by Ruby Namdar
Rachel nodded thoughtfully. She was amazed at how quickly she had adjusted to the new situation. She would never have guessed two days ago that the first object of her newly awakening maternal feelings would be her father.
30
August 1, 2001
The 12th of Av, 5761
Ten a.m. Andrew lay in bed, blinking in the strong light coming through the south window of the bedroom. After seeing the doctor, he had slept through the entire afternoon, evening, night, and next morning, waking only to eat a bit, take his pills, and sip some water, tea, or orange juice. It was Tuesday morning when he finally got out of bed. He showered, ate something, and sat in the living room for an hour and a half. Rachel sat with him for a while and then went back to working on an article she was writing with a colleague from Princeton. Andrew didn’t touch the newspaper or the remote control that she had left for him on the coffee table. Like a child clutching its tattered security blanket, a part of him clung to his blank state. He went back to bed and slept through the night without waking. A conversation in the living room between two women talking and laughing quietly found its way into his dreams and was forgotten with them. The tranquilizers were effective. He let them do their work and made no attempt to remember his dreams or remain in them. The last weeks now seemed a distant memory, as if they had happened to someone else.
He threw off his light blanket, rose slowly from the bed, and made his way cautiously, as if learning to walk, to the bathroom. Washing his face with cold water, he regarded its bristles in the mirror and went to the kitchen. Compared to the two previous days, he was stronger and clearer-headed. Rachel, noticing the difference with a smile, offered to make him coffee. The small smile she received in acknowledgment was encouraging. Her father was clearly emerging from his zombielike dream state. They talked a bit, skirting any difficult topics. Both felt the change for the better. Andrew glanced at the headlines in the paper, lay down to rest on the living-room couch, had a second cup of coffee in the late morning, and went to the bathroom to shower and shave. Although he felt more himself again once clean-shaven, some of the fears quelled by the tranquilizers returned now, too. He took a deep breath and tried to drive them back beneath the protective cover of the medicine. He knew he would have to confront them sooner or later—that afternoon, that evening, perhaps the next day. There was much he needed to understand.
He dressed and returned to the living room, glad that Rachel was there. The day went by leisurely. Rachel came and went, careful not to be absent for more than half an hour at a time. Andrew sat thinking, more willing as time went by to put aside the forgetfulness in which he had shrouded himself. What had happened to him these past weeks? Where had he been? Although he had no answers, the questions seemed less frightening. In the early afternoon he felt a wave of anxiety and asked Rachel if it was time to take his medicine. She gave him two pills and helped him to lie on the couch and rest for half an hour. The attack flared and died down, leaving behind a bitter, unpleasant taste. Rachel ordered supper over the phone and made some tea, after which they watched the first half of Gone with the Wind, smiling at its never-failing power to play on their emotions. At ten, Andrew took two sleeping pills, brushed his teeth, and got into bed. Rachel stayed awake in the living room, talking on the phone. Although her voice reached the bedroom, Andrew couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was like a strange lullaby that soon lulled him to sleep.
31
August 2, 2001
The 13th of Av, 5761
Nine a.m. Andrew woke to the notes of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major and smiled with satisfaction at Rachel’s tasteful choice. It was so good to have her with him! How many days had she been here? He tried calculating, then gave up. He shut his eyes, his head falling back on the pillow, and let himself be rocked by the adagio that he loved. Although he knew this domestic Eden would not last, its tender intimacy had been good for him. And not just for him: even in his precarious, uncommunicative state, he could feel they had been good for Rachel, too, that they had repaired something that was broken long ago. Perhaps it could never be put back together again, but its shattered pieces would be less painfully sharp. Rachel would resume her life. And he? How was he going to resume his?
