An Orphan's Tale (35 page)

SUNDAY NIGHT

This is today's true story.

Charlie came to visit Danny today but Danny never said anything out loud to him, even when Charlie spoke about them being together again after they send Danny back to Brooklyn. Danny gets more things he wants from being quiet than from talking. He wrote a note to the Director when he first came here and told him about what they were going to do to the Home one day in changing it into a halfway house for Jewish mental patients and other Jewish boys with Special Problems and the Director thinks that maybe it can be arranged and that's what Danny wrote out in a note today to Charlie. That way he can be safe here until they renovate the Home and then he can go there again.

Danny wrote down for Charlie that he's the only Jew in the place and that they won't give him Kosher food. He told Charlie that a man has to stay with him in the mornings when he puts his Tephillin on because of the straps. They won't force Danny to eat meat unless he starts losing weight or his blood tests show he's ill. Charlie said he'd speak to somebody from the Federation about speaking to somebody from the state about having frozen food sent in for Danny the way they do for Jews on airplanes!

A question for whoever is reading this: If you were a Jew on a plane and Arab hijackers asked all Jews to stand up, what would you do?

Charlie and Danny would stay in their seats!

Under the Romans Rabbi Akiba said a Jew can forsake some rituals if his survival is at stake. But he can never forsake the study of Torah!

Also: The Rabbis say that God saved the Children of Israel from Egypt because EVEN UNDER SLAVERY THEY KEPT THEIR HEBREW NAMES.

What Danny was imagining when Charlie was with him: that they were 2 Rabbis reciting things they memorized to each other and that when it was time for Charlie to leave the aides listened to them debating each other very Talmudically and nobody could remember which one of them was supposed to be in and which one out!

Danny loves that idea! He thought of writing it down for his dear friend Ephraim as a story to be called THE TWO MAD RABBIS in which the reader would have to guess which one really was and which one wasn't, but he decided Charlie would think it was too strange if Charlie was able to read any of it.

This is why Danny lets them read his notebooks now even though he hardly ever writes in them anymore, except to make lists or to put down the unimportant thoughts he has: because if he didn't let them they would anyway! They read to him out loud from his notebooks and say things like “That's very interesting” and then they wait and expect him to say something back, but he says Nothing.

They can never know what parts of his notebooks he wrote before the events occurred and what parts he wrote after and what parts he made up because he writes this down every time:

A spider spins a web for 1 of 2 reasons: to trap other insects for food, or to lure his mate!

Danny never told Charlie about his plan to ask Charlie to take them both to Israel, but he believes that's still 1 option that's left, as long as Israel still exists.

What Danny thinks when he considers that sentence: But Israel won't exist for the Jews forever! The Torah will. (Dr. Fogel was right all the time!)

Danny is quite content where he lives now, having all the time he wants. He's in a place with boys nobody knows what to do with yet. Everything is temporary, even the buildings they're in and the people who work in them. They can all be transferred at any moment if the state says so. They call the boys “a mixed bag.” People pass through the place where Danny lives going from 1 institution to another, or from 1 institution to the real world and vice versa.

Here are some places they go to and come from: foster homes, mental hospitals, reformatories, state orphanages, religious orphanages, courtrooms, halfway houses, religious organizations, welfare offices, real families, places for the retarded, places for the emotionally disturbed, places for the handicapped.

Danny's the oldest boy here! He's good at helping new boys when they 1st come in because they appreciate his silence. He doesn't show any reaction to the things they do and say and after a while they just seem to be attracted toward him. Most of the day most of the boys sleep and watch TV.

Danny didn't say anything to Charlie because he said to himself: As long as you're out there and I'm in here, what do we really have in common? You can always come here if you want but I can't go there. That's the difference!

While Charlie was talking an 11 year old boy named Michael took off all his clothes and went to the bathroom on the floor. Danny showed Charlie his friend Jimmy by glancing at Jimmy with his eyes. Jimmy is 7 years old and goes back and forth in front of the window all day long like an upside down pendulum.

They don't know where some of the boys here come from or what their names are. Some boys who come in at one end of the ward and go out the other are normal boys and they stay less than a week and Danny knows he'll never see them again.

