Zaddik, page 17
He tried to think, but his brain felt thick and slow. A lead balloon of depression began to inflate in his chest. Time to go to a meeting, he thought. Get things in perspective. Then maybe I’ll go into Brooklyn, talk to Rabbi Kalman. There was something about Gottleib’s corpse that stirred a memory. And maybe I’ll visit Sarah Kalman, see her shop.
Feeling heavy but oddly empty, Taylor walked back to Sixth Avenue to catch the train downtown.
The Cutter followed.
Chapter 27 All Things Beautiful
Kingston Street, Brooklyn
Monday, September 13
SARAH KALMAN’S dress shop was sandwiched between the Kingston Street Seforim Center, selling religious books, articles, tapes, and records, and Epstein’s Travel, advertising trips to the Holy Land. Kingston was the main shopping street in Crown Heights, and dozens of Lubavitcher women, pushing baby carriages and trailed by the usual army of children, strolled up and down in the sunny September weather. They stopped to admire the wigs in the window of the Le Petit sheitl store, they turned into the Lubavitcher Congregation butcher shop, with its sawdust-covered floor, to buy freshly plucked Glatt kosher chicken for dinner. They crowded into tiny groceries and stood picking over the packages and cans and produce, gossiping in Yiddish while their children darted in and out of the aisles. And some entered All Things Beautiful, to be greeted by Sarah Kalman’s sister-in-law, Channah.
Sarah Kalman, sitting and reading by the light of a small lamp at the rolltop desk in the back of her shop, watched the women eye Channah, trying to figure out if she were pregnant yet. Just this morning Channah had been in tears. Here she was, married almost two years, an old married lady of nineteen, and the Holy One, blessed is He, had not yet given her a child. She prayed and prayed, but still no baby. Channah knew that the women in the neighborhood were whispering about her, suggesting that she and her husband were having troubles, and Sarah knew that Moshe was angry and rapidly losing patience. Without children, Moshe’s status in the community was at risk, and that meant his income as a rabbi could suffer. Channah was sure that if she didn’t get pregnant soon, Moshe would be asking the sofer, the scribe, to write up a get, a letter of divorce, and although Sarah told her not to be silly, she didn’t doubt that Channah was right.
Channah had asked Sarah what she should do, and Sarah had thought briefly of suggesting that Channah see a doctor. A few months before her marriage, Channah’s appendix had burst. Perhaps the infection had damaged her tubes. But Sarah knew that she could never explain that to Channah, and that Moshe would never allow her to see a doctor, especially not a fertility specialist. No Hasids became doctors, and they regarded all doctors with suspicion, even the Sabbath-observing physicians who practiced in the community. By claiming to cure people, doctors cast doubt upon God’s powers. Most Hasids believed doctors were going to hell. And Sarah did not think much of the neighborhood doctors, anyway—all of whom were well past sixty—believing that they did not keep up with modern medical advances.
Sarah also knew that Channah would never go to a doctor behind Moshe’s back, even if Sarah held her hand. Channah was a good girl; she would never act independently or risk giving the slightest offense. Not like me, thought Sarah. So she had told Channah to be patient, Hashem would certainly answer her prayers.
Sarah was fond of Channah and felt sorry that she was married to her pompous, thickheaded, intolerant brother, Moshe. Indeed, Sarah sometimes wished she could be Channah—a simple, sweet young girl entirely at home in the Lubavitcher world that to Sarah often seemed suffocatingly small.
Sarah sighed and turned back to her book, S. A. Horodezky’s Ha-Hasidut v’ha-Hasidim, Leaders of Hasidism. By her side was also Simon Dubnov’s massive History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, and a shoebox containing Dov Taylor’s family papers—letters, marriage certificates, and a tattered Bible with a mother-of-pearl cover and his family tree, written in fading blue ink, inside. Reading, studying, was Sarah’s drug, the way she escaped from Lubavitch’s narrow paths. And now she was deep into the story of Hirsh Leib, Dov Taylor’s great-great-grandfather.
