Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

“Why are you all right?”

“Why don’t they fill out the census?”

“Because. We’re Jews. Bad things happen when you count us. Think what happened the last time.”

“What happened last time?” Google search: Hasidic population .

“The Holocaust, dummy. The last time we were thoroughly ranked and recorded, who do you think was doing the counting?”

She’s right. There’s no solid number that’s easily searchable. “So?”

“So. Even for a minyan you’re not supposed to count with numbers. You use a ten-character word instead. And you can’t point fingers.”

Quick search for the Holocaust and Mussolini’s name pops up almost as much as Hitler’s. Why did Jill mention Mussolini and Hitler earlier? And now Jules, too. Old Benito did help Hitler try to wipe out the Jewish population. But what does that have to do with Nicolette and the Hasids at the gallery? Wouldn’t it be great if it were some kind of intricate revenge plot? Maybe they want to commission Nicolette to paint Hitler out of history. No, that can’t be it.

“West? Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you on the computer?”

“No.”

“You are. You’re using your Internet voice. Stop that when you talk to me.”

Maybe the way we use the Internet is an appropriate metaphor for the way we truly move through time — the expansiveness and invisibility. We experience position and time as discrete markers of identity. I am right here and right now. Later, I will be right there and right then. But in space-time, we are four-dimensional creatures. The physics says that I am neither here nor there, neither now nor then; I am a continuous four-dimensional instant, curving through space and time. We think of people and things as having temporal ends — a person dies, they are ended — but that’s misleading. People only end the way a yardstick ends and the way a road ends. They stop in space. We cry.

But is it a tragedy that a yardstick does not extend forever? No! Its utility is derived from its limitation!

“Jules, think carefully. Have you noticed if there’s been fewer people lately? At synagogue and stuff.”

“A couple women stopped coming. Everyone’s moving upstate. What if I moved to Poughkeepsie? Elaine loves it. Not that Dan would ever leave the city.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you’re so curious, why don’t you come to an event tonight?”

“Services again? Don’t you ever do anything else?”

“I do lots of things.”

“You used to try to make me go salsa dancing. You’re not allowed to dance anymore?”

“Total freedom isn’t always a blessing, West.”

“Yes it is.”

Jules sighs. “Like at a diner, like at Neil’s over on Lex, don’t you have a moment of panic looking through that menu? Page after page, having to read every item to make sure you’re making the best choice. And then you get your usual tuna sandwich and you’re no happier than if you had chosen something from a list of five items. You’re less happy, knowing there are all those other meals you never tried. Or at the supermarket—”

“Okay, I get it.”

“And you have a hundred choices of cornflakes? It’s suffocating. There is such a thing as too much freedom.”

“I get it,” I say, clicking to another website quietly so she can’t tell.

“I make choices within a particular path. We all have our restrictions and disciplines. Mine is faith.”

“What’s mine?” I say.

“I don’t know, West. Your disease?”

There’s a moment of static and I’m not sure if she’s hung up on me or if I should.

“I didn’t mean that,” she says. “If you want to know, the population is growing. Because of the Lubavitch movement.”

I can time travel, too, sort of. I pull up photographs of Mussolini and his mistress hanging from the Petrol station for public viewing. His demise on display.

I wait to feel something about it. I wait and wait.

It’s like the way empathy works, neurologically speaking: when you see a spider crawling up someone else’s arm, you feel as if the spider is crawling up your arm; that feeling is as real as that experience, the same neurons really do fire up. It’s hard for most people to empathize with the abstract — genocide, war. But since I am able to feel other people’s brains as if they’re mine all the time, then maybe I truly can time travel, too. If I just imagine hard enough

I hear someone laughing in the background. “Is someone else there?” I ask quietly.

“No, just Dan. He’s watching some stupid show about tricked-out cars.”

“Dan’s there? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I told him it was killing his brain cells. You would never watch that, would you? You have better taste. I told him that, too.”

“I have to go.”

“But what about dinner? That’s why I called. Tuesday?”

Dan just happens to be within hearing distance of every important conversation. I hang up.

It’s all connected to the Hasidim. And Dan.

The Hasidim know the painting was created in the 1950s because they had it dated like the gallery-sitter said. But they still believe it’s Nicolette’s — they said so at the landmine house. And they know that Nicolette created the landmine house this year. So, and therefore:

P5: THE HASIDIM, WHICH INCLUDES DAN, HAVE ALSO CONCLUDED THAT NICOLETTE CAN TRAVEL THROUGH TIME.

What are they plotting? What could they possibly use this information for?

P6: THE HASIDIC POPULATION IS SECRETLY ON THE DECLINE.

Let’s just say that my sister’s Lubavitch movement is a desperate response to this decline, recruiting less religious Jews as quick as they can. If the Hasidim are disappearing — like the bees, like the names — they would, naturally, want to know how one might stop from disappearing. You can’t hold that against them, because as we all know:

A3: ANYONE ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION IS BOUND TO TAKE DRASTIC MEASURES TO PUT A STOP TO SAID EXTINCTION.

They must have decided that if Nicolette can paint a woman’s suicide out of existence, why shouldn’t she, or they, be able to paint their own extinction out, too? If only they could harness that power themselves, they could paint away their own demise and time travel to who knows where! But to harness it, they need Nicolette to teach them, or force her to paint it for them. But the only way to locate Nicolette is through the painting, the last tangible link.

C4 (FROM P5, P6, & a3): the hasidim will stop at nothing to track down nicolette.

I write a letter to Jill that I plan to leave at the first-floor gallery in the building asking him to meet me at a certain location four days from now. I try to sound friendly so I won’t scare him away. Four days to prepare my thoughts. I haven’t told anyone, really, about Nicolette — I haven’t wanted to give her away like that. I don’t know if Jill is working under the Hasidim’s spell or if he’s a free agent, but time is running out, I can feel it. Nicolette is in danger and I must protect her. Without knowing where she is there’s only one thing I can do. I have to tell Jill:

C5: I MUST STEAL THE PAINTING.

Every city has a suicide bridge: Golden Gate Bridge Jacques Cartier Bridge Aurora Bridge Coronado Bridge Sunshine Skyway Bridge Cold Spring Canyon Bridge Nusle Bridge Van Stadens Bridge Humber Bridge Hornsey Lane Bridge Duke Ellington Bridge Villena Bridge Foresthill Bridge Grafton Bridge.

Here I am, five o’clock on Thursday, standing in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and not a bird in sight. Jill’s tromping up from the East. It looks like he’s carrying Brooklyn Heights on his shoulders. Four days since our last encounter and he hasn’t changed a bit.