TEN
* * *
THE RULES OF LOVE
**********
I CAME upon the Wizard of the Lower East Side exactly as I had the morning I first met him. As I turned the corner onto Ludlow Street suddenly there he was, in the very same spot where I’d first spied him all those years ago, when I was just a boy. Perhaps he could tell the future, as people said, and therefore knew where he might find me, or perhaps it was the way New York City worked—it was a huge teeming place of strangers, until you stumbled into what seemed to be a village made up of people you’d known in your youth whom you couldn’t seem to avoid. Hochman wore fashionable clothing, perfect for the season, a white linen waistcoat, a straw hat, white trousers, and cream-colored leather boots. He was on his way to a luncheon, he told me, given in his honor by the Workmen’s Circle. He had recently helped them find a boy of twelve who had come to New York from the Ukraine on his own, only to be trapped into near slavery by a sly, unscrupulous businessman who made a practice of selling the services of young immigrants to farms in New Jersey, where they labored in the fields with nothing more than a roof over their heads in return.
“You’re a union man?” I said, surprised.
“I’m a man of my people,” he said. “Wherever that brings me. If the Workmen’s Circle wants to recognize my good deeds and call me a hero, who am I to disagree? They may honor you one day as well. You’re quite famous at the moment. I heard about the girl you found.”
“As of today, I’m not in that business anymore.”
Hochman studied me. “No,” he agreed. “It was never for you. There was only one thing you were searching for.”
I admit I was curious as to his psychic powers, in which I’d never had any real faith. Now I tested him. “And what was that?”
I imagined he would say love, as I’d recently found the woman of my dreams and could think of little other than Coralie. Unfortunately, the feeling was not mutual, as she had fled and disappeared. Could I have found her? Probably. But if she had no wish to be found, I saw little point in doing so.
Hochman motioned me to follow him, and I surprised myself by accompanying him. I wished to hear what he had to say. We went in the direction of Essex Street, not far from the funeral home, to a saloon frequented by men of our faith. We went inside and sat at a rear table where we might be afforded some privacy. After ordering our drinks, Hochman continued.
“You were looking for the truth about your father, something I happen to have. But maybe so much time has passed, you don’t want to know. The truth frightens people because it isn’t stable. It shifts every day. If you’d prefer to remain in the dark, I would understand.”
Our drinks were delivered, and I gulped mine down. Perhaps that gave me the courage to say, “Go ahead. Tell me your great secret. Let’s have it.”
“You’ve resented your father all this time for running away and attempting to drown himself. You judged him as a coward. Am I correct?”
I shrugged, but my answer was clear.
“That day on the dock, there were other men who’d been let go from the factory. They had arranged to meet to plan what action they should take. A member of the Workmen’s Circle had been sent to meet with them.”
I laughed and thought the Wizard’s report preposterous. How could Hochman know this information when he wasn’t there? “And you divined these facts out of thin air?”
“The man presenting me with my honor today at the luncheon was the representative from the Workmen’s Circle. When your name came up in regard to Hannah Weiss, he told me your father’s story. The bosses sent some thugs after your father and his friends. If you hadn’t been there with him, your father would have stayed and fought; instead he saw that you had disobeyed when he told you to run. He went after you to ensure your safety and bring you home, but one of the henchmen sent to disrupt the union meeting came after him. Your back was to him when he was pushed into the river.”
I had always been convinced of my father’s weakness because he was in mourning for my mother, because he had cried in the forest in Russia. I couldn’t stand to hear him weep. I’d covered my ears every evening. I had assumed he had leapt, a lost and helpless man. Never had I thought he’d meant to rescue me.
“You can say I don’t have the power to see the future,” Hochman went on, “but when you stopped me all those years ago on the same corner where we ran into each other today, I saw that we would meet again, and that the river would run through your life. I knew I’d be the one to tell you the truth about your father, although I didn’t know what that was until just a few days ago, when your name came up in conversation.”
I called for another drink. Without my resentment toward my father, the hatred I’d been carrying around was now directed at myself. The terrified boy in the forest who thought the owls could carry him away. The boy who believed there were ghosts in the grass. I was the coward who had cried in the forest. I was the one who could not stop mourning my mother.
Because I could not endure who I was, I had changed my name so that I might be someone brand new. I had placed upon my father’s shoulders my many flaws and faults.
“Maybe you’ll understand why he would risk everything for you now that you’ve known love,” Hochman said. He laughed when I gazed at him with surprise. “There’s no need of psychic powers to see that. I can spot desire after all these years.”
“Unfortunately she doesn’t feel as I do.” I had the letter I’d been given in my jacket, which I’d read over and over again, a wound I couldn’t help but revisit. “She’s sent me away.”
“Don’t walk away too fast,” the Wizard said. “She may change her mind.” Hochman toasted my health and wished me good fortune. “Love is the one thing that’s not easy to find. It’s an achievement, Eddie, to feel such a glorious emotion, whether it’s returned or not. Some men never do. Though I’m not surprised to hear you have a passion. I saw it inside you, even when you didn’t know it was there. Why do you think I hired you? I saw exactly who you were.”
THE NEXT DAY, I went looking for my father. I knew I owed him an apology. If I were to be honest, I owed him more than that. I had brought Mitts and North with me, knowing they needed the walk, and they were quiet, tempered by my mood. Once I’d climbed the steps, however, I found I couldn’t knock on the door. I stood there in the hallway where I had been a hundred times before, and yet I was not the same person who had lived here. The corridor appeared smaller and more narrow than I had remembered. There was the scent of cooking from other flats, onions and chicken, and the dim lighting that turned shadows blue. I imagined my father on the other side of the door, his prayer book open as he said the evening prayers, the photograph of my mother on the table propped up beside an empty soup bowl. I had looked to find what I was missing in Moses Levy, in the hermit, in Hochman, in Mr. Weiss, but all along it had been here, at the end of this corridor.
Still, I could not go farther. I couldn’t imagine asking for his forgiveness. My throat had closed up. Could words burn you? Could they tear you to pieces? I stood with my back against the wall that was streaked with cheap green paint. Mitts and North were beside me, on edge. Did I bring them for protection or merely for company? Or was there another reason? I had met an old woman on the dock the day I rescued Mitts, and she’d told me that it was easy enough to judge a man by the way he treated his dogs. Perhaps I wanted my father to see that I was not a wretched, thankless person, the sort of man who would walk away without a look back, a son who would judge his father and fail to rescue him when he was drowning. I had a heart after all, not straw inside me, but blood and bone and flesh.
I did the only thing I knew how to do. I had the rest of my savings with me, all I had. I slipped the envelope of money under the door. I thought I spied a shadow. I thought I felt him near. I bowed my head and said the evening prayers. I was grateful for the teachers I’d had, though I now recognized myself to be a slow and unexceptional student. I finally understood what Mr. Weiss had given me in return for finding his daughter, for, like the angels who are said to follow men’s lives on earth, he’d sent me a message. I was my father’s son, no matter what my name was.