The Rabbi & the Alchemist

The Rabbi and the Alchemist munched their bagels in awkward silence. Two rye with capers, onions, lox, and Bubbe Sperlinger's homemade herb schmear: the Rabbi’s Tuesday usual. Around them, the deli buzzed with conversation.

“Good bagel,” the Alchemist grunted before tearing off another bite, halves together in true sandwich fashion, filling his mouth to burst. Scattering crumbs across the table, the younger-looking man repeated, “Good bagel.”

“Finest in the city,” said the Rabbi. “I suspect Bubbe paints them with honey before toasting. But will she tell me? I try to make my own before but, feh! They taste like rubber.” He ate each half separately, taking slow, delicate bites to ensure the proper balance of toppings. The true yiddish yichus. “Your hair is longer. It suits you.” The Alchemist's hair looked good in the way some men make bedhead look good, falling in dark curls to his neck and past his cheeks, framing a stubbled jaw and a nose that might have been considered too large on a less handsome face. A nose the Schutzstaffel soldiers had often grabbed him by as a joke.

The Alchemist shrugged and ran a hand through his hair.

“I have not seen you at the High Holidays for some time?” the Rabbi said into his bagel.

“Rabbi—”

“What is this ‘Rabbi’ mishigas? From when have you called me ‘Rabbi,’ just us two?”

The Alchemist sighed. But he smiled, and it was a real smile. “Avrohom.”

“Much better. So, you were telling me why you have missed the High Holidays?” The Rabbi clucked his tongue.

“Miriam doesn’t like crowds anymore.”

“Ah,” the Rabbi said. A pause, and both men took another bite of bagel. “How is Miriam? You are not wearing your wedding ring.”

“I needed the gold.”

The Rabbi frowned. Then, after another moment, he murmured, “And why would you need the gold? Does the Stone not produce just this for you?”

“The Stone isn’t working.”

Before the Rabbi’s shock could register, a hand closed on his shoulder and he jumped, letting out a surprised, “Ey!” as a blonde woman appeared beside him. She stepped back, lined face creasing, bright red smile wavering. She wore a stained white apron over a pink blouse.

“Sorry to scare you, Rabbi, but Dora said you were here and I had to come say hello. You weren’t in this morning. Thought you’d finally decided my food’s not very good.”

“My dear woman,” said the Rabbi, taking Bubbe Sperlinger’s free hand in his, “your bagels are ever as excellent as your company.” Bubbe’s Deli had long been the city’s Semitic spot of choice for any meal necessitating a challah, a bagel, or a kosher kitchen you didn’t have to help clean up. It had also served the Rabbi breakfast every Tuesday morning for the past fifteen years. Until today. Today it was late lunch because old habits die hard, and never at all in old men, and he had been silly enough to think he might have his bagel and this conversation without being overheard. Even with the deli half empty, the Rabbi knew most everyone inside. Many were members of his own congregation. Two tables away sat Phil and Dora Weinstein, whose son Jeremy had recently begun studying for his Bar Mitzvah. Noni Goldstein, Maura Chazak, and Chavah Dillinger—all three on the shul’s fundraising committee—occupied a booth in the corner. At the counter, Evan Gamat and Joseph Weiss chatted with a goyish blond man while Barry Weinberg placed his order.

The Alchemist sat in silence as Bubbe Sperlinger rambled and Avrohom nodded politely. She told him about her husband Adam's back pain and recent colonoscopy. About how her grandson, Seth, was starting his own technology company— “Have you ever heard of a bitcoin, Rabbi?”—and how her granddaughter had shaved the side of her head and gotten a tattoo! Didn’t she care about being buried in a Jewish cemetery?

Bubbe Sperlinger was not, of course, the Rabbi’s own bubbe, but that was what everyone in the community called her. Back in Poland, the Rabbi’s own bubbe and zeyde had lived in the apartment one floor above his family. When rumors had begun pouring in about Germany, Avrohom’s father begged them to flee the country. But they were stubborn as only old Jews could be. At the camp gates, Avrohom and his father were selected for labor, while his mother, bubbe, and zeyde were sent to the showers.

“And what’s your name?” Bubbe asked, turning to the Alchemist for the first time.

“Where are my manners?” exclaimed the Rabbi. “Bubbe, this is Shimon Lozinski.”

Shimon extended one hand, and she grasped it with that surprising strength always found in old Jewish women. “Pleased to meet you. The Rabbi wasn’t lying about how good your bagels are,” he said.

Bubbe clapped a hand over her heart. “Handsome and so nice! Are you from around here?”

“I have known Shimon since he was a boy,” the Rabbi cut in. “Sometimes he honors me by attending services for the High Holidays. I believe it is for my sermons, but he tells me it is for the food afterwards.” Avrohom chuckled, patting Shimon playfully on the left forearm. The Alchemist jerked his arm away.

