The Ruined House

by Ruby Namdar

  “What do you see?”

  “I see a candelabrum.”

  “What kind of candelabrum?”

  “A candelabrum all of gold with a bowl and seven wells for oil.”

  “And what more?”

  “Two olive branches, one to the bowl’s left and one to its right. What are they, sir?”

  “You know very well what they are!”

  “No, sir. I do not know.”

  “What do you not know?”

  “I do not know the meaning of these two olive branches with the golden pipes running through them.”

  “They are the two anointed ones that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.”

  “And the wells?”

  “They are the eyes of the Lord that run to and fro over the whole earth.”

  The angel rises from the bed and approaches the candelabrum, growing larger as he does until he looms like a mountain from the plain. He lifts an arm toward the towering gate arching over him from earth’s end to earth’s end, reaches up, and effortlessly removes its large headstone—the stone that bears the full weight of the arch, of the entire house. Afraid, I shut my eyes, waiting for the ceiling to collapse in a hail of stones and leave all in ruins. There is silence. Nothing has happened. I open my eyes: the building is unscathed. The arch is suspended over the void like the vault of the heavens, miraculously intact. The angel smiles and toys with the huge stone, tossing it from hand to hand like a ball. Who has despised the day of small things? They shall rejoice and see the plummet. Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. The house shall not lie in ruins unless the word is spoken, and the city shall stand on its foundation. This is the headstone, grace, grace unto it.

  3

  June 10, 2001

  The 19th of Sivan, 5761

  Eight thirty a.m. Andrew squinted in the blinding light flooding the park and glancing off the unwashed windshield of Ann Lee’s car. The light seemed overwhelming for such an early hour. Or was it just ordinary light that his eyes, red from lack of sleep, couldn’t tolerate? He lowered the sun visor. Lately, he had been sleeping poorly. In fact, it was hard to know whether to call it sleep or not. Striking yet unnerving visions kept flickering before his eyes, realistic and dreamlike at once. He was looking through the heavy gates of an ancient shrine. Golden shovels, fire pans, and candelabra, strange, intriguing instruments that looked brimming with energy, as if they were about to burst into flames at any moment, gleamed magically inside its dimly lit interior. Andrew yearned for these beautiful things, for the heady aroma of incense, the golden semi-dusk of the Temple’s interior. If only he could walk through these golden gates and disappear there forever.

  The old car jolted along. Andrew ground the gears, confusing first with third and second with fourth, unable to find reverse. The car protested with hoarse, animal-like grunts. His bad driving, especially when it came to stick shifts, was a standing joke between him and Ann Lee, but there was nothing funny about it now. It was depressing, humiliating. Having to borrow Ann Lee’s car for Alison’s monthly visits to Ethel had lost the charm of its irony. Ann Lee had made a face when he asked for it, or so he imagined. Not that she needed it for anything or that there was anything wrong with asking, but these days, everything between them was wrong. Nothing was right, period.

  Andrew shut his eyes for a second to shield them from the fierce sun. A large, burnished gold candelabrum, the seven arms of which rose upward like the branches of a young tree, burned brightly behind his tightly shut eyelids, searing its image into the retina. He opened his eyes just in time to see a barrier closing off the entrance to Central Park. Still daydreaming, he swung the wheel to the left and then to the right without grasping what his hands were doing and turned onto the park drive that was reserved on weekends for joggers and cyclists. Yes, he was in a dream—or more precisely, in a nightmare. The eerily empty road awoke him with the awful knowledge that he had blanked out while driving, and driving Ann Lee’s car at that.

  Andrew slowed down, trying to cope with the unusual situation. What if this really was a dream? There wasn’t a car in sight, not a single cyclist, not even a jogger. Like every Manhattanite, he knew the park was closed to motor vehicles from ten to three every weekday. He himself had biked through it hundreds of times during these hours. Now, though, he was there when he shouldn’t be. The quiet around him was oppressive, unreal. He braked and almost came to a stop in the middle of the road, then remembered with a start that driving on this road on the weekend was strictly forbidden. Cautiously, he began looking for a way out of the park. Where was the nearest exit? Wasn’t it 96th Street?

