by Amy Gottlieb
Can a man love a woman and a man?
Only a fool would ask to measure the depths of a human heart.
Many nights after Sol and the children are asleep, Rosalie sits alone in the dark kitchen, but instead of calling Walter, she waits until it is late enough for Madeline to be waking up in London. She speaks to Madeline in a rush of words and emotions, telling her everything about Walter and the sermons, about the congregation, and about Sol and the state of her marriage. If she holds back, Madeline says, “I want the full report, pussycat. Tell me more.” As Rosalie delivers the details to her best friend, she talks faster and faster, the story of her life bubbling to the surface like the froth in a Champagne flute. Since they met in Jerusalem, Madeline has divorced her husband; she tells Rosalie that if she had a Walter of her own, perhaps her marriage would have survived. It takes three, sweet pea, she said. A man and a woman and a living spark that keeps all the desire in motion.
It has been almost two years since Rosalie’s last trip to Berkeley. When she phones Walter, she doesn’t speak with the same emotional rush that she reserves for her calls with Madeline. Walter believes Rosalie is holding back. Their ghostwriting project was too much of a success; the sermons saved Sol’s pulpit and preserved their marriage too. The Kerems are complete, he thinks; the inner circle of their family is nestled safely within the orbit of their congregation. Rosalie yammers on about the exploits of her children. Charlie this, Philip yesterday, and Lenny, oh Lenny. He is the one who breaks me to pieces, who asks me to linger in his room and read every volume of Tintin’s antics until he is fast asleep and dreaming himself into the story.
“And the fruits of our little project?” asks Walter.
“At times I see the synagogue as a holding place for tenderness. A random group of Jews pausing together, engaging in an orchestrated conversation about the meaning of life.”
Walter wonders if her gauzy remarks are a mask, a way to render their affair into a continuous conversation about religion. In the past year she has mailed him sporadic postcards with quips that read like outtakes from the purple binder.
Holiness is another word for dignity; dignity is a synonym for presence.
In the World to Come, each of us will wear a coat sewn from the days we lived on earth. The brightest threads of this coat are woven from love.
Faith is the trump card in the deck of life.
If a student had written these, Walter would have called her into his office and cautioned her against writing soft-brained cupcake theology. But he and Rosalie created this project together and the words she writes belong to both of them.
The desert air and canopy of stars coax Walter into a long, deep sleep and he wakes at dawn with a start, reviewing the filmstrip of their reunions: their rendezvous in the American Colony Hotel, their visit to Madame Sylvie’s courtyard, and her visits to Berkeley. The last astonishment Sylvie dispensed for him was about Sonia, of course, but his fiancée has become a distant ghost over the years; she no longer hovers at the edge of his thoughts, waiting for attention. And Rosalie—when will he see her again? Paul is right; his head is forever mired in a barrel of spices in a foreign land. He may have become a well-published tenured professor but he is a man without a future.
Walter phones Rosalie on a Sunday morning and she picks up on the first ring.
“You came to Berkeley twice because Sol sent you. And now it’s my turn to ask you for something. The first time and the last.”
“Hold on, Walter. I was just making sandwiches—” She rests the handset on her shoulder and counts the slices of bread lined up on the counter waiting to receive slabs of peanut butter. Ten slices, five hikers, one hour left, not enough time to buy ice for the cooler, pick up Sol’s tallit from the dry cleaners, wake the boys—
“Come to Eden Ranch.”
Rosalie glances at the clock.
“Are you there?”
“It’s been too long, Walter. And I can’t get away now: the shul, the children, Sol, who is actually well—more or less—and can you believe the five of us actually go hiking on Sunday afternoons? And Charlie, Charlie is applying to college—”
“Stop hiding behind your family. I need to see you.”
Rosalie is silent.
“Are you there?”
“Yes, Walter. I’m here, always here. It’s a big life. More than I ever imagined. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Don’t mock me. Your playboy refugee understands the power of the tribe.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Look. Paul has a following here and he’s brought me in as a guest teacher. You could work with me; we can teach together. You might even like it.”
