The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness

by Joel ben Izzy

  “But . . . you know . . . why?”

  He shrugged, thinking. “Here’s what I know: Life is a tough teacher. First she gives the test. Then she gives the lesson.” He leaned toward me, speaking softly. “Look, Joel. I’m sorry. I really am. I can see that you’ve been through hell. And I don’t have an answer, just another question. That is, are you ready to learn from what you’ve been through?”

  I thought for a time, then nodded.

  “Well that’s a damn good thing. Because, until now, you’ve been like the guy in the monastery,” he said with a smile. I didn’t catch the reference, and waited. “You’ve done nothing but bitch and moan since you got here.”

  He snubbed out the cigar. Getting up from his chair, he went to a closet and came back with a blanket. “I’m exhausted,” he said, motioning me toward the couch. “Why don’t you sleep here tonight? We’ll talk in the morning.” Then he walked into his room and shut the door.

  It was only then that I remembered where I was and when it was. I turned on the cell phone—which blinked with a half-dozen messages—and called Taly, who answered, groggy and furious, but relieved to know that I wasn’t lying somewhere dead on the side of a road. I told her I’d be back the next day.

  After I hung up, I took a long look around the room—at the books, the flickering fire, and the table, at my half-empty glass and Lenny’s pink wineglass across from it.

  • • •

  I LAY AWAKE on Lenny’s couch with springs sticking up into my back. I twisted and turned for some time before I finally found a workable position. Then, just as I reached the edge of sleep, I heard a loud growling sound. I sat up, a shot of terror running through me, until I realized it was Lenny, in the next room, snoring.

  Unable to sleep, I thought about Lenny and how strange it was to find myself back in his cabin. And what of his question: Was there some reason for what I had been going through? It was a beguiling question, one I’d asked myself for months, with no answer. Yet hearing him made me wonder. He seemed convinced that somewhere there was a reason, an explanation that would make it all make sense.

  Is that the way it works? For everything that happens in life, there’s a reason? Even as I posed the question, I began to generate a list of things that couldn’t possibly have a reason—mass slaughter of humans; horrible, random diseases; cruel accidents. The list grew fast. Yet the longer it grew, the more I wanted to believe.

  The rain had stopped, and now I heard only occasional drips from the trees onto the roof of the house. Lenny’s snoring had stopped as well, and I could hear birds singing. I looked outside the window to see a patch of sky through the trees, glowing a shade of purple I had never seen before.

  “BREAKFAST IS SERVED.”

  I heard a dull thud just in front of me. I opened my eyes. There before me was a shiny bagel on the table, just a few inches from my nose. I closed my eyes.

  “My friend, it comes down to this. Either this is life’s way of saying ‘screw you!’ or maybe—” He paused for a very long time, and I opened my eyes to see beyond the bagel, where he stood. As he came into focus, he looked even worse than the night before, his pale, puffy body in only a tank top and striped boxer shorts, with legs so bruised and skinny that I wondered how they could hold him up.

  “—just maybe,” he finally went on, “you have been given the gift of a lifetime.”

  “What?” I managed.

  “Could it be,” he said, “that losing your voice is the best thing that’s ever happened to you?”

  I stared at him, more speechless than usual. A gift? What was he talking about? I had no idea what time it was, but it was too early. I pulled myself upright and stared at the bagel. In that same way that lines from songs sometimes pop into my head for no good reason, I could think of nothing more than a favorite expression of my mother’s: “A bagel is a doughnut that’s been to college.” I reached for it. It was cold. I took a bite. The inside was frozen.

  “Do you see?” he asked.

  My head ached and there was a sharp twinge in my lower back where I must have slept on a spring. Beside the bagel was a mug of coffee, freeze dried from the looks of it, with brown flakes floating on the top.

  “Why,” he said again. “You want to know why all this is happening to you, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s obvious.” I waited for him to go on, and when he saw he had my attention, he stopped. “Or at least it will be, when you’re ready. But you’re not there yet.”

