Bee Season (27 page)

He knows he will have to give his father some explanation for a weekend away. No matter how devoted he may seem in Chali’s eyes, Aaron knows he is only playing at changing religions until Saul knows the truth. Abstention from meat and masturbation are simple games compared to revealing his newfound faith to his father.

The certainty of Saul forbidding a weekend stay is as strong as Aaron’s determination to go. Asking his father’s permission will only make getting away more difficult. He needs an alternate plan.

Though school seems worlds away, Aaron remembers seeing posters for Sierra Club outings. He decides there’s no reason they couldn’t sponsor a summer camping trip. He devotes the rest of the day to planning. Should he fake a permission slip? Should he seem excited or nonchalant? Aaron runs through the various potential outcomes to his gambit. By the end of the day he is thoroughly spooked.

Aaron hands his father the fake permission slip at dinner, the most promising of a series covertly drafted upon a typewriter in Chali’s office.

“Sierra Club?” asks Saul. “I didn’t know you were a member.”

But if Aaron’s hours of anticipation have made him overanxious, they have also left him prepared. “I’m not, but anyone can go,” he answers, trying to keep his voice steady. “There was a poster at the library. I haven’t gone camping since Scouts.”

Saul realizes this is true. The amorphous cause of Aaron’s increasing detachment suddenly solidifies into a single source of fatherly guilt: Saul has never taken his son camping. Saul calls up rustic Sears catalogue scenes of fathers and sons in plaid flannel, lighting kerosene lanterns in front of pup tents and smiling at each other in mutual appreciation of their primogenital heritage. It is the best Saul can do given his utter lack of personal camping experience.

“Maybe we could go camping together,” Saul says in a tentative voice that strikes terror into Aaron’s heart because, in all his interpolations of this moment, this was never a possibility.

“Uh, sure, Dad,” gulps Aaron, unsure whether this sudden change bodes well or ill, but now Saul is signing the permission slip. Now he’s handing it back. Aaron realizes with equal parts relief and anger that the camping trip, like the legendary family vacation, will never exist beyond his father’s words.

Saul smiles and adds
father/son camping trip
to the mental list of things he really does intend, someday, to do.

Even if Aaron weren’t putting all his effort into not revealing that he’s about to spend a weekend wearing a robe and chanting mantras, even if Elly weren’t flushed with the thrill of having met Abulafia in print, neither would notice any difference in their parents. Saul alternates between being relieved and appalled that life continues as it always has despite the fact that he and Miriam only see each other at dinner and then only if she arrives home in time to eat. Although he knows her increasingly belated homecomings are job-related, he can’t help but wonder if his new sleeping arrangements have led her to seek someone with fewer compunctions about providing what she claims to want.

Neither has mentioned that horrible night. The longer Saul waits to say something, the more surreal the whole thing becomes, until it takes on the hazy quality of a partially forgotten nightmare. He begins to take comfort in the nocturnal solitude of his study. The reason for this change of venue slowly shifts until he has convinced himself that he is there for Eliza’s sake. It frees him to focus entirely upon their studies and how best to guide his daughter’s progress. Ultimately, his relocation to the study represents the best chance to achieve their goal. If Saul conceals this new arrangement from Eliza, it is only to avoid alarming her. He doesn’t wish to burden her with his efforts on her behalf. Saul begins to take pride in his new routine, can actually look at his wife without picturing her in their bed, bleeding. His new conviction becomes so strong that he starts remembering a conversation in which he and Miriam discussed the move, complete with jokes about how they’d see each other again next June, after the national bee was over.

When, during their next study session, Saul suggests that Eliza chant each letter recombination aloud, she balks. She is used to permuting in silence. Her voice will slow her down. The strange letter combinations will trip up her tongue, so awkward compared to the grace of her pen.