Rosalie laughs. “I’ll be a guru!”
“I’m here all summer. Waiting.”
She sends Walter a postcard:
Four days. Our last time.
R.
Rosalie is the last passenger left in the airport van. She wishes she had gotten off at the Lawrence Welk Resort with its uniformed doorman in nearby Escondido, rather than barreling up this mountain road with a driver who tells her that the area is saturated with Western diamondbacks and that she needs to carry a big stick to scare them off. She rubs her ankle, trying to imagine the icy sting of a snakebite, the cold poison coursing slowly up her leg. She could ask the driver to turn around, take her back to the airport. Sol didn’t ask her to see Walter this time, and she could have refused the invitation. This visit belongs to her alone.
Rosalie drops her bag at the gate and finds Walter standing in the middle of a circle of stones, addressing a motley group of students who look like teenage runaways. A girl taps her on the shoulder and hands her a copy of Be Here Now and she thinks of Nathan’s line, be less remote. Except for Walter, everyone’s hair looks unwashed and Rosalie thinks about buying a family-sized bottle of shampoo. Paul sits beside his pregnant girlfriend and massages her filthy neck. Rosalie shudders and focuses her gaze on Walter.
“In Varanasi,” he says, “people use their bodies to understand life and death; they immerse in the ghats of the river that bear the ashes of their loved ones. In the West, we use words to understand life and death and our language is imprecise, distancing. This affects our karmic balance.” Rosalie stares at Walter and smiles. She hasn’t heard him lecture before and she follows the stream of his words as if she is listening to a symphony. How did he learn all this and how can he teach some of it to her?
At the end of his talk Walter takes questions. Rosalie moves closer to the group and raises her hand.
“Do you think karmic balance can be achieved in one’s lifetime?”
“Ah! Excellent question!” He smiles. “Many spiritual teachings are rooted in this inquiry. Karmic balance cannot be achieved, only readjusted on a cosmic plane. And even if one lives an examined life, the ultimate meaning of the journey may not be obvious.”
“So it is impossible to know if your answer is correct,” she says.
Walter leads Rosalie to his tent and they make love with a level of deliberation and care that feels new to both of them. This tenderness, thinks Rosalie, marks the end. From the geniza to Eden Ranch, a perfect arc from youth to middle age. Our swan song to savor for the rest of our days.
She tells him this is the last time.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” he says. “We completed our assignment, accomplished our mission, and saved your husband.”
“You pleaded with me to meet you here. What choice did I have?”
“Everything we’ve done together has been your choice,” he says.
Meals at the ranch are eaten in silence; Paul calls this the practice of meditative digestion. “The holiness of food,” he says, “cannot be experienced through the cacophony of conversation.” The students eat sparingly at long tables and then gather outside in the circle of stones where Paul delivers lectures and Giselle crouches before him, her belly dragging on the ground like a giant gourd. Walter and Rosalie teach a class together on Hindu and Hasidic parab
les. The students ask them for a blessing and Walter says, “Paul Richardson is your holy man; we have no power to bless anyone.”
The night before Rosalie is to leave, they lie in the middle of a field, staring up at the stars. Walter asks if she remembers the last line of the Song of Songs.
“Quick my love over the mountain of spices,” says Rosalie. “Not an exact translation, but it’s mine.”
“Sonia loved the Song,” says Walter.
“The woman in your astonishment.”
“My fiancée. Before India. Before you.”
Rosalie turns on her side and faces him.
“My father wouldn’t leave. Those last weeks Sonia and I were always together in my bed, fucking like bunnies, drunk on vodka, making plans. She only wanted to go to Palestine. Sure, she was a Zionist, but she also loved the poetry of the Bible. The Song of Songs. The Prophets. She was a singer.”
“And she loved you.”
“She had a curtain of long blond hair that smelled like cardamom. Made me swoon.”
Rosalie smiles.
“We hadn’t eaten and she went out to look for crackers,” he says. “She was barely dressed. An inconsequential moment.”