  “What do . . . you mean?”

  “Because it’s the truth, and you’re afraid of the truth.”

  I sat there for a time, chewing on the bagel and wondering what the hell he was talking about.

  “The truth,” he said again. “The whole truth, the real truth, and nothing but the truth, with a capital T. The truth shall set you free.” He sounded like a revivalist preacher. “That’s why we tell stories, don’t you see? What is a story, but a golden lie that speaks the truth.”

  I couldn’t answer.

  “At least they’re supposed to be. But you, you’ve been running from the truth. Now you have to turn around and run the other way. Chase after it! Look for it in dark places where you don’t want to go.” He paused, finally, and I thought he was finished. But a moment later, a grin appeared on his face.

  “Tell me,” he said, “have I ever told you the story of the search for truth?”

  STORY ORIGIN: INDIA

  The Search for Truth

  There once lived a man who set off to look for truth. He scoured the world in search of it, giving up his possessions, his family, his home, all to search for truth.

  After many years of wandering, his travels took him to India, where he heard tales of a distant mountain. Atop that mountain, people told him, he would find that place where truth resides.

  For many months he searched, until he found the mountain of which they spoke. He climbed for several days until he finally came to the mouth of a cave. He called into it and, a minute later, his call was answered by the voice of an old woman.

  “What do you want?”

  “I seek the truth.”

  “Well, you have found me.”

  He entered the cave and there, in the back, saw the most horrific creature he had ever laid eyes on, huddled over a fire. Her eyes bulged out, one further than the other, and bumps covered her face. Stray teeth stuck from her mouth, and her long tangled hair hung down in matted strands.

  “You?” he said. “You are truth?”

  She nodded.

  Though shocked at her appearance, he stayed with her and found that she was, indeed, truth. He lived there many years, learning her ways. Finally, as he prepared to leave, he asked how he could ever repay her for all she had done for him.

  “I would ask simply this,” she said. “When you go out in the world and speak of me, tell them I am young and beautiful!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Search for Truth

  THERE ARE SOME STORIES that make you feel warm and good inside, leaving you with the sense that all is right with the world. There are others that simply make you laugh. And then there are those you just don’t know what to do with, the kind that pass through your psyche like a mouse moving through a snake. That’s how it was with “The Search for Truth.” I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know what to make of Lenny. In fact, that morning as I drove up the coast from Santa Cruz toward Berkeley, I didn’t know what to make of anything.

  That’s why I decided to drive back on Highway 1, the ribbon of road that runs along California’s coast, winding its way between the sheer cliffs to the east and the tumultuous Pacific to the west. It’s a longer route than the one I’d taken the night before, but strikingly beautiful, and the perfect place to be completely baffled.

  I’d driven this stretch of road many times, but never tired of it. Though it was not raining that morning, I could feel a storm coming as I drove into gusts of wind so strong t
hat they lifted up my windshield wipers, then let them whack back against the glass. In a cliff above me I spotted a lone Yucca plant, clinging on for dear life, and just above it a hummingbird, diving, swooping back up, and diving again.

  I thought of all the other times I’d driven that road and remembered a favorite piece of music that I’d always saved for that particular drive—Keith Jarrett’s “The Köln Concert.” I fished around in my box of tapes and, sure enough, there it was, label peeling off, but the very same. I slid it into my tape deck and heard those marvelous first chords on the piano.

  Keith had not aged well—at some point the tape must have gotten wet. Parts of the concert were way too loud, while others were inaudible. I let it play, though, as I drove over bridges that arched above the ocean, with the rolling clouds above and the churning waves below.

  I thought again of Lenny’s story, how he’d laughed when he told it, then showed me to the door, as though inviting me to leave. “Tell them I am young and beautiful.” He’d said the line twice. What was that supposed to mean? That truth herself is a liar? Or that she really was beautiful? That Lenny was young and beautiful?

