The Angel of Losses Read online

  As the first son granted to the rebbe, who was already late in life and parent to three daughters, Solomon was called to study as soon as he could speak. He was too small to hold his father’s books, and so they were spread before him like the fields of a kingdom are spread before a prince.

  Solomon wished to set all the letters free.

  The other boys in the rebbe’s school read and studied and argued, and pulled books from shelves and unfurled scrolls and examined the minutest corners of the law, and invoked the rabbis of twenty centuries in their grand debates.

  Solomon ignored the books, captivated instead by the quill in his hand, its tip glittering through the ink like a star at midnight. Touching it to paper was like opening a vein, releasing all the beauty of his short life: the delicate wildflowers swaying at the side of the road, the clouds like words of the Almighty frozen in the blue, the rash of pink light in the darkest distance of night, clear water in a thick glass, his mother’s voice guiding him into a safe sleep. It was all there in the clean edge, the deep color, the swelling staffs, the snail-shell spirals of the universe of the alphabet.

  His father told him stories from the rabbis, and Solomon’s favorites were fables about the alphabet. How the Torah was written in fire on the arm of the Almighty. How each letter petitioned to be the first in the alphabet, with humble aleph being chosen, and proud tav promised a place on the crown of the Messiah. How the Secret Name of God was a string of seventy-two jewels. How in the perfection of the Messiah’s paradise, a twenty-third letter would be added to the alphabet, a letter now cocooned in the hidden depths of creation, like the pearl at the center of a grain of rice.

  And what laws did the letters, strung into a net around every daydream and fancy, enumerate? This, Solomon had no interest in learning.

  The boy was pummeled by the words of family and neighbors, exhorting him to study, insisting that someday he would be a great rebbe like his father, but Solomon would not be persuaded. He didn’t want to be a scholar or a leader, he didn’t want worldly fame or spiritual favor, and the threats and grand promises only hardened his resolve.

  His mother conceived again, and a second son was born. From his earliest days, Manasseh was pious. He cried uncontrollably on days of penance and mourning. He giggled and played during celebrations. On fast days, he refused his mother’s breast. On Sabbath midnights, the hour that the exiled Messiah feasts, he cried for his meal.

  His first words were read from the book his brother pretended to study.

  Some say that one need not be learned to be a great tzaddik—the most ignorant man can be the most holy, if his heart is filled with sorrow for the exile and desire for the Messiah. Manasseh’s heart was hungry for redemption, just as his eyes were hungry for Torah. He pored over the books in the library; he triumphed in debates with students twice his age. He was the product and apotheosis of a hundred generations of wonder rebbes, and no one could see it but his brother. The court still expected Solomon to succeed his father, and he felt the sting of rejection on Manasseh’s behalf, for while Manasseh expressed no ambition, Solomon was furious that his brother’s gifts remained unrecognized.

  When Solomon was eighteen years old and Manasseh fifteen, a stranger came to the village. He appeared ageless. His hair was black but his beard was white. The skin of his face was a mask cured by the sun. And his eyes. His eyes were like two candles in his skull.

  He waited in line with the other visiting supplicants, the mud climbing his boots, and when he was invited into the rebbe’s audience, he declared that he had been sent by the prophet Elijah. Or so the rebbe relayed to his family later. He’s a madman, he said.

  Soon everyone was talking about this traveler, who sat with the other students in the rebbe’s classes and prayed with the congregation on the Sabbath, his voice rising from the chorus in an alien melody. The village families invited him into their homes for dinner, a dry bed for the night, and he told them of his journey across the continents. He had seen thousand-year-old pillars stolen during the sack of Jerusalem in a church in Rome, and on the anniversary of the Temple’s destruction, he watched them sweat until the city was deluged. He had visited the schools of Alexandria, the asylums of Baghdad, the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel in Persia, the holy city of Jerusalem, where the inhabitants collect rainwater or go thirsty, and where the Mourners of Zion dress in black and fast in huts, begging God to bring mercy to his children in exile.

