The Chosen

'Two blatt.'

'Two blatt?' I stared at him. That was four pages of Talmud a day. If I did one page a day, I was delighted. 'Don't you have any English work at all?'

'Of course I do. But not too much. We don't have too much English work at our yeshiva.'

'Everybody has to do two blatt of Talmud a day and his English?'

'Not everybody. Only me. My father wants it that way.'

'How do you do it? That's a fantastic amount of work.'

'I'm lucky: He gri

'Kiddushin,' I said.

'What page are you on?'

I told him.

'I studied that two years ago. Is that what it reads like?'

He recited about a third of the page word for word, including the commentaries and the Maimonidean legal decisions of the Talmudic disputations. He did it coldly, mechanically, and listening to him, I had the feeling I was watching some sort of human machine at work.

I sat there and gaped at him. 'Say, that's pretty good,' I managed to say, finally.

'I have a photographic mind. My father says it's a gift from God. I look at a page of Talmud, and I remember it by heart. I understand it, too. After a while, it gets a little boring, though. They repeat themselves a lot. I can do it with Ivanhoe, too. Have you read Ivanhoe?'

'Sure.'

'Do you want to hear it with Ivanhoe?'

'You're showing off now,' I said.

He gri

'I'm impressed,' I said. 'I have to sweat to memorize a page of Talmud. Are you going to be a rabbi?'

'Sure. I'm going to take my father's place.'

'I may become a rabbi. Not a Hasidic-type, though.'

He looked at me, an expression of surprise on his face. 'What do you want to become a rabbi for?'

'Why not?'

'There are so many other things you could be.'

'That's a fu

'I have no choice. It's an inherited position.'

'You mean you wouldn't become a rabbi if you had a choice?'

'I don't think so.'

'What would you be?'

'I don't know. Probably a psychologist.'

'A psychologist?'

He nodded.

'I'm not even sure I know what it's about.'

'It helps you understand what a person is really like inside. I've read some books on it.'

'Is that like Freud and psychoanalysis and things like that?'

'Yes,' he said.

I didn't know much at all about psychoanalysis, but Da

'What would you be if you didn't become a rabbi?' Da

'A mathematician,' I said. 'That's what my father wants me to be.'

'And teach in a university somewhere?'

'Yes.'

'That's a very nice thing to be,' he said. His blue eyes looked dreamy for a moment. 'I'd like that.'

'I'm not sure I want to do that, though.'

'Why not?'

'I sort of feel I could be more useful to people as a rabbi. To our own people, I mean. You know, not everyone is religious, like you or me. I could teach them, and help them when they're in trouble. I think I would get a lot of pleasure out of that.'

'I don't think I would. Anyway, I'm going to be a rabbi. Say, where did you learn to pitch like that?'

'I practised, too.' I gri

'But you don't have to do two blatt of Talmud a day.'

'Thank God!'

'You certainly have a mean way of pitching.'

'How about your hitting? Do you always hit like that, straight to the pitcher?'

'Yes.'

'How'd you ever learn to do that?'

'I can't hit any other way. It's got something to do with my eyesight, and with the way I hold the bat.! don't know.'

'That's a pretty murderous way to hit a ball. You almost killed me.'

'You were supposed to duck,' he said.

'I had no chance to duck.'

'Yes you did.'

'There wasn't enough time. You hit it so fast.'

'There was time for you to bring up your glove.'

I considered that for a moment.

'You didn't want to duck.'

'That's right,' I said, after a while.

'You didn't want to have to duck any ball that I hit. You had to try and stop it.'

'That's right.' I remembered that fraction of a second when I had brought my glove up in front of my face. I could have jumped aside and avoided the ball completely. I hadn't thought to do that, though. I hadn't wanted Da

'Well, you stopped it,' Da

'No hard feelings anymore?' he asked me.

'No hard feelings,' I said. 'I just hope the eye heals all right.'

'I hope so, too,' he said fervently. 'Believe me.'

'Say, who was that rabbi on the bench? Is he a coach or something?'

Da

'That apikorsim thing got me angry at you. What did you have to tell your team a thing like that for?'

'I'm sorry about that. It's the only way we could have a team.

I sort of convinced my father you were the best team around 'and that we had a duty to beat you apikorsim at what you were best at. Something like that.'

'You really had to tell your father that?'

'Yes.'

'What would have happened if you'd lost?'

'I don't like to think about that. You don't know my father.'

'So you practically had to beat us.'

He looked at me for a moment, and I saw he was thinking of something. His eyes had a kind of cold, glassy look. 'That's right,' he said, finally. He seemed to be seeing something he had been searching for a long time. 'That's right,' he said again.

'What was he reading all the time?'

'Who?'

'The rabbi.'

'I don't know. Probably a book on Jewish law or something.'

'I thought it might have been something your father wrote.'

'My father doesn't write,' Da

'Talk in silence?'

'I don't understand it either,' Da

'Your father must be quite a man.'

He looked at me. 'Yes,' he said, with the same cold, glassy stare, in his eyes. I saw him begin to play absent-mindedly with one of his earlocks. We were quiet for a long time. He seemed absorbed in something. Finally, he stood up. 'It's late. I had better go.'

'Thanks for coming to see me.'

'I'll see you tomorrow again.'

'Sure.'

He still seemed to be absorbed in something. I watched him walk slowly up the aisle and out of the ward.