Cass wasn’t sure in which of the two offices he’d find him. The door to the smaller of them was ajar, and Klapper was sitting at his desk, calmly writing. He didn’t turn at the sound of Cass’s footstep, so Cass knocked on the open door, and the professor turned around in slow motion.
“Ah, Reb Chaim. Take a seat.”
Jonas Elijah Klapper was smiling, and Cass recalled that inexplicable gleam of triumph that had vied with righteous fury for control of the professor’s face, as if the screaming match with Browning Crisp was the realization of all that he could hope for.
“So, Reb Chaim, here we are!”
Cass nodded. Professor Klapper’s face looked almost glazed with well-being.
“But not for long,” Klapper continued in response to Cass’s nod. “I shall soon be departing Frankfurter University. Indeed, I am going to a distant land. I shall be telling you where before too long. There are things I cannot yet say. I am enjoined to preserve the silence of the Dura Valley, or, to paraphrase the Valdener Rebbe, the silence of the Hudson Valley.”
The creases in his pate that had been pressed into place by ceaseless cerebration were smoothed, the blued shadows that mottled his jowls and the half-circles beneath his eyes were lightened, his coloring, usually cement-gray, was roseate, and even the down slope of his eye seemed raised several degrees. Perhaps this was the face of beatitude.
“The Valdener Rebbe, may his name be blessed, spoke to me in the allegorical mode, this being the only means by which certain things may be imparted, a threefold interpretation being customary. And so it was that the Rebbe spoke of the special-needs children in the community. These children are beloved of God and yet separated from Him through no fault of their own. They lack the means to find their way through the sacred paths of learning. I alone, the Rebbe said, of all the men whom he had ever met, had the connections to help these children.
“‘The special-needs children of the community’ refers to the nation of Israel in exile, and the connections of which he spoke became clearer to me as he went on.
“He spoke of a child, one child. ‘On such a child I never dreamt to rest my eyes.’”
Klapper was a good mimic. Cass could hear the Rebbe’s voice lurking beind Klapper’s.
“He called the child ‘my son,’ and as he spoke his eyes glistened with the purity of his tears. ‘Abraham despaired of a son, and then Isaac was born. Hannah, too, despaired of a son. She went with her husband to the temple at Shiloh and prayed with such ardor that Eli the priest thought she must be drunk or out of her mind and wanted to throw her out.’”
And though Cass knew that Klapper’s eyes would move inexorably in the direction of the photograph, when they did he had to resist the urge to flee.
“‘I, too, knew such despair.’” He was still speaking in the Rebbe’s voice. “‘And as it is written of the Arizal, the lion of S’fat, so it was with the child. The child grew and was weaned and was brought to school and learned more and faster than any child his own age, following in the footsteps of Isaac on the way to Moriah.’”
Cass’s desire to flee had grown so urgent that he could feel it as a physical sensation spreading through his limbs.
Klapper had now sunk into profound reflection, and Cass cautiously began to rise from the green metal chair.
“Stay!” Klapper bellowed.
Cass sat down swiftly.
“I have alluded to the fact that I shall shortly be leaving these shores. It will not surprise you to learn that I shall be going to the holy city of S’fat, where my footsteps have always been pointed. In a manner of speaking, I am going into exile, at least for some years. I can take only one student with me. I have chosen you.”
“Me?”
“You seem surprised. I wonder why. Perhaps it is the humility of the true disciple.”
“But what about the others? What about Gideon Raven? He’s been studying with you for almost thirteen years. He understands your ideas better than anyone.”
“Gideon is a more-than-adequate student of my past. But you, Reb Chaim, shall be the student of my future. You have already had a taste of the bitterness of exile. I had a divination concerning you, even before I knew who you were, and I tested you. You are aware of what I allude to?”
“‘Dover Beach’?”
Klapper’s smile was benedictory, and he nodded once.
“I have too soft a heart and could not extend your trial too long. You see how nothing is as it seems? In a moment of abject humiliation, the loftiest of futures can be received. As Hannah and her son were lifted aloft, so, too, the tested student.”
Even Roz was stunned when Cass related this conversation with Klapper.
“S’fat? Where the hell is S’fat?”
He had gone to her place on Francis Avenue, hoping to find her there. She answered the door in a purple towel, her hair dripping wet. She had gone for a late run and had just gotten out of the shower.
“It’s in Israel. It’s where the Jewish mystics congregate. One of the hot spots.”
He wished that she didn’t go running at night. She was fearless, and he loved that about her, but he also worried.
“The Hot S’fat!” she said, laughing.
It would be wonderful to take care of her. She was a woman, even if she was Suwäayaiwä, and he wanted to take care of her.
“It’s not really funny.”
She was beautiful and brilliant, strong and immensely kind.
“It’s not?”
And she loved with such force. She had loved Tsetse, and she loved Azarya, and she loved him, too. She loved Cass Seltzer.
“He wants to take me along with him. Only me. None of the others. Not even Gideon. He’s abandoning them all.”
As wild and unpredictable as she was, she was always on his side. That was and would always be predictable. And he was on hers. Even without always getting what her side was, he knew with certainty that he’d be on it, and she’d be on his.
“What a shit. Still, you have to admit it’s all for the best.”
What a thing it is in this world to have somebody always on your side.
“I hope Gideon sees it that way. I worry that he’s about to become the most disappointed man in the world.”
“I don’t know. He’s got a lot of contenders.”
Cass was staring at Roz.
“What is it, Cass? Do I still have shampoo in my hair?”
He stooped down swiftly to one knee.
“I love you, Suwäayaiwä!”
“Well, I love you, too!”
She followed suit and got down on one knee in her purple towel.
“No, no. You have to stand, and I have to kneel!”
“Okay.” She got back up. “What are we playing?”
“We’re not. I’m proposing.”
“What are you proposing?”
“Marry me! Marry me and become Suwäayaiwä Seltzer.”
“Good one!” She laughed. “No, wait a minute! You mean it! Darling boy, get up. You’re upsetting me down there.”
He got up. She put her hand on his cheek.
“I can’t marry you, Cass.”
“Never? I know I’m young, but I’m getting older quick.”
“Cass, I can’t think about marriage, and you’re only thinking about it because you’re having a breakdown and haven’t realized it yet.”
“I don’t think I’m having a breakdown. I think I’m realizing that you’re the most perfect woman in the world.”
“Well, of course I am.” She gently stroked his hair. The tender gesture made her feel even more impossibly tender. “I’ll always be there for you, but I need a life of maximal options.”
“Don’t you think you could live with maximal options married to me?”