The Visiting Professor Read online

  The Rebbe uncrosses and recrosses his legs. Lemuel catches a glimpse of pale, hairless skin glistening above his lace-up high shoes. “Ha! After the destruction of the Second Temple, Rebbe Judah ha-Nasi, may he rest in peace, is said to have asked, If God really loved man, would He have created him?’ “ Pulling at his beard, the Rebbe rocks back and forth in a kind of delirium. “It is not only a good question, it is maybe the only question.” Wincing, he brings his hands up to his temples. “Oy, in the words of the illustrious Rebbe Akiba, my head is spinning from all these questions without answers.”

  “Your head is spinning from all the marijuana.” Lemuel leans forward. “Are you all right?”

  “I am not all right, but I will be all right. You maybe know the Jewish proverb: If you want to forget questions without answers, put on a shoe that is too tight.” The Rebbe’s bulging eyes flick open and focus intently on Lemuel. “Do not make the mistake of thinking you can tell a rebbe by his cover any more than you can a book.” He melts back into his chair. His lids drift closed. When he speaks again, his singsong voice is barely audible. “You maybe know the story—the famous Vorker Rebbe, may he rest in peace, said you could distinguish an exalted person by three things.” Rebbe Nachman thrusts a fist into the air and raises a finger for each item. “One: He weeps without making a sound. Two: He dances without moving. Three: He bows down with his head held high.”

  The Rebbe’s fist drops back onto the table, his head nods forward onto his chest, the joint slips out of his fingers. Lemuel scoops it up from the stock-market pages, passes it under his nose as if it were a Cuban cigar. He is tempted to follow the Rebbe’s example, to come at the world of chaos from another direction. In the end he decides he has had his ration of chaos for one day and stubs out the joint in an ashtray that bears the name of the hotel it was stolen from.

  Removing his shoes, glancing over his shoulder at the Gnostic chaoticist snoring fitfully in his chair, Lemuel pads softly out of the room.

  Like every insomniac, I have learned to use the night. When St. Petersburg was still Leningrad, I would pace my room into the early hours of the morning, contemplating the whiteness of the night, scribbling differential equations on the backs of envelopes, squaring circles, following elusive threads of randomness to their chaotic origins on the off chance of stumbling across a single example, one would be enough for a lifetime, of pure, unadulterated randomness.

  I did some of my more imaginative thinking in man-made near-randomness during these insomniac patrols, discovering, to give you a for instance, the idea of programming a computer to dip almost randomly into the infinite chain of pi decimal places in order to create a three-number key which, in turn, generated ciphers that came remarkably close to being random and thus, for all practical purposes, unbreakable. But this is not something I want to go into in any detail right now.

  All this is by way of saying there was nothing extraordinary in the way I spent my first night in Backwater. Inspecting my American living room furnished in what I took to be Mexican modern, there was a great deal of straw, I tipped a wicker rocking chair forward and observed it swinging back and forth. It reminded me of several applications of the mechanics of the pendulum I had worked on years before; it reminded me also of my mistress leaning over my body, her sagging breasts swinging like pendulums as she coaxed erections from my reluctant flesh. Suddenly memories of Petersburg I had been hoping against hope to leave behind invaded my brain cells: Faceless men were spilling out of doors and windows; thick-soled, steel-toed shoes were kicking at figures on the ground; a little boy I did not recognize was cringing in a corner. Oy!

  Proust, Marcel, somewhere said the only paradise is paradise lost. Or words to that effect. Petersburg, lost, still did not seem like a paradise to me. Nor, for that matter, did Backwater, found. Which left me, like the Rebbe plying between two shores in his traghetto, en route …

  Now that I think of it, it is probably true what my mistress said me about my being more interested in the going than the getting there. Arrivals give me migraines. If only someone would invent a journey without an end.

