Dante's Equation Part 14

"Why?"

"Why? Because Wallick took it as a challenge to break Kobinski, that's why-to bring him down into the dirt and horror with the rest of uspishers . If Kobinski's saintliness intimidated Groding, it only made him the special target of Wallick. And let me tell you-you didn't want to be a special target of any of those demons, but particularly not Wallick."

"Wallick killed Kobinski?" Aharon asked, glimpsing an end to this story.

"Killed him? He wanted tobreak him. Can you break a dead man?"

"I really don't need to-"

"He beat him, often. Every time he saw him. With a stick he beat him-sometimes just a little, sometimes alot, till there was blood covering his face. Even in a place like Auschwitz, where you saweverything , it was still upsetting to see such a great rebbe covered with blood like this."

"I think I-"

"Then there was mealtime. Wallick would come through after we'd been served our nothing soup of water and potato peelings, and he'd always time it just so. Anyone else in the same situation would have gobbled the soup in line, as soon as they got it, but Kobinski never did. Can you imagine it? Day after day he stands in line, gets his soup, smiles at the inmates handing it out, waits for his son, walks calmly to find a place to sit-never hurries, never acts as if anything were wrong. Then as soon as he sits-bam-Wallick comes along and knocks the bowl from his hands. And Kobinski just sits there, looking at the spilled soup while everyone else goes after it on hands and knees, eating the wetdirt trying to get a little nutrition."

Biederer sighed. "I'll tell you who it hurt-his son, Isaac. Sometimes I saw tears running down his face as they walked away from the line with their pitiful bowls. Once I heard him urge his father as they walked past me, 'Eat, Papa; eat now,' and his father said, 'We must first find a seat,' in a pleasant voice. Oh, the poor boy-what a curse, to have such a great rebbe for a father!"

Something trembled on the tip of Biederer's tongue, trembled like the moisture on the edges of his eyelids. But he shook his head. "One thing at a time." He took an enormous breath. "What else did Wallick do to Kobinski? Latrine duty, all the time. Horrible. Truly horrible, such a great scholar crawling around in absolute filth. Disgusting! Wallick wouldn't allow him any help during the day, but when his followers got back from their own labor sometimes he would still be at it and they'd finish for him."

Biederer pointed those smoking fingers at Aharon. White streamers drifted around his face like premonitions of his shroud. "I'm telling you, the stink of such a place-you can take it maybe two minutes without vomiting. Buckets and buckets of the worst . . . ! It's not just normal slops, see. Everyone was sick with diarrhea, typhus, every illness known to man. And the smell starvation gives a man's guts . . . ! This is h.e.l.l, I'm telling you."

"Please," Aharon said weakly. Hecould smell it. A distinct scent of urine and feces was in his nostrils. He stood up and went over to the window, no longer caring about Biederer. He opened it fully, pulling up the blinds. He leaned out and gulped in fresh air. But the air outside was so hot by now that it did little to clear his head, only sat in his lungs like wet towels.

"But none of this-noneof it broke Kobinski."

Biederer's voice came from behind his head, like the voice of the dead. There was that heavy weight in the old man's voice again, something large unsaid. But this time, Aharon had the feeling hewouldsay it. Aharon couldn't stop him. He couldn't even open his mouth to talk.

"Not . . ." Biederer said with a thick tongue, "not until Wallick began to mess with hisson."

"Please, Lord."Hot tears of pain and frustration filled Aharon's eyes. He pushed against the sill to stand. He went over to the chair and picked up his coat. "Shalom,Mr. Biederer."

"Okay, Rabbi Handalman," Biederer said, his hands out and down in surrender.

"No, I'm sorry, but-"

"So I'llstop ," Biederer said firmly.

Aharon stood still, coat and hat in hand. The sweat tickled as it ran down his cheeks into his beard. Biederer made a gesture upward with his outstretched hands-nu?

"I don't need to hear any more." Aharon put on his hat.

"There'smore . So we'll skip the son. I can't say I blame you there. But I have something you want. It's about the rebbe's work. So sit."

Aharon fingered his coat for a moment. He slowly removed his hat and returned to his seat. He was beginning to hate Biederer. The old s.a.d.i.s.t, he had some kind of perverted desire to pa.s.s along that black chip in his heart, poisonous and festering.

"It was after Wallick had . . . well, Isaac was no longer in our barrack."

"He was dead," Aharon said with a resigned sigh.

"No," Biederer said, eyes bright and terrible. He took another cigarette. "But you don't want to hear about that, so you won't hear. Since you're so delicate, Rabbi Handalman. I know your type. Yes, I know your type."

Aharon clenched his fists on his hat brim. "Say what you have to say."

"After Isaac left the barrack Kobinski finally began to wake up to reality-you know what I'm saying? He became obsessed with finding a way out of Auschwitz. Somehow Anatoli managed to smuggle in a map of the area. Kobinski pored over that map, drawing lines and numbers. Some said he was using astrology; others said it was devils' work."

Aharon sat forward on his chair rigidly. What was this?

