Kaaterskill Falls

by Allegra Goodman

  “Have we been the people we should have been?” Isaiah asks, far below in the sanctuary. “Are we now the people we should be? Every act we do should be al kiddush hashem—for the glory of God. Every deed to make his name holy. In our homes, in our streets, in our work. Our lives should be lived with one purpose. There should be no division. We must never think: Here, I am a good pious Jew, but there, in the office, something else. We should be the same in every place, at every time. We should be conscious of His presence. All the days of our lives.”

  Rav Isaiah’s voice floats up through the hushed building to the balcony, and Elizabeth can just make out his small dark figure. She knows that what he says is true, and yet the message is distasteful to her; she cannot separate the words from the speaker. She cannot forget her audience with him in Kaaterskill. The Rav spoke to her then; and, when she tried to reply, he dismissed her and her ideas, he ordered her to give up her project. He crushed her utterly.

  They troop back to the apartment, Elizabeth and Isaac and the children along with their guests, the Krackowers, an English couple with their son. The girls set the table for ten: the heavy white cloth, with a pale, almost imperceptible, wine stain, the palest pink, where Sorah once knocked over a glass, the white dishes and crystal, the silver challah plate and the silver knife; two round challahs, covered with the embroidered challah cover, garlands of embroidered flowers, and looping silver fringe. Elizabeth looks over at the table from the kitchen, and it is ready. Every spoon and decorative leaf. She is pouring honey from her big jar into the silver honey bowl with its long silver spoon. At the last minute, after they make motzi and eat the challah, she will cut the apples, because the girls won’t eat them when they’re brown. She will dribble the apples with honey for a sweet new year. Brocha will complain she didn’t get enough, but the honey will be sweet and smooth on her tongue. And Elizabeth will be sad. She feels her sadness growing within her. Weeks have passed, and her sadness is starting to show, as the baby shows now. As always, she carries round and low.

  She is angry with herself for always thinking about her loss. She calls everyone to the table and Isaac says kiddush. She serves the food—salad with gefilte fish, chicken soup with kreplach, roast turkey and stuffing, tsimmes, orange and gold with sweet potatoes and carrots, two kugels. She serves from one end of the table, and Isaac carves the turkey at the other. The apartment is warm, because they have left the oven on low to reheat the food for the two-day holiday. Isaac talks to the Krackowers’ teenaged son about what he is learning at the yeshiva.

  After dessert and the grace after meals, after the Krackowers are gone, the girls go to their rooms to play. They play for a long time quietly by themselves. Elizabeth only hears a murmur from the two bedrooms.

  “You should lie down,” Isaac tells her as he puts away the benschers.

  “All right,” she says.

  “Elizabeth. You seem so tired.”

  “I am tired,” she says.

  “You’ve been working too hard,” he tells her. “Cooking all this, and cleaning.”

  She brushes crumbs off the tablecloth. “That’s what it is,” she says.

  “What did you say?”

  “That’s the strange thing. The holidays feel like work, suddenly. I suppose they were work before, but they never felt that way. It never used to be so hard.”

  “You know why it’s hard,” Isaac says. He assumes she means the pregnancy, but he misunderstands her.

  This year cooking and cleaning and even the praying are hard, because Elizabeth is divided from what she used to be, and the tide is in, and she didn’t get back in time. She is standing on the shore; she is clearing the table, shaking out the tablecloth over the water. Preparing the house for Rosh Hashanah was sweet before. It was sweet to begin the new year by listening to the Rav. Elizabeth had listened to him with the others and rededicated her life each year. Today, when she heard the new Rav’s words, she believed that they were true, and when she watched him speak, she knew that she would follow him, but following is work. She admits to herself the conflict between her own desires and his decisions; she admits the disjunction between her ideas and his plan for the Kehillah. The disjunction was always there, but it was inside of her. Private, familiar. The Rav broke it open, wounding her, making her confess it.

