Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet

by Harry Kemelman

  “And I never saw him again either,” the rabbi said. “I went there a couple of days later to pay for the medicine, and he was gone. I seem to recall that I spoke to his father, and he was rather stiff and formal with me. I got the feeling that perhaps he resented having been put to the trouble since I didn’t normally trade there.”

  “Well, if it’s Aptaker’s son, you can thank him properly now that he’s back.”

  “I gather he’s not. Just visiting, he said. Maybe he’ll be at the evening service and I’ll get a chance to talk to him then. I would have this morning—I sensed that he wanted to talk to me, but with his usual officiousness Kaplan came over and dragged me off.”

  “You don’t like him much, do you, David?”

  “Who, Kaplan? Oh, I like him well enough.” His face twisted into a sour smile. “Though I liked him better before he became president of the congregation.” He laughed shortly. “Since his election, we appear to be in competition. The president is supposed to be the executive director of the congregation while the rabbi guides its religious life. Usually we’re on opposite sides of the fence. They want to shorten the service or update it by substituting modern poetry for some of the prayers, or they want to get the temple to take sides on national politics.”

  “But you’ve always been able to set them right,” she interposed.

  “True. But then we were in opposition. I represented the religious side, while they represented the secular. But with Kaplan—”

  “He’s trying to be both the president and the rabbi of the congregation. Is that it?”

  He nodded grimly. “Just about. He holds weekly At Homes for religious discussions and lectures. Every few weeks he leads a group up-country to some camp and holds a retreat of prayer and meditation and religious discussion.”

  “And you object to that? What was it my Aunt Gittel used to say—‘Is it a flaw that the bride is pretty?’”

  “You can err on the right just as much as on the left,” her husband retorted. “And you can be so meticulous in your observance of the regulations that you lose sight of the reason for them in the first place. But where the error is in the direction of excess, criticism becomes almost impossible. It’s like those airline people who instead of calling a regular strike tied up the airports by adhering rigidly to the regulations. What could you say to them? Don’t follow the regulations? Can I say to Kaplan and his group, don’t be so religious? At the last meeting he proposed that the temple buy this property in New Hampshire to establish a permanent retreat. This new idea of retreats, and of the special group, or the commune, or the chavurah—whatever they call it—withdrawing from the world and society to expand their precious souls, it’s contrary to traditional Judaism.”

  “It’s attracting the young people, though,” Miriam observed. “I was reading—”

  “What’s the point in trying to attract young people to traditional Judaism by changing it? So if they do get interested—hooked, is the expression I’ve heard—it’s not Judaism. It’s something else that has only a superficial resemblance to it. I’ve read about them, too. There is a group that celebrates Rosh Hashonah by baking a birthday cake with candles for the world, if you please. Another, down in Florida, tried to rent a lion from some outfit that supplies them to the movies to see if they could make him lie down with a lamb. What’s the sense of attracting young people, if they turn out to be nuts? Some are in the neo-Chasidic movement. This Akiva may be one of those, judging from the way he was gyrating and rocking back and forth while davening. They’re terribly concerned about such things as having the mezzuzah affixed to the doorframe exactly right and that it be handwritten by a scribe on real parchment. Otherwise, presumably, it won’t work. And all of them are so self-righteous and so condescending to what they call ‘establishment Judaism’ as though for the last couple of thousand years we’ve just been going through the motions and haven’t really understood what it’s all about. It’s the same attitude that led to the recent ‘improvement’ in our colleges.”

  “Whew! I had no idea you felt so strongly.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I got carried away. It was just that it occurred to me that when this Akiva, if it is he, brought that medicine in the middle of the night, he was doing a real mitzvah. It certainly was more of a religious act than his coming this morning to pray.”

  6

  Marcus Aptaker arrived at his store at half past seven, a good hour before he normally opened for business, and within minutes his resentment and annoyance with his son fell away from him. He liked to come in early so he could do his paperwork leisurely, pecking out necessary correspondence on one of the two ancient typewriters in the prescription room, checking statements against bills, making out checks for supplies. Then he would wander about the store, straightening a package on the shelves or turning a bottle so that the label showed; sometimes changing stock from one shelf to another; or even just touching things as a lover might touch his mistress to be sure she was there, to make contact.

  For he loved the store. It gave spice and variety to his life. Every customer who came in to buy was a problem to be solved. Should he suggest an alternative to the item he did not stock, or would the customer resent it as officious? Should he show a higher priced item? Should he offer an opinion at all? Then there were major decisions: should he transfer the toothpaste next to the toothbrush rack so that the one might suggest the other, or should he keep them far apart so that the customer, in naturally going from the toothbrushes to the toothpaste, would have to pass still other items which he might be tempted to buy? These were all problems that presented themselves one after another all through the day. And he solved them, each in turn as they came up. It was challenge and accomplishment.

