William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“And this flame, what does it look like?” asked Morris.

“It’s close to the color purple in the middle, with something like blue at the edges.”

“And you’ve seen this hallucination?” I said.

Beth looked up at me calmly. “Yes,” she said.

“Fascinating,” said Morris, the final “ng” sounding like a “k.” “Simply fascinating.”

“And then we concentrate on a mature plant and immerse ourselves in the thought that this plant will someday wither and decay before being reborn through its seeds. As we concentrate on the death and rebirth of this plant, banishing all thoughts other than those of the plant, we begin to see the death force inherent in the plant, and it too is like a flame, green-blue in its center and yellow-red at the periphery.”

“I can’t believe you’re buying into this crap, Beth,” I said.

“I’ve seen it,” she said. “Either that or my lentil casserole was spiked.”

“And now, after you’ve seen all this,” said Morris, “what are you supposed to do with all that you are seeing?”

“I don’t know that yet,” said Beth with a sigh. “Right now I’m struggling to develop my spiritual sight so that, when the truth does appear, I’ll be ready to perceive it.”

“When you perceive something a little more than these flamelike colors,” said Morris, “then you come back to me and we’ll talk. The spirit world, it is not unknown to Jews, but these colors, they are no more than shmei drei . Just colors I can see every day on cable.”

Morris Kapustin was my private detective. He didn’t look like a private detective or talk like a private detective or act like a private detective but he thought like the best private detective you’ve ever dreamed of. I liked him and trusted him and, after Beth, the list of those whom I actually liked and trusted was rather short. Like all good things in this life I had first had him rammed down my throat. A group of insurgent clients had thought a settlement offer I had jumped at was less than their case was worth. They ordered me to hire Morris to find a missing witness. Morris found him, which increased the value of the case tremendously, and in the process he sort of saved my life. Since then he had been my private dick, my spiritual adviser, and my friend. I had thought I would do my dance around the Reddman fortune without him but, after discovering that skeleton the night before, I realized that the mysteries were deepening beyond my minimal capacities and that I needed Morris.

“I think,” I said to Beth, “that Morris is pretty firmly entrenched in a spiritual tradition a few thousand years older than your Church of the New Life. I’m sure he’s not interested in your New Age rubbish.”

Morris picked his head up out of his hands. “On the contrary, Victor. It is just such rubbish that interests me so much. Did you ever hear, Victor, of Kabbalah?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I said, though that was about the limit of my knowledge. Kabbalah was an obscure form of Jewish mysticism, neither taught nor even mentioned in the few years I attended religious school before my father quit the synagogue. It was said to be ancient and dangerous and better left untouched.

“Your meditation, Beth, this is not a foreign idea to Jews. The Hassidim, they chant and sing and dance like wild men and they say it works. I always thought it was the way they drank, like shikkers in a desert, but maybe it is something more. And this is what I find, Miss Beth. Every morning, in shachris, when I strap on my tefillin and daven, I find often something strange it happens. Some precious mornings all the mishegaas around my life, it disappears and I find myself floating, surrounded by something bright and divine and infinite. The Kabbalists, they have a term for it, the infinite, they call it the Ein-Sof .”

“But that’s very different,” said Beth. “We’re being trained in our meditation to focus and join with a great emptiness, not a deity of some sort.”

“Yes, of course, that is a difference. But there are those who claim that any true knowledge of the infinite, it is so beyond us that we can only experience the Ein-Sof as a sort of nothingness. The Hebrew word for nothing, it is Ayin, and the similarities in the words are said to be of great significance.”

“How come I never learned any of this?” I asked.

“This is all very powerful, very dangerous. There were people, very devout people, great rabbis even, who were not ready to ascend into certain of the divine rooms and never returned. The rabbis they think maybe you should get off your tuchis and learn more about the bolts and the nuts of our religion before you start to potchkeh with the Kabbalah. Maybe learn first to keep the Shabbos and keep kosher and learn to daven every day. They have a point, Victor, no? These are not games or toys. They take intense commitment. True devotion comes from following all God’s mitzvoth . The righteous, they reach a point where every act in their daily rituals is full of meaning and devotion and life itself, it becomes like a meditation.”

“If this is all so darn terrific, how come I never saw it being hawked on an infomercial?”

“Not everything in this world can be bought, Victor,” said Beth.

“Maybe not,” I said, “but have you seen what the stuff Cher sells can do for your hair? Tell me something, Beth. If your friends are so exclusively devoted to the spirit world, why are they so anxious to get their mitts on Jacqueline’s five-million-dollar death benefit?”

Beth looked at me for a moment. “That’s a good question. I’ve been wondering about that myself.”

“Until we find an answer,” I said, “I think you should be extra careful. They might just be as dangerous as they think they are.”

“That’s exactly why I set it up so you’re the one who’s going to ask Oleanna all about it.”

“Oleanna?”

“Tomorrow night, at the Haven. I told her you had some important questions.”

“And the great seer deigned to meet with me?”

“It’s what you wanted, right?”

“Sure,” I said, suddenly and strangely nervous. “What is she like?”

“I think you’ll be impressed,” said Beth, laughing. “She is a very evolved soul.”

“Her past lives were thrilling, no doubt,” I said. “She was a queen or a great soldier or Nostradamus himself. Why is it no one ever sold insurance in their past lives?”

“You should not be scoffing so quickly,” said Morris. “Someday, when you are ready, I’ll tell you of the gilgul . As Rebbe Elazar ha-Kappar once said, ‘Those who are born are destined to die, those who are dead are destined to be brought to life again.’ Be aware, Victor, there is much to learn in this world, and not all of it can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica .”

I stared at him. “Did you ever go to college, Morris?”

“Aacht. It’s a shandeh, really. I regret so much in this life but that I regret most of all. No. I had plans, of course, when I was a boy, the Academy of Science at Minsk, they took Jews, they even taught in Yiddish, and the whole of my family we were saving each day zloty for my fee. I was to be an intellectual, to sip slivovitz in the cafés and argue about Moses Mendelssohn and Pushkin, that was my dream. Then of course the war, it came and plans like that they flew like a frying pan out the window. Just surviving was education enough. I won’t go through the whole megillah, but no, Victor. Why do you ask such a thing?”

“Because I could just see you hanging out in the dormitories, eating pizza, drinking beer from cans, talking all night about the cosmic mysteries of life.”