36 Arguments for the Existence of God - [63]

Klapper might have been answering Roz, but his response was directed to the Valdener Rebbe, and it had impressed him.

“That’s some good head you’ve got on your shoulders, Rav Klapper! No wonder you’re an Extreme Distinguished Professor! That’s a first-class Gemara kop, a head for Talmudic study. Do you have scholars in your family perhaps, rabbinical scholars?”

“I’ve always assumed I must. It is more than possible to be of a plebeian family with no discernible learning and still have towering Talmudists and Kabbalists in one’s lineage, whose erudition one carries in one’s genetic memory.”

Leave it to the Klap, Roz thought, to mangle the math and science in the most self-aggrandizing way possible. Everyone is guaranteed to find famous people in his family tree, since the number of ancestors explodes the farther back you go. Every Jew is going to find some legendary rabbi, every Wasp is going to find some aristocrat. Throw in intermarriage and the Jew will find an aristocrat and the Wasp a Talmudic sage. And could even the Klap believe that erudition was transmitted in one’s genetic memory?

Suddenly the boy piped up from his father’s lap.

“The number of my sisters is special.”

“Of course it is,” said Roz in that sudsy voice some women get when they talk to children, though it was a surprise to Cass-and to Roz-that she was one of those women. “Your sisters are special.”

“Ask him what he means,” said the Rebbe. “Tell our guests what you mean, tateleh.”

“If you put my sisters in a group, then there’s no way to make equal groups of them.”

All three visitors stared at the boy. The Rebbe was stroking his beard and smiling.

“Go on,” he said to Cass and Klapper. “Ask him what he means.”

“If I have a group of six things, could I make equal groups out of it?” Cass decided to ask, seeing that Jonas Elijah Klapper was sitting there impassively, and Roz was supposed to keep all manifestations of herself to a minimum.

“Yes, two ways. You could make two groups with three things, or you could make three groups with two things.” He had a way of gesturing with his hands, very Hasidic.

“What about six groups with one thing?” Roz asked.

The child looked at her and laughed. He seemed to think she’d made an uproarious joke.

“You can always do that!”

“You’re right,” said Roz. She didn’t know much developmental psychology, but having the concept of a prime number seemed pretty advanced for a child this age. It was touching to see the Grand Rabbi’s face, irradiated with love. Mystic shmystic, this guy was a proud papa.

“Do you know what we call the kind of numbers that you can’t make any equal groups out of?” she asked him. “We call them prime numbers.”

“Prime numbers,” the boy repeated, carefully. And then he smiled at Roz. The look of bliss was baffling, moving. Why did he look as if she’d just given him the present he’d secretly wished for as he blew out the candles on his last birthday cake, if Hasidic children engaged in such practices?

“Yes, prime numbers. And they’re exactly as you said. You can’t divide them up into groups that have equal numbers, except of course groups with one thing in them.”

“Groups with one thing in them!” he repeated, smiling. “And as many groups as were in the first big group.”

“That’s right. You said it just right.” She smiled back at the boy.

“Do you know what I call prime numbers?” he asked her, the only one of the males in the room who didn’t seem to hold it against her that she was a woman who spoke. “I call them maloychim. Special maloychim.”

“Angels,” the Rebbe translated. “The heavenly hosts.”

“And I call you an angel!” Roz said.

The child stared at her as if she’d just announced that she thought he could fly. That’s probably what he did think that she’d announced. And then he laughed out loud in a high soprano. The kid’s amusement amused her so much that she couldn’t resist. Klapper bristled, but the Valdener Rebbe tolerated the tainted noise of a woman’s laughter with surprising sangfroid. Unlike his Hasidim, he was often exposed to the outside world, meeting with politicians, agency heads, social workers, medical specialists, and building contractors. The Rebbe had to know how to talk to a variety of people whose assistance his community required. He had developed a level of worldliness to save his Hasidim from having to deal with the world.

“So, tateleh, can you tell our visitors any more of your special maloychim?” he asked his son, lightly glancing the back of his hand over the child’s cheek.

“I’ll start with one. And then there’s two, and then three, and then five.”

“That’s good!” Roz said, enjoying both the look of pride on the Rebbe’s face and the look of exasperation on Klapper’s. She’d edged around the side of the room, still hugging the wall, just so that she could get an angle on Klapper’s face and still keep the child and his dad in her sights.

“After five, there’s seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three, forty-seven, fifty-three, fifty-nine, sixty-one, sixty-seven, seventy-one, seventy-three, seventy-nine…”