Davita's Harp

by Chaim Potok

  Two of the three candles on the buffet sputtered and died.

  Mr. Helfman asked me what I was studying in public school and began to compare my subjects with those taught in the yeshiva. There was haughtiness in his voice as he went along claiming superiority for the yeshiva curriculum.

  “How are your grades, Ilana?” Mrs. Helfman asked.

  “I get nineties and hundreds,” I said.

  “I’ll bet you do,” said Mr. Dinn. “So did your mother.”

  From across the table David was looking at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.

  On the buffet the guttering flame of the third candle suddenly flared, leaped upward, flickering wildly, and was gone. A thin column of dark smoke spiraled slowly toward the ceiling.

  “Ilana, would you like to help me bring in the dishes?” Mrs. Helfman asked.

  From inside the kitchen, which was now cluttered with dirty pots and dishes, I heard David and his father and Mr. Helfman talking together about something I didn’t understand. They spoke briefly in English, then slipped into Yiddish. Mr. Dinn and Mr. Helfman went on talking Yiddish, but David kept going from one language to the other.

  Mrs. Helfman saw me listening and said, “They are discussing tomorrow morning’s sedra—the reading from the Torah.”

  “David knows almost all the Torah by heart,” Ruthie said proudly. “David is a genius.”

  “Bring in the cake,” Mrs. Helfman said to Ruthie. “And don’t brag so much. You’ll bring upon us the evil eye, God forbid.”

  Later, as we sat around the table near the end of the meal, Mr. Dinn leaned back in his chair, cleared his throat, and proceeded to deliver a little sermon. His forefingers tucked inside his vest pockets, he began in his sonorous voice to describe how God came down to Mount Sinai thousands of years ago in order to give the Torah to the Jewish people. The mountain was all covered in smoke, he said. There was thunder; lightning flashed from the clouds. The Torah was written in fire on tablets and the tablets were then wrapped in fire. Moses’ face shone with light as he held them. “Only Moses could touch that sacred fire,” said Mr. Dinn. “And that sacred fire could not be tampered with. The Sanctuary in the desert also had a special sacred fire, and only on that fire was one permitted to offer a bird or an animal as a sacrifice to God. Tomorrow’s sedra tells us that the sons of Aaron the high priest brought their own fire into the Sanctuary and were killed. A strange fire must never be brought into the heart of the Sanctuary where the sacred fire of God is found. From this we can learn that we must preserve with care the sacred fire of our Torah, its laws, its words, and never permit it to be mixed with strange fires from the outside.”

  As he spoke I noticed David and Mr. Helfman and his wife glance at me from time to time as if to gauge my reaction to his words. But I could not understand much of what Mr. Dinn said. Mr. Dinn and Mr. Helfman then talked awhile longer about the mysterious deaths of the sons of Aaron. David joined their conversation. Ruthie and Mrs. Helfman sat listening. Then they all began to sing zemiros. There were phrases in the zemiros that I recognized. Mr. Dinn seemed surprised to see me join in the singing. I sat quietly through the many songs I didn’t know, listening, trying to memorize the lines that were being repeated. Sometimes I just sang the melody without the words. Nine months earlier, on a sultry Friday night, I had listened to David and his father joyfully singing these songs on the porch of their house in Sea Gate; now I was singing with them. I had no idea what the words meant; I just enjoyed the music, the lilt and rhythm of the melodies, now slow and now fast, now melancholy and now joyous.

  At a pause in the singing Mr. Dinn leaned forward and placed his long arms on the table and said, “Well, I see you enjoy singing, Ilana. You know, there’s an interesting story told about King David and his harp.” He adopted again that serious and sonorous tone. “King David was a great musician. When he slept his harp hung from the wall over his bed. The winds are strong in Jerusalem. Each night the wind would blow through the strings of the harp and the harp would begin to sing. King David would wake and listen awhile to the music of his harp, and then spend the rest of the night studying Torah so he could be a strong and wise king. An interesting story.” He smiled down at me in his distant and courtly manner. “Let’s sing some more.”

