The Book of Names (6 page)

“From what you said on the phone, I knew this would be complicated.” The hypnotherapist tapped a pencil on the desk.

“Damn straight it's complicated. Can we start now?”

“We can try.”

David took a ragged breath and forced his eyes to close as Dorset lumbered around the desk to take the chair beside him. He settled back into the recliner and heard the click of a tape recorder. Dorset told him he would wake up refreshed, that he would remember everything he recalled under hypnosis. He directed David to focus on his voice.

The hypnotherapist's tone was soothing, his words low-timbered and rich, like a radio announcer's.

“Counting downward . . . five . . . now four . . .”

David soon found himself engulfed in liquid darkness. He was drifting . . . drifting past the tension throbbing in his shoulders . . . drifting past anxiety . . . past thought.

He followed the voice, that reassuring, even voice, followed it back to the winter of his thirteenth year, to the snow-packed roof of the tall handsome house where Crispin Mueller ran easily ahead of him.

“Abby! Grab my hand—Abby!”

“Abby's fine, David,” Dorset said. “You're in the hospital now. The doctors are there. Can you see them?”

“I see myself. My chest—it's bloody. The doctors are bent over me.”

“Do you feel any pain?”

“No, no pain, I'm just floating. Now Crispin's here—the doctors are gone. What's that light?”

“Find out. Go toward it, David. You're perfectly safe. Tell me what you see.”

Light, beautiful silken light. He saw people within the light, shapes, faces. So many faces. They shouted to him, arms outstretched from within the shimmering rainbow. He was mesmerized by their faces—transparent, tortured, pleading faces.

Their shouts nearly drowned out the light, pounding at his head, roaring like thunder. Their names. They were shrieking their names. He heard hundreds of names, thousands, over and over. Then, in one voice, the tortured faces chanted a single word.

Zakhor.

Suddenly, the light went out.

When David opened his eyes, the dim light in Dorset's office seemed to burn his skull.

His head was splitting, his breath coming quick and shallow.

“Are you all right, David?”

“You tell me, Doctor.” Shakily, he sat up.

Dorset handed him a glass of water. “So, do you remember everything you just told me?”

“Every word.” David's face was pale. He was having a hard time digesting what he'd just revisited. Now, instead of answers, he had a lot more questions.

“I always remembered being pulled toward a brilliant light, but I had no memory of seeing all those faces. Of hearing their shouts.” David's brow furrowed. “Who's Zakhor?” he said, almost to himself. “They all said it.
Zakhor.”

The other man regarded him intently. “Perhaps you should check your journal. And perhaps we should make another appointment for next week. You traveled a remarkable distance on your first try. Next time we may be able to probe on to another level.”

“Can't you take me back down again now? I need to find out what these names mean.”

“I can't do that. It would be counterproductive. Reliving such experiences drains the psyche. Give your subconscious some time to assimilate what you saw. Believe me, this is best.”

David left the office, his chest tight with worry. He punched in Dillon McGrath's number as he crossed the street to his car.

“Dillon. Stacy's name is written in my journal. And I have no idea why. Some of these people have died, Dillon.” The words tumbled out in a rush. “And what's Zakhor? They told me Zakhor.”

“Who told you ‘Zakhor'?”

“The people. The people at the end of the tunnel.” David took a deep breath. “There were thousands of them. Shouting at me. Shouting their names. And then they all said ‘Zakhor.' ”

There was silence at the other end of the line.

“I may know someone who can help you figure this out,” Dillon said finally. “I think you must consult a rabbi,
David. I know you have no affinity for religion,” he said quickly, before David could interrupt. “And that you haven't seen the inside of a synagogue since your bar mitzvah. But those voices spoke to you in Hebrew.”

“Hebrew?” David stopped in his tracks, two feet from his car. “Zakhor is Hebrew?”

“It means ‘remember.' Those people you saw in the light, in the tunnel. They want you to remember.”

“Remember
what?”
David scraped a hand through his hair and squinted up at the sky.

