“Don’t compare,” Shuli says. “What you do, it’s criminal!”
“So call the police.”
But Shuli doesn’t. Instead, he rubs his cheeks with both hands. He scratches at them, and then scratches furiously at his chin.
Chemi watches this agitated display. “Can I ask you something?”
Shuli stops and meets Chemi’s eyes.
“How did you find me? All these years, I wait for someone to grab me in the street and tear me limb from limb. I wait for one of the students downstairs to figure it out and kick in my teeth. Yet, it’s you. From way back at the beginning.”
“I had a map. From a boy in my class, at the school where I teach. The boy who wrote you about his father.”
“Still, it’s impossible. There’s no trail to follow from there to here.”
“When you replied, we replied with a picture. When you answered, the boy looked inside the server for the IP address that attaches,” Shuli says, repeating what Gavriel had taught him. “And with the latitude and the longitude, he found the satellite image of the street. I felt too guilty to look, an invasion,” Shuli says, blushing. “So he drew a map of where you were. Unfortunately, not an exact map. Just the crossroads. But I thought it would be much simpler to find you when I thought kaddish.com was real.”
“Very smart, and very sly. An x/y-axis. Truly, well done.”
“When there was a yeshiva, but no you, and no computer, I waited. It’s taken some time.”
“Well, you couldn’t have gotten any closer than you did. Jerusalem is a stacked city. It’s not just the x/y. You need the z to give you the third dimension. It’s admirable, though. What your hacker student accomplished, you can’t have expected more.”
“He is all of twelve years old. Smart child.”
They both afford Gavriel a moment of esteem. Then Shuli takes the questioning back, feeling he’s already shared more than Chemi had a right to know.
“And the money? All those clients,” Shuli says. “You should be rich by now. How can it all be spent?”
“Do you have any idea what it costs to live here? Do you know what it costs to raise a family? This business, it’s only by credit card. The transactions get reported. Do you know what murder taxes are in Israel?” Chemi says, in a huff. “It’s almost better not to work. If you knew the hours I spend keeping the whole thing going. This scam is scamming me. And then there’s the money I give to that yeshiva eating away—”
“Wait, wait,” Shuli says. “Why give money? Why do anything for those boys?”
“Because it’s their real faces in those pictures. Do you see how they live down there? On what little they survive? Don’t I owe them for what they do?”
“You worry over the students but not the dead?”
“The dead are dead.”
“And what of the living who pay?”
“The boys are different. They’re innocent.”
“And we’re guilty?”
“Everyone who comes to my site gets what they deserve.”
As quick as Shuli is to acknowledge his own guilt and the spectacular lapse behind it, he’s not sure that’s what anyone deserves, least of all not knowing they’d been treated in bad faith.
It’s clear to him what must be done.
“The families need to be told.”
“Great idea!” Chemi says. “Why don’t you tell mine first?”
“Your wife doesn’t know?”
There’s no end to the revelations that stun Shuli. While he chews on that new bit of information, Chemi goes to the mini-fridge and pulls out two bottles of beer. He pops the tops and passes one to his guest. Turning his chair around, he straddles it, leaning over the back.
“She thinks I’m a programmer,” Chemi says. “That I’m a freelancer. Which, in a way, I am. Why don’t you break the news to her and we can see together if my life comes apart.” At that, Chemi reaches across and clinks his bottle against Shuli’s. A forced toast. “If you want to ruin all those other happy lives, you can write everyone on the list. Before you do, just be sure they’d rather have the truth than sleep at night.”
What had this man already done to Shuli? And what an impossible position did he put him in now? The families must be told. But to tell them would only spread the agony of this terrible knowing.
Shuli suddenly feels so tired. A deep tired that makes him think he might actually sleep. He looks to that rickety cot.
“How far do you live from here?” Shuli asks.
“Not too far. Over by Ammunition Hill.”
“Go home,” Shuli says. “I need to think.”
“You trust me to return?”
“No,” Shuli says, “I don’t. Why not leave me your driver’s license and your teudat zehut?”
Chemi takes out his wallet and surrenders his license and his national identity card, in its cracked plastic sheath.
Chemi turns to go. As he steps away, Shuli grabs at his arm.
“Actually, take these,” he says, giving back the IDs. “I’ll take your phone instead. For those who move in the modern world, that’s the most collateral one can give.”
Chemi looks at his phone, contemplating, before handing it off.
“Is there a code?” Shuli says.
“No code. Just dial.”
“And your home number?”
“Esther,” Chemi says. “Pull up that name. That’s my wife.”
Shuli checks the contacts for the name. Satisfied, he aims the screen toward Chemi.
“Is Rav Katz’s number in here?”
“You’ll see it in the outgoing calls.”
Shuli confirms this too, already dialing while Chemi is still there.
“It’s a good idea,” Chemi says, approving. “Talk to the rebbe. He’s very wise.”
XXVI
Rav Katz stands at the edge of the balcony, a hand thrust out toward his yeshiva—he’d come as soon as he’d heard. He wipes red-rimmed eyes against a shirtsleeve and turns to Shuli, leaning his weight against the railing. It creaks so loudly and lists so noticeably, Shuli is sure rabbi and rail will both go tumbling over.
