Zix Zexy Ztories

Helena; or, Sanskrit Is Sexy Too

I had Walter Kleinsaltz to thank for introducing me to Helena. Kleinsaltz, my former Greek professor, was also a renegade reform rabbi. Sick of the rabbinate, he slid from Hebraism to Hellenism. However, on the High Holy Days he sidled back, when a South Shore congregation needed him for its overflow crowds. In one such synagogue I saw him in the black satin sacral robe, a little feline smile on his generous pink, almost effeminate lips. Kleinsaltz didn’t believe in God. But, thank God, neither does anyone else around here, he said. And anyway, he figured, no one could sniff out such heresy over a weekend, when even marginal Jews were excited about Deity. From a theological point of view—he wasn’t totally sans scruples or ideology—Kleinsaltz felt that if on the outside chance God indeed existed, He wouldn’t very likely punish him for being a rascal three days a year. Hypocrisy for Kleinsaltz, like consistency for Emerson, was a hobgoblin of little minds.

A few months after I’d had my last class with him, I bumped into him on the run in the hall of the synagogue where I taught Jewish history. His robe ballooned behind him. It was the first day of Rosh Hashana and instead of shaking hands and wishing each other a good year, we spontaneously pressed our index fingers to our lips—a sign to keep mum. We’d caught each other moonlighting. As a graduate student on a $5,500-a-year stipend, I was forbidden to work (a rule made by $60,000-a-year deans); and he, as an untenured assistant professor—probably the oldest one on the Cotton Mather College campus—he too was prohibited by university regulations from accepting outside employment. Only tenured faculty members were permitted to take on extra jobs.

Where are you running to? I asked.

I forgot my sermon, he panted. I hope it’s in the car.

Kleinsaltz was a bumbling teacher. He forgot his books, his notes, his facts. He said Sparta when he meant Athens. He quoted Plato, but it was Aristotle. He probably hadn’t read either in years. He mixed up Oedipus and Odysseus. Once he referred to the Odyssey complex. Questioned, he said he meant the yearning for wanderlust. Menelaus came out Menelayer. He mixed up Thucydides and Herodotus, and called Aristophanes the greatest living tragedian. When the class, used to his boners and usually discreetly silent, now yelled out, What? he blushed and said, If Chekhov wrote comedies and fools call Kafka’s work comic, then Aristophanes wrote tragedies. Period!

I don’t know how he ever got into Cotton Mather, unless it was because he had known Professor Roman Ingelberg (the triple threat: Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek) in England, where they both settled after fleeing Nazi Germany. But Kleinsaltz covered all this up with a good-natured, self-effacing grace, his English tinged with that slight, cultivated Jewish-German accent (there is a difference between a Jew speaking German and others) that made us forgive him.

Kleinsaltz was along in years, probably in his late forties. Being an assistant professor at forty-eight or forty-nine was like being a busboy at forty. Even waiting was hopeless.

I invited Kleinsaltz to come after services for a holiday lunch.

After the meal he inspected my three small rooms and said, Maybe it’s time you settled down? He leaned back into my over-stuffed armchair. There was a mauve, winy glow on his cheeks.

You don’t like my cooking? I said.

It’s delicious. You teach here?

I pressed my finger to my lips.

You preach here? I countered.

He winked. "I didn’t hear a word. I don’t know a thing. Pass me some more of that delicious bribe. I mean brine. Wine! I didn’t know you know Hebrew."

I don’t. That’s why I teach in a reform congregation. And I didn’t know you were a rabbi.

Shh. Don’t tell a soul. I graduated from a rabbinical seminary before I went into Greek. Let’s have some more of that Tokay.

I poured him another glass. He said, L’chayim, and sipped the wine happily.

It doesn’t bother you, I said, my voice rising in indignation, that you’re stuck in this dreary, water-logged Massachusetts town for two days and that the Rabbi Kahn who hired you to lead Rosh Hashana services for the once-a-year overflow crowd didn’t have the Jewish decency to invite you for a holiday meal? How would he feel if the case had been reversed?

‘You mean if he were me and I were he?"

Exactly. Wouldn’t he feel rotten? I asked.

He’d feel terrible. I wouldn’t have invited him either. Why should I invite an atheist to lunch? Would you?

