There was no talk of a pardon, he was told. It was enough, he was told, that the governor had commuted his sentence to life in prison. That man would never again, he was told, hold elective office in the state; and was, in fact, he was told, in danger. He had received threats. He …
Frank dozed somewhat, as his lawyer went on. he heard the references to “years to come” and “eventually”; and he drifted off, and, in his mind, this haze mingled with his sleep in his cell; and the lawyer seemed, in his dream, to be using a Latin term, and that term was “salt.”
“Assault?” he wondered. “Soult? Saut?” The root was familiar, but he could not apply it to the present case of his incarceration.
“And why should he speak in foreign tongues?” he thought. “What is the purpose of it but to obscure?”
But perhaps it was Hebrew, he thought, in his dream. The Leshon HaKodesh. The Holy tongue. “Salt.” He reduced it to Shin Lamed Tof. “What can this root mean?” He dreamed, in his dream, he was in a stone building in some Eastern port city. He was dressed in a toga and carried a roll of papyrus, or what he took papyrus to be, as he walked into the building which he then knew was a library. But there were women there, which struck him as odd, as he knew that women, in the city in which he found himself, in ancient Greece, in Rome, perhaps, would not have been allowed into the building.
“Not women,” he thought. “That was not the operative prohibition. It was Jews. Jews would not have been allowed. I would not have been allowed. …”
During the day, he thought back on the dream. He progressed. From “What was I seeking?” to “some word,” to “some legal term,” to “sue”; and, thus, to the memory of his encounter with the lawyer the afternoon before, and, thus, to its reiteration in that evening’s dream, and, unbidden, later, to the word “salt.”
But was it Hebrew? he thought.
When his work in the dispensary was finished, he returned to his cell for prayers. And, after prayers he took down the lexicon, and a pad and pencil.
“Shin. Lamed. Tof,” he wrote out. “Or, Shin. Lamed. Tet; or, Samech Lamed Tet or Tof” he wrote. “Or …” Here he looked at the list and perceived these would be enough for his beginning.
Under the first he found nothing. Under the second, “Shalat. Shin. Lamed. Tof: to domineer. From the Aramaic: to overcome, to prevail.”
Could that be it? But, no—as it solidified, and became not an unexplained experience but a landmark, and that landmark only the one meaning, and that meaning unconnected to his dream, he discarded it. It was devoid of mystery. That mystery was the word “salt,” which he had dreamed, and which was being brought back to him to remind him, to admonish him. But of what?
And, suddenly, he was back in his kitchen. On that Saturday morning. Over his breakfast. Sitting alone. Early. Ruthie out shopping, as she did Saturdays, his wife asleep upstairs, and he was in his kitchen, cooking porridge. He was reading the newspaper. His hand went out for the salt, and the glass jar knocked over, the cork fell out, and the salt sprinkled over the counter.
“That,” he thought, “was my first premonition. If I had one. As I look back to it: that was it.” And then he thought, “There is no augury in Israel, No sorcery in Judah,” and, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” and, “… no signs or portents.”
But surely the Torah contradicted itself on this point, as it did on most every point, giving alternate or conflicting advice or commandment.
Were there not, he thought, Medad and Eldad, whom Moses himself allowed to prophesy? And was there not …
“No,” he thought. “This is new to me, and I should not be allowed to confute even myself in this ancient argument. …”
(“Nadah and Abihu,” a descant ran in his mind.)
“… and Baalam,” he thought. “Whose prophecies were directed by the Lord. And … and the Prophets themselves,” he thought. “Ezekiel, Elijah himself; and, further …
“I must ask the Rabbi” and “The man knows nothing” warred in his head. From the short conflict emerged: “What can you expect of a prison system so poor, so savage; and from a man who himself …” The conflict reemerged with: “No, I will not think ill of the Rabbi, who, whatever his incompetencies, has worked to help me.
“The salt was spirit,” he thought. The feeling grew as it came back to him. “… and I thought, ‘scrape it up and throw it over your shoulder.’ and then I thought, ‘that’s superstition, and unfitting to a man who can understand the workings of cause and effect.’ And then I thought …”
He remembered how he prided himself on his logical process: “I am a careful man, and am I to fly in the face of ancient custom (which would not exist without a reason) without first examining it? For my desire to perform magic with the salt is strong.”
And he remembered hearing his wife stirring upstairs, at that early, unaccustomed time, and hoping she would not come down to spoil his cherished Saturday morning privacy.
“Why might it exist?” he thought. “That superstition? And could it, in any way, affect the progress of …” Here he remembered the boy riding past on the bicycle, and here, too, that the day was the Confederate Memorial Day; and that he might have difficulty with the crowds on his way home from work.
He had swept the salt with the fat side of his hand, toward the counter edge. It formed small, diagonal ridges in the moist day, adhering to the wood; but he swept it along, over the edge, and into his other palm, as he debated.
He wondered how he would act next—puzzled that he could divide himself in two: the actor and the observer at once; and the actor again into two: he who would throw and he would not throw the offering; and then it came to him, and he raised his left hand, and held it over the porridge pot, and threw the salt into it.
“I have not wasted it,” he thought. “It has meaning.”
But what was that word?
He glanced down at the pad and saw, written there, Shalat. He tried to remember its meaning, and found it was gone.
“No, it must be there,” he thought. “For it was there a moment ago. Shin. Lamed. Tof. Shalat: to …” “Yes?” an opposing voice asked. “Yes,” he thought. “To overcome. From the Aramaic.”