The Janus Tree: And Other Stories Read online

  Which was kind of funny, given that the tiny man who opened the door wore a white robe, had white hair tied back in a ponytail, and was Chinese. Chinese-American, as it turned out.

  “Mister…Burnstein?” the man said, bowing slightly.

  “What? Oh. No. But, yes, I’m here for him. For El Burnstein. My name’s different. Marty.”

  The white-haired man just stood in the doorway, still the only visible form in the sea of blankness behind him, studying Marty’s face. Even with the door open, Marty heard no sounds from inside the home.

  “But you are the Shomer, yes?” The white-haired man pronounced the word perfectly, Hebraically. At least, it sounded that way to Marty. Bowing again, the white-haired man said, “I am sorry for your loss. This way.” Turning, he moved into the dimness, his robe seeming to float on it like a paper lantern.

  Marty followed. Halfway across the long foyer, or whatever it was, his eyes began to adjust, and he started to make out shapes. A circular reception desk. Rooms to the right, one with a door wide open. A single room to the left, with larger double doors, also open. To the left of those doors stood a single, large vase of long-stemmed flowers. Drained of their color by the dimness, they looked like scratches in the dark, gestural impressions of flowers, as in Chinese scroll painting. The rug beneath Marty’s feet felt deep and soft and dark. Like earth, he thought. Which was appropriate enough. Jewish funerals were about returning, as quickly and simply as possible, to the clay from which we were made. Ahead of him, the white robe descended down a staircase draped in even deeper shadow, and Marty hesitated at the edge of it. As usual, he felt ill-prepared, and also, he had to admit, a little nervous. And then ridiculous. If he were indeed a ferryman, well…what had he thought this river would look like? He started down.

  Only after he’d reached the bottom did the Chinese man switch on the overhead fluorescents. They didn’t twitch or hum, just revealed the long, sterile hallway. No carpet here, no flowers, only hospital-gray linoleum, open doorways spaced quite a ways apart, a couple of empty gurneys tucked neatly against the blank, white walls. One gold-filigreed coffin, empty and unlatched, standing upright.

  Not his uncle’s coffin, then. If El had had his way, he’d have gone in the ground naked, without any box whatsoever, to speed his return to the earth. It’s what Jews did, apparently. But neither his sister nor his wife had been able to stomach that idea, so they’d gone for the simple, pine receptacle.

  “This way, please,” said the Chinese man, and led him directly into the first room, where again he waited until Marty was beside him to turn on the light. The door swung shut automatically behind him.

  All at once, Marty closed his eyes. He wasn’t ready to see his uncle’s body again, or rather his face. What had been his face and so obviously wasn’t anymore. But when he opened his eyes, he saw a square, small, closet-like room. Wedged not quite lengthwise—because it wouldn’t fit—against one wall sat someone’s old, green couch, the middle pillow squashed down almost level with the frame but the other pillows puffed up and brighter green, as though no one had ever sat on them. In front of the couch sat a low coffee table with a single reading lamp and a scattering of books on it. One of them, at least, was a Tanakh. The spine said so in plain, transliterated English.

  “Do not please open the door,” the Chinese man said. And before Marty realized what was happening, could formulate even one of his half-dozen questions or even ask which door, because there were two in there other than the one through which he’d come, the Chinese man left.

  For the first few minutes, Marty just stood in the center of the room. Before it had become the Shomer Pro’s office, or whatever it now was, this had clearly been a closet. It was too small, the walls too bare for it to have been anything else. Adjacent to the couch, almost completely blocking the wooden door at the back of the room, sat a squat bookcase, with a few more books lying haphazardly atop each other, halfway leaning out of themselves. On the wall facing the couch, he was surprised to see a square window at eye-level. But whatever it looked out upon—not the parking lot, surely, because there were more rooms in that direction, and because he had to be at least ten feet underground—Marty had no view of it, because on the other side of the glass, heavy blue curtains had been drawn all the way closed. Beside the bookshelves sat another low table upon which sat a single, empty glass and a full pitcher of water. The glass looked pitiful, standing there, and disconcertingly like a vessel in a ritual: the Elijah cup, placed just so, in what Marty was certain was the precise center of the table. Underneath the table stood a small stack of magazines. Slowly, carefully, as though afraid of disturbing something, Marty leaned closer, then blinked in surprise. Almost laughed.

