Kaaterskill Falls Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Kaaterskill Falls

  “Kaaterskill Falls continues where [Goodman’s] last book, The Family Markowitz, left off—and then goes further, cutting new ground…. Her truest talent is for imposing a shape on the little, everyday disturbances that distract most of her writing peers; she has an almost 19th-century ability to create a sense of linkage, of one existence impinging on the next.”

  —Daphne Merkin, The New York Times Book Review

  “Admirably rich in nuance and detail, Kaaterskill Falls sets out to compose an entire tapestry, and certainly in its gradually realized world of interrelated friends and neighbors, it succeeds.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Like Jane Austen, Goodman locates the universal in the quiet doings of small, honeycomb societies, deftly tailoring the particulars of her characters to generic moments of self-awareness.”

  —Elle

  “[Goodman] writes with such winning grace, such deftly evocative intimacy of detail.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “A delight, stem to stern … Goodman has often been singled out for her eye, which like Arnold Bennett’s or Vermeer’s never loses a significant detail or blurs its focus…. This young Mozart of Jewish fiction has pulled off another major feat.”

  —Newsday

  “A carefully observed and haunting novel … Like the late Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, Goodman wrings ineffable strands of passion from the quietest of hopes and disappointments.”

  —People

  “[An] inventive first novel … Goodman’s writing is nuanced, graced with subtle imagery and flashes of insight.”

  —USA Today

  “A writer of uncommon clarity and grace … Goodman’s handling of incident is masterly.”

  Please turn the page for more extraordinary acclaim.

  —The New Yorker

  “To call this a Jewish novel, or even a religious novel, would be to simplify it unfairly. Kaaterskill Falls reads like a realist novel from a century or more ago. Goodman’s clear writing recalls Fielding, Austen, Balzac, Tolstoy. The book also recalls the tradition of landscape in American writing: Emerson’s sublime nature, Thoreau’s woods, Emily Dickinson’s slant of light.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “In Kaaterskill Falls [Goodman] creates a world that envelops the reader…. A talented writer who crafts beautiful sentences: Goodman makes us think and laugh.”

  —The Jewish Week

  “An old-fashioned, quiet, complicated story … the kind of story that matters. The kind you have to read for yourself.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “After two acclaimed short-story collections, Allegra Goodman has written a novel, Kaaterskill Falls, and it’s been worth the wait.”

  —Harper’s Bazaar

  “A remarkable achievement … With insight, affection and gentle humor, Goodman builds her narrative with scenes of marital relationships, domestic routines, generational conflict, new love and old scandals…. Her tenderly ironic understanding of human needs, ambitions and follies, of the stress between unbending moral laws and turbulent personal aspirations, gives the narrative perspective and balance. In knitting the minutae of individual lives into the fabric of community, she produces a vibrant story of good people accommodating their spiritual and temporal needs to the realities of contemporary life. She does so with the virtuosic assurance of a prose stylist of the first rank.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Allegra Goodman transports us to a sealed, antique world in the heart of modern New York…. Thanks to her flowing, lyrical style and deft characterization, Kaaterskill Falls is a compelling human—and theological—drama.”

  —Daily News (New York)

  “Ms. Goodman does a marvelously sympathetic job of conjuring up the circumscribed world of the rabbi’s followers…. [She] writes with such supple understanding of her people that the reader quickly … become[s] absorbed in the small, daily dramas of their lives. So authoritative is her storytelling that she is able to move from one character’s point of view to another’s and back again to an omniscient overview without missing a beat.”

  —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

  “Kaaterskill Falls is a kind of heaven … complex and brilliant…. Allegra Goodman has not so much created a world as given us entry into one that, for many, will seem almost unimaginably foreign. But Goodman’s talent runs so deep that to step into it is to live there for a while.”

