Jane Goes Batty

How she longed to have her there to confide in and to laugh with, to say “Do you remember when?” to, and to just be quiet with.

“Would you like a tissue?”

The rabbi’s voice jarred Jane from her thoughts. She realized to her horror that she had been crying freely. Her cheeks were damp, and her nose was running. “Yes, please,” she said, sniffing.

Ben located a box of tissues and handed it to her. “There’s a Jewish proverb,” he said. “ ‘What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul.’ ”

Jane blew her nose. “In that case, I seem to be having quite a good scrubbing,” she remarked.

“My people specialize in grief,” Ben said. “If they awarded degrees in it, every Jew would hold a doctorate.”

Jane laughed as she dried her face. “My people are just the opposite,” she told Ben. “Our upper lips are so stiff they prevent us from smiling.”

“How did we get here?” asked Ben. “Oh, yes. Your potential mother-in-law and how the reality of her is far worse than what you’d imagined.”

Jane sighed deeply. “I expected her to be protective of Walter,” she said. “But honestly, she’s like something out of an old Norse legend—or Grendel’s mother. Oh, and you should see her little dog, Lilith. She’s adorable, what with having only three legs and all, but what a little monster.”

“Lilith?” Ben said. “That’s interesting.”

“Why?” asked Jane.

“In Jewish folklore Lilith is the name of Adam’s first wife,” Ben explained. “Supposedly she left him because she found him weak and stupid. Some stories say she was a demon with the feet of an owl, and that she came at night to suck the blood of children. Essentially, she was the world’s first vampire. If you believe in that kind of thing.”

Jane considered this information for a moment. “And do you believe in that kind of thing?” she asked the rabbi.

Ben shrugged. “Who’s to say what’s real and what isn’t?” he replied. “The world is a strange and wonderful place.”

Jane nodded in agreement. “So Judaism allows for the existence of vampires?”

“Among other things,” said Ben. “Some people say that Lilith was actually trying to suck the souls out of her victims, not just their blood.”

Jane felt herself growing uncomfortable. More than once during the past two hundred years she had wondered about the state of her soul and what had happened to it when she died and was reborn. She’d never had anyone with whom she could talk about such things. Now she wondered if she dared.

“Assuming she really was a vampire—or whatever—do you think Lilith had a soul?” Jane asked.

Ben got up and went to a bookcase. He returned with a small book, its covers stained with age. As he flipped through the pages he said, “There is a Jewish poet—a philosopher, really, although those two often go hand in hand—named Solomon ibn Gabirol. Lived in the eleventh century. He wrote a number of poems about humankind’s relationship with God. My favorite is called ‘Kether Malkuth.’ A large part of it is devoted to the nature of the soul.”

He stopped at a page and ran his finger down it. “Here we are,” he said. “Listen to this.

O Lord, who can reach Thy wisdom?
For Thou gavest the soul the faculty of knowledge
that is fixed therein,
And knowledge is the fount of her glory.
Therefore hath destruction no power over her;
But she maintaineth herself by the stability of her
foundation,
For such is her nature and secret;
The soul with her wisdom shall not see death.
Nevertheless shall her punishment be visited
upon her,
A punishment bitterer than death,
Though be she pure she shall obtain favor
And shall laugh on the last day.
But if she hath been defiled,
She shall wander to and fro for a space in wrath
and anger,
And all the days of her uncleanness
Shall she dwell vagabond and outcast;
‘She shall touch no hallowed thing,
And to the sanctuary she shall not come
Till the days of her purification be fulfilled.’ ”

Ben shut the book. “I love that idea of the soul being indestructible,” he said. “It endures despite everything.”

“But it also has that bit about an unclean soul wandering in wrath and anger,” Jane pointed out.

“Which brings us back to Lilith,” said Ben. “Some scholars would argue that her soul, being unclean, is what caused her to turn into a demon. A vampire, if you will. Her bloodsucking is simply her attempt to steal a clean soul from someone else. But that in itself makes her own soul even more unclean, and so she can only be purified by being destroyed and allowing her soul to come back in the body of another, to have another chance at redemption, if you will.

“That’s kind of a lot to put on a three-legged dog,” Ben said as he stood and returned the book to its shelf.

Jane suddenly felt very cold. She had long ago decided that she no longer had a soul, that whatever had existed in her had departed at the moment of her transformation. Now Ben Cohen was suggesting that perhaps she was wrong about that. Not that anybody really knows, she reminded herself. It’s all a lot of guessing.

Still, she was shaken.

“So now that we’ve determined that you’re facing Grendel’s mother and her vampire dog, what are you going to do about it?” Ben asked.

Jane shook her head. “I was hoping you would tell me,” she said.

“I think you need to figure out what exactly it is that upsets you about her,” Ben suggested. “I don’t think it’s just the fact that she’s Walter’s mother. There’s something else going on.”

“If there is, I don’t know what it is,” Jane told him.

“Keep looking,” said Ben. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I suppose so,” Jane said, standing up. “I should go speak to Walter first. He probably thinks I’ve gone mad.”

“We’re all mad here,” Ben said. When Jane looked at him he added, “Sorry. It’s from Alice in Wonderland. Sarah’s favorite book. I’ve read it so many times I’ve memorized most of it.”

“She sounds like someone I should like to know,” Jane said. Then a thought came to her. “If you don’t think it’s inappropriate, would the two of you like to come to dinner at my house?” she asked. “You could meet Grendel’s mother for yourself.”

Ben hesitated.

“I know,” Jane said. “You don’t normally socialize with people you counsel. I think, however, that we’re becoming something of friends.”

The rabbi smiled. “I believe you’re right,” he said. “And in that case, I accept.”