  I was so absorbed in this question that it took me some time to notice that Keith had gone completely silent, save for a slight squeaking sound that might have been a mouse. I glanced down to see a mess of brown ribbon spewing forth from the dashboard. My tape player had chewed up Keith and spit him out.

  At any other point in my life, this would have upset me, but I had run out of room to be upset. Instead I watched the tape flow down, billowing into a pile at my feet. Lenny, a sleepless night, the bar mitzvah, the past months, the droning echoes of my own voice bouncing off the inside of my head—there was no room for any more. My brain was full.

  I pulled over and got out of my car, the sea air filling my lungs. Far below me, the waves crashed against the rocks, sending up a spray that felt good on my face. There was nothing to do but take it in. I’d had no great epiphany. But something had shifted inside me; I had crossed the line from confusion to bewilderment. It’s a nice feeling, bewilderment—the same confusion on the inside, but wrapped in a sense of wonder.

  I crossed the road and walked down a path that led to tide pools between the waves and the cliff, with seagulls circling high above. I noticed a dark spot, about twenty feet up the face of the cliff, with ice plants hanging stubbornly in front of it. I climbed up the rocks to find the entrance to a cave, larger than it had seemed from below, just tall enough for me to walk in upright. It led back a ways, then curved to the right. As it did, the sound from the wind and the ocean faded, and a few more steps took me into complete silence. At the back there was a dry spot, and even an outcropping of rock, like a bench against a wall. I sat down. This was exactly what I was looking for.

  “Alright,” I said to myself. “I’m ready.”

  For what, I had no idea. But it seemed that I had been drawn to this place. After all, wonderful things happen in caves. The man in the story had gone into a cave looking for truth, and found it. People hide in caves. I thought of a Bible story I had heard as a child about David. He was running from the soldiers of King Saul, who had been ordered to kill him. His path took him to Ein Gedi, the lavish oasis near the shores of the Dead Sea. Running for his life, he ducked into a cave—barely deep enough to hide him, but it was all he could find. As he lay there, pressed into the shadows, he saw a tiny spider at the mouth of the cave. For a moment, he forgot about the soldiers, and watched the spider as it spun its web over the mouth. Several minutes later, when the king’s soldiers came by, David pressed himself against the wall and held his breath as he heard them talking outside the cave.

  “He must be in here! Have you looked yet?”

  “Don’t bother. He’s not there. Look—there’s a spider web over the opening—he would have broken it if he’d gone in.”

  The soldiers went on, and David sat in total silence. It was then that he heard it—a very still, small voice. It was the voice of God—not the booming voice that comes when lightning strikes and the clouds part—the one that can only be heard in silence. The voice promised that God would always be with him. Throughout his life, it was this voice that guided him, inspired the Psalms he wrote, and aided him when he was lost.

  I wanted to hear that voice. That still, quiet voice. I wanted it to tell me the message I’d been missing, the one that Lenny had said was so obvious. A single word of truth. Anything. Even a “hello.”

  Okay, I thought again. I’m ready.

  I could feel my ears straining. I locked my teeth and sat absolutely still. Somewhere, deep in the cave, I heard a drop of water. Then silence again. Soon there were voices in my head, the usual ones, commenting and criticizing, and I shushed them away, lest they trample the still, small voice I desperately wanted to hear.

  I sat there for a long time. I could feel my heart beating. From time to time I heard another drop of water, but other than that, silence.

  No little voice came to me in that cave. I walked outside into the light, which seemed blindingly bright, and as I made my way back to the car, rain began to fall.

  I ARRIVED HOME, expecting Taly to be furious with me—she had every right to be, after I’d left her wondering where I was until after midnight the night before. I found her on the treadmill, walking very fast. She didn’t stop walking as she gave me the lecture—a vivid description of her panic, with details of the images that had run through her mind, including the muddy water flowing around my body in a ditch.

