Stanley Elkin - Boswell

It was too much for him. “Please,” he said. “I must insist that you reveal at once what you’re objecting to. If I’ve made a mistake in dogma or interpretation I’d like to know about it. We’re all of us students here.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course. Yes.”

“Well—”

“Yes?”

“Sir, if you’ll permit me, it seems to me that the implicit lesson in all religions, the essence of the ecumenical pronouncement, is—”

The bell rang. I shrugged sadly and left the room. He wooed me. He followed me in corridors, Boswell’s little lamb. He kept his office door open all day hoping for another glimpse of me. I strolled by maddeningly. He came up to me in the Yard and spoke to me; I answered politely but with reserve. We had coffee together; he bought.

Eventually he began to suspect that I was playing with him and I moved to consolidate my position. At the beginning of the next class I asked permission to make an announcement.

“I would like to apologize for my lack of humility last time,” I said softly. “It is of course unforgivable that a person like myself — I’m from the Pennsylvania coalfields — who ought to thank God just for the privilege of hearing a wise man like the doctor here, could dare to bring even a moment’s anxiety to such a saint.” I watched him squirm. “Yes, a saint,” I repeated. “I would be bereft of hope for my arrogant soul except for my knowledge of God’s infinite mercy. Thank you.”

When he began to lecture, the students couldn’t keep, their eyes off me. They had to see how I was taking it. I was taking it like an angel. I looked like God was scratching my back.

Finally, during a pause, I gasped. He stopped talking at once, thinking it was the old business all over again. Out of a corner of a veiled eye I could see he was angry. I gasped a second time, but it was nothing like anything I had shown them before. There was terror in it, but the terror that exists before grandeur. The man could see he hadn’t caused it. He could see, as I meant him to see, that he was insignificant there. I pitched forward in my seat, the movement heavy, strained, as though I were being tugged by invisible hands. I trembled and there were tears in my eyes.

“What is it?” a student asked, frightened. “Is he sick?”

“Leave him alone,” the Doctor of Divinity said sharply. “Don’t touch him.”

Then, by a supreme effort — who says the will ain’t free? Free? Hell, it’s absolutely loose — I managed to bring across my face, like one leading a child to a fair, an expression of absolute beatitude, of a serenity so profound it could stand before Death. My face became a crazy quilt of intelligent joy. I looked exactly like someone who could do the job, taking instructions that weren’t to be questioned. I nodded gravely.

“I think he hears something,” a student whispered hoarsely.

My eyes opened slowly. They rolled up into my skull and my lips parted. Then I slumped back in my chair exhausted. It was over.

I shook myself. I pulled myself together. I looked around. I smiled compassionately, bravely. I looked at the Doctor of Divinity sadly, as if I knew his fate. (I do!) “What was it?” he said.

I stood up.

“What was it?” he asked again.

“I am not at liberty to say,” I said, and left the room.

As a matter of fact, this religion thing has taken a good deal of my time lately. Just a few weeks ago I read about a miracle rabbi who lives in the orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg, and I went to find him. It was very strange.

The lights shone redundantly from the windows of the apartment buildings even at noon, vaguely like some kind of public act, a candle-lighting ceremony in a large stadium, or perhaps some wartime measure. On one side of the street where municipal signs warned no parking was allowed on Saturdays, the curb was lined solidly with cars. Each had been ticketed. I thought of ancient taxes, old impositions. I seemed to be in a place under siege, where heroism was communal, vaguely timid. There was no life in the shops; the streets were deserted. Occasionally, in doorways, I saw clusters of old men in dark gabardine, their faces shadowed under black, wide hats. They seemed to add weight to the aura of helpless conspiracy about the place. As I went by they stopped talking to watch me. I might have been a centurion, some Roman fop. When I had passed they spoke again, talking in Yiddish. Arguing, quietly indignant with one another in the street, they had the air of persons anxious in minor causes.

In the apartment building I rang the rabbi’s bell. There was no answer. When I came out a group of old men was standing about outside the building.

“Where do I find the rabbi?” I asked one.

“It’s funny. To me you don’t look Jewish.”

“I’m looking for the miracle rabbi.”

“Italian he looks.”

“Italian looks Jewish. He don’t look Jewish.”

“But he looks for the rabbi.”

“To hit him on the head. See his size? Since when is a big one like that friendly?”

“It couldn’t happen.”

“I have to see the rabbi,” I said.

“Take advice. You don’t appear stupid. Listen to me. Don’t look for no miracle rabbis. Don’t seek to know mysteries which are beyond even big-shot Talmudic scholars,” said the first man.

“Do you need from a miracle rabbi in America? In America is Nature. Nature and Time. Let them take their courses.”

“You couldn’t go wrong.”

“I called his home. He doesn’t answer,” I said.

“On Shabbos he should come to the telephone? That would be a miracle. Am I wrong, Traub?”

“That would tahkee be a miracle,” Traub said.

“Tell him. Don’t pull him apart,” a tall old man said.

“Tell him yourself,” Traub said.

“This miracle worker you mention, this Jewish magician you seek to find, he is the Rabbi Oliver Messerman? The same Rabbi Oliver Messerman who makes the old women and the young girls and the children crazy with his hocus-pocus dominocus and his chants from the Cabala?”

“The fella written up in the World-Telegram?” another said.

“He don’t look Jewish to me, Rabbi Messerman,” the first man said.

“Yes,” I said. “Rabbi Messerman.”

“Let me ask you a question, young man. Where would a rabbi be on the Sabbath?”

“In the temple?” I said.

“The shul, he says.”

“Reasonable but incorrect,” the tall man said.

“Where is he, then? Please, I have to find him. It’s a matter of life or death.” It was a strange phrase. It thrilled me to say it, as shouting “Remain calm” in a burning theater might have thrilled me. Even as I said it I thought of all the times it had been spoken to telephone operators, to policemen, to airlines reservations clerks— always somehow to strangers. It underwrote one’s need. Emergency was a password, a universal language. Yet all those times it had been said, just as now, there was something spurious in it, as though the language of urgency undercut urgency, as though it was understood that it could never be our life, our death.

Perhaps they heard the evasion. “Life and death?” one said.

“A very important matter,” Traub said.

“We are his congregation,” the first man said.

“His minyan.”

“He is our spiritual leader forward march,” Traub said.

“A Messiah.”

“King of the Jews.”

“God’s small son.”

“All right,” I said, “where is he?”

“In his house is where he is,” the tall man said.

“You can see him through the window. He stands in a white sheet and makes prayers for the world. Go, you’ll see.”