“She was murdered.”
“Everyone at the Seminary knew that part of the story. Shot. Along with my father. His flute fell to the floor with their bodies.”
“Walter.”
“The bullet—”
Rosalie rests her head on his chest.
“She took the bullet for me, Rosalie. My father was a target, and I was his son. But Sonia had a chance of survival.”
“How can you blame yourself?”
Walter begins to sob. “I hid under the bed. They were shot in the next room and I made myself disappear.”
Rosalie runs her fingers through his hair, pulls him close.
“You had no choice.”
“Sonia took the fall so I could live.”
“It was so hopeless, Walter. You all would have been killed anyway. Then, or eventually. You don’t know.”
“At Shantiniketan I would lie under the date palm trees and imagine that I was in the afterlife and Sonia was on her way to Palestine. I would close my eyes and allow time to disappear, a night and a day and another night until someone came outside to offer me food and tea.”
Paul and Giselle walk by, holding hands. Walter stops talking and waits for them to pass.
“I deserved none of it. I was not meant to be saved.”
“You deserved me,” says Rosalie.
Walter laughs. “That’s rather pitiful. I stole you from my first American friend. First I stole Sonia’s life, then I stole yours.”
“You did not, Walter. This—everything—has been my choice. You said so yourself.”
“Sonia was so much better than we will ever be.”
“She was young, Walter. She was in the process of becoming.”
“And what have we become?”
Rosalie turns away, wraps her arms around herself, and begins to cry. “Why is this so sacred to me?” she asks.
“I don’t know, darling. Ask my friend who lectures in the circle of stones. He will tell you all about karma. Paul and I have words for everything, just like you and Sol. Is this beautiful or is this an ugly betrayal? Roll the dice and let me know what you come up with, rebbetzin.”
Rosalie pictures the congregants looking up at her when she gave her speech, hanging on every word that crossed her lips. They were hungry for the syllables that stumbled out of her mouth, as if she were a mother bird parceling out worms: Feed us. Teach us. Awaken our sleepy lives. And that’s what she and Walter did, with their purple binder overflowing with attempts at wisdom, a line here, a story there. Mazel tov, rabbi. You delivered the goods. Our love, your words. Our stained bodies, your sacred mission.
“Shameless and wrong and confounding and beautiful,” says Rosalie. “Everything at the same time.”
“We never should have met,” says Walter. He reaches for her and she shrugs him off.
“Sometimes I wonder if Sol and I would still be married if we didn’t have you. But what about you, Walter? You can crisscross the globe, gaze upon Brahmins immersing in the ghats, then return to your hillside idyll graced with young women and flanked by peacocks. Your life is so big! So why us? Why me?”
“My heart is not aligned to reason, Rosalie. And neither is yours.”
Just before dawn Paul and Giselle’s voices ring outside the tent. Through a crack in the siding, Rosalie spies a bright red splotch and rising smoke. She turns to Walter and shakes his shoulders but he doesn’t wake up.
“Evacuate!” shouts Paul.
Rosalie shakes Walter harder. “Wake up!”
Paul storms into the tent and screams into Walter’s face. “Wake the fuck up! There’s a fire on the other side of the hill!”
Rosalie shakes him again and Paul screams louder. “Get your head out of the spice sack, Walter! We’re evacuating! Get on the truck with the others!”
Rosalie pulls Walter to stand, hands him a shirt and pants, and leads him outside. The corner of the canyon glows orange and the radius of the light spreads down the surrounding hills like lava. The guests pile into the truck and Rosalie runs toward it. Walter grabs her arm.
“There’s no immediate danger.”
“It’s dry as bone here. The chaparral will go up in flames in minutes.”
“This is nothing, darling. We have the place to ourselves—”
“Is this some kind of death wish? You can escape only once.”
“I know what danger smells like,” he says. “This is a trifle.”
“You’re crazy.”
Walter cups her face in his hands.
“Trust me,” he says.
Rosalie spies the truck heading down the mountain, chases after it for a minute, and then gives up.
