Prayers for the Living

by Alan Cheuse

  But thank God for the medicine! I take it for my eyes, for my nerve. Here on this part of my face I have a nerve that burns through to my bone. Sometimes I sit here and wait for it to erupt, like the way you hear people in Hawaii wait for volcanoes? If they wait—or do I hear wrong? Do they go about their business on those islands and get caught unaware? Or do they worship the fires within the mountains? Or do they believe in nothing but ocean and wind and sky and cloud and the heat from beneath the ground? Lava flows—pace of a dray horse it makes. New country, Hawaii. I would have liked one day for my Manny to have taken me there, except he was business busy at the end, busy, oh, I meant to say at the end down there. In the Americas, they call it. Where the brother-in-law lurked for many a year. Building connections. Making deals.

  He was ready . . .

  Eye . . . shit . . .

  No, no, sorry, darling, sorry. Excuse this crazy tongue. Excuse. I’m not losing control. Blame the drugs. It’s just that in so many months I haven’t wanted to talk about this, not since. The. You know. And so. It makes for pain, it alerts the nerve in my cheek, the volcano feelings.

  New country feelings. You, who now know old country sorrow, it’s difficult to understand. And if I had not come over in my youth, I would not be so easy to say this, that’s for sure. Look, even the gentiles, they have this problem. Because they too are all immigrants. Their people came over the water. And trekked over the mountains, dray horses, oxen leading their carts, wagons. Here first only were the Indians, the red Indians, and even they walked over from the old country, from Siberia, the first ones some cold summer morning ten thousand years ago, packs on their backs, children at their hips, or was it the reverse? across the land bridge that no longer joins the Russians to our Alaska, and one day they walked over a hilltop and saw the mountains of the country where we live now.

  Mama, says one of the little Siberian Indians to his mother, I want a drink of water—in whatever language, if they talked, they said these things to each other, and the mother smiled down at the little one, a babe naked as the day she gave birth to it, and pointed to a pool of water in the rocks past which they walked. Mothers in those days were as good as they are now. They loved their children, they tried to keep them from falling too far and feeling the hurt. These first Americans, what wonderful parents they were! Surviving such a trek with their children, these Indian mothers, or the same for the Jewish mothers—there are stories, you know, told by certain religions that these first ones belonged to the lost tribe of Israel. That they sailed over here on large reed boats, whole families, many families, the entire tribe.

  My Sadie was studying these things, is how I know. When she got to college it was around the same time that her father bought the big boat company down there. The brother-in-law went down on trips all the time, but my Manny, he didn’t seem to find the time. And he kept threatening her, you’ll go, you’ll go, and all the time she was studying about it—in fact, she got to the point where she was talking about it so much he even used her to do research for a speech he had to make when he took over the big fruit company down there. And for a long time when he was heckled by those roughnecks, the demonstrators, and even the ones that called themselves Jews for Justice, he thought at first, poor fool, that she was standing by him, giving him facts, facts. Almost to the end. But not all the way to the end. And so when you get to the end, when you see what she did, you could cry.

  But the facts, the facts—these she kept on talking about and I, the grandmother, the mother, I couldn’t help but learn a little about these matters myself.

  The land bridge, or the reed boat, which is true? Not even the biggest scholars on either side want to make a final No to the other side. Maybe both sides are right? They both came. And why not? Look, here we got room for everybody. But I’ll tell you one thing, my dear, my friend, my dear companion, the one thing I’ll tell you is that Columbus Day is a joke. Today this holiday is a joke. So maybe it was an Indian, so maybe it was a Jew, so maybe it was a Jewish Indian discovered America, but it wasn’t the Italian who first came to these shores. He came so late that when me and my Jacob and my Manny, when we sailed across over the ocean that flowed all around, if it existed, my Jacob’s famous Atlantis, the prow of our boat was nearly bumping the stern of his boat, our front his back, I know these words from Jacob.

  See, so the Europeans didn’t make a discovery but only found something they wanted to take over. And cover over, not uncover. And this was the problem with my Manny, wasn’t it? That he behaved in the end like he didn’t know this—that he hadn’t yet found out the truth that even my schoolgirl, my college student, could figure out, the truth about discovery, about the discovery of this part of the world, that it had been here already before he got here, before any of us got here, and that it wasn’t ours to do with what we would.

  All the tribes that got here before us knew this, but the Europeans who broke away from their tribes never learned it well enough. All together we knew this, but when we break away from the group it’s something we forget. All our waking hours we know this, but sometimes in our sleep, in wild dreams of uncovering, we forget. All the sleep time we know this, but waking sometimes we act as though the day is not part of the night, and the night the day, do you see? I don’t see no more myself, but I think of it, I see in my thoughts, I see my thoughts, and my thoughts see me.

