by Milk;Honey
The fourth wall was taken up by an oversized picture window that framed a canyon view of towering eucalyptus trees, shrubbery, wildflowers, and mountains. Rav Schulman’s desk was in front of the window, placed away from the wall so that chairs could be positioned on either side. The rabbi sat with his back to the window, and when Decker entered the room, he motioned him to the chair with the view.
But Decker didn’t sit right away. Instead, he studied his father’s phylacteries.
Rav Schulman regarded Decker’s restlessness, had known something was amiss when his student called him immediately after the Sabbath requesting to learn. Schulman had told Decker to come to his study an hour after his Saturday night lecture to his rabbinic students.
Decker shifted his gaze to Schulman. As usual, the rav was dressed in his black silk suit, starched white shirt, black tie, and high-polished oxfords. The old man met Decker’s stare with perceptive eyes. Though Decker had second thoughts about being here, it was too late now. Schulman knew he was troubled, so he might as well get it over with.
Decker spoke first, saying, “Rabbi, how much of our behavior do you think is inherited?”
Schulman shrugged. “I wouldn’t even hazard a guess, Akiva.”
Calling Decker by his Jewish name. His name for over a year. But it still sounded foreign.
“My father”—Decker paused, then clarified—“my adopted father, my real father, I should say, is a very gentle man. Gruff outside but a sweetheart inside. I’m anything but gentle. I wonder if my biological father had a nasty temper.”
The rav stood, his eyes pained by Decker’s question. He twirled the tip of his silver beard around his finger. “What’s really on your mind, Akiva?”
“I met an old friend of mine,” Decker said. “We served in Vietnam together. He brought back memories—of myself—I’d just as soon forget. But it wasn’t just him that made me aware of this. Once in a while, something will happen and I’ll just lose control. I get this murderous look in my eye. Happened just the other day with Rina.” Decker blushed. “You knew Rina had been in town, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” Schulman said. “We had several nice long talks.”
The old man had to know they were sleeping together, but Decker couldn’t read it in his face.
“I owe you a mazel tov, Akiva,” Schulman said.
“Thank you,” Decker said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for her to say yes.” He cleared his throat. “I want to be a good husband to her, a good father to her boys. I want…I don’t want them to be afraid of me. But sometimes it’s as if I’m possessed. Something just takes control of me.”
“Yetzer Harah,” Rav Schulman said.
Decker considered his answer. The Yetzer Harah—the evil inclination. As good a description as any. He said, “It’s not lust or gluttony or greed. It’s just plain evil. Desire to destroy. What the he—what’s wrong with me?”
“What do you do when your Yetzer Harah is strong in you?” Schulman asked.
“I usually manage to hold it in until I get off work,” Decker said. “I work out the horse—too vigorously. I take potshots at my barn. If someone’s around, I’ll scream at them. Once, I kicked my dog. Funny thing is, these rages aren’t necessarily brought on by anything big. It’s just a feeling that overwhelms me.”
“You seem to be controlling yourself pretty well,” Schulman said. “Though we should be kind to animals of course. Tzar ba’alei chaim.”
“The only trouble is, now I live alone, and no one except maybe the dog and my horses know about my temper.” Decker faced the old man. “But that will change. Rina saw me lose control once. I don’t want her to see it again.”
“Well,” Schulman said, “it’s nice to be able to be perfect, but we all lose our tempers—”
“But—”
“Wait,” Schulman said holding an upright hand.
“Sorry.”
“You get angry, I get angry, everyone gets angry. What you seem to be talking about”—The Rabbi spoke in a crisp, accented voice—“is extraordinary anger, which I suspect has something to do with your war experiences, otherwise why would you bring that up in the first place?”
Decker didn’t answer.
The Rosh Yeshiva went over to his desk, pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. He poured a big one for himself, a smaller one for Decker, and said, “So, do you want to tell me about it?”
Decker held the glass, swirled the whiskey. “It’s hard.”
“Let me guess.” Schulman downed the first shot. “You killed someone. You probably killed more than one person, but one specific person is sticking in your mind. Notice I used the word ‘kill’ and not ‘murder.’ A war situation, Akiva, you cannot consider yourself a murderer…unless the killing was gratuitous.”
“I didn’t think so at the time,” Decker said. “I swear—”
“No shevuah, please,” the old man said. “Swearing is serious business.”
“I really thought that this girl—she was a sixteen-year-old girl—was enemy. I shot her at point-blank range. She…exploded all over me. Her blood was still warm…God, it was awful.”
“Sit,” Schulman demanded. Decker obeyed. The old man said, “Did you rape this girl before—”
“God no!”
“Just a question,” the old man said. “You’d be surprised what kind of confessions have come through this office.”
“I thought Jews don’t confess.”
“To God, we confess everyday,” the rav said. “But confession to man is not a part of our religion. Unofficially, however, my bochrim have told me things. Believe me, you’re not the first young man to tell me his dark secrets.”
He poured himself another shot and urged Decker to drink. “Since this isn’t confession in the Catholic sense—where a parishioner unburdens his soul and a priest listens and forgives in the name of God—I’m going to tell you one of my war stories.”
“Please,” Decker said.
