The Kabbalah Master

by Besserman, Perle;

  Once, when two ten-year-old boys came all the way from Staten Island to buy an expensive phony magic book, he’d sold them a cheaper, secondhand one with better illustrations written by a famous magician who debunked phonies. Claiming he didn’t need the stuff lying around the store, Seymour had thrown in a sleight-of-hand deck of cards and a magic wand for free. Seymour was “cool,” the kids said. Ah, but kids were different. They filled in the gaps for themselves. Not like the poor woman sitting in front of him, still fishing for the paper tag in her teacup. She was no kid, and he, Seymour, was obliged to treat her like a grownup, set her straight before she got herself into real trouble.

  “I’ll ask you again. Do you really believe in all this?” Seymour pointed his finger directly at Rabbi Joachim’s Zohar.

  Sharon put down her teacup and looked him in the eye. “I love him,” she said quietly and simply.

  That’s nice, Seymour thought, dumping too much sugar into his coffee, very nice. No use mincing words. It was time to talk, and talk fast. In twenty minutes the enemy would return. John Davis had promised another visit tomorrow. Someone from the Times had been trying to reach him on the telephone all morning—for a follow-up story, no doubt. And Seymour’s printer was threatening to come to the store and commit suicide in front of all the customers on the main floor.

  Dismissing all sentiment with a wave of his stirrer, Seymour said, “I don’t mean to sound harsh, but that has nothing to do with this problem right here,” knowing, of course, that it had everything to do with it. “I love Rabbi Joachim too, in my own way, and he’s gotten us both into hot water. Granted, he’s charming, enigmatic, charismatic, even. A regular misunderstood hero. But where does that leave us, Sharon? Me, I never believed a word of his program.” Seymour took a gulp of his coffee and smacked his lips. Too sweet, but he needed a heavy dose of sugar now. “Of course Rabbi Joachim believes it; in fact, I would go so far as to say that he’s never had any intention of putting anything over on us.”

  “Whoever said that he wanted to fool anyone?” Bristling at the challenge Seymour had thrown her, Sharon stopped fussing with the teabag, put aside her sandwich, and placed both hands on the desk. Beneath the tears there now lurked anger. And beneath the anger, a tiny ray of hope that she might see Rabbi Joachim again.

  “Oh, nobody—just all those people we got rid of a few minutes ago who were crying for his head, just the New York Times, the Food and Drug Administration, and soon, maybe even Nader’s Raiders.” Seymour’s face turned beet red with annoyance. That was not it, not the right way. He calmed himself, then, indicating the drawer containing Rabbi Joachim’s letter, he said, “There’s a letter from him here. I told you about it this morning. Of course there’s no return address, but it’s postmarked Tel Aviv,” he lied, “and let me tell you now, Sharon, that if you know anything about Rabbi Joachim’s secret files, you’d better give them to me right away. Tayson has ransacked the Center’s office; he’s way ahead of us already. And you’re next. That snazzy lawyer is sure to subpoena your personal files. But listen to me, I’m on your side. I figure our Rabbi Joachim really believes in that dead uncle of his. And for all I know, maybe he’s full of ‘divine light’ or whatever he calls it. But as he told me so himself, right here in this office, he never has and never will give any guarantees or promises—to anyone. That’s why I took him on in the first place. He’s harmless; he just tells his disciples to work things out for themselves, that’s all. If they’re sincere, he says, if they practice his ‘meditations’ or pray a little—what have you—they’re entitled to ‘enlightenment.’ Don’t ask me what that means; I have no idea. I suspect Rabbi Joachim thinks he’s been entrusted by his uncle with the answers to life and death. So what if you don’t get enlightened after ten easy lessons, so you’ve lost only a few bucks and stood to gather some good deeds along the way. And he never promised anyone—at least not to my knowledge—that they’d be ‘cured’ by drinking clover tea, either. So there’s the whole thing in a nutshell.” Seymour clapped his hands. “If our Kabbalah master is a phony, at least he’s not an intentional one, because he guarantees you nothing. And that’s why they won’t get him. Love him or not, lady, it’s you and me who are going to be left ‘holding the bag,’ as our lawyer friend phrased it so aptly.”

