A guide for the perplexed: a novel

by Dara Horn

  “I can never thank you enough,” he said. His voice was quiet, humbled. “Her oxygen level was really low. If she had gotten there any later—”

  “You know how to work the nebulizer now, right?” Judith interrupted. She kept her words cold, managed. “You have to treat her every four hours around the clock for the rest of the week. Don’t forget. Set your alarm.”

  “I don’t have the right kind of brain for this sort of thing,” Itamar said.

  There was an ache in his voice, a pleading. Judith blew a puff of air, trying to dispel it. “People much dumber than you have dealt with this,” she told him. “You can handle anything.” It was what everyone had always told her sister.

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “If I had been alone with her, my daughter would be dead.”

  She looked at his shoes. “I have to go,” Judith muttered pointlessly. “Don’t forget to set your clock.”

  She leaned in to kiss him goodbye, reaching for the casual in-law embrace, pecking his cheek. He held her shoulders for a long moment, and rested his head beside hers. And then he took her in his arms and pressed his tongue between her lips.

  It was a mistake, surely it was a mistake, she thought as he opened her coat, then opened her shirt, and she did not stop him. Cool air blew across her breasts. He slid his hands under her bra, then leaned her back against the door. His hands flowed over her body like warm water on her skin. She slipped her hands around his back, beneath his sweater, under his belt, under his pants, beneath his shorts, around his hips, dislodging the phone in his pocket. He opened her bra and bowed before her, tracing her skin with his tongue; he took her breast in his mouth and lapped her up as though she flowed with milk. But now he wept openly, crying as she had never before heard a man cry. His head shivered on her shoulder as he pressed her against the door, his hands still clutching her breasts. He sobbed into her neck, a long low howl. He was trapped, and starving.

  “She would forgive me, wouldn’t she?” Itamar wept, and poured his hands between her legs, at the door of the world. “Do you think she would forgive me?”

  “I forgive you,” Judith whispered.

  He wept and wept until Judith wept with him, gasping, sobbing, pressed against the house’s locked front door.

  TALI HAS JUST NOTICED her reflection in the faucet of the bathtub. Judith is rubbing soap on her neck, feeling the wet down of the girl’s back, the little points of her shoulderblades angled like wings lifting her skin from her rippled spine, long black hair pasted against her skin like spilled black paint. Her back curves beneath Judith’s knobbed hand, her body curling like a baby bird enfolded in an egg. Her eyes appear in the chrome surface of the faucet, and Tali pauses to stare at herself, captive in that instant, unsure, in her six-year-old mind, which one of her is real.

  “Mommy,” she says, “There’s the other me!”

  The word mommy shudders through Judith, wind blowing through her throat. She doesn’t correct her.

  “Yes, there’s the other you,” she agrees. She glances at the reflection, and in that moment she imagines looking out at Tali through the chrome surface like a lens, seeing the girl distorted and unchanging in the center, and then seeing her entire future compacted in that circle. She sees Tali growing older, her curiosity hardening into intelligence and then arrogance, careless pride pushing out from beneath her skin like the insistent wings of shoulderblades on her back. She sees the boys who will love her, the ones whose hearts she will shatter without even hearing the crash; she sees the woman the girl will become, beautiful and proud, every marvel she creates almost an accident. Judith even sees the girl’s own daughter, a dark-haired beauty at her mother’s feet, drinking in her words. And Judith sees what lies before her: the possibility of changing the past forever.

  At bedtime she kisses her little girl good night.

  “Stay with me,” the little girl begs. “Stay with me until I fall asleep.”

  “I will,” Judith promises, and stays, stroking the silk sheath of the girl’s brushed black hair as the girl drifts into undeciphered dreams.

  Judith stays for a long, long time, wondering who will forgive her.

  4

  IN A WINDOWLESS ROOM in Cairo, Solomon Schechter struggled to breathe.