“The room, right here, the whole time—hidden,” Katz says. “Always, I felt like we had a guardian angel watching over us, and now to learn it’s a monster peering in.”
“Which is why we need to arrange for a beis din, so that he can be properly judged. It’s preferable to the police, yes? This is a matter of Jewish law.”
“I have a better idea. Why not call the newspapers and stick it on the front page?” Rav Katz twists at his beard, keeping a fist closed around it. “What good will come from dragging this ugliness into the courts? A story like this will spread until it reaches the Gentiles and embarrasses the Jews.”
“You can’t not want justice. Not after what you and I, what the students and all those poor people, have been subjected to. A fraud. A con. He’s a thief like any other and should be treated as such.”
“Not like any other,” Katz says. He frees his beard to light a cigarette, blowing a smoke ring Shuli’s way. “A sin like his, one that reaches to Paradise, how could we find enough ways to punish him? Retribution is beyond us. It will only come when Leibovitch faces a Heavenly Tribunal.”
If there were any room left for Shuli not to believe what he was hearing, he’d have added Katz’s reply to the mix.
“You want to wait until he’s dead of old age?” Shuli says.
“I didn’t say that. I said he should face a Heavenly Tribunal. I wouldn’t be surprised if that court came down from above to convene among the living. There’s precedent for such manifestations. God has sent judges to this world before.”
The rabbi ashes his cigarette over the edge of the railing and, as he turns to scan Jerusalem in the distance, Shuli’s gaze follows.
&nb
sp; “You’re really not going to give me advice?”
“I’m the one who needs it,” Katz says. “Where am I going to find an honest donor to make up for what, from this mamzer, will be missed?”
“At least help me figure out what to tell the victims. I’ve been learning at your yeshiva, which means I’m your student. You can’t just leave me to fend for myself.”
“Whoever asked you to show up at my doorstep? Charity toward you doesn’t make me your keeper.”
“Please!” Shuli begs, pressing his hands together.
“You do what you need, but not with my blessing.”
Rav Katz takes one last glance over the edge of the balcony before ducking out through the metal door to the landing. Shuli latches it closed behind him. Every footfall of the rebbe’s can be heard as he hurries down the stairs.
Exhausted beyond reason, Shuli practically crawls into the apartment and lies down on the cot, pulling the pillow over his eyes.
* * *
—
When Shuli opens his eyes again, he finds himself in darkness. He’s at first unsure where he is. He then remembers he’s in Jerusalem, in evil Chemi’s hut of an apartment, and is overcome with joy that he has his kinyan back, and then with sadness because everything else has gone abominably wrong.
Sitting up, placing his feet firmly on the floor, he senses that it’s both floor and not floor, and—giving his toes a wiggle—concludes that he’s both awake and still dreaming. Looking around, now somehow seeing without light, he understands that he’s back in a place he’d been before.
Shuli presses himself to standing and double-checks his purchase in this otherworldly world. Finding himself steady, he turns on a lamp out of habit and then strips off his clothes. He goes into that narrow bathroom to take a shower, and as he washes himself, he notices beside it a deep pool. When he is clean as clean can be, down to his nails, Shuli jumps into the pool, dunking himself deep. Remembering his wedding ring, he pops up and slides the ring off to avoid chatzitzah. Submerged again, he feels, in this mikvah, pure.
Considering the pool’s sudden appearance where it couldn’t possibly be, Shuli isn’t at all surprised when he steps out into the room in a towel and sees an ornate cupboard, so much like the ark that holds the Torah at the yeshiva.
Opening it, he finds a pristine kittel on a hanger. Shuli takes down the robe, starched and fresh, a brilliant white. He fastens the snaps, and it fits him nicely, reaching down to his calves. The robe is not markedly unlike the one he himself wears on the High Holidays, and in which he will one day be buried.
As he makes his way further into the dream, stepping out onto the balcony, Shuli stands where Rav Katz had and stares up at a sky, blacker than black, the stars particularly aglow. Shuli marvels at how magical is the universe and how unnaturally bright the night. Shuli thinks again that, yes, he’s in a dream.
Stepping through the metal door and out onto the landing, he crosses directly through the door opposite, where usually there was a solid wall. He knows this door can’t have been there. But hadn’t it felt the same when he’d first sought the entrance to Chemi’s? Maybe this one too had always been there, but he’d likewise paid it no mind when climbing up and down between the yeshiva and the street above.
The balcony on which he finds himself is the same as Chemi’s. But right where the apartment would be is a grand and complicated house. Isn’t this just the way things were in Nachlaot! Hadn’t Shuli always said that about this neighborhood? One really never could tell what wonders lurked behind a gate.
Shuli lets himself in to find that the structure is even larger inside than it appears from without. He roams a maze of hallways, and Shuli knows just when to turn and when to go straight, when to climb or descend a staircase. He glides along this way, floating as one might on an inner tube in a river, until he reaches the mouth of the dream.