“You know I was in the camps, nu?”
Decker nodded.
Schulman said, “I escaped in a very strange way. Only God could have fated such a rescue. I was young, but I came down with a very bad case of pneumonia. No use to the Nazis anymore. The Germans took a truckload of us out into the forest to be shot. Why out there, I don’t know. The grounds around Auschwitz were piled high with dead bodies, maybe they were running out of room.”
Decker winced, but Schulman was calm.
“So they drove us out for miles,” the old man continued. “Deep into the forest until they found a clearing. They stripped us naked and commanded us to line up against a row of trees. Oaks. That I remember, strangely enough—the leaves, the bark…Anyway, the Nazis ordered us on our knees, backs straight up, hands behind our heads—typical execution position. They had dogs with them in case any of us decided to make a run for it. I thought, This is it. I said Shema.
“But as we were lining up to be shot, I limped behind a tree and tried to hide. I should have been spotted at any moment—the tree trunk was narrow, minimum shield—when suddenly, poof, I’m swallowed up by the earth.”
Decker stared at him.
“Just like that!” Schulman snapped his fingers. “I went straight down. I figured out later that I must have stepped into some kind of animal trap. No one noticed my absence, because who counted Jewish bodies? Piles of leaves and mulch covered my head.”
Schulman paused a moment and knitted his brow in concentration.
“I heard everything. The crying, the moaning, the shooting. Pop, pop, pop. One by one. All the while, I’m shaking, thinking at any moment I will be discovered. I was petrified I was going to sneeze or cough. But I went unnoticed.”
“A miracle,” Decker said.
“Truly,” Schulman said. “A ness—a miracle from Hashem. Now, to make a long story short—”
“No, please—” Decker said. “Don’t cut it short for my sake.”
“I cut it short for my sake,�
�� Schulman said. “You don’t like your memories, I don’t like mine.”
Decker said nothing.
Schulman said, “I somehow survived my bout of pneumonia—baruch Hashem it was the summertime—and I became a very sturdy young man, living like an animal in the forest for two years. Throughout my wanderings, I met very few people. Hermits with beards down to their knees. Crazies, feral, bestial people who lived by their instincts and wits. Maybe even a few of the crazies were escaped Jews like myself. But no one would let on, nu?”
Decker shook his head.
“Finally, I came upon a righteous Gentile couple who befriended me. Allowed me to live in their barn an entire winter. They provided me with blankets, hot coals, and coarse bread. This couple even dared to risk their lives by hiding me in their haystack when their SS son came on a surprise visit.”
Schulman sipped his drink. “I tried to locate them after the war. I was unsuccessful.”
He was silent for a moment.
“Their son’s visit made me realize what a danger I was to these people. Without them asking, I went on my way. I lived—survived—eating berries and leaves, drinking water from streams. And I found a gun, several, in fact. Being kosher, I never attempted to hunt for meat. I don’t have a shochet’s mentality, though theoretically I know how to ritually slaughter an animal. And I was able to sustain myself on the fruit of the forest. After such a ness, I was not able to transgress the laws of kashruth even if I had the excuse of pekuah nefesh—saving a life.”
“I wish I had your faith,” Decker said.
“You experience a ness like that, the faith just comes, Akiva,” Schulman said.
He paused a moment, then went on. “Toward the end of the war—I didn’t know it was the end of the war back then—I came across one of Hitler’s elite wandering the forest. He was a young man—around eighteen, nineteen—dressed in a dirty uniform—and was roaming about half-dazed, his eyes glazed over. He must have become separated from his regiment. He saw me, snarled, and fired out one word at me. Juden. That triggered some…primal anger deep within me.”
Schulman’s eyes hardened.
“I became enraged, reached for my gun. Suddenly, I saw fear in the boy’s eyes, Akiva. Imagine how that felt. A scrawny beaten-down Jew instilling a Nazi with terror. He started begging me for mercy, crying out his mother’s name. I remained unmoved, thinking, Gornish mein helfin. Nothing would help him now. I knew if I let him go and he should be saved, I would be hunted down and shot. Or he’d just go on to murder other Jews. For my sake and the sake of klal Yisrael—the Jewish people—I…shot him.”
He shrugged and looked Decker in the eye.
“Never any question as to the morality of what I did,” Schulman said. “I knew I was correct. It didn’t bother me then, it doesn’t really bother me now. But every few years, I dream about that boy. I see the terror in his eyes. I wake up, say a bracha to God for delivering me. But then I ask myself…” He pointed his finger in the air and his voice took on a singsong cadence. “If I was so right, why does God allow me to see this child’s terror as clearly as the day I shot him?”
“Do you have an answer?” Decker asked.
“I have postulations only,” Schulman said. “My primary thought is that Hashem wanted me to experience the fragility of life. As that boy’s life was in my hands, so am I in Hakodosh Boroch Hu’s hands. That was the purpose of the biblical sacrifices. Do you think that Hashem needed us to give Him a goat or a ram for His ego?” The old man stuck his finger in the air. “Of course not!”
Decker smiled.
