by W. E. Gutman
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Cover
Other books by W. E. Gutman
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Postscript
Back cover
FLIGHT FROM
EIN SOF
W. E. GUTMAN
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
Flight from Ein Sof
Copyright ©2012 by W. E. Gutman
ISBN-13 978-1-927360-88-0
First Edition
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gutman, W. E., 1937-
Flight from Ein Sof [electronic resource] / written by W. E. Gutman – 1st ed.
ISBN 978-1-927360-88-0
Also available in print format.
I. Title.
PS3607.U86 F65 2009 813.6 C2009-900633-2
Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
Original art and cover design by Tony Cartisano, Norwalk, Connecticut.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the author.
Publisher:
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
www.ccbpublishing.com
To a worker in the vineyard of negentropy, with heartfelt gratitude.
*
And to my wife, Linda
with love.
Also by W. E. Gutman
Journey to Xibalba –
The Subversion of Human Rights in Central America
© 2000, Reporter’s Notebook (out of print)
NOCTURNES – Tales From The Dreamtime
© 2006, Fiction (ISBN 1-4259-5951-2)
ADRIFT – Life In Transit
© 2008, Autobiography (ISBN-13 978-0-9810246-9-1)
The Inventor
© 2010, Fiction (ISBN-13 978-1-927360-89-7)
A PALER SHADE OF RED –
The Roots of Dissent, Memoirs of a Radical
© 2012, Autobiography
One Last Dream
Un Dernier Rêve (French translation)
© 2012, Screenplays
ONE NIGHT IN COPÁN
Chronicles of Madness Foretold
© 2012, Short Stories
... This time for sure, this time forever, but it turned to sand slipping through our hand, as time slipped away ....
The Grateful Dead
Scripture -- when it says that God is angry with sinners and that He is a judge who takes cognizance of human actions, passes sentences on them, and judges them -- is speaking humanly and in a way adapted to the received opinion of the masses.
Its purpose is not to teach philosophy, nor to render men wise, but to make them obedient.
Baruch Spinoza
There is no Absolute, no Reason, no God, no Spirit at work in the world: nothing but the brute instinctive will to live.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It is useless to talk about reality in metaphysical terms as reality can’t possibly reflect the fragmented and hallucinatory nature of the dreams that reality m i m i cs.
Unlike reality, a dream does not have a “meaning.” A dream is its own meaning.
PROLOGUE
A close friend, a fellow-journalist, inhabits his past the way Diogenes occupied his barrel -- a loner given to periodic fits of acrimony and despair.
Whereas Diogenes sought “Light” (knowledge) in the shadowy regions of human credulity, malice and stupidity, my friend retreats into the darkness of his own ruminations. Defying logic, given to self-treachery, he claims that everything that happened yesterday was wholesome and joyful. He dreads today. He lives in fear of tomorrow. A casualty of his own selective memory, he is visited by black-and-white recollections of a Gatsby-like adolescence, of doting parents and foppish peers stylishly attired in the latest art deco couture. He dredges up silver-screen memories of cruises to exotic locales, winters in Zermatt, lavish suppers at La Tour d’Argent in Paris, gala performances at London’s Covent Garden and lazy afternoon tennis parties spent sipping Veuve Cliquot Champagne in fluted crystal glasses. He replays halcyon days filled with improbable metaphors further tarnished by the passage of time. He stopped wearing a watch for fear that each ticking second takes him closer to the brink.
In his closet, hangs the elegant ensemble in which he will be buried -- a black velvet Dior suit, a pink poplin shirt and an Italian silk vintage tie bought in Milan for the occasion twenty years ago. He fears death but, damn it, he will put himself on display in an open casket, suitably made up, a hint of rouge adorning his lips, a white carnation pinned to his lapel. He cares not a whit about life but he will take his final curtain call with studied chic.
“You don’t find that bizarre,” I ask. “Or paradoxical?”
“That’s who I am,” my friend pleads.
“That’s who you engineered,” I retort.
“I can’t change.”
“You refuse to change. Misery loves company.”
The humble reed sways and bends and yields in the wind. The mighty oak tenses up and resists, snapping like a twig and toppling over. Everyone can change. I feel sorry for my friend but I’ve stopped preaching the virtues of positive thinking, will power and optimism. His is a hopeless case. Yesterday is an unforgiving prison. He has committed himself there until the end of time.
In stark contrast, I live on the cusp of a never-ending tomorrow. A lifetime of inauspicious yesterdays has taught me to steer clear of the past and to keep an eagle eye on the future. The past is gone. It can’t be altered, revived or updated. I revisit it on occasion when memory beckons but the sojourn is brief and utterly lacking the tinges of maudlin melancholy that color my friend’s reminiscences and poison his existence.
Unlike my friend, who is mired in the rose water-scented dreams where yesterday’s evanescent specters congregate, I feel no nostalgia, no regret. I find his narcissistic fixation on “olden times” a noxious fad and a colossal waste of time. The past is irreversible. I file it away in some dark and dusty attic where I keep bric-a-brac and junk.