"He told us he had found a gateway." Biederer looked sheepish, as if knowing it sounded crazy. "A gateway to . . . to Heaven. It was out in the woods, about a mile from camp. If we could only getto it."

Aharon felt a surge of disappointment. This was what he had come here for? Sat through all this horrible sewage of the past? "That's ludicrous!"

Biederer shrugged. He leaned back, tapped his foot, but there was a stubborn look in his eye, the look of a true believer. "Maybe. And maybe some people even back then didn't believe him- maybemost people. But somedid ," pointing his cigarette/fingers at Aharon. "Some said he was a great kabbalist, that he could call down a heavenly chariot like Ezekiel. And maybe some just thought they had nothing to lose."

"This is the escape attempt?" Aharon said, connecting this with what he'd read at Yad Vashem. Biederer nodded.

Aharon huffed. "But everyone was killed that night! Rabbi Kobinski-may he rest in peace-he must have been driven over the edge. I'm sorry for it, but it's true."

Biederer leaned forward and took his cup, drank from it. He shook his head. "No, Rabbi Handalman."

"How do you know?"

"Because it worked."

Aharon stared at him, astonished. There was something so calm and triumphant on Biederer's face that Aharon was intimidated to stillness.

"You can think what you like-who can stop you? But what happened, happened. I didn't go. I was afraid; that's G.o.d's truth. About ten men from our barrack went. Only two returned-Anatoli was one of them. They managed to slip away from the others in the darkness and made it back to camp. They told us."

"Yes?"

Biederer's wizened face was practically glowing. "That night they got out of the camp and reached the place where Kobinski said they would find the gateway. The guards caught up with them there. They rounded up the prisoners, were going to bring them back to camp to be executed. But Kobinski challenged Wallick, and they struggled-hand to hand,hand to hand . . . like Jacob wrestling with the angel!"

Biederer closed his eyes, his face triumphant, as though he was viewing in his mind's eye a scene he had imagined many times before. He took one last drag on his cigarette, holding the moment on his tongue. "Then the chariotdid come, in a flash of light, and took them both."

"What?"

"They disappeared,Rabbi Handalman. Kobinski and Wallick together-vanished! And no one ever saw either one of them again."

The older children were playing quietly in the apartment courtyard with the neighbor children. The baby was asleep in her crib. Hannah Handalman sat at the kitchen table, looking out the window.

She knew Aharon had gone to Tel Aviv to see one of the survivors on her list, Biederer. He didn't tell her. He was going for a drive alone, he said. But he didn't go for drives, her husband. Jerusalem was all the world to him. Where else would he go on a whim? And then there was the look on his face, the look of a man going to a dentist for a root ca.n.a.l.

Hannah was fighting temptation. She'd had the misfortune to notice that Aharon had left his bags in the hall last night and that one of them, a large black bag, was the bag that contained the Kobinski array binder. When Aharon left this morning, he did not take it with him.

Unfortunately, that left her in a predicament. She told herself her husband had been very clear about not wanting her interference. But then, she thought perversely,she had been very clear about wanting him to spend more time with her and the children. And didshegetthat ? No.

The more she contemplated the situation, the more hotly rebellion burned in her breast; it was like a clawed little mammal with a mind of its own. If Aharon had been a loving husband, if he'd been warm and tender and asked her nicely, there was nothing she wouldn't do for him. Their marriage itself proved that.

There had been a time when she had considered a life other than this. There had been a time when she had friends who wore blue jeans and mocked tradition. When she married Aharon, she understood that she was signing up for the life of her parents. But he had been so handsome and fiery, standing at their dinner table speaking pa.s.sionately about the Torah, he'd made her believe in it all again. The dramatic young Torah scholar! A jewel of Jewish manhood! She'd thought he was the rock upon which she could anchor her belief, that the world of thefrum made sense as long as their love was in the center of it. What she hadn't understood was that the lifestyle she'd chosen would go on and on, but his ardor for her would not. What she had taken for a rock had been no more substantial than pa.s.sion's first blush. What bride understood this?

She had already disobeyed him a little. Her parents, bless them, had moved to Israel to be close to their grandchildren shortly after Yehuda was born. The last time she'd visited them with the children she'd seen her younger brother, Samuel, surfing on the Internet. Would there be-she'd asked him- an on-line network of Holocaust survivors? With a little searching, Samuel found a newsgroup. He posted a message there under her direction: Looking for anyone who knew Rabbi Yosef Kobinski, Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz.

She was almost relieved they hadn't heard anything back yet. Of course, she hadn't told Aharon. It had been a whim. Nothing would come of it.

The children were playing quietly below; the baby was sleeping.

The binder was heavy. She got it onto the kitchen table, where she could still watch the children. But after a while she forgot to watch, and when they came in an hour later she plopped them down in the living room with new coloring books she'd been saving for a rainy day and continued searching.

All the way back to Jerusalem, Aharon could not stop seeing the scene Biederer had painted: the frail camp prisoner, Kobinski, dressed in filthy stripes, and the sharply dressed n.a.z.i guard, Wallick, struggling hand to hand, the one hopelessly outmatched but determined, the other toying, cruelly, and then the two of them vanishing to the astonishment of the onlookers.