  The air in the room grew warm. Mr. Dinn and Mr. Helfman and David removed their jackets and sat in their shirt sleeves, singing. There was color on David’s normally pale face and his eyes were shining. He sang in his high, thin voice, with his eyes closed and his body swaying back and forth. We sang for a long time. Then they sang and chanted the prayers that ended the meal. And when the singing was done, Mr. Dinn and David and Mr. Helfman got into a discussion about a point raised earlier concerning the sons of Aaron. They were deep in this talk a few minutes later when, suddenly, jarringly, the doorbell rang.

  Mr. Helfman looked up, surprise on his round face. A shadow passed over Mr. Dinn’s abruptly stony features. Mrs. Helfman said, “It must be your mother, Ilana.” Ruthie went to the door.

  I heard my mother’s voice and her footsteps in the hall. She came into the living room with Ruthie. She looked weary and ashen. Her hair was in disarray beneath her dark beret. She stood blinking her eyes in the brightness of the living room and gazing at the people around the table.

  “Hello, Ezra,” she said evenly. “How are you?”

  “I’m well, Channah,” Mr. Dinn said, after a pause. “And you?”

  “I’m very tired.”

  “Your rally went well?”

  “Very well.”

  “You spoke?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad for you that it went well.” His manner was stiff and polite.

  There was a brief silence.

  “David, how are you?” my mother asked.

  I saw a slight stiffening of David’s thin form. “I’m okay,” he said with some sullenness in his voice.

  My mother said to Mrs. Helfman, “Thank you for taking care of Ilana.”

  “A pleasure and a joy,” Mrs. Helfman said.

  “Anytime,” Mr. Helfman said. “A smart girl, a bright girl.” He said something in a language I didn’t understand. My mother smiled wearily.

  “Channah,” Mr. Dinn said.

  My mother turned to him.

  “Call me Monday morning about Jakob Daw’s visa. There are people in Washington I can talk to.”

  My mother looked at him, then looked at me. “If you want me to, I’ll help,” Mr. Dinn said. My mother nodded slowly, wearily. “Good night, Channah,” Mr. Dinn said. “Good night, Mrs. Chandal,” Mr. Helfman said.

  “Good Shabbos, llana,” David said.

  At the door, Mrs. Helfman said, “You’re sure you don’t want a cup of tea? You look exhausted.”

  “I want to go to bed,” my mother said. Ruthie said, “Good Shabbos, Ilana.”

  “Good Shabbos, Ruthie. Maybe I’ll see you in shul in the morning.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Helfman, Ruthie,” my mother said.

  We started along the hallway to the stairs. A dull heavy silence brooded over the house. I could hear the echoes of our footsteps.

  “Mama?” “Yes.”

  “You shouldn’t ring their doorbell on Shabbos. They don’t use electricity.”

  She paused for the briefest moment on the stairs, then continued along beside me. “I’ll try to remember, Ilana.”

  “Were there lots of people at the rally?”

  “Thousands. Many thousands.”

  “And you gave a speech?”

  “Yes.”

  We were on our landing but not yet at the door, and she was already removing her coat and beret.

  “Mama, did you go to school with Mr. Dinn?”

  “We went to Brooklyn College together a long time before you were born.” She fumbled in her purse for the key, hampered by her coat, which she had thrown over one arm. As she put the key into the door, she murmured to herself, but clearly enough for me to hear, “I am
so tired…. Who can get used to this? After so many years together, to come home alone and go to bed alone and wake up alone….”

  The harp sang softly as we entered the apartment.

  The web of sunlight upon my curtain woke me. I dressed and ate quickly. In a dream during the night I had heard my mother crying. I peered into her room and saw her curled up in sleep, looking frail and small, her mouth slightly open, the morning light giving her smooth face an ivory pallor. I went from the apartment and the house and walked in the cool April morning air to the synagogue.