  Crossword Master Challenges? Either the Shomer Pro kept a private stash down here for between-Psalm entertainment, or this room really had been prepared specifically with Uncle El in mind.

  From somewhere deep in the bowels of the Rosenberg Home, far away from the Shomer room, something metallic tapped. And tapped again. Then came a rattling clatter, not loud, but startling in the absolute silence that had preceded it, like bare feet racing down a hall. Marty opened the door through which he’d come, stuck his head out, but the Chinese man had turned off the lights out there again, and he could see nothing. He put out his hand, felt around for the switch, couldn’t find it. The stairs were just to the right, he knew. He wasn’t as far from the drizzly, dreary outside world as he felt. Nor was he alone in the building, clearly, despite the silence rushing back in around him, filling his ears completely, as if he’d suddenly sunk into water.

  Only as he retreated back into the Shomer room and the little bubble of light from the single, overhead bulb, did the question he really should have asked occur to him: Where was Uncle El?

  The answer seemed obvious enough. He was behind the blue curtain. In the room with the door Marty wasn’t supposed to open. Unless that was the other door, and he was meant to go straight through this one, sit down next to the coffin, assuming his uncle was in the coffin, and…

  No. The tools of the Shomer’s trade—the Tanakh, the couch, the water, the light—were in this room. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, Marty thought inanely. Except that there was no man behind the curtain. Not anymore. And his job was to make sure no one else paid any attention to whatever was left behind.

  Abruptly, another thought surfaced, dragging with it emotions Marty had forgotten were down there, or convinced himself he’d buried, and he sat hard on the depressed pillow and gripped his knees with his hands. The irony was not lost on him, was in fact unmistakable. For twenty years—more—he’d longed for just one more night alone with Uncle El. Like when he was a kid, and El had taken the train down from college and spirited Marty away to the diner for blintzes, to some minor league baseball stadium he’d never been able to find since where fans hooted every time their Owls scored or threatened to score, to the Delaware shore in the dark in the middle of winter to swim for thirty seconds in their underwear and then drive straight back home, shivering, singing along to awful country songs on El’s old car radio. So much of the code Marty used for processing the world—the numbers and slashes for transcribing baseball games in scorecard boxes, the slanting or adjacent –ing and –ed and –er and –un combinations that signaled opportunity on a Boggle board, the squiggles and dots of trop in Torah portions in prayer books that indicated changes of pitch or chances to make the secret pretend-farting noise with your lips—he’d learned from El, on those nights. And now his wish had been granted. They were going to spend one more night alone together.

  Did you know, he found himself mouthing, almost saying, into the empty room? Straight to the blue curtain, while he imagined his uncle sitting up just on the other side, leaning his ear to the glass. Did you ever understand, all those years you made fun of me for being resentful when you started bringing Robbie and Leo and my sister along, how hard that was, for me? What a jolt that was? Realizing that those nights, th
at magic, wasn’t between us like I’d always thought, it was all you? That what you were great at—what you loved—wasn’t showing the magic to me, just showing it to kids? Any kids?

  It wasn’t quite true, Marty knew, wasn’t so simple, certainly wasn’t fair and never had been. He was weeping anyway. Feeling every bit the selfish brat El had made him feel he was, later, sometimes, without ever saying so. But it wasn’t selfishness, Uncle El, Marty thought, wiping viciously at his face. Not only. I just don’t think you ever understood what it meant to have a companion like you…then realize that that companion wasn’t really for you…that there aren’t anywhere near enough companions in the world to go around…that there aren’t enough freezing, free nights to swim in…that you actually didn’t have that much to say to me once I was old enough to start wanting to share my wonders with you…

  That wasn’t fair either, although it was at least a little true. By the time Marty had been old and fully formed enough to want to show his uncle his discoveries, El had kids of his own, work responsibilities, dry cleaning and milk to stop for on the way home, his aging parents’ endless little illnesses, the thousand tiny obligations of adult life that Marty had learned, much later, stole away all but the most essential friends and interests and nephews simply by eliminating the time for them.

