Monastery Page 3

  My mother, perhaps in an attempt not to cry, simply kept taking quick sips of her heavily sugared green tea. My sister and her fiancé announced that, although it was supposedly a kosher restaurant, they wouldn’t eat anything in a place like this, saying these last two words with special emphasis, italicizing them. Disdainful and standoffish, whispering to each other—no touching till after the wedding—they drank only water. My father and brother shared a huge plate of vegetable chow mein in silence. My Peking duck was dry and overcooked.

  I FELT MY BROTHER KICK my leg and edged farther away from him and, faceup in our king-size bed, forced myself to recall those six words.

  As kids, my brother and I slept in the same room, our beds arranged perpendicularly, head-to-head. Every night after we brushed our teeth and got under the covers, my mother would finally come in, pick up our clothes, tidy up a few toys strewn on the floor, and ask us: Have you said your prayer yet? Then each of us, tucked under the covers, would repeat those six words in Hebrew, always the same prayer in Hebrew—quick, perfunctory, rote. First word: Shema. Second word: Yisrael. Third word: Adonai. Fourth word: Eloheinu. Fifth word: Adonai. Sixth word: Echad. Six words. The same six words in Hebrew that made no sense to us, that had no meaning beyond invoking the presence of my mother, who would come in to say good-night, to kiss us good-night. We would each mumble those six words and then get a kiss on the forehead and then we could fall asleep. Life was simple. Sleep was sweet. Prayers, perfunctory or not, comprehensible or not, made their own kind of sense. I can’t imagine a prayer, any prayer, having a meaning more profound than a mother’s good-night kiss. I don’t remember when we stopped saying that prayer, my brother and I. Maybe during the cynicism of adolescence. Maybe when we each got our own room. Maybe when my mother stopped offering a good-night kiss in exchange for those six words, and those six words definitively lost all their meaning, all their logic.

  I felt my brother’s cold feet on mine as he lay beside me in a deep and peaceful slumber. Perhaps to get back at him, or to make sure I could actually remember them, or to see if they still held any enchanted maternal sway, I began whispering those six words into the darkness of the night, lying faceup, exhaling them up, using all of my breath to drive them upward. Over, and over, and over. Until the six words became a flat shapeless mass and I got bored or maybe I just fell asleep.

  I’M GIVING THAT ASSHOLE ten more minutes.

  My brother, furious, was sitting on the sidewalk beneath the meager shade of a cypress, rolling another cigarette. I kept quiet. I know his fury well, and the best thing to do is keep quiet. We’d been waiting almost an hour at the entrance to a Jerusalem neighborhood called Kiryat Mattersdorf.

  The night before, as we left the Chinese restaurant, my sister had asked us to meet her fiancé there, at the main entrance, on Panim Meirot Street. He wanted to show us around the neighborhood of the yeshiva where he studied. My brother and I immediately smiled at each other, each with the same thought: Not a chance. We said no thank you, and my sister shook her head in disgust and said she didn’t even know why we had come, then mumbled something that might have been in Hebrew, turned, and stormed off. But the next morning (again I’d heard or dreamed the same shrieking or wailing in the night), my mother came to the room to wake us up: her face forlorn, her voice desperate, pleading that we go, that it wasn’t much to ask, that it would be for only a short while, that it was for our sister’s sake, for our brother-in-law’s sake. She called him that. Our brother-in-law. I hadn’t thought of him as a brother-in-law. There are words that suddenly lose all meaning.

