He was speaking discursively, my brother, with no plan, giving voice to his thoughts as they came into his head. He made reference to the complex rite of intense preparations for the entry of the high priest into the holy of holies of the holy temple in Jerusalem once a year on Yom Kippur day—and how the congregation was filled with such elation when he made it out, alive and in one piece, with a glowing countenance, unscathed by divine wrath. If the holy temple is where the Shekhina, the feminine aspect of God’s presence, dwells on earth, Rebbie-ji asked, where then is its holy of holies? He paused, then answered his own question, using the Sanskrit word. It is inside the Shekhina’s yoni, of course. It has been my burden in this life to serve as the high priest sent in to penetrate the sublimely dangerous territory of the Shekhina’s yoni, her holy of holies, every day and night for the sake of carrying out tikkun, healing the holy congregation of Israel, he began by saying—but he did not utter out loud the remainder of his thought. Instead, in the most expressive of gestures, his hand moved up, opening toward his ravaged face as if to say, Behold how I have fared, there will be no rejoicing. Then he pulled his hooded blanket down over his sacred countenance, masking its lesions and sores.

No one doubted that the fire that broke out that night in the House of Holy Healing was started by a memorial candle, though many commented later that it was a miracle that such an accident had never occurred before. It was not a subject I cared to discuss, but I knew for certain that it was far from an accident. When plague broke out in the villages of India, I had once told my brother when we were children, they cremated the dead in their hovels, burning everything to the ground along with the bodies inside. I did not know if this was true, I had only read it in a book about India, I had been fixated on India from a very early age, it was the place on my inner map filled with all the starving children I could have saved with the piece of potato kugel I was leaving uneaten on my plate. But Shmelke remembered this tale, he made reference to it over the years. Lying in his bed after his darshan that night, I could envision him flinging out his arms with clear intention—even in the womb I already bore the scars from his habit of deliberately thinking and dreaming with his hands—knocking over the candles and shattering their glass.