A rather mysterious figure, this Rebbe Hirsh Leib. A zaddik, to be sure, but a loner, one who never had followers, disciples, or his own congregation. He wrote no books, and very few stories were told about him and those that did exist concentrated on his physical strength, which was said to be immense, not his erudition or his holiness. He was also said to have had a mystic connection with horses; like Rebbe Schneur Zalman, the author of the Tanya and the first Lubavitcher rebbe, he must have known the language of animals. He seemed to have spent most of his life getting into scrapes, wandering from town to town to pray and study with the other zaddikim of his time. His wife, thought Sarah, must have loved that.
On the other hand, although a marginal figure in the spiritual and intellectual development of Hasidism, Hirsh Leib certainly had been at the physical center of the third generation of the early Hasidic movement, when the disciples of the disciples of the Baal Shem Tov gained followers all over Eastern Europe. He seemed to have been especially close to Rebbe Jacob Yitzhak, the Seer of Lublin, and to the Seer’s closest friends: Rebbes Menachem Mendel of Rymanov, David of Lelov, Naftali of Roptchitz, and Rabbi Bunem, the apothecary. Hirsh Leib knew Rebbe Elimelekh of Lizhensk, the Seer’s old teacher, as well as the Seer’s troubled disciple, the holy Yehudi. He also knew Rebbe Israel, the Maggid (which meant preacher) of Kosnitz, perhaps the most powerful and worldly zaddik of that time, an intimate of Napoleon Bonaparte and Tsar Alexander.
Indeed, as Sarah delved deeper into the stories and histories, this Hirsh Leib seemed to have been everywhere, even at the strange Simkhas Torah celebration of 1814 in Lublin to which the Seer had invited all the Hasidim in the world. It was on that most ecstatic festival day celebrating the completion of the annual cycle of Torah reading that the Seer was said to have fallen to the street from a small window in his study; he died some ten months later, having never arisen from his deathbed, having spoken to no one. Except, perhaps, to Hirsh Leib, the Zaddik of Orlik, who, along with Rabbi Bunem, had discovered the Seer that night. Unfortunately, about that same time, Hirsh Leib had also died. He was stabbed to death in the market, it was said, by a Cossack.
That Simkhas Torah night was cloaked in many mysteries. No one knew why the great Seer of Lublin had decided that it should be the largest celebration the world had ever seen. Yet, as thousands of Hasidim danced in the streets with the holy scrolls, the Seer himself went missing. No one, not even his wife, knew where he was. And then came the fall.
Sarah closed her eyes and imagined that night, the narrow, medieval streets of Lublin thronging with men dancing in ecstasy. She could almost hear the singing, the stomping of thousands of feet, the noise rising up to the darkening heavens.
The Seer’s fall was another great mystery. The window, it was said, was far too small and too high for a man just to fall out of. And the Seer was found many streets away from the study house, with injuries too severe for him to have walked or crawled.
Sarah Kalman closed the book and pressed her fingers to her eyes. Her thoughts were far from her shop, where Channah chatted endlessly with a stream of customers shopping for new dresses in anticipation of the coming High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. What Sarah wouldn’t give to be able to solve this old mystery, to be able to talk to Hirsh Leib, to ask him what the Seer, who it was said could see backward and forward in time, had told him on his deathbed.
Suddenly Sarah became aware that something had changed. The store was quiet. She opened her eyes. A tall, slender figure was standing in the entrance, silhouetted by the sun. Men didn’t often come into her shop, and Sarah rose and squinted to see who it was.
“I’m looking for Sarah Kalman,” said the deep voice in English, a language rarely heard in All Things Beautiful. Sarah recognized the detective Dov Taylor and walked up to rescue him from Channah and two customers who were staring at him as if he were a visitor from another planet. Which, in a way, he was.
“Mr. Taylor,” Sarah said. “A pleasure to see you.”
Taylor was struck afresh by how pretty she was. Usually he was attracted to tall women, the taller the better, like Mary Rubel. But Sarah Kalman, although tiny, had her own charms. There was something intensely self-possessed about her, something that Taylor had intuited at her father’s Sabbath table, and he sensed it again right now. She seemed complete, with no loose ends dangling. Somehow she took up space out of proportion to her diminutive stature. Taylor felt a lifting of the agitated depression that had accompanied him on the train down to Crown Heights, the depression that had deepened when Rabbi Kalman had told him that the cuts Taylor had described—across the throat, from belly to sternum, the lungs and intestines removed and left hanging—were the way of shekhita, kosher slaughtering.