  TWO VERY YOUNG SOLDIERS passed by, holding machine guns, dressed in green, wearing black berets, and on seeing them, possibly because I was tired of waiting, I instantly recalled the one time I’d played in a heavy-metal concert. I was fifteen or sixteen. The band had telephoned me because they urgently needed a keyboardist for a concert that weekend, and they knew I played piano. They were punk, or heavy metal, or some bizarre mix of the two. They were called, to my parents’ horror, Crucifix. I didn’t understand their urgency. I didn’t understand what piano had to do with heavy metal. And though I didn’t like that kind of music at all, flattered and naïve, I accepted. We practiced once or twice at the singer’s house, and it took me no time to learn the simple, repetitive, monotonous chords of their songs. I showed up the day of the concert in jeans and a button-down shirt and they laughed at my preppy attire, and with leather and chains and black makeup and black boots and a black beret, they proceeded to disguise me as a punk rocker. We played to a theater full of teenagers, and I tickled a few keys here and there. When I got back home, I was still euphoric. Maybe even humming one of their metallic melodies. I went into the bathroom and turned on the light and contemplated the punk rocker in the mirror. My costume, I suppose, had worked. I wet a towel and leaned in toward the mirror to take the makeup off my eyes, only to discover that on the black beret, smack-dab in the middle of my forehead, was an enormous swastika. A Nazi swastika. I snatched the cap off my head to inspect it from up close, without the distortion of the mirror. The swastika was embroidered in black thread. Factory stitching, expert stitching. I remembered that as they were dressing me, someone had hurriedly stuck the beret on my head. I never saw it, never saw myself with the beret on, never knew that I’d played two hours to a full audience dressed as a Nazi punk rocker. Did that make me a Nazi, at least for those two hours, at least in the eyes of those teenagers? I felt something in my stomach. Nausea, maybe. It was already after midnight, but I went back out. I walked for blocks, until I’d gotten far enough away from my house. I came to a wasteland and cast the beret into some bushes, hard, far, as if casting into the night my honor or my guilt.

  HERE HE COMES, I said to my brother, eyeing my sister’s fiancé as he crossed the street toward us, his gait slow and disdainful. He was still wearing the same black suit and the same white shirt as the night before. You can’t smoke once we go in, he said the moment he approached us, no greeting whatsoever, no apology whatsoever for his late arrival. My brother muttered something, stood up, and wearing an expression I knew all too well, continued to smoke his cigarette in a leisurely fashion, making us stand there waiting until he’d finished the whole thing.

  As we walked to the entrance, my sister’s fiancé explained that the neighborhood of Kiryat Mattersdorf was Haredi, perhaps the most conservative offshoot of Orthodox Judaism, also known as ultra-Orthodox. He was telling us something or other about the rabbi who’d founded it in 1959, when we passed a big security gate, painted bright yellow, still open. What’s this for? I asked, interrupting him. To close the street off later, he said, for Shabbos (the Yiddish word for Shabbat). I asked him why. He said it was forbidden for cars to come through during Shabbos. He said driving a car on Shabbos was forbidden. He said that this law was based on one of the thirty-nine prohibitions of the Mishnah, the first text written about Jewish oral traditions. He said a Jew never questions what is written in sacred texts, as they are the laws of Hashem, who is all-powerful. He said that since today was Friday, there was a lot going on. Shabbos is almost upon us, he said. We’re preparing for Shabbos, which begins in less than an hour, he said, his eyes raised heavenward.

  In a tour-guide voice, and in something of a rush, he showed us the outside of the building where his yeshiva was located. He showed us the building that was the synagogue, and the building that was the school, and the building that was the old people’s home. We kept walking down the street and he kept pointing out buildings where some famous rabbi or other lived, and where yet another famous rabbi or other lived, saying their names as if we knew who they were or as if we cared. He introduced us to several of his friends, all dressed like him and all speaking like him and almost all American. The women, wearing the same dresses and head scarves as my sister, ignored us. The Orthodox kids laughed and played around us the way all kids laugh and play.

  My brother wasn’t saying anything. From time to time, we simply turned to loo
k at each other or glanced at our watches or shook our heads. I felt as though we’d suddenly stepped into another country. A country radically different from the one we’d left a few steps behind, just on the other side of the yellow security gate. A country physically confined, decidedly self-contained, cloistered somewhere between yellow security gates and huge invisible walls.

  I noticed many of the men heading for the same door of an old cream-colored building. All of a sudden, we too were heading for the door of that old cream-colored building. We walked up dark steps to the fourth floor, the highest floor, and for the first time that afternoon I felt nervous.

