Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

Of which aspect of the preceding sequence was his adviser asking had he any idea? Cass opted for the concrete.

“Well, yes. My mother was born into a Valdener family. She’s related to the Valdener Rebbe. I used to visit New Walden as a child.”

Jonas Elijah Klapper shot forward in his chair so that he was half hanging off it. His facial expressions sometimes mimicked a silent-film actor. At this moment, you could almost hear Cecil B. DeMille shouting through his horn, “Show us amazement!”

“So, then, you, too, can trace your lineage back to the holy Ba’al Shem Tov?”

“Well, yes, I guess I can. I never really thought about it.”

“Never really thought about it?”

Jonas Elijah Klapper collapsed back into his chair, his outburst knocking the stuffing out of him.

But he soon recovered. He sat up and, turning his back to Cass, put his elbows on his desk and buried his face in his palms. Cass sat there in an agony of uncertainty. Anything at all could be happening now. One guess was as good as the next. Minutes passed. Should he quietly exit? Had Jonas Elijah Klapper already excused him and gone back to work? Cass knew from the others that this sometimes happened.

“Well, this is extraordinary,” Professor Klapper finally said, turning around in his revolving chair and again facing Cass. “This is something I could never have foreseen.”

Jonas Elijah Klapper was gazing at Cass with discomfiting intensity, as if searching in Cass Seltzer’s amiable though distressed visage for signs of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s lingering presence. Cass was forced to stare straight back into the professor’s face, and at close range.

It was, for some obscure reason, excruciatingly uncomfortable to be this physically close to Jonas Elijah Klapper. Not even he was Pure Spirit. The soaring sentences were punctuated by panting intakes of air. The thighs, encased in gray broadcloth, seemed like items better described in the vocabulary of architecture than of anatomy. His face, too, was markedly corporeal-heavy and fleshy. The cultivated elegance of his mind had done what it could, but when he spoke of “the divine pathos,” “the inconsolable solitude,” “the fraught distance between the poet and reader,” he never managed to look more pathetic, inconsolable, or fraught than the man behind the deli counter. But his eyes were sad. There was a depth of sadness in his eyes.

“I have a great interest in meeting the Valdener Rebbe, a man who I suspect confounds that prejudice which sees no worldly knowledge in the Hasidim. As you, of course, are intimately aware, my dear Mr. Seltzer-or may I call you Reb Chaim?-the Grand Rabbi of the Valdeners named the seat of his New World rabbinical court New Walden, presumably alluding to the American transcendentalism of our own homegrown seers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.”

That wasn’t the way Cass’s mother told the story, but Cass wasn’t about to argue with Professor Klapper’s superior erudition.

“We shall seize this extraordinary expedient posthaste! Reb Chaim, I count on you to make the necessary arrangements!”

They rode to New Walden in a Lincoln Continental.

It had been Roz who had gone to the streamered lot in Somerville and rented the car on Klapper’s-or, rather, Frankfurter’s-dime. Jonas Elijah Klapper had never learned to drive, so a chauffeur was needed, or so Roz kept insisting to Cass.

“But I know how to drive.”

“Tell him your license has expired! I’m not missing this!”

Professor Klapper had seemed a bit put out to learn that an unknown female would be accompanying them, but his attitude toward Cass had undergone so steep an upgrade since he’d learned of Cass’s Valdener connections that he had refrained from too vigorous a protest.

After Professor Klapper had settled himself into the front passenger seat, he turned and examined the driver at length, peering at her over the top of his bifocals.

“I presume from your coiffure that you are an adherent of Rastafarianism. I can assure you that I accord your belief system the same respect I do all religions. I believe it to be a prejudice of temporalism, akin to racism and sexism, when a religion is dismissed on the grounds that it has been established at a time too near the present. Indeed, all religions emerged at some present or other. So let me hasten to declare that you will find nothing but deference on my part for your faith that Haile Selassie is the Messiah.”

Cass braced himself for Roz’s reaction, which, if they were lucky, would be confined to peals of laughter, but Roz stared straight ahead and remained silent.

Jonas Elijah Klapper, satisfied that he had made his point of view known, turned himself to the activity of getting the seat belt around him and inserted into its buckle. He was struggling with the contraption, and Roz, under normal circumstances, would have offered to help, but she couldn’t risk an utterance that would unblock the swell of laughter that she was forcefully resisting for poor Cass’s sake. At last they heard the click, and Roz wordlessly put the car into gear.

Before they’d gotten very far on the Massachusetts Turnpike, Jonas Elijah Klapper decided that he did, vehemently, object to the Rastafarian’s driving. Either Roz normally drove like this, or she was enjoying getting a rise out of their passenger. From the back, Cass could see that Professor Klapper was gripping the sides of his seat.

“Which of these contraptions indicates the speed at which we are recklessly hurtling, young lady?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Is there any way to tell our speed, Cass?”

“Now, see here, they have helpfully posted the speed limit at regular intervals- There! There! We just passed another sign with ‘55’ emblazoned upon it! There must be some way to determine the rate at which you are hastening us toward our death.”

He leaned over to try to get a look at the dials.

“Don’t do that, Jonas! Never crowd the driver, especially at the rate we’re going!”

“So you admit we are exceeding the limit! I demand that you pull over immediately and cede the steering wheel to Mr. Seltzer!”

“His license is expired! It’s against the law!”

“So is the reckless endangerment of one’s mortally afrighted passengers! I shall defray all costs should Mr. Seltzer be issued a summons.”

“What about the points on his record? What about the hike in his insurance premiums?”

“Gladly shall I compensate for all, young lady! Premiums, tickets, a hush-hush bribe to the stalwart officer in blue if he can be induced to take it! It shall all be worth it to live to see another morrow!”

The professor prevailed. Cass and Roz switched places.

It was a cold but piercingly bright Sunday afternoon in late February. As they crossed the Hudson River on the Tappan Zee Bridge, the skyline of Manhattan rose up in all its glory.

“It isn’t far now,” Cass announced. He found himself excited to be returning after all these years.

His mother had been amazed when he’d told her about the field trip he was taking. He had called her, at Professor Klapper’s urging, to find out how they should get in touch with the Rebbe to arrange for a personal visit.

“My cousin Henoch,” Deb had answered. “He’s the Rebbe’s gabbai , or personal assistant. It all goes through Cousin Henoch.”

“Do you have Cousin Henoch’s phone number?”

“I’ll get it from Shaindy.” Shaindy, another of Deb’s countless cousins, was the only one in the family with whom Deb remained in contact. Deb’s family had been unusual in New Walden, since Deb had no brothers and sisters, prompting her to fantasize that whatever had prevented her parents from being maximally fruitful had prevented them from having any children at all. The fact that she looked so much like her father, Mendel Sheiner, who had been a bookkeeper in a jewelry exchange in Manhattan’s Diamond District, didn’t count conclusively against her fantasy. A lot of the Valdeners resembled each other. The Rebbe may have decided to redistribute the wealth, taking from a family with lots of children to give to a sterile couple. Anyway, it was a fantasy.