  He remembered the first time it had happened to him, the terrifying sensation of the world encircling his throat and tightening its grip. He was nine years old, in Romania, bringing medicine home from the pharmacist for his brother. The road was old, a route pounded by barbarians crossing the Carpathians centuries before, and wound its way past the ruins of a fortress. But now it was neglected and overgrown with roots and weeds. He walked with awe through the tunnel of naked branches above his head. He loved to climb trees, but that day he felt the grip of the earth on his feet. His twin brother was burning with a fever that refused to break. He heard a rumble of thunder above the trees and decided to hurry. He started running, and soon he felt his breath speeding, thumping, pounding as if his brother’s fever raged within him. He slowed to a stop, and as he stood beneath the branches and the darkening sky, he felt his neshamah—his soul, his breath—being released from his body, gusting out of his mouth while his body stood still. He gasped, stabbed by a sharp, sudden, alien pain, and tried to reel his soul back in, but it refused to return. As the world whirled around him, he steadied himself with Hebrew verses engraved on his memory: Everything that breathes will praise God. The breath of all that live will bless Your name. His eyes followed his breath up into the air and saw the letters of the words flying free. When he awoke he was lying in bed beside his sick twin brother, with a saline pipe from the pharmacist in his mouth. It happened to him often after that, the flight of breath and life—whenever he entered an unfamiliar place, until he found a way to conquer it.

  Egypt was like England, Schechter had immediately noticed: full of stone ruins that no one understood, and full of people who never said what they meant. He was prepared for heat, and for poverty, and there he was pleasantly surprised—when he arrived in December the weather was warm, but far more bearable than a humid Romanian summer, and the tourist districts of Cairo were full of opera houses and French dancing classes and elegant cafés, the eyeless beggars confining themselves to the archeological sites. What he was unprepared for was the absolute ruin of the country itself, the completely unrestored splendor of the ancients poking through the city’s modern skin like the bones of a dying man. Beggars had set up camp in warrens of ancient tombs, the famous pyramids were piles of rubble stripped of their alabaster, and enormous ancient obelisks lay on their sides, their inscriptions ground to dust. The poor holed themselves up in the shade of ruins, constructing shantytowns out of broken slabs of frescoed stone, while Europeans in pith helmets presided over sweating workers who dug up the ancient dead for German and British museums. It was like watching birds pecking at a giant’s corpse.

  Schechter was equally unprepared for the endless misdirection, the fundamental assumption that what anyone said was only the tiniest fraction of what was implied. His dragoman in Alexandria had told him that the Metropole Hotel in Cairo, which the spectral twins had recommended, was completely booked, but that the Royal Hotel, in a “more simple” location, was available at half the price. Mindful of money that wasn’t his—his expenses were being paid by Professor Charles Taylor, Master of St. John’s College—Schechter told the agent to book the Royal. The agent had then consulted several letters in his breast pocket, peering at them meaningfully through a monocle before informing Schechter that in fact the Metropole might be available, that a room might be arranged, except that it was so very difficult to make the arrangements so very quickly, of course, when telegrams were so very expensive. Schechter failed to understand that the agent was asking for a tip. He found himself in a dump on a street full of brothels. His Englishness and his wealth were his shadows—even though in England no one thought he was English, and not a penny of the money was his. He couldn’t leave his filthy hotel room without l
eaving a trail of Professor Taylor’s money behind him, a slick of slime like the trail of a slug.

  He had come to Cairo armed. The university had supplied him with a letter of introduction to the Grand Rabbi of Cairo, which Schechter himself had written in biblical Hebrew and which the registrar had insisted on wax-sealing with the university crest, as well as binding with a red silk ribbon. Schechter had almost removed the ribbon; it seemed so ridiculous. But when he collected his letter of introduction from the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, he noticed that the Chief Rabbi’s secretary had bound his letter with a silk ribbon as well. When Schechter finally met Rabbi Aharon Raphael ben Shimon, Grand Rabbi of Cairo, he understood the ribbons.