Ezekiel's chariot. Even he could see that stank of mythmaking.A flash of light. Could it have been the weapon? Could Kobinski have managed to make the weapon, somehow? Had it been on him that night? Had the two of them been vaporized? Or was there something else going on entirely?

By the time Aharon reached home it was late. He dragged himself in the door with the weariness of the walking dead.

"It's about time," Hannah said to him, coming from the kitchen. Her cheeks were pink. "I started supper. It's chicken."

"I'm not hungry. So where are the children?" he called out, louder. "My son and daughter don't have a kiss for their papa?"

The children used to run to him when he entered, but they hadn't for months now. Devorah and Yehuda peeked cautiously from the living room. Aharon knelt down, held out his arms.

"Come here, Devehleh."

The little girl ran to him with restrained eagerness. Then Yehuda. Aharon found himself clinging to the boy. Yehuda, his eldest, his son, was nine years old-the same age as Isaac Kobinski in that picture. He turned his wooly face to the boy's small shoulder when he felt tears.

"Papa, what's the matter?"

Aharon let him go, pushed himself upright. "Nothing. Everything's fine; why shouldn't it be?" He wiped his eyes. His son and daughter stared up at him in shock until he shooed them back to their games. He felt weighted with grief, as if he'd been sittingshivah .

"Aharon,"Hannah said, tenderly, but she didn't come to him.

He wanted to reach out for her, but the gap felt so wide. He rubbed his lips with trembling fingers. "I'm not hungry, but maybe I should eat."

"Come into the kitchen while I cook. Come on."

The baby was in the kitchen high chair, happily munching on a sliced apple. Aharon kissed the warm and scented top of her head before slumping into a seat. Hannah used tongs to turn the pieces of chicken in a hot pan, then came to sit with him. "Was it so bad?"

He looked at her. Of course she had guessed where he'd been. "Oh, Hannah. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Am I tracking a madman? Am I crazy myself? What?"

"Shhhh." She patted his hand.

"G.o.d has given this to me, and I'm failing Him. I'm not capable. Nothing is fitting together. Nothing makes any sense!"

He knew this dark emotional tide was temporary. It was the images Biederer had tried to poison him with, not just that last battle in the woods but all of the terrible atrocities. And he had never,never wanted this.

"G.o.d knows what He's doing!" he said fiercely. "If He punishes, there must be a good reason. Who are we to question?"

Hannah regarded him with wary concern. "You had a bad day. Tomorrow you'll feel better."

"Lo."

"Stop then," Hannah said impulsively. "Aharon, please. Sometimes you have such a look . . . I'm afraid for you." "G.o.d wants what He wants. Jonah tried to run away. Look where it got him." The words, and all they brought with them of the simple, straightforward G.o.d of the Torah, made him feel better. He sat up a bit straighter and searched in his pocket for a handkerchief.

"What?" he asked, because the fact that his wife had something to tell him was written all over her face.

"Nothing."

"There's something,what ?" "I . . ." She shook her head and leaned forward in her chair, burying her face against his vest. "I love you, Aharon Handalman. I still love you."

"Of course," he said, but he heard the doubt in her voice and gripped her tightly.

When it was taken seriously, Copernicus' proposal raised many gigantic problems for the believing Christian. If, for example, the earth were merely one of six planets, how were the stories of the Fall and of the Salvation, with their immense bearing on Christian life, to be preserved? If there were other bodies essentially like the earth, G.o.d's goodness would surely necessitate that they, too, be inhabited. But if there were men on other planets, how could they be descendants of Adam and Eve, and how could they have inherited the original sin, which explains man's otherwise incomprehensible travail on an earth made for him by a good and omnipotent deity?

-Thomas Kuhn,The Copernican Revolution, 1957 [F]ailure to adjust early in evolution may be just what is needed for success later on, that stress and strife are ingredients of long-range harmony, that pain is vital to birth and creation.

-Guy Murchie,Seven Mysteries of Life, 1978

7.1. Jill Talcott

AUGUST SEATTLE.

THE ONE PULSE, 90 PERCENT POWER.

She probably should have stopped at 75 percent power. But Jill Talcott had too much at stake to play it safe. And since no one except Nate knew what she was doing, there was no one to advise her otherwise.

She didtry to get advice. The thought of Dr. Ansel had been more and more on her mind. She wanted very much to talk to him about her discovery and what it might mean. He was practically the only person shecould speak to. But there was the business of the bad parting holding her back.

When she finally gathered her courage to call, a secretary answered and she was transferred to Tom Cheever, the head of the department.

"Jill Talcott? You were Dr. Ansel's graduate student? I guess that was before my time. I've been here five years."

"Yes," Jill agreed, feeling guiltily relieved. Cheever didn't know her, which was good. Not that Ansel had made a big deal out of her transferring to another professor. It probably hadn't been a big deal to anyone but her, but- "What is it that you're working on now?" Cheever asked.