A Blessing on the Moon (24 page)

Grunting with satisfaction, Zalman wipes the grease from his hands on a dirty chamois. He opens the throttle, adjusts a latch. The spiral
bevels bite into each other, reeling the steel cable in, until the chain loses all its slack. The motor grinds against the resistance of the moon’s great weight.

“Easy, careful now,” Zalman whispers to himself, monitoring the winch’s speed.

Slowly, the bones give way and the moon is lifted up. The winch grinds without hurry until the crescent is finally exposed, suspended in its chains. Bones drop from it like water from a hooked whale. My eyes accustom themselves to its intense new light. The bright opalescence engraves deep shadows into the faces of my two companions. Soon, however, it becomes apparent that the moon’s surfaces are not clear, but have been mottled, as though with dark and purple bruises.

“The core is spongy, as opposed to its harder, icier crusts,” Zalman says when I draw his attention to these discolorations. “It must’ve drawn the blood into itself.”

The sight nauseates me.

“Luckily, we brought push brooms,” says Kalman, presenting one to each of us. He and Kalman exchange sly smiles: to their minds, nothing has been left to chance. God has provided for everything.

We return to the pier with the brooms.

In the vat where I steamed my feet, Kalman now prepares a brew of seawater and silt. The moon hangs, quavering, a few feet above our heads, beetling like a hoisted boat. Following Kalman’s lead, I dip the bristles of my brush into the briny vat and raise the broom against the moon’s curved side. Zalman does this as well, each of us concentrating
on a different section. Standing on the stepladders when we need them, we scrub and we rub, and although the mottling lightens, the stain is too deep. Our burnishing cannot make it disappear. Again on ladders and with dark glasses to protect our eyes, we rub the moon down, drying it with towels until it gleams even more brightly than before, despite the mottling. Forever now, the moon will appear this way, no longer the smooth and gleaming pearl I remember from my youth.

Also, I can’t help commenting on the many pockmarks its surface has sustained.

“Bullet holes,” is Zalman’s grim-lipped reply.

We climb off our ladders and fold them away. The brooms we store upon our cart, leaning them against the vat of seawater. I rub my hands together. They are coarse and dry with blisters. All that remains now is to return the moon to its niche in the proper quadrant of the sky. Kalman must be thinking the same thing, for together, we turn to Zalman, who stands upon the pier, his arms hugging one another, as though he were shivering.

He meets our gazes. “Gentlemen,” he says, pinching at his sleeves, “I have no idea how to proceed.”

“Perhaps,” Kalman suggests, “if we untie the chains, the moon may float on its own into place.”

Dark planes shift across Zalman’s hawk-like face. He shrugs gloomily. “Nothing I understand of the process gives me any confidence an approach of that sort will succeed.”

I clear my throat. “May I suggest we recite the sanctification over the moon. Whether it helps or not, surely it wouldn’t be inappropriate.”

Zalman’s spirits seem to lift, if only slightly, and the three of us gather close together. At first, however, no one can remember the words of the prayer, so long has it been since anyone had cause to recite them.

“How does it begin?” I ask. “Does anyone remember?”

“Hallelujah, praise God?” This is Kalman’s shy suggestion.

“That’s it!” Zalman cries and immediately the sentences flow into the dried riverbeds of our brains.

“Hallelujah! Praise God,” our voices rise as one. “Praise God from the sky, praise Him in the Heavens! Praise Him all His angels, praise Him all His Hosts! Praise Him sun and moon, praise Him stars of light. Praise Him skies of skies, and the waters above the skies!”

The words burst from our dammed hearts. And at the appropriate passage, we address the moon itself, quivering above us, so near.

“Blessed be your Former, your Maker, your Possessor, your Creator!” We repeat the formula the required three times.

“Just as I leap towards you but cannot touch you,” we say, leaping into the air, “may my enemies not touch me with their evil! Let them fall from dread and terror! Let them be as still as stones!”

We turn to one another and exchange the traditional greeting, “Peace to you. And to you, great peace,” our eyes moist with tears.

“Let every soul praise God,” we whisper. “Let every soul praise God.”

We utter the rest of the psalms and benedictions, our arms bracing one another for support.

“The Eternal will bless us, all peoples of the earth, all peoples of the earth. Amen.”