Danny thinks they'll keep him as long as he wants them to because most of their cases don't interest them the way he does, even if they read what he's writing down right now! The 1st thing Danny ever said when the policeman brought him to the station was “I DON'T EXIST” and he discovered that he can repeat that out loud or in writing and it always gets people interested in him.

He showed his notebook to Charlie, offering him the chance to read what he writes now, but Charlie wasn't interested. Charlie said he's been studying with Dr. Fogel but when Danny didn't ask him any questions Charlie didn't tell him what he was learning. Charlie said that he and Dr. Fogel and Sol and Anita and Mr. Mittleman all talked about Danny after he ran away and here's a list of their ideas:

But when Danny showed no reaction to their ideas Charlie laughed and tried to brush his hair with his hand but Danny pulled away. “Oh Danny, Danny,” Charlie said. “What do you want from my life?”

And that was when Charlie informed him that if he got well after they send him back to Brooklyn, Charlie would be willing to let Danny live with him. He talked with people at the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and they were going to work things out. Charlie said he wanted Danny to have his own room and that he thought Mr. and Mrs. Mittleman would let Charlie pay to have one built on to the house.

He also told Danny that Anita sent a Thank You for the stopwatch. He said she was having a lot of fun with it. He said she was getting very big and very beautiful and was still in charge of the school and that he saw her almost every night.

Danny showed nothing in his face to his old friend. He didn't trust him and he didn't
not
trust him. That's what life is teaching him!

Charlie said Anita wanted him to stay with her and her family for a while so they could see how things would work out and he asked Danny what he thought of that idea, but Danny just stared back into Charlie's eyes. Charlie said he wasn't going to do it, but not because of Danny. “There are lots of things you don't understand,” Charlie said. “As smart as you are.”

Danny thought then of asking Charlie if he and his old friends were going to have a memorial touch football game in Brooklyn once a year for Murray but he didn't.

Charlie talked about the other people they shared in common and this is what happened to all of them:

Charlie's eyes were clear and he looked better than he did when Danny saw him in the country, and this is what Danny saw: that Charlie thrives most when other people need him!

Who needs him now? Anita and her children. Lillian and Sandy. Mr. and Mrs. Mittleman. Sol and Dr. Fogel. And DANNY GINSBERG!

Danny listened to his friend talk about different things and he thought to himself, Even though Charlie had the life he had from the time he was brought to the Home, he's just a normal man. Charlie didn't seem very large to Danny and it was hard for Danny to remember how they used to talk to each other so much.

Danny missed his memories.

Danny pictured himself on the hill overlooking the school with Charlie down below yelling at the boys while they practiced and he saw himself waving good-bye to Charlie. But Charlie didn't look up and see him.

Danny wondered if Charlie was imagining what it would be like for them to meet in 20 or 30 or 40 years and what they would look like and if they would be old and stooped over. He felt that Charlie's being with him and talking and Danny's being with Charlie and not talking was like something he could have imagined before today ever took place!

Nothing surprises Danny anymore.

Charlie said a man told him they'll let Danny use the library next week but Danny didn't tell Charlie that he doesn't memorize sayings anymore. His head got too full of them and he needs to make room now because his next project is to memorize the entire Torah! He knows he can do it because what he's memorized up until now would be almost twice as long written out as the whole Torah is. There are less than 9,000 basic Hebrew words in the Torah altogether.

Why Danny's doing this: because he sees more than ever that Dr. Fogel is right not to believe in a mere nation such as Israel. THE ONLY THING THAT LIFE AND HISTORY TEACH US THAT IS CERTAIN IS OUR SUFFERING AND OUR TORAH! Those are the things that endure and that can never be taken away from us. Even if they burn our land and destroy our dwellings and take away our possessions and strip us naked, we can still carry His words in our hearts and our minds and they will sustain us!

*

Old age would be best, Charlie told himself as he drove home. He had always believed that. Despite the love and attention he'd received as a boy, for his successes, he remembered even then how he'd longed to be an older man. Old men, he believed, were free because they were farthest from their own childhoods. Charlie could hear all the arguments Murray would have given him, about the strength of emotions engendered in early years, but Charlie didn't see why it had, necessarily, to be that way. When he reached forty he would be on the other side; he could, as it were, start again. When he learned to read and to study he felt he would also learn to lose those desires that now drove him, and that, as they had just proved again with Danny, troubled his life.