Sam's Legacy

by Jay Neugeboren

  “It’s what they write off stolen goods to,” Ben said. “Many of our finest department stores and best-run supermarkets are having trouble these days with inventory shrinkage. The cautious client…”

  “Come on,” Sam said. “Save it. Flo said she’s cold.”

  “It’s appropriate, though,” Ben said to Tidewater. “Living when we do with so many people using psychologists and psychiatrists—you might say that we live in a shrink-age.”

  Tidewater groaned, but he was, Sam saw, pleased. Sam jerked his arm forward, and saw Flo glance at him. Damn! He didn’t want her to see his annoyance, but the walking and the cold were getting to him. He shouldn’t have agreed to come, he knew, but he hadn’t really had a choice—if he wanted to keep Ben from bugging him. “There—!” Ben declared suddenly, and he pointed down the street. “There!”

  The evening with the guys had made a difference, Sam admitted to himself. If, from now on, he saw them once a year, that would be plenty, despite what they had all said. He could understand why Tidewater seemed pleased by Ben’s attentions to him, his word games. Sure. Sometimes you wanted to hold on to what was left, even if what was left was only a memory. Sam wouldn’t—he laughed at the word—tax his own memory. It wouldn’t do much good, the deficit he was working at. But with his money about gone, Ben finally leaving, his friends living their new lives outside Brooklyn, and Dutch flying off on his theories again—there wouldn’t be much left for him to believe in, except Sabatini’s voice and Tidewater’s words, and he knew how much they were worth.

  “It’s my shul—the synagogue I went to, with my father—your grandfather, Samela.” Ben’s voice was suddenly high-pitched, like a boy’s. “I told you I’d find something. Come. We’ll ask directions. We’ll stop for a minute and get warm.”

  They crossed the street, Ben, excited, pulling Tidewater along. The synagogue—Congregation Shaare Shamayim—was a small brown brick building, wedged between two abandoned apartment houses. Sam mounted the steps to the entrance, behind his father and Tidewater. Above the iron doors, in stained glass, he saw lions and Jewish stars. Flo held tight to his arm.

  Ben reached forward to pull the handle of the door, but before he could it had opened, and a man stood there, smiling. Sam stopped. “We’re…” Ben began, stepping backward. “We’re lost.”

  The man was no more than five feet tall, dressed in black: a squarish black yamulka on his head, a long black coat, black pants, black shoes. His dark beard swirled about his cheeks and fell in curls to his waist. Only his eyes—greenish-brown—had color, and they sparkled as he laughed. “And I’m not?” he said.

  Sam watched Ben’s mouth. It hung open, in astonishment. “You’re Rabbi Katimsky!” Ben exclaimed, and his hand groped for Tidewater’s arm. He steadied himself. “I remember you from when I was a child. But—”

  “I am Rabbi Katimsky,” the man said, and his eyes laughed again. He emerged from the doorway and stepped down to the landing where Ben and Tidewater stood.

  “You must be the son,” Ben said. He turned to Sam and Flo. “He looks just like his father. If I didn’t know—” Ben broke off, breathing hard. “You must be your father’s—Rabbi Katimsky’s son.”

  The Rabbi smiled. “I am Rabbi Katimsky,” he said again. “May I help you?”

  Ben shrugged. “We’re lost,” he said, and Sam saw his father look down, unsure. “What I mean to say is, I once lived here—I was bar mitzvahed in this shul, my father prayed here.” Ben waited, but the Rabbi said nothing. “We were looking for the house I grew up in.” He gestured to Tidewater. “Where we grew up—my friend is from the neighborhood too—when I spotted your shul.”

  The Rabbi smiled. “Yes?” he said, as if he expected Ben to say more.

  “We were thinking you might give us directions—it’s why we stopped.”

  The Rabbi was, Sam saw, enjoying himself. “They tell me that’s my job—to give directions in life.”

  “Look,” Sam said. “We’re cold. We don’t have time for—”

  “Yes?” the Rabbi asked.

  “I mean they’re older than I am,” Sam added, indicating the others.

  The Rabbi closed his eyes, let his chin drop to his chest, as if he had made a decision. “Are you Jewish?” he asked, speaking to Tidewater.

