Fire Year

by Jason K. Friedman

  Had Isaac gone back to sleep? Zev looked into the future and what he saw wasn’t good. And so, abandoning theology, he leapt on Isaac’s back, pounding it with both fists until his brother relented and got up.

  After the readings, when everyone else had gone back to bed, Reb Aryeh began to write, opening the books that served as barricade during his classes. He wrote every day but the Sabbath, although nobody had ever seen a word he had written. He used no notes in class or in his public lectures; he had never published a book.

  Zev came from behind him one night but his father didn’t notice. Zev apologized for disturbing him. His father turned around, interested to see what his son had to say. “Father,” he said. “It’s about Isaac. I want to tell you something. To help him.” Zev tried not to notice the spark in his father’s eyes at the mention of Isaac’s name. “He told me something,” Zev forced himself to go on. “He told me, he, God forbid, doesn’t believe in God.” Reb Aryeh cocked his head, then shook it, and Zev, watching closely to see if he was nodding yes or no, could not finally decide. Whatever his father was doing, he didn’t look surprised. “Aha,” Reb Aryeh said, “you make him sound like one of them.” “Father?” Zev asked. “One of them,” he repeated. “His opposites. Those who live by the law and die by it and never talk to themselves in between. Do you think they who know everything but believe in nothing believe in God?” Zev had never thought of this; he felt derailed. “You can follow the letter of the law without believing in God, obviously. They only believe in God who believe in perfecting themselves morally to be worthy of God.” “But Isaac—” Zev feebly began before his father cut him off. “Why should Isaac say he believes in God if he doesn’t? When he’s ready to believe in himself, then he’ll be ready to believe in God.” “But he’s always late to the midnight readings, and I thought it maybe was because—” “It’s maybe because he’s comfortable in his bed that he’s late. You of all people know he’s got a comfortable bed, doesn’t he? Do you think I want to get out of bed?” “But you do it.” “Of course I do. And he will too, eventually. If he isn’t so perfect, it just means there is something left for him to learn.”

  VI

  To control anger, Reb Aryeh advocated a method that to Zev sounded as dubious as standing on a cold floor to overcome lust: “Think of a friend lying on the battlefield with a sword stuck out of his neck and blood spouting from his throat.”

  Instantly, Reb Aryeh could see the enjoyment on his students’ faces as they thought of a friend—or an enemy or anyone at all—with a blood-spewing gash and a sword through his throat or with a knife in his back or with one or both of his eyes gouged out. Or with his genitals gored into pulp by a bull.

  The rabbi could see these images pass across the students’ faces, and before any one of them could open his mouth to make an idol out of his teaching, he said, “Now, what kind of advice is this? Why is imagining such a horror a good way to control anger?”

  “It gives you perspective,” said one student. “How important is your anger when your friend is lying dying on a battlefield? You must rush to his side!”

  “No,” disagreed another student, “this image of the friend and the sword and the blood is arbitrary. You might as well be thinking of a snail. It’s just something to distract you from the passion at hand.”

  “It’s not arbitrary at all,” said a third student. “Reb Aryeh said it’s a friend lying dead on the battlefield. A friend is someone you love and so imagining harm to him is reminding you of the importance of love in the world. Love is more important than anger or lust. Love surely can’t be a passion that comes from the Serpent, can it be?”

  “There is no human love without divine love,” the rabbi said. “The love between friends depends on the love of God. As for why the image of a friend wounded grotesquely on the battlefield distracts you from base passion, or a son slain before his time—most of you are too young even to guess at the consequences of anger. As it is written, ‘Anger rests in the bosom of fools.’ Before it eats you like a worm from the inside, before it consumes your life, anger can cause you to do great harm to others—your enemies and also your friends. Can you imagine any connection between your friend lying dead on the battlefield and your own anger that makes the image more useful than that of a snail?”

  “Your friend might die because of your own anger,” said the third student. “You are fellow soldiers, closer than brothers, you love him and he loves you—a love, as Reb Aryeh says, that reflects your mutual love of the Lord. But if you’re angry at him for just one moment, then you might take your eye off him just when another soldier approaches with his sword drawn and your friend needs you to defend him the most. If you’re angry at him, then you might even, God forbid, wish him dead, and God might hear your words and allow it to happen. And then, as Reb Aryeh says, you too would feel as if you had died, or might take your own life.”

  “But with all respect, isn’t this an overinterpretation of the line ‘For anger kills the foolish man,’ Reb Aryeh?” asked the second student.

  “Why do you think it is, as you say, an overinterpretation?” Reb Aryeh asked.

  “Because a man who is angry will not, God forbid, take his own life,” said the second student. “Anger is a passion and passions are the sign of the living.”

