Light Fell by Evan Fallenberg Read Free Book Online

her side.
    Yoel spoke in a quiet voice spiked with anger. “Their supplications leave me cold. Why don’t they spend more time trying to improve the world around them instead of praying to ‘renew our days of old’ or ‘bring the Messiah now’? Such a waste of God’s precious time.”
    Joseph turned sideways to look at his friend. Yoel continued to stare straight forward, and Joseph could see the bitter rage in his clenched jaw and narrowed lids, his hands still rammed into his trouser pockets.
    “They’re all lacking something, wishing for something. I can’t help feeling sorry for them,” Joseph said softly. He took a step closer to Yoel and looked up into his half-turned face. “Anyway, let’s celebrate our good fortune with that wine you’ve prepared for us.”
    Yoel relaxed his shoulders, turned toward Joseph, and smiled in acquiescence. “You’ll like this,” he said as he poured from a crystal decanter. Joseph bent his head into the rich scent of cloves and citrus and cinnamon that wafted from his glass. As he tilted it to his mouth Yoel stopped him with a gentle hand and recited the appropriate blessing.
    Joseph dropped onto a plush sofa, hoping his friend would join him, but Yoel seated himself in an armchair to his right. He offered Joseph sugar cookies. They spoke of the apartment, Yoel’s in-laws, the weather. As they sipped the hot wine Yoel recited a poem too quickly for Joseph to catch and decipher, a poem he said had been written by a Muslim cleric for a young Christian boy. Joseph retained only the closing stanza:
    If only I were the priest, or the metropolitan
    of his church, or else his Gospel and Bible;
    Or if only I were the sacrifice he offers
    or his cup of wine, or a bubble in the wine.
    Yoel pointed to a small stack of books on the coffee table in front of them, each with protruding slips of colored paper. “I’ve been asked to speak to a group of American Jewish leaders next week and I hoped you could help me by translating a few passages into your perfect American English.”
    A bit deflated at the prospect of spending this precious evening poring over heady texts, Joseph nonetheless made a quick peace with himself and said he would be delighted. Yoel moved to sit beside him on the sofa, in order to explain what he needed, and Joseph could not help but notice the way his long, thick fingers caressed the holy books, the deep resonance of his voice as he read the verses. Joseph could barely restrain his urge to lean on Yoel’s shoulder, to feel the pulse of his big body.
    “So that’s all you really need to know. I hope it’s not asking too much. You can write it all down on this pad of paper. Just please write neatly so that I’ll be able to make sense of it later.” He stood quickly and Joseph nearly fell into the crater of space left in his wake. “I’ll leave you alone with it for a little while. I know how hard translating is, especially with someone looking over your shoulder.” Yoel’s mood was lighter now, almost cheerful, and he bounded out of the room at a joyful clip.
    Joseph opened the top book on the pile. It was something he recognized, a passage from Maimonides about the place of man in the universe. The text was straightforward, but he could not reproduce the great scholar’s tone in English. It came out sounding too common, too modern and American, and he wished he was capable of a Shakespearean translation, something to elevate the English version. The next text was Buber, so he skipped ahead, hoping that would be more accessibly modern. Agnon, Ahad Ha’am, Flavius Josephus— here they were, a pantheon of Jewish minds, each with demands of his own. Joseph began each with hope and interest and ceased each translation midtext. His disappointment with the turn of events grew with his frustration.
    Half an hour passed, then another. Joseph sat with one foot buried beneath him in the sofa cushions, the other on the floor. The books lay open on his lap and