“What do you want from me?” I pleaded.
Hym Yuda had appeared again, this time in the bedroom, sitting on that chair from Ikea in the corner. It was totally out of whack: this old Jew from Eastern Europe in that molded plywood rocker. But maybe the whack was me and the chair vacant. In any case, it bounced slightly and he actually seemed to be enjoying it, as opposed to eyeing me sternly as he usually did.
“I want you should take the oytser,” he said, studying the chair as though it were expensive, “the family treasure, and do something with it.”
“So that story about you and the angel is true?” I asked. “It really happened? I thought it was made up.”
“It’s true whether it happened or not.”
Faster than you could build that thing at Cheops, I shot back: “So now you’re a philosopher!”
“Don’t be a putz.”
“Okay fine. So then what is it?”
“Vus?”
“What?”
“What what?
“What is the oytser?”
He bounced his eyebrows: “You with all your fancy higher education can’t figure that out?”
“I’ve been trying,” I said. “But I’m getting the feeling we’re not talking diamonds here.”
“Pah!”
“Or gold.”
“Schnook!”
“Don’t start with that again.”
“Then be a mensch and get off your tuchis and get busy.”
“And do what exactly?”
“You want me to tell you?”
“Yes! That’s it exactly.”
“Okay.”
“So tell me.”
“I can’t tell you. You have to find it and use it. That’s the whole point. That is why I made the deal with that angel. Hoping to have a descendant smart enough to figure it out and use it. Maybe not you.”
“Maybe not.”
“Maybe not.”
“Schnook! You’re the one who has conjured me up. You think I have time for this nonsense?”
“No, not you. You’re so busy posing like some rabbi inside an old photograph.”
“What rabbi?”
It went on like that for quite a while – in circles so to speak – and I was beginning to get very aggravated at my Hym Yuda sitting over there calling me names. Yes, but then it occurred to me – recurred I should say – that he was not really there in the first place. This was all some kind of vividly annoying daydream I was having. After all, people in old photos do not just pop out and start chatting with you. Still, as the shadows lengthened, he was still sitting there. So I floated another idea.
“So what then? You’re an angel. My guardian angel.”
“Pah! My entire life I worked for my family. Angels sit around and make deals.”
“Oh so a ghost then.”
Hym Yuda perked up at that. I meant it sarcastically but he suddenly straightened up in the chair and retilted his little hat.
“You may be right. That seems…somehow…”
“Terrific...only I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said. Not to insult him or anything but just to end the debate, if not the whole reverie.
“No? But rainbows you’re fine with I suppose.”
“What about them?”
“You believe in them, don’t you?”
“Yes because I can see them.”
But of course both of us instantly saw the problem there. After all, I could see Hym Yuda too, sitting there in my bedroom just as clear as any rainbow.
“Rainbows are real,” I added.
“Rainbows are in your head, bubela. Even I know that. Ever held one, ever moved one? Ever notice that each one is half of a perfect circle to everyone no matter where they are standing? Ghosts are like that.”
“Fine, swell. You’re a ghost or something. But I still don’t understand what it is you…”
And here Hym Yuda interrupted me; he was not a particularly patient man.
“Find the oytser and use it,” he said bluntly. “Use it to create the future.”
The future? Whose future, I wondered. His, mine, ours, someone’s, anyone’s. But even before I could pose the question, he had vanished. Very much like a rainbow in the dull, dry air.
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