“Well . . .” Zalman paused. “At least we have each other.”
Jacob set his eyes upon the boy again as a smile came to his lips.
“Yes,” he said, “we will always have that.”
Jacob opened his eyes just as the announcement came over the loudspeaker. He gathered his things and got off the subway at the stop in Mill Basin. During the five-minute walk, he relived the dream he had just had. Like all the other times, it had seemed so real, as if it were yesterday. And yet it was over thirty years ago since he had taken that last ride with Zalman, who had accompanied him to the ship that would take him to his new life in America. It would be nearly a year later that Zalman would follow him to stay with cousins before he would leave him once again.
In the dream he had been content, had no animosity toward his companion. No, it had been a good dream. A dream about two friends traveling toward a new life filled with hope. Not like the dreams he had when he fell into a troubled sleep most nights as he dreamed of sitting in airplanes that fell out of the sky and climbing giant ladders whose rungs shattered with each step. Always in these dreams Jacob was running, running to escape an angry inferno, or running toward someone, a child whose face he dared not see, a child falling from a mountaintop whose hand he had clasped only to have it slip away, to lose him in the murky depths far below. These were the dreams that dominated his night as Jacob lay in his bed, so that upon awakening, he would reach for his Esther and bring her close to him, holding on to her for dear life, afraid that she, too, might fall from his grasp.
But now, as Jacob lingered on the five-minute walk to his home, he tried not to recall those nightmares and to focus only on the beautiful evening. And he tried to recall the dream he had just awakened from on the subway, in which Zalman had appeared not as a rival, a treacherous enemy, but as the friend and the brother he had always been.
Jacob weaved slowly among the commuters emerging from the station, not stopping to purchase the evening paper or pick up a pack of mint Life Savers from a nearby newsstand.
He didn’t hate Zalman. He never had. If Jacob had taken the time to search deep within his heart, he would admit that it was Zalman, not he, who had saved their lives. If not for Zalman, Jacob would have been just another solitary defeated young man in hiding, or worse. But Zalman had given him purpose. The child for those first few weeks had brought an innocence back into his life, and along with it a sense of anticipation, that things would be better. Jacob knew, too, that as the older, more experienced one, he would have to be the boy’s protector, so that when the crucial time came, he would not think of his own fears, but only of the boy. He could not save his father, his brother, not even his mother. But maybe he could save the boy. After all that had occurred, Jacob realized that if not for Zalman, he himself would have fallen, only to lie buried with the others for eternity. Zalman had been the strong one.
There were fewer stores and people now, as Jacob turned the corner of the residential block. He averted his eyes when he noticed the few workers out late, digging up water pipes in the middle of the street. Watching the mounds of dirt ascend as a giant pit became ever larger had always unnerved him, reminding him of his near miss with death. But here, in America, the image had taken on a different, more pleasant aspect, as each slash of the shovel into earth meant hope, the beginnings of a new house taking shape, a new dream realized. And then, years later, as a small casket was lowered into the ground, the sound of the spade, the smell of damp earth frightened him as it never had before. He crossed the street.
As he neared the home, Jacob tried to recapture his dream. Zalman seated next to him on the train, standing nearby as his best man, staying up late into the night, meticulously drawing the lines that would someday be Jacob’s house, watching patiently as his son’s fingers paused over the keys of the piano. And Jacob realized then that without Zalman, like the house, his life would have had no foundation. Again, he recalled when Esther had approached him with an idea. She wanted a new house, this time smaller, a new home only for two. But Jacob had swiftly denied the request. How could he move on to a new home? Without Zalman, how could he start again?
He wondered, too, why he had hurt him. Although there had been no words between the two men that day when he had thrown Zalman out of the home, Jacob knew that the man had suffered a pain, one so deep that only Jacob himself could fix it.
Jacob knew that it was not jealousy but fear that had incited his actions. He could not chance losing her, just as he had lost his parents, his brother, everyone he had. He would not let Esther slip into the hole. His fear had morphed into anger, an anger aimed at his best friend.