One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross

by Harry Kemelman

  “Of Harvard? The physicist? I know of him, of course, but I’ve never met him.”

  “Fine. Then the letter will come from Professor Levy. So when you get a letter from Levy—Harvard Faculty Club stationery, probably—you just take it down to the Old City and drop it off with my cousin Mahmoud.”

  “That’s all? There’ll be no reply? No message he’ll want me to convey to you?”

  “Nothing.” He smiled. “Except that if you see something in his shop that interests you, perhaps some beads or a pin for your old girlfriend, I’m sure he’ll give you a good price on it. Oh, and write me if you have a chance. Your first time in Greece, right? And you’ll be there for a couple of weeks? It will be interesting to hear how the country strikes you.”

  6

  In a studio apartment in a high-rise condominium that was already beginning to show signs of wear even though it had been erected only half a dozen years previously, two men sat playing chess. Except for a couple of cots, two easy chairs, two straight-backed chairs, and a low coffee table, the apartment was bare. In the Pullman kitchenette there was a microwave oven, a coffee percolator, and a few glass dishes.

  Avram, a man of sixty, sat in one of the easy chairs, the coffee table jammed up against his knees as he studied the chessboard. Gavriel, a good twenty-five years younger, sat opposite him on a straight-backed chair. He reached forward, then drew his hand back, and then nodding, reached forward and made his move. “Check,” he announced. “And if you interpose with the knight, I move my queen up and—”

  “All right. You’ve got a win. That’s, let’s see, three out of seven today. Your game is improving. A coffee, maybe?”

  The phone rang. Gavriel scooped it up from where it was resting on the floor. “Yes?”

  He listened for a moment, said “Right,” and hung up. “Yossi,” he announced to the older man. “El Dhamouri picked up Professor Grenish at the Northhaven Faculty Club. In his limousine, no less. And took him to the Château on Route Ninety-three for dinner. Very swank, very expensive, the Château.”

  “How did Yossi know they went to the Château? Surely he didn’t follow them.”

  “Oh, he didn’t have to. Grenish was not making any secret of it.”

  “All right, we’ll pass it on.”

  “I suppose we have to, but did it ever occur to you, Avram, that we pass on an awful lot of junk that has no significance whatsoever?”

  “Sure, but they feed it into a computer and you’d be surprised at what they come up with occasionally. In this case, though, we have two, each on one of our lists, and they’re meeting. That’s an intersection, so it’s automatically interesting.”

  “Why? They’re friends. And we’ve reported meetings between them several times. One only a couple of weeks ago at the Harvard Faculty Club.”

  “Which makes it a continuing situation, not just a chance encounter, and that makes it all the more interesting for us. Have you ever seen this Professor Grenish?”

  “Sure. I attended a couple of those public lectures he gave at the Boston Library.”

  “And how did he strike you?”

  “He didn’t strike me at all. I thought he was pretty dull and colorless. I didn’t fall asleep, but if I had, I wouldn’t have missed anything.”

  “That’s right. That’s exactly right. A dull, colorless, mediocre sort of man. The only reason he’s on our list is his membership on the Arab Friendship League. I think his name is on the stationery as a member of their Board of Trustees.”

  “So what? There are quite a few of these Jewish radical intellectuals who are sympathetic to the Arabs because the new Left is pro-Arab and they don’t want to be shunted off as has-beens.”

  “Sure, and the Mossad likes to keep a general watch on them. Nothing intensive, but an occasional glance in their direction. But here we have a dull, colorless sort of fellow who is being cultivated by a rich, flamboyant personage like El Dhamouri. Why? What could El Dhamouri see in the likes of Grenish? Now, we are naturally interested in El Dhamouri because he is rich and has status and so he’s bound to be contacted by various Arab groups, if only for financial help.”

  “Sure, but they always meet in a public place. There’s no report of secret meetings.”

  “That’s right. It’s never at his home, where only someone who happened to see him enter or leave would know about it. It’s always in a public place, like the Faculty Club or a restaurant, and now the Château. Why? Because he wants to be seen with him? What would he gain by it?”

