I love my brother. And in my own way, Rebbe, I love you. I kept the secret so that you might not have the disgrace in your own eyes, and so that the cameras would not come poking in your windows, the reporters would not come crowding your stoop to demand of you how was it possible that out of your Torah and your Talmud and your Kabbalah came Gregory Belkin, the Messiah of the Temple of the Mind, whose voice is heard from the city of Lima to the towns of Nova Scoda, from Edinburgh to Zaire. How did your ritual, your prayer, your quaint black clothing, your black hats, your crazy dancing, your bowing and hollering-how did all of that loose upon the world the famous and immensely successful Gregory Belkin and the Temple of the Mind? For your sake, I kept quiet."
Silence. The old man was sunk in silence, unforgiving, and filled with contempt.
I was as confused as ever. Nothing drew me to either man, not hate or love, nothing drew me to anything but the remembered eyes and voice of the dead girl.
Again, it was the younger man who spoke.
"Once in your entire life, you came to me of your own will," Gregory said. "You crossed the great bridge that divides my world from yours, as you call it. You came to me in my offices to beg me not to disclose my background! To keep it a secret, no matter how many reporters questioned me, no matter how they pried."
The old man didn't answer.
"It would have benefited me to let the world know, Rebbe. How could it not have benefited me to say that I had come from such strong and observant roots! But long before you ever made your request of me, I buried my past with you. I covered it over with lies and fabrications so as to protect you! So that you would not be disgraced.
You and my beloved Nathan, for whom I pray every night of my life. I did that, and I continue to do it ... for you."
He paused as if his anger had the better of him. I was mesmerized by both of them and the tale that unfolded.
"But as God is my witness, Rebbe," Gregory said, "and I do dare to speak of him in my Temple as you do in your yeshiva, let me tell you this. She said those words when she died! Now you know it was none of your black-clad saints clapping their hands and singing on Shabbes who killed Esther! It wasn't my doe-eyed brother who killed Esther. It was not a Hasid who killed Esther. When the Nazis shot my mother and my father, neither raised a hand to stop the arm or the gun, is that not so?"
The old man, perplexed and torn, actually nodded in agreement, as if they had moved far beyond their own mutual hatred now.
"But," said Gregory, and he held up the check in his left hand, "if you don't tell me the meaning of those words, Rebbe, and I do remember them, then I shall tell the police where I once heard them. That it was here in this house, among the Hasidim whom Gregory Belkin, the man of mystery, the Founder of the Temple of the Mind, was actually born!"
I was dumbfounded. I waited. I didn't dare to take my eyes off the old man.
Still he held out.
Gregory sighed. He shrugged. He walked a pace and turned and looked to Heaven and then dropped his hand. "I will tell them, 'Yes, sir, I've heard those words. Yes, once I heard them. At my grandfather's knee, and yes, he is living, and you must go to him to find out what they mean.' I'll tell them- I'll send them to you and you can explain the meaning of those words to them."
"Enough," said the old man. "You're a fool, you always were!" He sighed heavily, and then more in contemplation than consciously, he said, "Esther said those words? Men heard her?"
"Her attendants thought she was looking at a man outside the window, a man with long black hair! That's a secret the police keep in their files, but the others saw him and they saw her look at him, and this man, Rebbe, he wept for her! He wept!"
It was I who trembled!
"Shut up. Stop. Don't . . ."
Gregory gave a soft laugh of nudging mockery. He stepped back, turning this way and that again,