  The rabbi was sitting behind a tea table in a sunny stone courtyard full of potted palms in a modest house in Ismailiya, one of the city’s most expensive European neighborhoods. Even though a servant had ushered him in, Schechter saw the man seated in the courtyard and thought that there had been a mistake, that he had accidentally been brought to an audience with a Coptic priest. The rabbi was wearing a floor-length black robe with an elaborately brocaded collar, embroidered entirely of gold and silver thread in a delicate pattern that continued down from his neckline to the floor. Several golden medallions were suspended from his neck, like the heavy gold crosses he had seen Copts wearing around Cairo. The man had dark skin, a thick curly gray-black beard, stylish spectacles, and a surprisingly young-looking face. On top of his head was an elaborate dark turban-like hat with a shining golden band around it, the crown of an ancient king. In his mouth was a cigarette.

  Schechter stood before him paralyzed, suddenly short of breath. Then he noticed the two letters of introduction sitting on the table—their red silk ribbons, Schechter saw, now casually wound around the man’s tall thin glass of bright-smelling coffee.

  “Blessed be he who comes,” the rabbi announced in Hebrew, and stood, stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette. “The esteemed scholar and righteous man in Israel, Rabbi Shneur Zalman ben Yitzhak, may he go from strength to strength.”

  Schechter leaned back, feeling naked in the bright sun. He had not been addressed in conversation by his Hebrew name for almost thirty years. The rabbi’s accent was all wrong, of course, the Hebrew words a stretch of long dry vowels and gutturals, as though the language itself had desiccated in the desert air. But the words were the words of Schechter’s father, addressing him by the name that God would call him in the next world. Schechter bowed his head, noticing the gold embroidery along the hem of the rabbi’s robe grazing the stone floor. The clothes were absurd, Schechter thought. He withheld a smirk as he removed his own pith helmet.

  “Rabbi Aharon Raphael ben Shimon, I am honored to have the merit of living in your generation,” Schechter said. He spoke in Hebrew—which was a bit like speaking in Latin, since no one he knew of had spoken it in conversation for the past nineteen centuries. His years in England made him reflexively offer his hand. He lowered it quickly, and bowed his head.

  “May the merit of our ancestors intercede on our behalf,” the rabbi answered. He motioned for Schechter to sit on a wooden stool as he lowered himself back into his own cushioned chair.

  Schechter had met men like the rabbi before, holy men who spoke primarily in verses and aphorisms. The last he had known was the second son of the Skvirer rebbe, who, not being the first son of the Skvirer rebbe, had been forced out of his father’s court to run a yeshiva Schechter once attended. The man was deeply bitter, and expressed it by speaking only in quotes. He and Schechter had had entire conversations by exchanging biblical verses, mainly from Ecclesiastes. According to the son of the Skvirer rebbe, all was vanity. The sun was shining in Schechter’s eyes as a servant poured him coffee in his own tall glass. He squinted, put a hand to his hair to check that his yarmulke was in place, and placed his pith helmet carefully beside his feet, wishing he was still wearing it.

  “I see you have read the notices from the academy abroad, as well as from our esteemed teacher Rabbi Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire,” Schechter said, “may his wisdom expand to the ends of the earth.”

  “Amen,” the Cairo rabbi replied. Beneath his crown, the rabbi appeared, for a moment, bored.

  Schechter breathed, steadying himself. He knew already that the next step was not pleasantries about the weather, as it would have been in England, but gifts, the prettier the better. He reached into his satchel and took out his first attempt.

  “As you have heard, I am a scholar of Torah, though only the humblest of scholars. I would like to present you with one of my books—an annotation of the Avot d’Rabbi Natan, the only scholarly edition of that much-neglected chapter of the Talmud.” He removed the book from his bag and passed it to the man across the table.

  The rabbi took it, opened the first few pages, then examined its leather binding. “Of the making of books there is no end,” the rabbi quoted.

  Ecclesiastes, Schechter knew, was never a good sign. The rabbi yawned, and sipped his coffee.

  Schechter stiffened, and tried another tactic. He reached into his bag and extracted an open box of French cigarettes, which he had bought in Marseille the week before. He held it out to the rabbi. “Perhaps your eminence would enjoy these as well,” he said.

  The rabbi examined the box and helped himself to one. “Please, take them all,” Schechter said, placing the box on the table beside the book. This time the rabbi looked up at him and smiled, a genuine smile. As the rabbi struck a match, Schechter leaned forward.