  Silence.

  Seymour watched the second hand on his desk clock rotate across the face with astonishing speed. Determined to hold his assault, he made a show of forming the greasy sandwich wrappings into miniature basketballs and tossed them into his wastebasket a few feet away. One “ball” made a direct hit; the other two tapped the rim and rolled off sluggishly onto the floor.

  “I have no personal secret files, Seymour, I swear it.”

  Sharon’s dismal whine convinced him that she was being insincere. Okay, then, he’d let her have the truth right between the eyes. This one didn’t deserve the kid gloves treatment.

  “What about the astrologer? Didn’t you know that Rabbi Joachim regularly consulted an astrologer, one of my own very best and oldest customers? What kind of superman is that, what kind of psychic powers? Did you also not know that he came to see her about two weeks before he left New York, asking her for a reading? He was very upset, and she told him that it would be a very ‘propitious time’ for a trip to Israel. Do you know why?” The hurried catechism left Seymour breathless. His heart pounding, he paused for air.

  Sharon frowned. An astrologer? What was this all about? Seymour was trying to discredit Rabbi Joachim—that was it. He was launching a cheap shot just to wrench some sordid confession from her. Trying to remain cool, she said, “I thought such information was confidential. Can’t the astrologer be sued for telling you?” she asked.

  Seymour looked at her angrily for the first time but said nothing. Sharon had spoken effortlessly. It was as if Rabbi Joachim himself was putting the words in her mouth, at the same time enclosing her in a calm, serene glow of expectation, even approaching joy. She had the upper hand. Now it was her turn to crumple the leftover papers into miniature basketballs and toss them into the wastebasket—all three of her tosses accurately finding their mark. She could barely keep from smiling.

  Seymour saw his golden moment. Sharon was sitting smugly back in her chair, vulnerable, an open target.

  “Rabbi Joachim told me himself,” he told Sharon. “He told me, not the astrologer. How about the fact that the real reason for his trip was to get a divorce from his wife? Did you know that? Or that he’s been in the process of divorcing for nearly six months because the wife wouldn’t allow him visiting rights with his kids? How does that one hit you?”

  Sharon’s poor battered heart leapt like a bird breaking through the icy trees in its first flight toward spring. She longed to jump up from her chair and hug Seymour for telling her this, knew instinctively that it was true, that he was not merely prodding her for information but that in his desperation he was telling her everything Rabbi Joachim had made him swear to reveal to her only when the time was right. And the time was right now! Now!

  “I—I knew it, but I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone,” Sharon murmured, gathering confidence as she went along.

  Now it was Seymour’s turn to be surprised. “So we both know,” he could barely keep himself from shouting. It was two minutes to twelve. “So now, what?”

  Overhead, Sharon heard the bustle of the returning combatants. No longer afraid, certain that Rabbi Joachim was guiding her, she burst out, “He’s going to marry me. I’ve known it all along. The Center is closed. I closed it myself when he left.”

  It was twelve o’clock. Mrs. Wolstein could be heard wheezing her way downstairs. Mr. Berkowitz was tapping his cane against the closed office door.

  SEVENTEEN

  Time is a joke. Time is a paradox. Time is.

  —Anonymous

  IT WAS SHARON’S BIRTHDAY, THE SEVENTH SATURDAY after the Fourth of July, 1972. The Coney Island sky was overcast, the air gray, soft and humid, and the low-lying clouds fairly
tumescent with rain. Not really a day for a walk along the beach; hardly a short fresh breeze from the water, where now even the waves seemed to hang back, creating a stagnant pond skimmed by beer cans, ice cream wrappers, orange rinds, and the thousand-and-one varieties of summer detritus from the city. A day when the curly-headed boys in sneakers were out in full force, flitting through the traffic on Stillwell Avenue with rags at the ready, attacking windshields. A black priest made his way down the street toward a yellow brick church to deliver Communion in Creole to his Haitian congregation. A homeless couple wrapped in a blanket slept with their arms around each other in the doorway of an empty store. This was not a place for lovers.