“Maybe you’ll be at Rosh Hashanah services this year, Shimon?” asked Bubbe Sperlinger. “My granddaughter, Arielle, will be there. I would love to introduce you—”

“I’m married!” the Alchemist said sharply. All three looked at his naked ring finger. “I’m sorry, I'm sure your granddaughter is, it’s just that, I mean, I …”

Bubbe smiled at the flustered man. “Don’t be sorry. Your wife is a lucky young woman. Well, it was nice meeting you.” She kissed the Rabbi on the cheek, hardly having to bend, and shuffled away. The two men exchanged looks.

“That woman will try to set her granddaughter up with any man not yet declared dead,” blurted the Rabbi.

“Is she that bad looking?” asked Shimon.

“No, not at all. A lovely girl. Only problem, this is exactly the thing she wants.”

“What is?”

“A lovely girl.” The Rabbi winked.

For a moment Shimon’s eyebrows knit together, then understanding dawned. “You mean her granddaughter likes …”

“Yes, yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Oi, who do you think she came to about this?” The Rabbi puffed himself up, then deflated. “You should have seen the poor girl. In such a state she was. Her parents are orthodox, and how can she tell her dear Bubbe such this thing? Four hours it took me to calm her.” The Rabbi shook his head. Poor Arielle Sperlinger, sitting in his office, face purple, breaths so quick and shallow, tears streaming down her face like the flood of Noah.

“And you’re okay with … with that?” Shimon asked.

The Rabbi shrugged. “The times change, Shimon. I introduced her with the lady I take training from sometimes at the JCC. She has blue hair. They get along, I think.”

The Alchemist raised an eyebrow and snorted. “The times change,” he repeated.

Avrohom looked down at his bagel. Only one bite remained, and he did not want it. It stood between him and the rest of this conversation, the real reason Shimon wanted so badly to meet. Shimon, who had all the time in the world.

But Avrohom had not lived his life by avoiding what came.

“What do you mean by this, ‘the Stone is not working’?”

The Alchemist did not respond. His hands knit together, eyes going faraway. He licked his lips. Several times the younger-looking man opened his mouth to speak, closing it when nothing came out. So, the Rabbi asked the next question.

“And what of Miriam?”

How many years had he and Shimon spent in pursuit of the accursed Stone? How much had they begged, sold, stolen for any information on a thing heard of in whispers from kabbalistic schmucks? But it had been real in the end. They made it real. The Philosopher’s Stone. The masterwork of all alchemy; the stone that turned metal to gold, cured any illness, and made a person young forever. Made Shimon young forever. Shimon, and Miriam.

The Alchemist croaked, “When the Stone didn’t work … I read, if the gold was sentimental to the person it—it could be used to … but Miriam, she’s … it’s not working.” Avrohom remembered lines from letters Shimon had sent across the past few years.

Miriam would forget her own head if it weren’t attached to her neck.

Miriam left the burner on and almost burned the place down!

Miriam is worrying me. She forgot where our house was today.

Avrohom, something is wrong with Miriam.

He remembered first meeting Miriam. Nearly fifteen years after the long journey to America, Shabbat dinner in Rabbi Manuel Laderman’s backyard and Shimon, smiling wider than Avrohom had ever seen, arm in arm with a radiant girl. The hollowness of the camps not quite gone, yet she always seemed to be laughing. Something in her eyes. Two survivors who’d found each other in this bright new land.

“I’ve tried everything,” the Alchemist whispered. “The Stone, it should fix her, but it just doesn’t. It should fix her. It has to fix her. I’ve tried everything, Avrohom. You know I took her to a doctor?”

“You did?” This the Rabbi had not expected. “What did they say?”  Avrohom tried to meet his friend’s downcast eyes. Behind him, the Weinsteins were pretending not to eavesdrop. What would they hear? Dora Weinstein was a terrible and popular gossip.

“Couldn’t find anything physically wrong with her. ‘It’s like she’s never been sick a day in her life,’ they told me.” The Alchemist laughed. It was the same laugh he had used in the camp at night, when they clutched each other for warmth and Avrohom would whisper that tomorrow the soldiers would let them go free. Tomorrow. “She forgot who I was last week.”

Miriam had been beautiful when Avrohom first met her. She would still look the same. Shimon did. Avrohom could have. Would her eyes still be laughing?

“Why did you ask to meet with me, Shimon?”

“You have to help me.” The Alchemist’s knuckles were bright starbursts in his fists.

“You have the Stone, Shimon, the Philosopher’s Stone. Is this not enough?”

“It’s not working! It won’t fix her! It works for me but for her, it’s like her mind is … I’ve tried everything I can.” Shimon’s voice rose and his breath came in quick gasps. The Weinsteins dropped all pretense of not listening, and the three women in the corner were whispering. One pointed at Shimon. “I’ve gone through every book, and text, and—and spell I can find. Avrohom, please.”

