “Yes,” Danny said. “That’s exactly how I felt. All those years of silence, I needed someone to talk to.”

  “And then I didn’t duck.”

  “And then you didn’t duck, and we became friends—and suddenly you weren’t there any more. People are frightened of being alone. Most people, anyway. Zimmerman and Powys and others—those books that you saw—they talk about the beauty of solitude. But they enjoyed their solitude because they knew they could always come back to people. You don’t enjoy it when you’re really cut off. You hate it. Unless the solitude is a withdrawal as a result of some kind of breakdown. That’s what probably happened in the case of the Kotzker Rebbe. You ought to read up on him sometime. He was a lonely, bitter, angry man. I think he really hated being a rebbe. He wanted rational and spiritual perfection in everyone, and in himself too. It all tore him to pieces finally and he ended up denying the existence of God and broke down and withdrew. But I can’t imagine that he enjoyed his years of solitude. I can’t imagine anyone not hating solitude, especially a solitude that is involuntary. Even Byrd hated it finally. He thought he would enjoy it. But it ended up terrifying him. A man begins to disintegrate when he’s completely alone. Strange things happen. You know what happened with Byrd? He set up an advance weather station in the Antarctic in 1934 and manned it alone for four and a half months. He was connected by radio to the outside world, to Little America. He wanted to be alone. He actually looked forward to the solitude. And at first it was a beautiful experience and he even regretted having the radio. Then it slowly became what he called the ‘brain-cracking loneliness of solitary confinement.’ Those are his words. Let’s see.” Danny was silent a moment. Then he began to quote from memory. “ ‘At home I usually awaken instantly, in full possession of my faculties. But that’s not the case here. It takes me some minutes to collect my wits; I seem to be groping in the cold reaches of interstellar space, lost and bewildered.’ Somewhere else he says, ‘Now when I laugh, I laugh inside; for I seem to have forgotten how to do it out loud.’ He says that the absence of conversation makes it difficult for him to think in words. ‘I talk to myself and listen to the words, but they sound hollow and unfamiliar.’ A few paragraphs later, he writes that he’s been trying to analyze the effect of isolation on a man. I’ll just give you a few of his remarks. He says, ‘The silence of this place is as real and solid as sound. More real, in fact, than the occasional creaks of the Barrier and the heavier coneussions of snow quakes.’ Then he says something very important. ‘Very often my mood soars above it; but when this mood goes, I find myself craving
change—a look at trees, a rock, a handful of earth, the sound of foghorns, anything belonging to the world of movement and living things.’ That’s a very interesting observation. But Byrd was able to withstand the real disintegrating effects of isolation because he had records to keep and instruments to watch and because, as he put it, ‘my defenses are perfected.’ Things didn’t go too well for him later on, but that’s another story. The point is that Michael has tremendous defenses, and isolation has a way sometimes of penetrating those defenses and making you want to talk. I want Michael to talk. And I think this may be the only way to get him to do it.”

  I was staring at him in astonishment and fear. “You want to put Michael through this on the basis of a book by an explorer—on the basis of a single experience?”

  He shook his head slowly. “No. There’s some technical material that’s been written about the effects of isolation. I have some of it here.” He went through the pile of monographs on his desk, selected a few papers, and handed them to me. I glanced quickly at the titles: “Extreme Social Isolation of a Child,” by K. Davis; “Final Note on a Case of Extreme Isolation,” also by K. Davis; “Infant Development Under Conditions of Restricted Practice and of Minimal Social Stimulation,” by W. Dennis.

  “I have some other material at home,” Danny said. “Some of it is in German.”

  “Has this kind of thing ever been done before with someone who’s sick?”

  “I can’t find anything on it. Altman doesn’t think there is anything.”

  “You mean it’s never been done before?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You want to try an experiment with Michael that’s never been done before?”

  “Yes,” he said very quietly. Then he said, “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “How the hell do you want me to look at you? That’s a suffering boy you’ve got. How can you experiment with him when you don’t really know what you’re doing?”

  “I know he’s suffering,” Danny said, the calmness abruptly gone from his voice. “You don’t have to tell me he’s suffering.”

  “I think it’s a crazy idea. What do you do, lock him in a room, alone, without furniture, or even a clock, and just let him lie there by himself until he falls to pieces and begs to talk? Is that the idea?”

  “It’s a lot more technical and complicated than that. But that’s the idea.”

  “I think it’s crazy.”

  “Do you know what the alternative is?”

  “What?”

  “Michael will be institutionalized.”

  I stared at him and said nothing.

  “Tonight was very serious. How long do you think the people here are going to let him roam around loose? He’s dangerous, Reuven. He’s dangerous to others and to himself.”

  “And you think this experiment will cure him?”

  “No, it won’t cure him. If it works it will get him to talk. He’ll be able to go through the process of normal therapy. That’s what might cure him, or at least enable him to live with his problems. The experiment will make him really sick, so sick that he’ll want normal therapy.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about any of this. How can I decide whether it makes sense or not?”

  “I want you to trust me. Altman thinks it makes sense. I want you to trust me and to back me when I talk to the Gordons about it.”

  “What difference will it make what I say?”

  “You have no idea how much your word counts with the Gordons.”

  “Let me think about it. Let me—I want to think about it.”

  “Think about it until tomorrow night.”

  “What’s tomorrow night?”

  “A family conference after your dinner with the Gordons. Rachel and I and her parents are coming over. I set it up when I found out you would be there. I want a decision.”

  “Do Michael’s parents know about the experiment?”

  “Yes. They also want to think about it.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  There was a knock on the door. Danny looked across the room. “Come in,” he said, his voice suddenly calm again.

