That’s when the jackhammering began. It sounded like thunder at first, and I could feel it through the floor and see the pictures rattling on the wall. It stopped for a moment, then started again.
Some months earlier, a couple had purchased the house kitty-corner from ours, a once beautiful old building that had become home to about thirty cats. They made plans to restore the place and had been waiting for a break in the rain to start construction.
The noise became a constant source of torment, starting up at random intervals throughout the day. Just when I thought it had stopped, and I began to whisper something to Taly or the kids, it would start again, as though on cue. Sometimes, in lieu of jackhammering, I would hear the sounds of a circular saw or an electric hammer.
Not wanting to admit defeat, I tried to shout over it.
“Michaela . . . honk! Could you . . . honk!”
“What?” Michaela would say. “I can’t hear you. Speak louder!”
I tried that for two weeks. And then it happened, one day, as I was asking Elijah to pass the breakfast cereal. I stopped trying to talk over the noise. In fact, I stopped trying to talk the rest of the day. And even that evening, when everyone had gone to bed and I was all alone, with no construction noise, I did not try to talk. I gave up.
Only then did I realize that I had been trying, without success, to push sound from my mouth, every waking hour of every day, ever since the operation—seven months. Though I’d known intellectually I could not speak, my body had refused to believe it, until that moment.
Suddenly, I felt free, lighter. It was like an experiment I used to do as a kid. I would stand in a doorway, arms at my sides, pushing against the doorjamb as hard as I could for thirty seconds. Then, I would step out, relax, and my arms would float toward the sky, as though tied to balloons.
That’s how the silence felt. I remembered another Zen story, about two monks walking after a storm. They spot a beautiful young woman dressed in a fine kimono, standing at one side of a stream. She is unable to cross the stream, so the younger of the two monks picks her up and carries her to the other side. They go on their way, but the older monk is furious. He says nothing until he reaches the monastery, whereupon he turns to the younger monk.
“How could you do that?” he shouts. “You know we made a vow not to touch a woman!”
The younger monk smiles. “The woman in the kimono? I put her down hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”
My voice had become a useless limb that I had dragged around for so long that I had forgotten I was carrying it. That afternoon I put it down.
The moment I did, something happened. I began to hear other people’s voices in a new way. All my life, I’ve loved the sound of the human voice. But since that morning in the hospital, each voice I’d heard had come to me through the filter of envy; the speaker had something that I did not, and I wanted it, more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Now that the filter was gone, I was once again able to appreciate the bouquet of voices around me. There was Michaela’s little voice, so small and sweet, and the unyielding earnestness that infused Elijah’s. I heard the melody that came through Taly’s voice, even when she was not singing. There was something to notice in each voice around me, from Ron the postman’s slightly grainy, Midwestern drawl, to the warmth and openness that came through in every word spoken by Ginger, Michaela’s preschool teacher.
All these I could suddenly hear from a distance, the way one might appreciate a ballet if one has never thought of becoming a dancer, or the artistry of a basketball player if one does not play the game. Talking was natural for them, as it had once been for me. But that door had closed and—just as in my mother’s saying—a window had opened. It was the window to the world of silence, a world I had too long overlooked.
I remembered an article I’d once read about a sound technician who was traveling the world with his tape recorder, looking for the quietest places, trying to capture complete silence. At the time it had struck me as a pointless task—even if he had been completely successful, he’d have come home with a blank tape. Now, as I thought of him again, his plan seemed profound. The beauty of it lay in the fact that real silence—absolute, complete silence—does not exist. All we can do is peel back the layers of noise in this world, revealing the quieter sounds beneath. And gradually, the article said, we may hear the quietest sounds of all—the flow of an underground stream, a bug eating a leaf, or the sound made by a tiny fish as it spits a drop of water to bring down a passing insect.
Like that sound technician, I sought out silence, whenever I could. As most of my nights were spent writing, I found time during the days to go in search of the quietest places I could find, riding my bike into the hills behind Berkeley, looking for a sheltered place. Then I would sit there, my eyes closed, to see how little I could hear.
STORY ORIGIN: JEWISH, POLAND
The Wisdom of Chelm
Hidden away in the mountains of Poland, somewhere on the road from Warsaw to Chotzenplotz, is the tiny village known as Chelm. The people of Chelm are the greatest fools in the world, though they do not think of themselves as such. Rather, they consider themselves the wisest people in the world and their elders the wisest of the wise.
They spend their days in contemplation of the great questions of life, such as, “Which is more important—the sun or the moon?” A question like this can split the town for weeks, until the matter is taken up by the elders themselves, who ponder it carefully, stroking their beards and furrowing their brows. At long last, the question will finally be settled by Chaimyonkel, the very wisest of the elders, who will rule that, while the sun is indeed important, the moon is much more important, for it shines at night, when it is dark, and we most need the light.
Likewise, it was his wisdom that comforted Chelm when a tragedy struck the town—one night there was a terrible fire, and the people of Chelm fought the whole night through to extinguish the flames. In the morning, the Chelmites roundly cursed the fire except for Chaimyonkel, who disagreed.