  She walks down the hall and passes the little girls’ cramped bedroom. Sorah, Ruchel, and Brocha are playing there, still dressed up in their pretty dresses, still wearing their lockets. They are playing hospital, with their dolls as patients on the beds. The hospital is full of sick dolls and teddy bears tucked under white guest-towel sheets. Medicine is distributed, shots given, the sash of Sorah’s purple dress serves as a Band-Aid, wrapped several times around the head of Brocha’s bear.

  “I’m going to take his blood pressure,” Ruchel says.

  “No, me!” says Sorah.

  Of course, all the girls are playing they are nurses.

  2

  THAT autumn the leaves turn late in the little parks. Red edges brighten the slight elms that line the streets. The tree in front of the Rav’s building is small and protected by a black wrought-iron enclosure, but when the sapling turns, its scant leaves are transformed into a shower of gold. Inside their apartment Isaiah and Rachel hardly have time to notice. They are still grappling with the mountain of paperwork in the library, the bills and taxes, the Rav’s will.

  Many years ago the Kehillah bought the Washington Heights apartment for the late Rav. The deed was written out for him, in his name, Rav Elijah Kirshner, and there was no mortgage. The Rav owned the apartment free and clear. The house in Kaaterskill, however, was not paid for by the congregation. The rebbetzin Sarah bought the place in 1948 with reparation money sent her as the sole survivor of her family. She went up to Kaaterskill that summer and found the white house near to the synagogue. She chose it for its placement on the hill and for the large front porch, the beech tree at the side, and the large sloping garden. After picking out the house, Sarah wrote a check for the entire cost, ten thousand dollars. For five thousand more she could have purchased the two lots behind it on the hillside. The rebbetzin had the money, but the extra expense seemed extravagant to her then. The two lots were later subdivided, and Sarah regretted her decision. After her death Michael King bought the lots and subdivided them again. That was something Sarah Kirshner had never envisioned. She could not have imagined that—the land chopped up that way. But, of course, there were many things she had not dreamed of—that her porch would be glassed in, and her beech tree cut down. She had not realized then that her Schumacher curtains would fill with dust, or that her garden would be overgrown with blackberry bushes, or that her son Jeremy, her treasure, would turn his back on the family. How could she have imagined any of it? Even when she was dying, Sarah could not picture the future without her guiding hand.

  Regretting her mistake passing up the lots behind her house, Sarah Kirshner bought another property in Kaaterskill. Few people in the Kehilla know of this. She bought land fronting Coon Lake, a beautiful arched piece of land, covered with trees and wildflowers, stretching in a curve into the soft muddy sand, sucked by the water. The Rav never went there after Sarah died. For twenty years the lake property stood untouched and unvisited, but the Rav did not forget it in his will. He wrote, “The apartment in Washington Heights and the house in Kaaterskill, as well as the property at Coon Lake purchased by my wife Sarah, of blessed memory, I leave to my son Isaiah.”

  Short and tersely written, the will’s major section is devoted to Isaiah’s inheritance. A few paragraphs spell out the Rav’s provision for the Kirshner yeshiva; the gift of a certain set of books, the Rav’s volumes of Talmud, his tomes of Mishnah and the works of the Jewish sages. These books were given to the school long ago and form the core of the yeshiva library. All this is in order. Years ago the Rav told Isaiah and Rachel of his wishes, and they have already made their own plans. They will sell the Coon Lake property to raise money in the Rav’s mem
ory for the Kollel of advanced and needy Talmud students.

  When the Rav’s attorney opens the will in the Rav’s library, Isaiah and Rachel just glance at it together. They know what the will contains. They scarcely have to read the document. Then one sentence stops them short. Just a few words at the bottom of the page, but Isaiah catches his breath when he reads them. Angry tears start in Rachel’s eyes. In disbelief they read the words twice, and then three times. “All the books that are not part of the gift to the yeshiva, my entire personal library in the city and in Kaaterskill, I leave to my son Jeremy.” The words are typed neatly, dated March 1977, the last year of the Rav’s life. Initialed by the Rav, E.K.

