by Sigal Samuel
“She ran out of her hiding place, splashed into the water, bent down in the river. And what did she do? She grabbed his ankle—and kissed it! And then got very shy. Shy and scared, too scared to look up. What if he was angry? What if he hated her for spying? She closed her eyes and waited for judgment to fall. But, what? Did he punish her? Did he hit her? No. He bent down in the river, grabbed her ankle, and kissed it. And ah, that was it, it was all over for her. She stood. He gave her a kiss, a small kiss, right in the corner of her mouth. She gave him a kiss, a small kiss, right in the corner of his mouth. He pressed his finger to her lips. She pressed her finger to his. Sha, he told her without words. Quiet, be quiet, listen.
“Was it then that it happened, Lev? So fast, just like that? Or did it take her many more lessons, days, maybe, or weeks, to hear what the fish were saying? And the birds and the flowers and the trees and the sunlight and the wind? His secret language, his silent laugh?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again.
“Ah, how she loved him. He did not have anymore to write his stories for her—he could speak them to her now, in his own way, and she would hear him. How happy they were in their two-person world! How much taller they were than the rest of the village! All the poor people going about their little businesses, using pathetic spoken words—how sad and silly they all were! Didn’t they see that the language of silence was the most beautiful, most precise language of all? The only language that did not need to be invented by humans—the language that was actually spoken by God? And the voice of the Lord was walking in the garden . . . They did not see. And ah, how she pitied them. Because the tiny footfalls of silence, its tiny levers and pedals, you could feel them pressing on your skin if you learned how to open yourself to their music . . .”
I sat up a bit straighter. So that was it! The “voice of the Lord” was the silence all around you, and if you listened carefully enough, you could feel it “walking” all over you . . .
Mr. Glassman cleared his throat. “That was the happiest summer of her life. That summer of pity and music.” He sighed. “But her brother, his stories were sad. And she did not like this. She wanted he should be happy, she wanted he should make pretty things! ‘Make the world pretty,’ she begged him. So, for her, he tried. For a few weeks he told happy stories. Talking animals—giraffes, lions, birds—that sort of thing. But these stories were all failures. They did not tell the truth, and she, already, at ten years old, could feel that these stories were lies. ‘Make true things,’ she told him. She gave her permission and in return he gave his most beautiful, serious smile. And then, at the end of that summer, he told her another story. Ah, but what a story! The Kadosh Baruch Hu should guard us from such stories as that . . .”
The kitchen was now weirdly quiet. The only sound was the water rushing into the sink. But Mrs. Glassman wasn’t rinsing dishes anymore. I didn’t know how long she’d just been standing there, with her mouth hanging open like she’d had the breath knocked out of her. I watched her stay still a few seconds longer. Then, even though there were still dirty dishes left and even though the water was running over them and even though her hands were dripping wet, she turned away and walked out of the kitchen and slowly, maybe painfully, climbed the stairs.
Mr. Glassman let out a deep sigh. Seconds slipped by. Outside the window, a bird flew across the sky and cawed. Finally, he said, “I have kept you too long, you will come back another time and I will tell you Yankel’s story, yes?” I said, “Yes, sure,” and then I added, “Thanks for the lesson, Mr. Glassman!” before racing out the door into the fresh night air, which I gulped down into my lungs like a person who’s just been rescued from a shipwreck, and then I ran down the sidewalk and up the path to my house and turned my key in the lock.
Halfway through the dark hallway, I heard voices in the kitchen. Sammy was talking to someone and I was sure it must be Dad, but then I saw Alex and remembered that I’d invited him over for dinner. They’d obviously already eaten without me because Sammy was rinsing the dishes and Alex was loading them into the dishwasher, which was supposed to be my job. I was about to walk in but stopped when I heard what they were talking about. Me.
