“Perhaps,” said Darcy—and he looked up at Aaron from beneath a furrowed brow, as though he were struggling to communicate in an utterly foreign language—“you might consult with your rabbi?”
Aaron blinked—did Darcy know Aaron’s father was a rabbi? But of course Darcy didn’t know—Darcy was simply assuming, as the English did, that a Jew, no matter how secular, would naturally solve his problems through a Jewish solution, rather than see a psychologist like anyone else. Aaron could have been offended—but who was he to be offended at anyone else’s blind spots? He nodded—then nearly laughed as he realized, with a start, that it was Friday. And when he said to Darcy, who was looking alarmed, “Yes, I think I will,” attending Sabbath services seemed such a logical choice that he hesitated only a moment more . . . then rose, offered his thanks, and, to Darcy’s clear relief, made for the door.
The platform was already packed when he arrived. Some problem on the line had stalled the early evening commute. He waited amid a crush of Londoners of all shades and shapes—business-suited, turbaned, dyed, and pierced—packed together in restless silence.
It took nearly a half-hour for service to resume; once it had, six crammed trains passed before Aaron succeeded in boarding one. As his train started, he held to a pole, closed his eyes. For a moment, he imagined that Helen was somewhere on this car. She would make her way to him, size him up. Demand to know what he was doing outside the rare manuscripts room, when there was so much yet to be done.
The train lurched and rocked and reached its terrible speed—the tunnel blurring through the greasy window, each station a bright gift given, only to be wrested away. In the flickering light the strangers around Aaron were sculpted and beautiful, and in each face he read the reflection of all his own questions: Was Helen still alive? Was he, himself? Was there a world left, outside this tunnel, any longer? It was with unexpected relief that he gave himself over, hurtling amid -strangers—palms bracing walls and poles and one another, the crowd rocking against his shoulders and back and arms—a hundred hands, living and dead.
When at last he stepped out onto Bayswater Road, he saw that it was evening, and that the afternoon’s thick clouds had made good on their promise. The streets were wet, the light fading; by now, surely a Reform synagogue would have concluded its services. Still, he made for the address he’d written on his notepad.
In all his time in London, Aaron had never so much as tried to visit the synagogue, though of course his parents had recommended it; but he’d had no interest in English Reform Judaism, an even stuffier variant of what he’d left behind at home. And now that Aaron was looking for the synagogue, he couldn’t find it. Three times he walked past the large yellow awning before he realized this was it. There was no sign labeling it as a synagogue, and in fact the burly security guards had at first appeared to be bouncers; he’d assumed the building was a club of some sort. It was the well-dressed middle-aged Jews exiting in twos and threes that made him stop and squint at the small sign inside the glass doors. Hebrew lettering. Three hundred and fifty years after Ester’s time, he thought numbly, and London’s Jews were still being careful not to stand out—though now the threat was not the garrote or the pyre, but bombs; and the grist wasn’t heresy, but Israel.
The security guards eyed Aaron, then nodded him in. Inside, a jowly man regarded him. “You’ve missed the service,” he said.
Aaron forced a smile. “May I at least look around?” he said, simply because it didn’t seem right to let the man dismiss him so readily.
A shrug: it was all the same to the man what Aaron did.
Aaron walked through the foyer and deeper into the building, pausing outside the wooden doors of the sanctuary to read a small plaque. This congregation was established in 1840, drawing its original membership from two sources: the Great Synagogue of London, an Ashkenazic congregation established in 1690 at Dukes Place; and the Bevis Marks synagogue, which was itself built in 1701 to house the growing congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had worshiped for much of the seventeenth century on Creechurch Lane.
Inside the doors, the sanctuary was large and surprisingly ornate. Colorful designs capped the ceiling; an organ was set into the back wall; a dome overshadowed the bima, where a few people were gathered—stragglers from the evening’s service, Aaron presumed. One of the side walls of the platform was a screen, behind which the synagogue choir surely stood unseen during the service: voices emanating from nowhere in anesthetized four-part harmony. He’d heard about English Reform congregations—Jewish services as High Victorian undertaking. In addition to a beadle, this congregation would have three top-hat-wearing wardens—he could see, at the front side of the sanctuary, the wooden box in which they must have been stationed during the service that had just ended, standing and sitting at the right moments in the prayers, the congregation following their lead.
Aaron walked halfway down an aisle, then settled into a seat on the end of a row: he’d sit just a moment, then leave. What better place for a rabbi’s son—one, he admitted, with father issues—to contemplate fatherhood? But one of the people at the bima—a young woman who wore a green headband and long skirt and looked like a university student—had turned and was beckoning him. “Don’t be shy,” she called.
She was too cheerful and informally dressed to fit with Aaron’s notion of English Reform services. In fact, most of those standing with her were young, and wore loose flowing skirts, casual slacks, even jeans. Some of them looked American.
“Just here to see the sanctuary,” he called.
“Join us for a bit, anyway,” the girl insisted with a summoning wave. “We’re an alternate service, we meet monthly. You’ll like it, we’re a bit more fun than the regular services here.”