  Nevertheless, Marty mouthed, not quite daring to whisper, but speaking directly to the blue curtain. In the end, you were less interested in me than I was in you, Uncle El. Weren’t you?

  Without realizing he was doing it, Marty found himself opening his sketch book, slipping a charcoal pencil out of its case, starting to make quick, gentle strokes across the top of a page. These were softer strokes than his usual, made with twitches of his fingers, as though he were brushing lint off a suit coat rather than drawing. His uncle’s bumpy, bald head slowly took shape under his pencil, so that Marty’s hands seemed to be cradling it as they created it. The tears he was crying were grateful ones, now. Not angry. Not sad. Not anymore. Thank you Uncle El, he was thinking. Thank you. For so many things.

  The tapping started again, startling him, even though it still sounded far away. And then—from even farther—he heard a long, high-pitched, unmistakably human sigh. And another. Except it wasn’t a sigh. Only the distance made it seem like one. Marty could tell by the hitch in the voice, the way it wavered, soared upward, choked off. Somewhere in the Rosenberg Home, someone was wailing.

  “Baruch ata adonai,” he found himself saying, setting the sketch pad on the table. He started singing, softly but out loud, now. He sang the blessing all the way to the end. “Shehechianoo, v-keymanoo, veheegianoo…” Only as he finished did he realize how wrong his choice of blessing was. Thank you, God, for letting us reach this day?” Well. Maybe it wasn’t completely wrong. He was grateful. Or at least, there was nowhere else he’d rather have been.

  Another wail. Two taps. Then a thunderous rattle, much closer, that launched Marty off the couch, toward the door next to the blue curtain, then out into the hall. Which was still dark. Silent, the second he emerged.

  Or, almost silent. Not quite. Somewhere, not too far, something—a bunch of somethings—were rustling. Low and steady. Like closeted clothes in hanging bags, with a hand moving through them.

  “Hello?” Marty said. Naturally, he’d forgotten his cellphone. He had no idea what time it was.

  The wailing, when it came, was clearer out here. A woman’s voice, saw-edged and exhausted, rushing at him through the dark. He ducked back into the Shomer room, pushing the door closed rather than waiting for it, and stood a moment with tears drying on his face while the wail faded, slowly, to an echo. Only several long seconds later, when the wail had faded completely, did Marty realize the rustling was in the room with him.

  If there had been light in the hall, he might have bolted, right then. He almost did anyway. But something held him rigid, absolutely still. A weight, a grip on both his arms. Carefully, he swung his head around to look.

  What he saw was the couch with its sunken middle pillow. The bare walls. His sketch pad with his uncle’s head just taking shape there, featureless, yet already unmistakably El’s. At least, it was unmistakable to Marty.

  Nothing else. The grip on his arms lessened a little. Slipped away, and Marty heard himself say, “No. Wait.”

  It’s just my dead dad, Leo had said. Someone’s supposed to guard him.

  In one step, Marty moved to the window and pressed his face to the glass, trying to locate a slit in the curtains. He wanted to see, to perform his assigned task for Uncle El. But whoever had arranged those curtains had done so with purpose. They weren’t just pinned together but sewn shut down the center, then tacked in place at the corners. No light from this room spilled into that one. And no hint of what was in there filtered through to Marty.

  He hesitated one moment longer, and only then because the rustling started again. It wasn’t in the Shomer room. It was in the walls. Or else it was behind the blue curtain. With El. The resumption of the rattling clatter drowned it out, even though the clatter came from farther away, and when it ceased, the rustling did, too. Marty heard the tailing, sobbing end of a wail. Just what sort of training, he wondered, did a professional Shomer receive? Then he reached out, grabbed the knob on the door next to the window, and turned it.

  Locked.

  More rustling.