Dillon's voice came low and patient. “It's obvious, David. They want you to remember their names. And so you have.”

 

“You're the metaphysics genius,” David said into his cell phone. He swung the car onto 18th Street.
“You
tell me what this means.”

“That I can't do,” Dillon said promptly. “The fact that they spoke to you in Hebrew suggests to me that a rabbi is your best guide. The reason they want you to remember must be inside of you, David, just like their names. I have a colleague I believe can help you. Rabbi Eliezer ben Moshe is a revered Kabbalist, a teacher of the Jewish mystical tradition. You've had a mystical experience, David. Now if you needed an exorcism,” he said, “that might be more in my league.”

Kabbalah?
All David knew about Kabbalah was that some movie stars had made it a cause célèbre, tying red strings to their wrists and adopting Hebrew names.

As if reading his thoughts, Dillon said, “No, it's not the Madonna version of Kabbalah. And yes, I've already called him. He's very interested not only in your journal, but in that gemstone you've saved since your accident. Bring both of them with you when you go to Brooklyn.
In the meantime, he asked that you fax him several pages of the journal so he can study them before you arrive.”

David's brow creased as he made a sharp right. His mind was spinning as Dillon continued.

“Ben Moshe comes from a long line of learned rabbis who have made the study of Kabbalah, and the unraveling of universal mysteries, their lifelong purpose.”

Learned rabbis.
The words triggered vague memories from his childhood—his mother telling him stories about her ancestor, Reb Zalman of Kiev, a famous mystic. Supposedly he could teach students in two different cities, three hundred miles apart, on the same evening. He'd always thought she'd made the stories up.

“You're kidding me, right?”

“David, there are things in life you can't measure with science and empirical data. Try to be open-minded.”

David drew a deep breath. “I'm not convinced. . . .”

“You have a better idea?” Dillon countered.

David rubbed his forehead. “Whereabouts in Brooklyn?” He wondered what Dean Myer would say when he informed him he had an out-of-town emergency.

 

A hard drizzle was slapping the pavement when David stepped out of the cab on Avenue Z in Brooklyn. He hoisted his duffel bag onto his shoulder and ran up the steps of the nondescript brownstone on the corner. After pushing the buzzer, he studied the ornate silver
mezzuzah
affixed to the doorframe of the B'nai Yisroel Center.

A thin youngish man starkly dressed in a white shirt, black slacks, and a knitted black yarmulke ushered him through what David guessed had once been the front room of a private home. The brownstone had been converted into a comfortable maze of offices.

“I'm Rabbi Tzvi Goldstein, Rabbi ben Moshe's assistant,” he said, leading David down a hallway and into a classroom where a wide green blackboard sat perpendicular to the two long walls lined with shelves of books. David scanned their spines, noting they were all in Hebrew. The room smelled pleasantly of chalk and old leather and floor wax.

“We've been studying the journal pages you faxed to Rabbi ben Moshe.” Rabbi Goldstein was smiling and
seemed barely able to contain his excitement. “He is very anxious to see you.”

Good. Maybe now I'll get some answers
, David thought.

Lately, every time he picked up his journal, he found himself gravitating toward the page with Stacy's new name.

And it was making him increasingly uneasy.

“Can I get you some tea while I let the rabbi know you're here?”

“No, thanks.” David shoved his hands in his pockets as the young rabbi left. He moved toward the room's single window, where rain trickled in rivulets, blurring the view of the street below. His thoughts drifted to the images of the Iranian tanker explosion he'd seen on the airport TV while waiting for his boarding call. It seemed like the only news broadcast lately was bad news.

He jumped as a quiet voice spoke behind him, interrupting his thoughts.

“Shalom, David. Please, come this way. We can talk upstairs in my office.”

David felt a twinge of surprise. He'd expected a Yiddish or Russian accent, but the elderly rabbi standing before him spoke with a faint New England intonation. His voice was creaky, somehow matching his gaunt frame. Rabbi Eliezer ben Moshe was a slight man who looked every bit as ancient and well-worn as the books on his shelves. He had a full head of faded gray hair and a silver beard that wisped in cloudlike curls to the middle of his chest. As David followed him up the carpeted stairs, he noticed how frail the rabbi appeared. His plain black suit coat hung from his bony shoulders, looking two sizes too big, as if its owner had shrunk since the time it was purchased.

