Orchard (9780062974761)

by Hopen, David

  “It was all I had left of her,” Evan said, receding into himself. “It was all I had left.”

  “Evan.” I rocked on my feet, hands in my pockets, uninterested in his mental wanderings. I had little awe left for Evan Stark. “Why did you come here?”

  He retrieved the lighter from his pocket and, as I’d seen him do many times before, flicked it on, off, on, off. “You think this is beautiful?” he asked, gesturing toward the temple itself. He used the lighter to illuminate the intricacies, tracing the stone stairs, the hechal, with its chains of gold, its cedar-lined walls, its carvings of flowers and palm trees and cherubim. He paused over the Kodesh HaKodashim: the oversized menorah, the showbread’s gilt table, the incense altar. “Here,” he said, gently fingering the veil—a mixture of blue, scarlet and deep purple—that covered the wooden Ark. “I really think, maybe—I think this is where we went.”

  Amir gave me a look of apprehension, which I ignored. This time, however, I inched closer. “Where’s that, Ev?” Amir asked. “What did—where did we go?”

  “The innermost chambers,” Evan said quietly. “The Holy of Holies.”

  Amir went on biting his nails, staring intensely, running mental calculations.

  “Think about it,” Evan said in the face of our silence. “Think about what happens to those who enter the Inner Sanctuary?”

  “They die,” Amir said.

  “The problem is that it worked,” Evan said, “it actually worked.” The fire from the lighter trembled in Evan’s hand, casting him in fragmented light, accentuating his scar. “This whole time, when you mocked me for my experiments, I was—I was actually right, wasn’t I? You know it as well as I do.”

  “Right about what?” Amir said. “You think we did something right? You think Noah’s death worked?”

  “No, I mean that—you know what the Zohar claims? That we each contain just a tiny splinter of the inner sanctum,” Evan said, still resting over the veil. “And so human sacrifice—death, the thrill of a holy death—tears apart the veil, unleashing into the world whatever lies behind the curtain.”

  Amir put his hands to his knees in defeat. I stepped past him. “You know what?” I was shouting, unable to see straight. “You are fucking crazy! That night on the boat, you really were trying to kill me, and I never should’ve listened to—”

  “Eden, I’m not trying to—what if this is our only chance? You don’t understand that Noah’s death tore down the veil!” Evan yelled over the wind. From his pocket he removed a flask. Instead of swigging, he doused yellowish liquid over the model temple. A benzene stench spread toward us.

  “What the—?” I took a step back. “What are you doing?”

  “I really think—I know, actually, that we performed what few other humans ever have.” Evan returned the emptied flask to his pocket. “We saw God and we fucking survived! We were worthy, Eden, we—in the end, we really were, weren’t we? But when we tore down the veil, when we peeked at divinity, we left our world exposed to the . . . to the inner sanctum, I think. And now—I just”—he put his hand to his scar—“we have to reseal, I think we have to before anything else happens to us, before anything else is consumed, but I just don’t—”

  “Listen to me,” Amir said, desperate, “you’re—you sound unhinged. We need to all—” He trailed off, studied Evan’s face. “Evan, what happened to you?”

  Evan stared past Amir, focusing on me. “Before you dropped into our lives,” he said slowly, “she wasn’t in Kenya.”

  “I don’t know what that—”

  “Actually, she’d never even been to Africa. All that was a lie.”

  Suddenly it was crucial I didn’t blink. “What? So where was she?”

  “Hiding,” Evan said.

  Amir frowned. “What’re you talking about?”

  “She was with her parents, boarded up in Connecticut. She was supposed to go on that program. That part was real. But things changed, and she needed to—to disappear for a while. So, Kenya was the cover-up.”

  “I don’t understand.” I stepped toward Evan. “What was she hiding from?”

  Facial features dissolving under the weight of a boundless, vaguely ecstatic grief, Evan nodded. “She was pregnant.”

