The Mystics of Mile End

by Sigal Samuel

  I bolted upright, gasping for air in the morning light.

  The back of her canvas was staring at me. If I turned it around, it would reveal everything she had been thinking and feeling for the past few months. Would it be an expression of hope and happiness in the face of intolerable despair? It would not. Would it be a visual valentine? It would not. I was afraid to look, so instead I lay perfectly still, the golden undersides of birds twirling above my head.

  She would go to Kyle’s house, I realized with a pang. Jenny would go to Kyle’s and move in with her, because she would die before moving back in with her parents, and all her other friends had graduated and moved away, and where else could she turn? Nowhere.

  The thought felt too painful to bear.

  But when I got out of bed, I found, to my surprise, that it was bearable. Just. Even though being without her felt like nails digging through my skin, scratching at my face, her absence made it easier for me to do what I needed to do. In fact, the pain of this separation proved that I was well on my way. Jenny had been tethering me to reality. Now that she was gone—and I accepted she was gone—there was nothing to keep me from rising up the Tree.

  And wasn’t that, on some level, why I’d misread Yesod to mean a back-alley blow job—even though I well understood symbol and metaphor, even though my whole academic training had been about preventing me from committing exactly this type of misreading—because deep down, I’d wanted to push Jenny away? Because deep down, I knew that the Tree was a vertical tightrope along which only a single soul could walk?

  Instead of getting ready to go to my morning shift, I got my backpack and pulled it into bed with me. I took out the pages of my father’s manuscript and recorded my latest dream in the margins: taupe paint, blue nail polish, asphyxiation. Then I started reading:

  BINAH-CHOCHMAH is the final complementary pair. In Chochmah—Wisdom—the blueprints upon which the world is designed first come into being. However, these blueprints remain at a stage of pure potentiality; only in Binah—Understanding—do they take concrete form. For this reason, Chochmah is referred to as “the original idea” and “the seed of creation.” It is symbolized as the supernal father.

  From the depths of my backpack, my cell phone rang. I ignored it and frowned down at the manuscript. How was I supposed to get my hands on such abstract qualities as Wisdom and Understanding? What exactly was the difference between them, aside from the fact that one was about a potential reality and the other a concrete one? The rest of the chapter was not much help:

  Some sages read the word Chochmah as cheich mah, “the palate of selflessness.” This reading refers to the mystic’s ability to taste God as a result of having shed any remnants of the ego, as it is written, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalms 34). Chochmah is typically associated with the sense of sight, but the sages interpret this verse to mean that there is a sense of taste in Chochmah that awakens the sense of sight.

  A sense of taste that awakens the sense of sight? Over the next few hours, I puzzled over what this could mean. I walked to the market and wandered the stalls. I brought grapes, then cherries, then strawberries to my mouth, tasting one fruit after the other. Nothing transmitted the spark I’d been expecting. The glossy skins were cold to the touch.

  Dear Alex,

  God is the space between signals—radio and otherwise. In the silence/static/synapse between a moment of desperation and a moment of revelation, that’s where faith resides. And that faith isn’t a waiting for God. That faith is God.

  Do you remember the day of the science fair? I was so sure you and Lev were going to crash and burn. Calling the space station? Whoever heard of such a thing? But you sent your lonely voice out into space. Again you called and again silence and again you called and again silence and again your lonely voice crashing into the silencesilencesilence and I couldn’t stand to listen, stuffed my fingers in my ears, couldn’t stand to watch, squeezed my eyes shut tight, and still you sent your lonely voice . . .

  It hit the note of perfect faith. Van Gogh’s high yellow note. I thought: Where did he learn faith like that? I thought: God is in this classroom. And then your call was answered . . .

  I’m trying to have that same faith now. Sufficient faith to achieve the miracle. But it’s hard. I’m more than halfway up, I’m stranded here and it’s hard. Sometimes I think maybe you should be the one climbing this Tree. Between the two of us, you were always the more faithful.

  December was making me crazy. The days were colder, shorter. The streets were choked, the buses were choked, and in spite of my resolve to remain empty and waiting, I was choking on my own eagerness. Where was the key to Binah-Chochmah? I read and reread my father’s book, raking it for clues that seemed not to exist, so I ran my tongue blindly over random objects I encountered—a paring knife, a park bench—but not a single item responded to my touch. The world was a locket that had decided not to open.

