From: av214@yfn.ysu.edu (Barbara E. Walton) Newsgroups: alt.tv.quantum-leap.creative Subject: Return, pt.1 Date: 10 Jul 1995 15:36:51 GMT Organization: St. Elizabeth Hospital, Youngstown, OH Message-Id: <3trhej$os4@news.ysu.edu> (Bear with me on the opening epigrams; there is a story following...) ;) "The Return" a novella by Barbara E. Walton based on the MCA/Universal television show _Quantum Leap,_ created by Donald P. Bellisario "To help a fellow man may be to tip the scales for the entire world." Talmud "Each lifetime is the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle... But know this: No one has within himself All the pieces to his puzzle..." Lawrence Kushner PART ONE: BAAL TESHUVA "The gates of prayer are sometimes open, sometimes closed; but the gates of repentance are always open." Midrash CHAPTER ONE: LEAP-IN "There is no wisdom for a woman except at the distaff." R. Eliezar "Even Beruria, who once learned 300 laws from 300 _tannaim_ in one day, spent a long time on this particular text. What makes you think you can study it faster than she?" A Sage, chastising his impatient pupil Western New York. December 1, 1973. Letters. At first, all he could see were letters, dark, calligraphic marks, rough water on a paper sea. Some were English letters, others were... he knew it, but his mind was still whirling from the Leap... Hebrew. Yes, most of them were Hebrew. Sam Beckett was pretty sure that he would be able to read them in a few minutes, when the world became a little more coherent. Next, he saw his hands. They were hovering above the letters, the black sleeves around his wrists dragging along the paper. There was no watch on either wrist, and no wedding band. Sam was relieved at this; it was always awkward being married to another man's wife. He looked up. There were faces. On every side. Old faces, young faces, bobbing up and down, floating above a row of identical long black coats. All of the faces were bearded (except for one, which belonged to a boy not old enough for more than a light down on his cheeks and chin). All of them were framed by long curls which fell on either side. The eldest man sat at the head of the table like a monarch. He looked up at Sam. When he spoke, it was in a soft, gentle tone, with a hint of the Old Country in his words. "Micah. You have nothing to say?" "About what?" The man looked exasperated, but he answered patiently. "The Torah tells us that Leah was hated by Jacob our Father because she did not possess the beauty of her sister Rachel. But our Sages tell us that they were both beautiful, yet Jacob hated Leah nonetheless. Have you a thought?" Sam stumbled mentally. He was well-read in many subjects, but he had never had a chance to delve into the esoteric teachings of the Jewish Sages. "I... No. No thought." "I know why he hated her." The men looked up as a body. A woman was standing in a doorway that seemed to lead into a parlor. Sam's first thought was, _My God, she's beautiful_, but that wasn't exactly right. She wasn't beautiful, not in the classic sense of the word. She was short and thin, only a step away from tiny, yet she didn't give the impression of fragility. Her face was fresh and open, innocent of make-up, and somehow child-like and ancient at the same time, the chiselled face of an elfin princess, straight from the pages of J.R.R. Tolkein. She was cute, maybe even pretty, but not beautiful. What she was, was *sharp*, as if the world were a photograph, and she was somewhat more in focus than anything around her. It was her eyes, Sam thought, that caught a man's attention, and made her seem to a part of some other world, a mythical place where dragons battled dwarves and magic rings held the fate of the land. They a were bright sapphire blue, ringed with full lashes that needed no adornment. They had a life of their own, a flash of light despite the fact that she stood partly in a shadow. He caught his breath. The other men were frozen. "I know why Jacob hated Leah," she repeated. "The Sages tell us the story of their wedding night. When he called for Rachel, Leah answered '_Hineni_ -- Here I am.' The next morning he was angry, and he said, 'Why did you answer _Hineni_ when I called for your sister?' And she said... " The woman closed her eyes and thought about the exact wording. "Leah said, 'Is there a teacher without a pupil? I only learned from your instruction. When your father called for your brother Esau, did you not say _Hineni_?'" Sam laughed. "That would do it," he mused. He noticed an empty chair beside him, and started