Authors: Barbara Rogan
For many years Jonathan had clung to the belief that everything he did, he did for his family. In the days that followed Barrows’ diagnosis, he realized that he’d never asked Lily what she wanted, but rather had assumed he knew. Mistakenly, it appeared; for Jonathan could see her cancer in no other way than as a reproach to him, Lily’s way of saying: “No, dear, this isn’t it. This isn’t what I wanted at all.”
The great crisis that had so recently preoccupied him was as nothing. Whatever the outcome of his impending trial, his career was ruined. In a strange way, his awful guilt over Lily helped temper the agony of what he still regarded as wrongful accusation. There was solace in the discovery that he was not, after all, entirely innocent. And yet his true culpability would never be laid at his door, for who, besides Jonathan and Lily, knew how he had failed her, and who would believe him if he confessed? On the contrary: when Lily’s condition became known, even his enemies would pity him.
He went through the formality of scheduling another examination for Lily, by a neurologist whose name he attained from their own internist. Not because he doubted Barrows’ diagnosis—he knew damn well God wasn’t playing potsy with him—but to provide God with every possible opportunity of changing his mind. After all, God had stayed Abraham’s hand as he lifted it, on Jehovah’s own orders, to smite his beloved son, Isaac. A miracle, Abraham would later proclaim piously, but don’t you think he waited, arm poised, for just such an intervention? One does not sacrifice the innocent to punish the guilty: this is such a basic moral law, men expect even God to understand it.
To sweeten the deal, Jonathan offered incentives. For the first time since his daughter’s bat mitzvah, Jonathan went to synagogue and prayed. Lord, take the cancer away from Lily and give it to me, he bargained, and I’ll praise you on my knees every day of my life and die with a prayer of thanksgiving on my lips. Only let Lily be well, and the jury can find me guilty and sentence me to life; strike me dead if I murmur a word of complaint. Relieve me of this guilt, O Lord, for I cannot bear it. Have mercy, Lord.
The day’s reading was from the Book of Job:
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me...
The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.
Jonathan’s eyes filled with tears of recognition. He felt a terrible bond to Job, as if he, too, were sitting on the floor in ashes and sackcloth.
If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse. Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul: I would despise my
life....
He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.
The prayer service continued, but the rhythm of statement and response faded as Jonathan read on, transfixed. Coming upon this particular reading at this time was like hearing his name spoken in an empty room or picking up a bottle at the seashore and finding a message addressed to him. His heart swelled with anger at Job’s false comforters. Hypocrites.
Forgers of lies, physicians of no value.... Miserable comforters are ye all.
He felt he was reading a parable of his life. The only difference was that Jonathan, unlike Job, could not flaunt his unblemished righteousness in God’s face. Once, he would have dared; lately, however, he had come to understand that his was not an absolute but a relative virtue—relative to his times, to his peers, to what he could have done, had he chosen to be greedy. His affliction, on the other hand, was not relative but absolute, so disproportionate to his sins and so cruelly misdirected as to stand with the trials of Job.
When God spoke to Job from within a whirlwind—
Gird up now thy loins like a man: for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.
”
The lawyer in Jonathan cried out an objection. “Irrelevant, your Honor!”
Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valleys after thee?
“Your Honor, I object! Dewdrops and unicorns, hoarfrost and rain—Your Honor, kindly instruct the witness to confine himself to answering the question.”
Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?
“Your Honor, please; is this a court of law or a wrestling match? This is God’s justification? I’m stronger, tougher, older than you, so I’m right? This is playground justice, your Honor, this is bullying on a cosmic scale.”
But whom was Jonathan addressing, and whom was he kidding? There was no higher authority, no court of appeal. When he looked around him, he saw nothing but an old man leading a pack of other old men in meaningless prayer.
After the service, Jonathan stayed behind. Following an impulse of which he was ashamed, yet which he could not resist, he confronted the elderly rabbi, a pink-cheeked little man with a Yiddish accent. “What crap, what absolute bull,” he said furiously. “This book of Job subverts the whole goddamn religion.”
“Come into my office,” the rabbi said.
“What’s the point?” But he followed the old man down the hall into his comfortable, book-lined study.
The rabbi sat behind his desk and peered over his bifocals at Jonathan. “I know you.”
“Probably. But I’m not here to discuss my situation.”
“I see. You’re here to talk about the book of Job.”
“I can’t understand how they let that story in. Here’s a man who’s been unjustly punished, and he damn well knows he doesn’t deserve it. He asks why, as he has every right to do. He speaks so eloquently that God himself is moved to respond. Great. But what does God have to say for himself? Crap is what he has to say. Bullshit. Cosmic bluster. God beats his chest like Tarzan and comes off looking like a total shmuck—am I right or am I wrong, Rabbi?”
“Mr. Fleishman,” the rabbi said, “we Jews take the world as we find it. The questions Job poses grow out of the world; we do not invent them. The good suffer, the innocent die horribly, and sinners prosper. Natural and unnatural disasters descend upon us. We see this. We try to understand. But we cannot wring answers from God’s throat; and such answers as He volunteers are likely to seem paradoxical. ‘For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment.’ If a five-year-old child asked you, ‘Daddy, why do people fight wars?’ what can you say that is both true and comprehensible to him? The book of Job teaches us that the answer to the problem of innocent suffering lies outside the scope of human comprehension.”
“In other words, God cops out. ‘The devil made me do it,’ He says.”
“No. It’s the author of Job who blames Satan, and that passage about God’s wager with Satan is not something we Jews feel compelled to take literally. God himself says something quite different. He tells Job, ‘You cannot judge me because you are incapable of understanding me.’ “
“You’re telling me God works in mysterious ways. That’s not an answer; it’s a tautology. Where’s the comfort in that?”