  The other students turned toward Reb Aryeh, as they instinctively did when class discussion may have gone too far. Perhaps the books that lay before him were never opened because his face was open book enough; anything he felt could be read there. He rubbed his eyes, then pressed his palms against his closed lids. Who knows how long he stayed like this, for in the presence of this great man, no matter what he was doing, the students lost track of time. Reb Aryeh revealed his face and said, wearily, “You don’t need me to tell you, at your age, that the force of passion is in us all. Your chief aim—our chief aim—is to transfer the force of passion from the Serpent unto holiness. I don’t know if an angry man, God forbid, would be tempted to take his own life. But if he were so tempted, then he must cultivate the desire to do a mitzvah, he must turn his temptation for destruction into some creative act. And let us say your passion is for money. Then instead of buying more objects or a bigger house, spend it on holy things. Give it to the poor. Or if your money means you do not have to work so hard, then in your leisure do not loaf but pass it studying Torah. And if your love is for food, then eat with joy and with attachment to the Creator. And eat only healthy foods so that you might have the strength to pray to the Lord, to stand there before Him all day long as tall as a tree. A passion for drink? Well, the Lord has blessed you with a challenge to turn this one into holiness.”

  The students laughed, then sat there quietly. Finally Zev, whose presence in class had never been advertised by the sound of his voice, said, “It doesn’t work.”

  Zev had left the nighttime interview with his father feeling somehow diminished. Overnight he gave up responsibility for his brother’s soul. And he stopped going to the lake. There was no point. It made no difference whether he breathed faster and harder or slower and softer; he moved no closer to God. He had stopped looking at his brother at night but he thought about him even more.

  And now, because of this outrageous show of disrespect toward his father, Zev’s days and those of the children he would never have would be cut off from the earth. He flung out what little he had left to lose. “I’ve tried thinking of things,” Zev said, “not exactly like a friend with a sword coming out of his neck but similar. I’ve tried thinking of many different things. The first thing that comes to your head doesn’t help, because it’s too much like the thing you’re trying not to think about. The second thing doesn’t help either. You have to have a certain thing, as the rabbi said, something you can think of that has nothing to do with what you’re trying not to think about. If your mind always goes to this thing, it can help—but only a little. It doesn’t help very much. It’s very hard not to think about something, especially certain things. It’s very
hard.”

  Zev seemed to be close to tears, and now he looked around at his classmates imploringly, as if to ask, Which one of you will have the courage to say that you have felt what I have felt? Who here will say that what the rabbi is telling us to do doesn’t work?

  But the other students were looking at their teacher. He always knew when to speak and when to remain silent. Now, with his gaze directed toward the table, he seemed absent. His hands came together but continued to move, twisting in opposite directions, as of their own will.

  Profiting from this standstill, Zev went on. “Reb Aryeh, about the passion for money you say to turn it into a mitzvah by studying. Also the passion for food—you don’t say to stop eating, you say to strengthen yourself to pray. And what about anger? Must we never be angry, or can anger too be turned to good?”

  “Absolutely,” said Reb Aryeh. The other students were amazed that this freak, this shameful creature that their teacher himself had created, would be the one to return the rabbi’s spirit to his body. “Anger at a student—if we should take but one example—is warranted if the goal is to save the student’s soul. If a teacher’s anger at a student causes him to change his ways, then his anger has been turned to good.”

  “And what of the anger of a student toward his teacher?” Zev asked.

  VII

  From the moment his brother made his heretical confession, Zev wondered—he let himself wonder—what it must be like to live in a world without God. It was, he decided, like this, the marketplace, which he was making his way through now. There was no straight path through it. You couldn’t run if you wanted to, you had to make your way around a sea of wagons. You had to watch your step. Horses, cows, people from as far away as the district center—people who didn’t know who Zev was scattered among all those who only pretended they didn’t. Smell of shit and fish and smoke, terrified squawking of birds, babble of voices, deceitful smiles, hands extended, money taken. Partitions, stalls, tables, overhangs—all of it temporary, all of it illusion. The only things permanent in the square were the black obelisk, crowned on two sides with three crosses rising along a single shaft, and the cobblestones themselves, which were crowded now with cooking pots and piles of cloth and baskets of vegetables and barrels of grains. If there was order here, it couldn’t be discerned. The market was held only once a week, but no weeds dared grow between the cobblestones or where they were missing.

  Zev’s mother vended a putty made of boiled rye flour and chalk and oil. It was used by the town’s carpenters and painters, and it had such a reputation for strength that merchants from the district center came to trade for it as well. Isaac with his powerful arms put up and took down her stall and served as her assistant. The stalls were on the far side of the square and Zev tried to avoid them, but he was being pushed in that direction by the crowd. His mother called out his name, too loud, the single syllable like a knife thrust through the rough fabric of the marketplace. Everyone who had pretended to ignore him turned and stared, and as he approached he saw on his mother’s face a certain satisfaction scratching through her usual defiance.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, wiping her forehead with her apron.

  “I came to see Isaac.”

  And where was her so-called assistant?

  “He’s gone to let my usual customers know I’m here.” But where else would she be on this day? Here was a world in which lies were apparently allowed. “You should be in school,” she said with a knowing gaze.

  He looked down, as his father taught. To be among those who are humbled but do not humble others; are scorned but do not reply. Even here in the marketplace he could not abide by its rules, or its freedom from them. I have come to bring Isaac a message, he wanted to say. I have come to bring a message from Reb Aryeh. I have come to feel what I have so long wanted to feel. He would have liked to say all three things to his mother and let her try to distinguish lies from truth.