  I took refuge in every quirky behavior I had cultivated over the years as a way of making myself unknowable, a byzantine system of codes that no one could crack without the use of a primer or a magic decoder ring. I went to the library and trailed my finger along the spines. I ran warm water over my hands for hours at a time. I went to the downtown café and ordered a bowl of soup from the woman who had called out “Miranda!” in such a perfect voice. She asked for a name and I gave it to her. She waited, as if giving me a chance to correct myself, to call myself Miranda. I said nothing. She said nothing. I stood at the counter and waited. It felt bad to be confusing her in this way, and I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t strictly necessary, but it was, it really was. It was the whole reason I had come. I needed to hear the sweetest name, the name I’d been whispering to myself in the dark, finally spoken aloud.

  “Jenny!”

  She placed the bowl of soup in front of me. I resisted the urge to hug her. The bowl was steaming hot and I carried it to my table tenderly, like a newborn. For a long time, I simply sat in my seat and studied the vapors moving over the soup. I was searching for patterns in the chaos, for codes in the clouds, but the air around me was bereft of music. By the time I picked up my spoon, the soup was cold.

  What is the moral of this story?

  Don’t see signs in everything. It makes it impossible to live.

  Then one evening I found myself walking home by way of the McGill campus. This was a detour, but my feet seemed intent on carrying me there and I was happy to follow them. It was only five o’clock and already the sky was dark. Wind thudded through the branches overhead. Out of breath from the uphill walk, I paused to adjust my backpack, redistributing weight. Then I looked up and saw that I had come to a stop in front of Moyse Hall.

  Lights were blazing in the university building. A fresh tumult of voices told me a class had just gotten out. The voices sounded familiar. But it wasn’t until I saw their owners pour forth from the double doors and pass between the stone pillars that I actually recognized them.

  Zimmerman’s disciples scattered over the wide stairs, talking and laughing loudly. They were pulling on winter coats, huffing into cupped hands, warming them with their breath. They all looked so happy, so healthy, that I felt their normalcy as a physical blow. The preppy student linked arms with a ponytailed girl and emerged into the chilly air. As they chattered, they looked over their shoulders to Zimmerman, who was trailing one step behind them.

  The other students dispersed into the night, but these three stood on the steps, fervently continuing the conversation. It wasn’t hard to guess what they were talking about. Each of them held the insanely thick Norton anthology of literary theory. Zimmerman sent his fist crashing into his copy, again and again, like a Bible-thumper at the pulpit. His acolytes watched the progress of this fist, sweeping first up, then down, as if it carried their fates in its fingers.

  And there it was again, the angry ache gnawing at my gut. Every bit as strong as it had been during that initial lesson on Barthes. I shrugged off my backpac
k and quickly—almost savagely—ripped it open. I needed to grab on to something meaningful, something that at least didn’t swear off the very idea of meaning. I reached for the pages of my dad’s manuscript—

  But before I could get hold of them, a gust of wind tore toward me and lifted them away. First one page, then two, then three flew out of the backpack and rode the night air. My heart stopped. My hand shot out. My fingers clawed at empty sky. Carried by wind and gravity, sheaves of paper were cascading in a downward spiral. I chased down the slope after them, readying a flat-open palm to smack the pages to pavement. They were too fast—they were getting away from me—and they were all I had left of him in this world—

  I dropped to my knees, threw myself over the fluttering papers, pinned them down.

  Somewhere above and behind me, I heard the sounds of jeering voices, the preppy boy’s laugh and the incredulous giggle of his girlfriend. I whipped around, clutching the manuscript to my chest—and they recognized me. Their smiles faltered but did not fall from their faces. And Zimmerman—he recognized me, too; I could see it in his eyes. But, to my surprise, there was no laughter in them. Only pity.

  For a moment I saw myself as they saw me: disheveled, stringy-haired, pathetic.

  My cheeks burned. I set my face against them all.

