Jack Dann - Kaddish

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Kaddish

by Jack Dann

Born in Johnson City, New York on February 15, 1945, Jack Dann

and his wife, Jeanne Van Buren Dann, now live in Binghamton,

New York in a large old house with plenty of room for books.

Good job that, as Dann has written or edited well over twenty

books. Recent books include his mainstream novel, Counting

Coup, and an anthology of stories concerned with the Vietnam

War, In the Fields of Fire, edited in collaboration with his wife.

Dann's latest major project is a novel about Leonardo da Vinci,

which, at the start of this decade, was at 400 pages and going

strong. Dann's short fiction approaches horror in a quiet, moving

style that creates powerful and disturbingly reflective moods. Very

often he makes use of Jewish themes and history, as is the case

with "Kaddish." Regarding this story, Dann argues: "It's got to be

the only story written this year about Jewish horror! (We should

all live and be well!)" Don't know about that, Jack, but it's clear

that horror isn't bound by religion or creed -- this story will give

everyone a chill.

What ails you, O sea, that you flee?

-- Psalm of Hallel

Nathan sat with the other men in the small prayer-room of the

synagogue. It was 6:40 in the morning. "One of the three professors

who taught Hebrew Studies at the university was at the bema, the

altar, leading the prayers. His voice intoned the Hebrew and Aramaic

words; it was like a cold stream running and splashing over ice.

Nathan didn't understand Hebrew, although he could read a little,

enough to say the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, in a halting

fashion.

But everything was rushed here in this place of prayer, everyone

rocking back and forth and flipping quickly through the well-thumbed

pages in the black siddur prayer books. Nathan couldn't keep up with

the other men, even when he read and scanned the prayers in English.

Young boys in jeans and designer T-shirts prayed ferociously beside

their middle-aged fathers, as if trying to outdo them, although it was

the old men who always finished first and had time to talk football

while the others caught up. Only the rabbi with his well-kept beard

and embroidered yarmulke sat motionless before the congregation,

Ms white linen prayer shawl wrapped threateningly around him like a

shroud, as if to emphasize that he held the secret knowledge and faith

that Nathan could not find.

Nathan stared into his siddur and prayed with the others.

He was the Saracen in the temple, an infidel wearing prayer shawl and

phylacteries.

A shoe-polish black leather frontlet containing a tiny inscribed

parchment pressed against Nathan's forehead, another was held tight

to his biceps by a long strap that wound like a snake around his left

arm to circle his middle finger three times. But the flaming words of

God contained in the phylacteries did not seem to make the synaptic

connection into his blood and brain and sinew. Nevertheless, he

intoned the words of the prayers, stood up, bowed, said the kad-dish,

and then another kaddish, and he remembered all the things he should

have said to his wife and son before they died. He remembered his

omissions and commissions, which could not be undone. It was too

late even for tears, for he was as hollow as a winter gourd.

And Nathan realized that he was already dead.

A shade that had somehow insinuated himself into this congregation.

But then the service was over. The congregants hurriedly folded their

prayer-shawls and wound the leather straps around their phylacteries,

for it was 7:45, and they had to get to work. Nathan followed suit, but

he felt like an automaton, a simulacrum of himself, a dead thing

trying to infiltrate the routines and rituals of the living.

He left the synagogue with the other men. He had an early-morning

appointment with an old client who insisted on turning over his

substantial portfolio again; the old man had, in effect, been paying

Nathan's mortgage for years.

But as Nathan drove his Mercedes coupe down A1A, which was the

more picturesque and less direct route to his office in downtown Fort

Lauderdale, he suddenly realized that he couldn't go through with it.

He couldn't spend another day going through the motions of dictating

to his secretary, counseling clients, staring into the electron darkness

of a CRT screen, and pretending that life goes on.

He simply couldn't do it....

He made a U-turn, and drove back home to Lighthouse Point. The

ocean was now to his right, an expanse of emerald and tourmaline. It

brought to mind memories of family outings on the public Lauderdale

beaches when his son Michael was a toddler and wore braces to

straighten out a birth defect. He remembered first making love to his

wife Helen on the beach. The immensity of the clear, star-filled sky

and the dark, unfathomable ocean had frightened her, and afterward

she had cried in his arms as she looked out at the sea.

But as Nathan drove past the art-deco style pink cathedral, which was

a Lighthouse Point landmark, he realized that he couldn't go home

either. How was he going to face the myriad memories inhering in the

furniture, bric-a-brac, and framed photographs... the memories that

seemed to perspire from the very walls themselves? Helen and

Michael would only whisper to him again. He would hear all the old

arguments and secret conversations, barely audible but there

nevertheless, over the susurration of the air conditioner....

He parked his car in the circular driveway of his red-roofed, white

stucco home and crossed the street to his neighbor's yard, which had

direct frontage on the intercoastal.

He was, after all, already a shade; he had only to make a proper

passage into the next world.

And with the same calm, directed purpose that had served him so well

in business over the years, Nathan borrowed his neighbor's hundred

thousand dollar "cigarette" speedboat and steered it out to sea to find

God.

He piloted the glossy green bullet through the intercoastals, motoring

slowly, for police patrolled the quiet canals in search of offenders

who would dare to churn the oily, mirrored waters into foam and

froth. Yachts and sailboats gently tilted and rolled in their marinas, a

gas station attendant with a red scarf around his neck leaned against

an Esso gas pump that abutted a wide-planked dock where petroleum

drippings shivered like rainbows caught in the wood, and the

waterside pools and sun decks of the pastel-painted, expensive homes

were empty.

Nathan smelled the bacon and coffee and gasoline, but could hear and

feel only the thrumming of the twin engines of the speedboat. The

bow reminded him of the hood of an old Lincoln he had loved:

expansive and curved and storeroom shiny.

As Nathan turned out of the intercoastal and into the terrifying

turquoise abyss of the open sea, he felt that he had escaped the

bondage that had been his life.

The calm rolling surface of the sea had become time itself. Time was

no longer insubstantial and ineffable; it was a surface that could be

navigated. And Nathan could steer this roaring twin-engined

speedboat forward toward destiny and death, or he could return to the

past... to any or all of the events of his life that floated atop the

flowing surface of his life like plankton.

Nathan was finally the engine of his soul.

He opened the throttle, and the "cigarette" seemed to lift out of the

water, which slid past underneath like oil, sparkling green and blue in

the brilliance of morning.

Dressed in a herringbone blue suit of continental cut, starched white

shirt with rounded French cuffs, and maroon striped tie worked into a

Windsor knot, he sat straight as a die before the enamel control

console of tachometers, clutches, oil-pressure and fuel gauges,

compass, wheel, and throttles.

He felt a quiet, almost patrician joy. He had conquered time and space

and pain and fear.

He didn't care about fuel.

His only direction was the eternal horizon ahead.

It all changed when the engines gave out, coughing and sputtering

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KaddishbyJackDannBorninJohnsonCity,NewYorkonFebruary15,1945,JackDannandhiswife,JeanneVanBurenDann,no...

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Jack Dann - Kaddish

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