  Some days before, I had wandered about the apartment in an aimless and brooding reverie and had found myself in my parents’ bedroom looking at the bookcase that stood alongside the desk. I discovered an English Bible. I took it along with me. Inside the synagogue, I found my seat near the curtained wall. An old woman helped me find the Torah reading. I read slowly and carefully the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of Leviticus. The English was very difficult and I did not like the parts about killing a calf and dipping a finger in the blood and pouring the blood on the altar. I wondered if that was how everyone once worshipped God. I was not surprised that my parents did not believe in God or prayer. Blood and altars and burning kidneys and fat! I read carefully how the sons of Aaron were killed while bringing strange fire before the Lord. A fire went out from the Lord and killed them. I could not understand why they had to be killed for that. I read slowly about the animals the children of Israel were permitted to eat and about those they were prohibited from eating. There were creatures whose names I didn’t know: coney, ossifrage, ospray, kite, cormorant, gier eagle, and lapwing. But I knew hare and swine and vulture and owl. I read very carefully and slowly but didn’t understand what cloven-footed and cheweth the cud meant. But I understood about creeping things that went about on the belly and had more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth: I thought those words meant anything that had lots of legs. I understood about that. I remembered the roaches and bedbugs in our past apartments and the insects on the screens of the porches in Sea Gate: flying, crawling, whirring, buzzing, tapping.

  Outside in front of the building after the service I went over to David and wished him a good Shabbos and said I couldn’t understand why God killed the two sons of Aaron just because they were using strange fire. It seemed a very cruel punishment, I said.

  David stood among his friends and gazed at me out of his large dark eyes. Dusty sunlight came through the early spring trees of the parkway and fell upon his face, giving his skin a translucent appearance and revealing the veins in his cheeks and along the sides of his head.

  “They died because they were very bad,” he said.

  “What did they do?”

  “The midrash says they would be marching along behind Moshe and Aharon, and the children of Israel would follow, and all the time the sons of Aharon would keep saying to each other, ‘When are those two old people going to die so we can become the leaders?’ They had evil hearts.”

  “Where does it say that? I didn’t see it in my book.”

  “It’s in the midrash. Those are stories that explain the Torah.”

  “But why isn’t that story in this book?”

  “Because it isn’t. Not everything—”

  “What kind of book is that?” one of David’s friends suddenly interrupted.

  “It’s a Bible book,” I said. “I found it in—”

  One of the boys had come alongside me and was peering at the spine of the book. “It’s the King James Bible,” he said in a tone of horror.

  They all backed away a step or two as if I were holding in my hand a specimen of forbidden vermin.

  “That’s a goyische Bible, Ilana,” David said.- “It’s used by missionaries.”

  “Did she bring it into shul?” another boy asked.

  A rush of heat swept across my face. They stood before me in a tight semicircle, about a half-dozen of them, in dark suits and hats, gazing at me out of dark accusing eyes. I felt myself swiftly judged and instantly impaled upon their cold and demeaning stares.

  “I’ll get you a different Bible,” David said. “You shouldn’t bring that one to shul. You shouldn’t even read from it. There’s my father. Good Shabbos. I’ll give the Bible to Ruthie and she’ll bring it to you.”

  He stepped into the crowd and was gone. I walked quickly home.

  A letter had arrived from my father. He was in Bilbao with Jakob Daw. Hip okay. Daw okay. Visa not okay. War very definitely not okay.

  Over lunch I asked my mother what the word missionary meant. She said it meant a person who was sent by a church to some area to do educational or hospital work and to win followers for the church. “It comes from an old word meaning to send off,” she said.

  “I took your Bible to shul today and David said it was a Bible for missionaries.”

  “Missionaries use it, yes.”

  “He said I shouldn’t bring it to shul anymore.” “I’m not in the least bit surprised.” “Why do you have such a Bible?”

  “It’s a lovely work of English literature, Ilana. I read it for the pleasure I get from its language.”

  “Is Aunt Sarah a missionary?”

  “Yes.”

  We ate for a while in silence.

  “Are you going to ask Mr. Dinn to help Uncle Jakob get a visa?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is the war very bad in Bilbao?”

