A Blessing on the Moon (22 page)

Eventually, we come to an empty forest road and are about to cross it, when a colossal logging truck comes barreling around a hill, heading straight towards us. Zalman extends his arm in front of Kalman and me, knocking against our chests, preventing us from entering the road, where without question we would have been smashed.

The truck blares past, its harsh headlights shining in conical beams, its open windows emitting strange sounds, wild and pounding, with
chaotic rhythms, as though the driver were beating a club against the interior of his cab.

“Techno-rap,” Kalman whispers knowledgeably.

“During the war,” he explains, “I built a small radio out of spare parts, so we could listen to reports of the battles. It still works and I like to keep up.”

I have no idea what he is saying. But, again, I nod and grin and redirect my gaze from his face to the rear of Zalman’s head. Behind my own head, I hear him sighing, content that he has laid one more mystery to rest.

Zalman checks the way, removes his arm as a barrier, and allows us to advance across the road and back into the thickness of the trees.

“At first, we could not believe our good fortune,” Kalman murmurs this to me. “Of course, before that, we had argued over who was to blame. And naturally, we blamed each other. ‘If I hadn’t listened to you,’ he shouted. ‘We’d be dead in the forest!’ I shouted back.”

Why must everyone I meet tell me his story? It’s as though I wore a sign across my brow: Share with me the tedious details of your life!

He continues. “But, Reb Chaim, the air is so thin, so thin up there, it’s difficult to argue. You can’t shout. There’s nothing to fill your lungs. And also, the beauty, Reb Chaim, the beauty! You can’t imagine!
It leaves you wanting to be quiet. There are vast riverways of stars flowing through the Heavens. Even now, it’s impossible for me to speak, just thinking of it. That I should merit seeing such splendor!”

And for many steps, he does, indeed, remain silent. Eventually, his rapture passes and the tale begins anew.

“Our boat was pulled, soon enough, into the lunar tide. We arrived and settled in next to a monstrous crater. And what should we find there, covering its icy surface?”

Before I can guess, he has answered the question himself.

“A hundred pots of silver! A hundred? No, many thousands!

“We can’t stop congratulating each other, jumping up and down, each praising the other for his courage, for his great courage, in seizing the boat, which we anchor securely to the moon with a thick and sturdy rope.

“It took many nights, Reb Chaim, many cold nights, to gather all the silver. There was so much of it and it was freezing, I tell you! We had to wear gloves just to handle it, piling each little potful into the boat, stacking it so high, so high, that when Zalman and I stepped back into it ourselves, it was too heavy. The boat started to sink and, before we could even cut the rope, we had pulled the moon from the Heavens.”

“But that’s impossible,” I say, not ceasing from my walking.

“Impossible? Of course,” says Kalman, giggling behind me. “Nevertheless, it’s true.”

“The weight of the silver, which was originally supported by the moon, even when transferred to the boat, couldn’t cause the moon to sink.”

“The moon doesn’t sink,” Kalman corrects me. “The boat sinks.”

“The boat sinks, all right. But it shouldn’t pull the moon down with it, since the moon is able to sustain the silver’s weight. And although the silver is transferred to the boat, its weight doesn’t increase. There is no added weight.”

“Except for our hearts, Reb Chaim. How heavy they grew, knowing the trouble we were causing, pulling the moon from the sky.”

He shifts the ladder on his shoulders.

“That is something your mathematics and your astronomies cannot measure.”

According to Kalman, the two of them landed back in the forests, embarrassed over what had happened. They cut the rope that tethered the moon to their small craft and watched, in dismay, as the boat
rose with all their silver, and the moon remained exactly where it had fallen.

“We tried forcing it back into the skies, but, of course, for that, we did not have sufficient strength.”

Still, neither considered abandoning the orb. Instead, they tucked their sidelocks behind their ears, spat upon their hands and, with their shoulders, began pushing the giant ball along the winding forest paths.

They were again alone in our dark and terrible woods, but now with a large planet glowing conspicuously through the pleaching trees.

Near dawn, when the moon was as white as a dish, they chanced upon an abandoned farm, east of the Soviet border. Huffing and puffing, they rolled the moon into the tall barn, closing its high, flat doors behind them.