  “But Grenish would gain,” said Gavriel, “so maybe he’s the one who sets it up.”

  “You mean Grenish would call him and say, ‘Invite me for lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club, or for dinner at the Château’? That’s not very likely. Damn close to impossible, I’d say, unless Grenish has something on him. No. I think that El Dhamouri is aware of how Grenish feels about being seen with him. He’s a name-dropper, is our friend Grenish—”

  “Yes, even in those lectures.”

  “Right, so El Dhamouri not only takes him to places where a lot of people will see them together, but the right kind of people, like faculty people at Harvard. And he picks him up in his limousine at the Northhaven Faculty Club, where Grenish’s colleagues will see them, and lets him know in advance that they’re going to the Château, so that Grenish can mention it while waiting. I think that El Dhamouri is not merely cultivating him, he’s buttering him up. And that could be very interesting.”

  In the Watertown section of Boston, in the back room of a mom-and-pop variety store, the elderly proprietor was having his lunch while his wife waited on trade. As he stared blankly at the curtain that separated the room from the store—the curtain billowed as the outer door opened and closed—he chewed mechanically at a bit of meat, his whole face contracting, collapsing each time he bit.

  His wife parted the curtain enough to poke her head in. “Ali,” she said.

  “Have him come in.”

  A stout young man with a round red face sidled into the room. He doffed the linen cap he was wearing and held it against his chest with both hands as he looked uncertainly at the old man who stared back at him. After a moment, the old man nodded toward one of the plastic soda bottle carriers that were the sole furniture of the room, serving as both chairs and a table for the old man’s lunch. Ali nodded gratefully and sat down. Leaning forward eagerly, he said, “El Dhamouri was at the Château last night. He was with another man. Not one of us.”

  “Did you hear what they were talking about?”

  “I am in the kitchen,” he said deprecatingly. “But Giuseppe waited on them.”

  “And did the Italian hear anything?”

  “Only that the other one was going on a trip to the Mideast and would be in Jerusalem.”

  “And his name?”

  “Giuseppe said he called him ‘My dear Grenish.’”

  “Anything said about when he was leaving?”

  “Giuseppe got the impression that it was the next day—that is, today.”

  “That’s it? Anything else?”

  Ali’s small mouth spread into a wide smile and his fat cheeks all but concealed his eyes. “Only that in Jerusalem, he will be staying at the Excelsior.”

  “At the Excelsior! Well, well, well. Very considerate of him. Very good, Ali. I am pleased. You will let the Italian know. Do something for him if you can. A present, perhaps. Maybe a little hashish, or a girl.”

  7

  Between the Jewish rabbi of Barnard’s crossing and its Catholic chief of police, Hugh Lanigan, there was a friendship that went back to the first year the rabbi had arrived in town. At first the relationship had been purely official, and over the years there had developed a number of situations that called for the police chief to see the rabbi on official business. But there were also any number of occasions when the police chief would ring the bell of the Small residence and say, “I was in the neighborhood,” and either the rabbi or Miriam, whoever opened the door, immed
iately ushered him into the living room and set about brewing tea or coffee. And similarly, when the rabbi happened to be downtown, walking along Main Street on a summer’s afternoon, he was apt to be hailed by Hugh Lanigan taking his ease on the front porch of his house, and when the rabbi opened the gate, Lanigan would call out to his wife, “David Small, Amy. Rustle up some drinks, will you?”

  With a ruddy, square face surmounted by prematurely white hair cut in a whiffle so that at the top, pink scalp was visible, Hugh Lanigan was not much older than Rabbi Small. Although his formal education beyond high school had consisted of only a few college extension courses, he was of an intellectual and even philosophical turn of mind, and he enjoyed talking to the rabbi about their respective religions. That the rabbi’s insight had occasionally been of professional interest and help to the police chief served to cement their friendship all the more strongly.

  So it was not to be wondered at that the Lanigans were guests at the home of the Smalls at dinner one evening shortly before their departure for Israel. The talk had been general, but now, over coffee, they talked about the coming trip.