The rabbi spread his hands. “Only the poor comfort of faith— the belief, the hope that somewhere out there, there are answers; that there exists a perspective from which all this suffering makes sense; that redemption is possible.”
“That’s
your
reading, from this cozy study, from this comfortable niche you’ve carved for yourself, interpreting the uninterpretable word of God.”
If the rabbi was offended, he showed no sign of it. “What’s your reading, Mr. Fleishman?”
“If I were God’s lawyer, I’d advise my client not to testify. His best defense is to keep quiet and play dead. Otherwise, your almighty God hasn’t got a prayer.”
Reckless talk, but what precisely did he have left to lose? The age of miracles was past. “Curse God and die,” Job’s wife had advised him, but since then God had refined his punishments; now it was: Curse God and live.
The judge in Jonathan’s case had handed down her decision, granting the prosecution’s motion to freeze the Fleishmans’ assets. And the day after his visit to the synagogue, Jonathan learned that with regard to the other matter, God, like the judge, had turned thumbs down. The second neurologist’s diagnosis was identical to Barrows’, and he too urged immediate surgery.
25
THE KID SWAGGERED UP TO THE TABLE in Maxie’s where Barnaby sat alone swilling boilermakers. Three empty shot glasses and three empty steins were lined up in front of him. Barnaby knew the face—he worked for some downtown Trotskyite rag, circulation twenty-seven. “What do you want, kid?”
“I heard what you did to that Fleishman bitch, bro.”
“Bro?
Where’d you get that,
Miami Vice?
Goddamn pasty-faced suburban maggot.”
“Easy, my man—I am here to shake your hand.”
“Say what?”
“You heard me,” the kid said. “Hey, my philosophy? I say fuck ‘em all; and if you can’t fuck them, fuck their wives, fuck their daughters, fuck their fuckin’ dogs, man.”
“Fuck you, asshole,” Barnaby growled.
The kid faded. Real reporters came and went; none approached him. Barnaby kept on drinking. For a man who had recently scored the scoop of a lifetime, his dance card was surprisingly blank.
His body was in Maxie’s but his head was still in Hasselforth’s office. Thinking what he should have said, replaying what Roger had said. Hasselforth was in his sanctimonious mode, puffing away like Fred MacMurray in a cloud of smoke. “You compromised yourself and you compromised us. There’s no way you can be objective anymore. I’m taking the Fleishman story away.”
“You can’t,” Barnaby had said reasonably. “It’s mine. I broke it miles ahead of the competition.”
“And how did you get there?”
Barnaby ignored this remark. “Since when is objectivity a virtue around here, anyway?”
They went a few more rounds, till Hasselforth pulled rank. “I’m the editor, I call the shots. Like it or lump it, you’re off the story.”
The hell with them. The hell with all of them. Barnaby signaled for another drink. He still didn’t get it. What was the fucking big deal? It wasn’t as if he’d broken any of the real rules. Yes, he’d used the girl, but that was what reporters did. They were all parasites, but by God they were useful parasites. As to the sex: if you silenced every reporter who ever balled a source, newspapers would be nothing but blank space and ads. So what if she was a few years younger than he? She was old enough. When Woody Allen nailed Mariel Hemingway in
Manhattan,
the crowds roared. But him, he walked into his own newsroom and everybody looked at him like he was Freddy Kruger. Journalistic ethics, his ass. As far as Barnaby was concerned, it all boiled down to sexual and professional jealousy.
Take a vacation, Hasselforth had said. Damn straight he’d take a vacation, and spend it doing what he did best. He’d put together a story that would make Hasselforth sit up and beg. And if he didn’t, there were plenty of other fish in the sea. Barnaby knew his industry. If the product was good enough, they’d be lining up at his door, all sins forgiven and forgotten.
The next day, he phoned Jane Buscaglio. Her secretary said she was tied up. “So untie her,” he joked. The secretary didn’t laugh and Buscaglio didn’t return his call.
He didn’t need her—no single source was crucial—but it irked him. He checked her schedule. That afternoon, he went downtown to the federal courthouse and waited outside a courtroom till she emerged.
“Hello, Jane,” he said.
She looked at him as she would have at a steaming pile of horse manure and stepped around him, taking care not to soil her shoes.
He trotted beside her down the long corridor. “What’s going on, Buscaglio? All of a sudden I’m a leper?”
“Get away from me.”
“Not till you tell me why.”
She stopped on the courthouse steps. Quitting time; a stream of gray suits poured out of the building, parting around them, then smoothly rejoining. “You lied to me,” Buscaglio said.
“What about?”
“Grace Fleishman—ring a bell?”
“Who told you?”
“Who didn’t? It’s all over town.”
“You don’t believe that story. The girl’s a fucking basket case. What’s her word next to mine?”
“Gold,” Buscaglio said.
“Even if it were true, which it isn’t, the girl is free, white, and over eighteen.”
“Just barely.”
“Come on, Jane, this is bullshit. You need me. I’m a better investigator than anyone on your staff.”
“If anyone on my staff had pulled that kind of shit, he’d be out on his ass. Rayburn called me in.”
“Yeah?”
“He’d heard too. Said he knew I used you sometimes, and told me to cut it out. Called you a few choice names. Bottom line, you’re off the mailing list.”
“There’s gratitude for you,” Barnaby growled. “If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t have Kavin or Fleishman. That’s what he’s really pissed about. Lucas is of two minds about this prosecution, or hadn’t you noticed?”