  It seemed to take forever to get there. The childish relief he felt on seeing the exit gave way to a no less childish panic when he heard the siren of the police car that had been lying in wait, its full complement of lights flashing even though his was a simple traffic violation. It made Andrew think of a predator springing on its prey in some National Geographic documentary. Anxious to cooperate like a good antelope, he stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake, sent the car lurching forward, and snatched his foot from the gas while forgetting to floor the clutch. The car bucked and hopped almost clownishly, then stalled and came to a stop as though shot through the heart. Although the farce did not end, fortunately, like he imagined it may end—with his being surrounded by officers with their guns drawn, like an escaped convict—it was certainly bad enough when a crew-cut, baby-faced policeman approached him with all the excitement of a rookie cop and said, “Your papers, sir.”

  Andrew looked in the glove compartment, frantically searching it for the registration. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with a sleeve of the freshly ironed shirt he had put on that morning, now as damp and rumpled as a dishrag. The policeman looked at him with an intense stare. Where had she put the damn registration? It was perfectly clear now: he would be arrested and the car impounded. And just when Ann Lee had lent it to him so begrudgingly! He squirmed in the driver’s seat, ransacking the glove compartment for a third time. No, the registration wasn’t there. Despairingly, he straightened up and looked about. There, staring at him mockingly, protruding from the inside pocket of the sun visor, was the folded piece of paper he was looking for. The policeman took it without a word and studied it at length as if he had difficulty reading.

  “Is this your vehicle, sir?”

  “No, it’s not. It’s . . .”

  “Whose is it, sir?”

  “My partner’s.”

  “Your partner’s?”

  “My girlfriend’s.”

  “Your girlfriend’s. Right.”

  The last word, though clearly uttered with no disrespect, grated on Andrew’s already frayed nerves. How could it not seem judgmental to him? A fifty-two-year-old man driving a 1985 blue VW owned by his twenty-six-year-old girlfriend crashes a barrier at an entrance to a park! It was unseemly, if not suspicious, behavior. He didn’t know what to feel more demeaned by: the absurdity of the violation, which was hard enough to explain to himself, much less to a policeman; being given a lecture like a schoolboy by someone no older than Ann Lee or Rachel; or his timid acquiescence in the face of the banal lecture, which clearly had been rehearsed in more than one simulated drill. Did he understand the seriousness of what he had done? He had endangered the lives of cyclists and joggers. He would have to stand trial at the traffic court at 346 Broadway. The details were on the back of the ticket. Due to the gravity of the offense, he would unfortunately have to appear in person.

  It went on and on, the theater of the absurd without an audience. When the car’s papers were returned to him, Andrew even found himself saying, “Thank you very much, Officer. Have a good day.” It was an automatic reaction, everyone had it. He hadn’t really believed he would be arrested, had he?

  4

  One day, it will all erupt. The city will shatter like a dam before an angry river, bursting volcanically with the energy stored in it from the first day of Creation, sweepin
g all that’s in its path. A thick, black tide of iniquity will overflow and flood the streets like a gigantic, blocked sewage system. The outcry of the city’s poor who lived and died unheard—the sufferings of its impoverished, helpless immigrants crowded into lightless dungeons—all has accumulated, all has been compressed by the city’s weight into a liquid amalgam, a percolate of blood, sweat, bile, and tears bubbling beneath layers of asphalt, concrete, metal, and stone, a turbid, toxic fluid that keeps striving to force its way upward, into the open. Human passion, too, has been pressurized into a fiery, belching liquid that seethes behind facades and bakes the pavements until they steam and smoke with toxic fumes. Lust; gluttony; drunkenness; greed; pure, naked ambition: all the world’s cupidity has come to the city to satisfy its craving, teeming with rivers of sperm, estuaries of sweat, torrents of saliva—and nothing cools, all stays at the boiling point, all grows hotter and thicker from year to year, a perpetually churning lava. It will erupt one day, annihilating everything: all animal life, all plant life, all matter. All intellect, too, the ideas upon which the city is built: abstract and concrete, rational and romantic, idealistic and self-serving. So much thought has gone into the city and its intricate architecture, from the complicated symmetries of the metal constructions at the base of its skyscrapers and the magnificent, perfectly proportioned grid on which it rests to the fabulously complex economic and administrative networks that have made it the world’s capital. Never before has the human spirit been so intensively combusted in the cast-iron cylinder of technology, architecture, economics, and politics; never before has it been in such danger of exploding. The very earth, the primal foundations of Manhattan fertilized with the bones of its enslaved pyramid builders, will rise in rebellion. Deprived of light for one hundred years or more, choking under billions of tons of concrete, glass, metal, and meaning, the dark schist and granite will cast all off like a titanic beast breaking the chains of civilization and snapping the bonds of human conquest. Earth and air, fluids and flames: the destruction will be as infinite as was the city’s glory.

