Isaac does not want to consider this, but he forces himself just the same. He admits to himself that his objections to Elizabeth’s idea have as much to do with his own fears as money. As so often, he looks inside himself, and he is disappointed in what he sees. Disappointed especially in his old grief and longing for a son.
He dries his hands and sweeps the floor. On the bookshelves Elizabeth has arranged the Rosh Hashanah cards the family has received. Cards decorated with drawings of shofars, pictures of Jerusalem, reproductions of the designs in medieval manuscripts. “May You Be Inscribed in the Book of Life.” “L’Shana Tova.” “Best Wishes for a Sweet New Year.” The messages are not clichés to Isaac. Not simply lines of greeting-card verse. These are the fateful days of the year. This is the precious time before Yom Kippur, when God considers the actions and the souls of men. As it is written, on Rosh Hashanah our fates are inscribed, and on Yom Kippur they are sealed. Only repentance, and prayer, and charity, will cancel God’s stern decree. Isaac finishes sweeping and throws away the crumbs from the dustpan. He feels a certain urgency. This is the time to take stock. This is the time to change.
THE phone rings a few weeks later, and, when he picks it up, Andras hears Isaac’s voice, sounding a bit rushed, a bit blurry. “Hello, this is Isaac Shulman. L’Shana Tova tikatevu. How are you?”
“Isaac,” Andras says. He is surprised, even a little alarmed. Could there be some emergency? Isaac never phones him after summer ends.
“How is Nina? How are the children?” Isaac asks.
“They’re all fine,” says Andras. “How are you?”
“Thank God. Enjoying the weather—last year it was so cold for the haggim. Listen, I wanted to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.” Andras puts his paper down on the coffee table in his high-ceilinged apartment. It is twice the size of Isaac’s, but Nina isn’t entirely happy with the place. The kitchen doesn’t suit her, and the children’s bedrooms are small. She’d like to move out to New Rochelle, but Andras doesn’t want to commute.
“We’ve been thinking more about Elizabeth’s idea for a store in Kaaterskill,” Isaac says, “and I wanted to ask you what you thought—since it would be a kind of importing. Importing from the city to the mountains.”
She must have talked him into it, Andras thinks. He assumes that Elizabeth told Isaac to call. “Well,” Andras says, “I have to say I wouldn’t get started with something like this—”
“No, of course not. But if she did—”
“Well, she’ll lose some money,” Andras says. “Or you can think of it as spending money, or even investing. It’s just a question of how much.”
“How much do you think …” Isaac begins to ask.
Andras hesitates. Isaac is embarrassed, and yet he’s pushing on. He must think Andras knows what kind of losses or possible gains a store in Kaaterskill will accrue.
“It all depends,” Andras says. “You know, it depends on how much you have to play with. For something like this I wouldn’t spend money I didn’t have. I certainly wouldn’t do that. You’ll have to sit down and figure out the numbers. Getting the stuff, transporting it, renting a place in town, storing it, of course …” He goes on talking, answering Isaac’s questions, and in the back of his mind he is thinking about all the things he has to do the next day. “You know, as a matter of fact I have to go up to Kaaterskill tomorrow,” he says.
“Tomorrow?”
“Someone broke into our house.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Well, it happens,” Andras says. “I’ve got to take off the day and drive up.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Nina is very upset about it, but apparently they didn’t take much.”
“I wonder who would do such a thing,” says Isaac.
“I think it was just a couple of kids,” Andras says. “But now I’ve got to go up and meet with the claims adjuster, get the window repaired. It’s a nuisance.”
“You have to ask yourself why,” Isaac says again wonderingly.
His tone annoys Andras. “Well, why not?” he counters.
AFTER all, Andras thinks, as he drives out of the city, the house was there, the things were there. Why not take them? The burglary isn’t so hard to imagine. He can’t help but feel the irony that Isaac sits there in Washington Heights in the little Kirshner enclave besieged by drug dealers, muggers, rapists, and yet he can’t imagine why someone would steal. Of course Andras is bothered that someone got into the house, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Obviously in the off season, the townies decided to take a little for themselves.
The October leaves flame over the mountains, more and more colorful as Andras makes his way up. He can’t help slowing to look at them, trees turned to gold, green dyed garnet. Somehow he had forgotten about the leaves this time of year. The leaves are changing in the city, too, but you can’t see the full effect, the thousands all together. Here the color is so deep, so bright; the forests seem for a moment much greater than the city he’s left behind, the worries, the little grievances, and problems. The day off from work, the wasted day, is so beautiful. As he drives, the claims adjuster and all the little errands seem to fade away.
But the insurance claims and the repairs really are a nuisance when Andras gets to town. After the police came and found the broken window, they were supposed to board it up against the weather, but nothing was done on that score. The dining room is wet from the last rainstorm. The rug will have to be replaced. The new window is still on order, and the adjuster has not yet completed his paperwork. The whole business is a mess, one tale of incompetence after another. Andras paces through the cold, damp house impatiently. He’d come up determined to take care of everything at once, but in Kaaterskill neither the adjusters, nor the police, nor the workmen, have been in such a rush. They fully expect him to take off another day of work and drive back up later in the season. When it’s clear that there isn’t anything more he can do, Andras gets into his car and slams the door.
