by Chaim Potok
That was not a good Shabbat—neither for me nor for my father. My father remained in his study until a few minutes before it was time to leave for the synagogue. He shaved and dressed hurriedly and we walked along the Williamsburg streets through crowds of Hasidim in long coats and fur-trimmed caps on their way to their various tiny synagogues. I listened to their Hungarian Yiddish. Walking to and from our synagogue every Shabbat was becoming an increasingly uncomfortable experience for me. It was like moving back through centuries to a dead world that came to life once every seven days. It was a strange enough experience being on those streets during the week. But on Shabbat, when I could feel them making the very air tremulous with exultation, when I could see them in their respective garbs, most of them in fur-trimmed caps, some in dark suits, some in white knickers, all of them walking quickly, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, sometimes the father accompanied by a troop of male children—on Shabbat it was particularly strange and I felt myself to be an uncomfortable outsider who had somehow been transported to a world I once thought had existed only in the small towns of Eastern Europe or in books about Jewish history. They were my own people, but we were as far apart from one another as we could possibly be and still call ourselves by the name “Jew”—and I had never felt as distant from them as I felt that evening walking along Lee Avenue with my father on our way to the synagogue where we prayed.
My father said nothing to me as we walked. His cough seemed worse and inside the synagogue it was a quite audible counterpoint to the service. Many of my father’s colleagues prayed in that synagogue and after the service they crowded around him, expressing their anger at Rav Kalman’s article. I caught snatches of conversation that puzzled me. My father must not give in, someone said. He must not permit it to be withdrawn, someone else said. Names which I did not recognize were mentioned with tones of contempt. I stood aside and listened and wondered what was going on. As we walked back I tried to ask him what he was not supposed to give in on, but he would say nothing. We were not quite two thirds of the way home before I began to put it all together and realized that Rav Kalman’s articles had not been upsetting my father nearly as much as what had been going on in his school.
“They want you not to publish the book,” I said as we turned into our block.
He looked at me with annoyance and coughed raspingly. “They want,” he said, his voice hoarse and filled with anger and contempt. “What they want and what I will do are two different things.” I had never heard him so full of rage. “No one will ever dictate to me what I may and may not publish.” He coughed again and wiped his lips with a handkerchief. It was night now, but I could see the rage in his eyes by the dim light of a lamp post. “No one,” he said. “No one.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. We were walking up the front stairs of our brownstone.
“We will talk about it later,” he said. “After the meal. I do not want to upset Manya.”
We sat in the living room later that night and between ugly spasms of coughing my father told me that during the past two years four new Talmudists had been taken into the school. They had come from Europe after the war and had been hired by the new headmaster of the school, a man who had himself come from Bergen-Belsen. Slowly over the past few years the make-up of the faculty had begun to change. The original group of teachers was being replaced. The new ones were fiercely Orthodox. One of the new Talmudists had gotten hold of an advance copy of my father’s book and had read it and shown it to the others and to the headmaster. There had been a furor. The book was dangerous. My father had been warned that its publication might jeopardize his position in the school. His old colleagues had lined up on his side against the newcomers. There had been meetings, plots, counterplots, bitterness, vituperation, insults in the corridors. And Rav Kalman’s articles had served to fuel up the raging factions. The fight had come to the attention of the board of directors. There had been a meeting of the board last Sunday, and it too was split into opposing factions. The bitterness had been simmering quietly beneath the surface calm of the school during the past few years. My father’s book had brought it all out into the open. And it was ugly.
“They can’t fire you for the way you teach. You’ve got tenure in that school.”
“Tenure,” he said bitterly. “Reuven, do you know what it is to teach in a school where people despise you? What does it mean to have tenure when the air you breathe is poisoned?”
“What are you going to do?”
He coughed and wiped his lips. “The book will be published,” he said grimly. “No one will ever tell me what I may publish. Then we will see what they do?”
“But they can’t fire you.”
“No. But there are enough ways to make life unpleasant for a teacher so that he will leave without being fired.”
“You’re going to leave your school?”
“First the book will be published. Then we will see.”
“You can’t leave the school. They’ll win if you leave.”
“Reuven,” my father said quietly. “They may have won already. It is impossible to argue with them or to attempt to convince them of another point of view. They know only the lives they led in Europe and the beliefs their families died for in the concentration camps. No one will change them. They are strong and inflexible and they will mold Orthodoxy to their own ways. They have probably won already.” He was silent then, and his eyes regarded me intently from behind their steel-rimmed spectacles. “It is not a new quarrel, Reuven,” he said softly. “I do not know if that is much of a consolation to you, but this is a quarrel that has been going on a long time. The Gaon of Vilna had a student called Menasheh of Ilye. This student was one of the greatest Talmudists of his time. He also studied mathematics and astronomy and philosophy and was even something of an inventor of new machines. But he taught Talmud in the method developed by the Gaon. No one would ever dare challenge the Gaon if he interpreted a Mishnah in a way that went against the Gemora or the Rishonim. But whenever Menasheh of Ilye attempted to teach in this manner, he was persecuted by sincere pietists—and sometimes by those who were not so sincere but were merely foolish. He was sent away from many teaching positions as a result of his method. And his method was not nearly as radical as mine. He simply did not have all the manuscripts of the text of the Talmud which we have today. He was an amazing man. He suffered terribly at the hands of others. So this is not a new quarrel, Reuven.”
