Kagan's Superfecta: And Other Stories

by Allen Hoffman

  “They’re good people, Fran. They’re good people. They would never hurt you,” he explained.

  “Then why cry, darling?”

  “You don’t understand,” Kagan said softly. “They just wouldn’t hurt you. They’re good people.”

  Fran didn’t understand. Perplexed, she returned to the kitchen and served the chicken soup. Kagan came in and sat down.

  “Lieberman,” Fran said purposefully changing the topic as Kagan continued to wipe his eyes with a napkin, “said the chicken was so sweet it would be like eating licorice.”

  “Like eating licorice?” Kagan repeated in nauseated amazement. “And he wonders why he doesn’t have more customers. Like eating licorice. That sounds awful.”

  After a pause, Kagan shook his head despairingly. “Like licorice…. I guess it doesn’t always pay to advertise.” What a crazy guy that Lieberman was. He was always trying to get Kagan to go to Gamblers Anonymous. What did Kagan need that for? Those people have no backbone so they have to lean on each other. My God, would I be embarrassed. What do I have in common with them? I gamble. They gamble. So what? If I wanted to quit, I would quit. And I could quit. It’s that simple.

  Of course, I’m broke. It’s true, but so is the government and nobody seems very upset about that. And as long as I can afford your prices for kosher licorice, I mean chicken, and for meat, Lieberman, I can’t be too broke. What a salesman! Chicken as sweet as licorice! What a thing to say about a bird before Yom Kippur.

  “What are you thinking about, Moe?”

  “About Lieberman. My spot is good for Monday. If we don’t use the car this weekend, I’ll give him the spot on Monday. Of course, we’ll use the car, if it’s running, but if we don’t….”

  Kagan was amazed and delighted at the spontaneous responses that always bailed him out. Very often he opened his mouth and started a sentence with no idea what he was about to say, but something was always there. Often very good things indeed. Sometimes, it seemed to Kagan, his best things.

  Occasionally, he thought that if Ozzie were cooperative and asked all the appropriate, quick little questions one after the other, Kagan might turn out to be a great thinker, or at least a powerfully sensitive social philosopher. Unfortunately, Ozzie wasn’t cut out for that role and Kagan had to ask his own questions and wait around interminably for his own muddled answers.

  Why was such a terrific quick thinker such a lousy medium thinker? Sensing that this was a medium-speed inquiry, Kagan didn’t bother to wait for a medium muddled reply. Instead, Kagan looked at his pickle-green watch, a definitive act that dealt with the present — he’d better eat; suggested the future — Yom Kippur, Kol Nidre; and bespoke a difficult and unfair (even unsupportable) past — why should he, Kagan, get the hard questions? Immediately, Kagan felt better. Why shouldn’t he? He could take Fate’s best punches.

  “Did the cleaner get the spot out?” Fran inquired.

  Kagan had forgotten about that spot. He had backed into the shrimp dip at a party. Leave it to me; all my life I avoid shrimp, only to have it goose me in the tuchis at the Shelsingers.

  Kagan got up and took off his jacket.

  “No spot, hallelujah!”

  But there was a cleaning ticket stapled onto the back, at the bottom of the seam. Kagan hungered to know the number on that ticket. He thirsted to unfasten it but in his present state he was afraid of giving himself away. Fran was no fool. It takes a hardy and wary breed to survive in Connecticut, miles from a dairy restaurant.

  “Moe, may I ask you something?”

  Fran carefully avoided looking at Moe. Her eyes remained fixed on the chicken she was about to cut.

  “No, no!” Kagan interrupted, “don’t use the knife with the serrated edge. You’ll never get it off.”

  “Get what off?”

  “The chicken,” Kagan explained. “It’s like licorice.”

  They both laughed. Fran stopped but Kagan continued, shaking his head in disbelief. He put his jacket over a chair. The cleaner’s ticket faced him.

  “Moe, are you gambling?”

  “Why do you ask?” he answered. “Because of what I asked Louie?”

  Fran nodded.

  “If I were, do you think I would ask that in front of you?”

  Fran didn’t answer. Kagan continued, “I heard the rabbi talking in the shtibl and I didn’t think I heard it right, but I did. They have some pretty weird laws.”

  “I’m sorry. Forgive me for asking.”