  Feeling out of place, out of time, out of sync, I prowled the apartment over the Rebbe’s head, stepping off the distance from wall to wall, from window to door, from bookcase to fireplace, from one end of the corridor to the other, from toilet to tub, calculating square meters, almost swooning when I came up with 120, which was twice the size of the apartment I had shared with two other couples in Petersburg. I explored closets and nooks and the crawl space under the staircase leading to the attic, all the while flicking switches—I turned on the toaster, the microwave oven, the dishwashing machine, the electric knife sharpener, the electric can opener, the Toshiba T3200SX computer. On a bookshelf I came across a Sony hi-fi that would have cost me a year’s salary on the Petersburg black market. I pushed buttons, I twirled knobs. A radio came on. What turned out to be a local early-morning call-in show was under way, with a host who talked so rapidly I had to shut my eyes to follow what he was saying.

  If I understood the situation correctly, the host was in the process of interrupting the program for the hourly news bulletin. I remember some of what he said. A clerk transcribing the number of the winner of the South Dakota lottery had made a typing error, a seventy-seven-year-old man was informed he had won twelve million dollars. The next day, when the error was discovered, he died of a heart attack. On the local front, residents protesting against the construction of a radioactive-waste dump in the county were assured by a state commission that the dump site posed no health hazard. Federal law required every state to have a place to store radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, hospitals and industry by 1993. Residents opposing the dump site claim that radioactive waste would seep into underground rivers, eventually polluting the county’s water supply. And this item just in from the tri-county newsroom: State police today discovered the body of the latest victim of the serial killer who has been stalking the tri-county highways and byways. The most recent victim, a thirty-seven-year-old septic-tank cleaner, brings to twelve the number of people mysteriously murdered in the last sixteen weeks. A police spokesperson stressed there was no pattern to the crimes; the age and occupation of the victims, the sites of the murders, the intervals between the crimes were never the same. The only thing connecting this grisly series of killings, aside from the .38 caliber dumdum bullet rubbed with garlic and fired at point-blank range through the victim’s ear into his or her brain, was the signature of the killer—which is to say, the lack of a signature, the utter randomness of the murders. “And now,” the host rasped into the microphone, “we’ll take some more calls.” He repeated a telephone number several times.

  Without thinking I snatched the cordless telephone off the hook and punched in the number. I could hear a phone on the other end buzz. A recorded announcement informed me I was seventh on a waiting list. You must understand that for someone who has spent half his life queuing in Russia, being seventh in line is as good as being next. After a while the recorded announcement informed me I was second, then first. A moment later the voice of the host came over the phone and the radio at the same instant.

  “Hallo.”

  “Yes. Hello,” I shouted into the phone. A staticky voice that sounded vaguely familiar echoed back at me from the hi-fi speakers. “Yes. Hello,” it said.

  “I just now arrived in America,” I shouted into the telephone.

  “I just now arrived in America,” I heard myself shout over the speakers.

  “Turn down your radio. That’s better. What’s your handle?”

  “Handle?” “Handle?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Yes. Falk, Lemuel.” “Yes. Falk, Lemuel.”

  “Which of the two is a first name, Falk or Lemuel?”

  “Lemuel.” “Lemuel.”

  “Well, now, Lemuel, welcome to the U.S. of A. So, uh, where did you say you hailed from?”

  “I am not for sure.” “I am not for sure
.”

  “What you are is not for real. Ha ha! Only kidding. How’s that, you’re not sure?”

  “I was born in Leningrad …” “I was born in Leningrad, but I came here from St. Petersburg. Physically the two occupy the same space. Emotionally they are light-years apart.”

  “St. Petersburg, that’s, uh, in Russia, right? So what brings you to America, Lemuel?”

  “Chaos brings me to …” “Chaos brings me to America.”

  “Are you running away from it or toward it? Ha ha ha ha!”

  “Both. I thought your chaos …” “Both. I thought your chaos was greener. Dumb as it sounds, I thought your streets were paved with Sony Walkmans.”

  “Well, Lemuel, you are one funny son of a gun. What are you doing, trying out a comic routine on me? Or have you had one too many for the road? Only kidding. So tell me something, Lemuel, as someone fresh off the boat, so to speak, what hits you as the biggest difference between America and Russia?”