  It’s in there, Marty thought. It’s with El. With a snarl, he threw himself at the door, twisting the knob, which wasn’t locked after all, just a little stuck. The realization flooded him with simultaneous relief and horror as the door swung open. Air rushed out, stale and old. Too late, he wondered if he should maybe have grabbed a Tanakh or something, did he know any Psalms? ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow,’ wait, did Jews say that one?

  The light switch, this time, was where it should have been, on the wall right next to the door. Marty fumbled, flipped it. He stared. Then, through his tears and the heart-hammering that threatened to splinter his ribcage, he started to laugh. He couldn’t help it.

  Marty Action Figure braves the closed door, flings it free…and liberates the bathroom.

  When his breathing had calmed and his tears had stopped for the time being and the uneasy, spasm-like laughter had quieted in his throat, Marty washed his face in cool water, dried his hands on the neatly hung towel. No mirror. But then, there wouldn’t be in a Shomer’s room. Or else the glass would be soaped over. Leaving the bathroom door open but switching off the light, he returned to the couch.

  For a long time, he sat and sketched. He didn’t think more about Uncle El, or at least didn’t think anything specific. In his heart was a weight. But the weight came from accumulated memories, 35 years of everyday, bedrock love, not loss. Or rather, bedrock love and loss had become synonymous, now, maybe more than synonymous: different words for the same feeling. Maybe that’s why Jews almost seemed to celebrate this experience. Mark it with food and ritual storytelling. Clutch it to their breasts.

  Intermittently, like wind through window-cracks, wailing floated down the hall and through the door. The clatter came almost regularly, every five or six minutes. Every time, it startled Marty, made him look up, but mostly because whenever it stopped, he thought he heard rustling again, just for a second. Then Marty would glance at the dark bathroom, or over to the door he hadn’t opened, the one almost completely blocked by the bookcase. But he made himself stay put. This was his post. He was sure of it. Almost sure.

  Much later, the drawing not done but shaped, Marty put his pad aside, considered doing a solo Boggle round in El’s honor. The idea, though, of clattering the lettered dice-cubes in their little cage in the suffocating near-silence unnerved him. He reached for a Tanakh, opened to the Psalms. But those proved less than soothing, strangely savage. Almost none were about grief or even comfort. Mostly, they were brutal, or heartbroken. ‘You break the teeth of the wicked.’ ‘I am a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my kin.’ ‘It is for your sake that we a
re slain all day long.’

  But after a while, the words did seem to knit themselves together before his eyes, form a sort of blanket or gauze that Marty could feel wrapping him. Maybe the Psalms really did have power, to keep too much of himself from bleeding away, or else to hold at an almost-safe distance his dawning understanding of what other people’s deaths, even more than one’s own, really mean to the living. ‘You are my help and my rescuer; do not delay…’

  He had no idea how he fell asleep, or for how long. But the screaming woke him up.

  Heart thundering, he lurched up, swaying, clenching his fists as the screams silenced themselves. His eyes shot to the blue curtains, then to the door behind the bookcase. He’d failed. Let his guard down. And now Uncle El…

  With a cry, he moved toward the bookcase, intending to shove it aside so he could get through that second door. But a new round of rattling stopped him in his tracks. He held still, listening not to the rattle, but for the moment just after it, the rustling. And there it was. Or was it? Was that even a sound?

  Abruptly, he turned and walked out into the hall. A wail greeted him, piercing, shot through with breath. Again, he felt behind and all around him for the light switch, couldn’t find it. Only after a few seconds did he realize there were more sounds. Not rattling, exactly, but clicking. Sliding sounds. And murmurs. He was almost sure he could hear murmurs, now. Exhaling long and low, and with a single, uncertain glance back into the Shomer room, Marty started down the hall into the dark.

  He could sense—smell—the open doorways when he passed them. Antiseptic, pine-scented wax, metal. His knee bumped a gurney, sending it squeaking a few feet ahead until it bumped something—the open coffin—and causing Marty to freeze, his own hairs crawling up his back, shoulders hunching as though he expected to be grabbed. Edging more toward what he assumed was the center of the hall, he continued on.