  —Mary Cantwell, Vogue

  “Goodman’s portrait of the Rav is a marvel of research and imagination, a fascinating multifaceted profile of power and rigidity based on utter devotion to Jewish law and prayer…. Kaaterskill Falls is a different, surprising kind of Jewish novel … one that isn’t afraid to both question and embrace Yiddishkeit and spirituality.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “[Goodman] creates a world that gives the natural wonder of Kaaterskill Falls its full due. In short, occasions to admire the shape and ring of her sentences abound…. Few putatively ‘Jewish novels’ manage the tricky business of giving equal weight to substance and style. Kaaterskill Falls does—and does so brilliantly.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “An elegant portrait of orthodox Jewish life in the modern world.”

  —The Forward

  “A stunning story … As warm and knowing as her acclaimed story collection, The Family Markowitz.”

  —Glamour

  ALSO BY ALLEGRA GOODMAN

  TOTAL IMMERSION

  THE FAMILY MARKOWITZ

  PARADISE PARK

  In memory of

  Madeleine Joyce Goodman

  mother, scientist, administrator

  and baker extraordinaire

  We, I may say, fortunately, missed the direct path, and after wandering a little, found it out by the noise—for, mark you, it is buried in trees…. First, we stood a little below the head about half way down the first fall, buried deep in trees, and saw it streaming down two more descents to the depth of near fifty feet—then we went on a jut of rock nearly level with the second fall-head, where the first fall was above us, and the third below our feet still—at the same time we saw that the water was divided by a sort of cataract island on whose other side burst out a glorious stream—then the thunder and the freshness.

  —JOHN KEATS

  Letter to Tom Keats, 1818

  1

  FRIDAY afternoon, Edelman’s Bakery in Washington Heights is like the stock exchange—paper numbers strewn across the floor, everybody shouting orders: “Give me two! Seedless! No, make that four.”

  “A dozen onion!”

  “What?”

  “A dozen onion rolls—and I’m in a rush.”

  “Six challahs!” Isaac calls out. Suit jacket slung over his shoulder, he leans against the glass counter where Mrs. Edelman presides at the cash register. Isaac’s white shirt is drenched with sweat, his tie folded in the pocket. The air conditioner is feeble, and the bakery is mobbed with sweating customers: the women, in their long skirts and long sleeves, all covered up, even in the heat. The men, just off from work, their faces flushed under their black hats. The bakery floor, and even the walls, are scuffed and dirty, the glass cases empty except for a few babkas on curled wax paper. Edelman’s is rich only in the fragrance of its bread.

  Plucked from wire bins, Isaac’s challahs are so fresh that Mrs. Edelman’s fingers dent them. The loaves are magnificent, over a foot long, artfully braided, glossy with painted egg white, but time is short. Mrs. Edelman dumps them unceremoniously into brown paper bags. Isaac snatches them up with his change and runs out to his station wagon.

  He drops the br
ead and his suit jacket into the scorching-hot backseat and starts the car. He does not take off his hat; Isaac wears a black felt fedora, even in the summer. He is a small man, slightly built. His eyes are not dark, but light brown, and luminous like amber. His hair is brown, too, and like all the men in Washington Heights’ Kirshner community, he is clean shaven, almost modern looking, with neither beard nor peyyes. Isaac rolls up his shirtsleeves, and the veins stand out on his bare forearms. The steering wheel burns his fingers, but he has a wiry strength, a commuter’s stamina.

  Easing out into the traffic, Isaac passes shop windows armored with metal grilles, cement walls spray-painted pink. He drives past Auerbach’s butcher shop, Schwartz’s kosher cheese, Grimaldi’s corner store, and the Kirshner synagogue with its barred windows and combination locks. In 1976 the neighborhood is small and shabby and tight. The Kirshners’ apartment buildings are built close together of red brick, their few stores clustered as if for safety. Flights of stairs, hundreds of cement steps, provide shortcuts from the streets above to those below, and always, on the cement stairs, mothers and their babies, grandparents and teenagers, are passing each other. Everyone takes these stairs to get up and down, as if the neighborhood were a single house. There are no stairs, however, to the top of the Heights. No Kirshners climb up to Fort Tryon Park or go to the museum there, the Cloisters, with its icons and crucifixes, its medieval sculpture carved in cool gray stone. The Kirshners never think of the Cloisters. They are absorbed in their own religion. Although they have no paintings, or stained glass, or sculpture, they array themselves with gorgeous words.