to pull it out. "Why don't you have a seat?" A firm hand suddenly grasped his wrist and pulled his hand away from the chair. He looked up to see the stern face of a middle aged man looking down at him. He turned back to the older man at the head of the table. The man was obviously frustrated, but, again, he adopted an attitude of patience. "Micah, we do not do things that way here." He turned to the woman. "And Ruthie, you know it is inappropriate for you to speak here. Go teach your fairy tales to the other women." For a moment she looked back at him, pleading and defiant, then she lowered her eyes and turned away. "Yes, Rebbe," she said quietly, and left. The boy with the facial down slammed his fist on the table. "That's not fair, _zaideh_, and you know it." "It's the Law, Aaron." "No it isn't! The Torah talks about a lot of women who knew the Law." He gestured at the scrolls on the table. "Rachel and Leah were both prophetesses. Deborah was a Judge. Hulda advised King Josiah... even the Talmud has Beruria." "Beruria hanged herself," the Rebbe said with finality. "So what? No one stopped her from studying, so it can't be against the Law." "Aaron!" the old man roared, finally losing his patience. "That is enough. Women distract men from their studies, and that is a sin." Aaron closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. After a moment, he looked out again. "Yes, _zaideh_," he said. "Do you want me to re-quote the Midrash she told, so we can talk about it? Or can we just assume everyone heard it?" The Rebbe sighed, "We may assume," and a truce was obviously set between them. There was a moment's silence, then the Rebbe went on. "Our Sages teach us that Jacob hated Leah for reminding him of his crime against Isaac. What are we to make of this?" "I think," Aaron said, "that the story is about what it means to tell the truth. I mean, what it's always meant to the Jewish people. It means that other people hate you." The Rebbe rubbed his head with one gnarled hand. "Aaron, I am growing weary of this theme from you. No one knows better than I how well we are disliked... but can you think of nothing else, even for the length of the Sabbath?" "It was the Sabbath of Sabbaths when the Egyptians started killing us in Eretz Israel last month." "The Yom Kippur war," Sam recalled suddenly. That would make it... the early seventies, sometime around Watergate, although he somehow doubted that Nixon's tapes were a hot topic here -- wherever here was. "That is a secular matter and we will not discuss it on the Sabbath," the Rebbe said. "Rabbi Kahane is right," Aaron said sullenly. "American Jews are just racing each other back to the gas chambers." "Aaron, enough." "You're telling me?" Aaron stood and pushed away from the table, disgusted. "Sit down." "I'll study in my room." "Sit." "No." Aaron stormed out of the room. The rebbe shook his head. "I should have never let him hear that lunatic Kahane." He turned to Sam. "I'm sorry you had to witness that on your first Sabbath with us, Micah. My grandson is... " He shook his head again. "I am at a loss sometimes. We should return to our studies." "I think," a voice said behind him, "that it's time for a study break." Sam tried to glance behind him from the corner of his eye. He caught a glimpse of an impossibly bright green jacket, and the rim of a fedora. Why on Earth Al would center *behind* him... "Sam? We've gotta talk." Sam looked at the rebbe. "Rebbe, I, uh... I need to take a break." He smirked and shrugged in what he hoped was universal sign language for 'I have to go to the bathroom.' The rebbe smiled. "That *is* permitted, Micah. It's upstairs, the second door." "Yeah... Thanks." Sam pushed away from the table and headed for the stairs. Al pushed a few buttons on the handlink, and re- centered ahead of him. They started talking partway up the stairs. "It's Aaron, isn't it?" Sam asked under his breath. "Huh?" "The kid, Aaron. He and his grandfather were fighting a few minutes ago. Am I here to... I don't know, fix things up between them?" "Not exactly." "What, then?" Al took a deep breath. "Aaron Galanter is going to be murdered Thursday night." "Murdered? Are you sure?" Al nodded. "Beaten with a shovel. No one's convicted. Ziggy's giving a ninety-one point three percent chance that you're here to stop it from happening." "Why would someone kill a kid? What is he, thirteen?" "Fourteen. But he's got a real talent for picking fights. Before the Rabbi got him out of the City, the cops had picked him up seven times for it." "Seven times?" Al