  An old man sat on a bench on the boardwalk clasping his hat in his hands. His legs were spread out in front of him, making it impossible for anyone to pass between him and the guardrail. Inside his windbreaker, he carried a black jack in the hope of staving off a mugging. He was watching the young couple on the neighboring bench, studying their body language to see if they were dangerous or not. Deciding they were not, he placed his hat over his face and pretended to sleep while peering out from under it. Though he thought of himself as tough, the old man (who was once a sailor) was still soft when it came to love.

  “You know what you ought to do,” the young man was saying to the woman, “you ought to stay with me. ” His hair was uncombed and he looked as if he’d slept in his khaki army field jacket. The woman was older than her partner, blond and too skinny for the old man’s taste. She didn’t say anything, just sat there, staring, off in her own world.

  “Stay with me,” urged the young man.

  Suddenly, the woman spoke. “I didn’t know they kept the Whip closed all summer. I loved that ride better than all the rest. Arleen preferred the roller coaster, but it used to make me sick to my stomach.” The woman sounded like she might be drunk, or on drugs.

  “Stay with me,” pleaded the young man. It was as if he were singing a song, sad, yet pleasing to the old man.

  “Thank you for the corn and the root beer,” said the woman. “I really shouldn’t be eating anything at Nathan’s. It’s not Kosher, you know.”

  “Don’t throw your life away, Sharon. Come with me. Bring Paulie, bring Phyllis, you can even bring your mother if you want to. We’ll live out in the country, and there’ll be room enough for everyone.”

  “I told you not to call me. Why did you call me when I told you not to? And then bursting into my house unannounced, scaring the children,” the woman chided listlessly.

  “I told your mother I was coming; I didn’t burst,” the young man couldn’t go on any longer. Slumping heavily against the bench, he started sobbing.

  “I can’t—I can’t. Oh, please don’t cry, I can’t take it when you cry, please stop!”

  “Sharon, dearest, why are you doing this? Why?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s because I love him, even if he isn’t really what he claimed to be. Even if he took off without telling me, I believe in him. I believe that he’s coming back to me someday. Maybe not this year or the next, but he’ll be back. He’s divorced his wife.”

  “How can you? He’s gone, vanished from your life. He never cared for you. You almost landed in jail trying to cover up for him. You’ll wreck yourself and your kids if you go looking for him.”

  Moving away from her rejected lover, the woman started to get up from the bench then changed her mind and sat down again. Out in the water, the foghorn of a flat-snout tanker tooted three times. A girl screamed as the Parachute descended toward the boardwalk.

  It had gotten hotter. The invisible, milky sun was directly overhead. The old man’s woolen hat felt scratchy against his face. He wished he’d brought his pipe with him; he could have used a smoke now.

  The young man caught his breath in a sob, but it was the woman who spoke, this time rapidly, with excitement. “It isn’t what you believe in that counts, it’s that you believe in something instead of just floating around aimlessly until you die. I had nothing until I came to know him—nothing! And without him, I’ll stay nothing. Why can’t you understand that? Why is it so hard? It’s so clear to me. Why doesn’t anyone understand? You believe in your drawing, in your art. Icaro believes in saving the poor. Seymour Priceman, Rabbi Joachim’s publisher, believes in his business. Why can’t you let me have something to believe in?”

  “I love you, Sharon. I’d give up everything and become whatever you wanted. We could have a life together, go somewhere far from here. You could go back to school if you wanted to—anything!”

  “Oh, leave me alone, please!” the woman wailed, startling the old man, and he jumped, his hat sliding down from his face onto his chest. Now that he had an unobstructed view of what was going on, he no longer pretended to be sleeping.

