The Promise

by Chaim Potok

  “I believe the Torah was revealed,” I said carefully. My own understanding of the revelation was based on enough sources within the tradition for me to be able to answer that question affirmatively even though I knew mine could not be the same kind of understanding as Rav Kalman’s.

  “Do you believe the oral Torah was also given to Moses at Sinai?” He was asking me whether I believed the various discussions of the Talmud had also been revealed by God to Moses at Sinai. He was putting me through a theological loyalty test.

  “No,” I said.

  “No? Then what is the Gemora?”

  “It was created by great men who based their traditions and arguments on the Chumash.” “Chumash” is the Hebrew word for the Pentateuch.

  “You believe this?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is why you use this method?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your father believes this too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, Malter, your father is an observer of the Commandments?”

  “Yes,” I said emphatically.

  He nodded. “So have I heard,” he said. He stroked his beard and shook his head. “I am afraid I really do not know what to do with you, Malter.” He shook his head again. “I have never had such a problem. Tell me, Malter, do you know who you are? Who are you?”

  I looked at him in bewilderment.

  “The holy Rav Yisroel Salanter used to say, ‘Know yourself.’ ” He was talking about the nineteenth-century European rabbi who was the founder of the musar movement. “A person must know who he is. A person must understand himself, improve himself, learn his weaknesses in order to overcome them. It is hard for a person to understand his own weaknesses. I know. Do you know yourself, Malter? Where do you stand? Do you stand with true Yiddishkeit, or do you stand perhaps a little bit on the path of Gordon? Where do you stand, Malter?”

  I did not say anything.

  “I must know where you stand before I can give you smicha. Can you tell me?”

  I was quiet.

  “You cannot tell me anything?”

  Still I was quiet.

  “Know yourself, Malter. A man who does not know himself is lost. I know this. From bitter experience I know this. You do not have to tell me now, Malter. But you will have to tell me before I give you smicha. I will not give you smicha unless I have an answer from you. The Hasidim are not the only ones who guard the spark. I too have an obligation.” It was a moment before I understood the significance of that remark. “I cannot give smicha to someone who does not stand with true Yiddishkeit, no matter how great a Gemora student he is. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded.

  “I would like to give you smicha, Malter. But I will not give it to you before I know where you stand.” He stared darkly at my father’s book and was quiet for a moment. “Your father is a great scholar. It is a pity he uses such a method. He endangers Yiddishkeit with his method.” He looked at me sadly. “We will talk again another time, Malter. Do you have any questions you wish to ask me?”

  I shook my head.

  “No questions. All right. You may go now.”

  I got to my feet, picked up my Talmud, and started from the room. My legs were trembling.

  “Malter.”

  I turned to look at him. He was seated behind the desk. He seemed strangely small and a little forlorn.

  “Speak to me anytime you wish,” he said stiffly. “I am not so difficult to speak to as it sometimes appears.”

  I nodded and left him at his desk and closed the door softly behind me and leaned heavily against it to steady my legs. The corridor was deserted. The building seemed empty. It was a moment before I remembered my visit with Michael. I looked at my wristwatch. It was a little after two o’clock. I got my coat and hat and came out of the building into the bright sunlight. The sky was a deep, clear, cloudless blue.

  I got to the station just as a train was pulling out and had to wait more than ten minutes for the next train because of the Sunday subway schedule. I sat in the train and barely knew where I was and felt dazed and shaken and did not know what I would do. I wanted to talk to my father. The train roared along its tracks. I thought of Rav Kalman. Know yourself. I thought of Rav Kalman and listened to the clacking of the wheels. The car hurtled around curves and I braced my feet and felt my body swaying. Know yourself. He was forcing me into a choice and I did not know what I could do. The train stopped at a station, then pulled out again, picking up speed swiftly. I closed my eyes and listened to the wheels and felt my body swaying with the motions of the car. We went around a curve and there was a sudden fierce crescendo of screeching wheels and I thought I heard distant screams and shouts from the other passengers and a wild laugh and I opened my eyes and they were all in their seats and I did not close my eyes again the rest of that trip.

  It was ten after three when the train pulled into my station. I got off quickly and ran through the station and up the stairs into the street. There was a wind now and it was cold and I pulled up the collar of my coat and walked very quickly through a quiet residential area with wide front lawns and expensive homes and old trees along the sidewalks and children on bicycles in the streets, and then crossed to a block where a low stone fence ran around an old rambling graystone house set deep on a huge rolling lawn studded with trees and flower beds and laced with tiny gravel paths. There were cars parked all along the side of the street adjacent to the open front gate. Set into the low stone fence to the right of the gate was a small metal plaque that had carved into it the words THE ROBERT H. SELBY RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT CENTER FOR CHILDREN. A gray-uniformed guard stood by the front gate but he barely glanced at me as I went in. There were benches along the paths on the lawn and on some of those benches I saw couples sitting with children who looked to be in their young teens. I went quickly up one of the paths toward the house. I saw children strolling among the trees with adults. I did not see any other uniformed guards.