Of course not.

We looked at each other in silence. We smiled. A look of understanding passed between us as if we’d been friends for years.

Would you like some more meatloaf? I said.

Chin up, his head leaning against the back of the easy chair, Kleinsaltz wagged a finger at me. You’re drunk. A man needs a helpmeet, says the Bible. No one should make loaf alone. He smiled, lips closed, a softly ironic grin. He ticked his head; it was he who was slightly drunk. How old are you, if I may ask?

Twenty-nine, almost twenty-eight.

Really? You look twenty-five. When were you in my class?

This past spring.

That long ago? You looked twenty-six then.

It runs in the family. We all look twenty-five. My father, my mother, even my sister.

How old is she?

Thirteen.

"You are drunk. Pass the bribe. She’s only thirteen?"

Yes.

If she looks like you, I’ll wait for her. Twenty-nine? High time. I married late too. At thirty-two. Everyone thought there was no hope for me. But I’ve been married sixteen years now. And believe me this is the best meatloaf I’ve ever had. If I were ten years younger I’d fall for you.

I can cook but I can’t type.

Liselotta can’t cook but she types well. With my scholarly and research output, I need a full-fleshed typist full time at home. She wears horn-rim glasses and shoes too tight they should fit her like gloves.

The herr doctor rabbiner professor hiccupped. He covered his mouth, blushed. I uncorked another bottle of Carmel. Kleinsaltz filled his water glass and downed it like iced tea. By now his slightly Germanic accent became more pronounced.

There’s a girl I want you to meet…. Your name is Keller, isn’t it? he giggled into his palm. I like to share. I’ll arrange something soon. He pressed his index finger to his lip. Discreetly.

I didn’t think he’d remember, drunk as he was, but he kept his word. One evening that rabbi manqué called from Boston to invite me to a party. I told him I’d like to come but already had a date that evening.

No matter, bring her along for me. That girl I want you to meet is going to be there.

My date and I came into Kleinsaltz’s Commonwealth Avenue apartment holding hands. Janie was tall, beautifully baby-faced, Chinese-eyed. She radiated simplicity, innocence. But seeing the three bearded professors—one had his fist raised like Demosthenes—at the far side of the oblong living room, her hand fell slack. What’s Professor Ingelberg doing here? I wondered.

Kleinsaltz introduced me to his darkly homely wife and to Mrs. Ingelberg. Then a subtly European glimmer lit his eyes. And this is Helena Ingelberg.

Helena, looking rather bored, sat primly with a blazer over her well-filled blouse, but I already felt on my skin the warmth she exuded. I looked away for a moment. In my mind’s eye, I saw her strongly chiseled, pretty face and sensed the dagger-eyed vitality she radiated. I’m going to make it with Ingelberg’s daughter, I knew, and blessed my luck in having wined and dined Kleinsaltz. I blessed the whole karma of our coming together at the proper time.

Finally, after a few seconds, Helena said in her tweedy English accent, Pleased to meet you. She leaned forward, shook my hand quickly and lightly, avoiding even the suggestion of a touch. Then, facing Janie, said: And you too. What did you say your name was? Her green eyes excoriated Janie with a razor glance, cutting down a rival.

They call me Janie.

Janie looked uncomfortable. She hardly said a word. Who’s gonna take this albatross home? I screamed. Janie grazed my lobe with her lips and whispered, What are those men talking about over there? Are they singing? I looked at the three men huddled close at the edge of three low-slung chairs, an all-male Greek chorus, full professors full of classical Greek, having a grand old time in its repressed, muted way, like bishops, I suppose, at an ecumenical convention, larding their talk with double-entendre Septuagint quotes.

I lifted up a wave of Janie’s hair. The hair near her temple was moist and matted.

"They’re singing the Bhagavad Gita, I said loud enough for Helena to hear. It’s a sort of classical Oedipal trio. They’re trying to achieve cosmic yantra."

Will you stop shouting out your answers? Janie said behind her hand. Everyone is looking. Why did you bring me to a professor’s party? I feel so stupid here. Lord, I’m only a freshman.

I thought that was a senior dance I picked you up at.

I went anyway.