  Then, for what seemed like the thousandth time, I brought the manuscript close to my face, breathing in the scent of the pages and trying to absorb their meaning through osmosis. My lips brushed up against the words, tasting them. His words, and all around them in the margins, my words, my dreams, my commentary. My mouth grew bolder—teeth biting into paper—a ragged hole ripped right through the middle of the manuscript. I ate and ate and ate. Letters stumbled into my mouth and I swallowed them. Ink poured down my throat and I drank it. Tears filled the cups of my eyes and dangled from my eyelashes like question marks.

  And then I blinked, and it was as if my blindness had been washed away.

  Through the film of tears, only my scribbles in the margins were visible. The text in the middle of the page had vanished—and in its place was a naked light.

  The night air filled with wild laughter. Mine.

  Of course. A tightrope made for one meant that you couldn’t take anyone with you—not even the earthly teacher who had inspired your climb in the first place. You got to Binah by destroying Chochmah. By moving beyond the pure potentiality, the original idea, the seed of all creation. By killing the supernal father.

  I let go of the manuscript pages. They flew up into the sky, leaving my hands empty.

  But they were not empty.

  Instead of the book, I now had a golden key. I took hold of its head and turned.

  Dear Alex,

  God can’t enter you if you consider yourself something. God is infinite & so can’t be held by you unless you make yourself into nothing.

  Emptied self of everything now. All somethings & all somethingness. Am ready for Ayin.

  Haven’t eaten (except paper) in don’t know how long. Time stopped.

  Separation of self from body = divestment of the physical. Space stopped too.

  Don’t know where Ayin will show up. Could be around any corner. This street or next. Ayin is crown of Ani Highest linked to lowest Return to the beginning? Snakes, ladders. God biting its own tail: ∞

  Been walking through the city all night ± forever. Don’t recognize this place but the bird will find you. Can’t sleep. Can’t stop. So close. So close. So

  The sky was royal blue and then black and then electric blue and then gold. I kept on walking through the streets of the city. No, not walking. Flying. I was flying six inches above the ground at all times. Everywhere I looked, a thousand tiny outstretched hands waited to pull me up. There was nothing I touched that did not sing, and there was nothing I saw that did not contain a clue.

  I blinked and morning had come. The sign over the coffee shop said Two Moons. I peered into the window and it looked familiar. I had worked here once. How long ago? Nine thousand seconds, a minute, a lifetime.

  Someone—a man—what was his name?—stood behind the counter, scowling. He had his eyes on the table for four where that little girl always sat. Lily, her name was Lily. She was gleeful, kicking the leg of her chair as she raised her paintbrush in the air and applied it to—her own skin. Already she’d painted one arm blue, the other muddy purple. Now she was setting to work on her hands. That paint was going to get everywhere. The scowling man marched up to her and yelled. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, maybe the glass was too thick, or maybe it was my ears, they didn’t seem to be working normally, but from the way his mouth moved I could tell he was yelling. The little girl whipped around, manic delight in her eyes. She waved her hands in his face, eager to show him.

  Her hands were covered in paint. Green paint.

  And now, finally, I remembered: Lev’s hands. Lev, when he was a kid like this kid. Lev leaning toward me in the kitchen, palms streaked with green. Can you keep a secret? He told me about the tree and I told him about the bat mitzvah. You have to promise you won’t tell Dad. Whispering voices, late-summer light. Two of us against the world. Allies in the face of our father’s absence. And now, now he was really absent, and instead of allying with Lev I had—

  Forgotten he existed.

  The wind went out of me. A jolt behind my navel brought me crashing down to earth. Lily was waving her green hands at the window now, but I turned away, I couldn’t breathe. My eardrums popped. Sound rushed back in. “Samara!” Tyler—that’s who it was—called me from the doorway, but he was too late. I was already halfway down the block.

  Back home, I dug through drawers, coat pockets, piles of dirty laundry. My phone thudded to the ground. I picked it up. Turned it on. The screen showed a list of missed calls.