Nonetheless, he managed to overcome his anxiety. He would have to come to terms with reality. He had no choice. It just wasn’t the time for it yet. Maybe soon. Coping with his fears made him feel stronger and more together than he had felt in a long time. Yes, it was good to be with Rachel. Not to have to talk and be witty and brilliant all the time. To be allowed to be weak. It made her milder, brought out the best in her. The music kept filling the room, lapping at its walls like the waves of a calm sea. Andrew let them pass over him as if he were a patient shore used to their rise and fall.
After breakfast and a shower, he let Rachel talk him into getting dressed. Wearing a white, short-sleeved linen shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, he drank a second cup of coffee on the leather couch. They chatted, both heartened by the progress he was making. He was still weak. He felt vulnerable. But the apathy in which he had taken refuge was gone. Rachel asked him what had happened. He didn’t know where to begin. It was hard to find the words for it. He thought of the strange visions that had taken hold of him in recent months, surprised to realize that they had stopped completely since that dreadful evening after coming home from the park. He remembered the fire, the terrible destruction, and his uncontrollable weeping as he sat helplessly on the floor of the Temple. It was all so inexplicably strange, as if it had happened in another incarnation. He debated telling Rachel about it and decided not to. She wouldn’t understand him and would think he had lost his sanity. And who was to say that he hadn’t? Although she sensed he was in conflict, she chose to overlook it. Encouraged by his improved condition, she didn’t want to do anything that might cause a relapse.
After lunch, Andrew went to the bedroom to rest. He lay in bed and let his mind wander, no longer afraid where it might take him. He thought about Rachel and about the change in their relationship. About how patient and gentle she was with him. Yes, he had hurt her, hurt her terribly—and at an age when she had needed him the most. He hadn’t wanted or been able to face up to that. Now, he no longer had a choice. He had to acknowledge it to himself and perhaps—not necessarily today or tomorrow, but sometime soon—to her, too. How was he going to do it? By apologizing? How did you apologize for what had happened so long ago? What did it mean to do it?
Never mind. He would find a way. A solution would present itself. And Linda? Although the thought of their awful phone conversation was still deeply painful, he no longer tried to repress it. Much of what she said had been true. Did he regret leaving her and starting a new life? Not necessarily. It had been unavoidable—perhaps. Still, you can’t deny the price she paid for it, the price we all paid. A deep, dull sorrow came over him. He had to force himself to breathe. His eyes hurt and large tears ran down his cheeks, streaking his face. He lay without moving, letting them flow without attempting to stop them or wipe them away. An odd but comforting warmth suffused his face. Little sobs broke loose from him. Although he hoped Rachel didn’t hear them, he didn’t want to keep them in. Nor could he have. If she did hear, she didn’t let on. He lay there for a long time while the quiet sobs kept coming.
Later that afternoon, Rachel went out for an hour or two, having decided he could be left alone for longer stretches. Andrew thought about Linda some more, this time more calmly. Taking a few deep breaths and warning himself to stay composed, he thought about Alison, too. He missed her so badly that it made him ache. Surely, it wasn’t too late. The damage could still be repaired, if only in part. Why not have her sleep over now and then? True, the apartment wasn’t set up for that. He had thought more of his own comfort than of hers. She couldn’t be expected to sleep on the living-room couch and she had to have a space of her own. Should he hire an architect to redesign the apartment and make another bedroom? No, that would be too compl
icated. Too expensive and dramatic, too. He would find some less flamboyant way to handle it. There was no need to decide now.
Rachel returned toward evening, bringing a large illustrated book about aesthetic archetypes of sacred space. “The girlfriend I was staying with lent it to me. It’s a topic she’s researching. Don’t you think it’s interesting? Oh, Dad, I’ve got so many things to tell you . . . but it’s too late to start talking about them now. Maybe tomorrow. Let’s have something to eat. What would you like for dinner?”
