One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross

by Harry Kemelman

  Then abruptly she led them to the curb and said, “Stand right here, and if anyone tries to park, wave them on. Now, you wait right here and I’ll go get the car.” She looked mistrustfully at the two heavy bags and added, “It’s a small car, but we’ll manage. We can put them on the roof. I have a luggage carrier.”

  Remembering her old rattletrap of a car held together with baling wire and operated by prayer and imprecation, they were pleasantly surprised when a few minutes later she drove up a smart little Renault sedan that seemed almost new.

  She parked and got out, and the rabbi said, “Ah, Gittel, a new car.”

  “Not quite new.” Her tone was deprecatory, but she was obviously pleased. “It was only a couple of years old when I got it.” A shrug. “The present administration has grandiose ideas for our economy. It used to be that we weren’t permitted to buy things like cars and color television sets and new stoves and refrigerators until we could afford them. The present administration has a better idea. They encourage us to buy whatever we want in the hope that we’ll eventually be able to afford them. And to encourage us even more, they keep lowering the value of our money so you have to keep buying things so that your money shouldn’t become useless before you can spend it. It’s quite a system. Look”—she waved at the cars that were lined up along the curb—“not a jalopy among them. Now, let’s see: We’ll have to hoist those bags onto the roof.”

  But as the rabbi took the first bag off the luggage carrier, Miriam said, “No, David, I won’t let you.” And to Gittel she explained, “He has a bad back.”

  “So I’ll get someone to do it,” said Gittel. She looked around at a group of cabdrivers who were standing about waiting for fares, and was about to approach them when Skinner, their erstwhile seatmate on the plane, came along and greeted them.

  “I see you got through early. My man was supposed to meet me, but I guess he got held up.” He noticed the small and cluttered trunk and their two large bags. “Can I give you a hand?”

  “We were planning to load our bags on the roof,” said Miriam.

  “Here, let me help.” He picked up one of the bags with a heave and hoisted it onto the roof.

  “A regular Samson,” said Gittel admiringly. “I’ve got some rope—”

  “Good.” And hoisting the other bag on the roof, he took the rope from her and proceeded to thread it through the handles of the bags and then through the supports of the luggage carrier.

  “And where are you going? Tel Aviv?” Gittel asked.

  “No, I’m going to Jerusalem. Maybe I can catch a sherut, or take a cab.”

  “To Jerusalem? But that’s where we’re going. So come with us.”

  “I’ll be crowding you.”

  “Not at all. It’s a big car. Miriam can sit in front with me, and you two men can sit in back. Women’s lib.”

  The sun had already gone down, and dusk was soon followed by the darkness of night. Although they could see little beyond the roadway, Gittel persisted in pointing out places of interest. “You can’t see it now, but that’s a kibbutz on the right.” And, “If there were light, you could see the armored vehicles that were hit by the Arabs during the War of Independence.”

  Miriam made noises of interest and appreciation, and Skinner even turned to peer out of the window, which the rabbi thought was very polite of him, since he had no doubt been over that road dozens of times.

  As they neared the city Gittel asked, “Where do you go, Mr. Skinner?”

  “Please don’t bother. You just drive to wherever you’re going and I’ll take a cab from there. Besides, you’ll want me to help you with the bags.”

  “Oh, I can manage to slide them down, all right,” said the rabbi. “It’s not like lifting.”

  “Well, if you’re sure you can manage … I live in Abu Tor, Rabenu Tam Street.”

  “Near the American Yeshiva?”

  “That’s right. Next door, in fact.”

  “Oh, now I remember where I heard the name. You had some trouble with them,” Gittel continued.

  “I didn’t personally because I wasn’t here, but my manager, Ismael, reported some. They wanted to buy our place to expand their operation. It’s quieted down now.”

  “Nevertheless,” she insisted, “it was hooliganism. I would apologize to you, Mr. Skinner, for the behavior of these young men of the yeshiva if they were Israelis. But since most of them are American, I think maybe you should apologize, David.”

