Dante's Equation Part 3

"That's me." Denton gave his best smile and smoothed the lapels of his sports coat. He knew he made a good impression. His blond hair was fas.h.i.+onably trimmed, his nails manicured, his clothes expensive yet casual. He looked Ivy League. Slap a tennis sweater on him and he'd be ready for a casting call for aNational Lampoon movie. He worked hard to dispel that image in his personal life, but he used it when he thought it would buy him something. He extended his hand and the rabbi pressed it.

"I've heard so much about you," Denton said. "Everyone says you're one of the few experts left in the field of kabbalah."

Schwartz motioned to a chair. "Have a seat, Mr. Wyle. As I understand it you wanted to interview me? And this is, I presume,about kabbalah?"

The way he said it, kabbalah, in a rich, smooth rush, with a curious tweak of the syllables, brought goose b.u.mps up on Denton's arm. "That's right. And I really appreciate your taking the time."

He put his brown leather backpack on his lap and opened it to dig outTales from the Holocaust and his mini tape recorder.

"Can I ask what publication you're with? My secretary didn't get that on the phone."

"Um . . ." d.a.m.n. He should have had something prepared. He didn't think Rabbi Schwartz would approve ofMysterious World . Sometimes Denton told people he worked for a history magazine, but only when he was sure they wouldn't check him out. Schwartz looked like the sort who might.

"Mr. Wyle?"

"Sorry. I was trying to remember if I'd put new batteries in this thing." He held up the mini tape recorder. "I work for a magazine calledMysterious World . We cover religious mysteries, miracles, things like that." It was remotely true, if you considered things like Atlantis and tarot to be religious.

"Are you a.s.sociated with any particular denomination? Roman Catholic?"

"No. Not really." Denton held up the bookTales of the Holocaust . "Have you ever read this?"

It could have been his imagination, but he swore Schwartz looked at the book too briefly before answering. "No."

"It's, um, true stories from Holocaust survivors. I'm interested in one of the stories in particular, about a man named Rabbi Yosef Kobinski. Ever heard of him?"

Schwartz wiped his long beard with his hand thoughtfully. "Could be."

Denton was not getting the best vibes in this room. Schwartz was stiffening up, his face thickening like a time-lapse film of growing mold. Denton turned the charm up a notch, fixing a smile to his face. His muscles, used to smiling, held it effortlessly, like an Olympic gymnast standing on one leg.

"According to a supposedly true account by an eyewitness, Yosef Kobinski disappeared from Auschwitz in 1943."

Schwartz's lip curled. "Mr. Wyle, over six million were lost during the Holocaust."

"No. Hedisappeared . From Auschwitz."

Schwartz didn't ask him what he meant, which Denton found odd. He just looked extremely disinterested.

"So I talked to the editor ofTales . He said the old man who told this story was very reliable and not senile at all. Unfortunately, he's pa.s.sed on since the book was written, so I couldn't interview him directly. But the editor did recall something he'd left out of the book because he thought it would make the story less credible."

Schwartz was positively having a field day with that bored expression.

"What he didn't write was that Kobinski was a kabbalist. And the eyewitness was convinced that Kobinski used some kind of kabbalah magic that caused him to just . . . vanish."

"Mr.Wyle . . ." Schwartz shook his head in a tut-tutting gesture. His voice, to Denton's ears, did not ring true. He was now looking down at his hand, which had creepy longish fingernails and was carefully realigning papers on his desk.

Denton flipped open his notebook. "So I dug into a bit of research . . ." Actually, he'd paid his research a.s.sistant, Loretta, to do it for him. ". . . and came up with some other interesting cases. Moses ascended to Heaven in a cloud. Ezekiel vanished on a 'fiery wheel.' And there are lots of folktales about medieval rabbis and kabbalists pulling all kinds of, um, crazy stunts."

He laughed, but with a touch of respect,"heh-heh." He'd swerved into this later lightheartedness in an effort to get Schwartz to smile. He could sense which way the ball was rolling and was trying his darnedest to get on the other side of it.

