Prayers for the Living

by Alan Cheuse

  All the characters here are darkening, darkening, and all the characters are damaged—and if there is redemption here, it is in the act of telling a story that is ruthlessly honest and unsparing. This is a novel, in the end, about the ways our lives inevitably crash into one another. One of the great wisdoms of the book is to know that these are not accidents that intrude into an otherwise ordered life, but that life itself is a series of accidents. Prayers for the Living offers a vision of harsh beauty and for its wrenching honesty, for its simultaneous intimacy and wide scope, for the power of its soaring language, it deserves to live among the great novels of Jewish American experience. It is a book that bears the weight of something old, yet feels new and utterly alive at the same time.

  —TOVA MIRVIS

  PREFACE

  “It’s an old story, darling,” Minnie Bloch, the narrator of my novel, declares to a gathering of her elderly friends. She then begins to unfold the saga of her son, Manny: his rise as a young rabbi and as the head of a major American corporation, and his subsequent fall, which destroys him and his family in the process.

  I found the essence of the story in an article in the New York Times in the early 1970s. It was about the funeral of a multimillionaire New York businessman: an ordained rabbi from Long Island named Eli Black, who had risen in the world to become head of the international United Brands company and then leapt from the forty-fourth floor of a midtown Manhattan office building. He had been exposed as having paid over a million dollars a month to the head of the Honduran government in exchange for special tax credits for the company’s banana plantations.

  A man with a religious calling who had climbed so high in the world of business that his fall seemed spectacularly devastating; that incident stayed with me, in my mind and in my heart. I wrote the first few drafts of this in the third person, but nothing seemed to click until I decided to tell it from the perspective of Minnie Bloch. A hundred and thirty-something thousand words later, all of them spoken or imagined by the main character’s mother, an elderly Jewish woman, with powers, it seems, far beyond her own original calling in life, and I had found my novel.

  The decision to frame the story with Minnie narrating it to a group of her friends was inspired by a gathering of elderly women who would sit and talk and compare stories about their children and grandchildren; a gathering of women quite familiar to me, whose voices still ring in my ears. Throughout my New Jersey childhood, I sat in the midst of kitchen and dining room conversations among my maternal great-grandmother, my grandmother, a great-aunt, and my mother. They told stories and added commentary, their inadvertent domestic version of the Talmudic tradition: biblical narrative with an interpretive edge.

  These women, as ordinary as pie, yet beyond the everyday in their dedication to getting out the truth by using language as an instrument of both emotion and intelligence, have stayed with me ever since. Like the poets of the oral tradition going back to preclassical Greece, and as close to the present as the last of the African griots, they told stories with a verbal twist and haunting intonations, making judgment part of the meaning of the narratives. This stands a bit apart from the modern convention—especially present in the short story—of simply arranging some imagined truthful events into the order that gives a reader the maximum understanding of life (as in, say, the work of the masters Chekhov and Joyce and Hemingway). Now and then among modern greats a writer such as Isaac Babel will offer the same prescription, but with a tang or biting edge to the story, particularly in the metaphors.

  Minnie tends to embrace aspects of both traditions, telling what she takes to be the truth but presenting it more often than not with the biting edge of disappointment, sorrow, worry, astonishment, and, in her grandest moments, something akin to the musical turns of the old Greek chorus of tragic theater. She is no one but herself, but at the same time she embodies—in her role as all-knowing, all-forgiving mother confessor—the archetypical overseeing female, from whom all life flows.

  The title that has emerged for this publication—Prayers for the Living—grows from Minnie’s sense that when she speaks seriously, making what she calls her “prayers” (“A Mother’s Prayer,” and the concluding “Prayer for the Living”), she turns her ordinary inflected Jewish-American diction into something that calls up a higher realm, even now and then addressing her God directly. In this way she leaps, I hope, from the foundation of realism into the realm of myth-charged fiction, where history becomes a larger destiny and oracular birds fly through the luminescent atmosphere, intent on guiding certain normally earthbound creatures such as mothers and sons into that upper region that on ordinary days seems unattainable.