  His words hung senseless over the model temple. A dull ache came on in my forehead. The first time I kissed her, her high heels in my hands, her tears on my neck. Wrapped around her in her bedroom, frightened to stir, cracking open an eye to convince myself it was real. My need to be adequate, my stomach inverting itself, gorgeous delirium, the hope I was complete now, healed now, happy now. She wasn’t mine and, in truth, I never quite had her—nights here and there, shifting dreams, moments that never lasted. Sophia Winter never once belonged to me. “No, but, I don’t—” I touched the crown of my head. Not even twelve months before, I was obsessed with tragic grandeur. In the time since, I’d seen life extinguished, I’d seen grief’s hold over all people. Since I first learned to read, I’d wanted, more than anything, never to submit to the smallness of my existence. Now, I despised myself for ever having that desire. Now, I would’ve given everything for a final taste of that smallness. “Then all this time—but the baby?”

  “She has dreams, Eden, doesn’t she? Juilliard, medical school, Carnegie Hall. Having him would’ve meant giving up everything. But after everything that’s happened to me? I—well, I wanted him. Desperately. And I—it ruined us, I know that now. It ruined us, and in a way, I guess, it ruined everyone.”

  Before Amir or I could object, Evan put the lighter to the veil, which shriveled in seconds. He moved to the altar, the flame glowing an incandescent orange as it spread. Amir dove at Evan, attempting to seize the lighter, but Evan, in a surprisingly violent motion, threw him off, sending Amir crashing through the Inner Courtyard, which flattened beneath him. By the time I helped Amir to his feet the Kodesh HaKodashim was gone. Evan sent his foot through the hechal, launching fiery pieces of the chambers into the surrounding shrubbery.

  We watched the temple burn. Wind carried fire from the bushes to the palm trees, the garbage piles, the desks. I imagined Jerusalem under siege, Titus slitting the curtains, the steps of the sanctuary running with bubbling blood. Anything beautiful, Evan once recited in class, must first wear a monstrous mask. (“Friedrich Stark, everyone,” Amir had said at the time, extracting a laugh even from Rabbi Bloom, “our new philosopher to be born!”) These, of all things, came to mind.

  Amir threw fistfuls of dirt at the burning desks. Amplified by gasoline, however, the fire had already leaped to the top of the mound and toward the school. I dragged my foot through shrubbery, stomping at sparks, singeing the bottom of my jeans. Under my sneakers, an index card, half-blackened, torn from the temple walls: Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold / Have from. Evan stood in what remained of the Outer Courtyard, flames at his elbows, Jerusalem embers beneath his feet.

  I found myself yelling at neither Evan nor Amir in particular, pointing at the lights in the building, the few cars in the lot, realizing there were people inside. Cinders swam gently through the air. I dialed 911. Fire snaked from the very top of the palm trees to the second-floor window, climbed to the third floor, descended into the building’s underbelly, bathed us in an incoherence of bright light.

  Sirens in the distance. “We can’t wait,” Evan said. He stumbled, dazed, coughing through smoke. “I didn’t mean for—we have to get whoever’s inside.” We charged toward the front door, pausing before the flames. My vision blurred; I breathed fumes; the air stung my face, burned the top of my hair. Macabre screams from above. Unbearable heat, night collapsing over us, the door gone now, given over to fire. Amir tried forcing us back; Evan refused to retreat. Above, a brilliant red neared the top of the building, crowning us in a golden aureole. Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation. Ashes rained upon us, ashes covered our faces.

  Firefighters arrived, throwing Evan aside, rushing into the inferno. Evan remained frozen to his spot. His leg gave, so
he stayed there on the ground, gazing into the flames. Helmeted men, unfurling fire hoses: water surging in the dark, vaporizing in a fit of hisses. Cars pulled up, neighbors and students and parents pooled into the street, crowded the gate, watched Kol Neshama burn. Medics, policemen, fire volunteers, construction workers. Gio, Niman’s uncle, Lily’s parents, Gabriel’s family, Donny and his younger siblings, Kayla and her parents, Rabbi Feldman sobbing into his handkerchief. In the very back, Rabbi Bloom, glassy-eyed, dressed in a dark suit, his thin silhouette cutting a strange shadow against the curb of the street.