“The fire was a blessing!” he said. “For it gave us light! And without this light, how could we have ever seen our way to put out the fire?”
Getting to Chelm is difficult, for the road is fraught with perils. In order to find it, you must first be lost. You start walking from Warsaw on a sunny day when suddenly, a storm comes up—a blizzard. Day turns to night as you struggle through the snow until you can no longer tell left from right, up from down. At that point, you make a left turn and walk until you see a man digging around in the snow, under a streetlamp.
“Did you lose something?” you ask.
“Yes, I lost my keys.”
So you bend down to help him look, with no success. “Where exactly did you lose them?” you finally ask.
“Down the street, by the temple.”
“Why are you looking here?”
“The light is better.”
Only then, when wisdom and foolishness trade places, do you know you have arrived in Chelm.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Wisdom of Chelm
“OH, I GET IT,” Lenny said at last. “Silence.”
I had been standing on his porch for what may have been five minutes, but seemed like an hour, as he asked me one question after another, waiting for me to speak. But I said nothing, nor did I try. Much as I wanted to convey what I’d learned, saying anything about it seemed pointless.
Saying nothing in response, he motioned me inside, to sit before the fire. It was only after a very long time that he spoke.
“People think storytelling is about talking; it isn’t. It’s about silence and giving shape to that silence. Silence is our canvas. It is the clay from which we sculpt our world, the marble at which we chip away. And how do we chip away at it? With our words! We begin a story in silence, the purer the better. And when we stop to pause”—and here he paused, for a long time—“we can see, actually feel, the shape of the silence we have created. If you’ve come to silence, Joel, y
ou’re halfway there.”
Still, I said nothing, soaking up the rare praise.
“You know,” he went on, as we sat down, “I’ve been thinking about just what story you’re in. It’s hard to say, of course, because it changes all the time—like the lines on the palms of your hands. That’s because God is up there, twisting plots, adding details. And just when you think you’ve got it figured out, along comes a turn. At the moment, I wonder if you might be somewhere in Chelm. You know about Chelm, don’t you? The Polish Jewish town of fools?”
Of course I knew. Those were the stories my mother had almost told me. I had since learned many of them and told dozens in my performances. But as he said the word “Polish,” something came to me. I pulled out a pen and wrote on a scrap of paper.
“Polish—polish.”
“Good,” he said. “Polish, polish, Job and job. You see? Eventually, riddles solve themselves. And when they do, we must find new ones. Because if we don’t, we are in danger of becoming wise, wise like the fools of Chelm, looking for what we’ve lost under the streetlamp because the light is better. Their foolishness lies not in what they do, but in believing they are wise.”
He stared off into the distance for a long time. Finally he turned back to me.
“Have I ever told you about Pearl?”
I shook my head.
“No, I suppose I wouldn’t have.” He sighed. “She was ‘the imperfect woman.’ You must know the story.” I didn’t. “It’s about Mullah Nasrudin.”
I sat back in anticipation; I’ve always loved stories about the great Sufi mystic, the balding trickster-fool.
“Nasrudin was always being asked to give advice at weddings. Finally, a disciple asked why he himself had never married. ‘Ah,’ he explained. ‘I decided I would marry only when I found the perfect woman. For many years I searched, and I encountered many a woman who was kind, beautiful, intelligent. Yet not one of them was perfect. Each one had some small flaw.
“‘Then one day,’ says Nasrudin, ‘I saw her. I knew it instantly. There was no question in my mind. She was perfect in every regard. Sure enough, as I came to know her, I found she was, indeed, a gem without flaw.’
“‘So why didn’t you marry her?’ asked the disciple.
“Nasrudin sighed. ‘There was just one problem.’
“‘You found an imperfection?’
“Nasrudin shook his head. ‘No, simply this—she was looking for the perfect man.’”
Lenny shook his head. “Pearl,” he sighed again, “was imperfect in all the right ways. I had looked for years to find her—didn’t want to screw up again, like I did in my first marriage. A disaster. But within an hour of meeting Pearl, I knew she was the one. I could see it in her face. I could feel it in the bottom of my soul. It was meant to be. And you know what happened?”
I waited.
“We got married. She was my second wife. She was a dancer, jazz. Came here from New Zealand. She lived and breathed music. We honeymooned in Fiji and drank mango nectar under the stars.” He stopped for a moment and a dreamy look washed over his face.
“We came back here, bought this cabin, set up a life together.” He shook his head. “We were happy as could be. You know, you can go through life, never realizing just how lonely you are, until you fall in love.” With some effort, he got out of his chair, walked to his room, and came back with a picture in a silver frame, which he handed to me. She was a bright-eyed woman with curly brown hair.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” I nodded. “But a month after we were married she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Five months later, she was dead. All together, I had only ten months with her.” He stopped for a moment, and I could see tears. “But those ten months—they were the greatest gift I’ve ever been given. They got sweeter as they went along. Sweeter—not easier. They were hell. Doctors, operations, chemo, pills. She withered away, her hair fell out—she was gorgeous. And she got more beautiful, every day, until the end. I lived more in those six months than I have in all the rest of my life.” He looked away for a time, then added, “You’re never more alive than when you’re standing next to death.”
