by Chaim Potok
“The Jewish Marxists of the twenties and thirties should hear you talk,” I said.
“My father says most of those Marxists are real-estate salesmen now in California,” Eileen said. We laughed.
A few minutes later, Danny and I sat alone at the table. The girls had gone off together—“to powder our noses,” as Eileen had put it.
“We must be reading the same books,” I said.
“How is your French?” he asked.
“Pretty good.”
“Read L’Homme Révolté by Camus. It came out last year. You can get it in French.”
“We are reading the same books,” I said. Then I said, “Not everyone who resorts to violence is a fool. Remember the story of Abraham lopping off the heads of the idols.”
“Yes,” he said. “I can understand violence if a person makes a rational decision that his world is utterly evil and irredeemable and that nothing in it is worth saving.”
“Not many people can make a decision like that rationally.”
“They ought to read some good books.”
“Marx read a lot of good books.”
“Marx was full of rage. Books don’t do much good when you’re that full of rage.”
“We’re all full of rage. That’s something I’ve begun to think about these days. Who isn’t full of rage?”
“Yes. But most people manage in one way or another to handle it.”
“Why are people so full of rage? How would your friend Freud answer that?”
“With a lecture on sex and repression, and by drawing you a model of the id, ego, and superego.”
“Would it help?”
“To some extent. It would begin to teach you how to become aware of yourself. That’s what the soul is, I think. Self-awareness.”
“The soul,” I said.
“The crust is self-delusion. The soul is self-awareness.”
“And if you’re rebelling and are full of rage and don’t have that self-awareness—what then?”
“You become a Marx or a Michael.”
I looked at him. “Michael is rebelling?”
“Yes. That’s what it’s all about, I think.”
“What is he rebelling against?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Michael?”
“No. He won’t know until he’s able to talk about it.”
“How is he getting along?” I asked.
“Michael is right now probably still smashing his fists against the door trying to get out of that room. He broke a knuckle on his right hand two days ago.”
“My God. Do his parents know?”
“His parents are told everything.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
“Weeks. Maybe months.”
I did not say anything.
“He was in a trembling panic when we first put him in. He kept screaming that we were throwing him into a toilet. Now he’s raging against it. I think he’ll start experiencing hallucinations and nightmares soon.”
“You think.”
“Yes.”
“That material you gave me to read made the experiment sound as if it had a solid theoretical base.”
“It has. But we’re dealing with a human being, not with one of your deductive systems.”
I asked him some of the questions that had occurred to me as I had read the material and he warned me that his answers were going to have to be a little technical. I told him I was ready to be impressed, and he hesitated a moment, choosing his words, then began to speak. “Most disturbed children are able to respond to normal therapy,” he said, “unless they are very disturbed. Those in a treatment center setting who resist normal therapy usually manifest this resistance by manipulating their therapy sessions, by organizing members of their peer group in order to resist adult authority, by indulging in destructive behavior. They might use any or all of those forms of resistance. Am I describing someone you recognize? Yes … Now we become a little technical. When we have a boy like Michael, whose acting out is clearly destructive and with whom we cannot develop a workable therapeutic relationship, we can do one of two things. We can send him away—and in Michael’s case that would mean institutionalization, because he’s dangerous to himself and to others—or we can experiment. We’re experimenting with a radical intervention technique. We’re depriving him of his peer group so he’ll no longer be able to channel his resistance to adult authority into and through his peers; and we’re controlling his environment and showing him that his omnipotent defenses and magical thinking—which almost invariably occur in severe character disorders—are really ineffective. And now I’ll become very technical. A state of deprivation not only brings on regressive disorganization but also promotes a constructive reorganization of deeper resources within a person. It breaks him down so that, sometimes with help—in Michael’s case, the help would be normal therapy—he can then build himself back up. The regression it induces is utilized by the person in the service of renewed ego development. Regression in the service of the ego. How’s that?”
“I’m impressed,” I said.
He looked around the crowded, noisy restaurant. “The girls are taking a long time.”
“Girls usually do. Does your father know about the experiment?”
He gave me a queer look. “Of course not.”
“How did the meeting of the parents go?”
“There were—problems. Hello. Here come the girls.”
I looked across the restaurant. They were threading their way slowly through the crowd. Rachel was still wearing her glasses.
“Lovely lady,” I said to her a few minutes later as we came out of the restaurant, “how is it possible for a girl to powder her nose and not see her glasses?”
She looked astonished and quickly put her hand to her glasses.
“Exactly,” I said.
She smiled shamefacedly and removed the glasses and slipped them into her purse.
“How was the gathering of the parents?” I asked.
She looked puzzled.
“The Gordon-Saunders convention.”
“Oh,” she said. “It was—all right.”
“I’ll bet it was,” I said, and was about to ask her what she had thought of Reb Saunders when Danny came over. We went along the side street. There was much traffic and the sidewalk was crowded and, a block away, I could see the garish lights of Broadway. It was a cold night but there was no wind. Eileen took my arm. Danny and Rachel walked slightly ahead of us, their heads inclined toward one another, talking. I noticed that Rachel did not have her hand in Danny’s arm.
“Your friend is fascinating,” Eileen said excitedly.
“Really? Why?”
“My father says Hasidim are medieval. He’s not at all medieval. I didn’t think Rachel would find someone who was medieval.”
“Not Rachel.”
“Do you find that really brilliant people are scary sometimes?”
“Sometimes.”
“He scares me.”
“Yes? Good.”
She gave me a quizzical look.
“I mean it’s good to know I’m not the only one he scares.”
We took the subway home.
That Friday afternoon I had an appointment with Abraham Gordon—he was going to show me some rare medieval manuscripts of works in Jewish philosophy—and I came into the lobby of the Zechariah Frankel Seminary and there was Rachel.
“Hello,” she said, smiling at my surprise. “My uncle told me you would be here.”
She had on a brown coat and her auburn hair was long and her eyes were bright and she looked radiant—and I did not know what to say. So I said something about it being a happy surprise to see her.
“Walk outside with me, Reuven. Let’s walk and talk.”
“Let’s walk and talk” was an expression Abraham Gordon liked to use.
We went outside. It was cold but there was a bright sun and the sky was blue and without clouds. We walked b
eneath the trees. She was silent.
“We’re walking,” I said.
She said nothing. The sun was on her face and hair.
“But we’re not talking,” I said. Then I said, “What did Danny’s father tell you?”
She looked at me quickly, surprised.
“What did he tell you? Is there a problem about your uncle and that ridiculous excommunication?”
“No. I don’t think so. Danny said he would take care of that with his father.”
“Then what is your problem, lovely lady?”
“Danny’s father wanted to know how I would raise our children.”
“And you said?”
“I said I would raise our children to be educated Jews.”
“And that didn’t satisfy him.”
“He kept looking at Danny and asking me how I would raise our children.”
“What did he say to your parents?”
“He was very cool and polite. He acted as if we were stealing Danny from him.”
“You’re not a member of the fold,” I said. “That’s the problem. How did your parents feel?”
“My father was annoyed. My mother was a little hurt.”
“And you were frightened.”
“Reuven,” she said. “What does it mean to bring up a son in silence?”
“Yes,” I said. “I was waiting for that. I’ve been waiting for that for months now. Do you see that bench on the island across this street? I want to sit down on it. My legs are suddenly heavy with memories.”
We crossed to the island and sat on the bench, and there was the traffic in the center lanes of the wide parkway and the sun in our eyes.
“Who told you about the silence?” I asked.
“Danny.”
“What did he say?”
“That he was brought up in silence.”
“That was all he said? Nothing else?”
“He wanted me to know about it. He said to trust him. He didn’t want to tell me any more than that.”
“It scares you.”
“Yes.”
“It scared hell out of me. It’s a form of nonverbal communication. Danny will explain it all to you.”
“I don’t understand.” Her eyes were wide and moist and frightened.
“Rachel, listen. You love him.”
“Yes.”
“Then trust him. He’ll never hurt you. He is incapable of hurting anyone unless it’s a hurting in order to help. That’s what the silence did to him. He’ll explain it all to you. And it doesn’t mean you’ll have to raise your children that way. Danny was a very special case, and Reb Saunders raised him in a special way. Hasidim don’t raise their children in silence. It’s something that’s done by only a very few Hasidic families—and then only in extraordinary circumstances. There’s no magical hocus-pocus about it. Danny is using a variation of it on Michael. But I doubt that Danny would ever use it to raise a son. So be scared. But don’t be too scared. Danny will explain the whole business to you.”
She looked at me, her eyes brimming. “I was so frightened.”
“I know.”
“I thought—”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“I love him.” There were tears rolling down her cheeks now, jeweled in the sunlight. “I was so—so—” She could not go on.
“You love him and you thought suddenly here was something weird and medieval that affected not only you but your children. You could take it if it affected only you, but not if it affected your children. So suddenly you wondered if you might have made a terrible mistake. Yes?”
“Yes …”
“Love him,” I said. “You haven’t made a mistake. And neither has he, that lucky genius.” I reached over and wiped the tears from her cheeks with my fingers. “Your cheeks will freeze in this cold with all those tears. We can’t give our Danny a frozen-cheeked bride. How did you do it? How did you get him to go out on a date with you? Hasidim consider dating an absolutely dangerous and lustful activity.”
She smiled through the sheen of tears in her eyes.
“The wily female in pursuit. You kept bumping into him at the treatment center. You kept calling him on the phone to ask about Michael. Then, while talking about Michael, you would bring up this and that, and before anyone knew it you somehow managed to get him to ask if you might perhaps by any chance be interested in seeing a very fine movie which he heard had been well-reviewed and—”
“Reuven, don’t make fun of it. Please.”
“I’m not. I didn’t want you to think I was.”
“I love him. I saw him in the summer and drove him to the house and back and talked with him in the car—and I loved him. Me. Rachel Gordon. Twentieth-century sophisticate. Daughter of college professors. Did you know I read D. H. Lawrence with my father when I was sixteen, and he explained what it was Lawrence was doing? We had a smuggled copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and my father went over the erotic passages with me and explained their presence in the book from the point of view of literary necessity. We read a lot of books that way. I grew up free and sophisticated, with my parents trusting me to take care of myself. And I am in love with Danny Saunders. Isn’t that crazy? I love him. He’s so gentle and tender and kind and so deeply and honestly religious—and so clumsy with certain things but so eager to learn. And so stubborn too about—well, about some things. He won’t touch me. He won’t hold my hand. The second time we dated he asked me outright—but in a beautifully gentle way—if I was a virgin. He did it in such a way that I wasn’t even embarrassed. I’ve never known anybody like him. I was so afraid about the silence. I thought—I thought—”
“When will you be married?” I asked.
“In June. Reb Saunders wanted us to be married right away. He doesn’t approve of the dating. But it will have to be June. I graduate in June.”
“A June bride,” I said. “Does the lovely lady feel better now?”
“Yes. I’m grateful …”
“For the walk and the talk? Yes. You don’t have to tell Danny that we walked and talked. Let it be between us. All right?”
“Yes.”
“Listen, let’s walk and talk our way back to the seminary. Your uncle is sitting alone with some rare manuscripts worrying about me.”
“I told him you would probably be a little late.”
“I really ought to go up there now.”
“Yes.” She leaned forward toward my cheek but I moved back and stood up. She looked at me in surprise. Then she nodded slowly. After a moment she got to her feet and thanked me and I wished her Shabbat shalom and watched her walk quickly away, her auburn hair shining in the sun. Then I went up to her uncle.
We spent over an hour together, comparing the different manuscripts and discussing the implications of some of the variant readings we discovered, and just before I left he invited me to his home on Sunday. The galleys on the first part of his new book had arrived the other day and he was wondering if I was interested in having a look at them. I told him I was very interested. His round face grew flushed. He made no attempt to conceal his pleasure. Two o’clock at his apartment, he said. We could spend the entire afternoon together. If the weather was nice we could go out for a while, and walk and talk. Two o’clock was absolutely fine, I said.
I was there at exactly two o’clock. That was the day Abraham and Ruth Gordon began to talk about themselves.
An icy wind blew powdery snow through the gray streets, and so we did not go outside but remained in the apartment all that afternoon. We sat in Abraham Gordon’s study, a huge room which was really a combination library-workroom-study, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a small writing desk in front of heavily draped windows, and a long worktable on which were piled galleys, sections of manuscript, white and yellow sheets of blank paper, legal-sized yellow pads, long editorial scissors, paste, and a variety of pens and pencils. The table was against the wall opposite the door. Above it was a large chart which showed the stages of the vario
us parts of Abraham Gordon’s current book. The chart was tacked to a cork bulletin board on the wall behind the table. Abraham Gordon’s current book had been completed some weeks before and was now undergoing final revision. The first part had already been revised and was now in galleys. According to the chart, the second part needed “minor rephrasing” and the third part needed “major rephrasing.” Expected dates of completion were noted alongside each part. There were various notes concerning the stages of the bibliography, index, and the book’s two appendices. It was all very efficient and thorough—and it was all being done by Ruth Gordon.
She sat at the long table, wearing brown slacks and a plaid woolen shirt, with her hair falling across her shoulders and her eyes fixed intently upon a page of the manuscript. She had on a pair of dark-brown horn-rimmed glasses, which she used only for reading; when she was not reading but was still at the worktable, the glasses were pushed up high on her head so that they lay on top of the chestnut hair like two sightless lenses waiting for eyes. She smoked a great deal and hummed softly to herself as she worked—a melody I did not recognize, though it sounded like an Eastern European Yiddish tune. She worked with a soft lead pencil. Most of the time she made her corrections in silence. On occasion, she would interrupt her husband, who sat at his desk reading the galleys, and ask him about a certain word or phrase or sentence he had used, and there would be a brief conference and almost invariably he would tell her to use the new phrases or words she had suggested, and she would make the corrections. Twice that afternoon some major rewriting was required, and Abraham Gordon left his desk and stood alongside his wife, a hand on her shoulder, bending over the page, and they worked it out together—and then he went back to his desk and the galleys.
What I read in those galleys fascinated me. The book was about prayer, and the part of it that I read that afternoon was a moving and poetic account of what prayer had once meant and why it could no longer mean that today. And once again I found myself agreeing with all of Abraham Gordon’s questions and none of his answers.
Later, we came out of the study and sat in the living room in front of a fire and saw the dry snow against the windows and heard the wind blowing against the building, and Abraham and Ruth Gordon talked freely and openly about their lives and about their anguished bewilderment over Michael. Ruth Gordon had served us hot, spiced wine—reserved only for cold Sunday afternoons, she said—and now she sat next to her husband on the couch, and they talked. They seemed to need to talk about themselves now. I sat in an easy chair near the fireplace, and listened.