“Hashem wanted us to know how precarious is our hold on the thread of life. One minute that animal was alive, full of strength and vigor. A second later, it was dead. So it was with that boy. Those dreams come to keep me humble, Akiva. To make me understand that we are mortal creatures.”
“Nothing like a war to make you feel mortal,” Decker said.
Schulman patted his shoulder. “If I may interpret your pain, I’d say what you saw in that young girl’s death was your own mortality. And it scared you. Witnessing death firsthand, taking a life—horrifying, frightful. You don’t even realize how scared you are until after it’s all over. First you’re relieved to be out of that situation…then you become angry. Like discovering a practical joke had been played on you. The more scared you were, the more angry you are afterward. And the anger can stay with you a long time.”
“You were angry?” Decker asked.
“Furious! Enraged! Crazed with vengeance!”
“So how did you get rid of it?” Decker asked.
“Who said I did?” the old man cried out. “I’m still an angry man! Sometimes I’ll be reading an article in the paper about those mamzers from the Historical Review—the Nazi mamzers who say the Holocaust never happened. I read about the skinheads. I want to kill them. Ah, but I don’t. And you may get angry, start shooting at the barn, but you don’t murder, do you?”
“No,” Decker said.
“Ask God for forgiveness, Akiva,” Schulman said. “Hakodosh Boroch Hu is the only one who can give you solace. I’ve told you that before.” He stood up, motioned Decker to do the same thing. The old man embraced him tightly, then looked him in the eye. Still holding him, he said, “Then, my boy, have the courage to forgive yourself.” He broke away. “Enough of the past. Let’s learn a little Talmud.”
28
A weekend of dreaming in red, the images so realistic that even after Decker had awoken, he was disoriented. His heart raced, his skin was damp and sticky, his gut knotted with raw fear. Monday morning was especially bad, because he had to leave the confines of his bedroom and face the world. It took him a long time to shower and shave, to dress and say his morning prayers. He felt inanimate, removed from his flesh—a series of circuits programmed to follow a routine. It was as though he’d lost proprioception—his sense of self. He left for work without eating.
He knew the job would jolt him back to the present. With familiar people in familiar surroundings, he’d be okay, able to function. But the freeway ride over the mountains seemed surreal, the steamy hills melting into the asphalt, the cars’ blurs of steel—futuristic cockroaches speeding away from burgeoning sunlight. Even the station house seemed an oddity—a dirty white stucco building planted in the middle of a burned-out field. A gag gift from some alien architect.
What brought Decker back to earth was the odor of Hollander’s pipe.
“What tractor ran you over this morning?” Hollander asked.
Decker glanced at the clock—quarter to nine. “I think I’ll call Marge.”
“I just spoke to her, Pete. She sounds a lot better than you.”
“She’s okay?”
“Due to be released at ten. Her current flame is picking her up, and she sounded very pleased about that. You know, I think it was real lucky that she’s dating a shrink. I mean, he’s probably pretty good for her at a time like this.”
“Probably.”
“Building up her confidence,” Hollander said. “That’s the worst part. When you lose the confidence, start doubting yourself. Then things start looking pretty iffy out there.”
Decker didn’t answer.
“Something major happen to you, Rabbi?” Hollander said.
“I’m all right,” Decker said. And at that moment, he decided he was. His memories were like old photo albums, to be stashed away in an attic trunk, opened only on the rainiest of days. “Really, I’m fine, Mike.”
Hollander took a puff on his briar and blew out fruit-scented smoke. “Then you won’t mind hearing that an hour ago they sprang our buddy Earl Darcy on his own recognizance.”
Decker snapped to attention. “Who picked him up?”
“Sue Beth Litton,” Hollander answered. “I didn’t talk to her directly, but the jailer said she was pretty shaken by the whole thing.”
“Sue Beth didn’t have the foggiest notion of what she was in for when her brother confessed.”
�
��That was the jailer’s impression.”
The two men looked at each other, Hollander fidgeting with his pipe, Decker smoothing his mustache. With all that had happened with Rina and Abel, Decker had put his cases on hold. Time to bury the personal life and take out the professional one. Time to work!
“Think they’ll run?” Hollander asked.
“The thought crossed my mind,” Decker said. “Honey farmers could live a long time in the wilds, raise bees almost anywhere there’s cloverfield.”
“They seemed attached to their land.”
“I think they could reattach if they had to.”
“Yeah,” Hollander said. The stem of his pipe bobbed in his mouth. “Lots of cheap land outside of California, especially if they have Manfred money. Pick out some small town in Idaho or Montana. Continue where they left off. No one would ever be the wiser.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Pay them a visit?” Hollander said.
“Absolutely,” Decker said.
Hollander took the pipe out of his mouth and tamped down the tobacco. “You look better, Pete. Work agrees with you.”
A mile into the ride, Decker realized how much he missed Marge. Hollander operated the unmarked as if it were an adversary, oversteering each turn, jamming on the brakes whenever he stopped. He grunted as he drove, sang snatches of tunes over the dispatchers’ voices, making up lyrics as he went along. He had the decency not to smoke with the windows rolled up, but the pipe still leaked plumes of cheap tobacco. Decker sat rigid in his seat, his jaw so tightly clamped his teeth started to hurt.