  The Europeans came to New England and to the southern shores, and over the mountains to the great river valleys of the south of America. When they saw the tribes they conquered them and took their lands, and you know what, darling? we’ve been paying back with interest ever since. From the first garden these explorers took from the Indians, we’ve been owing, and we’ve been paying back. Take my Manny now, my poor Manny, he was taking out but he wasn’t putting back, not fast enough. But was that what happened? I don’t know, I don’t really know, I only know what I see when my eyes remain closed, what dreams may come to me in my state where I’m sitting awake and alert, the wind bringing the time of day and the season to my nostrils, to my skin, a blanket on my lap, my feet encased in slippers, the hands of the nurses upon me, and in my brain and blood this story I’m trying to tell you, my Manny’s rise, my Manny’s fall.

  THE FIRST TIME came with the board meeting when he was really flying high. The brother-in-law, the brother, Mordecai, Mord—I’ll call him Mord, it’s easier, darling, on the breath—Mord, he and several of the analysts they had brought in to decide about the future of the company, they had fixed their attention on a large old and famous firm in Boston that was going through hard times. Talking about ships, they had been in ships ever since the beginning of this country, hauling ice down from New England to the warmer regions, and bringing back up to the colder part of the world fruit from the tropics.

  “It looks like the thing for us to do,” Mord is saying, “a perfect way to diversify and build at the same time. They’ve got ships, we’ve got piers. They haul produce, we’ve got the warehouses. The ships are large, seagoing, we’ve got the barges and tugs. This is the chance we’ve been waiting for, for years now, Manny. It’s a big leap, but I think we’ve got the agility to make it.”

  He touches the tip of a pencil to his hawklike beak, as if he deliberately wanted to call my Manny’s attention to this birdy nose, a sign of his approval of everything that might be involved in the deal, both everything normal and natural and human, and all the aspects of it that could require some acting out of the ordinary, particularly because of the amount of money that was in question.

  I’d like to say that my Manny could tell by something in this pose that to choose to follow Mord’s suggestion would lead him to the disaster to come, but I can’t say that. Manny, he didn’t see. Because what was there to look at? The same face he had watched for years, the same creases in the cheeks, the same peering quality in the eyes, the hawk hunting for his breakfast.

  “And how much do we need?” Manny asks.

  I liked this so much about my son, becau
se he never changed in the way he talked—he could be asking about how much the temple needed to put up a new basketball court for the teenagers, he could be asking Sadie how much it would cost her for a new coat, he could be asking me how much it is for a movie and a dinner in the shopping mall—no, he didn’t change his way, and lucky for him he learned not to change the way he dressed either, remember, at this meeting, where the brother and the consultants, the accountants, the experts, they’re wearing the nicely tailored pinstriped suits, the beautifully polished brown leather cowhide, he’s standing there in the same style plain black suit he wore with the congregation, the same dark tie, only his white hair flaring up like a fire of smoke giving a signal that here was a man you might have to deal with.

  “How much?”

  And the brother says something, and the consultants each report some other things, and the accountant says something, and my Manny listens, listens, and then he asks, “And we can justify this to the . . .”

  And the brother-in-law points to the map spread out on the large polished oak table, and he points his finger to a part of the map here, a part of the map there, and he swings his finger along the coastlines, in sea lanes, around isthmuses, through canals, all the time talking quietly.

  And my Manny is nodding, nodding.

  And the telephone is ringing—blinking, to be specific, blinking nearly off its cradle . . .

  And in and out walk assistants, young women secretaries holding paper, folders, files, notes, tapes, photographs, and charts, more charts . . .

  It’s like an operation, really. My Manny was never a doctor like Sally’s Mickey, but to see him surrounded by all of these associates and assistants, to see the look of concentration on his face, only once before did I see this expression, when he was leaning over the Torah to read on the high holy days, like on the day he fell forward from the dais, like a surgeon over an open chest who leans in to see the bloody organ beating, beating, beating.

  If I had been there you probably think I would have tugged at his coat sleeve and begged him, Manny, Manny, don’t do this, it’s too big, and if you make a mistake you’re going to pay for it like you never paid before, it’s not a little congregation, it’s not like the bottle company and the opener company and the boats and the barges and the warehouses, it’s a country, Manny, almost a whole country that you buy when you buy this company. Look, you think I would have said, taking him by the hand and leading back to the map where a moment before the brother was pointing, showing him, this, that, look, I might have said, this could make you but it could also break you, and you’re so high now—this office, this high floor, this building of glass and steel, and the apartment we own now, in glass, high above, and the cars, and the schools you pay for, and the hospital, I mustn’t forget the hospital, because, let me tell you, to pay for the wife in the hospital costs him much more than the daughter in the most expensive college in the country—because apparently, and I don’t make the rules, teaching someone to forget—and you, of all of us, know probably that it can’t be done, can it?—is more difficult and so much more expensive than teaching someone to remember—and the vacations, the traveling, and the food we eat, and everything we buy and do, except of course for his clothing, which he keeps as simple as it always was—from all this you could fall away and be lost, and lose it. But no. If I had been there, I would not have said that to him, my Manny, my still then yet rising boy. I would have watched awhile in amazement, admiring him, the kid with the cart he helped his father with, may my Jacob rest in peace, this little pip he’s grown so big and powerful and rich and wise. Wise, yes. Sure, Mike, he was wise. How could you listen to all the reports and the news and the accountants and the commentaries and the advice and the analysts and the middlemen and agronomists and weather experts, the ones who tell the plain facts about money and the sea and the earth and the fire and the sky and clouds and sun and moon, how to listen to all this and make a picture or a pattern out of it and not be wise? Wise, yes. But how wise? We get to see.

