A Jew is a kind of longing. This one grows up, takes a train into the City, grows a voice, asks the librarian, “May I see the map please?” The librarian looks at this kind of longing, this Jew, and frowns. He is a librarian in the Map Room, he does not have time to be trifled with, he does not have time for longing. He says, “You will have to be more specific!” The Jew excuses herself, begs the librarian’s pardon, “May I see the map that overlays the City as it was on the City as it is?” He directs her to a computer terminal where there are over 15 maps of the past that can be compared to the current map of the city. As is his duty but not his pleasure in the moment, he asks if she needs any more assistance and barely hears the “no, thank you” as he sweeps away.
The young Jew looks at the terminal. To be Jewish is to have much of yourself hidden from your own view. In the vastness of Torah, surely there is a law that governs this moment? She does not know it. She unfolds the scrap of paper on which she has written an address across the river from where she is, opens a map from a hundred years ago, and begins to search.
Hours go by, and the librarian needs to close the Map Room. He finds the Jew still at her computer, eyes widely reflecting the orange light of the artificially sepia toned digital map of the past. The librarian feels a tenderness to the Jew, her dedication, and a remorse for his curtness earlier in the day before he had had his lunch. Gently, he nudges her before reminding her that the Map Room is closing. She blinks, nods, packs up, and leaves.
In the following days, the Librarian notices the Jew more and more in the library. She is in the Genealogy Room. She is in the Jewish studies hall. She is back in the Map Room, asking permission to print a section of map. It is a section of the city across the river, made humongous by magnification. He prints it, wondering why on earth someone would want to look in such detail at the blank shapes of a few blocks. The Jew is unfailingly polite and not forthcoming. He does not know her project.
When he presents the Jew with her picture of the past, it becomes clear that she is a kind of longing. She gazes reverentially on the city streets, and solemnly circles a building lot, much like other building lots on the map, with a pencil. The librarian is completely unprepared for her tears, but since they have nothing to do with him, she cries them anyway. Flustered, the librarian brings a box of tissues. She accepts the tissues, dries her tears. She is ruddy but otherwise composed. She asks the librarian, “May I hug you?” and the librarian says, “You may on the condition you tell me what this is all about.”
The Jew who is a longing nearly satisfied agrees. She says, “My grandmother was a pillar of a woman. When she died, my mighty grandfather descended into a broken senility, my father and his brothers affected a cold and haughty superiority to grief, and my mother, her beloved daughter-in-law, had a small nervous breakdown. We were shattered.” Here she pauses and looks at the librarian. “Do you know what an Ibbur is?” He shakes his head. She says, “An Ibbur is when a departed soul is invited to come into the soul of another. It is a beautiful moment of connection. It allows the living person to think and feel and do as the departed might have. I have decided, I will invite my grandmother’s soul into mine.” The librarian just says, “Oh!” He could mean many things by this. That he doesn’t believe the Jew. That he has felt a small thrill of fright. That he wants her to continue. She continues.
“So I began to reconstruct my grandmother’s life, in the hopes of reconstructing her. I have found her childhood house, her playground, her school, where her friends lived, everything . . . except the small Dairy restaurant her immigrant parents operated. That was lost to spotty memory. My grandfather had eaten there only once, at the very beginning of their love. My father thought it might be in one borough of the City, my mother swore it was in another.” At this point, the Jew gestures at her circled map, and the tears come again, precluding speech.
“You’ve found it,” the librarian suggests. The Jew nods. Yes. She has found it.
“And now what will you do? Go there?” he asks as she dries her tears again. She shakes her head. “To what end? The neighborhood has been transformed by the century. It will not be a restaurant, if it is even still a building.” The librarian is puzzled, but he does not know if he should express his question. He is a respecter of patrons’ privacy. But the Jew confesses anyway. “No, I will try to find the menu. I will learn the food my grandmother was around all day. And I will cook it. Her soul will fill mine. My family will be restored.”
The librarian feels many things, but he says only, “You may want to look upstairs, there is a database of menus from City restaurants.” She thanks him. “Now that I’ve told you, may I hug you?” The librarian had nearly forgotten his promise. He embraces the Jew. For a moment, as her body fills his arms, he feels a movement of souls. It is as if the Jew’s ideas are not only true but happening right now, happening always. It is as if souls flood into each other all the time, ending the loneliness behind the eyes, the deep darkness of being a conscience alone. And then she lets go, and packs her things, and leaves.
The librarian never sees the Jew again, she never returns to the Map Room. But somewhere, he finds himself thinking, a young woman is in a kitchen cooking a meal to become an old woman and heal her soul. He remembers that every map in his Map Room has a story very much the same. This soothes him.
Mordecai Martin lives with a cat, a wife, and an inordinate amount of pots and pans in a little but not tiny house in Philadelphia. He writes about obituaries, miracles, his fellow Jews, and love. Always love. His work has appeared in X-Ray, Funicular, Sortes, Gone Lawn, and other publications. He blogs at mordecaimartin.net and tweets @mordecaipmartin