  Consider the spirit-charged figures in the work of Chagall, both in the bodies of the human subjects and in the light and creatures of the upper atmosphere in the paintings. Or the reassembly of figures in Picasso’s canvases, where human beings turn into pure geometric forces. Or the superrealism of Gogol and the extraordinary events in novels and stories by Virginia Woolf, Bernard Malamud, and Gabriel García Márquez. Or the way legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane turns a show tune into a cosmic, rhythmical event. Or the raucous manner in which Charlie Mingus nudges the traditional blues into a sublime state of being, glorious noise turned into shaped sounds and, at its highest, into something resembling prayer.

  In the end Minnie transforms her huge dismay and gorgeous ferocity into a burning declaration about life on earth and beyond that allows the reader to take a deep breath afterward and ponder the events that have transpired on the page (and in the heart) as something as familiar as our own families, yet as large and overarching as stories born out of time long ago which might last into an unknowable future. Dear reader: meet Minnie Bloch and her son, Manny.

  ALAN CHEUSE

  Washington, DC

  Autumn 2014

  BOOK ONE

  AFTERNOON

  “It’s an old story, darling, so don’t get offended.”

  “I’m not offended.”

  “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “Don’t be so sorry.”

  Mrs. Bloch touched a hand to her auburn hair, a surface so carefully crafted that it appeared to be an object made of stone or dark-stained wood that had been constructed elsewhere and then placed atop her wrinkled forehead.

  “Now I’ve hurt your feelings. I’m sorry, Mrs. Bloch.”

  “Why should it hurt my feelings to hear someone’s name mentioned, Mrs. Pinsker? I want the best for my son and if that arrangement makes him happy . . .”

  “Mrs. Bloch, I was only bringing up the example of . . .”

  “Of what?”

  “Of a mother-child . . .”

  “A mother-child what?”

  Mrs. Pinsker looked up from her coffee cup and gave a sign with her large, red-rimmed eyes that it was not safe to speak.

  “Girls?” said the black, gray-haired, stick-thin waitress in a white uniform who attended them each week.

  “It’s the unofficial member.”

  “The ex-ofisho,” Mrs. Bloch said, trying to remember a phrase that she had heard her son Manny use when speaking about temple activities.

  “More coffee?” the thin black woman asked, her voice as much of a mask as her face.

  “Girls, she calls us,” Mrs. Pinsker said. “If she wasn’t as old as us I’d get insulted.”

  “How are you, sweetheart?” Mrs. Bloch asked.

  “Same. Same as ever. More coffee?”

  “And a doughnut,” Mrs. Bloch said. “Don’t you think I ought to have a doughnut?”

  “I vote you should have a doughnut,” Mrs. Pinsker said.

  “Something sweet always cheers me up,” Mrs. Bloch said.

  “I didn’t know you were depressed,” Mrs. Pinsker said.

  “You think talking about my son’s mistress makes me happy?”

  “You said if it made him happy you didn’t care.”

  “I don’t,” Mrs. Bloch said.

  “Girls?” t
he waitress insisted.

  “Sweetheart, a doughnut please,” Mrs. Bloch said. “A doughnut to make me happy.”

  “He doesn’t make you happy?”

  “Not when he’s sick.”

  “You said Doctor Mickey said he wasn’t sick.”

  “Not physically sick. He’s confused, darling. Why else would he fall? Why else would the world go dark for him? Dark, he said it went all dark. And on top of this he has a mistress, a married woman . . .”

  “A widow. So she’s excused.”

  “So she’s excused. But he’s got her. But if you think of it . . .”

  “Think of what?”

  “It’s almost part of his job.”

  “Florette?”

  “Because of her . . . you know?”

  “Because of the Holocaust, you mean?”

