City of God Read Online Free PDF Page B

included, found so intriguing.
    I feel deceived not by her but by appearances: how real they can be in my America. I feel no animus for her husband, I hardly know him. He’s a powerful figure in business often quoted in newspaper articles about the economy. She said he is a child who needs her unceasing admiration and praise. He worries constantly about his position in the business world, she has to listen to his anguished reports of matters she does not really understand and suffer his wild private swings from vanity and pride to whining self-doubt. He is afflicted with nameless fears, he has night sweats, and often expresses his dread that everything he’s made for himself, everything he owns, will one day be taken away from him. Including me, she said by way of conclusion.
    She turned on her side. She was smiling. Including me, she said again, whispering and then putting her tongue in my ear.

    â€”When a song is a standard, it can reproduce itself from one of its constituent parts. If you recite the words you will hear the melody. Hum the melody and the words will form in your mind. That is an indication of an unusual self-referential power—the physical equivalent would be limb regeneration, or cloning the being from one cell. Standards from every period of our lives remain cross-indexed in our brains, to be called up in whole or in part, or to come to the mind unbidden. Nothing else can as suddenly and poignantly evoke the look, the feel, the smell of our times past. We use standards in the privacy of our minds as signifiers of our actions and relationships. They can be a cheap means of therapeutic self-discovery. If, for example, you are deeply in love and thinking about her and looking forward to seeing her, pay attention to the tune you’re humming. Is it “Just One of Those Things”? You will soon end the affair.

    â€”Heist
    Yesterday, Monday,
    voice mail from a Rabbi Joshua Gruen of the Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism on West Ninety-eighth Street: It is in your interest that we meet as soon as possible. Clearly not one of the kooks. When I call back he is cordial but will answer no questions over the phone. So okay, this is what detectives do, Lord, they investigate. Sounded a serious young man, one religioso to another, mufti or collar? I go for the collar.
    The synagogue a brownstone between West End and Riverside Drive, a steep flight of granite steps to the door. I deduce Evolutionary Judaism includes aerobics. Confirmed when I am admitted. Joshua (my new friend) a trim five-nine in sweatshirt, jeans, runningshoes. Gives me a firm handshake. Maybe thirty-two, thirty-four, good chin, well-curved forehead. No yarmulke atop his wavy black hair.
    A converted parlor cum living room with an Ark at one end, a platform table to read the Torah on, shelves with prayer books, and a few rows of bridge chairs, and that’s it, that’s the synagogue.
    Second floor, introduces me to his wife, who puts her caller on hold, stands up from her desk to shake hands, she too a rabbi, Sarah Blumenthal, in blouse and slacks, pretty smile, high cheekbones, no cosmetics, needs none, light hair short au courant cut, granny glasses, Lord my heart. She is one of the assistant rabbis at Temple Emanuel. What if Trish wore the collar, celebrated the Eucharist with me? Okay laugh, but it’s not funny when I think about it, not funny at all.
    Third floor, I meet the children, boys two and four, in their native habitat of primary-color wall boxes filled with stuffed animals. They cling to the flanks of their dark Guatemalan nanny, who is also introduced like a member of the family. . .
    On the back wall of the third-floor landing is an iron ladder. Joshua Green ascends, opens a trapdoor, climbs out. A moment later his head appears against the blue sky. He beckons me upward, poor winded Pem so stress-tested and entranced. . . so determined to make it look effortless, I could think of nothing else.
    I stood