  “No,” Tidewater said.

  Ben forced a laugh. “Look, Rabbi Katimsky—being friends with me for so many years, growing up here—he might just as well have been.” Ben paused, saw that the Rabbi found no humor in the remark. “What I mean is, if you knew about his life, you’d—”

  “Then we still wouldn’t have a minyan,” the Rabbi said. He spoke to Tidewater, wearily, as if lecturing a child. “In our faith, you see, we need to have ten adult Jewish males, above the age of thirteen, in order to hold a service. If you were Jewish, along with the other two—the father and son, yes?—we would have ten, but without you we have only nine. There’s no point in telephoning the others. I’m sorry. Believe me.”

  “Come on,” Sam said. “Let’s get out of here. I didn’t pay to listen to this kind of—”

  “One minute,” Ben said to Sam. He spoke louder: “Howard Street,” he stated.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s the street we lived on, when we were boys together.”

  “Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s gone,” the Rabbi said. “I don’t get out much anymore.” He chuckled to himself, then pointed to either side, to the street. “You see what things are like, but I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t mind—it gives me all my time to devote to Torah. My pulpit, as we say in the trade, is a scholar’s dream.” He sniffed in and his head dipped backward, his eyes closing. He hummed to himself in the way Sam remembered his grandfather humming. Then his eyes opened and they flashed pale green light in Sam’s direction. “Listen to this, as long as you stopped: in the midrash I was studying when you interrupted me, the rabbis are telling a story of two men who are wandering in the desert when they discover that they have seven days of traveling left with enough food and water for only one man for seven days. It is an absolute certainty that, if they share the food and water, neither of them will reach their destination alive. What, the rabbis ask, is the man who possesses the food and water to do? Should he continue to share it with his companion, knowing that, if he does, neither of them will make it, or must he take the food and water for himself and let his fellow man die?”

  “Take it himself.” Sam heard the words and knew that he had spoken them.

  “No!” Flo cried, her fingers digging into his muscle, through layers of clothes.

  “Samela,” his father said, as if reproaching him. Ben’s eyes, behind his glasses, were watering. Sam would not look into Tidewater’s face.

  “Forget it,” Sam said. “It was just what came into my head, when you asked. That’s all.”

  The Rabbi’s voice was stronger, “But you are right, my son. The rabbis conclude, reluctantly, that the man with the food has the obligation—the duty before the Almighty—to keep the food and water for himself, and thereby to survive, and live.” Inside, Sam groaned, and cursed himself for having let the words out. “For life itself, according to our teachings, is the highest good—the summum bonum—and we must learn to serve it.” His head dropped, and he glanced at Tidewater. “We Jews believe in this world,” he said. “Let the goyim believe in the next.”

  “Howard Street,” Ben said again, an edge to his voice—angry, Sam thought, for the way the Rabbi had addressed Tidewater.

  “I’m sorry,” Rabbi Katimsky said, his voice suddenly soft and weak. “I wish I could help you, but I don’t get out much anymore.” He put his palms to his cheeks and rolled his head from one side to the other. “Forgive me! I rant and I rave and—but when do I have a congregation, how often do I…?” He put his hands out, taking one of Ben’s gloved hands in his own. “I’m glad you came back. God bless you.” He kissed Ben’s hand with his lips and Sam moved down a step. “Others forget. You don’t mind, do you�
��that I spoke to you of what I was reading, that I gave you one little parable?” He shuffled backward. “I hope you find what you are looking for—but be careful.” He stood inside the synagogue, and his gentle laughter sounded suddenly sweet. “Why, after all, be a rabbi if you can’t speak in riddles from time to time, yes? If you want to send a contribution it will be gratefully accepted.”

  The iron door closed, noiselessly. “Come,” Flo said. “I’m getting dizzy from hunger.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said to Tidewater.

  “Am I wrong,” Tidewater said to Ben, “or didn’t he look something like your own father—?”

  “I didn’t like him,” Flo said in Sam’s ear. Ben and Tidewater were in front of them again, walking arm in arm, away from the synagogue. “What he made you say.”