  “First, your towns, the distances …” “First, your towns, the distances between them, even your citizens are smaller than in Russia, though maybe they only seem smaller because I expected larger than life. Second, your apartments do not smell of kerosene.”

  “Mine smells of cat litter. Ha ha! If you’re listening, I was only joking, Charlene, honey. Okay, so Lemuel, what’cha wanna get off your chest?”

  “Off my chest?” “Off my chest?”

  “Why didja call in for? What’cha wanna talk about?”

  “I want to talk about …” “I want to talk about the serial murders. I want to say you this—the crimes may look random, but this seeming randomness is nothing more than the name we give to our ignorance.”

  “If I read you right, you’re saying there’s a pattern behind the murders the police aren’t aware of.”

  “There is a pattern …” “There is a pattern waiting to be discovered. Randomness, pure, unfortunately does not exist. At least nobody has been able to come up with an example. I should know. I have been looking everywhere—”

  “Well, I’m afraid I’m in over my head when it comes to anything pure. Ha ha ha ha. But we’ll be sure and pass your tip on to Chester Combes, the county sheriff. Listen, Lemuel, we’re counting on you to keep an eye peeled for this pure randomness—it’s got to be out there somewhere, lurking in the bushes, hiding in the shadows of an alleyway. Nice talking to you, Lemuel. Enjoy your, eh, stay in America. I’ll take another call …”

  I sensed he was about to hang up. “I need answers to (questions,” I shouted into the phone. “I figured out the high five. You explained me handle, you explained me getting off your chest. But how is it possible to wear a heart on a sleeve? What does it really mean, Nonstops to the most Florida cities? How can one city be more Florida than another? My Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Manual, King James, Raymond Chandler, Playboy never used such an expression. Concerning which side is up, who gets to decide that in America? I have a last but not least, here it is—what or who is tender to?”

  It dawned on me my voice was no longer echoing from the hi-fi speakers. Then I noticed the phone had gone dead in my ear. On the radio, the host was saying, “If you’ve just joined us, you’re listening to WHIM Elmira, the station where talk is cheap and sex is the number-one topic of conversation. Hallo.” He began chatting with a lady barber about something called the G-spot.

  Feeling frustrated, unable to get a grip on this America, I hung up the phone and turned off the radio and switched off the overhead light and the desk lamp and wandered over to stare through a pair of French doors opening onto an ice-covered sun deck built over a garage. Outside, a brittle stillness had settled over the piece of America the Beautiful I could see. Above the sun deck, the branches of a gnarled oak creaked like a ship’s rigging under the weight of the ice. Contemplating the winter wonderland, the part of me that is theoretical chaoticist started fashioning questions. Should one take the accumulation of ice on branches, like the serial murders, as yet another footprint of chaos? If the weight of the ice caused a branch to snap off, should one interpret this pruning of dead wood as a random event or an act of God? Is there such a thing as God? Was Eden, as the Rebbe claimed, really a swamp of randomness? If so, was the randomness pure and unadulterated? Or was it garden-variety fool’s randomness, and thus nothing more than a footprint of the order we call chaos?

  Assuming both God and pure randomness exist, what is the relationship between the two?

  If God created man, should this be taken as evidence that He loathed man? Or was Creation simply a random event that went unnoticed by everyone except man?

  Oy—I heard the Rebbe’s voice in my brain—my head too was spinning from all these questions without answers.

  Feeling drained for the first time since my arrival in America, I turned away from the French doors and made my way to the bedroom at the back of the apartment. Kicking off my shoes, sliding fully dressed under the sheets, I quickly sank into a fitful sleep. I dreamed the usual dreams: thick-soled, steel-toed shoes kicked at figures on the ground; faceless men began to dismantle a piece of furniture; a little boy I did not know cringed in a corner, barely able to breathe. …

  What seemed like minutes later, with the first rays of first light flecking the walls of the room, I was roused by the sound of a car pulling slowly into the driveway. A door slammed shut. There were footsteps below in the Rebbe’s apartment, then muffled voices, then for a long while absolute silence, then a hoarse cry that broke off abruptly, followed by someone moaning “Oy, oy, oy.” Moments later a toilet somewhere downstairs flushed.