  5

  June 18, 2001

  The 27th of Sivan, 5761

  Five p.m. It was exactly five in the afternoon when Andrew knocked on the new cherrywood door of Bernie Bernstein’s presidential suite and was admitted by a receptionist with a practiced, professional smile. Although he had heard of the extensive renovations carried out in the administrative wing of the Tisch Building, this was his first chance to see them for himself. The refined luxury of Bernie’s office was so in contrast to the stark, spartan aesthetics of the university’s halls of learning, it was striking. Warm afternoon sunlight poured through the roof windows, illuminating a corner of the president’s open office that was visible from the reception room. A beautiful antique Persian rug lay on its rich brown, brightly waxed floor; nearby, a collection of tawny-colored bottles stood on a mahogany bar. As lavish as a Hollywood studio, the suite impressed him, amused him, and left him somehow uneasy. Andrew returned the receptionist’s practiced smile, as she knocked for form’s sake on the open door and announced, “Professor Bernstein, Professor Cohen is here.”

  The president was alone, reading at his desk. So they’re not here yet, Andrew thought, with no idea of who “they” were. The purpose of today’s meeting was unclear. The notice he had gotten from the president’s office had been diplomatic to the point of obscurity. Although presumably he had been invited to confirm his appointment as the new director of the Asch Interdisciplinary Program, he could only guess why this had not been explicitly stated as the official purpose of the meeting. It was probably another one of the president’s theatrical whims. Bernie was not forthcoming about such things. He kept his cards close to his chest, whether or not there was a need for it. Now, his eyes lit up as he glanced from the document he was reading. Coming out from behind the empty desk, he shook Andrew’s hand. Smartly dressed, he was his usual suntanned, pleased-as-punch self. “Well, here you are! It’s good to see you. Can I pour you a drink? I have some interesting bottles here . . .”

  A drink? The president, it seemed, wanted to give things a festive air. Should he have worn a fancier suit? Bernie steered him by the elbow to the mahogany bar, which was indeed well stocked with the best, and took his time with the drinks, rattling bottles and glasses with the overgrown boy’s glee with which he did everything. Andrew used this time to take in his ostentatious surroundings. There was something astonishingly, almost surrealistically disproportionate about them. He speculated idly what the interior decoration had cost and where the budget had come from while Bernie chatted away in his normal, friendly, personal tone. The old windows had been replaced with floor-to-ceiling stained glass that looked suspiciously like original Frank Lloyd Wrights. The elliptical conference table, around which a dozen black leather chairs were neatly arranged, was white oak. Academia, so it seems, had become a profitable—a lucrative!—enterprise.

  Andrew looked at his watch. It was already five fifteen. Who else were they waiting for? Bernie turned to Andrew, handed him a big, beautifully crafted tumbler (It’s real lead crystal, Andrew thought, informed by his grip even before closely inspecting the glass) filled almost to the brim with a dark, fragrant single malt scotch that was poured over a few large, clear ice cubes.