  THE APARTMENT SMELLED of sweat, of taffeta, of confined bodies. The front door was left open and black-suited men came and went. Some wore lightweight black overcoats. Some wore black felt hats. Some wore straggly beards, while others wore them neat and trimmed. Some greeted us with a pompous gesture or whispered at us in Hebrew or possibly in Yiddish. We went through the entryway and through the dining room and a long hallway and came to a room full of men standing and sitting on sofas and folding chairs. Maybe twenty or thirty men, all dressed in black, all praying. Not a single woman. Looking toward the back, I caught sight of a great white mound atop an armchair that more resembled a throne. White cloth. White silk or satin. I got the impression that all of the men there were praying to the great white mound. It took me a while to realize that within the white mound, like a shelled seed poking out from the center of it, was a head.

  Rabbi Scheinberg, my sister’s fiancé whispered to us. Who? I asked. Deliberate, disgruntled, he replied: Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg. Who’s that? I asked, watching the tiny round head covered in gray hair, and my sister’s fiancé adopted a solemn air and exhaled a slight puff of air to make my ignorance clear. A great rabbi, he said. Rosh yeshiva, he said. Morei d’asra, he said. Posek, he said. Gadol hador, he said. And all I got was that he was an important old man, well respected in the community. Right, I said, suddenly realizing that what was on top of the old man were dozens, maybe hundreds, of white shawls, white tallit. Why’s he like that? I whispered to my sister’s fiancé. Like what? Like that, I said, hiding, practically buried under all those tallit. Tales, he corrected me, using the Yiddish rather than the Hebrew word. I knew little about what the white shawls—tallit or tales or whatever they were called—signified to Jews, beyond the fact that men wore them during prayer, on their shoulders and sometimes on their heads, like some sort of scarf or tunic. I remembered the one I’d had as a boy, all white, with sky blue and gold lines. I remembered its maroon suede case. I remembered one time when I dropped it mid-prayer in the Sephardic synagogue (there were two synagogues in Guatemala: an old Sephardic one in the center of the city, and a newer Ashkenazi one built in the shape of a Star of David and right next to a McDonald’s), and my father rebuked me as though I’d just broken a very precious object and then made me pick it up off the floor and kiss it. My sister’s fiancé, in hushed tones, explained to us that Rabbi Scheinberg was the only rabbi in the world to wear so many tales at once. Why does he do it? I asked, whispering. My sister’s fiancé smiled with condescension. Perhaps he welcomed my question. There are many different opinions among rabbis about how the tales should be worn, he said, and how the tzitzit should be tied. What’s that? Tzitzit, he said, are the knotted strands at the end of the tales. These, he said, showing me his. Right, I muttered. Rabbi Scheinberg, he said, wishes to respect all the different views on how to wear a tales and how to tie a tzitzit, and that’s why he wears so many tales when he prays, he explained, all those tales, a tales for each view. He fell silent and I kept staring at the old man’s pale little head. He looked as though he were in need of air. He looked as though he were suffocating. He looked as though he were drowning in all that cloth. He looked as though he were being buried beneath that which should have saved him. I felt pity, and fear, and perhaps a certain humility. Suddenly, my brother, who had said nothing up to that point, whispered: So what you’re saying is that rather than take a stand, he wants to get in good with everybody at the same time. But my sister’s fiancé either didn’t hear him or decided to ignore him. This is a privilege for you, he said. I wanted you to experience this. This is my gift to you. I’m going to stay and pray, but you two can go, he said, and he was swallowed up by the black sea of men.

  OUTSIDE, IT WAS BEGINNING to get dark. The yellow security gate was down. A festive air prevailed in Kiryat Mattersdorf, in the buildings, in the houses and apartments, in the entire neighborhood. But not in the two of us.

  We walked in silence out to Panim Meirot, the main street, and began waiting for a taxi. All of a sudden, without giving it much thought, not sure if I was serious, I told my brother I wasn’t going to the wedding. A taxi sped by without stopping. Then another one. What do you mean you’re not going to the wedding? Exactly that, I said, I’m not going to the wedding. And why not? he asked. I didn’t know how to respond, how to explain the exasperation I was feeling toward all that pretentiousness, all that farce. Or was it fear I felt? Was it something else? What was I actually trying to escape from? I didn’t know. The only thing I did know was that I needed to get as far away as possible from all of that, and from all of them, and maybe, if I could, even from myself. I don’t know, I whispered to my brother, and he frowned and shook his head and said, raising his voice, that we were there for our sister, that it was our sister’s wedding, that the wedding was what we’d come to Israel for, that I was crazy. Yeah, could be, but I’m not going. I can’t. Another taxi sped by. You can’t or you don’t want to? my brother asked, his voice now rather aggressive. I exhaled and replied, my voice just as aggressive, that it was the same shit. Because of all this, I suppose? he asked, almost as though it were an insult, his fiery glance cast back, perhaps encompassing all of the buildings of Kiryat Mattersdorf, perhaps encompassing all of Judaism. Maybe, I said. Well if that’s the case, he said, then you’re being more intolerant than they are. I kept quiet. Whether you like it or not, he said, whether you accept it or not, you’re as Jewish as all of them. That’s the way it is. That’s your heritage. It’s in your blood.