“Yes,” he said formally, “the pleasure is mine.”
“You remember Mr. Taylor,” Sarah said to Channah in English.
“Yes. Hello, Mr. Taylor,” Channah said awkwardly, shrinking away from him even as she spoke.
Sarah then said something in Yiddish to Channah, who turned and herded the two women shoppers toward the back of the store.
“Very pretty,” said Taylor, idly touching the arm of a dress. “You have a lot of nice stuff here.”
“Are you surprised?” Sarah asked.
“Well, actually, yes.”
“You don’t think Hasidic women like to look pretty? You should visit the sheitl shop and see the women trying on wigs for hours and hours. Expensive stuff, too. A good wig can cost two, three hundred dollars.”
“Would you cut your hair?” Taylor asked.
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” said Sarah. “I’m too old, too set in my ways.”
“You’re not even thirty.”
“Around here, that’s old. Come, it’s a beautiful day. Let’s walk a bit. Let me tell you about Hirsh Leib. That’s why you’re here, yes?”
“Yes, that, and just to visit,” said Taylor, attempting to take Sarah’s elbow as they walked out of the shop. She pirouetted away from his touch, talking, covering Taylor’s embarrassment with words. She may look like any other woman, he reminded himself, but she’s a Hasid; her sense of propriety, of personal space, is different.
As they walked up Kingston Street, Taylor again felt the community’s eyes upon him, the stranger, the goy. He also felt how Sarah Kalman kept her distance, and he clasped his hands behind his back so that he would not forget and accidentally reach out to touch her.
Sarah told him about Hirsh Leib, about the tumultuous times he lived in, about all the great zaddikim he knew, and about the disaster that had befallen the Seer of Lublin. Taylor tried to pay attention. But the events she described—Napoleon’s armies sweeping across Europe; zaddikim being imprisoned by the tsar or being excommunicated by the traditional Jewish authorities—seemed so distant, so irrelevant, that he found it hard to keep the names straight.
What’s all this got to do with diamonds, with murder? he asked himself. What’s it got to do with the fact that this murder was apparently committed by a Jew, someone familiar with kosher slaughtering? A shoykhet, is that what Kalman said? The shoykhet hangs the animal upside down so that it will bleed to death because it is forbidden to eat blood. The shoykhet examines the lungs and intestines to check for disease. And if the murderer was a Jew, was he a Hasid? Who but a Hasid would know about kosher slaughtering?
And what’s any of it got to do with me? Tonight, if I wanted, I could sleep with Mary Rubel. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t sleep with this chatty young redhead if I brought her a dozen roses every day for a hundred years.
So what are you doing? he asked himself. Some crazy rabbi tells you that another crazy rabbi who’s been dead almost two hundred years is living inside you and he’s going to solve a murder in the diamond district. And what’s really crazy is that you listen, and you’re listening right now.
Of course, something told you to ask about the way Zalman Gottleib was cut up. What did you know about kosher slaughtering? Nothing, that’s what.
Abruptly Taylor stopped and looked behind him.
“What’s the matter?” Sarah Kalman asked.
“Nothing,” said Taylor. “It’s just that I thought I felt someone watching us.”
“Here in Crown Heights,” said Sarah, “everybody watches everybody. And you’re a stranger.”
“You mean a goy,” Taylor said.
“Don’t be so touchy, Mr. Taylor,” said Sarah. “I mean everybody knows me, and everybody’s heard about you, so they watch.”
“What do you mean everybody’s heard about me?”
“Oh, there are no secrets here. Everybody knows you’re the handsome Jewish policeman helping the Satmarers find out who killed the diamond dealer. Everybody knows you went to the mikvah and sat at my father’s table for Shabbos. And now everybody will be talking about how shameless I am, walking down the street with you.”
“So why are you walking down the street with me?”
“Because I want to,” said Sarah, and Taylor saw her square her shoulders proudly. “I’m used to people talking about me. They’ve been doing it for years. It makes my father and Moshe, my brother, crazy, but I don’t mind. In fact, it’s good for business. Women come in to talk to me, it’s exciting for them, talking to Sarah Kalman, the rov’s crazy daughter, and maybe, when they’re there, they buy a dress.”
