The Righteous Men (2006) (14 page)

Will looked at his own finger, at the band that Beth had given him. At their
wedding ceremony, she had placed it on his finger whispering a vow that was for
his ears only. ‘More than yesterday, less than tomorrow.’ It
referred to the depth of their love for each other.

Now he was standing surrounded by naked men, some taking off tasselled vests
— which Sandy explained were worn by order of a religious commandment: a
reminder of God, even under your shirt — others putting them on, where
they instantly became stained with the moisture of skin not yet dried, several
muttering prayers in a language Will did not understand.
How strange the
world is
, Will thought surveying this scene,
that my love for Beth could
bring me to this place and this moment
.

‘Coming?’ Sandy was gesturing towards the pool.

Something told Will that if he was going to win this man’s trust, he
would have to show respect and go along with whatever ritual the hour called
for.

‘Sure,’ he said, taking off his own clothes; even the wedding ring.
Gingerly he followed Sandy, reminded of his school days and the walk to the
communal shower after a winter afternoon of rugby practice. Then, as now, he
felt self-concious, taking care to cover his private parts with his hands. The
setup here looked a lot like those old school baths, down to the puddles of
blackening water and the random pubic hairs on the white-tiled floor. There was
a sign:
LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR, TAKE A SHOWER BEFORE THE MIKVE
.
Will took his lead from Sandy, who stood under the jet of water for just a few
seconds.

Then to the
mikve
itself. It was like a small plunge pool and
plunging was what you did. Down the stairs, wade a step or two and then down
— a complete dunk, so that not a hair on your head remained dry — then
twice more and out. The temperature was comfortable but no one lingered. They
were not having a dip or a Jacuzzi, they were there to be purified.

As Will sank below the surface, holding his breath, he was filled with an
unexpected anger. Not at the men around him, not even at Beth’s captors,
but at himself. His wife was missing, in who knew what kind of danger, and here
he was, butt naked. He was not where he should be, in a New York Police Department
command centre, surrounded by flickering computer terminals manned by kidnap
specialists, each of them working round the clock to trace phone calls and
decode emails using state-of-the-art encryption technology, until finally one
officer turns around and announces to the room — ‘We’ve got
him!’ — prompting everyone to pile into squad cars and a couple of
helicopters, surrounding the criminals’ den with a SWAT team of marksmen
who then emerge with a trembling Beth, wrapped in a blanket, and her evil
abductor in handcuffs or, better still, a body bag. All this raced through Will’s
mind as he held his breath in the rainwater that was meant to sanctify his
body.
I’ve seen too many movies
, he thought as he came up,
breathed deep and shook the water from his hair. But the core feeling
persisted. He should be hunting for Beth and here he was instead, bathing with
the enemy.

As he dried off and put his clothes back on, he could not help but see the
men around him differently. What dark secrets did they carry? Were they
blamelessly ignorant of this plot or were they all in on the snatching of his
wife? Was it some kind of conspiracy, starting with the Rebbe but involving all
of them? He looked at Sandy, fidgeting with hairclips as he returned the black
yarmulke to his head. He certainly came across as a wide-eyed innocent, but
maybe that was just a skilful pose.

Will thought back to their first conversation at the diner.

Will imagined he had sought out Sandy, but maybe it was the other way
around. What if this ‘Sandy’ had been following Will since he had
arrived at Crown Heights, contriving to be sitting alone in Marmerstein’s
at just the right moment? It would not be such a hard trick to pull off. After
all, weren’t these people famous for their cunning …

Will stopped himself right there. He could see what was happening; he was
panicking, allowing a red mist to descend when he needed clarity. Hoary old
stereotypes were not going to rescue Beth, he told himself sternly. He needed
to use his head.
Be patient, stay polite and you will get to the truth
.

They popped in briefly to Sandy’s house which, Will guessed, had
simply been allocated to him. It was decorated in a style that belonged to
their grandparents’ generation: white Formica cupboards which would have
looked modern in 1970, a linoleum floor which seemed to hail from the Kennedy
era. The kitchen had two sinks and there was a large, industrial-looking urn of
boiling water, complete with its own dispensing tap, in the corner. On every
wall, in varying expressions, were photographs of the man Will now knew to be
the Rebbe.