  “I have heard that last winter you merited to make the acquaintance of our esteemed teacher the Chief Rabbi’s brother, the illustrious scholar of laws Elkan Adler, may his strength increase,” Schechter tried.

  The rabbi raised his dark eyebrows and exhaled smoke. “May his wisdom be heard in distant isles,” he said. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  Schechter hesitated before forging ahead. “Rabbi Elkan”—this wasn’t the right title, Schechter knew, but how else in ancient Hebrew would one describe a British lawyer?—“informed me that he was able to enter the storage room in one of your ancient houses of assembly. He brought back many ­written works to our distant isle, but none of great worth.”

  In fact Elkan Adler, to hear him tell it, had been escorted to a medieval synagogue, led through a hole in the wall above the women’s gallery, and allowed to enter a room full of ancient papers, where he was left alone for three hours—a privilege he had obtained from the Grand Rabbi in exchange for a large donation to the synagogue. In three hours he had managed to bring home only a few illegible documents and a chronic cough. The librarians at the Bodleian at Oxford thought he was a fool.

  The rabbi frowned. “The stone that has been rejected shall become the cornerstone,” he quoted.

  “In my country it has also lately been noted that certain works unknown in the West have appeared from merchants in Cairo,” Schechter continued. “Works of great Torah scholarship, never before seen in the holy tongue, that merchants in Cairo have sold to visitors from overseas.”

  “Whoever honors the Torah will be honored by all mankind,” the rabbi quoted, and yawned through his nose.

  Schechter could almost see the wall rising between them, but he pressed ahead. “I have also corresponded with the illustrious Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer of Jerusalem, the book merchant, who has procured many holy works from Cairo and has sold them to the libraries of many nations.”

  “May all nations take on the yoke of His sovereignty,” the rabbi quoted, and blew smoke.

  “The difficulty is that the Jerusalemite’s prices are high, and fees for shipping manuscripts are high as well,” Schechter said. He tried to maintain a delicate tone, without complete success. “And one never knows what one is getting, without seeing the works in advance. It is nearly impossible for the libraries in the West to know whether the works are worthy.”

  “Torah is the greatest merchandise,” the rabbi quoted, his expression still utterly blank.
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  Now Schechter was getting angry. No, he thought fiercely, it would not end here. His three-thousand-mile quest would not terminate with this stone-faced Oriental blowing smoke in his face. He gritted his teeth. “I have corresponded with the rabbi in Jerusalem,” Schechter said, “and inquired about the source of the manuscripts he has sold to our library in England. He insisted that these holy works came from a genizah in Cairo, but he professed not to know precisely where the genizah was located. He told me that all of the writings he has acquired from Cairo came to him through a Yemenite agent, and the Yemenite refused to divulge his source, except to say that a beadle of a Cairo synagogue was involved.”

  “Never trust a Yemenite,” the rabbi said.

  It wasn’t a quote. Schechter put down his coffee and saw that the rabbi was examining him, eyeing his face, his red beard, his blue eyes, his linen suit, the pith helmet Schechter had placed at his feet.

  “So you are yet another Ashkenazi who has come for the genizah,” the rabbi said, and leaned back in his chair. “Like the English and the Germans digging up the dead pharaohs. It astounds me. So many people come from around the world just to collect our garbage.”

  Schechter’s mouth opened, about to explain everything that this man in his ridiculous turban could not possibly understand. He imagined picking up his pith helmet and storming out the door. But at that moment he felt his breath quickening, the panic of a nine-year-old boy, the world encircling him, strangling him. Breathe in, he told himself. The breath of all that live will bless Your name. His breath returned as he understood what he needed to say.

  “I—that is, the royal kingdom whose munificence has brought me on my journey,” Schechter declared, “am prepared to expand on the price Rabbi Wertheimer of Jerusalem has received for the works he has purchased from your beadle. In fact, I can say that I am prepared to extend my kingdom’s unprecedented generosity. For,” he quoted, in what he hoped would come across as a humble voice, “the study of Torah supersedes all.”