  “It would be nice if we could make the trip sometime, Hugh,” said Amy, “and see all those ancient places. You can actually go to the place of the Last Supper—”

  “The Church of the Dormition,” remarked Miriam. “It’s in the Old City near the Wall.”

  “How about it, Hugh?” Amy persisted. She was a fine-looking woman, tall and trim with dark brown hair just beginning to silver. She had little wrinkles around the eyes, which were dark and protruded so that she looked somewhat surprised at all times.

  “You could have gone on that trip that Father Callahan led a couple of years ago,” said her husband.

  “Oh, it was a bunch of old women, male and female. I want to go with you.” To her hosts, she confided, “Hugh never takes his full vacation.”

  “I’ve never really had a chance to,” he explained defensively. “Something always comes up that I feel I should stay on top of. Besides, I’d just as soon let some of my vacation time accumulate for when I retire so that I can take my whole last year off.”

  “But that’s not for quite a while yet,” said his wife.

  “But I’ve got to plan for it. Then maybe we can do some traveling.”

  “Grace Bryant went on that trip,” said his wife, “and she came back with all kinds of things she bought.”

  “Yeah,” said Lanigan, “a bunch of junk. Jim Bryant said that whenever the bus stopped, she was the first one off the bus, buying little knickknacks they make for the tourists. She had bottles of colored sand, mother-of-pearl stuff, and little carvings in olive wood of camels and crucifixes. I’ll bet most of it was made in Hong Kong or Taiwan.”

  “No,” said the rabbi. “They have factories there, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, where they make it.”

  “All right, so they make it there. It still is a bunch of junk,” said Lanigan good-naturedly.

  “That cross she had, that was a nice thing. There were four little crosses, one at each corner—”

  “Oh, yes,” said the rabbi. “A Jerusalem cross. I believe the four small crosses are supposed to represent the four knightly orders that governed Jerusalem during the Crusader period. I suppose Jerusalem is where you’re most likely to get them.”

  “Could you get me one, David, while you are over there?” asked Amy Lanigan.

  “It might not be quite proper for a rabbi to buy a cross,” said her husband reprovingly.

  “Oh, he wouldn’t have to buy it. He could get someone to buy it for him,” said Amy.

  “I’ll get it for you, Amy,” said Miriam. “You just tell me what you want. Is it a pendant, or a pin, or—”

  “Oh, would you, Miriam? Grace Bryant got a large silver one, but if you could get me a small one, on a chain—”

  “You shall have it.”

  The rabbi reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket for a pencil and his notebook and jotted down a memorandum, “Amy Lanigan—Jerusalem cross.”

  “Look, David,” said Lanigan, “don’t make a big thing out of it. Just if you happen to think of it. I’m sure Amy wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble.”

  “Of course not—”

  “It’s all right,” said Miriam. “David makes notes because he can’t remember. But then he forgets to look at the notes. But I’ll remember, Amy, and since I’ll be getting it—”

  “I suppose you’ve had a lot of requests from your congregation,” said Lanigan.

  The rabbi smiled as he flipped the pages of his notebook. “Pills for her sister—Mrs. Gross; psychology book—Oscar Lamed; greetings—Mandelman family; notify Ben Levy re his brother Aaron—gall bladder operation successful; talk to and size up Ish-Tov, formerly Jordan Goodman—”

  “Jordan Goodman? Louis Goodman’s boy. I remember him,” said Lanigan. “Is he over there? He changed his name?”

  “He didn’t so much change it as translate it. Ish means man and tov means good, so Ish-Tov is a translation of Goodman. He’s become religious. What we call a Baal Tshuvah, in a yeshiva there.”

  “You mean like born again?”

  “Sort of. You know him? Officially, I mean?”