  “I look out for number one,” Sam said. “You worry about yourself.” His eyes moved down, and he saw how red Flo’s nose was. He heard Ben and Tidewater talking about Sam’s grandfather, and Sam remembered the man’s eyes, when he would sit in the living room, hour after hour, doing nothing. In truth, the eyes had never seemed sad to Sam. “I mean, living by yourself like that, with all those books, it can do things to a guy—”

  “I’m glad you’ll be staying—when Ben leaves. It means a lot to Mason, to have somebody to share things with.”

  “Sure,” Sam said, and he wondered, remembering how he’d felt when he was in Herbie’s house, unable, really, to say much to any of the guys, why it was that fifty years of knowing one another would bind Ben and Tidewater so tightly. He could understand that it would, of course—if he never saw Herbie or Shimmy or Sid or the others until the day they were covered up, he knew he’d still feel for them as if he’d known them every day for a lifetime—but he didn’t understand, exactly, why things worked out that way. Especially since—he couldn’t dispute the Rabbi there—he believed what he did about giving anything away, when it was a question of you or them.

  They walked for a few minutes, and then Ben announced that he and Tidewater had decided to give up. It was too cold, they’d been out too long, they were hungry. On the next street, they went inside a small luncheonette, ordered sandwiches and tea, and warmed themselves; Ben and Tidewater seemed, as they talked and laughed about their adventure, more relaxed with each other than they had been for a long time, and Sam found that he enjoyed listening to them. They talked about their homes, their families, their schools, and they named the things they shared: their age, their place of birth, their youth together; the fame they had both sought, the talents they had possessed, the lost years during which they had not seen one another. “Your father was wonderful,” Tidewater said to Sam as they were drinking tea. “I remember, in class, how I admired him—how I wished I could trade all my athletic abilities for his voice, for his way with words.” Tidewater laughed easily and loosened the scarf from around his thin neck. “Do you remember the time in our first year of high school—it is, in my memory, your finest moment—when, for your mischief, Dr. Rabinowitz tried to humiliate you before the rest of us?” Ben smiled, sipped his tea. “‘You brat,’ he declared. ‘You bum, Berman. You ungrateful lout. You scum of the earth.’” The two men laughed together and Sam found himself smiling. “And then your father, from the back of the classroom, rose from his seat—all five foot two inches of him—and, his face red with rage, a red which I must believe now was forced, an actor’s red—pointing to Dr. Rabinowtiz, whom we hated above all others, as much for his fancy airs as for his meanness, your father, as if sputtering with helplessness, declared: ‘You—you pedagogue!’”

  Ben feigned humility, as if accepting applause. “Time wounds all heels,” he said in explanation.

  They laughed again. Sam laughed with them, looked out through the luncheonette window at a mailman across the street, walking side by side with a policeman. The mailman probably had the welfare checks, Sam thought, or the social security checks. “He’s talking about you,” Flo whispered, nudging Sam.

  “I wasn’t daydreaming,” Sam said. “Just looking at—”

  “Of course not,” Ben said with affection. “That’s just my point. I was telling Mason how you followed in my footsteps, in your own way—how they called me down to school because they couldn’t figure you out.” Sam wanted to stop his father, to tell him to stick to his own life, but, with Ben in form the way he was, he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance, trying to use words against him. “When you were in the eighth grade, remember?—they called me down. What they couldn’t fathom, they said, were your lapses. How you could, at times, seem to have the most remarkable memory—the best powers of concentration of any student in the school, and then—you’d have what the guidance counselor called lapses: you wouldn’t understand the simplest things. They said you were—your own words just now—too much of a daydreamer.”

  “That’s a laugh,” Sam said, but saw confusion in Flo’s eyes. “I mean, I never dream at all is what—”

  “But what then, when you were gazing out windows, or not paying attention to teachers, was going on in your head?”

  “Nothing,” Sam said.

  “Of course,” Ben said to the others. “It’s what you said then—but were we fooled? They wanted me to seek professional help for you—but I refused. ‘We need men of vision,’ I told them. Isn’t that—”

  “Can it,” Sam said, annoyed. “Nobody’s interested in your—your—” He broke off. “I see what’s there, that’s all.” He looked uneasily at Tidewater, and found that he was wondering what was going on in the guy’s head, which part of his story he was trying to transfer into Sam’s head at that moment. “If you’re finished, let’s go.”