  It struck me then, watching my brother stand there in front of all of the gray buildings of Kiryat Mattersdorf, that the discourse about Judaism being in the blood, the discourse about Judaism not being a religion but something genetic, sounded the same as the discourse used by Hitler.

  There are thoughts that jump up, dark and clammy, like little frogs.

  Neither of us spoke again. Finally, a taxi stopped. Just as we opened the door to get in, we heard shouting and howling from behind us. It was a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews from Kiryat Mattersdorf. They were enraged. They were shouting at us and insulting us for getting into a car during Shabbat. Some of their stones landed very close.

  THAT NIGHT, AGAIN UNABLE to sleep because of the time change or because of the grimy old hotel, and smoking on the narrow balcony overlooking a pitch-black and possibly abandoned Jerusalem neighborhood, I missed my sister. That Orthodox woman, with her outfit and her wig and her sermons, was not my sister. I didn’t know who she was. But not my sister.

  I remembered her as a girl. Her wide-eyed gaze, her turned-up little nose, her beautiful black curls. And then I remembered this: my sister, so shy in public, hiding behind my father’s legs, refusing to let go of my father’s legs. And then I remembered this: my sister sucking her thumb until she was ten or eleven. She sucked only the right one, and only when she was holding a worn pale yellow blanket that she—to our public delight—called her Booby, and whose lace stitching she would scratch with the fingernail of her index finger as she sucked her thumb (recently I found out, amazed, that all those years of scratching had unraveled a dozen yellow blankets). And then I remembered this: a letter that my sister had written the tooth fairy, to apprise him of our upcoming move. We’re moving, she’d written. Please don’t forget to come for my teeth. And then I remembered this: my sister’s reaction when, after admiring him for years, she
finally met Mickey Mouse in person, on our first family trip to Orlando. Look, sweetheart, here comes Mickey, my father had said. My sister looked swiftly down at the ground in an attempt to find a mouse there, and on seeing the huge creature in front of her, she burst into sorrowful tears. And then I remembered this: my sister on my mother’s lap, on a private balcony at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, where we’d gone one night to see Cats. When the show began, all the lights were dimmed and the actors, dressed as cats, made up as cats, their eyes flickering green and red and yellow like cats, slunk out and prowled stealthily through the audience. A black cat, perched on the ledge of our private balcony, was so shaken by my sister’s panicked screeching that he nearly fell, and he had to come out of character and whisper to her that it was all right, that he wasn’t a real cat but a regular man, a man like any other, a man who was just dressed as a cat.

  Smiling, I decided to stop remembering and stubbed out my cigarette.

  I was about to open the sliding glass door to the room, when yet again I heard the shrieking or wailing. So I hadn’t dreamed it. There it was again, out there, down below, somewhere in that dark and abandoned Jerusalem neighborhood. It no longer sounded like a baby crying, but like many babies crying. Like a whole hospital or nursery school, I thought, where all the babies have started screaming or crying at once, almost in unison. High-pitched cries, loud, horrible, tormented. Though by turns they sounded more like the cries of an animal or a pack of animals, frightened, or dying, or about to die. I thought of the bleating of lambs. I thought of the slaughter of lambs. I thought of sacrificial lambs. Of course—I was in Jerusalem. I stood listening for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t figure it out. There was no light and no moon and no one around, not a single soul down on the street below. Then, maybe having given up, maybe just too scared, I turned and went back into the room. My brother slept the exquisite, motionless sleep of a little boy.