  The door opened and Abraham and Ruth Gordon came inside and closed the door behind them. They had on their coats and looked frightened.

  “We found Michael asleep,” Abraham Gordon said. His round, fleshy features were gray. “The girl said to go down to your office.”

  “Did something happen?” Ruth Gordon asked. Her eyes were dark with fear.

  “Yes,” Danny said quietly.

  “Something serious?”

  “Please take off your coats and sit down.” He sounded very calm and professional. “Reuven, think about it.”

  He was telling me he wanted me to leave. I got to my feet.

  “Must you go?” Ruth Gordon asked quickly.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re expecting you tomorrow night.”

  I nodded.

  “We came to light the Hanukkah menorah,” Abraham Gordon said. He seemed tired and confused. “We came straight from the airport. I bought him a new menorah.” He indicated the package in his hand.

  “Please sit down,” I heard Danny say, and closed the door softly behind me.

  It was very late, and I took a cab home. Manya was gone. I found my father at the kitchen table, eating alone. He had decided to wait for me before lighting the Hanukkah candles. He looked haggard. There was some cold chicken in the refrigerator. I ate quickly, and we talked.

  “When the alternative is possible disaster, a man must gamble,” my father said, looking at me intently, his eyes bright and weary behind his spectacles. I had the impression he was talking as much about himself as about the Gordons.

  Later, we went into the living room, and his thin voice chanted the blessings as he lit the candles on the Hanukkah menorah in the window—hours after they should have been lighted. We sang the songs together. Then we stood there for a long time, staring down at the two tiny flames that flickered against the enormous darkness of the night.

  Twelve

  I woke in the night and saw slivers of light framing my door and came quickly out of my room. The hall and kitchen lights were on. I found my father at the kitchen table. He sat very still, staring down at the table, and all he said was that he could not sleep and that I should go back to bed. I went back to bed and lay awake, and after a long while the lights were turned off and I heard him go to his room.

  The phone rang at ten to eight the next morning. I had just finished praying the Morning Service. I put away my tefillin and answered it on the third ring. It was Ruth Gordon. Her husband was not feeling well. The dinner would have to be postponed. No, it was nothing serious. She would call me again.

  My father looked as if he had not slept at all. He ate breakfast automatically and without appetite. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles and his face was pale. He had forgotten to comb his hair and grimaced with annoyance when I told him about it. He seemed reluctant to leave the house. When I asked him what was wrong he replied somewhat testily that nothing was wrong. He was still at the kitchen table when I left for school.

  Rav Kalman ignored me completely that day and acted as if I weren’t in the room. I found it increasingly difficult even to listen to his voice. I sat there most of the period, staring down at my Talmud and doing logic problems in my head.

  I called Danny at his apartment that night. He told me there had been a staff meeting at the residential treatment center that afternoon. They were beginning to re-evaluate Michael’s situation in the light of last night’s episode. He did not think anything really serious would result; a re-evaluation of this sort was more or less routine. But it didn’t help matters. Had I thought about what he had told me? Yes, I had thought about it, I said, and had talked it over with my father. I wanted to think about it some more, I said. And then I added that I still wasn’t sure I understood why he felt that my support would count very much with the Gordons. What was the matter with
Abraham Gordon? I asked. He had had some chest pains and the doctor had told him to rest for a few days, Danny said. We would probably all be getting together sometime next week.

  My father went to sleep very early that night. He looked ashen. There was clearly something going on in his school that was causing him considerable anguish. But he would say nothing about it.

  Rav Kalman continued to ignore me. I sat across from his desk on Tuesday and Wednesday of that week and he seemed hardly aware of my existence. But I noticed two changes in him that perplexed me. He had virtually stopped pacing back and forth behind his desk. He sat at the desk now or stood quietly behind it, smoking one cigarette after another. And much of the sarcasm was gone from his voice. He seemed quieter somehow; his voice was subdued; much of his usual relentlessness was gone from him. On Thursday I noticed him looking at me from time to time during the first hour of the class. Then, in a very quiet voice, he called on me to read. He let me read for half an hour without interruption. Then he called on someone else. After class, on our way over to the coatracks in the synagogue, Irving Goldberg asked me if I had noticed that there hadn’t been any tirades from Rav Kalman ever since the incident with Abe Greenfield the other week. I hadn’t noticed, I said, and added that it didn’t really make any difference to me one way or the other about Rav Kalman’s tirades.

  Abraham Gordon called me at a few minutes past nine that night. Could I come over to his office at the seminary tomorrow? He had a class from ten to twelve and would like to see me at about twelve if I could make it. We could have lunch together in the seminary dining room and talk. There was something important he wanted to talk to me about. He had thought I would be able to come over to them for dinner sometime next week, but something had come up and they would be out of town all of next week. Would I come to the seminary? He wanted to talk to me about Michael. His voice sounded hoarse and urgent. Yes, I said. I would come.

  The next morning I took a bus to Eastern Parkway, a wide street with two islands and eight lanes of traffic, and trees lining the sidewalks, and elegant private homes and well-kept, pre-war apartment houses. It was a cold, sunny morning, and I walked quickly to the five-story, gray-brick building of the Zechariah Frankel Seminary and up the stone steps and through the huge wooden front door into the lobby, where there were display cases of Jewish ceremonial objects and a collection of first editions of scholarly works by the faculty, arranged, title pages exposed, inside a glass-enclosed cabinet. Two students stood in front of the elevator door, arguing about a passage having to do with a cat in Martin Buber’s I and Thou. They continued arguing as we rode up the elevator. One of them wore a skullcap; the other did not. They were still arguing as I got out on the fifth floor.