More rewarding than tomorrow -- which can’t be foretold, postponed or prevented -- is a dimension rarely glimpsed by the fretful or the hyperactive. It is so fragile and magical and fleeting a realm that most of us traverse it without notice, conscious scrutiny or recollection. It’s a spatial and temporal continuum better known as “here-and-now,” whose assets are squandered with gluttonous frenzy by the unmindful and the emotionally comatose.
It was in Ein Sof, where I spent what seemed like the mere blink of an eye, that I navigated, after months of frenetic but meaningless exertions, the troubled waters of introspection. How soothing it was, once back among the living, to reconnect with my inner self, to surrender to life’s alluring embrace. Yes, I retold myself as time stood still: More useful than the past, safer than the future, is an existential realm that is tangible and lucid, at once fleeting and ceaseless. It’s the present, a place not bounded by geography, a circumst
ance unmarked by clocks. For those who have the courage to settle in its ineffable actuality, it’s the only place to be. Anyone yearning to break free from the shackles of the past and the ambiguities of the future will always find a warm welcome in its bosom.
I know I didn’t have to cross such galactic distances to apprehend the obvious. But serendipity is where you find it. As I came to, cleansed and brimming with a thousand spare tomorrows, I thought of my friend and others like him who, submerged under the weight of a thousand yesterdays, shackled by myth and superstition, can find no peace. Because they have ceased to dream, they have also ceased to be.
*
To be raises an interesting inference. As I transited in Ein Sof’s misbegotten universe, a part of me kept asking: Am I dreaming, or am I being dreamed by someone dreaming he is me? The question, the province of ontology (the nature of existence) and epistemology (the nature of knowledge) is simply this: Where does dream end and reality begin? Are my ruminations the byproduct of a heightened state of consciousness or the undigested leftovers of surplus meditations? Is reality a dimension only an involved observer can traverse? Or am I an accidental onlooker fated to replay reality through my mind’s eye? These and other questions not easily enunciated with words and pondered many times in silent thought -- as well as in my sleep -- have yet to yield suitable answers. As I would find out, a stopover in Ein Sof, however brief, exacts its own heavy price.
ONE
I arrived this morning after a brief and uneventful journey. I have scant recollection of this crossing. I may have suppressed it. I was eager to leave, disembark and settle in, and I paid little attention to the featureless landscape that unrolled before me. Unlike my travels of yore, when every ripple on the open sea, every cloud, every blade of grass, every flower picked along the way enthralled me, this voyage elicited only impatience. Not so very long ago I had dawdled, happy to suspend the moment as ports-of-call sang their siren song in the distance. Meandering to the antipodes and back had helped quell boredom, quench recurring pangs of wanderlust. I likened these expeditions to hitching a ride on a time machine that defies the sameness of immovable space: I sought in transience an antidote against immutability.
Wars, migrations and expatriations (or was it ruthless heredity?) had predisposed me to the meanderings that would highlight much of my life. Suitcases, always at the ready, were to me what wings are to birds, devices by which one takes flight, instruments of escape.
In a rare moment of controlled frustration, my mother had once astutely remarked, “When you’re here, you're restless and melancholy, so you go there. And when you’re there, you can’t wait to move on. Where in this vast creation can you ever find contentment,” she asked. I remember blurting out, unconsciously, what must have been a self-evident truth.
“In between, mama, in between.”
Time moves on with unrelenting swiftness. With it comes change, some unforeseen, some unmanageable. “Time,” said Henri Bergson, “is what hinders everything from being ceded all at once.” His was an optimist’s perspective. Time is a thief: it takes back everything it cedes -- itself included.
It was in haste and with a feeling of relief that I now proceeded toward my final destination. If you recall, it had been a year of gloomy forecasts and apocalyptic omens. Crops were dying, ravaged by torrential rains, droughts and cyclonic winds. Starvation was spreading across the globe and those who were not yet dying rioted in the streets and paid with their lives at the hands of crazed constabularies and vigilantes gone mad. Dark passions, political and religious, threatened to envenom societies already weakened by decaying economies, corporate greed and unregulated capitalism. Everyone, even the most sanguine, privately conceded that a menacing morrow lay ahead.
*
Despite my protestations, friends and relations had gathered to see me off, some armed with useless offerings, others so moved by my imminent departure as to shed a few ceremonial tears. The tears, I knew, would soon be stemmed. Life has a way of dimming surplus memories. You can always count on those most given to mawkish displays to recover from the deepest sorrow. Time heals everything. And life goes on.