  The house was quite large, with wide stone front steps topped by an overhang supported by huge white-painted colonnades. It had three stories, a gabled roof, tall windows trimmed in white, a huge wooden double door in front with large brass hinges and knobs. It seemed a lovely old house, obviously very well kept up, and there were shrubs all around it and more flower beds and tall trees behind it, and people kept going in and coming out of it, and it did not look at all like a place for the sick.

  I went up the wide stone stairs and through the wooden front door and found myself in a large carpeted foyer with paintings of New England winter scenes on the walls. Near the end of the foyer, and against the right wall, was a small desk behind which sat a man in his middle twenties wearing a dark suit and dark horn-rimmed glasses. He glanced at me as I made my way through the foyer and asked very politely if he could be of any help. I told him I had come to visit Michael Gordon and gave him my name. He consulted some cards on his desk and smiled.

  “Michael is waiting for you right inside. Have a pleasant visit.”

  The foyer led directly into a huge living room with a beamed ceiling and a dark-green carpet and couches and easy chairs and pale-green drapes on the windows and more New England winter landscapes on the walls, which were paneled with oak. Set into the wall to the left of the entrance was a huge stone fireplace with a protruding mantelpiece. On top of the mantelpiece was a large model of a schooner, its sails white, its hull and masts a deep reddish brown. At the far end of the room was a wide wooden staircase carpeted in green and winding upward to the floor above. The banister of the staircase was built of intricately carved oak. There were adults and young teen-age boys sitting around on the couches and easy chairs, talking in quiet voices. They seemed relaxed and quite at ease. I removed my hat and coat and held them in my hands.

  I stood just inside the entrance to the living room and scanned the room, searching for Michael. I saw a boy seated in an easy chair across the room near one of the windows reading a magazine. I looked around the r
oom but could not find Michael. It was twenty-five minutes past three. He had waited for me and gone. I wondered where he might be and was about to turn back to the desk in the foyer when I heard someone behind me say, “You’re here to visit Michael Gordon?”

  It was the man who had been at the desk. He came alongside me and regarded me curiously.

  I told him I didn’t see Michael anywhere in the room.

  “He’s right there near the window.” He pointed to the boy with the magazine. I stared and felt my heart turn over. I had not recognized him. His hair was cut and he had lost at least ten pounds and I had not seen him in about four months and now I had not recognized him.

  “Thank you,” I said, and went quickly through the room and up to Michael. He did not see me come over. He sat leafing through the magazine, his long face very pale, his glasses down along the bridge of his straight nose, all of him looking gaunt and dejected and lonely. The laces of his black shoes were untied. He sat hunched over the magazine, his thin body curved over it, and he turned pages mechanically and seemed not to be reading at all.

  I stood behind the chair.

  “Michael,” I said softly.

  He looked up immediately.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He jumped to his feet and the magazine fell to the floor and his face broke into a radiant smile.

  “I thought you forgot. I thought you weren’t—” He stopped and smiled and laughed and seemed not to know what to do with his joy.

  “I’m sorry to be late. It’s good to see you, Michael.” I offered him my hand. He seemed a little embarrassed to be shaking hands in an adult way. I looked around. Some of the people were gazing at us curiously. I saw one of the young teen-agers, a dark-haired, sullen-faced boy, turn to the man sitting next to him and nod toward Michael and say something softly. The man looked at Michael, then looked away.

  “Let’s sit down somewhere,” I said. “Over there on the couch. How are you, Michael? You’ve lost weight. How are you feeling? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to talk to you here.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Let’s go to my room. We’ll be alone there.”

  “Is it all right?”

  “Sure. We can go anywhere we want. We just can’t go off the grounds.”

  I followed him through the living room to the staircase. He walked quickly. His clothes were too large on him. His jacket hung loose at the shoulders. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and pointed to the corridor that led off to the right. It was brightly lit and carpeted in dark green and lined with offices.

  “Your friend has his office here,” Michael said. “The third office on the left. That’s where we meet.”

  “Where do the big doors lead?”

  “That’s a recreation room. Then there’s a dining room on the other side of the stairs. They serve kosher food if you want. They make it up special for me.”

  “Where do you go to school?”

  “There’s a separate building out back. You know what they call this house? A cottage. There’s a married couple that live here and take care of us. They’re supposed to be like our parents. Then there are four men who come in every day, but they don’t live here. A cottage. That’s very funny.”

  “It looks like a beautiful house.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate it. Let’s go upstairs.”

  I followed him up the winding carpeted stairway. We went through a double door and down a wide corridor. He stopped in front of a door.

  “The person on night duty stays here. There’s a phone inside. That’s where I called you from. Come on. We’ll go to my room. Did you bring that article by Rav Kalman?”

  “Yes.”

  “My room’s two doors away.”

  “Do you live in it alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s very nice.”

  “I hate living alone,” he said.