Because of the mikvah, and the white kittel he’d been gifted to wear on his journey, Shuli presumes that, when he turns the knob on the imposing door in front of him, when he steps into the room on the other side, he’ll find the Heavenly Tribunal of which Rav Katz had told him. This must be the Beit Din Shamayim come down from the upper reaches, to receive his testimony against Chemi.
Though he can’t still his trembling legs, Shuli does his best to straighten himself to his full height and barrels into the room.
To his great disappointment, there are no judges waiting, and, looking up, no celestial gallery of kaddish.com souls watching over the proceedings.
Only one of those Chemi has wronged is there. Shuli is relieved to find his stiff-armed father, with his hands stuck out, perched on a high stool. Shuli is not at all stunned to discover his own elbows gone as well.
His father smiles warmly, looking more angelic and divine than he had in the other dream. This makes Shuli happy, for his father is so deserving, and sad because it is so clearly a characteristic of the dead.
His father also wears the kittel, with its broad sleeves and flowing skirt, the white sash cinched tightly around his waist. It’s the exact robe his father had worn to their family seders, complete with the crimson stains from Passovers of yore. This reminds Shuli of food, and he looks behind him to see if the feast has returned. There’s nothing there, and with the conspicuous absence of food and drink, and with both of them dressed in white, yes, maybe it is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
As a greeting, Shuli says to his father, “I miss you so much,” and “I wish you’d gotten to meet my children, they’re very good children,” and “How lovely to see you today, looking so…rested.”
“Today? But there are no days here,” his father says, in his old voice, with his old mouth, and his old normal tongue set in its normal place.
It’s so good to hear his father talk, instead of making that terrible birdlike sound, that Shuli cries. “I’m just happy to be together,” Shuli says. “And I was worried it was Yom Kippur.”
“There’s no reason to worry. It’s nice to atone. If no one from the living ever advocated for you, it’s a comfort to take action in cleansing the soul. What’s wrong with a fast without end?”
“Without end” he hadn’t said. Shuli feels his legs go weaker. He looks for a place to sit but there’s only the stool his father uses.
Rushing for the closest wall against which to steady himself, Shuli tries to look cheery, grinning like a fool. Yes, yes, how nice for you! How nice that you have purpose, that you have a reason to not-live!
“Abba, is it really like this, for always, the fasting? No feast, even with the straightened arms?”
His father tells him that it is like this, unceasing, and then looks down at his elbowless arms with some trepidation, as if he hadn’t noticed that part before.
What Shuli can’t understand is how such conditions were possible.
One earthly year—what they’d always been taught, what he himself said to his students. This was the maximum period a soul might be purged in the afterlife. And yet, twenty years later, here his father is caught in a ceaseless kind of kaparah.
“Eleven months of Kaddish. One year of judgment,” Shuli begins reeling off halachah. “This—it’s against the rules!”
His father waves away such irrelevant lower-world notions. Without elbows, the swing of that arm, the billowing kittel sleeve, it’s as painful to look upon as that darting, spear-like tongue.
“A year is still the maximum,” his father says. “Only without day and without night to signify change, without a son who has been studiously saying Kaddish to go silent at the eleventh month, how are we to know when judgment comes to an end without such markers?”
Shuli, already sweating, says, “I will fix it, Abba. Don’t worry. For you, and for all the others. I will put it right.”
“You will?” his father says, looking oh so happy. “For all of us? For all the twenty-
eight hundred? The hunger, it does admittedly wear.”
“I will. I promise. For all two thousand seven hundred and ninety-four.”
Hearing that, his father curls forward on the stool and masks his face with the draping sleeves of his outstretched arms. It’s not out of sadness, Shuli can tell, but a flush of fatherly pride. His son, finally doing what’s right.
With his father leaning forward, a new door is revealed. It had been hidden behind his flowing robe when he’d been sitting erect.
Shuli dares not interrupt this moment of relief. He steps to his father’s side and reaches for the knob, slipping by.
Upon entering, Shuli is immediately confused, for the next room is the same as the last. There’s still no feast. There’s still one stool. And, atop it, his father, as Shuli had just left him, with his face pressed into his arms and those arms jutting out like stilts.
When this new father hears him close the door, he sits up, revealing his face. Shuli is shocked to see not his father but his sister perched there, and to find that her robe has the same stains. Pinned to Dina’s hair is the identical black velvet yarmulke that their father had always worn. And the modest peot by her ears are a pair of tight curls fallen loose, Dina’s hair tied back.
His sister stares at Shuli and Shuli stares at her. To see Dina dressed exactly as their father, to see her dressed exactly as a man, unsettles. She’s always been so faithful, so Orthodox and restrained. She is in no way a seeker of egalitarianism or reform.
“Sister!” he says, full of love. What a comfort to find her in this cold place.
She motions him closer with that same horrible wave, her sleeve sliding back as her arm windmills around. Shuli can’t help but notice the leather strap of tefillin wrapped around his sister’s hand and running up that unbending arm.
Looking back to her face, he sees the black box resting on her head, and the two straps from the shel rosh running down the front of the garment, black against white.
He approaches, as instructed, and Dina—not at all disparaging—says, “I can’t tell if the surprise on your face is from finding me here or from the tefillin I wear.”
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