“We can hasten the arrival of the Moshiach by intensifying our simcha or rejoicing. Simcha is obviously connected with the Moshiach or why do both words contain the Hebrew letters ‘shin,’ ‘mem,’ and ‘ches’? Similarly there is an inner link between Moses and Moshiach, as witness the verse, ‘And the sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come …,’ which is clearly a concealed reference to the Moshiach, as the words ‘yavo Shiloh’ and ‘Moshiach’ are numerically equal. Also equal are the words ‘Shiloh’ and ‘Moses’, proof positive that the coming of the Moshiach is related to Moses. Furthermore, ‘yavo’ is numerically equal to ‘echad’, which means one; therefore we can deduce that the Moshiach = Moses + One.”
When Isaac was to enroll in the yeshiva a month later, an elated Henry flew down to New York with him. Father and son made directly for Crown Heights. They stopped for a Lubavitch beef burger at Marmelstein’s, on Kingston Avenue, and then went out for a stroll.
“We’re being stared at,” Isaac said.
“It’s your imagination.”
They paused to look in Suri’s window, filled with glamorous wigs for the wives of the faithful who had shaven their heads to render themselves unattractive to men other than their husbands. Reflected in the glass, Isaac saw men across the street pointing him out, whispering together.
Sleek black hair. Brown skin. “They’re going to take me for some kind of freak of nature here,” Isaac said.
“Narishkeit. We’re among good people,” Henry said, taking him by the hand and leading him into the Tzivos Hashem store.
Garishly coloured portraits of the Rebbe, similar to the pictures of saints peddled at the kiosks outside provincial cathedrals in Europe, were on display everywhere, framed in plastic pressed and burnished to resemble pine. The Rebbe’s graven image was also available in postcard and wallet-window size or embossed on canvas tote bags. Isaac overheard a bearded man say, “Don’t look now, but it’s the rich meshuggena from the northland.”
“What can I buy for you?” Henry asked.
“Nothing,” Isaac said, glaring right back at a couple of pimply boys of his own age. “Let’s go.”
Next Henry took Isaac to the yeshiva to sit in on a study session with one of the Rebbe’s younger acolytes, swaying over his text:
“We look into the mirror,” he asked the men gathered at the long table, “and what do we see? The self, of course. You see yourself, I see myself, and so forth and so on. If we have a clean face, we see a clean face in the mirror. If we have a dirty face, that is what the mirror reflects back on us. So when we see bad in another person we know that we too have this bad.
“Now looking up into the mirror, we see the face, but looking down, what? The feet. You see your feet, I see my feet, and so forth and so on. The Rebbe has pointed out to us that on Simchas Torah one does not dance with his head—he dances with his feet. From this our beloved teacher has deduced that a person’s intellectual capacities make no difference on Simchas Torah and this is equally true for every Jew worldwide.
“Looking into the mirror you should also note that the higher is contained in the lower and the lower in the higher. But the reverse is also true. Chassidus teaches us that the lower is revealed in the higher and the higher in the lower.”
Isaac yawned. He yearned to see Broadway. The Felt Forum. A hockey game in Madison Square Garden. The offices where Screw was published. The McTavish building on Fifth Avenue.
“Are we going to visit Uncle Lionel?”
“I think not.”
But Henry, carrying charts, did take him to Columbia University. While Henry conferred with a climatologist, Isaac sat on a bench in the outer office. Bored, he dipped into the Mishneh Torah Henry had bought him at Merkaz Stam. The Messianic King, he read, will be a descendant of the House of David. “Anyone who does not believe in him or does not wait for his coming, denies not only the statements of the other prophets, but those of the Torah and Moses, our teacher. The Torah testified …”
Finally Henry emerged from the climatologist’s office, looking chastened. “Tell me, yingele, do you think your father is nuts?”
They made another stop, this time at an address on W. 47th Street, where Henry had to see somebody about a pair of diamond earrings, a gift for Nialie.
“How long will you be?” Isaac asked.
“A half-hour maybe.”
“I’ll wait outside.”
Bearded men in bobbing black hats seemed to be everywhere, flying past, briefcases chained to their wrists. Sirens wailed somewhere. The traffic stalled. Isaac, moving along, caught up with a bunch of people gathered in a semi-circle at the corner of Eighth Avenue. Thrusting through to the front, he came upon a ragged black boy turning cartwheels, two of his chums dancing on their heads. Then he was accosted by a girl wearing a see-through blouse and a silver miniskirt. Her hair was dyed orange and purple. Isaac, frightened, started back.
Crossing Seventh Avenue, he made out Henry in the distance, pacing up and down, searching, sidecurls bobbing. On impulse, Isaac retreated into a doorway. Look at him, he thought. With his millions, we could be living in a penthouse here. He wouldn’t have to keep dirty photographs of a skinny girl in his bottom desk drawer, he could afford the real thing, but, no, it had to be Tulugaqtitut. Shit. Fuck.
Henry, increasingly frantic, was stopping passers-by, obviously describing Isaac to them, asking if they had seen him. Five minutes passed before Isaac, taking pity on him, emerged from his hiding place. The instant Henry spotted him striding down the street he raced forward to embrace him. “Thank Hashem you’re safe,” he cried, even as Isaac wiggled free, embarrassed.
Two days later Henry returned to Tulugaqtitut, laden with books. Isaac didn’t see him again until he flew home, two weeks before Passover, and the two of them set out on the journey that led to Henry’s death only a hundred miles short of Tuktuyaktuk.
Four
The first thing Isaac noticed when he flew home for Passover was the new ship with three masts locked into the ice in the bay. Damn. Just what he needed, in case the gang in the Sir Igloo Inn Café didn’t already have enough to tease him about. The ship, which had been built in Holland, had its planking doubled, the bow and stern bolstered with steel plates. It was provisioned with sacks of grain and rice and dried vegetables, the immense freezer stocked by the Nôtre Dame de Grace Kosher Meat Mart. Crazy Henry’s Ark, they called it.
“You just got home,” Nialie said, “and already you are in a bad mood.”
“Forget it.”
Nialie soon had more to worry about. The night before Henry was to start on his journey a big menacing black raven pecked at their bedroom window, wakening Nialie with a start. She clung to Henry, pleading with him not to go, but he insisted. The trip was traditional. Every spring, two weeks before Passover, he and Pootoogook set out for a hunting camp of the Faithful, some 250 miles east along the Arctic shore. The Faithful counted on Henry to bring them boxes filled with the bread of affliction and wine appropriate to the feast days. Furthermore, Henry pointed out, this Passover’s journey would be a special pleasure for him. Pootoogook, troubled by arthritis, would not be coming. Instead Henry would be taking Pootoogook’s fifteen-year-old grandson Johnny and, for the first time ever, Isaac, whom he counted on to continue the tradition in later years.