The living room provided the only clue that young people were in residence.
It was dominated by a play pen, and cluttered with the bright red and yellow
plastic of children’s toys.

A toddler was among them, wheeling a dumper truck. Close by, sitting in the
corner of a very basic couch was a woman bottle-feeding her baby.

Will was gripped by a feeling he had not expected: envy.

At first, he thought he was envying Sandy for having his home intact, his
wife still safe. But that was not it. He was envious of this woman for having
children. It was a new sensation, but now, as if on Beth’s behalf, he coveted
this baby and toddler: he saw them through Beth’s eyes, as the children
she wanted so badly. Perhaps for the first time he understood his wife’s
need. No, it was more than that. He felt it.

The woman’s hair was covered by a small white hat that was singularly
unflattering. Underneath was a dark, thick bob — the same style worn by
every woman in Crown Heights as far as Will could see.

‘This is Sara Leah,’ Sandy said distractedly, heading for the stairs.

‘Hi, I’m Tom,’ Will said, leaning forward to offer a hand.

Sara Leah blushed and shook her head, refusing to offer a hand of her own. ‘Sorry,’
Will said. Clearly, these rules about women and modesty went beyond the simple
matter of clothing.

‘OK, we’re going to
shul
,’ Sandy was shouting as he
raced back downstairs. He sized up Will. ‘You won’t need that,’
he said, gesturing towards the bag Will had slung over his shoulder.

‘No, that’s OK, I’ll just keep this with me.’ Inside
were his wallet, BlackBerry and, crucially, his notebook.

‘Tom, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable in
shul
and it’s
shabbos
and we don’t carry on
shabbos
.’

‘But this is just keys, money, you know.’

‘I know, but we don’t have those things with us in
shul
or anywhere on Friday night.’

‘You don’t carry house keys?’

Sandy pulled up his shirt to reveal the waistband of his trousers. Around it
was a string, threaded through the belt loops, carrying a single silver key.
Will needed to think fast.

‘You can leave your bag here. You’re having
shabbos
dinner with us, I hope: you can pick it up then.’

Will could agree, dump the bag and just hope that Sara Leah did not take a
peek: one glimpse of his credit cards and she would know that he was no Tom
Mitchell. She would discover that he was Will Monroe and it would not take much
detective work to know that he was the husband of the kidnapped woman, whose
fate all these people were surely aware of. She would alert the Rebbe or his
henchmen and Will would doubtless be hurled into a dungeon just like Beth.

Calm down, that’s not going to happen. Everything’s going to
be OK
. ‘That’s fine. I’ll leave it here.’ Will took
off his bag, placed it alongside the pile-up of shoes and strollers by the
front door, slipped his notebook into his breast pocket and followed Sandy out
the front door.

They walked just a few blocks to reach the synagogue.

Clusters of men in twos and threes, friends or fathers with sons, were
heading in the same direction.

The building had a kind of piazza in front of it but was entered by walking
down a couple of stairs. Just outside, a man sucked heavily on a cigarette. ‘Last
one before
shabbos
,’ Sandy explained, smiling. So even smoking was
banned for the next twenty-four hours.

Inside was what Will would have described as the very opposite of a church:
it resembled a high school gym. At the back were a few rows of benches and
tables, backing on to bookshelves. In this area, like a large schoolroom, every
seat was taken and the noise was rising. Will soon realized this was not a
single class, but rather a cacophony of different conversations. Pairs of men
were debating with each other across the tables, each man hunched over a Hebrew
book.

They seemed to be rocking back and forth, whether they were speaking or just
listening. Next to them might be an eavesdropper or, more likely, another pair
engaged in equally intense dialogue. Will strained to listen.

