The righteous men

by Sam Bourne

  'You started painting.'

  'No. There was never any time. At sem, it was just study, study, study. Holy texts. At home I had to clean, cook, change diapers, play with the baby, help the younger ones with their homework. I shared my room with two sisters. I had no time and no space.'

  'You must have gone out of your mind.'

  I did. I'd dream every day how I could get out. I wanted to go to the Metropolitan Museum. To see the Vermeer. But it wasn't just the painting.'

  'Go on.'

  'I know this sounds funny, given what I'm like now, but I was really good at religious studies.'

  'No, sorry, I don't find that surprising at all.'

  'I was top of my class. I found it easy. The texts, all those multiple meanings and cross-references, they just seemed to open up to me. Once a rabbi told me I was as good as any boy.'

  'Oh dear.'

  'I was furious. It was like, girls are only meant to go so far. Once you're seventeen or eighteen you become a woman — and that means getting married, having babies, keeping house. Men could carry on at the yeshiva forever, but girls were only allowed to acquire the basics. Then we had to stop.

  Those were the rules. Five Books of Moses, a bit of Gemara maybe. That's a kind of rabbinic commentary. But that was it.'

  'So all this kabbalah, you never studied that.'

  'Wasn't allowed. Only men over forty can even look at it, remember.'

  'Christ.'

  'Exactly. You know me, if there's a forbidden zone, I want to go there. I found the odd book among my father's things, but I knew I couldn't do this on my own. I needed a guide.

  So I asked Rabbi Mandelbaum.'

  'Who?'

  'The one who told me I was as good as a boy. I told him I wanted to study. I came to him with all the relevant texts that proved I had the right, as a woman, to know what was in those books.'

  'And did he agree? Did he teach you?'

  'Every Tuesday evening, a secret class at his house. The only other person who knew about it was his wife. She would bring a glass of lemon tea for him, a glass of milk for me and rugelach, little pastry cakes, for both of us. We did that for five years.' She was smiling.

  'What happened?'

  'He got worried. Not for his sake — he was too old to care what people thought — but for me. I was approaching "the age of marriage". He told me, "Tova Chaya, it would take a very strong man not to feel threatened by so learned a wife".

  I think he was worried that he had ruined me: that, thanks to him, I would not be happy keeping house. I wouldn't be a good wife like Mrs Mandelbaum. He had lifted my sights.

  In a way he was right.

  'But he needn't have worried; by then I had planned my escape. I applied to Columbia; I gave a PO Box address so that no one would see the correspondence. I applied for tons of scholarships, so that I could afford a room. I presented myself as an independent adult; as far as the college were concerned, I had no parents.

  'So when the day came, I gave the kids breakfast, as always, called out goodbye to my mother, as always, and I walked to the subway station.'

  'And you never went back.'

  'Never.'

  Will's mind was speeding, spilling with questions. But he was also overrun with answers. Suddenly, he saw so much that had been hidden. TO was no toddler nickname, its origins forgotten. It was a vestige of Tova Chaya's former life. And no wonder TO's parents were such a mystery: they were from a past she had abandoned. Of course there were no pictures: that would have betrayed her secret.

  'Do they even know you're alive?'

  'I speak to them by phone, before the major festivals. But I haven't seen them since I was seventeen.'

  In an instant, TO made sense. Of course she was brilliant but knew nothing of pop music and junk TV: she had grown up without them. Of course she spoke no French or Spanish: she had devoted her time to Yiddish and Hebrew instead.

  Will suddenly thought of TO's eating habits — the fondness for Chinese food, studded with jumbo prawns, the fry-up breakfasts, with generous rations of bacon. She loved all that stuff. How come? 'The zeal of a convert,' she said wryly.

  Now that he had been to Crown Heights himself, Will realized the scale of TO's rupture from her upbringing. He looked at her now: the tight top revealing the shape of her breasts; the exposed midriff; the navel stud. He thought back to the notice he had seen in Crown Heights.