  “That’s all right. It’s a natural question. May I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” Fran answered, curious.

  “Would you mind if I asked for a little ketchup on my licorice?”

  “No,” she laughed, “but, Moe, that’s pretty spicy stuff before a fast. Are you sure?”

  “Just a little to take the edge off the sweet stuff.”

  As soon as Fran left the table and turned to enter the kitchen, Kagan fumbled for his jacket and unfastened the cleaner’s ticket. It fell, numbered side down, into his hand. His heart pounding, he pawed at the ticket lying in his palm, finally managing to turn it over. Thank heavens, he sighed. It was not five — seven — three — four. Kagan quickly crumpled it up and flipped it into the waste can. Thank God.

  “Why are you smiling, Moe?”

  “I think we are about to invent strawberry licorice,” he said.

  Terrific, it wasn’t the number! Nobody bets cleaning numbers. Laundry, maybe. Katzi’s, certainly. My God, I should have called Katzi. He would have appreciated it. Laundry, maybe; cleaners, never! Who wants to be taken to the cleaners? Oh my God, the number! Should I have bet the number?

  The arrival of the ketchup dispelled his confusion over the number. Kagan looked at the dull-red sedentary sauce. It seemed so distant from its origins, fresh ripe tomatoes. Old tomatoes in new bottles. Kagan was suddenly depressed. The tomato is poor and happy in the country — and breaks its neck to make it to the city, and what happens? It gets pickled, stewed, spiced, preserved, pulverized, and stuffed into a glass bottle where it sits like red sludge. Kagan wanted to lean over and in whispered tones ask the tomatoes if they had been the first in the family to go to college. Kagan knew. Listen, I know. Everybody thinks you have it made. You’re under glass where the bugs can’t get you. You have a nice clear bottle; plenty of light, no dark corners, a label to call your own. Oh, and every time you call your family up, they want to know how the ketchup is doing — so what’s new in the bottle? Ten pounds of preservatives; how could anything be new in the bottle? No, Kagan thought sadly, you can’t tell them that. So you hardly call and everyone thinks you never think of them and you’re a snob.

  “You changed your mind?”

  “No, it’s late,” Kagan said aloud. He pounded a little ketchup onto his boiled chicken, but it slid off the wet, steaming flesh. With a fork Kagan speared a piece and spun it in the ketchup as if he were eating spaghetti. As he chewed it, he thought it tasted more like chicken-tomato soup than ketchup. That thought cheered him. There are a few possibilities in the old bottle yet.

  “We better finish up.”

  “Yes.”

  They cleaned up and in preparation for the fast, brushed their teeth. It was one of the few times, perhaps the only time, Kagan brushed his teeth. Fran had to do it or she would be very uncomfortable. Kagan did it because he found it a pleasing modern ritual: Crest before Kol Nidre.

  As they were about to wish each other an easy fast before leaving, Kagan shouted, “The shoes!”

  They dashed back into the bedroom and rummaged about the closet for their rubber-soled shoes. Fran put on her white tennis shoes and Kagan laced on his old, black, high-cut basketball sneakers.

  4

  AS they left their building, Fran turned toward the Conservative synagogue where the chazan sang and the rabbi spoke. Kagan turned left, down West End Avenue, toward the shtibl, his small Orthodox synagogue, where the chazan chanted Kol Nidre and everybody prayed. Kagan felt smooth and
loose as he loped toward Kol Nidre in his sneakers. Maybe those crazy black kids know what they are doing, after all. Kagan knew he was no kid; he fancied that he moved like an old Knick. Dick Barnett, perhaps, suiting up for a little pick-up game in practice. You boys are going to see that the old man can still make it happen. He looked at his pickle-green watch and hurried. It was late. Of course, because it was late and he was in a hurry, who had to show up and bother him?

  “I thought you’d never get out of there,” Ozzie said.

  “You know women, Ozzie.”

  “Kagan, if you run like hell, you can make it,” the angel rasped.

  “Look who’s talking about hell!”

  “Kagan, I know who’s running. It’s worth fourteen thousand at least. Maybe more.”

  “No, Ozzie! I don’t bet on Shabbes and I don’t bet on Yom Kippur. It’s not my thing. I’m sure you’re right, but it’s not my thing.”