nodded. "It looks like he got mixed up with the Jewish Defense League." "The Jewish Defense League... yeah, I remember. My freshman year in college, I went down to New York with one of my music teachers, for a concert by... " he searched for a name, found it, "Leonard Bernstein. The J.D.L. was protesting it. I don't remember why." "Bernstein gave money to the Black Panthers. Kahane didn't like that, so he sicced the J.D.L. on the concert." Sam remembered very little of the rhetoric that had been flying around him in the early seventies, and that was only tangentially related to the random theft of memories that occurred whenever he Leaped. He had been engrossed in his studies; only Vietnam (and, to a lesser extent, Watergate) stood out clearly against the rest of the political mire. What he *did* remember of the Black Panthers was sketchy, but adequate to understand the problem the Jewish Defense League would have: paranoid speeches, occasional threats, and blanket accusations against Jews (and practically everyone else). "I guess I can understand the sentiment," he said. "But I think Kahane was playing right into their hands with the J.D.L." Al raised his eyebrow, and took a puff of his cigar. "Maybe he was; I don't know. But the early seventies were a pretty lousy time to be Jewish in America. The race problems were part of it. The Left saw them as a bunch of rich white professionals who liked to slum it now and then. The Right thought they were a bunch of radicals out to unravel the flag or something. 'Course they weren't all rich and they weren't all Leftish, but why let that spoil a good scapegoat?" Sam said nothing; Al went on. "And then there was Israel... " "I remember the Yom Kippur war," Sam put in. "Well, that's part of it. After the '67 war, Israel lost a little of the 'underdog' appeal. And then the Arabs started the oil embargo to try and force the U.S. to back out on Israel. And in a little backwater like this, having gas to run the tractors is more important than protecting a bunch of strangers on the other side of the world." Sam veered into the bathroom, and turned on the water in the sink to cover the conversation. He checked the mirror on the wall, to get a look at Micah Novick. He was surprised to see that Micah was beardless, and that there were no curls beside his face. He had apparently only been here long enough to develop a short stubble on his cheeks. "Where am I, anyway?" "Oh, yeah. You're in way-way-*way*-upstate New York. It's called... let's see... Teoka County. You're a little east of Buffalo and south of Rochester. The Rabbi brought the whole bunch of them up here from the City a few months ago. I never thought the Hasidim were big on back-to-nature, but, hey, it's '73... " "Hasidim?" "Yeah. They're big time orthodox Jews. I think there's something else that's different about them, but I don't know what it is." "I don't know how to be an orthodox Jew." "You've been Jewish before." "Not like this." Al shrugged and conceded his point. "Just tell them you're a... well... " He was struggling for a word when a third voice interrupted them. "_Baal teshuva_?" she asked. Al fell silent as Sam turned to find Ruthie standing behind him. CHAPTER TWO: RUTHIE "He who truly loves another can read his thoughts." The Koretzer Rabbi She leaned into the room somewhat, thought better of it, settled for leaning against the door frame. "Hi," she said, not extending her hand. "I'm Ruthie." "Ruthie Minkin," Al said behind them. "My God, Sam, it's Ruthie." Sam glanced quickly at the Observer, who had gone a pale shade of grey under his tan. There was nothing to be done about it now, so he turned back to the woman. "I'm Micah Novick," he said, offering his hand. "I know. The Rebbe told me." She stared curiously at his hand. "You know I can't shake your hand, don't you?" "I, uh... " She laughed. "Men can't touch women they aren't married to or related to." "Oh." "That's about the toughest thing to learn, but once you've got it, it's not too tough." Sam nodded. "The Rebbe said to tell you that _havdolah_ is going to be around 5:30." "_Havdolah_?" Sam asked, hoping it wouldn't mark him as a liar. She raised her eyebrows. "You really have been away awhile." "I guess I have." "_Havdolah_ is the end of the Sabbath. Wine, spices, candles... am I ringing any bells?" Sam shook his head. "Your parents didn't practice, either?" "Uh... " Sam looked desperately at Al, hoping the Observer had come out of whatever shock he'd fallen into long enough to give him an answer Micah wouldn't have to recant later. No such luck. He started to stumble through an answer, but Ruthie held up her hand and smiled gently. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's not my place to ask you that. It was rude." Sam let out a sigh of relief. "It's okay. Really." He gave Al another sharp look, and it went completely unnoticed. "Maybe I'll be able to answer that later." "Well, if you need help getting around here, just ask. No one will think less of you. We have a lot of _baalei teshuva_ around here." "_Baalei teshuva_... Those who return?" Sam translated tentatively. Ruthie nodded. "Yeah. You speak Hebrew?" "Yes... well, I think so, anyway." "You think so?" "Well, I mean, it's been awhile." "What about Yiddish?" "Not a word." "I doubt that. No one can grow up in America without knowing one or two Yiddish words. _Chutzpah_? _Meshugge_?" "Well, yeah... " "I told you you knew some." Sam smiled, and tried to think of a follow-through for the volley. First conversations were always hard to carry on. They stood awkwardly for a moment, then Ruthie sighed and leaned away from the door frame. "Well, I guess that's it." She started back inside, then turned around again. "Oh, there is one other thing." "What?" "You can't smoke on Shabbos. No fires." "What are you talking about?" She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Micah Novick. I could smell that cigar from downstairs." She smiled conspiratorially, then went on down the hall without further comment. Sam looked back at Al, who was staring at his cigar as if he'd never seen it before. There was a bemused smile on his face. "She knew I was here," he said. "Yeah. I noticed that. Who is she?" "That's Ruthie." "Uh-huh. Yeah. That much I caught. But who *is* she?" "Huh?" Al looked up, finally realizing that he was being a little obtuse. "I'm sorry, Sam. Ruthie and I... we were kids together." He snorted and shrugged. "We were grown-ups together, too, if you know what I mean." Sam nodded awkwardly. "God, Sam... I almost left Beth for her once. It was 1962, I think, or maybe it was '61." He brushed it off, apparently unconcerned about discussing the subject at all. "We hadn't been married very long, anyway, and Kennedy was still President. Ruthie came to stay with us for awhile, and... Aw, Sam, she was so pretty. And we were young back then... " Sam closed his eyes. "And you cheated on Beth." "Yeah." Sam sighed. He didn't remember Beth Calavicci very well (actually, he didn't remember her at all), but he knew that Al's marriage had always been a little rocky. He also knew that the reason it held together was that Al and Beth loved each other enough to fight through every rough spot they hit, and come out on the other side intact. He wasn't quite sure where to put this new piece of information about them. He couldn't very well say that he didn't understand; he could barely take his eyes off Ruthie himself, and he'd just met her. "So you were in love with Ruthie when you were a kid?" he asked after awhile. "In love?" Al shook his head. "No. Beth's the only woman I've ever really been in love with. But Ruthie... Ruthie was real special to me, Sam. I wanted to name one of the girls after her, but... well, you know. Beth didn't want me to." "Your wife didn't want to name her daughter after your mistress," Sam mused. "I can't imagine." He regretted saying it immediately when he saw the pained look on the Observer's face. "Don't say it like that, Sam." "I'm sorry." Al nodded, but didn't say anything. Sam went on carefully. "Do you ever see Ruthie now?" "No." He looked away. "The last time I saw Ruthie was when I identified her body." "Ruthie's dead?" Al nodded again. "They found her in the Genessee River, about forty miles north of here." "When?" "January of '74. She committed -- " Al suddenly snapped out of his melancholy. "Sam, if Aaron really was murdered because he was a Jew in the wrong place at the wrong time, then maybe Ruthie *didn't* jump into the river. Maybe she was thrown there. And maybe, well, maybe -- " "Maybe I can stop it?" "It's possible. I'll go ask Ziggy." He started to leave. "Al?" He turned back. "What if Ziggy says no?" "What?" "What if I can't save her? What if I save Aaron and Leap before I have a chance?" "What if you *can*, Sam?" Al disappeared through the Door. Sam turned off the water taps thoughtfully, and stepped out into the hall. He wasn't concerned about making a change he wasn't sent for; he'd done it before, and he would make every effort to do it here. But he was worried about Al, and, more selfishly, about his own life _vis-a-vis_ Al. The Observer was his ace-in- the-hole; without him, Sam's chances of fixing anything (or, in some cases, surviving anything) were no better than the chances of the person he had Leaped into. With Al this distracted, Sam was more than a little concerned about his Observing skills. "...and he just doesn't understand." "He understands, Aaron. Not everyone who doesn't agree with you doesn't understand you." The voices, Aaron's mid-level and cracking, Ruthie's soft and soothing, were coming from a room near the end of the hall. Sam peeked inside. Aaron was sitting on the edge of his bed and Ruthie was sitting beside him, stroking his hair to try and calm him. "It's just that sometimes I feel like I'm not even talking," Aaron said. "And then I start yelling, just to make sure." "To make sure of what, Aaron? That he hears you? Or that you really have something to say?" "Oh, thanks a lot." "Honey, I didn't say that to be mean. It just sometimes seems like you go way out of your way to disagree with people. I wonder if maybe you're trying to prove something." Aaron sighed deeply. "I don't know. Maybe I am." Ruthie glanced up, and for the second time in an hour Sam found himself nearly breathless looking at her. But, whatever Al said, Sam suspected that Ruthie Minkin had been his first love, and thought that the feelings he was experiencing for her would be a betrayal beyond reckoning. She gestured with her hand for him to enter. "Micah... what are you doing out there?" Sam stepped inside. "Hi. I, uh... I heard you talking. I didn't mean to eavesdrop." "Don't tell me," Aaron said dryly. "You thought that you just *had* to tell me how wrong I am." "Oh, Aaron... " Ruthie groaned. "No, I'm serious." "I didn't come in here to say that," Sam assured him, although a part of him did want to do just that. "I just happened to hear you talking, and I wanted to see who was down here." Aaron breathed deeply. "I'm sorry. It's just that every time I turn around, my grandfather or one of the old men is telling me to shut up." He shook his head. "They don't go into town. They don't hear what the people around here say about us." "What do they say?" "Oh, the usual stuff. Kike, sheeny, Christ-killer. They pushed me around a little at first; at least 'til I started pushing back." He smiled, faintly proud of himself. "And of course there's the ever-popular world conspiracy." Ruthie laughed. "If there really is a world conspiracy, I feel very left out." Aaron's mood picked up. "Well, I'll drop your name the next time I see the Elders of Zion." "The Elders of Zion?" Sam asked. "It's a stupid book," Ruthie explained. "Some paranoid Russian monk wrote about three hundred Rabbis getting together and planning to take over the world. I tried to get through it once, but it's too weird. Whoever the guy was that wrote it -- " "Sergey Nilus," Aaron provided. "Yeah. He obviously didn't spend much time around us. Otherwise he'd know that if you get three hundred old Jewish men together, they'd never be able to agree on anything. They'd probably argue 'til Moshiach came about what kind of _nosh_ to put out for the meeting." Aaron and Ruthie laughed, and Sam smiled; he decided that an early order of business here would be to find a Yiddish dictionary, so he would know what he was smiling at. "I guess we shouldn't joke around about the 'Elders,'" Aaron said as his laughing subsided. "Some idiot is likely to believe it." Ruthie shrugged. "You've got to laugh or scream, Aaron. I'd just as soon laugh." "Me too," Sam said. Ruthie tugged on one of Aaron's side-curls. "Are you feeling better, hon?" "Yeah," he said. He turned to Sam and shrugged self- consciously. "I really am sorry about spoiling your first study session, Micah. I just get mad sometimes. Mostly it's good to study Torah with my grandfather. He really knows his way around it." "Yeah, he sure seems to," Sam said. "He's a good guy, too. He's just a little old fashioned." Sam smiled. Whatever was wrong between Aaron and his grandfather was fixable, with time and patience from both of them. Ruthie kissed Aaron's forehead. "Well," she said, "I'd better get downstairs, before your grandmother decides I ran away." On her way out the door, she accidentally brushed against Sam, and every nerve ending in his body reached for the spot she had touched. _Oh, boy_, he thought. _This could be real trouble._ -- Barbara E. Walton | The Road goes ever ever on, | Down from the door where it began http://freenet.buffalo.edu/~ah329| Now far ahead the Road has gone | And I must follow if I can...