He couldn’t bring himself to go back inside. Pushing through the nettles, he made his way he didn’t know where. Around the side of the house, where blocks of stone and roof tiles had been left in disorderly piles, and a shovel stuck up out of the stony earth. Nothing was ever finished here: the world built over and over again on the same ground, with the same broken materials. Epstein stumbled, and the loose earth poured into his shoe. Leaning against the house, he pulled off the Italian loafer and shook out the dirt. He still wasn’t ready to be buried. The wall retained the heat from the sun. Shivering, Epstein tried to absorb it, until a thought pierced him: What if she was not an apparition at all, but Klausner’s flesh-and-blood lover? Was it possible that Klausner could carry on like that about the spiritual realms and the revelation of the divine light, waving his mystical wand, when all the while he was just as controlled by the laws of this world as anyone? Or could it be that she was his wife? Had the rabbi mentioned a wife? Was it possible that she, a world unto herself, sat listening to Klausner in a long drab skirt and punishing stockings, her head covered with a lifeless helmet of hair?
Coming around to the back of the house, Epstein saw light shining from a window. What more? He should go back to Tel Aviv, back to his hotel where he could fall asleep in the king-size bed, which was the only form of kingship he wanted, and wake up to his old understanding. The taxi was already on its way to him. He would go as he’d come: backward through the streets of Safed now settled in the dark, down the now-dark mountainside, through the dark valley, along the dark and shining sea, everything the reverse of what it had been, for that is what it is to live in a finite world, wasn’t it? A life of opposites? Of doing and undoing, of here and not here, of is and isn’t. All his life he had turned what wasn’t into what was, hadn’t he? He had pressed what did not and could not exist into bright existence. How often, standing atop the mountain of his life, had he felt that? In the glowing rooms of his home, while the cocktail waiters darted among the guests who had gathered to toast his birthday. Watching his beautiful daughters, whose every move was touched by their confidence and intelligence. Waking under sixteenth-century ceiling beams and a white eiderdown in a room with a view of the snow-capped Alps. Hearing his grandson play the small cello Epstein had bought him, the sheen on the rich brown wood the sheen of a good life. A full life. A life tirelessly wrestled from nonexistence into existence. There were moments when the elevator doors would open to the home where he and Lianne had raised their children like the curtains to a stage, and the world there was so fully wrought that he couldn’t quite believe it. Couldn’t believe what his belief in himself, and his huge desire, and his ceaseless effort had achieved.
He was exhausted. He half wished to pick up his phone and find someone to yell at. But yell what? What was it that, so late, still needed correction?
He was about to reach the window when he heard a rustling in the weeds. The light had blinded him. And yet he sensed that whatever was moving in the dark was more human than animal. “Who’s there?” he called. All that came back was the sound of the faraway dog who, having not gotten back what he’d wanted, was still barking. But Epstein could feel a presence close by, and, not yet ready to give himself wholly over to the inexplicable, he called again: “Hey! Who’s out here?”
“It’s me.” The deep-throated reply came from close behind him.
Epstein spun around.
“Who?”
“Peretz Chaim.”
“Peretz—” Epstein exhaled, and felt his knees nearly give way. “You almost gave me a heart attack. What are you doing here?”
“I was going to ask the same of you.”
“Don’t be a smart aleck. I came out to take a piss. The rabbi’s speech was heady. I needed some fresh air.”
“And the air is fresher back here?”
Epstein, not entirely himself, was not yet unhimself, and rose reflexively to the challenge.
“What does your mother call you, Peretz?”
“She doesn’t.”
“But once upon a time she must have called you something.”
“She called me Eddie.”
“Eddie. Eddie, I can imagine going through the world as. I had an uncle Eddie. I would have stuck with Eddie, if I were you.”
But Peretz Chaim was also quick, emboldened, perhaps, by the wine from dinner.
“Would have stayed stuck, you mean?”
Epstein now recalled how his own grandfather, whom he’d never known, had apparently changed names four times so that the evil eye wouldn’t find him. But the world was larger then. It was easier not to be found.
“And how did you get here, Peretz Chaim?”
But the moment offered the young man an escape, because just then the light in the window behind them went out, and they were plunged into darkness.
“Bedtime,” whispered Peretz Chaim.
A wave of exhaustion came over Epstein. He would lie down right there on the ground at the foot of her window and close his eyes. In the morning everything would look different.
“The rabbi’s waiting,” Peretz Chaim finally said. “He sent me to find you.”
Epstein sensed the disapproval in his words. And yet weren’t the two of them on the same side? Having both come late, unexpectedly, but of their own accord? Now, absurdly, he saw himself with a scraggly beard, donning the dark jacket, becoming a copy of a copy, so that he might brush against what was anciently original.
He could smell the kid’s sweat. Reaching out, he laid his hand on his broad shoulder. “Tell me, Peretz, I have to know—who is she?”
But the young man sputtered a laugh, and abruptly turned and was lost to the darkness. His allegiances lay elsewhere. It was clear he didn’t think much of Epstein.
The taxi that had come for him all the way from Tel Aviv was turned away—the 700-shekel fare handed to the driver through the open window, with another hundred on top. The driver, trying to decide if he should be annoyed, finally shrugged—what was it to him?—counted the money, and threw the taxi into reverse. Epstein waited until the sound of the engine died out and the night filled up again with its silent, immeasurable distances. It was a mistake, he knew. He should have gone back in the car, should have escaped while he could to the familiar dimensions of his world. Tomorrow he could have been drinking orange juice in the sun on the terrace. He should have gone, but he couldn’t.