  Skinner laughed. “Since I’m an American myself, I’m just as much to blame. Ah, here we are.”

  Gittel brought the car to a halt, and almost immediately a light appeared above the door. As Skinner got out of the car, an elderly Arab woman came hobbling out.

  “Mr. James!” she exclaimed, and making a kind of curtsy, she seized his hand and put it to her lips.

  Embarrassed, he explained, “Martha has worked for the family for years.” And then as she reached for his bag, he added, “She still thinks of me as the youngster she took care of when she first came.”

  To cover his obvious embarrassment, Miriam exclaimed, “What a lovely old house!”

  “It’s an old Arab house,” he said. “Would you like to come in and look around? I’ve remodeled some, but I kept the original floor tiles in the hall and the decorated ceiling.” At his side, Martha, still trying to wrest the bag from his hand, continued in voluble Arabic, to which he nodded every now and then.

  To his new friends, he explained, “It never fails. Whenever I come back after being away for a while, I’m treated to a litany of disasters that occurred during my absence. There was some emergency up in our Haifa office, and my manager, Ismael, had to run up there. And then he called to say that the car had broken down and that’s why he wasn’t able to meet me at the airport. And the stove had to be repaired and it still isn’t working properly. And there’s trouble with the water so that she’s had to buy bottled water, and Lord knows what else, but do come in. I’m sure—”

  “Never mind,” said Gittel. “We must be getting along.”

  He did not persist. “All right, but you’ll come and visit, won’t you? Now that you know where I live.”

  As they drove off, Gittel said, “He seems a resolute man. These yeshiva hooligans better not start with him. It was in all the papers. They wanted to buy his place. One report claimed they offered a token, a shekel for the property. It must be worth half a million. But even if they offered a legitimate price—and those religious groups have plenty of money—does that mean he has to sell? And the one they tried to deal with was not the owner, only a caretaker or a manager, an Arab yet, who didn’t even have the authority. So they harassed him. They dumped refuse in front of the door. They even started small fires. That brought in the police, of course. And that brought in some of the crazier of the religious groups and that in turn provoked the crazies on the other side. Finally the mayor got involved, and I guess he managed to knock some sense into their heads. The director of the yeshiva was replaced, and things quieted down.”

  “But what kind of yeshiva is it that would tolerate that kind of thing?” asked Miriam.

  “Ask your husband,” said Gittel tartly. “That’s his department. All I know is that most of the students are Americans. They look like a bunch of bums with their boots and overalls like farmers in those faded blue jeans. Some wear leather jackets with fringes along the sleeve. They are supposed to be Baalei Tshuvah. They are now presumably concerned only with holy things, and they prove it by throwing stones at anyone who drives by in a car on the Sabbath, even a doctor going to see a patient.”

  “Is that the yeshiva where the Goodman boy is?” asked Miriam.

  “I’m sure it is,” her husband answered. “Goodman said it was the American Yeshiva in Abu Tor. I can’t believe that there is more than one.”

  “Oh, dear, it doesn’t sound very promising, does it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said the rabbi. “In any organization there are apt to be a few bad ap
ples, at least extremists who lose all sense of proportion in their devotion to an ideal. I find it hard to believe that the yeshiva itself would foster that kind of thing.”

  “But they changed the head of the yeshiva.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean the first one fostered hooliganism—only perhaps that he failed to control it.”

  Back at the house in Abu Tor, only minutes after Gittel and the Smalls had left, Ismael drove up. He was full of explanations and apologies. He kept dabbing his upper lip and forehead with a large silk handkerchief as he told of the car breaking down and of the difficulty he had had in finding a garage with a mechanic. Then, when he had finally located one, there was the problem of getting the car to the garage. “He kept telling me, Mr. James, tomorrow. He would come for it tomorrow.”