“Well, I just don’t get how Lev can think that,” Alex was saying. “Those people he was talking about, the ones who stick messages in the Wailing Wall, they’re praying to something that doesn’t exist! To some magical, all-knowing, unobservable life form that—”
“I don’t see how that’s any different from the messages SETI sends out.” Sammy laughed. “The Arecibo message was also sent out to ‘unobservable life forms’—”
“Yeah, but life forms that, if they do communicate with us one day, will be one hundred percent observable and verifiable! Whereas God’s messages are never—”
“Which, by the way, that’s another thing I don’t get about SETI,” Sammy said. “If there is intelligent life out there, and if it does send us a signal with a pattern, won’t it be drowned out by all the other noise in the universe? It’d be like us listening for one radio station that’s broadcasting news when a million other stations are broadcasting rock music.”
“Don’t worry,” Alex said, loading the last dirty dish with a smile. “SETI scientists are experts at listening. They’ve had tons of practice.”
Sammy turned off the tap and turned on the dishwasher. “What kind of practice?”
He sat down on the floor in front of the machine. “Come here, I’ll show you!”
She gave him a funny look, then shrugged and sat down cross-legged next to him.
“One time,” he said, “I read about these SETI scientists who would spend hours and hours listening to dishwashers and washing machines, searching for patterns in the chaos.”
“Does that really work? I mean, can you hear the patterns?”
“I’m not very good at it. At least not yet. But—”
She shushed him and pressed her ear up against the machine. He did the same. She closed her eyes, probably to help her hear the noise better. But he kept his eyes on her.
After seven gazillion minutes, Sammy started to smile.
“What?” Alex whispered. “Can you hear something?”
“Even better,” she whispered back. “I can feel it.” Without opening her eyes, she reached for his hand and placed two of his fingers on her wrist, her pulse. “See?”
A few seconds passed. Alex’s eyes grew huge. He stared up at her, then squinted, like what he was seeing was so bright it was almost blinding. Sun and moon and stars.
I walked backward on tiptoes until I reached the front door. I stepped outside and softly closed the door behind me. Then I opened it, stepped inside, and slammed it shut.
“I’m home!”
Later that night, after Alex had left, I walked down the hall and stood in front of Sammy’s closed door. She was chanting again, but there was something weird about her voice now.
It buzzed for half a second, then went quiet for eighteen seconds. It hummed for another half a second, then went quiet for thirty more. Goose bumps rose on my arms and I pressed my ear to the door and then I realized what the weird thing was.
Most people, when they read, read one word at a time. But my sister was not most people. She was reading one letter at a time. She was letting each vowel or consonant roll around in her mouth for almost a whole minute before releasing it onto the air. In between one letter and the next, I could hear huge stretches of silence. And the silence was strange and layered, and it made me feel happy and sad and lonely all at the same time.
I walked across the hall and lay on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I didn’t really feel like doing anything just then, except maybe praying, but I didn’t know what for.
On my way to school the next morning, I stopped at Mr. Katz’s. He was on the lawn, staring up at the Tree. The clouds kept moving back and forth over the sun, and if you squeezed your eyes shut and tilted your head to the left, the toilet paper rolls really did look like branches.
I stood next to Mr. Katz and we both squeezed our eyes shut and then I could see the cradles he’d hung up in the branches, around twenty or thirty of them swinging in the breeze. They looked like empty spider webs, shining in the sunlight, waiting for a fly to land. I said, “I’m sorry,” and he said, “What for?” and I said, “For not knowing what fruit was on the Tree,” and he said, “Don’t worry, we just need to have a little emunah, and the Kadosh Baruch Hu will teach us what fruit it was, He’ll make a miracle, just wait and see.” We tilted our heads to the left and waited.
The next Tuesday, I woke up and realized there were only a few days left before the science fair. I was feeling nervous that the whole thing was going to be a huge disaster since Alex had been practicing radio calls to the space station every day and so far he hadn’t gotten through even once. Alex said that was just because he’d been miscalculating the orbital trajectory, but he would get the timing right in the end, not to worry. I worried.