But Schwartz rolled right over him. "Is there aquestion in there, Mr. Wyle? Or just foolishness?"

"You think the Ezekiel story is foolishness, Rabbi?"

"What's foolish is that I still don't know why you're here."

"I, um, hoped to get a little background on kabbalah. Speak to someone who really knew it. The real thing."

Schwartz steepled his fingers together on his belly thoughtfully, then shook his head. "You want background on kabbalah? No. I think you want foolishness-floating rabbis, mud golems, descending clouds. And I think thisMysterious World of yours is a foolish publication."

In all his days as a reporter Denton had run into plenty of naysayers and skeptics. But never had anyone been so unabashedly rude. "Uh. Well . . ."

"Kabbalahis sacred. Can you understand that? It isdeep, sacred work ." Schwartz leaned forward, glaring. "There are things in it so sacred they mustn't be said out loud even."

"Well, I don't mean any-"

"Kabbalah is, in fact, a privilege so rare, an elixir so potent, that even a Jewishrabbi may never earn it."

Denton sat frozen, his mouth still more or less in the outline of an understanding, patient smile.

"Well, I'm really just looking for a little sidebar material. Maybe I should ask some questions. Is thereanything in kabbalah which could explain a disappearance? Someone vanis.h.i.+ng into thin air? Or maybe some old stories about incidents like that? Because this eyewitness account seems really . . ."

Schwartz was holding up a hand, had been for some time. Denton trailed off, his words thudding to the ground like overripe tomatoes.

For a moment there was silence. Schwartz pressed his lips. "This is what I will give you. I will give you a story for your 'sidebar.' Ready?"

Denton nodded. He crossed his legs and tried to look grateful.

"Four sages entered Paradise. One was so enamored with what he saw that he could not bear to return to his life on earth and he died. One looked and became so immersed in the contemplation of the mysteries that he went mad. One thought the glory of the angels rivaled G.o.d Himself, and he gave up his religion in confusion and became an apostate. Only one had the maturity to handle what he saw. He survived to become a great teacher."

"That's nice. Thank you."

"Mr. Wyle, it is notnice . It is a warning to those who would thoughtlessly approach the gates of Heaven! I hope you will heed it."

Schwartz's eyes were piercing. Denton sat for a moment, trying to find something to say and failing.

Schwartz stood up, his tone lightening. "Done. I hope you enjoyed your visit upstate. It's beautiful countryside." He held out a hand. Denton stood slowly and took it. "Shalom,Mr. Wyle. G.o.d go with you."

Denton stood outside the yes.h.i.+va, rerunning the scene in his head. The moody clouds of spring opened above him and it began to rain. It sprinkled for about half a second; then it poured.

Water running down his face, still rooted to the driveway, the comic value of the deluge was not lost on him. He might even have laughed, were he not so humiliated. What! What on earth had just happened-besides the fact that he had walked in there completely unprepared? Why hadn't someone warned him that Schwartz was a kabbalah n.a.z.i? Why had he notbothered to seek out some of Schwartz's scholarly writing and figure out his agenda ahead of time? But no, that would have been too much trouble. He'd gone in there like a complete moron, "Oh, please, let me interview you!," a.s.suming that like alldecent religions-Christianity, for example-Judaism would not be able to resist a little free PR and a chance to sink its teeth into fresh meat. It was like an Ethiopian Jewish h.o.m.os.e.xual walking up to Goebbels and saying, "Hey, can I get your autograph?"ahuh ahuh ahuh.

Denton, you a.s.s!

And he'd gone to so much trouble to interview a real kabbalist, too. They weren't exactly listed in the phone book.

The Kobinski story described inTales was the most legitimate disappearance case Denton had ever run across. Real, live, historical people were involved. It hadn't happened in a locked room, not exactly, but ithad happened on perfectly dry land in the midst of a group-as ineyewitnesses . And the kabbalah spin had been too rich! He'dso been able to envision his article given the weight of legitimacy by fuzzy black wool vests, long beards, mysterious tomes, and fringes and freaking tweezers!