  He stood over Skinner, his heavyset body leaning forward at an angle, as he then told of accompanying the car to the garage, of the disorder in the shop—“Five minutes, five minutes, Mr. James, he spent looking for a screwdriver. And then he stops in the middle because he must eat. And all the time I am looking at my watch”—he extended his hand to show the watch on his wrist—“I keep telling him I am in a hurry and it is an emergency and he tells me—this, this ignorant, illiterate—I had to write out the bill for him …” A high school graduate with even some college courses to his credit, Ismael, who wore polished shoes and a silk shirt and a shiny black suit, had difficulty expressing the indignity he had had to suffer out of loyalty to his employer in dealing with such riffraff as the garage mechanic.

  “All right, all right,” said Skinner. “You got it fixed, though? No harm done. I got a ride from the airport with some people I met on the plane. Now, tell me what in hell is the matter with the water and what you have done about it.”

  10

  The rabbi and Miriam awoke late the next morning and found that Gittel had already gone. There were two keys on the kitchen table, and a note: “A key for each of you. Remember, it is a double throw lock and you have to turn the key twice … dairy dishes, blue pattern; meat dishes, red. Plain silver is dairy, the other meat. I shall probably be home around three.… If you should need to get in touch with me, this is the phone number … if no immediate answer, don’t lose patience. Enjoy!”

  While the rabbi recited his morning prayers, Miriam busied herself in the kitchen, and when he was through, there were orange juice, toast and eggs, and coffee spread out on the table awaiting him. From long experience, she was able to calculate to the minute how long he would be.

  “So much?” he murmured.

  “You need a good meal to start the day right, David. All the doctors say so.”

  “They could be wrong, you know.”

  “Look, eat what you can. Here’s the morning paper,” she said, knowing that with print before his eyes, he would go on eating absentmindedly until there was no more left on his plate.

  “Aren’t you eating? Don’t you need a good meal to start the day right?”

  “I ate before you got up. And before you start on your paper, let’s decide what we’ll do today,” she suggested.

  “Did you have something in mind?” he asked suspiciously.

  “It’s a fine day, so I thought we’d take a walk, maybe to the Old City.”

  They took the bus to the Jaffa Gate, and entering, they began to wander down the narrow, tourist-filled passageways, stopping to look at the merchandise displayed or to watch as tourists bargained with the shopkeepers standing or seated on small stools outside their shops.

  “It’s the same old tourist stuff,” said the rabbi. “Let’s go to the Western Wall and see what’s doing there. I understand they’ve made a number of changes since we were last there.”

  “Do you want to pray there?” she asked.

  “No, I already recited the shachris. I just want to see it.”

  “All right. And then we can circle by way of the Armenian Quarter and get home for lunch.”

  They made their way slowly, resisting the blandishments of the shopkeepers who, when Miriam stopped momentarily to look at something on display, offered it at a vastly reduced price because it would be the “first sale of the day” and they were anxious to make a beginning.

  “You’ve got to be careful not to show an interest,” the rabbi warned, “or you immediately become involved.”

  “Oh, it’s sort of a game with them,” said Miriam. “They don’t really expect you to buy just because you stop to look.”

  “I wonder. They’re all selling the same merchandise, so I imagine they interpret any sign of interest as a chance to make a sale. Besides, our own law forbids it on the grounds that it raises the merchant’s hopes only to dash them when you turn away.”

  “But that’s if you do it with no intention of buying, isn’t it, David? And I might buy something, if only for the fun of haggling. I understand you’re supposed to, that they feel disappointed if you don’t. Oh, there’s something in the window there.”

  “What?”

  “That cross. Isn’t that a Jerusalem cross? Isn’t that what Amy Lanigan wanted me to get her? I’m going in to ask about it.”

  He peered in through the window at a display of both crosses and Stars of David.

  “The one in the corner,” she said.

  “Yes, that’s a Jerusalem cross. I’ll wait out here,” he added after looking in and noting that the shop was tiny and, with the two or three other customers and the clerk, already crowded.

