The Jerusalem Inception

Chapter 8





Lemmy could not sit for the rest of the day. After sunset, when Sabbath was over, Temimah crushed a block of ice and wrapped it in a kitchen towel. “Lie on your belly and put it on.”

“Thanks.” He turned to go to his room.

“It’s time you grow up,” she said. “Your father expects you to take over some of his responsibilities.”

“Like what?”

She scrubbed a pot, which had waited in the sink for Sabbath to end. “Sorkeh Toiterlich is a wonderful girl, and you’re almost eighteen.”

Most of his contemporaries were already engaged, except Benjamin who, without a father, was a more challenging match. “I don’t feel ready,” Lemmy said.

“It’s not a question of being ready.” His mother filled the pot with soapy water. “It’s your duty to God. To the Jewish people. And to me.”

This surprised Lemmy. He had never thought of starting a family as a duty to his mother, whose daily life consisted of fulfilling her duties to others—to his father, to him, to the sect and its needy members. It had never occurred to him that she was also entitled, that she could be the beneficiary of someone else’s duty.

Temimah resumed scrubbing the deep pot with an iron brush. “It’s not enough for me, taking joy in other people’s children.” The brush scrubbed faster. “I’m not asking very much.”

“Asking me to marry isn’t much?” Lemmy shifted the pack of ice between his hands.

“She’ll be a good wife. I’ll help her with everything. And you can keep studying in the synagogue with Benjamin every day as if nothing happened.”

“But I don’t feel anything for her.”

Temimah’s hand stopped scrubbing. She looked at him, her eyes moist under the tight headdress. “Do you feel something for me?”

He didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve prayed for more children of my own.” She glanced at the ceiling. “But your father is a special man. He knows what’s best and I, well, I’m his wife. That’s my duty. But I crave to hold a baby. If not mine, at least yours.” She turned back to the sink.

Lemmy watched her shoulders tremble. What could he say? He wanted to relieve her sorrow, but the thought of standing with Sorkeh under the chuppah made him cringe. “Good night, Mother,” he said.

She didn’t answer.

He locked himself in his room, stretched on the bed with the pack of ice on his buttocks, and began reading The Fountainhead.

Hours later, his full bladder tore him away from the story. He hurried down the dark hallway to the bathroom and back to his room to continue reading. When he finished the book, the morning sun shone through the window above his bed. He closed his eyes and imagined the tall, square-jawed Howard Roark, the architect who defied the masters of his profession, mocking their grotesque imitations of ancient Rome in American cities, their pasting of motifs from a French chateau or a Spanish villa onto modern towers of wealth. Instead, Roark designed functional buildings in furious, brutal objectivism. Lemmy admired Roark’s unyielding integrity, his willingness to sacrifice everything for his beliefs, and his love for Dominique Francon, who loved him back but joined the enemies, who swore to silence his genius.

The Fountainhead excited Lemmy in an unfamiliar way. He could recite from memory full Chapters of Torah and Talmud, which he had studied since the age of three. He loved the scriptures’ poetic beauty and logical wisdom, and until now believed nothing else was worth reading. But here was a book that had absolutely no Torah or Talmud in it, and yet from its pages emerged a universe rich with men and women who fought for their beliefs, suffered for their idealistic goals, and served as the fountainhead of human progress while experiencing pain, love, and physical lust in ways he had always thought sinful.