The cold surprised him, but he kept moving steadily until he was up to his waist. Seen from an impossible perspective, there were his legs, greenish and beaded with air bubbles, standing on the great incline that led to the bottom of the sea. What was down there after all, Mayashka? The plunder of the Greeks and the Philistines, and the Greeks and Philistines, too.
The wind was up, and the waves skipped over the breakwater. It was no longer the season for swimming, and the only people out were a small party of Russians. One of them, with pendulous breasts, spreading thighs, and a long, swinging silver cross, plopped a fat, dripping baby down on the chair: I just found her in the sea! Epstein knew plenty about negotiating the waves, having grown up alongside the Atlantic. Holding his breath, he dived under and began to swim through the turbulence. The water seemed to buzz with life, with something almost electrical, or maybe it was only he, Epstein, who was conducting his energies across a new vastness. Weightless, he turned a somersault.
When his head broke through the surface again, there was a tall wave moving toward him. He went under and let himself be tossed about. He swam farther out, the long, strong strokes of his youth. It was different to think in the sea than it was to think on land. He wanted to get out past the breaking waves to where he could think as one only can when rocked by the sea. One is always in the hold of the world, but one doesn’t physically feel its hold, doesn’t account for its effect. Cannot draw comfort from the hold of the world, which registers only as a neutral emptiness. But the sea one feels. And so surrounded, so steadily held, so gently rocked—so differently organized—one’s thoughts come in another form. Freed into the abstract. Touched by fluidity. And so, floating on his back in the great bathtub of all life, the abstracted Epstein did not notice the tremendous moving wall until it was upon him.
It was one of the Russians, a bear of a man, who dragged him, sputtering, onto the shore. He had not been under for long, but had swallowed a lot of water. Retching, it came out of him, and he gasped for breath with his face in the sand. Hair plastered to one side, bathing suit hanging low on his hips, Epstein heaved with shock.
That night, while Epstein was eating dinner in a restaurant on Rothschild chosen by his cousin, his cell phone rang. The old one had not been recovered. The Palestinian party had checked out of the New York hotel at dawn; by the time Epstein’s assistant arrived, they were already aloft above Nova Scotia. In the Arctic altitudes, a stranger had nestled deep inside Epstein’s cashmere coat, perhaps scrolling through his photos. But there was nothing to be done for the moment, and so the lost phone had been replaced by a new one. He still wasn’t used to the ringtone, and when he finally realized it was coming from him and fished the phone out of his pocket, the caller was unidentified because his address book had not yet been transferred. It went on ringing while Epstein stalled, at a loss for what to do. Should he answer? He who always answered, who had answered once in the middle of Handel’s Messiah, conducted by Levine! The blind woman with a crooked haircut who never missed a concert and listened to the music in raptures had nearly set her German shepherd on him. At intermission she had laid into Epstein. He told her to go to hell—a blind woman, to go to hell! But why should they not be treated equally?—and when, the next time, he saw the dog eating some chocolate it had found in the aisle, he had done nothing to stop it, though later that night he had woken in a cold sweat, imagining the woman in the emergency room of the vet, eyes rolled back to their whitish blue, waiting to have the beast’s stomach pumped. Yes, he had always answered, even if only to say that he could not answer now, would have to answer later. His whole life had tilted toward his great readiness to answer, even before he knew what was being asked. At last, Epstein stabbed the screen to accept the call.
“Jules! It’s Menachem Klausner here.”
“Rabbi,” said Epstein, “what a surprise.” Moti raised his eyebrows across the table, but continued shoveling pasta cacio e pepe into his mouth. “How did you find me?”
They had been on the same plane to Israel. Going through security at JFK, Epstein heard his name being called. Looking around, he’d seen no one and so finished lacing up his oxfords, grabbed his rollaway, and hurried on to the business lounge to make some final calls. Two hours into the flight, already drowsing in the fully reclined position, he was roused by a persistent tap-tap-tap on his shoulder. No, he did not want any warm nuts. When he lifted his eye mask, though, he was met not by the painted face of the stewardess but by a bearded man leaning over him, close enough that Epstein could see the enlarged pores of his nose. Epstein squinted up at Klausner through a veil of sleep and considered lowering the mask again. But the rabbi squeezed his arm with a firm grip, his blues eyes alight. “I thought it was you! It’s bashert—that you should be coming to Israel, and we should be on the same flight. May I?” he’d asked, and before Epstein was able to reply, the oversize rabbi was stepping over his legs and dropping into the empty seat by the window.
“What are you doing for Shabbat?” Klausner asked now, on the other end of the line.
“Shabbat?” Epstein echoed. In Israel, the day of rest that was ushered in late Friday afternoon and stretched until Saturday evening had always represented an annoyance to Epstein, since everything closed, and the city went into lockdown in pursuit of some ancient, lost peace. Even the most secular Tel Avivians loved to talk about the special atmosphere that settled over the city on Friday afternoons, when the streets emptied and the world drifted toward a quietness, lifted out of the river of time, so that it might be laid back down in it deliberately, ritually, all over again. But as far as Epstein was concerned, a state-enforced hiatus from productivity was merely an imposition.
“Why not come with me up to Safed?” Klausner suggested. “I’ll pick you up and bring you myself. Door-to-door service, nothing could be easier. I have to come to Tel Aviv for a meeting on Friday morning anyway. Where are you staying?”
“The Hilton. But I don’t have my schedule in front of me.”
“I’ll hold on.”
“I’m at a restaurant. Can you call me back in the morning?”
“Let’s say you’ll come, and if there’s a problem, you’ll call me. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll be in the lobby on Friday at one. It’s only two hours’ drive, but that will give us plenty of time to get there before Shabbat comes in.”