  The two brothers were fascinated. They asked each other, how could any man travel so many miles for so many years and see so many wonders? How could any man walk all the way to Jerusalem, the refuge of his fathers, and walk away from it? It was as if the man had been made of water, reflecting a different image to each brother. To Manasseh, he was an ascetic, a tzaddik, wearing the robe of a penitent, a holy fire in his heart. The boy believed him to be a chosen soul with a keen eye. The hill tribes of Wallachia, who descend upon the Greeks but spare the Jews, and the Hebrew-speakers of India, who live beyond an unnamed desert, were all remnants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. This was the true purpose of the stranger’s journey, Manasseh was sure—to discern the limits of their people’s dispersal, and to prepare for reunion and the end of exile.

  To Solomon, the traveler was strong, weathered and polished by the wind and the rain and infinite steps on a hard road, an explorer, a free man. He quickly forgot the stories that captivated Manasseh and instead thought only about the island of Corfu, and the town of St. George, places where just one Jew lived. One Jew. Unburdened of his nation.

  Not long after the traveler’s arrival, the rebbe called Solomon into his study, a room filled with precious books of leather and parchment. It was here that the rebbe studied with angels, or so claimed the legends—or gossip—that circulated among the villagers, the pilgrims, and the students. The rebbe himself would not respond to such tales—he rarely responded to questions or musings on any subject beyond the law—though Solomon, who was often sleepless, had spied a blue light in the window on nights when he walked the village alone, a light that was not from a lantern or torch.

  We must speak of your studies, the rebbe said. You’re not demonstrating the dedication of a firstborn son.

  Solomon stared out the window at the mud, rising like a tide that could either drown him or sweep him far, far from this place.

  You’re silent. Are you ashamed? his father asked. His voice was gentle, as if he were asking if his son was in pain, if he was sick.

  No, Solomon answered.

  The rebbe’s face transformed. No? You should be ashamed. Your brother is three years younger than you and has already mastered the arguments of Maimonides. Your brother’s devotion rouses him at night to lament our exile, and still he rises with the sun to continue his studies.

  My brother is blessed, the young man replied. We are each blessed with different gifts. Now Solomon felt as if each word was a step along a perilous cliff, but he could not turn back. My brother was born to be a student and a teacher, he said. He was born to be a leader. Isn’t that clear?

  And what were you born for, my eldest? the rebbe asked. Besides bringing disappointment to your family.

  I was born to put the beauty of the world onto paper. I was born to be a scribe.

  Ah, the rebbe said. Then you give me nothing, nothing but disappointment.

  Having finally spoken the truth, Solomon could not contain his words. Don’t you understand? he demanded of his father. There was a mistake in heaven. Some angel confused the calendar. Manasseh has the soul of a firstborn son.

  The rebbe’s chin began to tremble, and he spoke with a fury his son had never heard before.

  Do not speak to me of my first son’s soul. Never speak to me of my first son’s soul.

  Solomon exited the school into a great field of mud. He felt terribly lost and terribly free. And there was the traveler, dragging through the muck with the aid of a staff, a branch twisted and gray. Not like the proud staff that the rebbe kept, which he had always
believed he would pass to his eldest boy. Solomon wanted to take the branch from the traveler’s hand and break it over his knee.

  Why have you come here? the young man asked.

  I was told your father was at the school, the stranger answered. I’ve come in the hopes that he’ll give me another audience.

  No, Solomon said. Why did you come to this place? Why do you want my father’s attention so badly? You’ve seen the entire world. You’ve turned your back on Jerusalem. Why do you persist?

  I’m looking for my home, he said simply.

  Then why don’t you return to the place you were born?

  This is the place you were born. He stretched his arms. Is it your home?

  Solomon decided to leave that night.

  He had little time to prepare, and he told himself that good-byes would be nothing but invitations to abandon his plan. Instead, he would leave without warning, and no one would suspect, no kind inquiry would provoke him to confession, and no pleading would persuade him to change his mind.

  He said nothing even to Manasseh, who quickly fell asleep on the straw mattress beside him. His sleep was restless but consistent, Solomon knew; his younger brother roused himself each midnight to mourn their exile from the Holy Land, from paradise, and exhaustion claimed him entirely in the evening.