  It was summer: who would be inside? A woman—Gemma’s mother?—claimed there was a yearbook meeting. The first firefighter out had retrieved a girl, someone coughing violently, a junior who’d apparently been tapped by Davis to take over as literary editor of the yearbook. Davis and Lily emerged next, unconscious, escorted into an ambulance. Orders to evacuate fell unheeded. The fire had been contained but refused to shrink. More commotion: the junior, recovering on a stretcher, began rattling off names. Gabriel Houri. Jennifer Benstock. Elana Levy. Solomon Katz. Harry Lasser. Sophia Winter.

  I doubled over, blood pounding in my ears. From the depths I have called You. Chaos. Stretchers. One thousand lights. O God, if You record iniquities, O Lord, who will stand? A faraway voice: do you ever feel outside the world? A pale figure—aristocratic cheekbones, sharp lips, ash-stained—on someone’s shoulders. Evan, marked with dust, beat his fists against the ground. Someone grabbed at my shoulders, it was my mother, I couldn’t get up. And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.

  The silence burst. All sound rushed back, the sound of wailing, the sound of burning, the sound of wind. Evan stood and looked hard at the fire. Rabbi Bloom broke into a run. A stretcher hurried past us: the ambulance was gone. For a moment Evan waited, giving Rabbi Bloom a chance to catch him, and then he hurled himself headfirst into the flames.

  Epilogue

  Who alone suffers, suffers most i’ th’ mind,

  Leaving free things and happy shows behind.

  —Shakespeare, King Lear

  I didn’t tell anyone I was coming. I had a conference in Manhattan; on a whim, I boarded a subway during a free afternoon and found myself ascending on Fiftieth Street. It rained on and off as I walked the streets of Brooklyn, trying to find the new apartment, receiving confused stares from black-hatted yeshiva students. I wandered past the old places, past my house and local restaurants, past Torah Temimah and the park where we’d played ball. I kept thinking that, even in the rain, it wasn’t all nearly as gray as I remembered, but beautiful, in fact, full of life, joy, purity. I thought about the feeling I had before I moved, standing in my emptied room. It is, more or less, the way I’ve felt since I saw Noah lowered into the ground.

  Outside the apartment building I bumped into a man with a large black coat and payot at his shoulders. He held hands with a toddler and was sweaty and disheveled and looked as if he were running late. He gave a brief glare, muttered rapidly in Yiddish. It was, I realized, my old friend Shimon Levy.

  “Shimon!”

  He stopped in his tracks, surveyed me up and down. I was clean-shaven, my hair cropped. I wore a brown bomber jacket. His eyes went to the thing missing from the top of my head. “Aryeh?” A low, awed voice. Blessed are You, Lord, who revives the dead.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. We shook hands. “Is this your son?”

  Shimon played uncomfortably with his payot. “My youngest.”

  “You have more?”

  “Baruch Hashem,” he said. “Three beautiful children.”

  “Wow, I—that’s incredible, Shimon. Really. Who’d you marry?”

  “Remember Esther Leah Epstein? Reuven’s cousin?”

  I bent over to face his son, who eyed me suspiciously, lollipop in mouth. “Shalom aleichem. What’s your name?”

  The boy shut his eyes, cleaving to Shimon’s legs.

  “Yossi.” Shimon put his hands on Yossi’s neck. “I’m surprised. Usually he takes to strangers.”

  I straightened. “I’m so happy for you,” I said. “Sounds like you have a wonderful family.”

  “The Rebonu Shel Olam has treated me with abundant chesed.” He paused, checked his wristwatch.

  “So,” I said, glancing around, “you live nearby?”

  “Over on Cedar. Near the yeshiva.”

  “Do you work there?”

  “No, I’m in kollel. For parnasah, though, I’m an electrician.” Yossi, from below, yanked impatiently at Shimon’s tzitzit. “But where are you now?” He lowered his voice, shielding Yossi from my answer. “Your father I see in shul.”

  “I’m still in school, after all these years,” I said. “But somewhere far away.”

  “Still go to libraries, then, yes?”

  I smiled. “I do.”

  “The libraries—those books—they worked out for you?”

  My scarf fluttered in the wind. Above us, a roiling sky. “No,” I said. “Quite the opposite.”

  He glanced down again at his son. “When did you—stop?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not a simple question.”

  “But what happened to you?”

  “Something I’m trying to forget,” I said in a quieter voice.

