A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn

Author:Dara Horn
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, Thrillers, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780393064896
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-09-02T13:00:00+00:00

In some dark closet of his mind Schechter heard a voice, a voice so distant and irrelevant that it took him several seconds to realize it was the rabbi’s. The shout echoed toward him from beyond the well:

“Is this the garbage you want?”

Schechter placed the poem aside—but there was no “aside,” it was all a well, a deep and bottomless well of lives, the lives of everyone who had left a name, and everyone who had perished as though they had not lived.

Schechter tried to speak, coughed, choked, tried again. “Yes, yes!” he shouted.

“Then perhaps we can come to an agreement,” the rabbi called back.

The words jarred Schechter back to the world outside the room. This time he understood immediately. He stared at the papers below him, thought of what Professor Taylor had given him, calculated what he had left, calculated what he might still need. Suddenly money seemed irrelevant. He was dipping his feet into eternity. But the rabbi below wanted an answer. And he was the one holding the ladder.

“I can offer you three hundred pounds sterling for it,” Schechter blurted.

Three hundred pounds sterling! It was more than four years’ worth of rent on his house in Cambridge. But what else was Taylor’s money for, if not for this?

Somewhere outside the hole in the wall, Schechter heard a sudden gasp, and then loud laughter. When the laughter finally faded, he heard the rabbi call out, in a bright tone, “Take whatever you like!”

As a matter of fact, Schechter liked it all. The next day he returned with canvas bags.

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