My instructions had been clear: No crying, no lofty words, no banalities, no expressions of regret, no outpourings of maudlin sentimentality, no long-drawn sendoff, no flowers -- especially no flowers. I’d always hated goodbyes, not because “parting is such sweet sorrow” but because I had detected, even as a child, a troubling insincerity in the effusiveness of the farewell ritual. I’d seen too many congealed smiles of regret and tear-imbibed handkerchiefs; I’d heard too many words of staggering triviality when silence would have spoken volumes. I’d witnessed too many gestures that bordered on hysteria but broadcast no sadness to know that people are capable of Oscar-worthy performances.
“Hate to see you go.”
“Take care.”
“We’ll miss you.”
“Have a great trip.”
“One more hug for good luck.”
“Love ya. Don’t forget to write.”
Oh, shut the fuck up! They all did what people do when they sacrifice tact and discretion at the altar of convention and vulgarity. I endured these theatrics until I could endure no more. I thanked everyone for their solicitude and bid them adieu.
*
My parents were there to welcome me. They looked well rested and beaming, their ghastly urban complexion now healed by a radiant tan, the kind of otherworldly glow that people acquire after a few months of retirement in the sun. We spoke about this and that -- hurried and disjointed bits and pieces snatched out of the blue. Life. The weather. The economy. The greed of the governing elite. The imbecility of the governed. Aunt Ernestine’s goiter. Little Adam’s Bar Mitzvah. We would reprise it all in greater detail as we relaxed, just the three of us, late into the long night ahead.
I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to be introduced to my maternal grandfather. He’d left Yesod the day I was born, never to return. I also met for the first time my paternal grandparents, both of whom had perished in Hitler’s gas chambers. They seemed none the worse for their ordeal, just older and grayer than they appear in the sepia-tone family portrait, the neat taupe three-piece suit and fedora my grandfather wore and the graceful beige silk and lace attire my grandmother sported a bit faded, their former crispness dulled by time.
They in turn presented me to my paternal great-grandfather Fabian, the one who carried bitter memories of his childhood well into adulthood, “Fretful Fabian,” who, sobbing, had told my father of the indignities he suffered at the hands of his own father, Abraham, and the sly and wanton young woman Abraham took for a wife a month after Fabian’s mother died.
Abraham, a prayer shawl wrapped around his shoulders and a skullcap cockily perched on one side of his head, smiled at me reflexively, the way strangers part their lips in token civility when first introduced. We did not shake hands. With five generations separating us, the blood that flowed through his veins and mine, the blood of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac, of David and Solomon and, who knows, maybe even that of the Jew named Jesus, seemed stripped of all dynastic relevance. Relegated to mythical status, the reviled patriarch examined me from head to toe with a mixture of languid amusement and detachment. He might as well have been gawking at a monkey in a zoo. He followed me with his eyes but said not a word.
As I weaved through this genealogical conclave, I also became re-acquainted with a host of long-lost uncles and aunts and cousins, many I’d never met before, others with whom I’d socialized on very rare occasions before I left Yesod for the golden shores of Ein Sof. They too displayed cursory interest in my person, uttering token banalities easily acknowledged with a nod, a grin or one-syllable grunts. Thankfully, they spared me the tedium of small talk.
That evening, we all gathered around a large table festooned with plates of sliced stuffed derma and sizzling latkes, saucers brimming with gefilte fish, kishka and vine leaves filled with rice, large platters of fried mamaliga squares
daubed with sour cream, and tureens overflowing with piping hot cholent, an indescribable but savory mishmash of potatoes, barley, beans, carrots, garlic, mushrooms and fried onions. We drank fermented cider, schnapps and plum brandy. And this being Purim, we also scoffed hammentash, bite-size raspberry, apricot, and prune tartlets shaped like the ears of the dastardly Persian vizier Haman, the appendages by which, according to legend, he was hanged to avenge his genocidal plot against the Jews.
Jews celebrate victory or flight from persecution by eating. They mourn catastrophe and death and expiate sin with a fast. Our history is filled with feasts, abstinence and famine. Every calamity is seen as divine retribution, God’s payback for the debauchery and impiety of his people. No disaster, no torment, however inscrutable and cruel is deemed trivial because every event, every setback, every tragedy is the manifestation of Yahweh’s will. Upheavals and grief and misery are tolerated, if not subconsciously longed-for, precisely because they herald purification and redemption and are encoded by God himself. God has decreed that Jews may not defy their own destiny by repudiating Moses’ legacy without unleashing upon themselves the fires of hell. This is why Jews, to this day, live in a state of controlled anxiety, the Diaspora’s assimilated ones subliminally, the new Canaanites with greater urgency.
“When will it ever end,” asked my great-great-grandfather Abraham rhetorically, his eyes fixed heavenward, his right fist softly hammering the left side of his chest, unaware that his grandson, grandson’s wife and several of their children had perished, that they were now mere statistics in the nihilistic calculus of the Final Solution. No one had had the heart to tell him. Or he had forgotten. This form of induced amnesia spares weak men the trauma of storing up too much knowledge which, everyone knows, can render them mad. People at the table looked quizzically at each other for a moment then continued to eat.
