Chaim Potok - The Chosen

He stared at me. 'I never thought of that,' he said slowly. 'I'll have to intercept the mail: He hesitated, his face rigid. 'I can't. It comes after I leave for school: And his eyes filled with fear.

'I think you ought to have a talk with my father,' I said.

Danny came over to our apartment that night, and I took him into my father's study. My father came quickly around from behind his desk and shook Danny's hand.

'I have not seen you in such a long time,' he said, smiling warmly. 'It is good to see you again, Danny. Please sit down.'

My father did not sit behind the desk. He sat next to us on the kitchen chair he had asked me earlier to bring into the study.

'Do not be angry at Reuven for telling me,' he said quietly to Danny. 'I have had practice with keeping secrets.' Danny smiled nervously.

'You will tell your father on the day of your ordination?' Danny nodded.

'There is a girl involved?'

Danny nodded again, giving me a momentary glance.

'You will refuse to marry this girl?'

'Yes.'

'And your father will have to explain to her parents and to his followers.'

Danny was silent, his face tight.

My father sighed softly. 'It will be a very uncomfortable situation. For you and for your father. You are determined not to take your father's place?'

'Yes,' Danny said.

'Then you must know exactly what you will tell him. Think carefully of what you will say. Think what your father's questions will be. Think what he will be most concerned about after he hears of your decision. Do you understand me, Danny?'

Danny nodded slowly. There was a long silence.

Then my father leaned forward in his chair. 'Danny,' he said softly, 'you can hear silence?'

Danny looked at him, startled. His blue eyes were wide, frightened. He glanced at me. Then he looked again at my father. And, slowly, he nodded his head.

'You are not angry at your father?'

Danny shook his head.

'Do you understand what he is doing?'

Danny hesitated. Then he shook his head again. His eyes were wide and moist.

My father sighed again. 'It will be explained to you,' he said softly. 'Your father will explain it to you. Because he will want you to carry it on with your own children one day.'

Danny blinked his eyes nervously.

'No one can help you with this, Danny. It is between you and your father. But think carefully of what you say to him and of what his questions will be.'

My father came with us to the door of our apartment. I could hear Danny's capped shoes tapping against the outside hallway floor. Then he was gone.

'What is this again about hearing silence, abba?' I asked.

But my father would say nothing. He went into his study and closed the door.

Danny received letters of acceptance from each of the three universities to which he had applied. The letters came in the mail to his home and lay untouched on the vestibule table until he returned from school. He told me about it in early January, a day after the third letter had come. I asked him who usually picked up the mail.

'My father,' he said, looking tense and bewildered. 'Levi's in school when it comes, and my mother doesn't like climbing stairs.'

'Were there return addresses on the envelopes?'

'Of course.'

'Then how can't he know?' I asked him.

'I don't understand it,' he said, his voice edged with panic. 'What is he waiting for? Why doesn't he say something?'

I felt sick with his fear and said nothing.

Danny told me a few days later that his sister was pregnant. She and her husband had been over to the house and had informed his parents. His father had smiled for the first time since Levi's bar mitzvah, Danny said, and his mother had wept with joy, I asked him if his father gave any indication at all of knowing what his plans were.

'No,' he said.

'No indication at all?'

'No, I get nothing from him but silence.'

'Is he silent with Levi, too?'

'No.'

'Was he silent with your sister?'

'No.'

'I don't like your father,' I told him. 'I don't like him at all.'

Danny said nothing. But his eyes blinked his fear.

A few days later, he told me, 'My father asked me why you're not coming over anymore on Shabbat.'

'He talked to you?'

'He didn't talk. That isn't talking.'

'I study Talmud on Shabbat.'

'I know.'.

'I'm not too eager to see him.'

He nodded unhappily.

'Have you decided which university you're going to?'

'Columbia.'

'Why don't you tell him and get it over with?'

'I'm afraid.'

'What difference does it make? If he's going to throw you out of the house, he'll do it no matter when you tell him.'

'I'll have my degree in June. I'll be ordained.'

'You can live with us. No, you can't. You won't eat at our house.'

'I could live with my sister.'

'Yes.'

'I'm afraid. I'm afraid of the explosion. I'm afraid of any time I'll have to tell him. God, I'm afraid.'

My father would say nothing when I talked to him about it. 'It is for Reb Saunders to explain,' he told me quietly. 'I cannot explain what I do not completely understand. I cannot do it with my students, and I cannot do it with my son.'

A few days later, Danny told me that his father had asked again why I wasn't coming over to their house anymore.

'I'll try to get over,' I said.

But I didn't try very hard. I didn't want to see Reb Saunders.

I hated him as much now as I had when he had forced his silence between me and Danny.

The weeks passed and winter melted slowly into spring. Danny was working on an experimental psychology project that had to do with the relationship between reinforcement and rapidity of learning, and I was doing a long paper on the logic of ought statements. Danny pushed himself relentlessly in his work. He grew thin and gaunt, and the angles and bones of his face and hands jutted like sharp peaks from beneath his skin. He stopped talking about the silence between him and his father. He seemed to be shouting down the silence with his work. Only his constantly blinking eyes gave any indication of his mounting terror.

The day before the start of the Passover school vacation period, he told me that his father had asked him once again why I wasn't coming over to their house anymore. Could I possibly come over on Passover? he had wanted to know. He especially wanted to see me the first or second day of Passover.

'I'll try,' I said half heartedly, without the slightest intention of trying at all.

But when I talked to my father that night, he said, with a strange sharpness in his voice, 'You did not tell me Reb Saunders has been asking to see you.'

'He's been asking all along.'

'Reuven, when someone asks to speak to you, you must let him speak to you. You still have not learned that? You did not learn that from what happened between you and Danny?'

'He wants to study Talmud, abba.'

'You are sure?'

'That's all we've ever done when I go over there.'

'You only study Talmud? You have forgotten so quickly?'

I stared at him. 'He wants to talk to me about Danny,' I said, and felt myself turn cold.

'You will go over the first day of the holiday. On Sunday.'

'Why didn't he tell me?'

'Reuven, he did tell you. You have not been listening: 'All these weeks – '

'Listen next time. Listen when someone speaks to you.'

'Maybe I should go over tonight.'

'No. They will be busy preparing for the holiday.'

'I'll go over on Shabbat.'

'Reb Saunders asked you to come on Passover.'

'I told him we study Talmud on Shabbat.'

'You will go on Passover. He has a reason if he asked you to come especially on Passover. And listen next time when someone speaks to you, Reuven.'

He was angry, as angry as he had been in the hospital years ago when I had refused to talk to Danny.