“Tell me,” she said, pointing in the direction of the ark, “did you happen to get a chance to look over …” The question trailed off.
I’d chosen the blue-mantled, hundred-forty-five-thousand-dollar Sephardic job, I recall Philip pointing out, but no, I hadn’t looked at it, hadn’t rolled it yet to the appropriate portion, hadn’t even removed its crowns or undone those tasseled ornamental cornsilk cords that loosely bound its twin cylinders. (Because I was working on the theory that it was Fate, God’s hand, that it was up to Him, that if He still wanted me chastised and publicly shamed practically a quarter of a century to the day after some overripe Chicago bar mitzvah pisher went head-to-head with Him over something as insignificant — to a child, remember, a little kid — as the thickness and shape of the letters in what was apparently the Father Tongue, if He, that is, could hold a grudge — or should I say Grudge, your Majesty? — every last second of every damned minute of every single one of those twenty-five years, just because I happened to be learning-disadvantaged in the Hebrew department, if all that His vaunted Mysterious Ways came down to was moving Jerry Goldkorn by way of Lud, New Jersey, all the way past the Arctic Circle so he could make asshole/asshole before a bunch of folks who weren’t too nuts about His Chosen People in the first place, then who was Jerry Goldkorn to sneak a peek, or look up the parchment skirts of some multimulti-K Torah?)
“No, Deborah,” I told her sweetly, “I didn’t happen to find an opportunity.”
As I said, and as Debbie predicted, the house was packed. Standing room only. I delivered my announcements to the bare quorum of Jews and approving goyim and unsmiling redskins, giving all of them the times for the next Jewish Singles’ Happy Hour (Alaskan corned beef, Juneau pastrami, rye bread flown in from magnetic north), and began the morning prayers. I thanked Him for redressing grievances, for being a Settling Scores kind of God, finished the prayers, told the congregation that we would read the Torah portion, declared the Sh’ma, and summoned Deborah Grunwald beside me to join me on the bema. Together we went toward the ark.
“Not,” I told her, speaking in my normal voice now too, in that customary pitch of conversation which, if it wasn’t audible in the first rows, was a proof of God’s existence that just by raising the volume a few ticks it was clear as a bell in Heaven, “because, counting Shavuoth and all those Friday night services, you must have set up the better part of a couple of thousand chairs for me by this time, and I owe you. Not even because”—our backs to the congregation as we moved toward the precious shittim-wood cabinet that contained the scrolls, I wasn’t even ad-even addressing her out of the side of my mouth, but was speaking flagrantly, profile to profile, like people in public seen from behind—“you’re a special favorite of mine, Rabbi’s pet, say, or something, well, lurid. I’ll tell you the truth, Miss Grunwald, lurid ain’t on my palette. I know how it goes in the world, how some-times it’s the priest gets the girl just because he is the priest. Not just the celibacy thing but because he has God’s ear, a line on the mysteries. That’s impressive to girls. Look, break in anytime if I’m out of line here, because, well, chances are I could be out of line and not even know it. See, I’m this Garden State rabbi and as much at a loss when it comes to the mysteries as everyone else. I mean, I’m impressionable too. Innocent beyond my years and trade. A rabbi who never had a proper congregation, who just says words over dead people for living people who don’t have the hang of or calling for it themselves. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you I’m the kind of shaman ladies don’t usually take a shine to. I regard myself as eligible and red-blooded as the next guy, but you’ve got to admit, the death of the next-of-kin doesn’t normally put someone in the mood. Widows never fell all over me, I guess I’m trying to say. So of course I never had much opportunity to fall all over them back. So it isn’t because of the likelihood of either of us having a crush on the other. It’s because I need a witness and you happened to ask the question is why!”
We opened the ark and took out the Torah. We removed the silver crowns and stripped the mantle from the loosely bound parchments. We were unrolling, separating the scrolls.
It was a little like waiting for a strip of leader to play out on film or recording tape. And at first, not distracted by the thick, black Hebrew letters, which always look, with their diminished, left-leaning hooks and finials like the spiky flourish on custard, as if no one not right-handed could ever have made them, it was easy to imagine that the hundred-forty-five-thousand dollars Alyeska was said to have paid for it may in fact have been its actual price.
The story of Creation came up, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Miriam, the Tower of Babel, Moses and the Exodus, Joseph and his coat of many colors, the Ten Commandments. The Sh’ma, the Mi Hamocha with its apostrophe to God—“Who is like Thee, O Lord, among the mighty? Who is like Thee, Glorious and Holiness, awe-inspiring in renown, doing wonders?”
And then its gorgeous parchment, the true, smoothly shaven, lime-buttered, chalk-rubbed skin of a sheep, abruptly ended, went the blank, vague, smudged and ancient ivory of a window shade.
“We missed it. Quick,” I told her, “roll it back, take it up. We missed it.” I fed her slack off my spool. Mi Hamocha went by, the Sh’ma. The Ten Commandments, Joseph, Moses, Babel. Miriam. Isaac and Abraham. Eve and Adam. Creation spun by and was furiously swept away back into blankness, the thick yellow light of the empty parchment. “It’s not here,” I told her, “it’s gone. Tish’a b’Av dropped out.” I looked at Deborah as if she might have taken it herself, like the Grinch who stole Christmas. Then we rolled it carefully in the opposite direction, the Torah bound on its wooden poles like newspapers in a European coffee shop. It was the same thing. The dietary laws were gone, the Korh Rebellion. It had all dropped out.
“Do you read Hebrew, Miss Grunwald?” McBride, some of the Indians leaned forward. I think they could hear me now, as if, with my question to Deborah, I had started the services up again, resumed the prayers. As, in a way, I had. “Do you know what we have here? Do you know what this is?” Deborah shook her head. So I gave them fragments from the story of Adam and Eve, selections from Exodus, a piece from the Tower of Babel, a bit from the Flood, throwing in all I could remember, whatever I had by heart, of the story of poor old God-bedeviled Job.
I assume the gentiles never noticed, nor the Indians. Maybe even some of the Jews.
Because what it was, what we had here on that authentic, lime-buttered, chalk-rubbed, hundred-forty-five-K sheepskin I was so taken with, were the Old Testament’s Greatest Hits!
The next, the last time, it was blank.
It was Rosh Hashanah. Deborah was gone too now. Which I might have expected. Which I did expect. What I hadn’t expected was that Howard Ziegler, Karen Ackerman and Milton Abish, on whom I counted to be there, if only out of the same goodwill and curiosity they shared with Arnie Sternberg, Dave Piepenbrink and the Jacobsons before their defections, didn’t show up either. I set up my own chairs, but I didn’t care about that. That was all right. I didn’t mind that part. What I minded was the other thing, the sense I had of having actually lost souls.
It doesn’t require much telling, this shouldn’t take long.
McBride was there again. I recognized Spike and recognized Ambest. I spotted Anderson, I spotted Jim Krezlow. And picked out others whom I’d first seen in Anchorage. Peachblow and Schindblist. Jeers, who had failed to qualify in the jackham-mer and been flown back to Alabama, had evidently come up to snuff and was being given a second chance. (Or perhaps not, maybe he was just there to see me.) There were Indians who looked familiar, and others from earlier fiascos. There were almost no Jews at all.