The party had broken up into groups. The profs, the two women, Janie and I, and Helena sitting in the love seat, unloved, leaning now toward her mother, now hesitantly toward us. Finally, Helena rose and said, Here, Walter, let me help you clear the tables.

Take me home, Janie whispered, her porcelain face pale. What am I doing at a faculty party? Then her eyes narrowed. They don’t sound like they’re singing.

"Chanting. That’s the word. It’s not like singing. It’s sprakhshtimeh. One is reciting the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. The other, the fellow with the beard like a shovel, that’s Helena’s daddy, he’s translating it into classical Greek. The short man is translating the Greek into Arabic. What they’re doing is called nekomeh. An Arabic marketplace rite that goes back—let’s see—to the middle of the seventh, some say early eighth, century when the Sicilian scholastics under idiotic Moorish hegemony would vie for idiosyncratic prizes for idiomatic simultaneous symbiotic classical translation."

I don’t feel well, Janie said softly. She pursed her lips. Holding back tears? Good, I thought. Maybe the ambulance will take you home. I’m only sixteen.

What? I roared.

Helena’s mother and Mrs. Kleinsaltz gaped at me. Helena, who had just come back into the living room, also heard. For a moment, half a beat, perhaps a dactyl, the chanting broke off.

I rose and brought Janie to the kitchen part of the living/dining room.

What? I hissed. I thought you were eighteen. You’re making a first-class anapest of yourself. Here I take you to the only place in the world where classical fenugreek is spoken. Don’t tell me you’re sixteen.

I made high school in two and a half years, Her head started to tilt back. Get me water. Quick. Her eyes blazed in a fever. You’re mean and sly and nasty, she said. How old are you?

Twenty-six. No. that’s a lie. I’m thirty-nine.

You look it.

She clapped her hand to her mouth. And I kissed you. I want to rinse my mouth.

Nekomeh. Sanskrit. Fez. Fawn. Fenugreek. Yantra.

Why do you keep saying that?

I feel good. I like the rhythm. I like the people here. I’m having a grand time despite you.

I never want to see you again. You’re absolutely the vilest, meanest person I’ve ever met. You’re an inconsiderate b … b … bastard. And a red flush inundated her china teacup face like a tidal wave. ‘You’re so old—she blushed again—and I’m only fifteen and a half."

You get younger by the minute. Soon we’ll have to rent a stroller.

Excuse me. She swept away, as if gathering her skirts like a heroine of a southern historical novel, and went up to Mrs. Kleinsaltz. Where’s the ladies’ room? I think I’m going to pass out.

She’s been drinking like a fish, Helena said.

Oh, I have not. I’ve been sipping 7-Up all evening.

Just then the men rose, signaling the end of the party. Now the women also stood. Helena too. I didn’t realize how tall she was. I noticed her long, swaggly legs, her demure ass. She went to the dining room and looked at herself in the mirror. Not the shy, averted glance most people use in the mirror. She watched herself staring back, and watched me watching her. I liked looking at her in the mirror, doubling her presence.

Quite a beautiful girl, that Janie, she told the glass, addressing me.

You sure are.

Helena turned from the mirror. She seized me with her strong green eyes.

The door closed. Ingelberg’s two colleagues departed quickly. Then came one of those moments of silence when people have run out of things to say and are dreaming up a pleasantry to carry them gracefully to the exit. The Ingelbergs and Kleinsaltzes faced each other. Then a long loud flush rattled the thin walls.

Suddenly all four began to speak. I stepped toward Helena, hoping that Janie would have a good long cry in the john.

Do you go to school? I asked.

I’m at Harvard, she said in her lovely English music hall voice.

Really?

She waited a moment. I’m a secretary.

The door was now open. Helena watched her father shaking hands with Kleinsaltz. Ingelberg then shook Mrs. Ingelberg’s hand. Thank you for having us. Then he took Mrs. Kleinsaltz’s arm and walked out with her.

Roman! Mrs. Ingelberg chided.

Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Ingelberg laughed, paunch quivering. I took your wife by mistake.

That’s all right, Kleinsaltz consoled him. Any time.

Professor Ingelberg walked over to me, recognizing (diplomatic lingo) me for the first time that evening. He had fat rolls on the back of his neck that reminded me of an ogrook I had once seen in Alaska. He wiggled his brows at me