  “Come to me, Sharon. Just let me hold you a while. Let’s stop talking, just for a little bit.” The young man had stopped crying and was gently coaxing the woman to come closer.

  The old man smelled frying onions. He’d forgotten about being hungry and was totally immersed in the couple’s bittersweet drama. Though he’d long since abandoned the joys and pangs of love. Protected by a heavy layer of scars so old and faded they no longer hurt him even a little, he found it strangely pleasant to relive them now.

  The woman wrenched herself free of her lover’s grasp. As she got to her feet, the old man’s hat slithered from his chest to the boardwalk floor.

  “Stay with me,” pleaded the handsome young man in the army field jacket. “Where are you going?”

  “To the Parachute.” The woman was walking away, her voice ringing shrilly against the open expanse of sky and the easy lapping of the waves. “Let’s take a ride on the Parachute.”

  Her lover got up from the bench.

  Reaching down for his hat, the old man felt a sharp pain in his chest.

  “Wait!”

  The woman was already approaching the entrance to the Parachute as her lover caught up with her.

  It always happens that way with women when they make up their minds to do something crazy, thought the old man, retrieving his hat. As soon as he sat upright again the pain in his chest disappeared.

  “I want to ride it once before it closes for the season,” the woman called out. “I’ve never ridden it in my life, I’ve always been too afraid, but I’m not afraid now!”

  “Ha!” the old man exploded. Disgusted with the way the drama was ending, he hacked up a blob of phlegm and spat it out on the boardwalk. Looking up, he saw that the young man had caught up with his sweetheart and that the two of them were walking arm in arm toward the doggone Parachute. This made the old man want to spit again, but his store of phlegm was exhausted. Feeling under his windbreaker for his trusty black jack, he got up from the bench and trudged solemnly back to his room at the Old Sailor’s Home.

  RABBI JOACHIM WAS COMING BACK FOR HER, Sharon was sure of it. And if he wasn’t coming back, it was because he wanted her to fly to him. Ascending, as she was now to join him in the misty upper regions. On the boardwalk below, small as an ant, an old man limped away, taking her fear with him, and Sharon laughed out loud. The Parachute creaked and bumped its way upward, faster now. Junior Cantana was sitting next to her, already forgotten, replaced by the rushing wind in her ears and the faraway roar of the white-capped sea. She was soaring alone—a divine being with flaming hair, ascending toward the Kabbalah master who had been testing her all along—her loyalty, her mettle, her capacity to withstand all the world’s lies. It was he who had created the entire illusory summer, gathering all the people, perhaps even playing all the parts himself: Jorge Diaz, to scare her; Officer Pols, to protect her; Junior Cantana, to tempt her; Rabbi Tayson, to betray her—even George Kellner, her father, to teach her how to love. Rabbi Joachim had played them all for her, whipping off one mask and replacing it with another. To think she’d doubted him for even a minute! How stupid of her not to have seen it before!

  Now no longer cowering and trembling before him
, Sharon had reached the last stage in her initiation. The distant roaring in her ears suddenly turned into laughter. The sun burned with it. The sea danced with it. The sky resounded with it. The great belly of God shook with it.

  Of course Rabbi Joachim would come back for her. Didn’t he always ?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my publisher, Paul Cohen, a sincere spiritual seeker in his own right, and to the staff at Monkfish Book Publishing Company for their efforts in making my book as lovely as I would have wished.

  To my friends and family, forgive me for not listing you by name, but accept a deep gassho for your loyalty and excellent insights into my work.

  Thank you to the late Rabbis Zvi Yehudah Kook, Aryeh Kaplan, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and Shlomo Carlebach, and to Madame Colette Aboulker Muscat, and all the real and imagined Kabbalah masters past, present, and future.

  But thank you most of all, to Manfred Steger, my husband, spiritual partner, collaborator, and soul mate, for inspiring me to soar.