Will was gripped by a feeling he had not expected: envy.
At first, he thought he was envying Sandy for having his home intact, his wife still safe. But that was not it. He was envious of this woman for having children. It was a new sensation, but now, as if on Beth's behalf, he coveted this baby and toddler: he saw them through Beth's eyes, as the children she wanted so badly. Perhaps for the first time he understood his wife's need. No, it was more than that. He felt it.
The woman's hair was covered by a small white hat that was singularly unflattering. Underneath was a dark, thick bob — the same style worn by every woman in Crown Heights as far as Will could see.
'This is Sara Leah,' Sandy said distractedly, heading for the stairs.
'Hi, I'm Tom,' Will said, leaning forward to offer a hand.
Sara Leah blushed and shook her head, refusing to offer a hand of her own. 'Sorry,' Will said. Clearly, these rules about women and modesty went beyond the simple matter of clothing.
'OK, we're going to shulV Sandy was shouting as he raced back downstairs. He sized up Will. 'You won't need that,' he said, gesturing towards the bag Will had slung over his shoulder.
'No, that's OK, I'll just keep this with me.' Inside were his wallet, BlackBerry and, crucially, his notebook.
'Tom, I don't want you to be uncomfortable in shul and it's shabbos and we don't carry on shabbos.'
'But this is just keys, money, you know.'
'I know, but we don't have those things with us in shul or anywhere on Friday night.'
'You don't carry house keys?'
Sandy pulled up his shirt to reveal the waistband of his trousers. Around it was a string, threaded through the belt loops, carrying a single silver key. Will needed to think fast.
'You can leave your bag here. You're having shabbos dinner with us, I hope: you can pick it up then.'
Will could agree, dump the bag and just hope that Sara Leah did not take a peek: one glimpse of his credit cards and she would know that he was no Tom Mitchell. She would discover that he was Will Monroe and it would not take much detective work to know that he was the husband of the kidnapped woman, whose fate all these people were surely aware of. She would alert the Rebbe or his henchmen and Will would doubtless be hurled into a dungeon just like Beth.
Calm down, that's not going to happen. Everything's going to be OK. 'That's fine. I'll leave it here.' Will took off his bag, placed it alongside the pile-up of shoes and strollers by the front door, slipped his notebook into his breast pocket and followed Sandy out the front door.
They walked just a few blocks to reach the synagogue.
Clusters of men in twos and threes, friends or fathers with sons, were heading in the same direction.
The building had a kind of piazza in front of it but was entered by walking down a couple of stairs. Just outside, a man sucked heavily on a cigarette. 'Last one before shabbos,' Sandy explained, smiling. So even smoking was banned for the next twenty-four hours.
Inside was what Will would have described as the very opposite of a church: it resembled a high school gym. At the back were a few rows of benches and tables, backing on to bookshelves. In this area, like a large schoolroom, every seat was taken and the noise was rising. Will soon realized this was not a single class, but rather a cacophony of different conversations. Pairs of men were debating with each other across the tables, each man hunched over a Hebrew book.
They seemed to be rocking back and forth, whether they were speaking or just listening. Next to them might be an eavesdropper or, more likely, another pair engaged in equally intense dialogue. Will strained to listen.
It was a mixture of English and what he took to be Hebrew, all delivered in a sing-song rhythm that seemed to match the rocking motion, beat for beat. 'So what are the Rabonim trying to tell us? We learn that even though we might wish we could study all the time, that this is the greatest mitzvah and greatest pleasure we could ever know, in fact HaShem also wants us to do other things, including working and making a living.' That last word was on a down note. Now the tune was about to go up again. 'Why would HaShem want this?
Why would HaShem, who surely wants us to be full of wisdom and Yiddishkeit, why would He not want us to study all the time?' The voice was getting high-pitched. 'The answer-' and a raised finger, pointing at the ceiling emphasized the point '-is that only by experiencing darkness do we appreciate the light.'
Now it was the turn of his friend, his study partner, to pick up the thread — and the tune. 'In other words, to fully appreciate the beauty of Torah-' Toy-ra '-and learning, we have to know life away from learning. In this way, the story of Noach is telling every Hassid-' Chossid '-that they cannot spend their whole life in the yeshiva, but must fulfil all their other duties, as a husband or father or whatever. This is why the tzaddik is not always the most learned man in the village; sometimes the truly good man is the simple cobbler or tailor, who knows and really understands the joy of Torah because he knows and understands the contrast with the rest of his life. Such a Jew, because he is one who knows darkness, truly appreciates the light.'
Will could barely follow what he was hearing; the style of it was so unlike anything he had ever heard before.
Perhaps, he thought, this was what monasteries were like back in the Middle Ages, monks poring over texts, frantically trying to penetrate the word of God. He turned to Sandy. 'What are they studying? I mean, what's the book they're looking at?'
'Well, usually in the yeshiva, you know, the religious academy, people will study the Talmud.' Will looked puzzled.
'Commentary. Rabbis debating the exact meaning of each word of the Torah. A rabbi in the top left of a page of Talmud will pick a fight with one at the bottom right, over the two dozen meanings of a single letter of a single word.'
'And is that what they are reading now?' Will indicated the two men whose teach-in he had been following. Sandy craned his neck to check what book they were using.
'No, these are commentaries written by the Rebbe.' The Rebbe, thought Will. Even his words are studied with the fervour of holy writ.
While they spoke, the room was filling up, people arriving in big numbers. Will had been at a synagogue once before, for the bar mitzvah of a schoolboy friend, but it had been nothing like this. On that occasion, there had been a single central service and a degree of quiet (though not the pin drop silence he was used to in church). Here there seemed to be no order at all.
Strangest of all, he could only see men. There seemed to be thousands of those white shirts and dark suits, unbroken by so much as a splash of female colour.
'Where are the women?'
Sandy pointed upwards, at what looked like the balcony of a theatre. Except you could see no one sitting down, because the view was blocked by an opaque plastic window. You could just make out the outline of the people behind, like glimpsing a projectionist in his booth. But they seemed to be shadows, revealed only in the small gap below the Perspex window.
Will stared hard, trying to make out a face. Giving up, he realized that he had been searching for Beth.
It gave him the creeps. He felt as if he was being watched, as if these blocked-off, unseen women were spectral spectators, observing the antics of the men below. He imagined their vantage point: he would stand out in an instant. The one man not in black-and-white, but in chinos and blue shirt.
From nowhere, a hand-clap began. Rows of men were forming into two lines, as if clearing a path for a procession.
The rhythm became faster as the men started singing.
Yechi HaMelech, Yechi HaMelech
Sandy translated. Long live the King.
Now people were stamping their feet, some were swaying, others were actually jumping in the air. It reminded Will of that old, archive footage of screaming girls waiting for the Beatles. But these were grown men, working themselves into a frenzy of anticipation. One man, his face flushed, was jerking from side to side, inserting two fingers in his mouth to make a wolf-whistle.
Will took in all the faces, crushed in the crowd before him.
They were not identical after all. He guessed several were Russian; a few more, their clothes somehow less formal, were dark and looked Israeli. He noticed one man, his beard wispy, whom he took to be Vietnamese. Sandy followed Will's stare.