“God didn’t write the world into existence,” Saul reminds her. “He spoke it into being. And God
said.
Eventually you won’t need to write at all when you permute. It’s the next step on Abulafia’s ladder, the only way to reach
Keter,
the Crown, where
shefa
becomes possible. Remember, no matter how silly a group of letters may sound, that sound is intrinsic to those letters. You won’t know them if you don’t know every sound they make. If you feel self-conscious, just remember that chanting is only a middle step. Ultimately, you’ll be doing everything inside your head.”

The idea of mentally transmuting six- and seven-letter words is extremely empowering, evokes comets streaking across the universe of Elly’s mind. She dreams herself astride these comets, rushing toward an illustrious destination where she will no longer be a forgotten speller, a nameless face in a class picture.

It is all Saul can do not to gape at his daughter’s progress. She is soon chanting even the most awkward permutations as if they were ordinary words, their sounds smooth and flowing in her mouth. Her new powers of concentration astound him. He laughs to recall a time when she struggled to ignore the sounds of a television. He has sneaked behind her during her chanting and dropped all three volumes of
Webster’s Universal.
She hasn’t moved, as far as he can tell not even hearing its unabridged collision with the hard floor.

Eliza’s initial reluctance and self-consciousness are replaced by impatience. Though Saul is proud of the hunger he now sees in his daughter’s eyes, he knows he must be cautious. Abulafia warns of the dangers of premature transcendence, mentions both psychological and spiritual consequences:
Many great men and sages have stumbled and fallen, were trapped and snared, because they exceeded the bounds of their knowledge.
Saul doesn’t want to risk overestimating his daughter. It is why he doesn’t show her the books beyond
Hidden Eden.
Instead he adapts parts of them for her. This way, when she is ready, the new books will seem familiar without having been introduced too soon.

When they begin a new exercise not described in
Eden,
Eliza is skeptical. Saul promises that the new technique will speed their progress, is something of which even Abulafia would approve. He is thankful when Eliza seems to accept his assurances. It spares him from having to explain that movement and vocalization are techniques taken from
Light of the Intellect,
the next rung on Abulafia’s ladder to
shefa,
a book he has deemed best not to show her.

“Consonants are the backbone of language,” Saul begins. “They give words their shape. But consonants alone are useless. They require vowels to give them dimension. An H alone is barely audible, but paired with a vowel, it comes to life. That life is different depending upon which vowel it is paired with. HE is incomparable to HU.”

Eliza nods vehemently. She knows this better than he does. Saul wishes he could just hand her all the books, wind her up, and watch her go.

“It’s important that the body express these differences in sound. Sound, after all, is a physical thing. Instead of just knowing how these sounds make you feel, I want you to express them in movement.”

“Like by dancing?” asks Eliza.

Saul chooses his words carefully, not wanting to reveal too much.

“It’s like dancing, but you might not move as much. Your movements can be big or small, long or short. What’s most important is that you express the sounds the way they feel to you, not how you think they should look.”

Saul’s first instinct is to teach Elly the movements as Abulafia describes them, but a superficial grasp of Abulafia’s principles would cost them everything they are trying to achieve. Rote learning would preclude a deeper understanding. If Saul wants his daughter to have a decent chance at
shefa,
she must be permitted to develop a feel for the letters on her own.

“Start with the letter A,” Saul instructs. “I want you to say the letter out loud, drawing it out so that you sense it fully. Then, when you’re ready, I want you to say it again, this time moving your body to express the way the letter makes you feel.”

Eliza nods. Saul can tell by her face that she’s ready. It’s as if she has grown a mental dimmer switch that, with one turn, can shift her from full attention to imperturbable inner concentration. It’s a startling transformation, Elly turning unfamiliar as her face becomes a shuttered window, all action occurring beyond view.

“
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
.”

The sound is so pure that if Saul weren’t looking he’d be unable to discern the age or gender of its source. The sound envelops him, the air having taken on A as completely as it would the scent of baking bread.

Eliza stops. Saul thinks she is waiting for his approval, but another look at her face reveals that he doesn’t factor into what she’s doing at all. He realizes, with a flush of excitement, that Eliza is preparing to move.

