The Magnificent Kornblatt

by Todd Schindler

read part  1

2.

Daniel often wondered what had happened to Kornblatt out there, for that is how he imagined it: Out there, wherever that was. He had heard things from Hannah, but she had no better idea where he'd been than anyone else. There was something about the man's silence that fascinated him, and there had been several instances, brief moments of direct eye contact, when Daniel felt as if Kornblatt looked right through him, that he saw everything, that his gaze burned through every edifice Daniel had built to protect himself. Somehow, this didn't frighten him; in a way Daniel was not able to fully comprehend, it pleased him, and he felt drawn to the man. Kornblatt was clearly his superior in intelligence, there was no doubting that. But it was more the impression of Kornblatt's power that attracted him. Perhaps this was the very essence of out there, Daniel mused, his journey's residue, some kind of cosmic dust that had attached itself him. It was mythic. It was a puzzle. He felt silly for thinking such things, a grown man, but he was strangely compelled. His life had become so well-ordered and confined that Kornblatt was like a window thrown open, a glimpse onto something that was foreign, alien, exciting. A new world. He wanted to know more but more what, he could not say. And the more distraught his wife became, the more his obsession with the man grew.

Daniel began bringing Kornblatt his dinners, then returning to pick up the dishes later in the evening. On the third or fourth night, Kornblatt unexpectedly invited him in.

"Ah, do enter, my good man, and please have a seat in my recently-requisitioned inflatable chair, yes," Kornblatt commanded, indicating a red plastic lump against the wall. "The neighbors saw fit to leave it to the whims of the sanitation authorities, yes, so I rescued it. Inexplicable, really. Such a striking red. It's a Fedco original, you realize, only 500 million ever produced. Please, inspect it—I can see that you're a man who appreciates the finer things. Ha! I should say, I think this little room is shaping up rather nicely, wouldn't you agree?"

"Indeed," Daniel whispered, stunned at Kornblatt's newfound loquacity.

"Yes, what with the chair and my new collection of wooden spoons, I do think I've created something of a domestic paradise. Granted, the two layers of egg-shell packing are a tad less luxurious than what I'm accustomed to in the way of bedding, sir, but I'll let you know, they've done wonders for my thoracic lumber, which, among other more minor physical botherations, has been plaguing me something frightful."

"What's the thoracic—?"

"Lumbar, yes, my back, sir. A trifle really, but quite painful at times." Kornblatt sat on his mat, then stretched his torso and readjusted his thick glasses with a bony index finger.

Daniel quickly scanned the room, which was no bigger than a cattle car: clothes (a single suitcase worth) were folded and piled neatly in one corner; along the neighboring wall, the makeshift bed on which Kornblatt was seated, the shiny plastic chair just opposite. Leaning against the far wall was what looked like an old piece of plywood, about six feet-by-three feet.

"Please, sir, be seated," Kornblatt said again, motioning to the chair. "I have brought the poor, doomed cathedra back from the edge of the abyss for your comfort, yes, and have reanimated it with my own breath, just as God did Adam, ha, yes, and Rabbi Loew the Golem, although, of course, this squishy, truncated Lazarus of a sofa-balloon neither revolts against me nor protects besieged Jews. Yes, well not yet at least."

With difficulty, Daniel settled into the half-inflated chair, sinking to a position that was more lying than sitting. He looked at Kornblatt and smiled uncomfortably. Kornblatt smiled back.

"Do you know a bit about icons, good sir?" Kornblatt asked suddenly. "The mediatorial ground between flesh and spirit? The doorway to divine beauty? According to Saint Theodore, the fact that we, ahem, we puny, ridiculous creatures are created in the image and likeness of God, that Supreme Fascist, ha, renders the making of icons itself a divine act, what do you think? In the jungles of Salvador, there exist adherents so enthusiastic that they will saunter into church—I myself will vouch for the veracity of this fact—and quite literally bite their icons, sir, tear at the soft wood with their teeth, like beasts, masticating the hands of Mary, the feet of Jesus, the thighs of Saint Anne, praying for drops of their consecrated blood. Do not doubt the powers of faith, sir.…"

And so it went. Daniel would come for the dishes and Kornblatt would regularly greet him with esoteric soliloquies on religion, philosophy, history, mathematics, linguistics, never stopping for dialogue, but chattering on breathlessly, sometimes for hours. Several nights, as a result, a resentful Hannah—who by this time had given up trying to communicate with her brother—was forced to trudge out to the guest house at a late hour, give a sharp knock, and drag her husband off to bed.

"Your wife is sitting inside expecting you and all night long, you're out here babbling about God-knows-what with that madman," she chided him.

"Come on, Hannah, your brother is an interesting fellow," her husband replied. "He's not crazy, you know, he's just a little bit different."

"Different? Is that what you call it? For Christ's sake, Daniel, he's worse all the time. He's been here a month, he talks to nobody, and when he does talk, it's to himself. He spends all day in that little box of a room, he never bathes, never changes his clothes. He does nothing for himself, you know that. He's just another mouth to feed."

"I don't think you really—"

"I think he needs to see somebody. He needs a doctor, that's what I think. He's sick. Are you going to deny that?"

"Okay. He talks to me."

"About what, Daniel? What does he talk about? Meaningless drivel. I haven't had a conversation that lasts more than two ticks with him before he clams up or just stops making sense. He's a sick man. It worries me." She frowned.

"I think he's harmless. He has an incredible imagination, you know."

"That means nothing to me," Hannah said dismissively. "Go to any mental hospital—I'm sure they all have incredible imaginations. It's just that that's all they have. He needs a doctor, Daniel, not a friend."

That night, as he lay in bed next to his sleeping wife, Daniel recalled the evening's conversation with his brother-in-law. Kornblatt had told him stories of the Mongol leader Tamerlane, a great-grand nephew of Ghengis Khan, who had conquered central Asia and brought destruction right up to the shores of the Mediterranean. He slaughtered all his enemies, showing no mercy even to the women and children. He built mosques out of their skulls. The capital he constructed for his empire, Samarkand in Bukhara, Kornblatt said, was the most amazingly refined architectural city in the world. "And how, good sir, kind sir," Kornblatt had asked him, "how can we reconcile this? A conundrum that would rattle even the greatest sages, no? How can such a godly mind, such an aesthetic mind, also be so bestial, so brutal, have such merciless jaws? The mind is a pair of scissors, yes, and one blade is a blade of creation, the other a blade of destruction. These two shanks define the limits of every man's activity, wouldn't you agree? Consider this, if you will… At the entrance to the mausoleum which holds the mortal remains of this beautiful, grotesque animal, sir, there is an inscription of which he is the author. It reads: Happy is he who renounced the world before the world renounced him." And at that moment, Daniel drifted off to sleep.

part  1

part  3

Todd Schindler, a former child star in Mexico, is a filmmaker and writer. He currently lives in New York City.