  “It’s the law!” the angel countered.

  “I know it’s the law and I do the best I can with the law, but….”

  “Kagan,” Ozzie pleaded softly, “it’s your last chance. Think of the charity you can give with it.”

  This last remark stabbed Kagan. The thought of charity made Kagan very uncomfortable. Not only did he not give because of his precarious financial state, but, worse, he had become a financial basket case, mercilessly soliciting funds from, well, from anyone. Kagan didn’t discriminate. Oh, he thought, it would be nice to give charity. After all, didn’t Prayer, Penitence, and Charity avert the Evil Decree? Five — seven — three — four to the Evil Decree!

  “Ozzie, I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “Kagan,” the angel mocked, “you still believe that God will print the winning ticket after Yom Kippur? Kagan, five — seven — three — four has to win tonight if you play it. And I’ll give you five superfectas for every ticket you buy.”

  Kagan stopped dead in his tracks, but his heart started dancing like a beggar at a Rothschild wedding.

  The angel continued, “Have I ever promised you anything I didn’t deliver?”

  “No,” Kagan said softly. It was true. Ozzie was one devilishly stubborn, cheap angel, but once he gave his word, that was it. Ozzie, Kagan suspected, was an angel from the old school and Kagan respected him for it. Whatever you might say about Ozzie (he was a lousy advertisement for angels!), he kept his word. Five superfectas! Five superfectas on only one ticket! Gevalt! If I parlay the winnings, I’ll wind up a millionaire! A billionaire! So long, penury! Goodbye, woe! Hello, charitable gift-giving! The numbers were warming up in his head. He could feel the fever throbbing. Deep in the medulla oblongata (it was the only precise term he knew above the spinal cord), he could feel his nerves firing, like distant artillery in a Russian novel. Although distant, the firing pattern was perfectly discernible: five — seven — three — four.

  “Run, Kagan! Run!”

  “Ozzieeeeeee,” Kagan mourned in heartfelt sorrow for both himself and the angel, “I can’t!”

  Kagan hurried toward the shtibl but the magic had disappeared from his step. The old black, Bob Cousy sneakers didn’t help at all. He felt the hard, torturous pavement against his feet. The jarring cascaded up his legs into his suddenly aching joints where it was stoically absorbed with all the other bruising crashes Kagan had sustained in a lifetime of running this way and that at the last minute, always the last minute and for what? For this and that! His soon-to-be arthritic hips (thank God, Kagan sighed, it shouldn’t be cancer) absorbed it all with a shrug of the pelvis. The curb is high; the sidewalk is hard. So what else is new?

  In his head and mind, though, Kagan wasn’t terribly despondent. Usually, klop! it all hit Kagan in the head, but now, with a curious gaze, Kagan looked about from the crow’s nest as beneath him the shabby, creaky, degenerating ship of his body labored toward some unknown landfall. Kagan was curious, like a child who releases the safety brake on his father’s car and enjoys the sudden change of state from rest to motion without considering that the car must stop somewhere and he does not know how to drive. Thus Kagan moved toward Kol Nidre. He turned onto Ninety-first Street.

  With his slowly accelerating gait, Kagan swung his head to the left and saw the chimpanzee in the window. It was a very famous monkey. Larger-than-life pictures adorned the apartment walls: the chimp wearing a funny chef’s hat with Johnny Carson, the chimp in a sailor suit with Fred Astaire. Now, however, the chimp’s glory was past, relegated to the great, fuzzy black-and-white blow-ups on the wall behind him in his trainer’s office. The chimp sat in the window watching the Jews run to shul Erev Yom Kippur. His long, hairy, tired arms dangled below his motionless feet. Kagan was struck by the ape’s soft, tender non-complaining eyes. This chimp knew what tsouris was. He had all his fingers and toes, thank God. He could see and hear. Sometimes sirens frightened him. No, it must be something else, something deeper.

  With that old face, Kagan thought, I bet this monkey would like to hear Kol Nidre. Who in the shtibl would believe that a monkey would enjoy Kol Nidre? Kagan smiled at the thought of a new photograph on the wall: the chimp in a prayer shawl standing next to the rabbi. (Today you are a Bic Banana!) It might do the shtibl some good.

  “Ozzie, are you still there?”