He plodded morosely to his car, shoes squis.h.i.+ng, got in. He was angry at Schwartz, angry with himself. But overtaking that, like some tardy but determined tortoise, was a squeezing in his chest, a sense of doom and danger-a panic attack.

He leaned against the steering wheel and took deep breaths. He hadn't been able to get Rabbi Schwartz on his side. Why, Rabbi Schwartz had never even smiled at him; he'd seen through Wyle's shtick as easily as if Denton were a housewife wrapped in Saran-hadn't liked him, hadn't engaged with him, hadn't given him theslightest freaking break .

Denton had a very hard time with rejection. When he was a boy and he'd felt this panic, he'd had visions of a rabbit: a rabbit sitting in a cage in the children's playroom, knowing that the kids had stopped being charmed by its cute fluffiness, had stopped coming around at all, and that the cook had a strange glint in his eyes these days. For when you were a rabbit, cute and fluffy was all you had.

But he wasn't that needy little boy anymore. Many,many people liked him now. Women, for example, he always had, and male friends, too, a lot of them. Some of them didn't even know about the money. He usually didn't tell the women he slept with, just to avoid problems. And mostly he got any woman he wanted-and many he didn't. Yes, people liked him very much as a rule. He was a goer.

But not Schwartz.

A movement caught Denton's eye, making him sit up straight in the seat and paste on a pleasant face. It was a kid walking a bicycle down the driveway. Denton had seen the boy in the library earlier, with his red curly hair and big gla.s.ses splattered, now, by rain. The bicycle had a large wicker basket strapped down on the rear guard. The kid paused at the end of the driveway, looked up the hilly road with an unmistakable "do I really have to do this?" set to his shoulders, and mounted up. Town, as Denton had recently found out, was five hilly miles away. He started the car.

"Hey!" He rolled smoothly up to the bike. "Can I give you a lift? It's raining pretty hard out here and I was just leaving."

The boy looked at Denton's clean-cut face, then glanced up the road. He brought the bike to a stop, balancing it between his two legs, and took off his gla.s.ses to wipe. They smeared wetly. "You going to town?"

"Can you get anywhere else from here?" Denton gave a phony laugh.

"I can't get my bike in there."

"You have a point." Denton looked behind him at the backseat of the sedan he'd rented. The kid was getting wetter by the minute.

"I'll just go. I only have to take in the mail."

"Is that all? Why don't I just drop it off for you? I pa.s.s the post office on my way out of town."

The boy's face struggled between the sheer appeal of the offer and his sense of duty. "But how would I get the basket back?"

"No problem." Denton put the car in park and got out. He unstrapped the wicker basket from the boy's bike and dumped the contents onto the pa.s.senger seat of his car-a few dozen letters and a small package. He put the basket back on the bike. "There. Now you can get back to the library. It looked pretty cozy in there." He smiled, holding a hand over his head to keep off the rain.

And that was how it happened that Denton found himself driving up the lonely road from the Hebrew Academy of Syracuse-in the presence of maples and aspens and nothing else-with Rabbi Schwartz's mail on his pa.s.senger seat.

To his credit, it did not occur to him to look at the mail until he was halfway back to town. And then it was only after a glance to see if the mail had gotten wet (it had) and another glance, curiously, to see the address on the topmost letter, and then, looking around guiltily in his rearview mirror to confirm that no one was there, he sidled off the road and began to look at the mail in earnest.

So it wasn't as though he had planned and plotted. He hadn't had the idea in his mind, even, when he'd offered to help the boy. How could he? He hadn't known what was in the basket. And he certainly hadn't known that among the bills and personal letters of the students he would find a letter from Rabbi Schwartz himself, a letter addressed to an antique dealer in Zurich, which piqued Denton, stirred visions of tweezers and tomes, a letter that, as fate would have it, had been dampened by the rain and had a corner on the back flap that was puffed up enough to insert a finger and that, with minimal tugging, opened without any ripping at all.

Yes, I am interested in the ma.n.u.script pages of Yosef Kobinski that you describe and will meet your price of $15,000 for the nonexclusive rights and the physical doc.u.ment.