Andrew took only one pill before going to sleep, leaving another on the bedside table to be safe. He leafed through the beautifully designed book that Rachel had brought and trembled when he came to the chapter describing the Temple in Jerusalem. Its handsome gold implements, the regal space of its great hall, the spacious galleries surrounding it—all were nearly as he remembered them. The similarity frightened him, causing him to slam the book shut and push it to the bed’s other end. He lay awake, his heart pounding. His mind refused to stay still. In the end, though, he reached for the book and retrieved it without opening it. Not now. Maybe tomorrow. When he had the presence of mind, he would glance at the illustrations again. Perhaps he would consult some scholarly literature on the subject. He would find out what was available on the Internet. Not that he had any idea what he would do with it. Still, it would be wrong to dismiss his visions of the past year or to absolve himself of the need to look into them.
That Friday morning, after coffee and a shower, he switched on his computer for the first time in three weeks. Rachel was sitting nearby. Although she was at work on her laptop, her company gave him confidence. He went through the accumulation of mail in his in-box and sent, with Rachel’s assistance, a short note to the editor of the magazine in which he apologized for not being able to write the article due to an unusually heavy workload. Politely requesting to be excused, he expressed his thanks and his readiness to be turned to again in the future.
His appetite kept improving and he ate almost a full meal for lunch without feeling nauseous. Rachel helped him to go through his voice mail, most of which consisted of her own messages. In the afternoon they went to the park, where they bought ice cream and sat on a bench overlooking the river. Cars traveled up and down the West Side Highway, their muffled motors sounding like distant surf. Children were playing football. Joggers and cyclists filled the paths. Families and couples stretched out on the grass. A ripe, plump sun was dropping westward, painting the wavelets on the river an orange-pink. That night Andrew slept without sleeping pills. He passed the night in a deep, uninterrupted sleep. Before waking in the morning, he had a dream. He, Alison, and two of her friends had gone for a walk in Central Park. As they were leaving it, they passed the row of merrily decorated horse-drawn carriages that waited for tourists on 59th Street, opposite the Plaza Hotel, and stopped by one that was harnessed to a big, snow-white horse. Its coachman wore a top hat with a colorful peacock feather stuck in its velvet band. The girls began to giggle and blush, pointing at the white horse, which had a jaunty feather, too, in the brow band of its bridle. Andrew looked at it and began to laugh, too. It was pissing, its long black member spouting a flood of urine into a puddle on the sidewalk. The horse pissed and pissed. The girls were doubled up with laughter. The coachman laughed, too. He lifted his hat drolly and exclaimed: “That’s my boy! Pisses just like a horse!”
Andrew awoke with a smile. Clear morning sunshine filled the room. Rachel was still asleep. There was a weekend quiet in the air. He lay on the pillow, reliving the funny scene of the urinating white horse. He still had a long way to go. Nothing had been solved, not really. The process of repair had only begun. He was conscious of that. Still, in spite of it all, he permitted himself, for the first time in a long while, a small, harmless dose of comfort.
END OF BOOK SEVEN
Epilogue
September 18, 2001
The 1st of Tishrei, 5762
Suddenly, everything seemed back to normal. After seven loud, nerve-racking days of endless CNN, droning helicopters, and wailing sirens, it was as if nothing had happened. The rain—the mocking rain that fell on the proud city licking the wounds that had wrenched it from its complacency, the largest of them a gaping hole in the ground where had stood the two towers that were wonders of the new world—the same rain that had thwarted the rescuers and condemned the last of those buried beneath the ruins to their deaths—the rain, too, had stopped. Among the thousands of inscriptions on the improvised memorial wall of the rescue operation’s command post on Chambers Street, someone had written, FOR THIS IS THE WHOLE OF MAN.
A tentative autumn sun shone down on Riverside Drive, filtered by the still green branches of the trees. Although they had yet to turn, pale yellow blotches had appeared here and there like the early onset of gray hair, foretelling the autumn. On the northwestern corner of 110th Street and Riverside Drive a small crew of movers busily struggled to maneuver the carefully packed parts of a grand piano, which were too large for the prewar service elevator, up the emergency staircase to the tenth floor. Andrew stood in the street below amid a pile of items still waiting for the movers. Ann Lee’s portable laptop was slung over his shoulder and a carton of her mementos, photographs, and correspondence was gripped firmly in his hands. She had gone to get coffee from the Starbucks on the corner, and perhaps also something to eat.