  Girls and women who wear immodest garments, and thereby call attention to their physical appearance, disgrace themselves…

  Her break from Hassidism could not have been more complete. And he was forgetting the biggest rebellion of all: him.

  People from her world did not have sex outside marriage.

  They rarely married people from outside their own sect of Hassidism, let alone non-Jews. Yet she had had a long, physical relationship with him — not her husband and not a Jew.

  For him it had been a wonderful romance. He now understood that for her it had been a revolution.

  He suddenly saw TO differently. He imagined her as she would have been: a bright, studious girl of Crown Heights groomed for a life of modesty, child-rearing and dutiful observance.

  What a journey she had made, crossing this city and centuries of tradition and taboo. He stood up, walked over to her and gave her a long, warm hug.

  'It's a privilege to meet you, Tova Chaya.'

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Sunday, 6.46pm, Brooklyn

  He wanted to interrogate TO for hours, about her life, about the secret she had kept for so long. Lots of Jewish people became orthodox; they were known as chozer b 'tshuva, literally 'one who returns to repentance'. She had gone the other way: chozer b'she'ela. She had returned to question.

  But they had no time for that conversation, no matter how much they wanted it. They had to get to Crown Heights.

  Yosef Yitzhok had been murdered, though neither of them had any idea why. The last messages Will had received directing him to Atlas at the Rockefeller Center — had been sent after YY's death, proof that he had not been the informer after all. So why would anyone want him dead? Will was baffled. All he knew was that things were turning steadily more vicious. The rabbi had not been exaggerating: time was running out.

  Just as pressing was TO's promise. All would become clear, she had said, once they were in Crown Heights. She could not tell Will herself what was going on. But the explanation lay there. They just had to find it.

  'I'm going to need to use your bathroom. And I'm going to need to borrow some of Beth's clothes.'

  'Sure,' Will said, trying hard to shrug off the potential symbolism of that request. He led TO to Beth's closet and, steeling himself, pulled back the sliding door. Instantly his nostrils filled with the scent of her. He was sure he could smell her hair; he could think himself into the aroma of that patch of skin below her ear. He breathed in deeply, through his nose.

  TO pulled out a plain white blouse, one Beth wore for formal work meetings, usually under a dark trouser-suit. It was cut high, Will noticed. We request that all women and girls, whether living here or visiting, adhere at all times to the laws of modesty…

  She turned to Will. 'Does Beth have any really long skirts?'

  Will thought hard. There were a couple of long dresses, including a particularly beautiful one he had bought for his wife on their first anniversary. But they were evening wear.

  'Hold on,' he said. 'Let me look at the back here.' He wondered if Beth had gotten around to throwing it out; he knew she planned to. It was a long, drab dark velvet skirt that Will had mocked mercilessly. He called it Beth's 'spinster cellist number'. She put up a mock-defence, but she could see his point: it did make her look like one of those silver-haired lady players spotted in every orchestra. But she felt attached to it. To Will's great relief at this moment, she had never got rid of it.

  'OK,' said TO, moving towards the bathroom. 'These will have to go.' She cocked her head to one side to take off her earrings. Then she pr
essed her face closer to the mirror and began the complex manoeuvre of removing her nose-stud.

  Finally she gazed down at her middle and unscrewed the ring that pierced her belly button. She now had a small pile of metal in her hand, which she placed by the basin.

  'Now for the toughest job of all.' She reached into her bag to produce a newly purchased bottle of shampoo, one specially designed for the task at hand. She started running the tap, grabbed a towel and slung it around her shoulders. As if bracing herself for a nasty ordeal, she bent down and lowered her head towards the water.

  As Will watched she began to lather up and rinse. She had to scrub hard, but soon her effort was paying off. The water in the sink began to turn a blueish purple. The dye was coming out, a stream of it swirling around the white porcelain and away. Will was fascinated by the coloured water. It was not only removing a chemical from TO's hair; it seemed to be washing away the last decade of her life.