  In front of the shop directly opposite, two bearded young men in jeans and wearing knitted kipahs were haggling with the shopkeeper over a leather bag. He watched and listened with interest—they were only a few feet away—as the shopkeeper stroked the bag lovingly to show the fineness of the leather and insisted that if he were to accept the price offered, he would be losing money; that he was only asking for the cost, not including his overhead; that he would show them the bills of lading if they doubted him; that it was actually half the normal price, and he held out the little price tag for their inspection; that he was making this sacrifice only because it was the first sale of the day.

  Miriam appeared at the door of the jewelry shop, the cross on her open palm, and called to him, “David, what do you think? He wants eight dollars for it.”

  “I’m hardly an expert. Is it sterling?”

  “It’s got a stamp.”

  “Well, if you’re overpaying, it can’t be by much. Do you have any money with you? Here’s ten dollars.”

  A few minutes later she rejoined the rabbi on the street. “He guarantees it’s sterling,” she said, “and it has both a pin and a ring so she can wear it on a chain if she wants to.”

  “And did you haggle with him?” he asked.

  “I started to, but he explained that he couldn’t on merchandise with price tags. Some ordinance or other. That if he lowered the price he could be fined. Do you think he was telling the truth, David? I noticed that no one else in the store haggled.”

  “I don’t know. You might ask Gittel tonight. It wouldn’t surprise me, though. The government has been trying to put something like that in effect for a long time.”

  At the Western Wall there were only a few people praying, since it was midmorning and hence late for the morning prayers and much too early for the evening prayers. Most of those present were obviously tourists, and most of these were Gentile.

  “Are you going to pray, David?” asked Miriam.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Doesn’t it do anything for you—the Wall, I mean?”

  “Not really. I’m afraid I don’t have much feeling for shrines. It’s probably a flaw in my character.”

  “Well, I’m going to.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll wait for you here.”

  11

  Gittel’s apartment was large by Israeli standards, since it had three bedrooms and even a small dining room in addition to the usual salon and kitchen. For the first two or three days of their occupancy, Gittel did the cooking and
the shopping it entailed, but since she also had a job, Miriam insisted on taking over. This arrangement proved to be eminently satisfactory all around, since it not only gave Miriam something to do but also relieved Gittel of the burden of keeping house. She even admitted that the meals were better, since living alone she had gotten used to eating only what she could prepare quickly and easily.

  In the morning Miriam would sally forth after doing the breakfast dishes, for her day’s marketing. Usually she would take a bus to the supermarket, but if the weather was fine, she would walk. Occasionally she would go to the shuk, the open-air market, where she would shop for fruit and vegetables and sometimes even fish and meat, not merely because the prices were much cheaper but also because she felt that everything was fresher. She also enjoyed walking from stall to stall, comparing the merchandise offered for sale, picking, selecting, haggling with the shopkeepers. Then, laden with bundles, she would spend much of what she had saved by taking a cab home. She would prepare lunch for the rabbi and herself—Gittel usually ate lunch at a commissary connected with her office. Then she would get everything ready for the evening meal, after which she would he down for a siesta, common in Israel, as it is in most Mediterranean countries. Later in the afternoon she would cook dinner, sometimes dashing out to the nearby macolet to buy something she had forgotten.

  Three mornings a week, she attended the beginners’ class at the ulpan. It did not improve her scanty Hebrew much but it gave her a feel for the language, and she was better able to handle the few phrases she needed in her shopping and in her dealings with the neighbors and the ozzeret who came once a week to do the heavy cleaning. It also enabled her to make friends with some of the other members of the class, Americans for the most part, with whom she would occasionally spend an hour over coffee.

  It was a pleasant life, which occupied her time and yet did not burden her. She felt free to have a sandwich in a restaurant with a classmate from the ulpan instead of going home for lunch, certain that the rabbi could fend for himself with a bit of smoked fish and bread and butter, or even a bowl of cereal, for they ate American-style, that is, they had their heavy meal in the evening and only a bite at midday.