He looked around him, struck by the sudden tranquility. An Orthodox Jewish family walked by at the stately pace reserved for Sabbaths and religious holidays and turned toward the park. Andrew smiled fondly. “Tashlikh, Rosh Hashanah . . .” He said the words out loud as he had learned them in his distant Hebrew school days. A couple started down 110th Street, a swarthy, average-height man walking hand in hand with an attractive blond woman of fine bearing. Two dogs, one white and one brown, romped around them, winding their leashes around their owners’ legs as if binding them together. Andrew blinked in amazement as he recognized his Hebrew-speaking neighbor, who was now clean-shaven and dressed in a starched, white shirt. Their glances met in a momentary flash of recognition and mutual, unstated understanding. The man nodded briefly. Andrew, for some reason feeling embarrassed, half nodded in return. The dogs leaped on each other in puppyish play, excitably dragging the couple toward the river.
Yes, it had been a hard year, very hard. But things were beginning to settle down. He would start teaching again when the fall semester began, and there had been hints from the administration of a highly desirable appointment in the not too distant future. Rachel was finishing her doctorate and would be coming to live in New York with Abby Rosenthal, her new partner. Although it was too early to talk about it, they were hoping to start a family. It hadn’t yet been decided which of them would have a child first, but what difference did that make? They had plenty of time to think about it. Ann Lee was launching a career as a soloist and would be offering her own course in the university’s Department of Performance Studies. She hadn’t made up her mind whether to enroll in a doctoral program; she thought she might prefer the life of a dedicated artist to one of discoursing on the arts. Might she, too, one day have a child with Andrew at his no-longer-young age? It would be a bright, lively boy whom he would love with all his heart and with whom he would miss no opportunity to play baseball on Saturday mornings on the sidewalk of Riverside Drive. The haunting dreams and visions of the winter, spring, and summer of 2001 would never return and would slowly be forgotten as the years went by. Time would go its way, its bright river flowing onward. He would even once more see his fat homeless man, who for some reason had moved to the steps of a church on 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where he reposed with regal ease, a huge cigar clenched in his fist, absorbed in his chessboard as though it were a crystal ball, a magic looking glass in which the whole world was reflected. Everything would be the way it was, almost. Only a whisper could still be heard where once stood the ruined house.
END
Acknowledgments
I would li
ke to thank my many friends, family, and colleagues, who supported and enriched the long and, at times, excruciating process of writing this novel. They say it takes a village, but in this case it felt more like an entire city.
Special thanks go to my dear friend and editor of the Hebrew version, Dr. Haim Weiss, to whose boldness and determination I largely attribute the success it enjoyed; my larger-than-life translator, Hillel Halkin, whose hard work and unrivaled talent allowed him to render this novel, considered by many to be untranslatable, into beautiful, transfixing English prose; my able agent, Susan Golomb, from the Writers House Agency; my wonderful publicist, Lynn Goldberg, from the Goldberg and McDuffie Agency and the creative and devoted Nicholas Davies and Jennifer Murphy from Harper, for their excellent work; the authors Amos Oz, Colum McCann, Anne Roiphe, Dara Horn, and Lauren Belfer, who read the novel and offered their keen observations; my dear friends, Nicholas Lemann and Judith Shulevitz, who went above and beyond to help facilitate this translation; David Koral from production editorial, for his meticulous and painstaking work; Leah Carlson-Stanisic for brilliantly and laboriously designing the interior, and especially for taking on the complex and unprecedented challenge of creating the Talmudic pages; and above all, I owe the deepest gratitude for the tireless work, courage, rigor, and wisdom of my brilliant editor, Sofia Groopman, who saw the visions of this novel and turned them into reality. Working together with her on this manuscript was the most gratifying experience an author can wish for.