Edgar Doctorow - All the Time in the World

A moment later his head appears against the blue sky. He beckons me upward, poor winded Pem so stress-tested and entranced … so determined to make it look effortless I can think of nothing else.

I stand finally on the flat roof, the old apartment houses of West End Avenue and Riverside Drive looming at either end of this block of chimneyed brownstone roofs, and try to catch my breath while smiling at the same time. The autumn sun behind the apartment houses, the late-afternoon river breeze on my face. I’m feeling the exhilaration and slight vertigo of roof-standing … and don’t begin to think — until snapped to attention by the rabbi’s puzzled, frankly inquiring gaze that asks why do I think he’s brought me here — why he’s brought me here. His hands in his pockets, he points with his chin to the Ninety-eighth Street frontage, where, lying flat on the black tarred roof, its transverse exactly parallel to the front of the building, its upright pressed against the granite pediment, the eight-foot hollow brass cross of St. Timothy’s, Episcopal, lies tarnished and shining in the autumn sun.

I suppose I knew I’d found it from the moment I heard the rabbi’s voice on the answering machine. I bend down for a closer look. There are the old nicks and dents. Some new ones, too. It’s not all of a piece, which I hadn’t known: the arms are bolted to the upright in a kind of mortise-and-tenon idea. I lift it at the foot. It is not that heavy but clearly too much cross to bear on the stations of the IRT.

I’D BEEN JUST about convinced it was, in fact, a new sect of some kind. You do let this happen, Lord, ideas of You bud with the profligacy of viruses. I thought, Well, I’ll keep a vigil from across the street, watch them take my church apart brick by brick. Maybe I’ll help them. They’ll reassemble it somewhere as a folk church of some kind. A bizarre expression of their simple faith. Maybe I’ll drop in, listen to the sermon now and then. Learn something …

Then my other idea, admittedly paranoid: it would end up as an installation in SoHo. Some crazy artist — let me wait a few months, a year, and I’d look in a gallery window and see it there, duly embellished, a statement. People standing there drinking white wine. So that was the secular version. I thought I had all bases covered. I am shaken.

HOW DID RABBI Joshua Gruen know it was there?

An anonymous phone call. A man’s voice. Hello, Rabbi Gruen? Your roof is burning.

The roof was burning?

If the children had been in the house I would have gotten them out and called the fire department. As it was, I grabbed our kitchen extinguisher and up I came. Not the smartest thing. Of course, the roof was not burning. But, modest as it is, this is a synagogue. A place for prayer and study. And, as you see, a Jewish family occupies the upper floors. So was he wrong, the caller?

He bites his lip, dark brown eyes looking me in the eye. It is an execrable symbol to him. Burning its brand on his synagogue. Burning down, floor through floor, like the template of a Christian church. I want to tell him I’m on the Committee for Ecumenical Theology of the Trans-Religious Fellowship. A member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

This is deplorable. I am really sorry about this.

It’s hardly your fault.

I know, I say. But this city is getting weirder by the minute.

The rabbis offer me a cup of coffee. We sit in the kitchen. I feel quite close to them, both our houses of worship desecrated, the entire Judeo-Christian heritage trashed.

This gang’s been preying on me for months. And for what they’ve gotten for their effort, I mean one hit on a dry cleaner would have done as much. Listen, Rabbi—

Joshua.

Joshua. Do you read detective stories?

He clears his throat, blushes.

Only all the time, Sarah Blumenthal says, smiling at him.

Well, let’s put our minds together. We’ve got two mysteries going here.

Why two?

This gang. I can’t believe their intent was, ultimately, to commit an anti-Semitic act. They have no intent. They lack sense. They’re like overgrown children. They’re not of this world. And all the way from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side? No, that’s asking too much of them.

So this is someone else?

It must be. A good two weeks went by. Somebody took the cross off their hands — if they didn’t happen to find it in a dumpster. I mean, the police told me it had no value, but if someone wants it it has value, right? And then this second one or more persons had the intent. But how did they get it onto the roof? And nobody saw them, nobody heard them?

I was on the case now, asking questions, my nostrils flaring. I was enjoying myself. Good Lord, Lord, should I have been a detective? Was that my true calling?

Angelina, whom I think you met with the children: she heard noises from the roof one morning. We were already gone. That was the day I went to see my father, Sarah says, looking to Joshua for confirmation.

And I’d gone running, Joshua says.

But the noise didn’t last long and Angelina thought no more of it — thought that it was a repairman of some sort. I assume they came up through one of the houses on the block. The roofs abut.

Did you go down the block? Did you ring bells?

Joshua shook his head.

What about the cops?

They exchange glances. Please, says Joshua. The congregation is new, just getting its legs. We’re trying to make something viable for today — theologically, communally. A dozen or so families, just a beginning. A green shoot. The last thing we want is for this to get out. We don’t need that kind of publicity. Besides, he says, that’s what they want, whoever did this.

We don’t accept the I.D. of victim, says Sarah Blumenthal, looking me in the eye.

And now I tell You, Lord, as I sit here back in my own study, in this bare ruined choir, I am exceptionally sorry for myself this evening, lacking as I do a companion like Sarah Blumenthal. This is not lust, and You know I would admit it if it were. No, but I think how quickly I took to her, how comfortable I was made, how naturally welcomed I felt under these difficult circumstances, there is a freshness and honesty about these people, both of them, I mean, they were so present in the moment, so self-possessed, a wonderful young couple with a quietly dedicated life, such a powerful family stronghold they make, and, oh Lord, he is one lucky rabbi, Joshua Gruen, to have such a beautiful devout by his side.

It was Sarah, apparently, who made the connection. He was sitting there trying to figure out how to handle it and she had come in from a conference somewhere and when he told her what was on the roof she wondered if that was the missing crucifix she had read about in the newspaper.

I hadn’t read the piece and I was skeptical.

You thought it was just too strange, a news story right in your lap, Sarah says.

That’s true. News is somewhere else. And to realize that you know more than the reporter knew? But we found the article.

He won’t let me throw out anything, Sarah says.

Fortunately, in this case, says the husband to the wife.

It’s like living in the Library of Congress.

So, thanks to Sarah, we now have the rightful owner.

She glances at me, colors a bit. Removes her glasses, the scholar, and pinches the bridge of her nose. I see her eyes in the instant before the specs go back on. Nearsighted, like a little girl I loved in grade school.

I am extremely grateful, I say to my new friends. This is, in addition to everything else, a mitzvah you’ve performed. Can I use your phone? I’m going to get a van up here. We can take it apart, wrap it up, and carry it right out the front door and no one will be the wiser.