  “Do you think”—Yossi tugging violently at his legs now—“do you think you’ll ever return?”

  I studied the face of my oldest friend’s child. After a long pause: “Yes, actually,” I said. It was true, I realized then. It had always been true. “I will.”

  We hugged, said goodbye. I watched him go, watched him gather Yossi into his arms and kiss his cheek. The last time we parted, I’d escaped, like I’d always wanted, and he’d remained behind. Shimon Levy, in the years since, had uncovered the inexhaustible dream: family and community, faith and culture, stability and kindness, order and depth, the courage to live as we all might, were we conscious of infinitude’s daily touch, were we liberated from longing, were we content to beat interminably at some ideal. I, in turn, roamed through wet streets, looking on at the world around me, discovering what a monstrous thing it is to be alone. Hillel cautioned against separating from the community, and yet Hillel hadn’t lived my life. The rain resumed. I decided to walk back to the train.

  * * *

  WE HAVEN’T SPOKEN ONCE IN the last seven years, Evan and I. Occasionally, I’ve considered sending emails—composed when the sleeping pills don’t work like they used to—though I always delete them in the morning. I don’t do this because I miss him or feel sorry for him or have something to tell him. I do it because Evan, I know now, is like I am, or rather I am like Evan. Amir and Oliver found happiness; Evan is the only one, I suspect, who suffers like I do. This is why I was secretly and perversely delighted when, last week, I received the following letter:

  Eden:

  I hear you’ll be in the northeast. I wonder if you’d entertain meeting me. There is, I imagine, much to say.

  —E.S.

  Attached was a picture of the five of us. I’m not certain when it was taken, though I had a feeling it was from Remi’s birthday party, considering we were all wearing dark suits. It was a relic. There was Noah, front and center, taller than we were, handsome and beaming, his blond hair the brightest part of the photograph. He had one arm around Amir, who wore a sly half smile, and the other around Oliver, short, well manicured and, chin up, defiant. On the far right was Evan, unsmiling, hair gelled, eyes dark and knowing. Then on the left, almost an afterthought, I stood, smiling uneasily, noticeably out of place. Scribbled on the back of the picture was a tag from Euripides: “Terrible is it to desire it . . . but also terrible not to desire it.”

  * * *

  I MET HIM AT SOME quiet bar near Union Square. Hardly anyone was there. He arrived before I did and picked a table in the far back. I almost didn’t recognize him. His hair was at his shoulders now. He had a thick beard, the sort people grew in mourning, which worked to cover the entirety of his scar, save for a s
mall patch just under his eye. His skin was ruined, he looked a great deal older. He had a cane leaning against the table and, apparently, something of a nervous tic that caused his fingers to quiver slightly. He didn’t notice me until I sat across from him.

  For a long while we stared, said nothing. He didn’t offer his hand; I was glad, because I wasn’t certain I’d accept. Finally, he smiled—a worn, sad smile—and cleared his throat. “Still drink whiskey?”

  I nodded.

  He limped over to the bar, returning with two tumblers. “On me,” he said, handing me the drink.

  “What do you want?”

  Several times he blinked. I got the sense he couldn’t control it. “Never one for small talk, Eden.”

  “Neither are you.”

  He put down his whiskey. “I’m not actually supposed to drink. Stomach’s fucked. Never been the same since.” He was referring, I assumed, to the time he entered the fire.

  “Thought maybe it was because you’re back in rehab.”

  Another self-hating smile. “No more rehab.”

  “Tell me,” I said, “how was prison?”

  “Prison was—difficult. Prison was remarkably unenjoyable.”

  “And afterward? Where were you then?”

  “You didn’t follow along in the papers, with the rest of Zion Hills?”

  “Can’t say I did.”

  “There was some time in a ward,” he said. “And that was also rather unpleasant.”

  I spun my tumbler in careful circles. I found these rotations oddly comforting, probably because they reminded me that I was, in fact, grounded to my own world, one that existed quite apart from his, and that seeing Evan again need not diminish my sense of self-sovereignty. “Are you—crazy?”

  He leaned back in his chair, winced slightly, readjusted his positioning. “Some people in my life seem to think so.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I say we all went a bit mad.”