  His door was unlocked. It was a small room but very clean and neat, with white-painted walls and a rug on the floor and a bed against a wall and a chest of drawers and a bookcase across from the bed. There was a deep closet, and prints of New England landscapes on the walls. A single tall window divided the wall opposite the door. The window was covered by a heavy iron screen. To the right of the window stood a long, black, gleaming telescope mounted on a tripod. Near the door was a desk and a chair. In a corner of the room was a second chair. The room was quite warm and smelled vaguely of disinfectant.

  Michael sat on the bed and I brought over the corner chair and sat next to him.

  “Well, how are you? Tell me really how you are.”

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly, not looking at me.

  “How have your talks been with my friend?”

  “Let me see that article,” he said, turning to me abruptly.

  “Don’t you want to tell me about yourself first?”

  “No.”

  “I’d like you to.”

  “I want to see that article.”

  “All right.” I took it out of my jacket pocket and handed it to him. He snatched it from my hand and read it hungrily. I could see his eyes racing across the printed lines. His pale face was without expression. He gave it back to me and lay down on the bed and put the palms of his hands under his head and stared up at the ceiling.

  “You see what I mean now?” he said softly. “You see how vicious he is.”

  I did not say anything.

  “Why don’t they leave us alone? What do they want from us?”

  “How did you know about the article?”

  “My aunt and uncle were talking about it outside the door on a visit. He told her not to mention it to me.”

  “It’s very warm in here, Michael. Can we open the window?”

  “I have to call someone in to do that. They lock the screen from the inside. I can’t open it myself.”

  I stared at the screen and saw the lock. I had not noticed it before.

  “Do you want to go for a walk?” Michael said. “We could go for a walk and I could show you the grounds.”

  “If you want to.”

  “I hate this room anyway. Let’s go for a walk.”

  I put on my coat and hat and he put on a knee-length dark-blue winter jacket and we went downstairs and out of the building. It was cold outside and there was a wind. The sun was pale on the tall winter trees. We walked along a narrow path between the trees. There were dead leaves on the ground. The hedges were trimmed and there were shallow grooves on the sides of the paths between the gravel and the year-round grass. We passed a one-story gray-brick building with large plate-glass windows, and I could see dark-green blackboards and beige walls and new desk chairs. Michael said nothing as we went by. He walked slightly stooped over, his eyes gazing at the ground near his feet. There were not many people outside now. I listened to the wind in the branches of the trees. We walked in silence and came to a small round structure set in among the trees, a lovely pagoda-like structure without walls and with a white circular bench attached to the carved red beams that supported its sharply slanting Oriental-style red roof. Michael stopped and looked at it and I saw his eyes become moist and dreamy, and he pushed his glasses up along the bridge of his nose, then stood very still, his hands deep inside the pockets of his coat.

  “It’s very pretty,” I said.

  “It’s beautiful,” he murmured. “It’s my house.”

  I did not look at him. “Do you live in it?” I asked.

  “Not yet. But it’s my house. I’m going to live in it one day soon.”

  “Are you going to live in it alone?”

  “No. I hate being alone. I only like being alone when I’m outside.”

  “Who is going to live in it with you?”

  “Rachel.”

  I kept my eyes on the pagoda and did not look at him.

  “We’re going to live in it and I’m going to take care of her.” Hi
s voice had a distant dreamy sound to it. “She took care of me all those years and I’m going to take care of her.”

  “When did she take care of you?”

  “She was very nice when she took care of me. She really worries about me. And I’m going to worry about her and take care of her. You can visit us sometimes if you want, Reuven. Yes, I’d like that. You can visit us if you want. Maybe Rachel will even stay with your children one day when you’re married and you go away on a trip. I used to love to have Rachel stay with me when my parents went traveling to lectures or conferences.”

  “Does your mother always travel with your father?”

  “Yes. Ever since his heart attack.”

  “And your father does a lot of traveling?”

  “He lectures to Jewish students in universities. He comes home very tired and very sad. He’s afraid religion is going to die. Yes, I’d like you to visit us, Reuven, That would be very nice. Would you promise to visit us?”

  “Sure,” I said, still not looking at him.

  “I could set up my telescope right there in that clearing and I could show you the constellations. I never showed you the constellations, did I, Reuven. But I dream a lot that we go sailing right off the lake and into the sky and I show you the stars. But those are only dreams. How long has it been since we went sailing, Reuven?”

  “About four months.”

  “Four months? Has it been four months?” He was silent a moment. I could hear the winter wind in the trees. It was very cold now and the sky was pale with the oncoming evening. I saw Michael bend down and pick up a dead leaf and hold it in his hand. It was a sycamore leaf, brown and brittle and papery with death, and he held it in his left hand and with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand he tore a piece of it away and ground it to dust between his fingers. He looked at me.

  “Why did they put me in here?” he asked quietly. “What do they want me to do?”

  I did not say anything. He tore away another piece of the leaf.

  “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do.”