  And also, he loved the things he sold. Although he did not smoke, he delighted in the smell of the tobacco when he slid open the door of the cigar showcase, or the feel of a briar pipe as he passed it across the counter to a customer; the delicate shape of the flagons of perfume and the new line of men’s toiletries packaged in masculine solidity; the cameras, the pocket radios, the clocks and watches; the colorful boxes of candies, and the mechanical pencils and ballpoint pens in their special rack; the sunglasses, and the new display of rubber gloves that had come in only last week, the rack cleverly designed so that as one flat box was drawn out, another automatically took its place; the expensive line of French soaps; the tiny scissors and nail clippers, all in gleaming chrome; and best of all, the special patent medicines that a pharmaceutical house had made up for him under his own label.

  Also he liked the people who came into the store, but he liked the idea of the counter between them, because while amiable and friendly as became a good retailer, his professional status required that he not be too friendly. That was the beauty of it, that he was not just another tradesman like the grocer or the hardware man. He was a businessman and a professional man, a member of the corps of doctors and scientists and researchers who were engaged in the healing and care of the sick and like them with a diploma and a degree and a license to practice with all the duties and responsibilities thereunto pertaining.

  At eight-forty, the first customer came in, and Marcus Aptaker came forward to greet him, his face automatically assuming the retailer’s smile of polite inquiry.

  7

  “Did you eat someplace?” demanded Mrs. Aptaker. Her son, on his return from the temple, had said he didn’t want breakfast, that he wasn’t hungry.

  “No, but—”

  “But me no buts. How do you think it makes me feel when my own son won’t accept food from me? So you’ve become pious and my dishes aren’t kosher? All right, I’ll give you some cereal and milk in—in—the mixing bowl. It’s glass, so you can eat anything in it. Isn’t that right?”

  He did not have the heart to point out that the spoon was not glass and hence, from his point of view, not kosher, but he reflected that the injunction to “Honor thy father and mother” was of equal importance to the dietary la
ws, so he said, “All right, I guess since it’s glass, I can eat from it.”

  He poured the dry cereal into the bowl and added milk.

  “A couple of eggs, Arnold? I can make them so you could eat them from the shell. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? And a cup of coffee. If you want, I could give it to you in a glass.”

  “Sure, Ma, that’ll be fine.”

  “All your meals you can take here. If you’re worried about my pots and pans, I can cook on aluminum foil like I did when my uncle stayed with us a couple of days. He was as bad as you. And I got enough glassware, pie plates, custard cups, you could eat from them and not have to go hungry, or go to the grocery and get something to eat from a paper bag like an animal.”

  “Sure. I don’t mind if it’s not too much trouble for you. And if Dad doesn’t mind my eating separate food while he’s eating. You know how he is.”

  “Yes, I know how he is.” She sat down across the table from him. “I know how he is, but do you know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you know that your father is sixty-two years old already? And every day, winter and summer, in some of the worst storms, he goes to the store. Me opens every day. And he works long hours. Even when it’s McLane’s day, your father opens and then instead of coming home as soon as McLane gets there, he’s apt to hang around all morning. Then he goes at night to close. Ross McLane works a forty-hour week, but not your father. The other stores in the area close at eight or nine, but your father keeps open till ten every night. And you know why? Because he feels it’s his duty, his responsibility. The others close earlier and earlier because they’re afraid—so many holdups by these dope addicts—”

  “Has Dad ever been held up?” he asked quickly.

  “Once, but they caught them. Your father feels he’s safe because we’re on the Salem Road and lots of traffic. He never asks how I feel.”

  “Well, gee, I don’t see what I can do.”

  “You don’t see what you can do? Well, to start with you could go in and give your father a hand while you’re here, just so he can feel you’re still his son and a member of the family. Then you could come and live here in Barnard’s Crossing. The same job you’re working at in a stranger’s store, you could do in our store. And then, in time, you could take over the store the way your father did from his father. That’s what you could do.”

  “I’m not coming back to Barnard’s Crossing. That’s definite,” he said stubbornly. “I’ve made a life for myself in Philadelphia. My friends are all there.”

  “But before that, your friends were all here. You were born here. You grew up here.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to die here.”

  “Living in Barnard’s Crossing is like dying? It’s so bad here?”

  “That’s not what I meant. Look, Ma, in Philly I got a job. I work forty hours a week, and the rest of the time is my own.”

  “But you’re working for somebody else and just for wages.”

  “So what? But when I’m through for the day, I’m free.”

  “Listen, Arnold, a nurse takes care of children and a mother takes care of children. When she’s off duty, the nurse is free, but the mother is never free. So is it better to be a nurse or a mother? Here, you’d be working for—”

  “Here, I’d be working for the store. When I was home, Dad cared a lot more about the store than he did about me,” he said bitterly.

  She nodded. “It seems that way sometimes. That’s because a store, if you take care of it, it takes care of you. Your father lives from that store, and your grandfather before him. You remember him, your grandfather?”

  “I was just a little kid when he died, but I remember him.”