  PULLING into the upper Port Authority, Isaac sits with the engine running and scans the crowds for his car pooler, Andras Melish. Loudspeakers in the bus terminal blare destinations in New York State: Syracuse, Albany, Schenectady. Isaac is surprised not to see Andras standing there, waiting. He does not think he could be overlooking him. Andras is not easily overlooked. He always stands out, much taller than the others in the waiting crowd.

  A shadow darkens the passenger side window. Andras climbs into the car and slams the door behind him.

  “Where were you? I was trying to phone you,” Andras says. Despite his fifty-seven years he has the challenging voice and arrogant black eyes of his youth.

  “I got held up at the bakery.” Isaac is polite but unapologetic.

  They had hoped to beat the rush-hour traffic, but at two o’clock they’re crawling over the silver George Washington Bridge. Isaac’s Mercury does not have air conditioning. Stuck in traffic, the car gets so hot, it hurts to breathe. As if to taunt them, the Hudson below glistens in the sun. Through the bars and cables of the bridge Isaac watches sailboats puff up with the river breeze.

  “Why don’t you try the other lane?” Andras asks. He is a stickler for punctuality. Habitually, as if to hold it against Isaac, he times their commute.

  “This lane is fine,” Isaac replies.

  There is still a distance between them left over from the winter. In the city the men almost never see each other; they lead such different lives. Isaac’s gritty neighborhood is nothing like Andras’s on the Upper West Side. Isaac’s clerical job in the Department of Public Works is far from Andras’s position as head of his own import company. And, of course, Isaac’s upbringing and convictions are nothing like Andras’s. Young and fervent in his observance, Isaac was born into the separatist Kirshners in Washington Heights. But Andras is twenty years older, an immigrant from Budapest. He comes from an expansive, assimilated Jewish community that, like Andras’s belief in God, has scarcely existed since the war.

  By the time the gray Thruway spreads out before them, and the station wagon picks up speed, Isaac is exhausted. His legs ache. He wishes away the two hours ahead. His wife will be waiting for him. He hasn’t seen Elizabeth all week. She will come out to the car and help him carry in the armfuls of fresh bread. The girls will be playing in the yard. Soccer, hopscotch, tetherball, jump rope. They will jump up to see him.

  Through the open window, in the dry breeze, Andras watches trucks heaving past—eighteen-wheelers with smokestacks of their own. He’s brought in a new line of toy trucks at the warehouse. Tonka trucks, blue and white, logger trucks loaded with miniature pine logs, orange U-Hauls with detachable six-inch trailers. They’ve even got tiny SPIRIT OF ‘76 bumper stickers for the Bicentennial. What Andras really needs is a second car. His wife won’t hear of it, of course. It would be a waste of gas, she says. Nina’s conserving energy for the whole country, car-pooling.

  Often Andras thinks that he wouldn’t mind spending a few weekends alone in the city. He could use the time to do his books. But his sisters, Eva and Maja, are waiting for him in their brick house in Kaaterskill. Even now, as he and Isaac are driving up, Andras’s older sisters are baking rugelach, prune cake, and mandelbrot. They still bake for him, just as they did when he was a boy.

  “Our exit,” Andras says suddenly.

  Isaac turns off, at the last minute, onto 23A.

  “You didn’t see it, did you?” Andras asks.

  Isaac smiles, a lightning-quick smile. “I was waiting for you to remind me.” He can tease Andras now that they are past the heavy traffic and making better time. They are closer to Kaaterskill. Everything is easier.

  Even as they take the exit, the wind softens. The Thruway is now four lanes instead of eight. Billboards for Catskill Game Farm appear, ads for the petting zoo with pictures of goats and lambs blown up giant-size against the trees. The hills on either side are green, thick with oak and pine. Nothing but trees on either side, and the broad road slowly rising. The wind seems to comb the trees upright so that they stand thick and straight.