It was a mixture of English and what he took to be Hebrew, all delivered in
a sing-song rhythm that seemed to match the rocking motion, beat for beat. ‘So
what are the
Rabonim
trying to tell us? We learn that even though we
might wish we could study all the time, that this is the greatest mitzvah and greatest
pleasure we could ever know, in fact HaShem also wants us to do other things,
including working and making a living.’ That last word was on a down
note. Now the tune was about to go up again. ‘Why would HaShem want this?

Why would HaShem, who surely wants us to be full of wisdom and
Yiddishkeit
,
why would He not want us to study all the time?’ The voice was getting
high-pitched. ‘The answer—’ and a raised finger, pointing at
the ceiling emphasized the point ‘—is that only by experiencing
darkness do we appreciate the light.’

Now it was the turn of his friend, his study partner, to pick up the thread
— and the tune. ‘In other words, to fully appreciate the beauty of
Torah—’
Toy-ra
‘—and learning, we have to know
life away from learning. In this way, the story of Noach is telling every
Hassid—’
Chossid
‘—that they cannot spend their
whole life in the yeshiva, but must fulfil all their other duties, as a husband
or father or whatever. This is why the
tzaddik
is not always the most
learned man in the village; sometimes the truly good man is the simple cobbler
or tailor, who knows and really understands the joy of Torah because he knows
and understands the contrast with the rest of his life. Such a Jew, because he
is one who knows darkness, truly appreciates the light.’

Will could barely follow what he was hearing; the style of it was so unlike
anything he had ever heard before.

Perhaps, he thought, this was what monasteries were like back in the Middle
Ages, monks poring over texts, frantically trying to penetrate the word of God.
He turned to Sandy. ‘What are they studying? I mean, what’s the
book they’re looking at?’

‘Well, usually in the yeshiva, you know, the religious academy, people
will study the Talmud.’ Will looked puzzled.

‘Commentary. Rabbis debating the exact meaning of each word of the
Torah. A rabbi in the top left of a page of Talmud will pick a fight with one
at the bottom right, over the two dozen meanings of a single letter of a single
word.’

‘And is that what they are reading now?’ Will indicated the two
men whose teach-in he had been following. Sandy craned his neck to check what
book they were using.

‘No, these are commentaries written by the Rebbe.’
The Rebbe
,
thought Will. Even his words are studied with the fervour of holy writ.

While they spoke, the room was filling up, people arriving in big numbers.
Will had been at a synagogue once before, for the bar mitzvah of a schoolboy
friend, but it had been nothing like this. On that occasion, there had been a
single central service and a degree of quiet (though not the pin drop silence
he was used to in church). Here there seemed to be no order at all.

Strangest of all, he could only see men. There seemed to be thousands of
those white shirts and dark suits, unbroken by so much as a splash of female
colour.

‘Where are the women?’

Sandy pointed upwards, at what looked like the balcony of a theatre. Except
you could see no one sitting down, because the view was blocked by an opaque
plastic window. You could just make out the outline of the people behind, like
glimpsing a projectionist in his booth. But they seemed to be shadows, revealed
only in the small gap below the Perspex window.

Will stared hard, trying to make out a face. Giving up, he realized that he
had been searching for Beth.

It gave him the creeps. He felt as if he was being watched, as if these
blocked-off, unseen women were spectral spectators, observing the antics of the
men below. He imagined their vantage point: he would stand out in an instant.
The one man not in black-and-white, but in chinos and blue shirt.

From nowhere, a hand-clap began. Rows of men were forming into two lines, as
if clearing a path for a procession.

The rhythm became faster as the men started singing.

Yechi HaMelech, Yechi HaMelech

Sandy translated.
Long live the King
.

Now people were stamping their feet, some were swaying, others were actually
jumping in the air. It reminded Will of that old, archive footage of screaming
girls waiting for the Beatles. But these were grown men, working themselves
into a frenzy of anticipation. One man, his face flushed, was jerking from side
to side, inserting two fingers in his mouth to make a wolf-whistle.

Will took in all the faces, crushed in the crowd before him.

They were not identical after all. He guessed several were Russian; a few
more, their clothes somehow less formal, were dark and looked Israeli. He
noticed one man, his beard wispy, whom he took to be Vietnamese. Sandy followed
Will’s stare.