There, they concealed the moon beneath as much hay as they could gather and, for the first time in what felt like a month, they slept. Each night, however, the moon grew smaller and smaller. This so distressed the Hasids that they couldn’t stay hidden beneath their own haystacks, but crawled out obsessively to check upon its progress. They couldn’t lie to themselves: the moon was definitely waning. And finally it disappeared.

The three nights that followed were difficult ones, emotionally wrecking for the Hasids. How they fretted and fussed, tearing at their beards, wailing for mercy! Still, as terrible as these nights were, they were nothing compared to the fourth night when the moon failed to
reappear. The Hasids raged madly through the barn, searching the cracks in the floor for even the smallest of crescents.

Nothing could be found. They held each other and wept.

The earth was dark and they had lost the moon.

Can it possibly be true, Kalman’s story? On the surface of things, I have every reason to doubt him. Perhaps they pocketed the silver for themselves and are hoping now to recover it. Why should I believe their story? Still, he’s a trustworthy sort, this Kalman, and a fellow Jew besides. It’s forbidden for him to deceive me. Not that it hasn’t been known to happen, one Jew lying to another, we’re only human, after all, but, still, what’s forbidden is forbidden. Plus, he’s a Hasid, he’s taken on more than the Law requires. He’d be cutting his own throat, lying to me.

Along with the two bags and the shovel and the broom I am forced to carry, these thoughts weigh me down until each footstep is more difficult than the last. I am about to insist upon stopping for the night, when our clanking trio emerges into a vast and open field. The light from the stars, no longer obscured by foliage, shines on the grass so clearly that every blade seems to stand out against its own shadow. Checking the field’s mathematical correspondences, Zalman allows
himself one small syllable of satisfaction: “Ha!” He drops to his knee and, with a spade he has carried on his belt, overturns a swallow tuft of earth.

He sifts the black dirt through his fingers, raising his smudged hand towards Kalman’s eager face.

“Kalman, tell me, what do you see?”

A repressed cry of joy manages to free itself, if only momentarily, from Kalman’s throat.

“Exactly,” says Zalman, “exactly.” And again, he picks through the moistened loam. “Now, Reb Chaim, look.” He extends his palm to me. I step closer. He holds a small portion of the fallen night, or so it appears, so many silver motes are gleaming in the blackened dirt.

I raise my gaze from his flat palm to his hawk-like face. Behind the wild and now unruly beard, his black eyes burn even more wildly.

There will be no sleep this night, I sadly tell myself.

Zalman slaps his palms, one against another, cleaning them, returning the dirt to the ground. He gives me a bracing chuck on the shoulder, as though he has read my thoughts. With Ola’s compass in hand, he counts seventy-seven large paces, moving to the center of the field. Remembering the small telescope, I bring it from my traveler’s sack and watch him through its fractured lens.

“What’s he doing?” Kalman breathes impatiently on my neck, pulling with both hands on his reddish beard.

Consulting the compass, Zalman faces all four directions, one after the next, before settling on one. He spits into his palms and raises the
pickaxe high above his head. Bracing his legs, he brings the axe down, cutting into the earth.

“What’s he doing now?” Kalman jumps from leg to leg, squinting into the distance.

“I’m not sure,” I say.

“Let me see, let me see!” Unable to stop himself, Kalman pulls the lens from my good eye.

“Ah yes ah yes I see I see,” he says, all in one breath, before returning the spyglass to me.

I once again peer through the little tube. Zalman is on his knees, with a mallet, pounding pegs into the ground. He reorients himself with the compass, until he is sure he is facing our direction. He waves his long arm and motions us to join him.

What are we to do? Kalman and I collect the equipment and struggle with it to the center of the field.

“Kalman, Chaim!” Zalman shouts, returning a third of the way, un-burdening us of at least a good half of our load, taking the brooms and the shovels and the buckets upon himself. “My calculations have proven exactly correct, right down to the smallest detail, God be praised.” He is delirious. “I am certain it is no more than ten to fifteen meters beneath us. If we begin now and work without ceasing, I’m convinced, with God’s help, of course, that we can have it up and running for Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the new month.”