“Keep your voice down. If the Stone cannot fix her, then I fear—”

“Please! Please, Avrohom. It always worked better with you. We could do things together. Spells and—and we finished the Stone together. You have to help me.” The Alchemist’s eyes were bright and vast. The Rabbi’s stomach tightened. He closed his eyes, unable to look at his friend’s face. Old memories took hold. Memories not dulled by age but sharpened and made dangerous. The deli faded. He was back in the tiny attic he and Shimon had rented as young men, still so fresh off the boat you could follow their damp footsteps right back to Ellis Island. Covering every inch of the rented room were books, diagrams, and half-mad notes in Yiddish and English and Hebrew. Thunder shook the house. Metal wire ran from a lightning-rod haphazardly secured to the roof, through the window to their great contraption. Avrohom held one handle, Shimon the other. It had taken everything to build. Finally lightning struck with the sound of God’s own voice. The contraption exploded in brilliant light. Pain burst inside Avrohom as he hit the wall and somewhere Shimon was screaming. Avrohom crawled forward, blinded from blast but pulled by something, a gravity in the center of the room he needed to reach. The contraption’s torn metal sliced his hand but he kept reaching, drawn forward until his fingers closed around something small and warm and the pain was gone, his sight restored. He remembered how the Philosopher’s Stone had glowed in the dark room. The masterwork of all alchemy.

He opened his eyes onto the deli.

“I love Miriam, and this is a tragedy I wish I could fix.”

“We can fix it.”

“No, Shimon, I will not.” Avrohom could not look at his friend—at the man unchanged. Shimon blinked, then his face contorted, and he lunged across the table, grabbing Avrohom by his left forearm. The Rabbi tried to pull away but the Alchemist was stronger. He tore the buttons on Avrohom’s cuff, forcing the sleeve up and over, revealing a discolored patch of scar-tissue that had been burned and burned until the numbers were no longer visible.

“You’ll just let it all die then? Everything we survived?” Shimon’s eyes were cold, all pleading gone from his voice.

Avrohom looked around the deli and saw concerned faces everywhere. Chavah Dillinger had her phone out. Evan Gamat and Barry Weinberg were on their feet. He looked at them, and shook his head. To Shimon he whispered, “Do as I have suggested before. I can give you the phone number. Tell them it is your grandparent’s story. These historians, they will listen to you. Put it in a museum. Put away the Philosopher’s Stone. Let others remember.”

“I remember!” Shimon spat. “I never forget.”

“And what good does this do anyone?” Avrohom fought to whisper, grief burning up his throat like bile. “Do you think I can forget? Every morning I wake up in Auschwitz! But still I have done my best for many years. To be a good man, a good rabbi, a good husband and father. What of you? Do not pretend what we did was for the good of our people.” It was the Rabbi’s turn to grab Shimon’s left arm, pulling the sleeve back to show the string of blue-black numbers, forever sharp and clear. “What good is a shout no one hears?”

Fury and dismay fought across the Alchemist’s handsome features as he stared into the Rabbi’s lined face and they clutched each other.

“You have gotten old.”

“We are both old.” Avrohom released Shimon, and Shimon released him.

“I will not condemn Miriam to your choices,” said the Alchemist. He stood, tossed his napkin over his empty plate, and left.

Avrohom could feel eyes on him. How much had they heard? His right hand found his left sleeve and tugged it back down.

He remembered meeting Shimon again for the first time after rabbinical school. The Alchemist was tan from traveling the globe, head without a yarmulke, payes missing, and eyes bright with answers to questions Avrohom had chosen not to ask. “You would make a very good old man,” Shimon had laughed, and it sounded like a joke then. Now, as Avrohom watched his friend disappear, it sounded like a verdict.

“Rabbi?” His head snapped up, almost right into Bubbe Sperlinger’s nose. “Are you alright? Your friend didn’t seem happy when he left.”

“Oh, yes. We had a disagreement, but nothing to worry about.” The Rabbi gave her a wan smile. He thought of his own bubbe, so long gone. Of his wife, their children, and grandchildren. Around the restaurant he saw friends and neighbors already sliding back into their own lives. Of course, rumor of the event would spread like wildfire, and soon the entire community would blaze with the encounter.

“Are you sure? What was the problem?” Bubbe asked.

Avrohom frowned. “We do not see eye to eye on many things, but he is a good man. I wish I could have helped him.” He remembered what he had told Shimon so many years ago, when asked why he would choose this life. Now the words spilled out once again. “I had to do what I felt was right, that is all.” It still sounded foolish.

The low buzz of conversation resumed as Bubbe left him to finish his meal, and Chavah Dillinger waved from her seat in the corner. He waved back. Come Saturday they would want to know about the strange young man and his argument with the Rabbi, and he would find something to tell them. He always did. Wrapping his last bite of bagel in a napkin, he stood, then shuffled towards the door. His wife would laugh at him for bringing her just the one bite home, but she would eat it and smile. That, at least, would be good.