  Turning onto Washington Irving Highway, they enter the forest. They exchange the sunny afternoon for shade, and the light breeze for damper, stiller air. The highway cuts around Cole Mountain, peeling away in a slow spiral from the trees. As the road rises, the lanes narrow, pressed together by the heavy woods. Transmission humming, the car climbs past shattered boulders, enormous shards of rock. Old oaks overhang the road, roots flung up from the ground, while younger birches shoot up toward the light in thin stalks, like grass. And yet there are houses here behind the trees. One on the right with peeling white paint, another freshly painted turquoise with a baby barn, and an enormous mailbox. This is Palenville. The mountain villages announce themselves with motels and signs: WELCOME TO PHOENICIA, and ENTERING COOKSBURG. Sudden flashes of sun, Floyd’s Motel and Cooksburg’s main street radiate light as clearings in the shade.

  Isaac’s car hugs the tightly coiled road. The low safety rail bolted to the road’s edge isn’t much to keep a car from tumbling down into the deep gorges, hundreds of feet below. Isaac drives above the gorge called Devil’s Kitchen, and the ravine called Devil’s Dam. There are car wrecks rusting down there under the leaves, and boulders bigger than the wrecked cars. And there is the sound of water, the rustling water, to Isaac’s ears, like a thousand men praying together, davening and turning pages. Little by little the rustling water gathers strength, the gathering of voices growing louder and louder, until, as the road turns toward Kaaterskill Falls, the water begins to roar.

  The road is high, clinging to the mountain. The rapids rush white over the green rocks, then tumble down into pools far below. From the car Isaac and Andras can’t see the swimmers playing and diving in the rock pools. Only the falls pouring down over the upper face of the rock, a blasting of all the long spring’s rains and winter’s melted snow.

  It’s darker and greener here than anywhere else. The gorges and ravines broaden into a deep valley, and across the valley, far away in the trees, are Victorian mansions, tiny in the distance. Fairyland, Isaac’s girls call the hillside, and the faraway houses do look like fairy palaces, delicate as chess pieces, exquisitely carved rooks.

  Past Fairyland, past Kendall Falls and Bear Mountain, Isaac drives. Past the roadside spring bubbling into its mossy barrel, past granite boulders, past thousands upon thousands of
trees standing together, the young and old in congregation, until, at last, he enters the town of Kaaterskill, bright with white houses set against dark trees.

  Kaaterskill’s Main Street is five blocks long. The buildings are all clapboard with porches, except for the brick firehouse, just built to replace the old station that burned down a year ago. Rubin’s Hotel is the biggest building on Main Street. The line of rocking chairs on the hotel porch is positioned for a view of the whole town. Across the way the post office also has a porch, and is freshly painted Williams-burg-blue with cream trim. Then there is the Taylor Building, where the Taylor brothers practice law, and trade in real estate; Hamilton’s shingled general store; King Real Estate; Boyd’s Garage, with its dusty, glassed-in office at the back; the Orpheum, showing The Godfather Part II. The Main Street buildings nestle together companion-ably, as they have for years. They match each other, with their shutters and twelve-paned windows, and their creaky front steps. Only near the end of the street does the old style give way to the new. Here, like the village dragon, the chrome-and-glass A & P sprawls in its black-paved parking lot.

  Isaac turns off Main Street just before the A & P, and drives down Maple Street, gently sloping, broad, and gracious. The trees on Maple are gigantic, so old, they arc over the road in a canopy of leaves. Their shade extends to every house, from the big summer places like Andras’s with sweeping lawns in back, to the rental bungalows like Isaac’s, small and square. Under the trees Isaac parks the car, and he and Andras step out. The city is gone and the world is green. Green trees, and green grass, and green leaves all around.

  As he does every Friday, Andras goes directly to see his sisters, but Isaac walks across the street. A crowd is gathering at the Curtis place. Will Curtis’s new house has finally arrived. It has come in two sections, preassembled, and mounted on an enormous flatbed truck. A white-sided rectangular shoe box of a house with a green front door and matching ornamental green shutters.