Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

The ex-Extreme Distinguished Professor hadn’t gotten in touch with any of his graduate students, nor had anyone from the administration. At the designated time, the seven of them were assembled round the seminar table, awaiting the Sublime, the Subliminal, and the Self.

Vague rumors had reached them, but they were uncertain of everything. It fell to Cass to tell them quietly of the scene that he had witnessed, and they received the news in wounded silence. The few desultory speculations concerned where he might go next, and they along with him.

“He could go anywhere.”

“Not Great Britain.”

“Well, of course, not there.”

“He could always go back to Columbia. I’m sure Columbia would be thrilled to have him back.”

“It would be good to go back to New York.”

“Who knows where it will be? We could end up almost anywhere in the world.”

“It’s kind of exciting. Disorienting but exciting.”

“You have to expect the unexpected with Jonas.”

They sat there for the full two and a half hours of the seminar, long after they had given up on Professor Klapper’s appearing, feeling that it would be disloyal to leave before the allotted time was over. When Cass left them, they were heading as one toward the View from Nowhere.

Cass had decided against informing Klapper of his change of plans. He would go and speak to the dean of graduate students. His hope was that some other Frankfurter department would accept him. He had some ideas about what he wanted to study. But Cass received word from Klapper himself, a scrawled note left in his box summoning him.

Cass wasn’t sure in which of the two offices he’d find him. The door to the smaller of them was ajar, and Klapper was sitting at his desk, calmly writing. He didn’t turn at the sound of Cass’s footstep, so Cass knocked on the open door, and the professor turned around in slow motion.

“Ah, Reb Chaim. Take a seat.”

Jonas Elijah Klapper was smiling, and Cass recalled that inexplicable gleam of triumph that had vied with righteous fury for control of the professor’s face, as if the screaming match with Browning Crisp was the realization of all that he could hope for.

“So, Reb Chaim, here we are!”

Cass nodded. Professor Klapper’s face looked almost glazed with well-being.

“But not for long,” Klapper continued in response to Cass’s nod. “I shall soon be departing Frankfurter University. Indeed, I am going to a distant land. I shall be telling you where before too long. There are things I cannot yet say. I am enjoined to preserve the silence of the Dura Valley, or, to paraphrase the Valdener Rebbe, the silence of the Hudson Valley.”

The creases in his pate that had been pressed into place by ceaseless cerebration were smoothed, the blued shadows that mottled his jowls and the half-circles beneath his eyes were lightened, his coloring, usually cement-gray, was roseate, and even the down slope of his eye seemed raised several degrees. Perhaps this was the face of beatitude.

“The Valdener Rebbe, may his name be blessed, spoke to me in the allegorical mode, this being the only means by which certain things may be imparted, a threefold interpretation being customary. And so it was that the Rebbe spoke of the special-needs children in the community. These children are beloved of God and yet separated from Him through no fault of their own. They lack the means to find their way through the sacred paths of learning. I alone, the Rebbe said, of all the men whom he had ever met, had the connections to help these children.

“‘The special-needs children of the community’ refers to the nation of Israel in exile, and the connections of which he spoke became clearer to me as he went on.

“He spoke of a child, one child. ‘On such a child I never dreamt to rest my eyes.’”

Klapper was a good mimic. Cass could hear the Rebbe’s voice lurking beind Klapper’s.

“He called the child ‘my son,’ and as he spoke his eyes glistened with the purity of his tears. ‘Abraham despaired of a son, and then Isaac was born. Hannah, too, despaired of a son. She went with her husband to the temple at Shiloh and prayed with such ardor that Eli the priest thought she must be drunk or out of her mind and wanted to throw her out.’”

And though Cass knew that Klapper’s eyes would move inexorably in the direction of the photograph, when they did he had to resist the urge to flee.

“‘I, too, knew such despair.’” He was still speaking in the Rebbe’s voice. “‘And as it is written of the Arizal, the lion of S’fat, so it was with the child. The child grew and was weaned and was brought to school and learned more and faster than any child his own age, following in the footsteps of Isaac on the way to Moriah.’”

Cass’s desire to flee had grown so urgent that he could feel it as a physical sensation spreading through his limbs.

Klapper had now sunk into profound reflection, and Cass cautiously began to rise from the green metal chair.

“Stay!” Klapper bellowed.

Cass sat down swiftly.

“I have alluded to the fact that I shall shortly be leaving these shores. It will not surprise you to learn that I shall be going to the holy city of S’fat, where my footsteps have always been pointed. In a manner of speaking, I am going into exile, at least for some years. I can take only one student with me. I have chosen you.”

“Me?”

“You seem surprised. I wonder why. Perhaps it is the humility of the true disciple.”

“But what about the others? What about Gideon Raven? He’s been studying with you for almost thirteen years. He understands your ideas better than anyone.”

“Gideon is a more-than-adequate student of my past. But you, Reb Chaim, shall be the student of my future. You have already had a taste of the bitterness of exile. I had a divination concerning you, even before I knew who you were, and I tested you. You are aware of what I allude to?”

“‘Dover Beach’?”

Klapper’s smile was benedictory, and he nodded once.

“I have too soft a heart and could not extend your trial too long. You see how nothing is as it seems? In a moment of abject humiliation, the loftiest of futures can be received. As Hannah and her son were lifted aloft, so, too, the tested student.”

Even Roz was stunned when Cass related this conversation with Klapper.

“S’fat? Where the hell is S’fat?”

He had gone to her place on Francis Avenue, hoping to find her there. She answered the door in a purple towel, her hair dripping wet. She had gone for a late run and had just gotten out of the shower.

“It’s in Israel. It’s where the Jewish mystics congregate. One of the hot spots.”

He wished that she didn’t go running at night. She was fearless, and he loved that about her, but he also worried.

“The Hot S’fat!” she said, laughing.

It would be wonderful to take care of her. She was a woman, even if she was Suwäayaiwä, and he wanted to take care of her.

“It’s not really funny.”

She was beautiful and brilliant, strong and immensely kind.

“It’s not?”

And she loved with such force. She had loved Tsetse, and she loved Azarya, and she loved him, too. She loved Cass Seltzer.

“He wants to take me along with him. Only me. None of the others. Not even Gideon. He’s abandoning them all.”

As wild and unpredictable as she was, she was always on his side. That was and would always be predictable. And he was on hers. Even without always getting what her side was, he knew with certainty that he’d be on it, and she’d be on his.

“What a shit. Still, you have to admit it’s all for the best.”