  And then, after the lecture came the sigh. It was a long, slow sigh, with a shaking of her head.

  “Joel,” she finally said. “As I was lying in bed last night, waiting, I realized something. For months I’ve been hoping against hope that your voice would come back. But I can’t do it anymore.” She pressed the pause button and the treadmill stopped. “I love you, the kids love you, but it’s time for us to go on. Without your voice.”

  TALY’S MESSAGE WAS NOT the one I wanted to hear. No, what I wanted to hear was that still, small voice, and I wasn’t about to give up hope. I went through my days looking for signs. I got my hair cut and listened to the barber’s chatter—maybe he was the messenger? I looked for messages in the clouds and omens in the shadows. I bought lottery tickets once a week, figuring I’d had enough bad luck, and I might have some good luck coming. I opened the newspaper at random, closing my eyes and pointing to a word, hoping a lightbulb would go on. I wore my lucky sweatshirt. Everywhere I went, I looked for omens. Hummingbirds, like the one I’d seen on Highway 1, had always been my talisman, and whenever I spotted one, I took it as a good sign.

  Then one night about a week later, I simply got tired of waiting. Taly and the kids were asleep and I felt like I would break in two if I didn’t do something, anything. Entering the kitchen I saw a huge pile of dishes. That was something I could do, even if I didn’t like to do it. I set to work, starting with the easiest items—glasses and plates—then worked my way to the more challenging pots and pans. I filled the sink with soapy water and thought again about my visit with Lenny.

  The truth. He’d said I was running away from the truth. I should turn and face it. Alright, then, just what was this truth that was supposed to be so young and beautiful, I asked myself as I scraped something black from a baking pan. Well, the truth was that my voice was gone. Taly was right. The nerve that had controlled my vocal cord was not in shock; it was dead. It had been nearly four months since the surgery. It wasn’t coming back. The window of opportunity had closed.

  That was the truth, plain and simple, and it was far from beautiful. I scoured a frying pan which, as far as I could recall, had never been completely clean. Without my voice, my storytelling days were over. There was no other way around it. It was almost funny; I had made a career out of spinning whatever life sent me into a story, like a juggler spinning plates on sticks. But now that I had stopped, everything had come crashing down, landing here, in this sink full of dishes. Without my vo
ice, I could no more spin stories than the miller’s daughter in “Rumpel-stiltskin” could spin straw into gold.

  Traveling the world telling stories had been a dream, one that I’d followed for nearly twenty years. It had taken me a long way, but now it was over, gone the way of my father’s violin playing and my mother’s journalism. I had once read that middle age is when you stop worrying about being like your parents and discover that you’ve actually become them. It was at that moment, over the sink, that I turned middle aged.

  I cleaned Taly’s yellow teapot, which really didn’t need cleaning, and remembered my high-school graduation. The valedictorian had stood before our class, eyes full of tears, and said, “These have been the best years of our lives.”

  “God forbid,” I had said at the time. The idea that life would go downhill from high school was a horrible thought. She’d been wrong; life had gotten much better since then. Yet now, it seemed, I was on my way down. No longer was I the great dad I had once dreamed of being, or even a very good one. I was grumpy most of the time, and impatient, not unlike my own father when he was sick. I felt filthy with guilt and began to scrub the metal burner pans on the stove.

  It wasn’t just the kids I’d let down; it was Taly. I thought back to our wedding. It had been a traditional Jewish ceremony, and at the end the rabbi had wrapped a wineglass in a napkin, saying, “Let this remind you to treat each other well.” He had placed it on the ground. “For in life, some things are fragile, like this glass. As you break it, let it remind you that there are things that, when broken, can never be repaired.” I had stomped on the glass, and everyone had shouted “Mazel Tov!” And now, here we were, not quite ten years later, our glass shattered.

  That was the truth, plain and simple, I had worked so hard not to see. And there was nothing beautiful about it. In fact, it was old and ugly, and the more I looked at it the uglier it got.