So after school, we walked to his house and went straight to his room. I was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on the poster, adding stars and planets to the sky I’d drawn up above the ham radio, but really I was watching Alex test the actual radio out.
“This is VA2KFO, this is VA2KFO, come back?” Alex said. VA2KFO was his call sign, which is like your code name if you’re a radio operator. “Hello, N1ISS, do you read me, come back?” N1ISS was the call sign for the International Space Station. “This is VA2KFO, this is VA2KFO, calling N1ISS, is anyone out there? Hello?”
Half an hour passed. Nobody answered. My stomach began to ache.
Finally, Alex turned around and shrugged. “I’m sure they’re just busy right now. Did you know astronauts have to do four hours of exercise every day, because of the microgravity? That’s probably what they’re doing right now, exercising. Anyway, their next orbit is in ninety minutes, so I’ll call again then.”
When he went to the kitchen to get a snack, I decided to take a break from the poster board. I walked around his room. I looked into his telescope but I couldn’t see anything because it was daylight. I sat on his bed, which had dinosaur sheets on it now, which made me feel a bit embarrassed for Alex. Then I looked at his bookshelves and noticed how, even though Alex’s floor was a huge mess, his books were arranged in an unbelievably logical way.
All the books about astronomy were together. One shelf was full of books about the human brain. Another shelf had books about animals, the bottom shelf was completely packed with science fiction, and the top shelf was bending under the weight of three gazillion comics. Inside each perfect category there were smaller, hidden categories, because all the books were also arranged alphabetically by author—last name, then first name—and also by height, and also by color, and also by whether they were hardcover or softcover.
Then I saw a small hole in the wall beside the bookshelf. I got down on my knees to look at it and there was a tiny scrap of paper stuffed inside. I pulled the paper out and opened it.
The first thing I noticed was that it had a very tiny map of all the streets in our neighborhood, and a red X where Alex’s house was. The second thing I noticed was that it had a few words scribbled at the bottom. It said: DEAR GOD. I AM HERE EXACTLY. WHERE ARE YOU EXACTLY?
The next day, I went to Mr. Glassman’s house to see if he was around to teach me more about the Tree of Knowledge.
When he opened the door, at first he looked right through me, then he looked at me like he didn’t recognize me. Then he said to come in, so I came in. I asked, “Where’s Mrs. Glassman?” and he said, “Chayaleh is not feeling well.” His hair was sticking up like crazy around his ears and the buttons on his shirt were done up all wrong. He kept staring down at the number tattoo on his arm. I said that maybe I should come back another time, but he said no, we should learn some Torah, it might help her get better, so I said okay.
We went into the kitchen, but practically the second we sat down we heard a loud crash from upstairs, like maybe Mrs. Glassman had knocked over a lamp or something. Mr. Glassman looked scared and ran up the stairs.
I waited around in the kitchen but after a while I got jittery so I climbed the stairs, too. When I poked my head into the bedroom doorway, Mr. Glassman whispered at me to come in.
Mrs. Glassman was lying in bed but I could tell she wasn’t exactly sleeping, just resting, because her eyelashes were fluttering. Mr. Glassman gave her a sip of water and then put the glass on the floor, near where a lamp had fallen onto its side. He waved me into a chair.
“Chayaleh is ill,” Mr. Glassman told me. “She will recover with the help of the Kadosh Baruch Hu but it is very serious. The doctor gave her a new medication. He says now we must wait and see how she reacts. Wait and see, wait and see, all he ever says is wait and see! You would think a doctor could tell you something one hundred percent, but no, they like to toy with us. Well, and why should it be so surprising? After all, He toys with us, too.”
Mr. Glassman pointed up at the ceiling. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. He seemed to be in a weird mood.