At Zalman’s directive, we station ourselves at key positions, near the clips that fasten the chains in which the moon is bound. Zalman himself climbs aboard the moon’s gleaming prow, planting his feet in the middle. On the count of three, Kalman and I release the clips from the twin horns. The chains unravel and fall from the moon like clattering snakes. The moon rocks perilously and we scramble for firm ground. Zalman, balancing himself, barely has time to release the hook and jump to the pier, before the crescent crashes with the smashing force of gravity, sending bone fragments flying in all directions.

“Look out!”

We turn against the bony gale, teeth and knuckles pelting our backs, pounding into us like hail stones.

When it’s safe to look, the moon is once again stranded in its bed, a pregnant woman who cannot lift herself without assistance.

“Zalman, Zalman, I’m so sorry!” I say, running to him.

But my words are ridiculous and small. Absurd to comfort Zalman, as though this enterprise were his alone.

He sits on an overturned bucket, his back bent, his beard in his hands, staring at the luminous wreck before him.

I doubt he even hears me.

I myself am about to sit, when, nearby, a tree limb breaks. Its cracking and peeling, familiar to me from a life in the lumber business, fills the air and a metallic voice cries out “God in Heaven be praised!!! Whooooooo!!!”

I search the tree line. Against the starry patterns of night, the black outline of a figure can be seen spiraling to the ground.

By the time we reach him, at the far end of the field, the man is up, limping in small circles, attempting to dust the debris of the forest from his black and somber clothing. My hopes of seeing my Rebbe are once again dashed. This man is far too old and with a whitened head, too delicate and so very frail.

“Old man, what were you doing in the trees?” I ask, offering an arm for him to lean on, while Kalman and Zalman brush the leaves and pine cones from his shoulders.

“Chaimka,” he says. “It’s me!”

The voice has grown reedy with age, but it is unmistakably his. He raises his burning blue eyes, so bright I can see them even in this dark, and looks at me from beneath the brim of his black fedora. The skin, tightening against sharp cheekbones, creates a rueful smile.

“Once again, don’t you even know your own Rebbe?”

“Rebbe?” I say. But it cannot be! Surely, this is not my Rebbe, but his own father, or even his grandfather, both of whom were saints. “Rebbe, how old you have become!” I say. No, it’s impossible. It’s as though an artist had sketched over his portrait with chalk, whitening the outline and all the small details. His frame remains thin and vigorously upright, it’s true, but he must be nearing ninety!

“Stop gawking, Chaimka,” he says. “It’s me. It’s me.”

The two Hasids and I escort our revered master to the bucket, where we make him sit, despite his protest that nothing is the matter. Kalman prepares a glass of water, which the Rebbe drinks awkwardly, spilling a line across his snowy beard. With the back of his hand, he pats the spot until it’s dry.

“I’ll get used to it again,” he chirps. “I’ll get used to it again.”

He stands and stretches his arms, folding them behind his back.

“Now what do we have here, what do we have here?” He warbles
this, strutting to the edge of the pit, his beak-like nose leading him there. He turns his head sharply, this way and that, from one horn of the moon to the other.

“Who can explain this?”

He looks over his shoulder through one cold eye.

“Rebbe,” Zalman steps forward. “We followed the map, which I devised.”

“Followed the map? Good, good,” the Rebbe clacks.

“After waiting for Reb Chaim.”

“Exactly as you specified,” Kalman forces his way into the conversation, hungry for the Rebbe’s attention and his praise.

“He appeared, as I said he would, did he not?” the Rebbe nods.

“Exactly according to your exact specifications,” Kalman repeats needlessly.

“We excavated the pit,” Zalman says without pride.

“Yes, I see, very good.”

“The moon was there, beneath the bones.”

“Beneath the bones, yes, I see,” the Rebbe’s eyes sparkle, catching the light of the moon. Although Zalman may berate himself, that he managed to achieve even this much is not insignificant, and the Rebbe is obviously pleased.

“I slept on it, Rebbe,” Kalman offers, a clumsy attempt to garner more attention for himself, “so that it not disappear.”

“You slept on it, did you, Reb Kalman?”

“Yes, Rebbe, I did.”

“In chains, I suppose?”

“Yes, Rebbe.”

“Ah, what dreams you must have had, what dreams!” the Rebbe looks at him directly.

“Hoops, Rebbe, I dreamt of hoops.”