  So if I had been there, would I have said, caution, slow down, you got enough, you could go too far and lose everything? Not this mother, not me, no. Because I had confidence in him to do the right thing, because I had seen him at work over the years, seen him work his charms on the people in the congregation and do right by them, seen him help the troubled and the disturbed and the worried and the upset, this was his great talent, not so much the part where he could tell you marvelous things about the Torah and history but because of how he could look into somebody’s eyes and see down into their heart where the blood rushed, and the truth of their feelings that roared along in the arteries and veins, and he could advise them so well, and when he went into the business full time, this same power worked for him, where he could make the new men he met feel such confidence that he would handle their affairs, and his own, with ease and dexterity and wisdom and caution to a certain extent, but also with enough foresight and even—what’s the word I want to say?—abandonment? daring, yes, daring! that when he came to an abyss he would draw back and consider, and usually draw back far enough in time to make the run and leap across it without any great exertion. Or so it seemed.

  His hair.

  I think in a way if he were just a former rabbi in a dark suit without the hair many would not have believed in him, no matter how much he had already accomplished. But because of the combination of the suit and the hair, the hair that looked almost out of this world it was so gorgeous, so stunning, as though light collected in it and reflected back in your eyes, I think that this had, in some strange way, an effect on the people that he met, on the boards, and in the meetings, and at the clubs, and on the docks and warehouses, so that even the roughneck men with the gaff hooks in their hands kept peace in their hearts for him when he walked past.

  It was a kind of miracle, don’t you think? You who have known a kind of miracle in your survival? Or would it have been a darker miracle but a miracle nonetheless if you had not? I don’t mean to press. Wait. You know the effect he had on you, the steady hand on your shoulder, the gentle pressure he applied to your life. Imagine how it was growing up with him, as his mother, watching, hoping he could keep his balance, expecting that at any moment he would tumble. Of course he had some talents, too, in addition to the looks and the luck. When he was a student, and then a young rabbi, he could memorize the things he needed to say, the poetry, the lessons, the parables, the learning, he could quote from here from there in the Talmud, he could find examples from books of history, from literature—though to me always it will remain the most impressive—and to you too, darling, I know it is also doubly true—that sermon of silence, the sermon on the camps, the talk of silence, the silence of talk—but he did talk when he needed to, and I’m not saying that he stood like a mute and nodded when the brother-in-law and the experts made suggestions. Not at all. He asked good questions, and he made suggestions, and all in all it was his company as much as anybody else’s and he ran it like that.

  Except of course he had doubts. Who doesn’t have doubts?

  And the night after that meeting where everything, or so it seems, got decided, he came to me after the late supper I cooked for him with my own two hands like the old days.

  “You like it here, Mama?” he asked me.

  “Do I like it here? No, I don’t like it. I want to go back to Jersey where I have to do this.” I was cooking for him potato pancakes, a little bit of lettuce and tomato on the side every night. “I want to go back downtown, even, to the little apartment where we lived after your father died, alone, where I washed and cooked and cleaned without no help.”

  “Maybe I can arrange it,” he said, leaning over my shoulder and taking a delicious sniff of the latkes.

  “You want to go? Go ’head.”

  “You wouldn’t like it.”

  “I wouldn’t. It’s true.”

  “I wouldn’t either.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “And ce
rtain women I know wouldn’t like it either.”

  “Maby.”

  “Maby, of course. She wouldn’t like it. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t afford to stay alive without the care we buy for her.”

  “True.”

  I went on with my cooking, turning the flat little cakes of shaved potato as if nothing in the world interested me more.

  “And Sarah, she couldn’t take it.”

  “Sadie wants what she wants. And what she wants takes money.”

  “Yes, Mama,” he said. “For a girl who talks against things”—something she was doing ever since she started at the college up in New England—“she needs a lot of them. Her stereo in the car, her stereo in the room at school, her—well, I don’t want to knock her too much. I enjoy buying these things for her. But she couldn’t take it.”

  “Take what, Manny? What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Nothing, Mama. I’m just talking. Just letting off steam.”

  “You had a hard day?”

  “Hard? Soft? It was my day, the way days go these days, not so bad, not spectacular.”

  “You’re having a big success?”

  I slipped my spatula beneath the pancakes and turned them easily one more time. In a few moments I had scooped them up and stacked them on a serving dish. The odor was alluring, and also memorial-like, reminding me here in the new days in this beautiful apartment high above the city of the old days in the tiny apartment down in the Lower East Side. It was as if, for a second or two, the past was as real as the smell of the past and I would turn and find my Jacob ready at his place at the table, smiling up at me through his dark beard, his mouth watering at the sight of my potato pancakes.

  “I have a chance,” he said.