  “He was quite a man, your grandfather. He was a pharmacist in the old country, and when he came here, he was highly respected. Do you have any idea what it meant in those days to be a pharmacist, and even more, to have been one in the old country? All the other immigrants were tailors and cobblers and peddlers, ignorant men, most of them. But your grandfather had been to the gymnasium and to a technical college. Nowadays, to own a drugstore, maybe it isn’t so much. People think of it like any other business. How much does it take in? What’s the net profit? But in those days it was a profession like a doctor. You stayed open till midnight every night, not so you could make a few more sales, but because you had a responsibility to the community. Your father was brought up with that idea. The store isn’t just a store to him. That’s why he stays open later than any other drugstores in the area. And on Wednesday nights, when all the other stores close early on account the doctors take Wednesday afternoons off, he keeps open till his regular time.”

  “Yeah, I know, sixty, seventy hours a week,” he said bitterly. “And he expected the same of me. And when I took time for a little fun, wham! he fell on me like a ton of brick.”

  “You also took money from the cash register, Arnold,” she said sorrowfully. “That’s one thing a storekeeper can’t allow, not even from his own son. It’s like making a hole in the bottom of a boat.”

  “I was going to put it back.”

  “That kind of money you never put back. You lost it gambling and spending on your fancy girlfriends. Those were not nice people you were running around with over in Revere. It would only have got worse.”

  “I never spent more than I could really afford. That IOU Kestler kept pressing me for, that had been hiked. All I owed was fifty dollars and they made it a hundred and fifty—”

  “You see the kind of people you were mixed up with?”

  “All right, so what could I do? I was in a bind. Would you have felt better if I’d had both arms broken?”

  “You should have told us. Your father would have taken care of it.”

  “Oh sure!”

  “Yes, sure. The day after you left, Kestler came in looking for you. Your father asked him what he wanted and he showed him the IOU. Your father paid him and then told him never to come into the store again.”

  He crashed a fist down on the table and jumped up from his chair. “I paid him a week later, with my first pay check. I paid him off.”

  “You paid him a hundred and fifty dollars?”

  “I paid him fifty. That’s all I owed him. Oh, that bastard, I’ll kill him.”

  “That’s nice language you use in front of your own mother. This is what your new religious friends teach you?”

  “But Ma, he took the money from me after he’d already got paid off. I’m going to see him—”

  “You’re here for a couple of days and you want to stir up trouble. Then you’ll leave and—”

  “But I can’t let him get away with it.”

  “It seems to me you should be thinking of what you owe your father.”

  “All right, I’ll send him a check as soon as I get back to Philly.”

  “He doesn’t want your check.”

  “So what does he want?”

  “I told you what he wants. That’s too much? So the least you can do is while you’re here, go in the store and help out.”

  “All right, I’ll go over right now.”

  She considered. “No, better you should go tonight when Ross McLane will be there, too. The first day, it would be better if you were not alone, the two of you.”

  “So I’ll go over right after the evening service.”

  “And Arnold, don’t ask your father what to do. Go in like you owned the place. See what has to be done and start working.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  8

  Morton Brooks, the principal of the religious school, knocked and, without waiting for an invitation, entered the rabbi’s study. He was forty and hence a year or two older than the rabbi. His long hair, artfully combed from the side across the top of his head, accentuated rather than concealed his baldness. For a short time during his youth he had had an office job with a Yiddish theater in New York which was always on the verge of bankruptcy and which occasionally called on him fo
r walk-on parts to save the salary of an actor. As a result, he regarded himself as of the theater primarily. He had been teaching in Hebrew schools for the past fifteen years while awaiting a call from the producer.

  “What’s the point of knocking if you don’t wait for me to say come in?” the rabbi asked peevishly.

  “Oh, I knew you were alone,” said Brooks airily. “I listened at the door before I knocked.” He perched familiarly on the corner of the rabbi’s desk and lit a cigarette.

  Inasmuch as they were of an age and Brooks was actually the elder, it was hard for the rabbi to put him in his place, especially when he was not sure what his place was. Although it was generally understood that the rabbi had overall supervision of the education of the congregation in Judaism, the operation of the religious school was the responsibility of the principal, who answered not to the rabbi but to the school board, which was elected annually. Even in the matter of salary, the rabbi was not sure who was senior, since his own was voted openly by the temple’s board of directors while the principal’s and teachers’ salaries were negotiated confidentially by the school board.

  Morton Brooks blew smoke toward the ceiling and said, “You haven’t forgotten about Sunday, have you, David?”

  “What about Sunday?”

  “It’s Parents Visiting Day.”

  “Oh that? What about it?”

  “Well, I wondered if we couldn’t make some changes in our procedure.”

  “Like what?” the rabbi asked cautiously.

  “Well, you remember when the school board set up Visiting Day a couple of years ago, the parent was supposed to discuss his kid with the teacher. Then if he wasn’t satisfied, he could talk to one of us.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  Brooks’s voice took on a complaining tone. “Well, it didn’t work out that way. They’d see the teacher, then they’d see me and then they’d insist on talking to you. And sometimes you’d say things to them that didn’t exactly jibe with what I said.”