  He left her but didn’t head back in the direction of his father’s school. He pushed his way instead toward the far side of the square, where the road to the district center began. Zev had never been to the district center. The lake, which was not so far away, was as far as he had ever dared escape. He would be imprisoned in the town forever, just as he was already imprisoned in his own useless body. At least he knew this. He didn’t stupidly believe, as his stupid brother did, that he would make it to America, where you ate meat every day and there was work for everyone and all the women were beautiful.

  Across the square Isaac was smiling his easy smile as he spoke with two other boys, neither of them Jewish. One of the boys was colorless, obviously a follower. The other was Josef.

  Zev’s blood galloped in his ears. He had the impression that his heart wasn’t beating more quickly than usual, but that the cavity in which it hung was otherwise hollow. And if this emptiness wasn’t an absence of fear, then it could at least allow courage to rush in. By now Josef had noticed him, and Zev saw he had no trace of fear in his eyes, as everyone else in the town did when Zev approached. No trace even of surprise, though the market was not Zev’s world and he rarely came here. Zev held Josef’s gaze too. He was not handsome, this Josef, but his wide face contributed to the impression of solidity that his broad-shouldered body gave. Both Isaac and the other boy were laughing—but Zev couldn’t imagine Josef ever laughing. And then Isaac noticed Josef staring, and he followed the line of his gaze to Zev.

  “It’s the little rabbi,” the third boy hastily put in, to make up for being the last to notice him.

  “Go home,” Isaac said.

  But Zev just stood there.

  Now the third boy, the dull one, was really interested. “Why don’t you go to the synagogue,” he sneered.

  “Zev!” Isaac said.

  “Go blow the horn in the synagogue,” the third one said and moved to block him from escaping.

  Zev could smell liquor on his breath. If the boy was afraid to be in Zev’s presence, he wasn’t showing it, except perhaps in the slight tremble of his legs as he stood there before him. Clearly, this one wanted to hurt Zev in order to raise himself in Josef’s esteem. Josef, who in his brother’s stories never needed to take more than one step to dissolve the opposing front line of would-be boy soldiers. Josef, who wielded his power by withholding, by never giving his opponents what they so desperately wanted.

  When Zev stepped out of his shadow, more to make something happen than to escape, the third boy stayed where he was. They were letting Zev go—a clear path to safety lay before him. And so Isaac never had to defend him, though Zev was no longer sure he would.

  The lake at summer’s end. Nothing was as Zev remembered. The lake, the trees, the clearing where he had sat—all of it had changed in the usual way, the way the world was always changing. It was not so very late in the day but the water was colorless, the sun having already fallen behind the tops of the trees. A carpet of dead leaves crunched under his shoes. But it was still hot. The light was thick and heavy and still. It seemed to have poured from heaven before the sun had gone. Filtered its way through the branches and stopped, stiffened there like amber or glue. For this was the real change, not the plants that had withered in the drought or the leaves that had fallen but the impression the scene gave of stillness, trees and water and grass having fused into one, all of it held together by the solid mass of light. A paradox: flow and stasis, the world a record of its own creation.

  Tomorrow he would be fifteen, a number that happened to be the value of nothing more than one of the names of God. A number that blessedly had nothing to do with fires. Fifteen meant only this, that another year had passed during which he had failed to master the passions of his body.

  He lowered his pants and saw how his jacket and shirt and fringed underclothes hung down and continued to cover him. His clothes made his body into something unrecognizable as a body. Turned him into a scholar, no longer a man—the way a woman in her wedding gown is no longer a woman but a bride, the way a p
erson wrapped in a funeral shroud is a corpse. He took off everything he was wearing—even his hat. He laid them down on the leaves, placed them next to each other as on himself, so that a flattened man seemed to lie there.

  Pale as a grub, he stood under his meditation tree and breathed in and out. Then he headed toward the lake, walking with calm to its pebbled edge.

  He put one toe in. Took a step. He was walking on rocks, dark now around the paleness of his foot, which was fully sub-merged. He took another step and the water lapped at his ankles. Left foot, then right, then left again, then right—he tried not to count the steps. The water was not cold. But as he walked he braced himself for the drop-off into the freezing netherworld. He closed his eyes and said the sh’ma, as he had been taught to say before death.

  He did not see the Divine Throne. He did not see the beautiful woman. He saw his father sitting in the schoolroom with the holy texts spread open. Writing the book that Zev now understood was for him.

  He stopped moving and turned around. The shore lay at some distance but his knees were not wet. The water was warm against his naked legs.

  Acknowledgments

  I live and write in a household of three, but it took a shtetl to bring this book to fruition.

  My parents filled me with stories and learning—and let me use their beach cottage to work.

  My old friend Susan Buchsbaum was my sounding board and a careful reader of the stories in this book.

  Anne Cheng has given me deep friendship and excellent feedback on my work.

  Cappy Coates and Veronica Selver provided indispensable comments and edits, as well as encouragement over the years.

  Tim Dean deserves much credit for slogging through my early writing.

  Simon Firth read my work over the years and helped me with “There’s Hope for Us All.”