The leaves are even more beautiful in the late afternoon light. Dusty gold. Andras drives along Mohican, staring out at the thick woods. Then he stops by the side of the road just to sit in the car and look. Slowly he opens his car door and gets out to stand at the edge of the road where it cuts into the forest. The air is cool, but surprisingly mild. Piled high on the ground are yellow leaves still fresh and new, like a river of gold through the trees. Andras stands and looks at them, the masses of leaves like a shifting stream, then walks in a little way, just to see how deep they are. He wades in up to his knees. Slowly he begins to feel the quiet of the woods. He reaches down and touches the golden surface carpeting the ground. Something cracks, then cracks again. A shot breaking the air. In numb terror, Andras scans the trees, but all is still.
The tree trunks stand around him black. The leaves are still golden, but the place is not beautiful anymore. “Andras,” he hears faintly. He starts at the sound. He spins around and he sees Una in the trees, holding a long rifle.
“You!” Una exclaims. “What are you doing here? I thought you were a hunter.”
Andras stands motionless for a moment, riveted by the sight of the old woman holding the gun. Then he strides toward Una. He towers over her, his fear flaming into rage.
“What the hell are you doing?” Andras fairly screams at her.
“I thought you were a hunter,” she says. “I’m scaring them off the land.” She looks up at him and she speaks calmly. She has regained her composure. “The hunters are attacking my friends, and I won’t have it anymore.”
Andras wants to shake the old woman by the shoulders. He wants somehow to shake some sense into her. “You’re going to kill someone,” he tells her.
“And what do you think the hunters do?” she demands. She stands straight and taut before him, her features sharp, gray eyes fierce and clear.
He turns away, disgusted with her, afraid in his anger that he will hurt her. “You’re spiteful, cru
el—” he spits the words out.
“I’m just the way I always have been,” Una says mildly, and she walks away and leaves him there with no apology.
He knows she fired high, but he is still trembling, even with the knowledge that she shot in warning. Even if scaring hunters with a rifle is like her, consistent with Una’s stubborn, misanthropic opinions. Trembling, he walks out to his car, clumsily; he fumbles for his keys. Those summer afternoons he had not listened carefully enough to what Una said. He had only appreciated her detachment and independence, her voluble solitude, her more picturesque eccentricities. He had made Una crusty but softhearted in his imagination. And when she suggested to him that she did not cherish life he couldn’t believe she was completely serious. He had imagined her a kindred spirit; proud, as he was, so that last summer he left the blanket on a tree stump for her even after she refused it. He was sure when he was gone that she would change her mind.
2
THE Rav has been seeing a great deal of Jeremy. He has been asking Jeremy to visit, and even to spend Shabbat. He feels a new interest in his older son, a desire to talk to him about books and articles, even about Jeremy’s scholarship. But even as he draws Jeremy to his side, the Rav seems consciously to exclude Isaiah, speaking less to him, suspending their private Talmud sessions. He doesn’t treat Isaiah the way he used to, doesn’t confide in him, and in fact, looks up at him warily from his white pillows, almost, it seems to Isaiah, as if he were just another doctor. This avoidance hurts Isaiah deeply, and yet he says nothing. He can’t speak of it.
Only Rachel, Isaiah’s wife, speaks of it. “It isn’t right,” she tells Isaiah. “He’s determined to humiliate you. He’s purposely turning against you after all the work you’ve done for him, after devoting yourself to him.” Isaiah feels even more miserable when Rachel talks like this, because she articulates his own feelings so well. She is a fiercely devoted wife, and she makes his cause her own. She wants Isaiah to confront his father and admonish the Rav for treating him this way. She bursts with indignation on Isaiah’s behalf. Whenever they speak, she not only reflects but magnifies Isaiah’s own sense of injustice. She turns his worries and his fears back at him with such intensity that they cut like accusations. He isn’t getting credit; he isn’t being treated as he deserves. And what is he doing about it? Why is he allowing this to happen? When she berates him like this, it’s easy to forget that she is on his side. They argue in low voices in their apartment directly above the Rav’s.
“You have to speak to him,” Rachel says.
“What could I say?” Isaiah retorts. “Is he going to listen to me?”
“That’s not the point,” she says.
“Then what is the point?”
“The point is that you make yourself heard. You have to be—”
“Rachel, stop it.”
“More assertive.”
“Stop.”
Rachel purses her lips. She knows that pressing Isaiah will not change the situation, but she can’t help herself.
Their marriage was arranged by their parents when Rachel was twenty-two, and Isaiah a year younger. They had been introduced in the living room of her parents’ house and left alone to talk. Rachel was then about to graduate from Barnard with her degree in music. She did not go out. She knew few people at the college because she lived at home. Of course, this was what her parents intended. The Rav and Rachel’s father, Rabbi Guttman, knew and respected one another, and they had planned the meeting of their children for some time.