I LEFT LENNY that afternoon, marveling at how different stories can be, how some stories can make us laugh, while others make us cry. I thought about bedtime stories, which send us off to sleep, and Zen stories, which wake us up with their strange, paradoxical twists. Other stories do this as well, because they sneak up on us when we’re not expecting them. Lenny’s last story had opened up something inside me. I noticed it from the moment I left him; the world seemed closer. Driving home, seeing my house, the trash waiting to be taken out—nothing had really changed, but I found that I saw it more clearly. It wasn’t better, it wasn’t worse; it simply had the sheen of reality.
The story of Pearl had landed somewhere deep inside me, and it surfaced again and again, especially at night, over the next weeks. I found myself thinking about death—not just my father’s, which I’d thought about for years, but my own, the one I’d avoided by having the tumor removed. I realized that, in all my focus on my voice and its return, I hadn’t quite let in just how close I had come to dying.
One night I woke early, just before dawn, and went to check on the kids, as I often do. Elijah was sound asleep. In the glow of his night-light, I looked at him a long time, then at the flags scattered around the room. He had recently started inventing flags for made-up countries where the Beanie Babies lived, making the flags from wooden chopsticks and a white sheet Taly had cut up. These were in a basket and I sifted through them, until I found what I was looking for. It was one he had not yet colored, and I borrowed it. I sat there on the floor, cross-legged, waving it.
A minute later Michaela awoke, rubbed her eyes, and crawled out of bed. She walked over to me and sat on my lap. She didn’t say a word, but merely looked at the flag, then up at me, her hands resting on my knees, and I felt like the luckiest man alive.
THE NEXT MORNING I made pancakes for the kids’ breakfast—a dad activity that I’d come to love. Inside my head I heard “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from Oklahoma! and though I couldn’t sing it, I whistled. That morning I became a short-order cook, as the kids put in their orders for pancakes.
“I want an E on mine,” said Elijah.
“And I want an M,” said Michaela.
As I made their pancakes, I looked up at them and felt something strange, a feeling I could not name. What was it?
“Is this an M or an E?” asked Michaela.
“It depends which way you look at it,” answered Elijah. “But what’s this one?”
He pointed to a huge pancake I’d made, as big as a plate, filled with holes.
Standing between them, I pulled them both close to me and whispered. “It’s a map . . . of the stars.”
Delight spread across their faces, and that’s when it hit me. No wonder I hadn’t recognized the feeling; it had been so long.
I was happy.
STORY ORIGIN: JEWISH, POLAND
Buried Treasures
Long ago, in the Polish city of Kraków, there lived a poor Jewish tailor by the name of Yaakov ben Yekel. Hard as he might work, he could never seem to make enough money to feed his wife and children. With nothing else to do, he went to the temple, where he prayed for a miracle.
That very night he had a magnificent dream. In it, he found himself in the distant city of Prague—a place he had never been before. Yet now, he could see it all clearly, even feel the breeze as he walked through its streets, with a shovel on his shoulder. Finally he came to a spot on the ground. There, he began to dig a hole, and as he did so he heard a loud voice call to him, “Yaakov ben Yekel—go to Prague! There is something there for you!”
He had the same dream, again and again, each time more vivid than the time before. Finally, he realized there was nothing for him to do but go to Prague.
It took him weeks to walk there, through the rain and snow, but when he finally arrived, he was astonished by what h
e saw. The city of Prague appeared exactly as it had in his dream. He ran through the streets, finally coming to the very spot he had seen in his dream—and began to dig.
Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” said an angry voice. There, beside Yaakov, stood a guard, the biggest man he had ever seen. Yaakov was terrified. Not knowing what else to say, Yaakov told the truth.
“I’m digging here . . . because I had a dream—”
“Ha!” laughed the guard. “A dream?” He slapped Yaakov’s face. “You look like a dreamer, thin, weak, sickly! Dreams are for fools, like you!” said the guard. “Funny you mention dreams—last night, I had a dream. A voice spoke to me and said ‘You there, Ivan, go off to the town of Kraków—and there, in the miserable little house of a tailor’—something like Yankel, or Yekel—‘you will find, under his stove, a great treasure.’ It was a crazy dream—but you don’t see me going off to Kraków, do you? No, dreams are for fools!”
With this, the guard kicked him out of the city, and Yaakov began the long walk home. When he arrived, weeks later, he kissed and hugged his whole family—then went right to the stove. He pushed it aside and began to dig. He dug for hours but, in the end, found only dirt. Finally, exhausted, he fell asleep.
As he slept, his children played in the hole, digging deeper until his youngest daughter found something that felt like an old soup pot. With her brothers and sisters, she pulled it up and brought it to Yaakov. He pried it open and found that it was filled with old gold and silver coins—a fortune, enough money to feed his family, fix his house, and even to do what he had always wanted to do—give to the poor.
He lived a good life until, finally, as a very old man, he found himself with but one coin left. This, he decided to give to a beggar.
“Thank you,” said the beggar. “And for you, Yaakov, I have two words of advice.”
The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness Page 9