But his walnut brown eyes, as he watched David take a seat in his cramped office, were sharp with worry, curiosity, hope.

“Did you bring your journal—and the stone?”

So much for preliminaries.
David reached into his duffel and pulled out his journal. The rabbi's eyes lit when he set the red leather book down on the desk. As he pulled the rock from his pocket, David spotted the pages he'd faxed sitting alongside the rabbi's computer. There were notations on them, but he couldn't read what they said.

The rabbi stretched out a gnarled hand for the stone, and hesitating only a moment, David placed it in the man's palm.

Rabbi ben Moshe stared at the smooth variegated agate, unblinking and silent. He drew in a breath and his frail chest quivered.

“There are no facets,” he whispered.

David watched in silence as he quickly opened a desk drawer to withdraw a magnifying glass. He turned the stone from side to side and, peering through the glass, examined it from every angle.

Out of all that had happened, the notion that this rock—something he'd kept on his desk since he was thirteen—held any significance, was the thing that baffled him the most. But the rabbi was brushing his finger across the Hebrew lettering with such reverence, such awe, that David curbed his impatience to rush into a discussion of the names.

“This is an ancient holy stone.” Rabbi ben Moshe glanced up and met his eyes. “See how it's cut—rounded and shiny? The agate is polished, yet it doesn't glimmer or reflect the light. That's because it was cut in a convex style known as cabochon. Until the middle ages all stones were cut this way.”

David glanced once more at the milky blue stone he'd so casually kept in the hand of the ceramic monkey.

“You're telling me it dates back to the Middle Ages?”

“Oh, no. It is much older than that. It dates back thousands of years—to biblical times.”

Biblical times.
David was stunned. And skeptical.
How would Crispin Mueller have gotten his hands on a biblical stone?

“I was told it had magic powers.” David half-expected the rabbi to laugh.

But ben Moshe nodded, holding his gaze. “And so it is written.”

Then the rabbi closed his palm around the stone and murmured a prayer in Hebrew.

“You are Jewish. Do you understand the
Shehehiyanu
prayer? I have just thanked God for allowing me to live long enough for this moment.”

David's spine tingled.
What was he talking about? What was so special about this moment? And what did Crispin's rock have to do with Stacy's name being written in his journal?

He leaned forward as the rabbi set the stone carefully down beside the journal.

“You say it's magical. In what way?”

“It belongs to a very special set of twelve. You told me on the phone that you're not religious, David, but I assume you know who Moses was.”

David nodded. “That much I know.”

“And his brother, Aaron—the high priest?”

“Now you've lost me.” David was wondering whether he'd made a mistake in coming here. He felt he was moving further away from answers about the names, getting sidetracked with gemology and Bible study. As he struggled to contain his impatience, his gaze returned to the
stone. Suddenly he remembered the reason he'd kept it in the first place—as a reminder to pause and think. He forced himself to bite back his questions about the journal and to concentrate on the rabbi's words.

“In the book of Exodus,” ben Moshe continued, “we read that Aaron was the first high priest, the most glorious Jewish position, and that God told Moses to make his brother three holy garments—a breastplate, an
ephod
, and a robe.”

“You've lost me again, rabbi.” David shrugged. “Ephod?”

“It's another word for the linen apron Aaron wore during the holy rites. But the breastplate is what we're concerned with.” The rabbi continued. “It was made according to instructions God gave to Moses. It was a woven square fashioned by an artist from threads of gold and blue, purple and scarlet.”

Ben Moshe met David's eyes and explained. “According to the Book of Exodus, whenever Aaron entered the holiest part of the Temple to pray to God, he was instructed to wear upon his heart this ‘Breastplate of Judgment,' which contained the names of the Children of Israel—the names of the Twelve Tribes.”