“Did Chayaleh ever tell you the story of how she and I met? No? Well, you know, when I was a boy—fourteen, fifteen—I wanted to be a mathematician. I was the best student in mathematics, and the teacher, Mr. Krakowski, told me that if I worked hard he would give my name to the university in Göttingen, to recommend that I study there. Then one day Chayaleh enters the class. I soon learn that she is smart—very smart—annoyingly smart. I do not admit it to anyone, not even to myself, but I know she has a better kop for mathematics than even to me. She is so curious, for every fact Mr. Krakowski teaches she has seven questions. He says that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, she wants to know why. He says that even nature is made according to the rules of mathematics, she wants to know how.
“For many months we are rivals and I hate her bitterly, more bitterly than Haman and his evil sons, may their names be erased. Then one summer afternoon I walk into the forest and see her tall shape walking through the trees. Every so often she bends to pick something up, studies it for a minute, then wraps it up in the scarf she is carrying and keeps walking. I follow her, hiding behind trees so that she should not see me. But eventually I am so curious to know what she is doing, I forget to hide, and she whips around and catches me. ‘What are you doing?’ we shout at the same time. ‘Were you following me?’ she says. She is very mad. ‘What are you collecting?’ She does not answer me, so I grab the scarf and open it. Inside I find a bunch of pinecones. ‘What do you need with all of these?’ She looks at me, still very angry, and lifts her chin up in the air and says, ‘I am checking to see if what Mr. Krakowski said is true. About the Fibonacci numbers appearing in nature.’
“And that’s it. That’s all. Something inside me releases, like a thousand elastic bands letting go all at once. I am so happy that a little laughter bubbles out of my throat, I can’t help it—but this is a big mistake, because Chayaleh thinks I am laughing at her, and she does not talk to me for an entire month after that. She is a very stubborn girl, but eventually she forgives me. I lay a pinecone on her doorstep every day for a month, and eventually she forgives me.
“We spend the last few weeks of the summer lying in the forest together, in the sunshine, we talk, we kiss, we examine the pinecones, we fall in love. One day, she suddenly gets very serious. She turns onto her stomach and tells me she does not want to love me anymore. ‘Why not?’ I want to know. ‘Because you cannot depend on people. They are always changing. They are not like math, like numbers, that always stay the same. People, they come and go. You cannot trust them.’ I am shocked, I don’t know what to say. We lie there in the sunlight, not saying anything, listening to my silence. It makes a very loud noise. She gets up and leaves me.
“For weeks I am miserable. Then one day our teacher Rabbi Loew is telling us about how the great commentators, blessed be their memories, used gematria to interpret words in the Torah. Have you learned it yet
in school, the system of gematria? No?”
I shook my head, so Mr. Glassman got a paper and a pen and started scribbling.
“You see, in the system of gematria, every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a number. Aleph is one. Bet is two. Gimel is three. When I hear this, I am so excited I can barely contain myself. I rip a page from my notebook and spell her name, then my name.”
I looked at the paper on Mr. Glassman’s knee and saw:
8 =
8 =
10 =
10 =
10 =
5 =
40 =
30 =
5 =
Chaim = 8101040
Chayaleh = 8105305
“At the bottom of the note, I scribble: You see? People and numbers are not so different. She sits three seats to the right and two rows back. I watch impatiently as the note travels to her, uncurls in her hand, sits beneath her gaze. Suddenly she smiles. She looks at me and I am so happy, a little laughter bubbles up in my throat, I can’t help it.
“The next year is when the tzures start. They, may their names be erased, begin with their deportations. I am deported one day, with no warning, no chance to say good-bye. In the cattle car all I can think is, what if Chayaleh forgets about me, who knows how long we will be separated, what if we don’t see each other for years and years and by the end of it she does not recognize me? They take me to the camp and make me stand in a line. Left, right, left, right, my eyes flick from side to side, I should be praying to end up in the good side but who knows what is the good side, if there is a good side, what do they know from good sides? I lose track. Suddenly it is my turn. I am told to turn right. I turn right.