“I don’t understand. You seem so normal.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“I guess. That’s the way I meant it.”
“What you really meant is that I don’t seem as strange as the other Hasidim.”
“No. I mean—”
“It’s all right. I’ll accept your compliment. But it’s not true. I’m not normal. Not in my world, and not in your world, either. Probably not in your world most of all.
“But I don’t want to talk about me. It’s too boring. What’s interesting,” said Sarah, her green eyes bright, her voice lightly brushed with urgency, “is that no one really knows what happened to the Seer on that Simkhas Torah night except, perhaps, your great-great-grandfather, Rebbe Hirsh Leib.”
“Whatever happened to Hirsh Leib, anyway?”
“He died. He was stabbed to death in the street.”
“Why?”
“Who knows? Maybe he accidentally kicked dust on a Cossack’s boots. I’m sorry, he was your great-great-grandfather, but that sort of thing, you know, it happened all the time.”
As they walked down Division Street, Dov Taylor thought about his ancestor Hirsh Leib dying in the street, his blood soaking into the dust as people stepped over him. Another murder. And the Seer of Lublin? Perhaps another. Christ, what a bloody history.
Were they all killed by fellow Jews?
Sarah Kalman was going on about life in Lublin, about the hardships visited upon the Jews, and Taylor tried to pay attention to what she was saying while he tried to shake the feeling that they were being watched.
He could not.
Chapter 28 The Parker Meridien Hotel
West Fifty-seventh Street,
Manhattan
Monday, September 13
LADISLAW CZARTORYSKI could not take his eyes off the huge diamond that Ariel Levin had placed between them on the small pink-marble table by the window overlooking the great, black, nighttime void of Central Park. Ariel Levin could not take his eyes off the dull sheen of the aluminum suitcase packed with money and lying open on the bed.
“It’s worth a lot more than that, Mr. Cartovsky,” said Levin, giving the suitcase and the money the back of his hand.
“I am sure you are right, Mr. Levin,” said Czartoryski, gazing at the diamond, imagining he could see the city’s lights twinkling in its depths, imagining how his friends would look at it in awe, “and you can certainly look for another buyer if you wish. Perhaps you will find one who will pay more. However, there, on the bed, is five hundred thousand dollars in American dollars. It is real, tangible. You can feel it, smell it, and count it. And, right now, it is yours.”
Maria Radziwell stood behind Levin, her large, tanned hands resting lightly on his shoulders. Her nails were long and unpolished. She looked into Czartoryski’s pale blue eyes and saw them shine with triumph. Suddenly she felt as if she were touching a dead man, and she stepped away from Levin.
“Come, Mr. Levin,” said Czartoryski. “This is a fair offer.”
“I would like at least six hundred thousand,” Levin said.
“Yes, and so would anyone,” said Czartoryski. “However, I do not have it readily available, and after what my niece has told me about your adventure this morning, I suggest that it is in both our best interests to conclude our business speedily.”
“Yes, yes,” Levin said. “You’re right. Well, all right.” He reached across the table to shake Czartoryski’s small hand. “We have a deal.”
“Excellent,” Czartoryski pronounced. “Excellent.” He snatched the stone off the table and produced a blue velvet pouch from the pocket of his gray pinstripe suit. He dropped the diamond into the pouch and the pouch into his pocket.
“Shall we have a toast? I have an excellent brandy here, a Delamain Grande Vesper. You would like one, wouldn’t you, my dear?” he asked Radziwell. “My niece,” he told Levin, “is very fond of brandy. But why am I telling you? I am sure you have already become familiar with my Mary’s tastes.”
Czartoryski fetched three snifters from the suite’s bar and poured them each a generous portion. “I would like to propose a toast,” he said, swirling the amber brandy in his glass, “to our deal and to this magnificent diamond. May our business bring good fortune and happiness to us all, and may this stone’s journeys be over forever.”
They drank, and Levin walked over to the bed and closed the aluminum suitcase. “Mr. Cartovsky, it has been a pleasure doing business with you,” he said, lifting it up.