Why was it that for Denton Wyle, the important forks in his life were never consciously chosen? That fate was always a brick wall he ran into while drifting about aimlessly like a leaf in the wind? He was a seat-of-the-pantser, a blind pup rooting around for the teat, rooting and rooting.

And somehow he always found it.

2.2. Aharon Handalman

JERUSALEM.

Aharon Handalman kicked off his slippers and pulled the heavy binder into bed with him. Hannah was reading something, hopefully (he gave her the benefit of the doubt) some novel of the uplifting sort appropriate for a rabbi's wife.

"Look at you," she said. "You're worse than Yehuda with his homework."

Aharon grunted and settled in, fluffing the pillows behind him. He cracked open the binder, pencil at the ready in his pajama pocket.

The binder contained printouts of all the Kobinski arrays, keywords circled. There were nearly four hundred of them now. Some of the words circled were from the encyclopedia entry-Eleazar Zaks, Brezeziny, The Book of Mercy, Auschwitz. But none of them told Aharonwhy Kobinski was there, why he should be sprawled like "Kilroy was here" all over the holy Torah.

Also, it was unfortunate, but the computer could only look for the words youtold it to. And since he still didn't know much about Kobinski, the only thing left was to eyeball the array like a word search. This was not a skill a Torah scholar had much need for, as things normally went.

Hannah leaned toward him. "What is this?"

"It's my work, Hannah."

"It's Torah code, yes?" She lay against his shoulder.

He moved the binder a little to the right, away from her. "Hannah,please."

She stayed where she was, gazing up at him with a slight crease between her eyebrows. "Why is it you never want to talk about your work?"

Her tone-a little hurt, a little too serious-surprised him. He turned his head on the pillow to look at her more closely.

When he'd married Hannah, she'd been very young, eighteen, the pretty daughter of an Orthodox rabbi. Aharon didn't know all the details, but there had been some danger; she had met the wrong kinds of friends,s.h.i.+ksahfriends. Her father had seen in Aharon the makings of a proper son-in-law, and the marriage had been arranged quickly.

That was not to say they'd forced Hannah. In those days Aharon drew more than his share of feminine glances, and he'd been pa.s.sionate in his courts.h.i.+p. How many hours of Torah study he'd wasted daydreaming about her then! He'd said to her, "You're going to be my wife and that's it." She was a satisfactory wife, except, perhaps, for a little rebellious streak-nothing to get excited about, certainly, but it could be a nuisance.

"Hannah, this isTorah study ," he said, with great forbearance.

"You can't tell mea little ? How is your work going, Aharon? You never tell me anything."

He sighed a complaint. He didn't want to have this conversation. He wanted to look at the Kobinski arrays. He had so little time with them as it was.

"How are things at the yes.h.i.+va?"

"Everything's fine. Everything's good." His eyes were wide, his tone satirical. "They still have young men there, you know. And how are things at home, Hannah? How's the oven-working well?"

"So what is this? New research? It looks interesting."

He looked at the ceiling in a mock pleading gesture.

"Please,Aharon. I see no one but the children all day. I need something else to talk about. I feel I hardly know you anymore. You always shut me out."

"Shut you out? What is this 'shutting you out'? You have your work and I have mine, and that's it."

But it was an automatic response. It was actually tempting to speak of it, to tell someone about the Kobinski arrays. For some reason, he'd never had a friend among other rabbis at the yes.h.i.+va. And Binyamin was the only student with an interest in the codes, his only confidant. Also, maybe telling her a little would get her off his back so he could get back to work. Yes, this was also true. It certainly was not because in her eye there was a look that meant business.

He filled her in, briefly, on their discovery of the Kobinski arrays and what the encyclopedia had to say about him. "So now we have to a.n.a.lyze the arrays, see if we can learn why they're in the Torah. And that's what I'm doing, Hannah. So now you know. Congratulations."

He pulled the heavy binder back up on his stomach, but he snuck a glance at her to gauge her reaction.

There was a smile on her lips that was rarely there these days. She lay back on her pillows with an air of contemplation. "That's very interesting."