  “That’s what I mean. Because she was in the concentrating camp, because she came to him for help.”

  “You know all this?”

  “I know more than you think, more than Manny thinks, and what I don’t know I imagine.”

  “You’re telling me you make it up?”

  “What I make up usually turns out to be very close to what’s true. Very close.”

  “Then make up, make up,” said Mrs. Pinsker. “He’s my rabbi, so I’m entitled to know what’s going on with him.”

  “You’re entitled. For you, darling, I’ll talk,” Mrs. Bloch said. “For the leading lady in the grandmothers’ club, for one of the founding members that you are, I’ll talk. Talking will help me, I’m sure. Talk, Doctor Mickey always says, talk away.”

  “What a darling man,” Mrs. Pinsker said.

  “His mother Mrs. Stellberg is very proud of him, and so would his grandmother be proud if she was still alive.”

  “Do you know if she’s alive?”

  “How could she be alive? Is your mother at our age? Is mine? But I’ll ask. I’ll ask him. I’ll get personal from my side of it for a change. He knows more about me, about my family, than anyone else—because I talk to him—but I don’t want nobody else should know.”

  “But you’re telling me now.”

  “Grandmother to grandmother I’m telling you.”

  “You’re upset. I can tell.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Your hand trembles when you lift your cup. Ten times a minute you wipe your lipstick with a napkin. Normally you don’t do this.”

  “So I’m upset.”

  “So you’ll talk.”

  “I’ll talk.”

  “Your food,” said the waitress from over Mrs. Bloch’s shoulder, and with a birdlike quickness set the dish on the table and stepped away.

  “Who does she think she is? A princess? If I was a waitress I would be more polite.”

  “Maybe she is better than us,” Mrs. Bloch said, her viscous upper lip curling back in a smile.

  “Don’t get funny. So tell me the story.”

  Mrs. Bloch held the pastry up in front of her.

  “What are you doing? You’re studying it?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “I told you. It’s an old story and I’m remembering it, darling. You want to hear it from the beginning?”

  “From the beginning? From the creation of Adam and Eve? No, thank you, that part I’ve heard.”

  “No, from Minnie and Jacob, that’s what I was thinking. From the creation of Minnie and Jacob.”

  “For that you need to study the doughnut? Better you should get one with a hole in it, so you can look through the hole to the other side.”

  “The other side? I’m seeing the other side without closing my eyes, without a magical hole in a magical doughnut.”

  Mrs. Bloch took a bite out of the pastry. She chewed for a moment, and then said through a mouthful of dough, “Don’t look so impatient, it’s a long story, I need my nourishment.”

  “You said old story, not long.”

  “Well, what’s old? What’s long? As long as it’s good.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Pinsker, “how could it not be good? You’re sitting here, you lived, that’s it. A happy ending. I can tell. You’re smiling again, darling.”

  “And I shouldn’t smile when I’m thinking about the beginning?”

  “But so tell me what was going on with his accident.”

  “With Manny’s fall?”

  “No, with the president of the United States. With George Gershwin. Of course, with your Manny.”

  “With my Manny it was an accident.”

  “I was there, I could see, a man trips, a man stumbles, but I mean he’s all right? He’s not sick? A man just doesn’t all of a sudden tumble down after all these years for no reason. Look, everybody has reasons but not everybody falls down. So tell me his reasons? What’s the matter? He’s got a disease? He’s got troubles with you-know-who?”

  “I told you, nothing. He’s got nothing. Nothing is wrong. He told me earlier in the day he had a little headache.”

  “Headache? It’s a tumor, maybe?”

  “Please darling, I told you, it was nothing. He had a little headache. In the hospital, after his accident, lying there, he told me everything. Ever since his father died, a long time ago, we’ve been very close, you know . . .”

  “I’ve heard, I’ve noticed.”

  “So you’ve noticed. So I’ve been like his concudante, do you know what I mean?”