  He left to collect a few things of his own. What had the rabbi said? 'All will become clear in a few days' time.' That was two days ago. Perhaps he was about to close in on the truth, at long last. What would it be? What was this 'ancient story' into which he and his wife had somehow fallen? Once he knew, would he be back with her? Would he hold her again? Would that be tonight? 'So, what do you think?'

  Will wheeled around to see a different woman. Her hair was now dark brown, brushed straight and long into a 1990s style bob. She wore sensible black shoes, a long black skirt and a white blouse. She had borrowed a thick, quilted jacket of Beth's that, in other circumstances, might have been fashionable but which now looked only practical. Standing there in his apartment was a woman who could have passed for any of the young wives and mothers he had seen in Crown Heights two days earlier. She looked like Tova Chaya Lieberman.

  'I'm so glad for the shoes. Thank God, they fit me and that's all that counts It took Will a moment to realize what TO was doing. She was trying out the sing-song, Yiddish-inflected accent of a New York Hassidic woman. It came to her so easily, it persuaded Will immediately.

  'Wow. You sound… different.'

  This was the music of my youth, Will,' she said, sounding like TO once more. Except there was a wistfulness in her voice he had never heard before. Then, snapping out of it: 'Now, what about you?'

  Me?'

  'Yes, you. We're going there together. Tova Chaya wouldn't be seen with some shaygets. You need to look the part, too.

  Now, come on: black suit, white shirt. You know the drill.'

  Will did as he was told, finding the plainest outfit he could.

  He had to reject a suit with a pin-stripe and a white shirt with a Ralph Lauren polo player on the chest. Plain, plain, plain.

  He looked in the mirror, hoping his transformation would be as convincing as TO's. But his face gave him away. He might have passed for American, but Jewish? No. He had the colouring and bone structure of an Anglo-Saxon whose roots lay in the villages of England rather than the steppes of Russia. Still, that need not be a problem. Had he not seen the faces of Hanoi and Helsinki among the faithful on Friday night? He would say he was a convert.

  He only needed one last thing. 'TO, where am I going to get a skullcap from at this time of night?'

  'I already thought of that.' With a flourish, TO held up a large black disc of material. 'I borrowed it from your friend Sandy when we were in the park.'

  'Borrowed?'

  'Well, I knew they always carry spares. And I just happened to be glancing into one of his jacket pockets. Here, put it on.'

  As if in a ceremony, TO stretched onto tiptoes and placed the yarmulke onto Will's head. She dashed into the bathroom and came back with a hairclip. 'There,' she said, attaching it just so. 'Reb William Monroe, it's a pleasure to meet you.'

  Once in the cab, Will felt himself begin to twitch with excitement — and nerves. He had never so much as attempted an undercover assignment and that's what this had become.

  He was in costume, trying to pass himself off as somebody else. His protective armour — chinos, blue shirt, notebook was gone. He felt exposed.

  In a bid for reassurance, he reached for his cell phone — a memento of his regular life. A new message, apparently from the same unknown sender he had once thought was Yosef Yitzhok.

  Just nen we are, our nunber few

  Desoribable in digits two

  We're halved if these do multiply

  If we few perish then all nust die.

  He had no idea what it meant but it hardly mattered now.

  According to TO, everything was about to be explained. Habit made him check his BlackBerry next. The red light was blinking: a Guardian News Alert. Nostalgia had made him an electronic subscriber to the paper he used to read back home.

  Ordinarily, he rapidly deleted these email updates: he had enough to do keeping up with the news in New York and America. But that 'alert' did the trick: what breaking news might justify its own bulletin? He clicked it open.

  The Robin Hood of Downing Street Britain's hottest political scandal in decades took its most bizarre turn yet today.