“But friends,” he says, handing each of us a shovel and an axe, “this night can’t last forever and we have no time to waste!”

And so, we take our stations around Zalman’s central marker. I raise my eyes to the great sky, shining high above. I lift the axe they have given me. Physically numb and ravaged by my grief, I begin to dig.

We break into the earth with our sharpened hooks, shoveling in deeper with our flat pans. The Hasids sing wordless tunes to keep their spirits up. My back is aching, blisters swell inside my palms. That three old and tired Jews, and one of them dead, can work so hard is an astonishment to me. Before long, we are knee-deep into the ground, with small hills of overturned dirt all about us. Our shovelfuls are no longer entirely black. They glitter and glisten with silver specks. Pans of dirt fly over our shoulders, bursting apart like shooting stars. Our clothes become covered in silver dust. Indeed, we practically shine.

“Good, good,” Zalman mutters happily, confirming everything against his map.

When the ground is to my chest, Zalman strikes something with a hollow clink. The sound chills me to the bone. We relinquish our shovels and congregate, heads together, at the spot.

Zalman whisks away the extraneous dirt with a barber’s lathering brush. Digging in with his fingers, he uncovers a long white flute and holds it up to us.

“Bone,” he says simply. “Part of an arm, I suspect.”

Our work proceeds more slowly after this and with greater care. We must tie handkerchiefs around our faces. With each new shovelful, the pit releases a dram of biting stench. There is no longer any place for us to stand or to walk with safety. We sift through the remains gingerly and in our stocking feet. Despite precautions, our every step breaks something. More than once, one of us puts his foot down and the ground shifts, sending him backwards into the clattering heap.

Had we really convinced ourselves that the moon could be found lying beneath an empty field, ripe for the picking? No, whoever buried it has buried it deep, beneath layers and layers of corpses, so long ago now that the skin and the muscles have stretched and torn away, and there is nothing left but bones.

Near daybreak, Kalman shouts to us from a distance. Zalman and I make our way through the quicksand of tibias and fibulas, to where the blabbering Kalman is kneeling.

Even after we have reached him, he continues to call our names.

“Kalman, calm down!” Zalman orders.

Kalman points before him, his hand trembling.

Poking out from beneath a cluster of bluish elbows is the tip of the crescent’s curved horn, about as big and round as a large man’s fedora. It shines with a dull yellow light.

Zalman wraps a tailor’s tape around the curving hook and takes its dimensions.

“It must be enormously huge!” I say.

“Judging by the size of the hook,” he reads the tape through glasses, “I’d say it’s buried fairly deep.”

The sun sneaks over the horizon and the moon begins to whiten.

“Quickly,” orders Zalman, peering at the sky. “Grab the horn before it disappears!”

Kalman protests. “But, Zalman, I’m exhausted!”

“If it wanes further,” says Zalman, “we’ll never find it again. Our work will have been for nothing!”

Bleary-eyed, Kalman does as he is told, wrapping his legs and arms around the moon’s conical tip.

“Oy, oy, oy, but it’s freezing!” he complains.

“You’ll get used to it,” says Zalman, handing me the end of a long coil of rope. Together, we lash Kalman to his lunar mast.

“But how can I sleep this way?” he calls after us, as we wade to the crater’s edge. “I’ll be good for nothing this evening! You’ll be short a man!”

His words trail us, growing fainter and fainter, as we cross the vast distance, and although I feel sorry for him, I am far too fatigued to be anything but grateful that it is he and not I who must sleep with the sharp hook of the moon rising, like a blade, between his legs.

Zalman and I help each other from the pit. We stand, finally on solid ground, dusting the soil from our trousers. Zalman pours a small bucket of seawater from the spigot in the vat and we wash our hands. My spine aches, my blistered palms are stiff and sore. I have never worked so hard.

Drained, and with one last look at Kalman in the distance, roped now, or so it appears, to a mere column of air, I lie beneath a fir tree. I bend my arm beneath my head and roll onto my side. I hear him shouting and fall instantly asleep.

Bing! Ping! Ping! Bing!