  “Do I know? Do I know? Don’t I have children of my own? Don’t I hear all the stories, all the troubles?”

  “If they talk to you, you’re lucky. If they don’t, you’re happy.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, Mrs. Bloch. So tell.”

  “What what?”

  “You’re telling me about his accident.”

  “His fall.”

  “His fall. And later his summer and his winter and his spring? Keep talking.”

  “Very funny. Summer, winter, whatever. I’m telling you he had his summer later in life than most boys, with this business he was making. And good for him, because early in his life, times were rough for him when he was a little boy, when my Jacob passed away . . .”

  “That’s the beginning you were talking about?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So you’ll tell me that later. But now I want to hear the middle. The part I saw. Because even though I saw it I didn’t know what I was seeing.”

  “Typical.”

  “What do you mean, darling, typical? You think I’m blind or something? I was there, I was looking down from the upstairs . . .”

  “From up there we get a good view, don’t we, Mrs. Pinsker?”

  “The grandmothers see everything, sure. So I was up in the balcony watching, like in the old days, when I’m up there watching the stage show at the Roxy . . .”

  “Looking down at the stage show, of course. So you don’t think I remember those things? And let me tell you what I remember . . .”

  “I’ll let you.”

  “Thank you, darling. And I’ll tell you. What I remember is looking down from the balcony of the old shul on my old street, peeking from behind the curtain they put up around us to keep us ladies from looking down.”

  “They put up a curtain?”

  “You were so far ahead of everybody you never had no curtain? In some places I hear, of course I never saw, they had a wall. And you could make eyeholes and peep through. They had their old ways. In the old country. And some were not so bad and some were not so good. I’m telling you, my Manny banged his nose against it when it came time for him to stay downstairs with the men. He didn’t want to leave me, the boy was such a good one. And he had to go to school? Same trouble. He didn’t want to leave me. Such a good boy. But what you were asking, that comes later and you were asking about his accident.”

  “His fall.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “But it comes first, not later.”

  “First I’m telling, but in his life it co
mes later.”

  “Don’t confuse me, just tell me.”

  “I’m telling you. Just the way he told me.”

  “His concudante? Like the confessor?”

  “You mean like the Catholics? God forbid.”

  “If He forbid we wouldn’t have the Catholics.”

  “Don’t joke when I’m thinking about this.”

  “Thinking to you is like praying? I shouldn’t disturb you?”

  “I’m just trying to get it right.”

  “Look, darling, sip a coffee, calm a little, and tell me what happened.”

  “When he fell? It was awful. Remember, it was the high holidays, Yom Kippur, the very last day of the ten days of penitence, when it comes time for God to decide which book He wants to write our names in for the coming year—the Book of Life or the Book of Death.”

  “Stop with the Sunday school lecture already and tell me what happened.”

  “So I’ll tell. So Manny woke up that morning, he told me later in the hospital . . .”

  “He tells you everything? Ah, I should be so lucky. My boys, they never talk. And you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because they are terrible talkers. They are like . . . like Moses’s brother Aaron, he talks with pebbles in his mouth. They have stories, believe me they have stories just as good as your Manny’s, but they can’t say them because they can’t talk so good. Book of Life, Book of Death? They could write books themselves, believe me, if they could only write.”

  “Now your turn to stop.”

  “So I’ll stop. You want me to stop? I’m not offended. So. I stopped.”

  “You better keep stopping or I can’t tell you.”

  “All right, all right, so go on.”

  “I’ll go on. Please. Let me clear my throat. Aherm. Aherm.”

  SO HE WOKE up that morning feeling, he said, very very strange, not in the usual way as though something is going to happen—because you know when you feel that way it never does—but strange because he had the idea that something already had taken place, that something in his life had been decided for him. Do you know? As though God had written in the book already, and he didn’t know which one. Except he didn’t think of it that way except to explain it to himself, the feeling that something had already gone past him. Or something had been lost.