  Outside their single window the trees whipped in the wind, their silhouettes silvered by occasional lightning snaps. Solomon would not allow the weather to deter him; the village was plagued by lightning storms, many of which brought little rain at all. If he did not go now, he would never go.

  It was nearly midnight. Solomon rose in the darkness and dressed in a second set of clothes. He hid a few coins in his sack, in his pocket, in his shoes; he selected two inkpots, two pens, a knife; he wrapped a single blank scroll and kissed it once, praying it would remain dry if rain began to fall.

  Suddenly, the hinges on the door began to grind. Solomon plunged into his bed and pulled the blanket to his chin. A spectral glow swelled around the door until it opened to reveal his father. The lines in the rebbe’s face were deep-drawn by the moonlight coming through the window, and his eyes shone blue in the silver night. He looked at Manasseh and then at Solomon, who had intended to feign sleep but had been trapped by those strange eyes, feverishly bright.

  So this was why his father had been so consumed lately by the question of succession. He had reached the end of his reign, and just as the stories of their fathers dictated, heaven had come to claim him. Solomon had witnessed the results of the rebbe’s power, but he had never seen his father’s magic like this. The old man was transformed into something otherworldly, and for the first time Solomon felt a desire to be alight with wonder himself.

  The rebbe crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He put his hand on his oldest son’s forehead, and Solomon briefly felt his childhood illness again—his bones trembling with the heat.

  You are arrogant, the rebbe said. A son should require no argument in exchange for obedience. You are willful, but so am I. I believed I would have what I wished, that you would bend to my demands in the end. And now the end is here. Shall I be proven right on my last night on earth, or shall my tragedy be the same as my father’s?

  Solomon didn’t understand, but the rebbe’s question troubled Manasseh’s sleep, and he moaned softly, and turned toward them, his brow pinched over his sealed eyes. Solomon marveled that the rumble of the rebbe’s voice didn’t rouse Manasseh; nor did the moonlight, which lingered in their father’s eyes; nor did the sizzle of lightning or the iron scent of rain.

  There is no time now, the rebbe said. No time to persuade, no time to argue. You must rally your little bit of faith and place it in me. You think that you honor your brother by deferring to him; in fact, you will only destroy him.

  You will take my place, his father continued. The angel will come to you. I don’t know when, but he will. He will tell you a terrible story, that I am suffering, and that only you can save me from my fate. Do not believe him. If you do believe him, then recall the father who was impatient, who cared little for the things you loved, and who wore a mask of disappointment. And let him be.

  The rebbe kissed Solomon’s forehead and stood. As he turned away, a cloud passed over the moon and shadows rose like steam, licking the hem of his robe. As he passed through the door, a soundless bolt of lightning turned the sky to chalk and the trees to bone, and for an instant the rebbe stood alone in the bleached night. The darkness returned, a wave swallowing the rebbe and slamming Solomon’s door. Solomon counted his heartbeats until they slowed, and prepared to rise—when thunder exploded, shuddering through the walls and floor, through Solomon’s joints and the hinges of his jaw.

  And still Manasseh slept.

  Solomon fled his home without a glance behind. The storm had passed, and the trees were strung with cottony fog. The village path took Solomon past his father’s study at the yeshiva, and he slowed his steps as he approached. The building was dark, silent, empty. The rebbe was gone.

  SOLOMON TRAVELED FOR MANY WEEKS, WALKING HIGHWAYS and deserted roads, through villages and cities, farms and markets, past castles and mountains, and always there was a Jew generous with a meal or in need of a scroll for his doorpost, and Solomon accepted charity and did what work he could to earn a bed, until it seemed his hand had written a totem for God across the homes of half the world.

  Finally he came to a city, floating on the watery seam of the world, where the dead had their own island and even the Jews had their own stitch of earth between a guarded wall and the lagoon. Solomon paid a ferryman to take him to their quarter, and he walked through the alleys, across the humped bridges and the stones pooled with water, and the whole place was imbued with the sound of the tides, as if the city were at the center of a giant’s heart. By nightfall, he was inside the gates of the Jewish quarter, not a neighborhood but a prison, they said. They called it a ghetto.