  Sam stood, went to the coat rack. He heard Ben talking about his gift to him, about fading in and fading out, but he saw no reason to listen to him. If he’d wanted to, he could have seen the entire day—the journey—as Ben’s way of getting around to this, and of doing it in front of Tidewater and Flo, but he didn’t, he knew, have to take things that far. And he didn’t, he warned himself, have to let himself get worked up. Ben played that way, saving things up, and Sam knew where it had gotten him. He put a dollar bill next to his father’s cup. “Like the rabbi says, we each…” But he couldn’t find a way of finishing. “I’ll wait outside. Take your time.”

  On the street again, he found that he wasn’t even angry with Ben. If they wanted to stay there forever, sipping tea and reliving every minute they’d ever spent together—like Max and Shimmy and Dutch, he thought, always acting as if nothing had changed when the truth was, everything had changed—it was all the same to him. Men of vision—that was really rich, except that, Sam recalled, at the time he’d connected his father’s phrase with his own eyesight—with his ability to read the titles on records as they spun around. But one way or the other, Ben had helped him—he admitted that; after Ben had come to school that one time, they’d never bothered him again. Maybe, he thought, he should send Ben to speak with Sabatini.

  Later, when they emerged from the IRT subway at Church Avenue, Ben asked Sam to go with him to the supermarket: they could buy some of the things for Ben’s farewell party, they could get some cold cuts and all have supper together. In front of Flo and Tidewater, Sam saw no way to refuse.

  They walked down the aisles, Ben pushing a cart, dropping items in the basket. Ben seemed calm, and Sam was in truth glad now, despite everything, that he had agreed to go with his father on the trip. It would have been worse, he knew, if Ben had gone without him and he’d had to listen to the story afterward. “The Rabbi,” Ben said quietly. “He looked so much like the Rabbi Katimsky I remember…”

  The store was crowded, noisy. Sam let his mind drift. “Your grandfather was a Zionist,” Ben said, “but when I tried to tell him once that Theodor Herzl himself, the founder of Zionism, had been willing to settle Jews in Argentina or Central Africa, he refused to listen to me. He came to America dreaming of Palestine.” Their cart half-full, Sam nudged his father aside and did the pushing. �
�What I’m getting at is this: why shouldn’t the Jews buy a section of California—or Florida—and never worry about Arabs and hijacking again?”

  “I don’t blame you for going,” Sam said. “I told you before.”

  “I was imagining it this morning—Katimsky telling me that he was living in Africa already, but…” Ben held Sam’s arm. “I shouldn’t try so hard, should I? But I’d like—” His voice was low, intense. “I’d like to give you things you could remember—it’s why I asked you to come with us this morning, why I try to be clever, with theories and—”

  Sam heard a wild screech. In front of the meat department he saw packages fly in the air. “Forgive me,” Ben was still saying. “I’m happy that—” Sam saw an old woman in a long gray coat, her nails in the face of one of the butchers, blood under her fingers. The butcher tried to cover his face. Sam pulled hard—Ben’s grip had become stronger—and in a few steps he was there, grabbing the woman’s arms. Packages of ground beef were scattered on the floor, shopping carts converged on them. “Him! Him!… It’s him! Him! Him!…” the woman cried. Her voice rose, her nails tore strips from the man’s face.

  “Please,” the butcher whimpered. “Please.” Sam pried at the woman’s wrists, but she was hanging on for life. Her eyes protruded from great hollow sockets, her jaw trembled. “Him! It’s him!”

  Sam let go of one wrist, used both hands on the woman’s other one. He knew what adrenaline could do, when a person was excited. He heard another old lady shriek. “Murder!” she cried. Two of the store managers, in white shirts and striped ties, were on the woman’s other arm. A short man—not Ben—his own wife’s arms around his waist, was tugging at the woman from the middle. The other woman wept. “Gottenyu! Stop, darling… Genug… Ethel, darling… Ethel…somebody stop her please!” The old woman hung on, tears streaming down her face, her mouth open so wide that Sam could see the back of her throat.