  “Kagan,” Ozzie burst out, “straight to the corner and take a left to the OTB. It’s not Yom Kippur yet. Don’t worry if they’re saying Kol Nidre without you. The law demands that Kol Nidre start before Yom Kippur proper.”

  “Ozzie, I had something else in mind. You know how it is in the shtibl. People talk a little Torah, discuss wise commentaries, say heavy things about Yom Kippur.”

  Ozzie did not respond. Kagan continued, “Well, I never have anything to say, and since you’re an angel and know the entire Torah, I thought you might give me a few things to say. Kind of make me look good.”

  “You want some Torah to say?”

  Kagan didn’t like the angel’s tone. “Yes, that’s right. You do know the whole thing.”

  “Kagan!” the angel bellowed, “I thought man had chutzpah, but you’re too much.”

  “What did I do?” asked Kagan.

  “You don’t accept my Torah. You spit in the face of my Torah! And you ask to hear Torah from me?”

  “What does one thing have to do with the other? Maybe if you teach me other parts of the Torah, then I’ll come to accept yours. Doesn’t it say somewhere you can study for the wrong reasons because in the end the Torah will bring you the right reasons? And anyway, didn’t you tell me the world was created for the Torah?”

  “Deceitful Son of Adam!” the angel hissed.

  “Torah’s Torah, isn’t it?” Kagan replied.

  “You want to hear Torah, Priest of Israel? I’ll tell you my Torah. The Law, the Ten Commandments, was given to Israel on Yom Kippur.”

  “Oh, really, I didn’t know that. Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff I want to hear.”

  “Yes, Israel was given the Ten Commandments on Yom Kippur” — the angel’s voice was rising in a crescendo — “because the first time they were given, Israel turned its back on them. The world was created for the Torah, Son of Man, and all the nations of the world save Israel refused it. And Israel, holy Israel, went to Sinai and in preparation for the Torah, what did the Chosen People do? You built a golden calf! An idol! You denied Creation! You rejected God! And Moses himself destroyed the tablets. And we angels wept, we begged God to destroy Israel. ‘What is man?’ we cried, ‘that he is worthy of Thy Torah?’ Kagan, do you hear? Elsie the Cow is a childish way to sell ice cream! But for a god?! Even Howard Johnson and the Dairy Queen chased Elsie out of this idolatrous town. And the Holy Nation didn’t even choose Elsie. They chose Daisy the calf. Shame! Shame! And yet....”

  “And yet?” Kagan beseeched.

  In hurt and bitterness, the angel screamed, “And yet God thundered, ‘Mercy! The show must go on!’”

  “Yes,” said Kagan, “the show must go on,” and moving quickly now, he took the st
eps two at a time and entered the shtibl.

  Kagan squeezed through the tightly packed room as the rabbi finished his talk. “We hope and pray and feel confident that our prayers will be accepted for us and for the entire nation of Israel.” I must be the last one to arrive, Kagan thought. Last to Kol Nidre, last to Shabbes, first to kiddush. Not bad, there must be a routine there somewhere. First in shul, first in kiddush, first in the pockets of his coreligionists. First to pray, last to pay, in the mikveh, all the way.

  Kagan reached for a tallis. As he was about to don the prayer shawl, he stopped. He had just remembered that he had forgotten. Every year he forgot.

  “Bienstock, do you make a blessing putting on the tallis?”

  “Yes, make the blessing.”

  Kagan nodded his head in appreciation, quietly murmured the blessing, and draped the prayer shawl about him.

  “It’s a funny thing. Every year I forget. It’s almost a custom or something the way I forget. I forget religiously,” Kagan joked, but Bienstock, his eyes closed, was opening his old, worn prayer book to Kol Nidre.

  Kagan felt warmly toward the gently swaying furrier. And he felt warmly toward the old machzor, the ancient, large prayer book for the Day of Atonement. Kagan had always liked the old-style prayer books with their solemn, mottled covers and their frayed, yellowing pages. His grandfather had had a machzor like that. It was his father’s, “your great-grandfather’s — a wedding gift.” After the old man’s death, Kagan had asked about it but no one seemed to know what had happened to it. It was a shame. A machzor like that could give you a jump on the service. Kagan sensed that by now it could almost pray by itself and he would have only to turn the pages and chant “Amen.” