The Promise

by Chaim Potok

  “Yes?” he said, as if he were clutching at the news. “Are you permitted to tell me what is happening?”

  I told him as much as Danny had told me. He nodded.

  “You broke the cherem for a good reason,” he said. “I am glad.” He was evaluating Michael’s situation from the point of view of his understanding of Jewish law. He had satisfied himself that his granting me permission to see Abraham Gordon had been a wise decision.

  “Tell me, Reuven, you have seen Gordon lately?”

  “No.”

  “You will see him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though his son is better?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are a good friend to Gordon now?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “I disapprove,” he said. “But I can no longer stop you.”

  I said nothing.

  “Your father will teach in the Frankel Seminary?” he asked then.

  I nodded.

  “I did not want to give you smicha,” he said quietly. “My teacher would not have given you smicha, Reuven. He would not even have let you take the examinations. But he did not see—he did not live through—” He broke off and passed his hand across his eyes and was silent for a moment. “I did not want to drive you away from the yeshiva. I did not know what to do … The others … they prevailed upon me …” He stopped and gazed at me. “It is different hearing and seeing your fathers method than merely reading about it … A voice … It needs a voice to give it life … You understand me, Reuven?”

  “Yes.”

  “I still do not approve of it. I will fight you when you teach it … But it is different when one hears it …”

  I said nothing.

  “Once I had students who spoke with such love about Torah that I would hear the Song of Songs in their voices.” He spoke softly, his eyes half closed. “I have not heard the Song of Songs now for—for—” He blinked. “I did not hear the Song of Songs in America until I heard your voice at the examinations. Not your words, but your voice. I did not like the words. But the voice … Do you understand what I mean, Reuven?”

  “Yes.”

  “ ‘My sons have conquered me,’ ” he said softly, quoting in Hebrew. Then he said, “Do you know why it is different when one hears it?” He did not intend for me to answer. He went on himself. “Your father’s method is ice when one sees it on the printed page. It is impossible to print one’s love for Torah. But one can hear it in a voice. Still it is a dangerous method. And I will fight you if I learn you are using it too much in your classes.”

  I was in something of a daze and was not quite listening to everything he said, so I did not fully grasp the meaning of his last words.

  “I will be able to keep my eyes on you here,” he said. “I could not have influenced your father. But you I can influence. Why should I give you to Gordon when I can keep you here? I have lost too many students. Too many … I will take a chance on you, Reuven. I have given you my smicha and will keep my eyes on you to watch how you teach. We will have many fights. But they will be for the sake of Torah.” He saw me staring at him and seemed surprised. “You have spoken to the Dean?” he asked sharply.

  “No.”

  “He has not asked to speak to you?”

  “No.”

  “He is a better scholar than he is an administrator. Go speak to the Dean.”

  I got shakily to my feet.

  “Reuven,” he said.

  I looked at him.

  “You will use your method on the Prophets and the Writings?”

  I did not say anything.

  “You will give approval to those who use such a method on the Prophets and Writings?”

  Still I said nothing.

  “Do not ever dare to do that. I will fight you in print if you do that. I will fight you the way I fought your father. Now go speak to the great administrator.”

  I went to the Dean’s office and was informed by him that I was a troublemaker. He had better things to do with his time than run back and forth trying to make peace between Rav Kalman and Rav Gershenson, he said. He did not go into details about that fight, but I gathered from him that Rav Gershenson had gone to the president of the school and there had been a long and angry meeting and Rav Kalman had finally agreed to give me smicha on the condition that I never be permitted to teach Talmud in the yeshiva. The president had agreed—and then had suggested that the graduate school might want to make use of my Talmudic abilities. He understood Rav Kalman’s refusal to let me teach in the rabbinical school of the yeshiva where smicha was given, but the graduate school … That had precipitated another quarrel, but in the end Rav Kalman had yielded. He could hardly threaten to resign over my appointment to the new department of rabbinics when he himself had just agreed to give me smicha. I did not have to give them my decision right away, the Dean said. “Go home and think about it. Source criticism in a smicha examination! Go home and call me later in the week.” He was angry but he shook my hand.

  My father smiled with pride and delight when I told him. “You should accept it, Reuven. It is a great honor. I wish—” He stopped. “You should accept it,” he said.

  “Malter versus Kalman. I feel like I’m back where I started. Constant battles with Rav Kalman.”

  “No, Reuven. You will be fighting him from within. That is the only effective way to fight a man like Rav Kalman. Will you accept it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He looked at me, his eyes wet. “Rabbi Malter,” he said. “Rabbi Malter.”

  Manya called us in to supper.

  I took a long walk later that evening through the dark streets of Williamsburg. The streets were filled with Hasidim, and I walked among them, listening to their Yiddish and watching their gestures, and thinking of the boy who had called my father a goyische Talmudist. It was a cool, clear evening, and I could see stars in the sky and I thought about Michael and then forgot Michael as I peered through the front windows of some of the shops that were still open and watched the buying and the selling and still felt out of it all, only remotely connected to it by a shared history. I read the Yiddish signs on the storefronts and listened as three elderly Hasidim passed by talking in awed tones about their rebbe. I did not understand them and they did not understand me, and our quarrels would continue. But I was part of the chain of the tradition now, as much a guardian of the sacred Promise as Rav Kalman and the Hasidim were, and it would be a different kind of fight from now on. I had won the right to make my own beginning. And I thought I might try to learn something from the way Rav Kalman and the Hasidim had managed to survive and rebuild their world. What gave them the strength to mold smoke and ashes into a new world? I could use some of that strength for the things I wanted to do with my own life.

  I walked a long time through the cool April night, and when I returned to the apartment I found a message near the phone. It was in my father’s handwriting. Abraham Gordon had called. Would I please call back?

  “Congratulations,” I heard him say into the phone. “Rabbi Malter.”

  I thanked him.

  “Ruth and I want to know when we’ll see you again.” His voice sounded dull with fatigue.

  I told him I could come over the following evening.

  “Michael asked for you again today,” he said. “He spoke to Daniel for about half an hour.”

  Had they seen him? I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Daniel won’t let us near him.”

  I came over the next night and we talked and they were both genuinely pleased that I had passed the examinations.

  “This young rabbi won’t smash at me the way the Rav Kalmans do,” Abraham Gordon said to his wife. He was trying hard to sound cheerful, but his face was drawn and he seemed very fatigued. He sat with his huge body slumped back on the couch, his feet on the coffee table. Ruth Gordon sat next to him, smoking quietly. “We have an ally in the enemy camp, Ruth.”

  She smiled wanly. She was making
no attempt to maintain her pose of regal coolness tonight. She looked like a badly frightened mother.

  I asked him about the book.

  He had stopped working on it, he said. He couldn’t concentrate on it any more. He couldn’t concentrate on anything any more.

  Ruth Gordon asked me if I would like a cup of coffee and I said yes, I would, and she went out.

  “She’s not even urging me to finish the book,” Abraham Gordon murmured, staring after his wife. “Neither of us has any stomach for that book.” He looked at me. “It will be very good to have your father at the seminary,” he said. “You at the yeshiva and your father at the seminary. Strange,” he said softly. “Usually it’s the other way around.”

  Ruth Gordon came back with the coffee and we talked a while longer. There was no particular purpose to their having asked to see me. They seemed simply to want me around, to talk to me, to someone, anyone, and I was, or had been, the closest one to Michael—and so they wanted to be near me.

  “I really would have liked you as a student,” Abraham Gordon said to me at one point. “But I’m glad you’re remaining where you are. God help us all if Orthodoxy becomes dull-witted with fundamentalists like Rav Kalman. We’ll never be able to talk to each other. But I don’t envy you the fights you’ll have on your hands.”

  “There are fights everywhere,” Ruth Gordon said.

  “Yes,” Abraham Gordon said, nodding. “Indeed there are.” Then he said, “It took courage for you to do what you did. I would not have thought Rav Kalman would give you smicha.”

  “He almost didn’t. The others had a difficult time convincing him.”

  “That’s not why he gave you his smicha. You can’t convince someone like Rav Kalman to give smicha to a person he feels doesn’t deserve it. You know what smicha is to people like him? It’s the link between them and Moses at Sinai. And that business about the Song of Songs—that wasn’t the reason, either.”

  “What was?”

  “Maidanek,” he said.

  Before I left, Ruth Gordon asked me if I would have dinner with them the following Sunday. I accepted. She shook my hand warmly.

  The next day I arrived at the yeshiva at five minutes before three and waited outside the door to Rav Gershenson’s classroom. Rav Kalman dismissed his shiur first, and my classmates came out and crowded around me, loud with their congratulations. Irving Goldberg’s solemn face beamed as he shook my hand and pounded my back. Even Abe Greenfield, the shy and suddenly explosive rebel of months back, found the courage to say a few nice words before he retreated back into his silent world. Then I saw Rav Gershenson’s students beginning to leave their room, and I went quickly inside.

  There was the usual group of students around Rav Gershenson’s desk. But he saw me and asked them to leave. A moment later, we were alone.

  He took my hand in both his hands. Then he asked me to sit down. He sat back in his chair and peered at me and smiled and shook his head.

  “I do not know how many smicha examinations I have given in this yeshiva,” he said. “But I have never given an examination like that one. Tell me, Reuven, did you know the chance you were taking?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head again. “You came close to losing. You even almost lost with me when you began to talk about—nu, what difference does it make? It is all over. But we had a very difficult time with Rav Kalman. Tell me, Reuven, will you write articles on the Gemora using this method?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am not sure Rav Kalman will like that.”

  I did not say anything.

  He smiled. “It is hard for an old tree to bend, Reuven. Be careful in your articles. Be very careful. Do not be afraid to write.” He smiled sadly. Years ago, I had looked up his name in the English and Hebrew catalogues in the school library and discovered he had never published anything. “No,” he said. “You should not be afraid to write. But be careful that you know what you are saying. Rav Kalman and others like him are—difficult opponents. They would be impossible to bear if they were not such great scholars. Nu, I am glad you succeeded. Give my regards to your father. Tell him—tell him it would have been a pleasure to have both Malters in our school. But I am grateful for winning at least half a victory.”

  And again he took my hand in both his hands and held it a long time.

  I went home and spent the rest of the day working on my Master’s thesis. I finished it that Friday, half an hour before it was time to begin to prepare for Shabbat.

  The phone call from Danny came four days later, on Tuesday morning in the first week of May. He wanted me to come immediately to the treatment center. His voice was soft and very tight. He needed my help, he said. It was very important that I come immediately. Could I come? Sure I could come. Michael’s parents would be there too, he said. I was to give my name to the person at the desk in the foyer and someone would take me downstairs to the isolation room. He was expecting me to be there in about three quarters of an hour, he said. I took a cab to the treatment center.

  Sixteen

  The guard at the gate recognized me. He was the one who had helped me stop Michael from setting fire to the leaves in the pagoda. He nodded as I went by. There were tiny green leaves on the trees now and I heard the warm wind in the branches. I could see the pagoda through the trees. Its slanted red roof gleamed in the sunlight.

  I went quickly up the wide stone stairway and into the foyer. The man behind the desk spoke briefly into the phone after I gave him my name. A moment later another man came through the living room. He wore a tweed suit and horn-rimmed glasses and looked to be in his thirties. He asked me to go with him. We went into the living room and along the corridor past Danny’s office and then through a heavy metal door at the end of the corridor and down a flight of stairs to another corridor with a cement floor and cinder-block walls. An overhead bulb burned dimly from an old ceiling fixture. Near the end of the wall to my right was a door. The man tapped on it softly. It opened and Danny came out and closed it immediately behind him. The man nodded at Danny and went away.

  Danny took my arm and led me away from the door back to the staircase. He seemed exhausted. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles of sleeplessness and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead and upper lip.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m tired. But I’m all right. Listen, I want to talk to you before you go in there.”

  “You said his parents would be here.”

  “They’re inside.”

  “How are they?”

  “Very badly shaken.”

  “Is Michael talking to them?”

  “Michael isn’t talking.”

  I looked at him.

  “We had a fine session yesterday and he asked to see them. I finally got him to ask for them.” He was tense and nervous and his eyes blinked repeatedly. “Early this morning he was fine. Now he’s back into one of his catatonic withdrawals and has stopped responding. I want you to go in and visit with him as if he were upstairs in his own room.”

  “Catatonic?” I heard myself say. “Michael is catatonic?”

  “He’s been in and out of it for weeks. All I want you to do is go in and talk to him the way you did before.”

  “What do you want me to say?” The news that Michael had been catatonic all these weeks had filled me with horror. I was trembling inside. “I don’t know anything about all this. What should I say?”

  “Say anything. Treat it like a normal visit. Say anything that comes into your head. I have no idea what will finally get him to talk. He has got to be able to tell his parents what he told me or it won’t mean very much. So say anything.” His voice was tight. He ran a finger across his perspiring upper lip. He had not had a haircut in a long time. His sand-colored hair was thick along the back of his neck and over the tops of his ears. “He’ll hear you. A catatonic hears and sees and remembers everything that goes on around him.” He stopped and lo
oked at me. “I have got to get through to him,” he said, softly, urgently. “Altman is beginning to have his doubts about this whole thing. I have got to get through to this boy.” There was desperation in his voice and a plea for help. “Come on,” he said. “And don’t worry about the way he looks. He’s lost some weight, but he’s physically all right.”

  “Can I say anything to his parents?”

  “Say whatever you want to anyone you want. Just be yourself.”

  “I’m scared,” I said.

  He gave me a grim look. “I’ve been scared for weeks,” he said. “Come on.”

  We went back along the corridor to the door. It was a heavy wooden brown door with large brass hinges, a brass knob, and a small circular key insert that was flush with the wood. Danny took a key ring from the pocket of his jacket. The keys jangled softly in the silence of the corridor. He selected a key and inserted it into the lock. There was a soft click. He pushed the door slightly open and held it for me and I stepped inside and he came in and I heard the soft click of the door as it closed behind us.

  We were in a small dimly lit room. The walls were white and bare. The wooden floor was a dark brown. Set high in the wall opposite the door was a small narrow window. It was closed and the panes had been painted white. The ceiling was white. Silence, utter silence, filled the room, dense, thick, pressing against the window and the walls. I could feel it, I could actually feel it pushing against me. Directly below the window, Michael sat on a mattress, his legs folded Indian-fashion beneath him, his back to the wall. A white sheet and a brown blanket covered the mattress. He sat on the mattress and stared at the floor. He wore dungarees and a pale-blue polo shirt. His hands lay limply across his thighs. He had lost a great deal of weight. He seemed reedlike now, gaunt, his face almost as white as the sheet, his dark-brown hair thick and wild, falling across his forehead, his blue eyes wide and blank behind the glasses that had slipped down along the bridge of his nose, his narrow face devoid of expression. I looked at him and felt a shock of terror move through me. A few feet to his right, Abraham and Ruth Gordon sat on chairs near the wall with the high window, their coats across their laps. They looked at me as I went slowly toward Michael, their faces tortured, bewildered, white with fear and pain. They said nothing. Ruth Gordon held a handkerchief in her hands. She twisted it slowly. I saw her twisting it slowly on her lap, twining it around her fingers and twisting it. Abraham Gordon sat very still, his huge body curved forward on the chair, his round face and balding head covered with perspiration. I stood in front of Michael and looked down. I could see the top of his uncombed hair and the glasses on the bridge of his nose and the arms limp on his thighs and the curve of his shoulders and back, all of it very still, frozen, matching the dark silence of the room. Danny was alongside me. I glanced at him and he nodded briefly. I removed my coat and hat and put them on the floor in front of the mattress. I sat down on the floor. Danny sat down beside me. I sat there, staring at Michael and did not know what to say. I listened to the silence. It moved against me like something alive, and I found myself trying to reach beyond it for a sound, any sound, the tick of a clock, the tapping of shoes on a floor, the soft clearing of a throat, the wind in the branches of a tree, the skittering of leaves across the ground, anything. But there was nothing—only the silence, like a giant hand around the room. I was trembling and sweating. Danny sat beside me, gazing at Michael, and there was on his face a look of pain and anguish and suffering, as if he were somehow inside Michael, peering out at me through Michael, and I had come to talk to him in his entombing silence.