Часть 5

Глава 7

I nodded, and tried another smile. My father had read that article to me before he had sent it off to his publisher. He had begun reading his articles to me during the past year, and spent a lot of time explaining them.

The noise in the synagogue had become very loud, almost a din, and the room seemed to throb and swell with the scraping chairs and the talking men. Some children were running up and down the aisle, laughing and shouting, and a number of younger men lounged near the door, talking loudly and gesticulating with their hands. I had the feeling for a moment I was in the carnival I had seen recently in a movie, with its pushing, shoving, noisy throng, and its shouting, arm-waving vendors and pitchmen.

I sat quietly, staring down at the prayer book on my stand. I opened the book and turned to the Afternoon Service. Its pages were yellow and old, with ragged edges and worn covers. I sat there, staring at the first psalm of the service and thinking of the almost new prayer book I had held in my hands that morning. I felt Danny nudge me with his elbow, and I looked up.

'My father's coming, ' he said. His voice was quiet and, I thought, a little strained.

The noise inside the synagogue ceased so abruptly that I felt its absence as one would a sudden lack of air. It stopped in swift waves, beginning at the rear of the synagogue and ending at the chairs near the podium. I heard no signal and no call for silence; it simply stopped cut off as if a door had slammed shut on a playroom filled with children. The silence that followed had a strange quality to it: expectation, eagerness, love, awe.

A man was coming slowly up the narrow aisle, followed by a child. He was a tall man, and he wore a black satin caftan and a fur-trimmed black hat. As he passed each row of seats, men rose, bowed slightly, and sat again. Some leaned over to touch him. He nodded his head at the murmur of greetings directed to him from the seats, and his long black beard moved back and forth against his chest, and his earlocks swayed. He walked slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, and as he came closer to me I could see that the part of his face not hidden by the beard looked cut from stone, the nose sharp and pointed, the cheekbones ridged, the lips full, the brow like marble etched with lines, the sockets deep, the eyebrows thick with black hair and separated by a single wedge like a furrow plowed into a naked field. the eyes dark, with pinpoints of white light playing in them as they do in black stones in the sun. Danny's face mirrored his exactly except for the hair and the color of the eyes. The child who followed him, holding on to the caftan with his right hand, was a delicate miniature of the man, with the same caftan, the same furtrimmed hat, the same face, the same color hair, though beardless, and I realized he was Danny's brother. I glanced at Danny and saw him staring down at his stand, his face without expression. I saw the eyes of the congregants follow the man as he came slowly up the aisle, his hands clasped behind his back, his head nodding, and then I saw them on Danny and me as he came up to us. Danny rose quickly to his feet, and I followed, and we stood there waiting, as the man's dark eyes moved across my face – I could feel them moving across my face like a hand and fixed upon my left eye. I had a sudden vision of my father's gentle eyes behind their steel rimmed spectacles, but it vanished swiftly. because Danny was introducing me to Reb Saunders.

'This is Reuven Malter, ' he said quietly in Yiddish.

Reb Saunders continued to stare at my left eye. I felt naked under his gaze, and he must have sensed my discomfort, because quite suddenly he offered me his hand. I raised my hand to take it, then realized, as my hand was going up, that he was not offering me his hand but his fingers, and I held them for a moment they were dry and limp – then let my hand drop.

'You are the son of David Malter? ' Reb Saunders asked me in Yiddish. His voice was deep and nasal, like Danny's, and the words came out almost like an accusation.

I nodded my head. I had a moment of panic, trying to decide whether to answer him in Yiddish or English. I wondered if he knew English. My Yiddish was very poor. I decided to answer in English.

'Your eye, ' Reb Saunders said in Yiddish. 'It is healed? '

'It's fine, ' I said in English. My voice came out a little hoarse, and I swallowed. I glanced at the congregants. They were staring at us intently, in complete silence.

Reb Saunders looked at me for a moment, and I saw the dark eyes blink, the lids going up and down like shades. When he spoke again it was still in Yiddish.

'The doctor, the professor who operated, he said your eye is healed? '

'He wants to see me again in a few days. But he said the eye is fine. '

I saw his head nod slightly and the beard go up and down against his chest. The lights from the naked bulb on the ceiling gleamed off his satin caftan.

'Tell me, you know mathematics? My son tells me you are very good in mathematics. '

'So. We will see. And you know Hebrew. A son of David Malter surely knows Hebrew. ' I nodded again.

'We will see, ' Reb Saunders said.

I glanced out of the sides of my eyes and saw Danny looking down at the floor, his face expressionless. The child stood a little behind Reb Saunders and stared up at us, his mouth open.

'Nu, ' Reb Saunders said, 'later we will talk more. I want to know my son's friend. Especially the son of David Malter. ' Then he went past us and stood in front of the little podium, his back to the congregation, the little boy still holding on to his caftan.

Danny and I sat down. A whisper moved through the congregation, followed by the rustle of pages as prayer books were opened. An old, gray-bearded man went up to the large podium, put on a prayer shawl, and started the service.

The Chosen

О книге

Chaim Potok

Глава 7

Часть 5

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