  “The war is bad everywhere in Spain.”

  “Can we go for a walk in Prospect Park later?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to go for a walk and see if there are flowers and watch people rowing on the lake.”

  “You’ll see tulips and daffodils, Ilana. Those are lovely flowers.”

  “Mrs. Helfman said that Mr. Helfman plants flowers in the backyard in the spring.”

  My mother said nothing. She seemed abstracted, elsewhere in her thoughts.

  After a while I said, “David’s friends are pretty nasty, you know? I don’t like them.”

  “Boys are nasty sometimes.”

  “They laugh at me. They’re cruel.”

  “Men can be like that too sometimes,” my mother said.

  “They’re mean and evil. They’re like the sons of Aaron.”

  “Finish your lunch, Ilana.”

  “I wish God would send a fire and kill them.”

  “Ilana!”

  “I hate them.”

  “Please finish your lunch, Ilana. Then you’ll help me clean up and we’ll take our walk.”

  I did not go back to that synagogue for a long time.

  The weather turned warm. There were days of brilliant sunshine and clear blue air. Young birds played in the budding trees outside my window. The sycamore in our backyard took on a soft and lacy look. One Sunday afternoon I saw Mr. Helfman turning over the earth near the far fence of the backyard and planting seeds. I watched him from the window of my parents’ bedroom, a short, pudgy, genial man wearing an old sweater and pants and a dark skullcap. He worked a long time, pausing frequently to wipe his face with a handkerchief. That was the afternoon three strangers—two men and a woman—came to the apartment and sat with my mother in our living room, studying. They looked to be in their middle or late thirties. I stood in the doorway to the living room and listened. They sat in the afternoon sunlight that came through the bay window. Each held a book and each read from it in turn. From time to time they would discuss a passage at length. My mother would respond to their questions in her quiet, determined, authoritative tone. Her face, bathed in sunlight, wore a soft gauzy luminous look. After a while I returned to my room and lay on my bed gazing at the sunlight coming through my window and listening to my mother’s voice coming through the wall and thinking of Sea Gate and the sunlight on the beach and wondering where Jakob Daw and my father were. The war was now in the mountains all around Bilbao.

  After the people had gone I asked my mother who they were.

  “Friends.”

&
nbsp; “What were you doing?”

  “Studying a work by Karl Marx.”

  “Will they come back?”

  “Every Sunday afternoon.”

  By filling all the hours of her days with work she was removing from her life the hollows of what she called empty time. Empty time led to loneliness, she had once said to me. And sometimes one might do strange and hurtful things out of loneliness. Loneliness was to be prevented as one prevents the spread of a plague.

  The following Sunday afternoon the strangers returned and sat with my mother in our living room, studying Karl Marx. They studied the text sentence by sentence, stopping often to ask questions of one another and to listen to my mother’s explanations. Sometimes my mother would answer by quoting from the original German. I lay on my bed listening to my mother’s voice through the wall.

  Four letters had arrived from my father that week. He wrote that Jakob Daw had a visa waiting for him in Lisbon and would soon be leaving Bilbao. Hip fine, war bad, visa large surprise and small miracle. I thought of Jakob Daw and my father in the war that was all around Bilbao. Pieces of arms and legs and the corpses of horses and people and the fires of shells and bombs. War.

  I spent the rest of the day reading a book Ruthie had given me. It was about an ancient plague that had struck the students of a great rabbi during a revolt of the Jews against the Roman empire. The rabbi’s name was Akiva. Thousands of students died of that plague. Suddenly the plague stopped. This happened about two thousand years ago, the book said, and Jews still celebrated the day the plague began to come to an end. There were color pictures of boys and girls picnicking and playing at racing games and with bows and arrows.

  My mother and I went to the movies that evening and saw a long news reel on the war in Spain. We watched Madrid being bombed and the fighting in the hills around Bilbao. There were fiery explosions and huge columns of boiling black smoke and collapsing buildings and men lying dead in tall grass beside a swiftly flowing river.