Visiting Professor Read Free Page B

inside.
     Lemuel gets a whiff of a vinegary deodorant, a glimpse of nicotine-stained teeth, a thick scraggly beard, coillike sideburns
     dancing in the air, bright Talmudic eyes bulging with carnal curiosity. The door slams closed behind him and Lemuel, pulled
     almost against his will into an outrageous fiction, decides he has come face to face with Yahweh.
    On the short side—his head comes up to Lemuel’s shoulder blades—but heftily built, Yahweh appears to be in his early thirties.
     He is decked out in scuffed black lace-up high shoes and a tieless white-on-white shirt buttoned up to a magnificent Adam’s
     apple. Where the starched collar chafes his neck there is a ringworm of a welt that makes it look as if he is sporting a dog’s
     collar. He has on baggy dull-black trousers, a rumpled vest, a loose-fitting jacket that droops open. Above a bulbous nose,
     black beetle brows sky-dive toward each other with delicious abandon. Defying gravity, an embroidered black skullcap perches
     on the back of his large head. Eyeing his visitor through perfectly round silver-rimmed spectacles, murmuring
“Hekinah degul, hekinah degul,”
backpedaling across threadbare carpets as his guest advances, Yahweh lures Lemuel through the vestibule into the overheated
     house.
    “What language is
‘Hekinah degul’
?” Lemuel asks.
    “It is Lilliputian,” Yahweh says. “Roughly translated, it means ‘What in the Devil.’ I have a theory the Lilliputians, metaphorically
     speaking, are maybe one of the lost tribes of Israel.” He half circles Lemuel, sizing him up from one side, then the other.
     “It’s me, your colleague and housemate,” he finally says in a singsong rasp. His bony hand closes over Lemuel’s gloved hand
     in an iron grip. “The bush, burning or otherwise, I do not beat around—it is not my shtick. In academic circles I am known
     as Rebbe Asher ben Nachman, the Gnostic chaoticist. In religious circles I am known as the Eastern Parkway Or Hachaim Hakadosh,
     the holy man from Eastern Parkway, which is in the heart of the heart of Brooklyn. To situate myself in the rabbinical spectrum,
     I am what Jews from the Venetian ghetto would have called a
traghetto
—a gondola plying the murky waters between the ultra-orthodox and the ultra-un-Orthodox. To situate myself in the historical
     spectrum, I am the last but not least in a long line of rabbis who trace their lineage back to the illustrious Moshe ben Nachman,
     alias Ramban, may he rest in peace, who met his Maker in Eretz Yisraelcirca 1270.” He nods approvingly. “You are trying not to smile at things which strike you as pompous. Your discretion is a
     tribute to the parents who raised you.”
    Dancing back a few steps, the Rebbe pulls an enormous handkerchief from the inside breast pocket of his jacket and opens it
     with a theatrical flourish; for an instant Lemuel is convinced his host is about to produce a white dove or another bouquet
     of roses. He is disappointed when Yahweh, deftly manipulating the handkerchief with one hand, noisily blows his long nose
     a nostril at a time.
    “Coming from Russia,” Yahweh says, his tone suddenly nasal, “you have probably not heard of me, believe me I am not insulted,
     but you have maybe heard of Brooklyn?” As he prattles on he inspects the handkerchief, looking for a bulletin on the state
     of his health. “Standing with your back to the Atlantic Ocean, sitting too, Brooklyn is immediately to the right of Manhattan.”
    Folding away the handkerchief, laughing at his little joke, the Rebbe dives for Lemuel’s valise, hefts it as if it is filled
     with feathers and starts up the stairs. “Before I became a rebbe and a holy man, I worked as a longshoreman on the Brooklyn
     docks.” He beckons Lemuel with a crooked finger. “Come. I keep a kosher house, I will not eat you. Upstairs is the apartment
     the Institute has put at your disposition.” He flashes a shy, asymmetric grin, transforming his