  “Oh, it was years ago. There’s a professor at Northhaven lives here in town. We’ve got quite a few of them—professors, I mean—living here in town: Harvard, B.U., Northeastern, that’s because they’re about half an hour south of here. And Northhaven, which is about the same distance north. Well, this one had a picture window in his house broken. He called us about it. Said he was sure it was the Goodman boy. Had he seen him do it? No. Had anyone seen him? No, but the boy had threatened him. Seems he’d cut him off from his scholarship. The professor was on the Scholarship Committee, I gather. Naturally, we said we’d look into it. It wasn’t what you’d call a high-priority item, what with there being no proof. But I sent someone down to see Louis a few days later and he reported back that the boy had left town. So maybe he did do it. And that was the end of it. I certainly wasn’t going to put out an all-points bulletin over a broken window.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah. Oh, then sometime later Louis came to see me about the boy. He had a snapshot of the boy in a long white gown and he was now a member of some crazy group in Arizona. Louis thought they might be a cult like the Moonies or the Hari Krishna and that maybe they brainwashed him and he might be a kind of prisoner. Well, of course, if he was being held against his will, I could notify the Arizona authorities. I did make some inquiries. According to the report I got they were supposed to be harmless. Some pot, maybe they even grew it. And, no doubt, some easygoing sex, but nothing the Arizona people were interested in doing anything about. So now he’s turned back to his own religion, has he? Well, that’s good. Louis and Rose must be happy.”

  “I’m not sure that they are. Things are not the same with us as with you. Your religion is grounded in faith, and return—some sects use the term ‘to be born again’ meaning to recover one’s faith, to believe once again. But our religion is a matter of obeying specific commandments. One who falls away from his religion doesn’t stop obeying all the commandments—thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness—merely some of them. He may stop observing the Sabbath or obeying the dietary laws—or he may continue to obey those because they’re apt to be a matter of dietary habit.…” The rabbi smiled. “If I converted to Christianity tomorrow, I still wouldn’t be able to eat a lobster.”

  “I get it,” said Lanigan. “You mean when they fall away and become atheistic they continue to obey the major commandments but don’t bother with the minor ones.”

  “Well, in theory we don’t distinguish between major commandments and minor ones. A commandment is a commandment. Perhaps you might say the liturgical rather than the moral and ethical ones. But that’s pretty much it.”

  “So when they become a what did you call it, a ballchew?”

  “Baal Tshu
vah,” the rabbi said with a smile.

  “Then he starts observing all the commandments? What sort of thing does he do?”

  “Well, he might wear a kipah, a skullcap, all the time, and he’s apt to stop shaving. ‘Thou shalt not trim the corners of your beard.’ And he’d be meticulous about reciting his prayers three times a day. He’d make sure to wash his hands and recite the blessings that are called for before eating. Most of all, I suppose he’d spend a good deal of time in study.”

  “Not in prayer?” asked Amy.

  “No, we just recite the prayers that are enjoined on us. There is no merit in repeating them. In fact, it might be considered to be taking the name of the Lord in vain.”

  “How about girls, women: Do they have to keep away from them?” asked Amy Lanigan.

  “Pretty much, in the sense of socializing. But they’re expected to marry and have lots of children.”

  “But if they don’t socialize with girls,” asked Amy, “how do they get to meet their wives?”

  Miriam laughed. “There’s always the matchmaker, the shadchen.”

  “And I suppose keeping them apart from women makes the matchmaker’s job all the easier,” suggested Lanigan. “But tell me, how do they make a living? Does this school train them for any profession? Do they become rabbis?”

  “Some of them do, I suppose,” said the rabbi. “It’s a different kind of job there than it is here, though. It might involve being a clerk in one of the rabbinical courts, or a mashgiach, a sort of supervisor of the dietary laws in a hotel or restaurant, or a teacher. Some leave to go into some purely secular activity. Some just stay on.”

  “So what are you looking for when you go to see young Goodman?”

  The rabbi shook his head. “His mother would like to know if he appears well fed and healthy. His father—I don’t know. Perhaps whether there is any chance of his coming back. At least that’s what I’d want to know if it were my Jonathon.”

  “You wouldn’t want him to become one of those Baal—”

  Rabbi Small shook his head vigorously.