  The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gavin Curtis, who police believe took his own life last week, seems set to be transformed overnight from a disgraced hate figure into a posthumous folk hero. Treasury officials, who earlier revealed that Mr Curtis had diverted large chunks of the UK's budget into a private Swiss bank account, have this morning disclosed where that money ended up — in the hands of the world's poorest people.

  Instantly hailed by the tabloids as a 'real-life Robin Hood', it seems Mr Curtis spent much of his seven years at Britain's exchequer robbing from the rich to give to the poor.

  'Our government grant doubled, then tripled under Mr Curtis,' said Rebecca Morris, a spokeswoman for Action on Hunger, a leading relief agency. 'We thought it was just government policy.'

  It was nothing of the kind. Instead such generosity to those fighting the wars on poverty, HIV/Aids and famine was the personal decision of Mr Curtis himself- made possible by taking money out of dormant bank accounts that had laid unnoticed and unclaimed for years and then burying the details in a bafflingly complex labyrinth of Treasury data.

  Some observers speculate that the Chancellor went further in recent months, finding extra funds by raiding subsidies earmarked for Britain's arms exporters. 'They got less so that the starving of Africa and the sick of the Indian Ocean could get more,' explained a ministerial ally last night. One report suggested it was this move which led to his eventual exposure.

  'He must have known the risks he was taking,' Ms Morris told the Guardian. 'And yet he was prepared to do all that, just so the hungriest and weakest would have a better chance.

  I can't tell you how many lives Gavin Curtis must have saved.

  Some will call this a scandal, but I think this was the action of a truly righteous man.'

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Sunday, 8.16pm, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  TO did not want to take the risk of a phone call. She feared that Rabbi Mandelbaum would be too shaken by the sound of a voice from his past. She feared, too, that he would instantly call her parents. It was likely he had been plagued by guilt during these long years: he had colluded in a secret with young Tova Chaya and look what had happened. He was bound to blame himself, for encouraging her rebelliousness when he should have curbed it. All this she imagined.

  So she would turn up. at his front door instead, leaving him no option. She looked at her watch: with any luck he would be back from synagogue by now. She remembered the address and, once she saw that the lights were on inside, she told the cab to wait. 'Sorry, Will. I just need a second.' She was staring out of the window, as if unable to move. It's been nearly ten years. I was a different person.'

  'You take your time.'

  Will stared out of the window, at streets that were preternaturally quiet. Theirs was the only car; no one was out walking. The only sound came from the radio, playing a song.

  Will did not
notice it at first, but one line of the lyric caught him. It was John Lennon, declaring that 'God is a concept, by which we measure our pain.' Will listened harder; the song was moving towards its climax. 'I don't believe in magic … I don't believe in bible… I don't believe in Jesus…

  I don't believe in Beatles. I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality.'

  He had never heard it before, but it made his throat dry.

  It was as if Beth herself were speaking to him, as if she had, at last, smuggled a message out of her cell. The yearning that Will felt for his wife at that moment was so great, it was as if he was made of nothing else.

  Finally, TO gave the signal to get out of the car. They paid the driver and walked towards the house. Will adjusted his skullcap. Again. TO knocked on the door. It took a while, but Will could hear activity. A slow shuffle to the door and then a hunched, grey-bearded old man. He could have been no younger than eighty.

  'Rabbi Mandelbaum, it's Tova Chaya Lieberman. Your pupil.

  I've come back.'

  The eyes spoke first, brightening and moistening in an instant. He looked and looked, without uttering a word. Then he nodded gently and waved them in. He walked ahead of them, allowing his left arm to lift up as he passed the door to the dining room: his way of saying, Go in there. He carried on in the direction of the kitchen.

  Will was hit immediately by the smell of old books: the room was crammed from floor to ceiling with the leather bound, gilt-edged volumes he had seen in the interrogation room on Friday night. Holy texts. The surface of the dining room table was invisible: covered first by a tablecloth, then a plastic sheet and finally dozens of open books. It was hard to see; the room was lit by one weak electric light. But even with a cursory scan, Will could tell: barely a word was in English.