Free In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist by Ruchama King Feuerman Page B

but then he stopped his thoughts before they burst out into words. It wasn’t appropriate to confide in her. She respected him, didn’t she? One might almost call her a student.
    “A season has passed,” he said, when the silence went on too long. “Spring’s here. You can see it on the bus.”
    “Really?” Tamar perked up and took a look around. “How can you tell?”
    Instead of pointing to the obvious—how the women on this mostly secular bus were wearing far less clothing—he gestured with his chin, “Look at all the jump ropes. The young girls are starting up again.”
    She twisted her long neck to scan the younger passengers. “You’re right.” She nodded, her eyes creasing in amusement. “I wouldn’t havethought you’d be the kind of man to pay attention to these little things.”
    “And what kind of man is that?” he asked, bending his head a little.
    “Actually, I hardly know myself.” She let out a laugh. “Not my father, I’ll tell you that much.”
    “Your father?” Here in Israel, surrounded by so many immigrants who had made new homes for themselves, he had a way of forgetting people had pasts … and parents. “Are you close with your father?”
    “No,” she said. “Not really. There’s not much of a connection. He took off in my early teens.” He saw her throat move a little, as if trying to dislodge a small obstruction. “Actually, I think I’ve reached an age where I no longer need to talk about my sad, boring childhood.” She looked at him pointedly, as if hoping he’d pull it out of her just the same. But this was not a conversation for a bus, and all he said was, “No childhood story is ever accurate. The father’s memories aren’t the same as the son’s.”
    “Nope, I guess not. Maybe,” she offered, “all the people who became religious need to meet teachers and rabbis and rebbetzins to get a parenting they never had.”
    He considered this, was moved by her observation. “There’s something to that. Often, a good teacher gives you a second chance.” A memory came back, when he was in second grade and kept missing school for weeks at a time because of upper respiratory infections. His mother tended to him with a consuming mother’s devotion, but one day his father took him aside, pushed him flat up against the wall, and said in a low, gruff voice, “Your mother is all I have in this world. If you ever come between the two of us”—here, his father brought his head so close, their noses touched—“I will make your life miserable.” Isaac had been all of seven at the time, and he had pished in his pants. For the longest time, he’d never felt entitled to anything, certainly not to his mother. But the rebbe had brought him in, given him a measure of contentment in the courtyard, and that second chance.
    Tamar stood, swaying slightly to the movement of the bus, a wistful look in her eyes. The driver shouted something, and the people in the aisle squeezed deeper into the bus. Small groups of teenagers moved their hips to the music, unimpeded by the cramped space. Outside, the shops and stalls were flitting by in a blur. Yet here in the bus, time had slowed.
    The bus jerked to a halt, and someone let out a strangled cry—a petiteelderly Yemenite man. “My hat!” he cried, his hands fumbling at his head and lap. “Who took my hat?”
    Isaac craned his neck and reached reflexively for his own hat. Then he froze. A teenage girl was making off with the old man’s gray fedora. She skipped off the bus while twirling the hat, her friends high-fiving one another as they dismounted. Isaac held out his hand, as if he could stop them! But it was too late. The last thing he saw as the bus pulled off was the girl tossing the hat, Frisbee-like, into a dense crowd of shoppers. The Yemenite man put his tiny hands and face against the smudged bus window, his mouth moving, making inarticulate sounds. As the bus took off he fell back in his seat in despair. He looked