  Isaiah and Rachel, and the Rav’s nephews, can scarcely believe it; they don’t want to believe it, and yet there it is, the gift to Jeremy of the Rav’s entire library, his thousands of precious volumes. His rare commentaries and philosophic treatises, theological works in rare German editions, interleaved with notes in the Rav’s own hand, the hundreds of volumes of German literature and poetry. The collection is magnificent in scope, an irreplaceable record of the Rav’s intellectual development. And the Rav has left the treasure to Jeremy. A sudden and spectacular inheritance.

  For months no one in the family speaks of the will. There is the funeral, and then the tremendous work of the transition, shouldered by Isaiah and Rachel. Knowing of the bequest, Jeremy, too, is silent. He goes away to Italy for the High Holidays, as he had often done in the past. On the library shelves and on tables throughout the Rav’s locked apartment, the books wait, their spines hooped with gold, their gilt-edged pages shining in the dusty light. They are uncataloged, many unread for years, many touched only by the Rav’s own hands.

  However, in November, the holidays are over, and Jeremy has returned. It is time to speak of these things. Jeremy comes to his brother’s door, and walks into the apartment above the Rav’s locked and silent home. Isaiah and Rachel usher him in and take his coat. Their apartment is the same. They are still living as they were above the Rav’s rooms, working like bees next to the sealed honeycomb.

  “How are you?” Jeremy asks his brother.

  “Thank God. And how was your trip?” Isaiah asks.

  “It went well. I gave a paper in Milan.”

  “Come, sit down,” says Rachel, and they sit, the three of them, in the living room. Isaiah and Rachel take the long old-fashioned sofa, and Jeremy the high-backed chair opposite. On the coffee table between them Rachel pours tea. She offers mandelbrot, her mother’s recipe.

  “These are very good,” Jeremy says. “Delicious. No, thank you, this is enough. Look, as I said earlier, on the phone, I want to talk about the books.”

  “We had an idea about them,” Isaiah says. “We wanted—we thought the best would be to give them to the yeshiva library and to keep them together with the others for the students.”

  “No, I don’t want to do that,” Jeremy says.

  His blunt dismissal startles them. Isaiah looks up, surprised and pained. “I don’t understand,” he says.

  “What don’t you understand?” Jeremy asks.

  “We thought,” says Isaiah, “there are so many. They are so specialized—”

  “I think I’m capable of reading them,” Jeremy says.

  “Yes, of course, but you don’t, you don’t learn from them—and they are part of the whole collection, the family collection.”

  “But father didn’t leave them to the family,” Jeremy says. “He left them to me.”

  “But, you know … well, what use would you have for them?” Isaiah asks.

  “It’s not a question of the use,” says Jeremy. “They belong to me.”

  Rachel looks at Jeremy sharply. “But what would you do with them?”

  “What do you care?” he asks. His voice is light, but his words are cold.

  They just look at him, their eyes confused and full of grief.

  “But I don’t understand,” Isaiah says again.

  “This is my inheritance, and I’m planning to take it,” says Jeremy. “You got the houses, the property at Coon Lake, free and clear. I don’t suppose you need the books as well.”

  “It’s not for us. None of it is for us,” Isaiah says.

  “Well, I’m going to take them,” Jeremy says. “I’m hiring movers to pack them. I need to bring them in downstairs to make an estimate. And in Kaaterskill.”

  “I think you should reconsider,” Isaiah says.

  “I’m not going to reconsider.” Jeremy is impatient. “I was left one thing by our father, and I don’t need to reconsider. You’ve taken everything else.”

  “We didn’t take,” Rachel says. “We gave constantly. And the houses aren’t free and clear. We’ve had to mortgage both of them. Do you think we got the money to care for the Rav out of thin air? We had twenty-four-hour nursing. Do you think that was free? How dare you say we took. We gave constantly, and the money was the least of it.”

  “I need to get in with the movers to make an estimate,” Jeremy says again.

  “But what are you going to do with them?” Isaiah asks. “Where are you going to put them all?”

  “I don’t know. I might sell them.” Jeremy sees them flinch at this, their eyes widen.

  “You will,” Rachel says slowly. “You will sell them, won’t you?”

  Jeremy’s brown eyes are lively. He watches his brother and his brother’s wife. After a moment he says, “I’ll sell them to you.”