  Motioning Andrew toward the leather seat in front of his desk, he said, as if reading Andrew’s mind: “No one else is coming. It’s only you and me today, dear friend. We have something important to discuss.” These words were not uttered in his usual, jovially noncommittal tone. His entire body language had suddenly changed. His face lost its usual impish expression and, much to Andrew’s astonishment, it seemed to have even forsaken its suntanned hue, making him look more like a regular middle-aged university administrator and less like an aging rich playboy. He sat heavily in his tall leather chair, carefully placed his drink on a black leather coaster, and slid another across the table toward Andrew who, sensing the mounting tension, suddenly pined for the usual Bernie-style banter about the rare quality of the scotch, the cost of the mahogany table, and the fact that the board would fire him immediately if he left a watermark on its supremely finished surface. But this was no day for banter, so it seemed. Bernie, his forehead furled and his thick eyebrows shadowing his eyes, started speaking, his voice hoarse and earnest.

  “Listen, Andrew, dear friend,” Bernie said as if picking up on an earlier conversation that they have recently had, “we need to talk seriously now!” The word now echoed in the room like a distant reproach, as if they’ve both indulged in a childish game and someone had to finally put an end to it and assume the role of the responsible adult. “I am sure you know what all this is about, right?”

  Andrew stared at Bernie, paralyzed by surprise. But Bernie’s face returned Andrew’s look of disbelief. “I must say that I am a bit baffled, I was sure that you were well aware of what’s going on. I did try to warn you then, in our meeting last winter. Not that it would have mattered, the deed is done.” Bernie lifted his glass from the leather coaster, leaving a wet ring that shimmered in the bright light of the table lamp, took a long sip from it, and put it down again, slightly missing the round watermark stain and leaving some of it exposed. Shocked at his inability to control his racing thoughts, Andrew found himself wondering if the dampness would stain the black leather surface of the coaster or whether it was processed to be water stain resistant.

  “It was decided,” said Bernie, “wait a minute, why am I saying ‘it was decided’? I was part of the decision, I was in the room—we decided, and by ‘we’ I mean the board, some members of the faculty and myself—to offer the position of the director of the Asch Interdisciplinary Program to someone else.”

  It seemed to Andrew that lightning had struck in his mind, trapping the air in his lungs for a few seconds before the thunder of understanding followed. “I wasn’t obliged by protocol to summon you here today and break the news to you in person,” Bernie said, “but it wouldn’t have occurred to m
e, after all these years of friendship, to let you find out tomorrow, with everyone else.”

  Bernie halted for a moment, stretched his hand toward his half-empty whiskey glass, reconsidered, and laid it back on the table. Andrew drew in a deep breath, forgetting to exhale. A loud static noise buzzed in his ears, silencing everything around him. “Please understand,” continued Bernie softly, his voice free of the playful, manipulative mannerisms that he developed over the many years of his tenure as president. “Our world is changing, it is changing rapidly, and we, as an institute, must adapt to these changes or we will perish. Our choice did not take into account only the past and the present, it took into account the future as well, and this future is going to be very different from what you and I can possibly imagine. The future is no longer ours, dear friend. We’re lucky we still have a slice of present to hold on to. We can’t take that for granted, I’ll tell you that!” He stretched an impatient hand toward his drink—diluted by the melting ice, it was now turned watery yellow—and downed it in one long gulp. “This may not sound very comforting now,” he went on, slamming his damp glass back on the coaster, “but you really should not take it lightly: you still have your job, your tenured position, your long list of publications, your reputation, and they—I’m sorry, I mean, no one—can take that away from you!” Bernie shot a quick glance at his empty glass, returned his gaze to Andrew, and continued. “Listen, it’s not so bad, what you have, not so bad. Do you think I don’t miss it sometimes? The serious, straightforward life of a distinguished professor? Far away from all this . . .” He waved his hand contemptuously at the disproportional grandeur of their surroundings as if it were imposed on him by some mysterious external force. “You probably want to know who the new director is, right? Well, that’s your prerogative. You do have the right to know before the rest of the world finds out.” Bernie stared at Andrew curiously. “You know her. As a matter of fact, you know her well.” Bernie paused for moment, his stare suddenly laden with new meaning. “We’ve decided to appoint Dr. Shirin Zamindar as the new director of the program.”