  Intrigued, I padded over to the window in my stocking feet in time to see a woman wearing fox climb back into a car. She started the motor, let it idle until the engine was turning smoothly, then pulled slowly out of the driveway.

  Smiling to myself, I leaped to a conclusion: marijuana was not the only forbidden fruit the Gnostic chaoticist had an appetite for. Again I heard the Rebbe’s voice in my head. “ ‘Ta’amu ure’u,’ “ it said. “ Taste it and see.’ “

  Chapter Two

  Freshly shaven (though not well shaven), a patch of toilet paper clinging to a coagulated cut on his chin, reeking from a few dabs of duty-free aftershave, Lemuel drifts at midmorning down South Main Street, past emergency crews repairing overhead telephone wires, past teenagers chipping away at the ice on the sidewalk, into the village of Backwater, population (not counting students) 1,290. With each breath the cold dry air stings his nostrils, bringing tears to his eyes. He glances furtively at one sleeve, then the other, looking for evidence of a Russian heart, is vaguely disheartened when all he sees is frayed sleeve.

  Dozens of young people Lemuel takes for students scramble up narrow paths toward the campus, which clings to the side of the long hill that dominates the village. Colorful scarves trailing behind them, they move with that distinctive rolling duck walk he first saw when Word Perkins tried to high-five him the night before. Lemuel is struck by the fact that the students appear to want to get where they are going. He decides that Americans may walk strangely but, unlike their Russian counterparts, they are not put off by journeys that end in arrivals.

  Continuing on, Lemuel passes a post office, a drugstore, a pool hall, a bookstore. The buildings strike him as being on the puny side, groundscrapers where he expected sky. He scales a frozen snowdrift and picks his way across the sanded street. On the far corner he stops to inspect a low-roofed hangar with a gaudy neon sign that reads “E-Z Mart” suspended from a gallowslike structure planted in the frozen lawn. Lemuel remembers hearing rumors about hangars with interminable aisles. His son-in-law claimed to have gotten lost for several hours in such a hangar in a suburb of West Berlin, a story Lemuel took, at the time of its telling, as metaphor.

  Clutching his briefcase under one arm, Lemuel shoulders through the swinging door and catches sight of endless aisles. The heart he does not wear on his sleeve misses a beat, then accelerates. He is startled by a burst of hot air fro
m a grill built into the floor. Flinging himself through the wall of heat, pushing through a turnstile, he sets off down an avenue of an aisle. Both sides, as far as the eye can see, are lined with shelves—and the shelves, without exception, are crammed with things to eat!

  If only the Great Headmaster could see this. Lenin always claimed that quantity could be transformed into quality, and here, in the aisles of a food store, was the living proof.

  Inspecting cans of corned beef and creamed corn and baked beans, Lemuel discovers that his fingertips have grown numb. Examining jars of low-calorie peanut butter and plastic containers of Hershey’s chocolate syrup and vats of Vermont maple syrup, he feels his knees begin to buckle. Suffering from what he suspects may be a terminal case of vertigo, he clings to a shelf, inhales and exhales deeply several times, brings a hand to his face, is relieved to find that his nose is cold and wet. Or (a sudden doubt) is that a sign of health only for dogs? Disoriented, he plunges on, fingering cellophane packages filled with spaghetti of every imaginable size and shape and color. His lips sounding out the letters, he reads the labels on jars of spaghetti sauce with or without meat, with or without mushrooms, with or without calories, with or without artificial coloring. It hits him that there are people in this miracle of a country who spend time and money coloring spaghetti sauce red.

  At the vegetable counter he fights back tears as he runs his fingers over a crisp iceberg lettuce. He starts to caress a cucumber, but drops it back into the bin when a stout lady with a mustache, pushing a shopping cart heaped with detergents, clucks her tongue at him. At the fruit counter Lemuel completely loses control of his emotions. Seizing a lemon—he has not laid his bloodshot eyes on a lemon in more than two years—he brings it to his nose and sucks in a long, drunken draught of its perfume.