Isaiah and Rachel met in the Guttmans’ brick Brooklyn house, the living room decorated in green. Rachel sat on the stiff green silk sofa, and Isaiah sat in the armchair facing her, so that he stared at the framed embroidered birds on the wall above her head. Chinese birds with fanciful tails embroidered on white silk in satin stitch. Rachel’s mother had left coffee for them on the table, and a plate of her small dry mandelbrot. Rachel and Isaiah sat with their hands at their sides. They did not touch the mandelbrot. Rachel thought that Isaiah was a good-looking young man. His eyes were a warm brown. She asked the questions. What are you learning? What do you want to do later on? She was trying to gauge his character. Isaiah told her what he was learning, that he learned every day with his father. He said he wanted to be a rabbi. He looked at her as he answered, but his voice was extremely quiet. Rachel said, “What did they tell you about me?”
“You play the piano,” he answered.
“Do you like music?” she asked.
“I don’t know much—anything about music,” Isaiah said. There was a pause and then he added, “But I like to listen.”
She liked that answer. He was honest. There wasn’t anything put on. She felt somehow that Isaiah would listen to her.
A full five years after their wedding, Rachel became pregnant with their only child. It had been difficult for her to conceive, and the pregnancy was fraught with complications. During labor she bled excessively, and almost died. She was hospitalized for several weeks after Nachum’s birth.
Nothing in life comes easily to Rachel. Nor is she an easy person. She is too quick, understands too well the selfishness, competitiveness, the cruelty, in people. She does not let bad behavior pass. She struggles against it. She struggles with herself. Even when she sits down at the piano, the music isn’t relaxation for her. She practices relentlessly, and with a kind of existential pessimism, believing that despite her skill she will never really capture the soul of the music, and that for her, music will always be a discipline and not a gift. She believes this although she plays beautifully. Rachel seems to other people to play with great feeling, although she is convinced that the inspiration is missing. She has never considered the possibility that in a performance it might not matter whether the feeling is authentic or merely projected. She believes that there is such a thing as a divine musical gift, a spiritual essence that she lacks.
But Rachel’s doubts are centered on herself; she has none about her husband. Her ambition for Isaiah is uncompromised. He is her profession, and his future is her life’s work. “It doesn’t matter,” she fumes to Isaiah. “You should ask him why he treats you like this. Is he angry at you all of a sudden? Is he suddenly upset at something that you’ve done?”
“Asking won’t help,” Isaiah says. “You know that.” He knows she isn’t really suggesting he confront his father. She is just wringing the situation over and over in her mind.
JEREMY has wondered about his father as well. He is baffled by his father’s sudden interest in him. After the holidays he and the Rav sit together in the Rav’s library on a couch moved in from the living room, and they talk about Jewish and classical philosophy. Aristotle and Rambam, Plotinus, Halevi, Philo. They speak about Jeremy’s travels in Italy and the clear simplicity of the Fra Angelico murals in Florence. They speak of the poetry of Petrarch, of Machiavelli’s anatomy of the art of war, and Jeremy’s work on the frame narrative in Castiglione. They discuss Jeremy’s paper on the courtier prince as an emblem of Plato’s unity of virtues. The Rav trembles more now; he speaks haltingly, and his face seems creased with shadows. Only his dark eyes are unaffected. They burn with intelligence, black and quick.
Sometimes Jeremy thinks of those people near death who suddenly turn to religion as if afraid of the hereafter and penitent for their former lives. He thinks wryly that his father is doing this in reverse, turning to his prodigal son with a sudden nostalgia for secular learning, for the memory of his wife and his own youth. Jeremy tries to objectify the attention in this way, and yet he can’t really think about it objectively. He enjoys it too much.
One October afternoon Jeremy sits in the library on his father’s couch and his father says, “I like this very much, the problem of the virtues. They are different and yet they are one. We used to study it in school. Where is my Protagoras?”
“I don’t know, Father,” says Jeremy, glancing around the book-lined room. In 1946 the Rav bought the apartment behind his own, and workers came and broke
through the dividing walls. The Rav’s library is a double room, made from two parlors back to back, with an arch carved from the wall between them. The front parlor is dark and wintry, with deep leather chairs and brown velvet curtains. The bookcases rise up to the ceiling, and books fill every inch of space on the walls. In the back parlor even more volumes line the walls. Thousands of them rising up and crammed together on the shelves. Low tables are stacked with books. Even the leather ottoman in front of the Rav’s reading chair is weighted down with volumes. The Rav probably hasn’t looked at Plato in thirty years, and his copy must be buried deep behind the tall volumes in Hebrew and Aramaic.
“I remember Socrates’ question,” the Rav says. “If the virtues are all aspects of the whole, how can we distinguish them from each other? Are they merely different names for the same thing? Or are they truly separate? If they are separate, then is it possible to have one without the other? Can we have temperance without wisdom? Or justice without holiness? No, of course not. And so we are left with the paradox.” He looks at Jeremy with his sharp eyes and says, “And what did Socrates prove?”
“Well, of course—” Jeremy begins.
“He argued that they are united as parts of knowledge, did he not?” The Rav pauses. Then he says slowly, “I think about it differently now from when I first studied it. I think perhaps the virtues are all distinct, that some may be taught and some not. They are all good, all valuable, but separate.”
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