I told him it didn’t make me feel one bit better to know that.
“I did not think it would,” he murmured. “I merely mentioned it because I have always had a great affection for that man. I used to hear stories about him when I was young. He—his reputation had a great influence upon me. My father’s father had been his student and talked of him often to my father. And my father talked of him to me. I feel I know him well. But I did not think I would ever be reliving a part of his life. That is the way the world is, Reuven. Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.” He stopped and coughed into his handkerchief and wiped his lips and his eyes. “I am tired. Let us have some tea and go to sleep. You did not tell me what you and Abraham Gordon talked about today. Let us go into the kitchen and have some tea and not talk any more about my yeshiva and its quarrels. And do not look so gloomy, Reuven. The problems will work themselves out.”
But he did not sound as if he believed the situation would resolve itself; he sounded grim, and the earlier anger was still in his voice, though considerably subdued now. He knew there would be a major conflict when the book was published, and he seemed quite prepared to do his share of the fighting. He was being challenged in the single most important area of his life—his scholarship and his writing—and he would fight.
We sat in the kitchen and drank tea and talked about my conversation with Abraham Gordon and then went to sleep. In the morning his cough was worse and I went to the synagogue alone. When I returned I found him in bed. He ha
d no fever but the cough was very bad and I was afraid it would begin to affect his heart so I persuaded him to let me use the phone—something we did not normally do on Shabbat—and called his doctor. Dr. Grossman came very quickly and pronounced it a bad cold and told my father to stay in bed at least through Sunday. My father said he had a faculty meeting Sunday afternoon. The faculty would have to meet without him, Dr. Grossman said. Unless, of course, my father was interested in a good case of pneumonia. Was my father interested? He was not interested. Then he was to stay in bed. What was all this fuss about his book? Dr. Grossman wanted to know. He had seen a copy of The Jewish Guardian. Who was this Rav Kalman anyway? A guardian of the faith, I said. My father gave me a warning look. What a fuss he was making over the book, Dr. Grossman said, closing his bag and putting on his hat and coat. The bearded vigilantes were out in force these days. I said there were a few vigilantes without beards running around Washington. Politics and religion always brought out the best in people, Dr. Grossman said. I was to make sure my father remained in bed and to call him in case he developed a fever. He wished us a good Shabbos and went out of the apartment.
My father slept all afternoon. I tried reading a Hebrew novel for a while, gave it up, studied some Talmud and gave that up too, roamed through the apartment, stared through the front window at the Hasidim walking along the street, and then found myself in front of the bookcase in my room, looking at the section where I kept the English novels I owned. Then I was holding James Joyce’s Ulysses in my hands. Then I was on my bed, reading the Ithaca section. I read until it was time for the Afternoon Service. After praying the service, I brought my father his supper on a tray and sat in the kitchen over some food and continued reading. Then I prayed the Evening Service, and my father chanted the Havdalah—he came into the kitchen for that, then into the living room to light the Hanukkah candles, and then went immediately back to bed—and afterward I sat at the desk in my room and went on reading. I had never quite understood that part of Ulysses until I read it that Shabbat. I was almost done with it when the phone rang.
It was Danny. Was I going out tonight? he wanted to know. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere tonight, my father wasn’t feeling well and I was staying home. Was it anything serious? he asked. No, it was a cold. Why? He wanted me to come with him to the Gordons. My head had been full of Ithaca until then and I had been talking and not really listening to him. Now I caught the panic in his voice. What happened? I asked. Something happened with Michael? Yes, something happened with Michael. No, he hadn’t been hurt or anything like that. He would pick me up in a few minutes and we would go by cab to the Gordons. Rachel would be there with her parents. Could I be ready in a few minutes? Yes, I could be ready. He hung up.
My father was still coughing but he had no fever, so when I told him about Danny’s call and listened to him urge me to go I did not feel too concerned about leaving him alone. I shaved and put on a fresh shirt and was knotting my tie when I heard the honking of an automobile horn outside. It was a cab. I told my father I was leaving and went quickly out. There was a cold wind and the branches of the sycamores swayed wildly. I slid into the back seat and heard Danny give the driver an Eastern Parkway address.
He was unshaven and his eyes blinked repeatedly and he looked as though he had not slept in a long time. He held a small overnight bag on his lap. He saw me looking at the bag.
“I went back to pick up my tefillin and some things,” he said.
“Went back?” I stared at him. “You weren’t home for Shabbat?”
“I’ve been at the treatment center since three in the morning.”
“You went to the treatment center on Shabbat?”
He spoke very rapidly as the cab took us through the dark asphalt-paved Brooklyn streets. I listened in dread and with a sense of too much happening all at the same time, too much—why everything all at once like that? The cab dodged through traffic and lurched around corners. It was an old cab and it rattled and trembled and wheezed noisily. But it possessed a singular virtue for which I was grateful: a silent driver. I listened to Danny.