“
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
.” Eliza’s body remains still as stone, her arms lax at her sides. Only her head rotates slowly, steadily, from right to left.

The blood drains from Saul’s face. He realizes that if he doesn’t sit down he may faint. Nothing Elly has read, nothing Saul has told her, hinted at this. There is no way she could have known. Yet, somehow, she is performing the motion exactly as Abulafia describes it in
Or HaShekhal (The Light of the Intellect),
a book Eliza has never read.

“Dad, are you all right? Is something wrong?” Suddenly his daughter is back, her face that of a little girl again. Her eyes are all concern and the will to please. “Did I do okay?”

“You did great,” Saul manages, trying not to sound as though he’s just had the wind knocked out of him. “You did just fine.”

Eliza is as surprised as her father. She had pictured herself dancing across the room, the power of the letters bestowing grace and ballerina toes. But when the moment came, she knew that anything more than her head would be too much, that the letters’ power arose from their simplicity. As she moved her head, each letter resonated as if she were a plucked string channeling sound waves to the small hairs atop her feet. She could feel the different vowels in her marrow, her bones chimes through which the letters blew. A sense of completion had filled her, the small movement of her head encompassing a new world.

She had expected her father to be disappointed. This, after all, was not the grand gesture she thought he wanted. When, instead, he is impressed, Eliza realizes she needs to shift her focus. The path leading toward
shefa
lies not in second-guessing her father but in following her own voice.

Which is how she knows she’s ready for more. She knows about the other books. She can see them beside the gap left by
The Hidden Eden.
She keeps waiting for Saul to show them to her. Even the sound of Abulafia’s name sets off music in her head. A-bu-la-fi-a. It’s magic, the open sesame that unblocked the path to her father and then to language itself.

But when she asks to be shown more, Saul insists that she wait. She has to first prove her readiness by winning the national bee. Eliza doesn’t need the national bee to prove this. When she permutes, each word opens up like a huge sunflower, each letter a petal with her at the blossom’s center. Saul assures her that her time will come. As far as Eliza is concerned, her time is now. When she pictures
shefa,
she thinks of the red phone on the President’s desk that is supposed to be a direct line to the Soviet Union.
Shefa
will be her red telephone, a direct line to God. She will get A’s on everything without having to study, transmuting her way to transcendence and a perfect grade. All the popular girls will consult with her about boys and she will use
shefa
to tell them if their affections are returned. She will become so popular that Gina Whitworth will call her first when she decides to have a party. With all that
shefa
has to offer, Eliza sees no reason to wait.

The rule against borrowing books from the study has been so clear and constant from so early on in Eliza’s life that it has achieved the status of natural law. Though secure in the necessity of her actions, the idea of borrowing a book without express permission makes Eliza’s heart beat cold.

The best time will be this Saturday, when Saul is conducting a bar mitzvah lesson. If Elly doesn’t take the book outside the study and replace it before her father returns from the synagogue, her secret will be safe. The trick will be to act like nothing has changed, to not let slip that pupil has outpaced teacher.
Shefa
will erase years of average report cards, undo seasons of unfulfilled expectations, and legitimize Eliza’s new place by her father’s side.
Shefa
will neutralize the guilt she feels when she sits opposite Aaron at the dinner table.
Shefa
is Eliza’s national bee backup plan. If she can get God on her side before bee season begins, she can be assured of avoiding dings and Comfort Counselors. With God on her side, the national trophy is as good as in her hands.

Sleeping bag and pup tent are carried to the car in passing reference to camping. The fact that Aaron actually plans to use the sleeping bag helps. It seems strange that discovering Kṛṣṇa  has made him a better liar. Aaron assures himself that his newfound deceitfulness is a necessary short-term skill to be abandoned once full-blown devotee-dom has been achieved.

It seems wrong that it should be this easy. Saul has unearthed the family camera for the occasion, takes a shot of Aaron beside the car. When he offers to lend Aaron the camera for the weekend, Aaron manufactures a river-crossing itinerary that will make camera carrying too risky. Saul deflates a little at the refusal.