  29 Nov 6:19 PM Jenny

  30 Nov 4:23 PM Lev

  1 Dec 9:02 AM Hannah

  4 Dec 9:45 PM Jenny

  4 Dec 11:58 PM Jenny

  5 Dec 12:03 AM Jenny

  5 Dec 8:12 PM Lev

  6 Dec 2:15 AM Jenny

  7 Dec 9:29 AM Hannah

  12 Dec 11:28 PM Lev

  13 Dec 10:03 PM Lev

  14 Dec 5:06 PM Lev

  14 Dec 8:30 PM Lev

  15 Dec 7:35 PM Lev

  16 Dec 8:48 PM Lev

  17 Dec 5:00 PM Lev

  17 Dec 9:36 PM Lev

  18 Dec 10:15 PM Lev

  19 Dec 10:49 PM Lev

  19 Dec 11:38 PM Lev

  I sank to the ground. My hand rose to my mouth. In the past week, he had called me eleven times. Eleven times. And I hadn’t returned a single call.

  Tears burned in the corners of my eyes, but I made myself blink them back. I looked up from the screen and saw Jenny’s canvas waiting on the easel, still facing skyward. The light was waning, and the canvas was growing dark, like a scar fading in reverse. I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I went over to it. I turned it around—

  It was blank. An unbearable expanse of white. A perfect portrait of the emptiness I’d foisted on her. The muscle of my heart clenched at the sight but I forced myself not to cry.

  I told myself: You had no choice. You had to do this. You were chosen. But I was trembling. I needed reassurance. I dug through my backpack until I found the one remaining page of the manuscript. The dedication page.

  For my children.

  I froze, then read it again. And again. And again. It did not say For my daughter. It said For my children.

  A strangled noise escaped me.

  All this time I had been banging my head against hallucinations. Caught on the infixed fangs of an obsession. I had passed my desperation through the air like a butterfly net and it caught strange moments of beauty, their tiny wings studded with secrets. But the secrets flaked off the second you touched them—it was all false, all fake—there were no secrets and there were no keys. None of it was real.

  In a horrible flash, it came to me: Zimmerman was right! Barthes was right! I had rebelled
against it, but it was true. We wanted to believe that, underneath it all, a meaning, a plan, persisted—but this idea could not, should not be trusted. The tears I’d been choking back for months poured down my face now, an unstoppable flood. To believe there was a plan just for me—to make keys out of people and means out of ends—what an idiot I’d been! I looked at the blank canvas and hated myself for what I’d done to Jenny. She was not gray, suddenly I understood this. She was not the beautiful maiden without eyes. My need for a person who fit that description was what had robbed her skin of its color. But the color was there, had always been there, though for months I hadn’t wanted to see it . . .

  I dropped the dedication page and fell into bed.

  The window was open. I could hear raindrops hitting pavement. The air around me filled with the noise of crinkling paper as overhead the cranes rocked and swayed. Goose bumps rose on my flesh. I thought about getting up to close the window, getting up seemed an impossibly difficult and complicated affair, the window stayed open.

  That night I dreamed the birds were crying. Above my head, their thousand dark eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Silvery threads of water fell on my face. At first I didn’t notice, because it was a soft, almost imperceptible mist. Then the mist spread out over my whole body. Drops of condensation collecting on my hair, my eyelashes, my collarbone, my belly, my kneecaps, the soles of my feet. The mist deepened to a heavy downpour, then the birds stopped crying, all except one, which hovered right above my chest. I could feel a drip, drip, drip somewhere in the region of my heart, slow but steady, all night long. In the morning, I was washed clean.

  I grabbed the paper crane giving Kyle’s address (in case you get lonely, Jenny had written, how many weeks ago now?) and raced out of the apartment. But the second I stepped into the street, I knew I didn’t need it. I could see exactly which way Jenny had gone. She had left traces of herself everywhere, dripping from the branches, twinkling from the streetlamps, sliding down the gutter. That fire hydrant, it was unnaturally red, and I knew that she had passed it. The tree on the corner of Saint-Laurent and Pine, it was impossibly green, and I knew that she had touched it. Beside a parked car was a puddle full of rainbows—amaranth, cadmium, cerulean, heliotrope, atomic tangerine—and I knew that in that spot she had succumbed to tears, drops falling onto pavement until her eyes were gray as marble. Everywhere she had gone, she had shed color, stained the world around her. This was the bread crumb trail she had left me.