The sky is dark; they have no kerosene and no flashlights. Walter leads Rosalie to the circle of stones and they sit on a single rock. She wraps her arms tightly around herself.
It’s three hours later in New York, she thinks. Wednesday. Lenny has a trumpet lesson and Sol doesn’t know where he keeps his music. Philip won’t do his homework if she’s not in the house. The jar of peanut butter is almost empty, not enough for Charlie’s sandwiches, and where are her children while she stands on this mountain in the middle of Gehenna? Rosalie stares at Walter in the dark and for a moment he appears to be a complete stranger.
“Who are you?”
She clenches her hands into fists and pounds his chest.
“I am the biggest fool for carrying on with you, ever,” she cries. “I have a family. I have children. Boys who need me. Who always need me.”
Walter looks stern, professorial. “This is nothing to be afraid of,” he says in a guarded voice. She once loved his accent and now she wants to break it apart, shatter his inflections until he talks like she does. Like Sol does.
“Look,” he says, suddenly. “Over there.”
A family of deer, scattered foxes and rabbits step out of the woods one by one and stand on the path, transfixed by the light in the distance. Squirrels and a single quail appear. Another deer. A lone turkey. The animals pause where they stand, all of them. Rosalie stands. Walter stands.
Rosalie looks into the eyes of the deer emerging from the woods. A family of quail flow onto the road. The rabbits stand frozen; one hops close to Walter’s feet. Rosalie gazes at the animals and pictures her children in their beds and Sol at his lectern and her father surrounded by his books and her mother in the kitchen. The animals stare, waiting for her to make the first move. She reaches for Walter and touches his face. He begins to cry and then speaks softly, “Sonia, Josef—” He recites a litany of names and words in German that she doesn’t understand.
Rosalie watches the animals who stand frozen in the clearing. She listens to the inflection of Walter’s voice as if she is listening to a strange symphonic poem. This is, she thinks, the last time. Walter continu
es to speak in German and then begins to sob. She takes his face in her hands and they kiss in the smoke that swirls around them.
The fire stops on the other side of the canyon.
STEAL THIS BOOK
July 1973
Sol and Rosalie are lost on a dark road in the Berkshires. Rain batters the car windows and Sol leans his head past the steering wheel, hoping the angle will lend him visibility.
“It won’t help,” says Rosalie. “We can’t see through this torrent.”
“I’ll pull over,” says Sol. “We can wait it out.”
“Keep driving.”
“Ten minutes won’t make a difference.”
Rosalie shouts, “Have you grown deaf in both ears? We were expected two hours ago.”
Sol continues to drive and Rosalie reads the directions to Lenny’s summer camp.
“The roads aren’t marked. We were supposed to turn right at a gas station.”
“I don’t see a gas station,” says Sol.
“Keep going.” She stares straight ahead, her eyes following the hurried blink of the wipers that are useless in the storm.
“I need your help,” he says suddenly. “I can’t remember the names of the first-timers who came to shul last week. There was a woman named Natalie, I recall. She stood next to our Bev, the lady with frizzy hair and flip-flops. Was Natalie the redhead or the one who wore a doily on her head? And she brought along a friend: a Sue, a Beth, maybe a Linda. What’s with these names that all seem the same to me?”
“Lenny is lying in a camp infirmary with a fever and you want to talk about some lady named Natalie or Linda or Beth or Sue? Who the hell cares?”
“It’s a camp infirmary, Rosalie. And Lenny is fine. He wanted to come home anyway.”
Rosalie sighs. Lenny is twelve, away at camp for the first time. His brothers had outgrown Camp Herzl, staffed with muscular Israeli counselors who supervised endless games of Gaga, built campfires by the lake, and danced in the baseball field every Friday night, greeting Shabbat like the ancient mystics of Safad. Lenny had begged Rosalie to let him try it out. She questioned his stamina for being away from home, but sewed labels and packed a trunk anyway. At the end of the first week he sent home a postcard: I hate it here. Too many rules, too many sports. Pick me up.