Часть 5

Глава 8

Reb. Saunders wanted to know about my eye. I told him it wam't bothering me at all and that I was supposed to see the doctor this Monday morning. He understood I was not permitted to read. I nodded. 'So you will listen, ' he told me, playing with an earlock. 'You are a good mathematician. Now we will see what you know about more important things. ' He said it with a smile on his lips, and I did not feel it as a challenge. I knew I could not match him and Danny in the breadth of their knowledge, but I wondered if I might not be able to keep up with them in terms of depth. Rabbinic literature can be studied quantitatively or qualitatively – or, as my father once put it, horizontally or vertically. The former involves covering as much material as possible, without attempting to wrest from it all its implications and intricacies; the latter involves confining oneself to one single area until it is exhaustively covered, and then going on to new material. My father, in his classes and when he studied with me at home, always used the latter method. The ideal, of course, was to be able to do both, but none of the students in my school had that kind of time available to him because of the school's heavy emphasis on English studies.

Reb Saunders had a text ofPirkei Avot open in front of him.

He began to read from it, stopping at the end of each passage. Danny and I took turns explaining. each alternating passage. I realized soon enough that the Pirkei Avot text was merely being used as a sort of jumping-off point for them, because they were soon ranging through most of the major tractates of the Talmud again. And it wam't a quiz or a quiet contest this time, either. It was a pitched battle. With no congregants around, and with me an accepted member of the family, Danny and his father fought through their points with loud voices and wild gestures of their hands almost to where I thought they might come to blows. Danny caught his father in a misquote, ran to get a Talmud from a shelf, and triumphantly showed his father where he had been wrong. His father checked the margin of the page for the textual corrections of Rabbi Elijah – the same Rabbi Elijah who had persecuted Hasidim! – and showed Danny that he had been quoting from the corrected text. Then they went onto another tractate, fought over another passage, and this time Reb Saunders agreed, his face glowing, that his son was correct. I sat quietly for a long time, watching them battle. There was an ease about them, an intimacy, which had been totally lacking from the show they had put on before the congregants last week. There was no tension here at all but a battle between equals, with Reb Saunders losing only a little less frequently than his son. And I soon realized something else. Reb Saunders was far happier when he lost to Danny than when he won. His face glowed with fierce pride and his head nodded wildly – the nod beginning from the waist and including the entire upper portion of his body, with the beard moving back and forth against his chest – each time he was forced to acquiesce to Danny's rendition of a passage or to Danny's incisive counter-questioning. The battle went on for a long time, and I slowly became aware of the fact that both Danny and his father, during a point they might be making or listening to, would cast inquisitive glances at me, as if to ask what I was doing just sitting there while all this excitement was going on: Why in the world wasn't I joining in the battle? I listened to them for a few minutes longer, and then I realized that though they knew so much more material than I did, once a passage was quoted and briefly explained, I was on almost equal footing with them. I had this time been able to retain hold of the chain of the argument – probably because there was no tension now – and so when Reb Saunders cited and explained a passage that seemed to contradict a point that had just been made by Danny, I suddenly found myself on the field of combat, offering an interpretation of the passage in support of Danny. Neither of them seemed at all surprised to hear my voice – I had the feeling they were surprised they hadn't heard it sooner – and from that point on the three of us seesawed back and forth through the infinite intricacies of the Talmud. I discovered that my father's method of teaching me Talmud and his patient insistence that I learn Talmudic grammar – I had painfully memorized an Aramaic grammar book – was now standing me in good stead. I saw allusions in passages that Danny and his father overlooked, and I resolved a contradiction with an appeal to grammar. 'Grammar! ' Reb Saunders threw up his hands. 'Grammar we need yet! ' But I insisted, explained, cajoled, raised my voice, gestured with my hands, quoted whatever proof texts I could remember from the grammar book, and finally he accepted my explanations. I found I was enjoying it all immensely, and once I even caught myself reading aloud from a Talmud – it was the grammatical discussion of the gender of 'derech' road, in the tractate Kiddushin before Reb Saunders realized what I was doing and told me to stop, I wasn't allowed to use my eye yet, Danny would read the passage. Danny didn't need to read the passage – he quoted it by heart with mechanical swiftness. It became clear quickly enough that though I was unequal to Danny in breadth, I was easily equal to him in depth, and this seemed to please Reb Saunders enormously. Danny and I were soon involved in a heated discussion concerning two contradictory commentaries on the same passage, and Reb Saunders sat back quietly and listened. Our argument ended in a draw; we agreed that the passage was obscure and that as it stood it could be explained either way.

There was a pause.

Reb Saunders suggested quietly that Danny might go down and bring us some tea.

Danny left.

The silence that now replaced our loud voices was almost uncomfortable. Reb Saunders sat quietly, stroking his beard with his right hand. I heard Danny's capped shoes in the apartment hallway outside the study. Then the door opened and closed. Reb Saunders stirred and looked at me.

'You have a good head. ' he said softly. The Yiddish phrase he used was, literally translated, 'an iron head'. He nodded, seemed to listen for a moment to the silence in the study, then folded his arms across his chest. He sighed loudly, his eyes suddenly sad. 'Now we will see about your soul. ' he said softly. 'Reuven, my son will return soon. We have little time to talk. I want you to listen to me. I know that my Daniel spends hours almost every day in the public library. No, do not say anything. Just listen. I know you are surprised that I know. It is not important how I found it out. The neighbourhood is not so big that he could hide this from me forever. When my son does not come home in the afternoons week after week, I want to know where he is. Nu, now I know. I also know that he is sometimes with you in the library and sometimes with your father. I want you to tell me what he reads. I could ask my son, but it is difficult for me to speak to him. I know you do not understand that. But it is true. I cannot ask my son. One day perhaps I will tell you the reason. I know the mind he has, and I know I can no longer tell him what he's to read and what not to read. I am asking you to tell me what he reads. '

I sat frozen and felt a long moment of blind panic. What my father had anticipated was now actually happening. But he hadn't anticipated it happening to me. He had thought Reb Saunders would confront him, not me. My father and I had acted behind Reb Saunders' back; now Reb Saunders was asking me to act behind Danny's back. I didn't know what to say.

The Chosen

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Chaim Potok

Глава 8

Часть 5

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