“I tried to calm him down, I said, ‘Gregory, please, we’re not in a television pulpit. Sit down. Rest.’
“Then Esther demanded to know why Gregory had been so kind to Nathan in taking him to the hospital. She said Nathan had told her all about that, this time in the hospital—how Gregory had checked Nathan into the hospital under his own name, and had paid all his expenses, and kept Nathan in a private suite, and didn’t want to worry the Rebbe or his wife about it, took care of all of it. She said, ‘Nathan said you were so generous.’
“I swear to you, I thought he would go crazy.
“I started to see how complex this was. Gregory had something at stake other than mere publicity. In fact, it was perfectly obvious to me that the Hasid connection would be a help to Gregory with his church, a form of…occult status…do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do exactly. Exotic and pure roots had grown this great leader.”
“Yes. So I sat up and tried to ask a few questions, ‘Why had Nathan been in the hospital?’ And Esther said that Gregory had suggested it, Gregory had told Nathan that they were both at risk for something inherited in their family, and knowing the Rebbe would never agree, he had spirited Nathan away and had all the tests done under Gregory’s name. For Nathan it had been a dream, the beautiful hospital suite, kosher food, all the proprieties observed, and the people thinking he was Gregory. He found it amusing. Of course he didn’t have the hereditary disease, whatever that was. God, what on earth—”
“Ah, I see,” I said.
“What does all this amount to?”
“Keep telling me everything about Nathan and Esther,” I said. “What else do you know?”
“Oh, that first night, we fought for hours about it. Finally she agreed she wouldn’t tell anyone, or try to bring the families together, but she would see Nathan from time to time and give him Gregory’s good wishes. Gregory began to cry with relief. Gregory can cry on cue, and on camera. He went into how his people had cast him out. The Temple was everything to him, his meaning, his life.
“Whenever he went into that speech, Esther and I would just roll our eyes. We knew that he had compiled the teachings of the Temple of the Mind with a computer program. He had programmed in all the information he could about other cults, and which commandments had given the members the most comfort, and then he had chosen a list of the most acceptable and likable commandments. Other aspects of the Temple were created the same way, through secret surveys and computer compilation of the most appealing aspects of other religions. It was a joke to Esther and me. But that night he wept and wept. It was his whole life. God had guided him and his computer.
“I went to sleep. Two days Esther and Gregory didn’t speak to each other. But that was nothing unusual. They could have fought over some little political question and scream. It was the way they acted together.”
“What else?”
“Two nights later, Gregory woke me at four o’clock. He was in one of his rages. He said, ‘Take the phone, talk to him, listen to him yourself.’ I didn’t know what the hell he meant.
“The voice coming through the phone sounded exactly like Gregory! I mean exactly. I could scarcely believe it was another person, but it was, and he introduced himself as Nathan, Gregory’s brother. He asked me kindly to explain to Esther that the families couldn’t get together. This breaks my heart, that I must say this to my brother’s wife,’ he said, ‘but our grandfather doesn’t have long to live and the Court depends on him. He is the Rebbe. Tell Esther that it can’t be, and give her my love, and in time I will see her when she comes to visit me.’
“I told him I understood perfectly. ‘You have my love too, brother-in-law. I too lost my parents in the camps. I wish you only well.’
“Then in Yiddish he said we were in his prayers and in his thoughts, and if we ever needed him, if Gregory was ever ill or afraid, we must call him.
“I told him how good it was to hear a Yiddish voice, and to talk with him. He laughed and said something like ‘Gregory thinks he has everything, and thank God he has a good wife, but you never know when a brother will need a brother. Gregory has never been sick a day in his life, never been inside a hospital, except to visit me of course and take care of me, but I will come if he ever calls.’
“I remember thinking about this hospital stay, these tests. Had Gregory himself had such tests? What was this hereditary disease? I knew it was true that Gregory had never been in a hospital. Gregory had a private doctor, hardly what I would call a licensed practitioner of medicine, but he had never to my knowledge been in a hospital. I said to Nathan how kind he was, and I asked how I might reach him, and then Gregory grabbed the phone back.
“He carried it out of the room with him but I could hear him talking Yiddish in a simple natural way, and intimately, in a way Gregory never spoke to anyone. I was really for the first time hearing him speak to a brother. I had never heard that. I had always been told that all Gregory’s people were dead. All of them.”
“How long ago was all this?” I asked.
“About a month ago. But I didn’t even think of it before now, all this. I mean, I knew in my heart that he had been responsible for Esther’s death, I knew when I heard him make his speech about terrorism and enemies that he’d been lying. He was too
“Yes, I do, but I see a large design here,” I said. “And the Rebbe. You never met or spoke to the Rebbe?”
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t go over there to be rejected. I have great reverence for those people, my parents were Hasidim from Poland. But no, I know that kind of old man.”
“Well, let me tell you this. That old man also accused Gregory of killing Esther. And he wanted to know the same thing you wanted to know, why.”
“Do you realize what this means?” she said. “If he would kill Esther to protect the family secret, then he might kill Nathan!”
“Has there been no call from Nathan concerning this necklace?” I asked. “I know how the Hasidim live, but this is news, diamonds, you know, talk of valuable diamonds snatched by terrorists.”
“No, no call that I know of, but you see, I’m cut off, I was surrounded by the Minders. And Gregory himself didn’t even come up with the necklace part till the day after the murder. In his first speech, all he did was talk about enemies. Then the next day he…my god, maybe that’s when Nathan called him, but then he wouldn’t have told such a lie or…Why in the hell did he bring up the necklace?”
I was quietly absorbing all these words.
“I think I can figure it out,” I said. “One thing is true, I foiled his plan. His plan is big. His design is big. I foiled it by killing those tramps that murdered her. So that blurred his attempt at calling it all terrorism. Those men cannot be traced to terrorists, can they?”
“No, not at all. Half the world is crying with him, and others are laughing at him. The men were bums out of some town in south Texas, bums. Now Gregory claims his enemies will use any means to hurt him and these bums were part of it and the theft was to give them badly needed wealth to fight his church.”
“Let’s leave the necklace for a moment. He still played up the terrorist part, and for some strange reason included the necklace. Now listen, I have to ask you. Why are there laboratories in the Temple of the Mind? Why?”
“Laboratories?” she asked. “I have no idea. I didn’t even know there were. Of course there’s Gregory’s own doctor, who pumps him up with Human Growth Hormone and special protein drinks and anything else he can to keep his youth and strength, and they do have some kind of hospital room so that if Gregory runs a temperature one degree above normal, his doctor can examine him in it, but there are no laboratories as such, not as far as I know.”
“No, no, I mean big laboratories where people are working with chemicals and computers. Huge laboratories with sterile storage and people even dressed in funny clothes to protect themselves. I saw this tonight. I saw this in the Temple of the Mind. I saw some people wearing orange clothes that covered their whole bodies. I didn’t think of it at the time. I was just looking for Gregory…”
“Orange suits, you’re talking about suits that protect people from viruses. Good Lord, is there disease at the heart of this? Gregory has some disease? What the hell did he do to Nathan in the hospital!”
“I think I know. He didn’t hurt his brother. And there is no disease in Gregory, I can tell you that for sure, or in the Rebbe. I would have known the moment I saw them. I sense these things.”
She winced, the mere thought of her own sickness suddenly confusing her and muddling her mind.