  “Sell them to us!” Rachel exclaims.

  “How much would you want?” Isaiah asks slowly.

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to put a price—I’d give them to you for fifty.”

  “Fifty …” Isaiah’s voice drifts off.

  “Fifty—thousand dollars?” Rachel echoes.

  Jeremy has shocked them. They sit there on the sofa helpless and miserable like a pair of children whose parents have gone away. They are good at that, acting childlike. Obedient. They have served and they have given. Of course, it is more complicated than mere filial love. Isaiah and Rachel depended on the Rav. They depend on him now. They would like to make Jeremy obedient to the Rav’s memory, but he did not cling to his father, and he will not obey.

  WHEN Jeremy has gone, Isaiah and Rachel don’t speak. Rachel clears away the teacups and puts away the uneaten mandelbrot. Isaiah goes into his study, a smaller room than the Rav’s library downstairs. He works at his desk, preparing for the shiur he will teach that afternoon, and he shakes his head as he reads. He doesn’t understand. Even if Jeremy doesn’t want to keep the books in the family, he doesn’t see why he would deny them to the students, to all the young men at the yeshiva and the Kollel, the young minds desiring only to learn.

  Isaiah goes to the kollel to teach his shiur. No one calls him the Rav. He is too new. He has been Rav Isaiah for too long, and now, in his forties, he is still to some extent thought of as the Rav’s son, an aging but wholly conscientious Prince of Wales. He walks up the street to the yeshiva, where his class is waiting for him. They are young men dressed in dark trousers and white shirts, black hats and flyaway black jackets. They are nineteen and twenty years old, newly married; the first of them beginning their families in small apartments near the school. They have bright and eager eyes; they are anxious to please him.

  Rav Isaiah opens his books and they open theirs. They are learning Talmud, and they are working their way through the teachings about contracts. For two hours Rav Isaiah guides them through the texts on the table. He explains the intricacies and nuances of language that binds and language that divides. Isaiah tests his young students, pressing them to look more carefully at the meaning of each word. But the conversation with Jeremy still rings in Isaiah’s ears. It is the motivation Isaiah cannot fathom, the emotion underlying his father’s bequest and Jeremy’s flippant response. These trusts, these contracts, these things are freighted with feeling. This is the mystery; that these things can cause such pain.

  At home Rachel is thin
king about Jeremy too. She sits at the piano and as she plays, she thinks that she understands him very well. Her eyes are on the music, Bach. Her fingers pluck the notes from the keyboard, a thousand dark ripe berries; and as she plays she shakes her head because she knows Jeremy, and this is what she should have expected from him. It is a shanda. He is a disgrace. Rachel opens the piano bench and puts her music inside. Then she takes the extra set of keys she keeps there and she walks downstairs.

  Gently, Rachel lets herself in to the Rav’s large first-floor apartment. Softly, she walks through the living room and dining room with its long polished table and twelve chairs. The Rav’s rooms are cool and perfectly quiet. Although the Rav has only just passed away, the apartment feels eerily still, as though no one has lived here for years. Rachel stands at the doorway to the Rav’s library and looks at the books lying there on the shelves. They are dark, and their bindings smooth. They fill the shelves and cover the walls up to the ceiling. There is something eerie about the books, something sad, but she does not know what it is. Rachel looks at them and thinks simply that it would be tragic if they were sold. Isaiah must not give them up.

  IN KAATERSKILL, the first week of November, snow falls thick on the houses and banks up high on the piles of dead leaves. The trees drift in sudden white. The gardens where the summer people played at badminton and growing vegetables are now white and still. Laden with snow, the branches of the Birnbaums’ fir tree swoop down to the ground. And the town belongs again to the year-rounders. Old Hamilton stands on the porch of his store and looks out at the street.

  It’s coming down fast. Hamilton measures his cane against the rising snowbank. He can compare the accumulation to that of other winters, this storm to other early storms. He remembers as far back as the blizzard of ’39. He remembers more about this place than any of the summer people ever could. The way in fall the mountain turns all at once as if it were catching fire. The way the winter comes down—an avalanche of ice.