  The residents ventured out by day and returned by night. The city was built into the sky, a stack of dwellings and prayer rooms, a great compression of humanity. It was awful and wonderful, and Solomon felt something new. He wondered if it was the feeling that the traveler had sought—that he had inspired the young man to find. Perhaps he felt at home.

  Perhaps it was because of Zipporah, the eldest daughter of the family that had taken him in. Her father was a prominent man, a publisher. Solomon soon learned that this city, despite the ghetto walls and the church censor, fed all the surrounding lands with Jewish books. Though Solomon did not use his real name, he admitted to studying at the rebbe’s school, and so the publisher hired him immediately and gave him a home and fed him at his table. They were a wonder to the young man, the books the publisher printed—art and philosophy and history. He printed the arguments of the rabbis too, but they were just one part of his work, just one shelf in an infinite library.

  Solomon was amazed that his employer, his wife, their younger children asked again and again for stories of the rebbe’s village—they with their world of stone and gold and ink in the palm of the sea, enchanted by his world of prayer and mud. He was surprised to learn that tales of his father had come so far, while his father had traveled not at all.

  And when he pretended that his father was not his father, he was ashamed.

  The little ones, especially, begged for stories. To them, the Wonder Rebbe was a magical man, something out of a legend, not the imperious man his sons knew. Solomon didn’t want to see the light in their faces go out, so he learned to equivocate. Is it true that an angel is his tutor? It’s true that he studied with great teachers. Is it true that when a man lies, the rebbe sees the truth written on his forehead? It’s true that he is a good judge of a man’s character. Is it true that he can heal the sick?

  Solomon imagined his infancy, his burning skin, his mother’s tears, his father’s chanting surrounding him like the sea now did.

  It’s true, he said.

  After some time, the mood in the ghetto
turned dark. The fearful talk was endless—shooting stars, twins born with their bellies joined, half a leviathan floating in on the tide, bad omens all—but the publisher’s family said nothing, their silence so thick and cold the young man didn’t dare knock against it and ask for an answer.

  The Jews worried about the people outside the ghetto the way others worried about volcanoes. There were only so many quiet years until the earth would shake and smolder, until the church remembered the Jews’ books, written in a sinister code, and their mouths, hungry for blood. First they would burn the books, the young man was told, and then they would burn the people who made them, their families maybe, their friends even. That’s how it had happened last time.

  So that was why the publisher had withdrawn inside his body, and his wife and Zipporah and the others were white-faced with fear. The old story was beginning again. But if death came for Zipporah, Solomon swore, he would help her outrun it.

  Zipporah began slipping away at night while her family slept. Solomon lay frozen, barely daring to breathe, watching her shadow on the ceiling in the brief flare of her lantern as she hurried through the common room where he slept. Finally, one night, he rose and went after her. She negotiated the alley maze with the grace of a ghost, and Solomon struggled to keep pace with the soft percussion of her footsteps until he turned a corner and felt a hand on his chest. He squinted against the sudden light of Zipporah’s lantern, which turned her face gold and her eyes black.

  Trouble is coming for us, she said.

  It had been so long since he had heard her voice rise above a whisper in the oppressive air of her home, and now it shot through him, as clear and hard as a blade.

  You’ve never left the city of your birth, Solomon said. But I have. I can show you the way. When trouble comes, we’ll be a long way from it.

  No, she said. I won’t leave my home. You have to save us.

  How can I save you, or anyone? How can I stop the church?

  The church, she sneered, and seeing her so angry, so brave, he loved her all the more. She dropped her gaze and took a deep breath, and when she lifted her face again, her expression was composed. I heard a tale of the Wonder Rebbe, she said. There was a woman who met a young man by the river. He gave her a gold bracelet and shared a meal with her, and later, when she disappeared, her sister realized that the man was a demon and had kidnapped her. She appealed to the rebbe, and he summoned this demon. The fiend declared the missing woman his wife: because she had accepted his gift and feasted with him, and because he had spoken the words I am yours and you are mine, she was bound to him eternally. But the rebbe prevailed and the girl was returned to her family. Is that story true?