It had taken most of the day to reconstruct from Michael’s disconnected words what had happened prior to Danny’s arrival. At a quarter of one in the morning, Michael had opened the door to his room and looked carefully up and down the corridor. The child-care worker on night duty was in his room. The corridor was empty. Michael closed the door softly behind him. He was fully dressed and had on his knee-length coat. He walked quietly through the corridor and stopped at four other doors, tapping on each softly. Four boys came out of their rooms. They too were fully dressed. The five of them walked very quietly to the end of the corridor away from the main stairway that led down to the living room and the foyer. They went through the exit door and down the back stairway to the thick wooden double door that opened into the dining room and the kitchen. The door was locked. There were small rectangles of opaque glass in the door. Michael removed one of his shoes and with the heel broke one of the panes of glass and reached through and opened the door from the inside. He cut his wrist doing that, but it was a superficial wound and there was little bleeding. The sound of the glass falling onto the floor of the dining room had been indistinct even to the five boys immediately outside the door.
The dining room was dark but they did not need light to find their way into the kitchen; they ate in that dining room three times a day. In the kitchen Michael opened one of the drawers in the large wooden table on which meat was prepared. He distributed four long knives to the boys and took one for himself. They went quickly back through the kitchen and the dining room, then along the corridor past the offices and into the living room. The uniformed night watchman usually sat at the desk in the foyer. He saw them. He also saw the knives. He stood up very slowly. He was a big man, with a barrel chest and a heavy pink face and thick arms, but he moved slowly and carefully as the five of them came toward him with the long knives in their hands.
Michael told him to get out of the way. The guard asked him where they were going. Michael told him again to get out of the way. He couldn’t do that, the guard said. They knew he couldn’t do that. Why didn’t they let him have those knives and then turn around and go on back to their rooms? He couldn’t let them go out. They knew that. Why did they want to make trouble for him and themselves? The guard did not think they would do anything to him if he did not let them see how frightened he really was.
Michael turned to one of the boys, a short, dark-haired, thin-faced boy of thirteen with strange burning eyes and his tongue running constantly over his lips. Michael asked the boy if he thought the guard could keep them from going out. The boy looked at the guard and began to grin crazily. The guard then recognized the boy: a schizophrenic who was making excellent progress in therapy but had to be carefully watched. Certain kinds of schizophrenics are capable of doing anything with a knife if aroused. They can kill themselves or anyone near them; or they can go into a frozen panic and do absolutely nothing.
The guard moved slowly aside. Michael laughed in triumph. The boys unlocked the front door and ran from the building. The guard immediately called the child-care worker on night duty. Together they woke the rest of the staff, going quietly from room to room so as not to disturb the other children.
They could hear the five boys laughing and shouting and racing through the grounds. The outside lights were turned on. Two of the boys were spotted immediately and came forward meekly and surrendered their knives and were sent up to their rooms, each of them accompanied by a staff member. A few minutes later, a third boy was found near the school building. They had a little trouble convincing him to give up the knife, but he did, finally, and went into the house. Michael and the schizophrenic boy were discovered in the pagoda. Michael laughed when they told him to give them his knife. He laughed loudly and shrilly and said he would kill anyone who came near him, they were all liars and cheats and he hated them and he would kill them or they would have to kill him if they wan
ted the knife.
The cottage parents and one of the single child-care workers stood near the pagoda. One of them suggested that they call the police. But that would mean headlines the next day and more fear and bad feeling in the neighborhood. The decision as to whether or not the police should be called would have to be made by the treatment center administrator. The staff member on night duty said he had better call Dr. Altman and Dan Saunders. But at that point the administrator arrived. He was a tall, gaunt, bald-headed man and he approached the pagoda and ordered Michael to give him the knife. Michael cursed him, loudly, shrilly, his voice breaking. The administrator went quickly into his office and called Dr. Altman, who said he would be over immediately and told him to call Daniel Saunders.
There were three phones in Reb Saunders’s house, all with the same number, one in Reb Saunders’s study, one in the hall of the second-floor apartment where Danny’s parents and Levi slept, one in the third-floor hall a few feet from Danny’s room. The use of the phone on Shabbat is forbidden by Jewish law except in circumstances that constitute a clear emergency, and so the phones in that house almost never rang on Shabbat. On the rare occasions when they did ring they were ignored, because everyone assumed that the person at the other end had dialed a wrong number.
The phones in Reb Saunders house began to ring at ten minutes past two that morning. Danny was immediately awake. He lay in bed in the darkness of his room and listened to the ringing of the phones echo through the house. After the seventh ring, the phones stopped. Then they started again. Danny was out of his bed and going down the stairs to the second floor when the phones stopped ringing the second time.
He found his father and brother in the hall of the second-floor apartment, both of them in robes and skullcaps. They were staring at the phone. Reb Saunders was about to say something to Danny when the phone started to ring again. He let it ring twice. Then he said to Danny in Yiddish, speaking over the noise of the ringing, “You think it is for you?”