“Ah, yes, the hoops, the hoops! Remind me to tell you of my own experiences one day.”

“Yes, Rebbe,” says Kalman, stepping back. “I will very much enjoy hearing of them.”

“But now, as you can see, Rebbe,” Zalman interrupts, doggedly putting forth his despairing account. “The moon is free, but we have been unable to force it to rise.”

“You recited the benedictions?”

“Of course.”

“At Reb Chaim’s suggestion,” Kalman adds, in a showy display of generosity.

“Hmm … Well, then, this is a complicated matter.”

The Rebbe circumnavigates the pit with vigorous strides. We have difficulty keeping up with him and tag along in an uncertain gaggle, waiting to supply whatever information he might need.

Every now and again, he stops and fixes his eyes upon the sunken crescent. During these intervals, we also cease our walking, the three of us, and gaze ignorantly at the moon, hoping to see there whatever the Rebbe himself is seeing.

“Chaimka,” his thin voice finally calls to me and, for a moment, I hear in it the familiar raven’s clack.

“Yes, Rebbe?” I leave the two Hasids and join him. The moon lies, swollen, at our feet. I am a head taller than my Rebbe and, for the life of me, as I watch his face now, standing behind him, I find it impossible to believe he ever was a crow.

“Chaimka,” this the Rebbe says, so quietly and almost like a child. “Hold my coat so I don’t fall in.”

The Rebbe’s shoe dislodges a small stone that jumps over the edge and into the pile of broken bones. The little rock dances, pinging against one hollow stick to the next, before spinning down a crack and disappearing for good.

“I understand,” I say.

With the Rebbe leaning over the edge of the pit, I dig in my heels, keeping the tails of his long black coat bunched together in both hands, so that neither he nor I fall in.

Raising his arms, the Rebbe shouts, “In the name of God, and with the merit of my righteous ancestors, I command you, O fallen luminary, to return to your place in the Heavens above!”

Zalman and Kalman move near. They stand behind us, peeking over each other’s shoulders. The Rebbe takes three steps back and smoothes down the wrinkled tails of his jacket.

The moon grinds and chafes against the bones, as though waking from a slumber. Slowly, it begins to float and soon is swaying above our heads, bathing us in its light. If the wind happened to blow it even
slightly in our direction, we might be crushed, should it fall. And for a moment, my heart grows faint with terror. But no, it ascends steadily, lurching from side to side, gaining momentum and speed.

I recall Ola’s telescope, and hurry to my bag, running with the moon behind my back. Ahead of me, my shadow dances across the ground, shortening as the moon draws itself further and further away. I open my bag and extract the spyglass and return with it as quickly as I can. We pass the collapsible cylinder among ourselves, watching the moonrise through its fractured lens. It sails as if by instinct to its proper quadrant. This, Zalman verifies against his map with our compass.

Finally, it comes to a rest. I have no idea how much time has passed, but not a little.

Still, none of us moves to leave. We bend our necks back and keep our heads lifted to the sky.

I cannot say I experience much joy and, judging from their stern and melancholy countenances, neither do my companions. Curious, after all this work.

“But how can we be sure,” Kalman whispers fretfully, “that it won’t wax and wane and disappear again?”

No one, not even the Rebbe, answers him and his words bring with them a mood of finality. They signal an end, not only to our work, but to our observations as well. We stretch, cracking our stiff joints and bending our backs until they pop. This one kneels to tie a shoe, that one blows his nose. With the tip of my handkerchief, I wipe spittle
from the corner of my mouth. Zalman and Kalman collect the spare ends of their machinery and their equipment, and begin packing it away. Periodically, each of us glances nervously at the moon, reassured and haunted by its presence in the sky.

“Chaimka,” the Rebbe calls, turning away. “Stay near now. Our work is not yet over for the night.”

There is nothing, really, left for us to say, and so I bid farewell to my two companions. I can see their weariness, in Zalman’s red-rimmed eyes, in Kalman’s sagging shoulders. They’re exhausted and why shouldn’t they be? This in itself might account for the simplicity of our farewells. But something else, a throbbing heaviness, enters into our exchanges, as we grasp each other by the hand and offer our tired kisses. They are at the end of fifty years of work, fifty-odd years of waiting, of planning, of study and interpretation. Hardly a simple task to awaken in the morning and prepare tea, contemplating the day’s few meaningless chores.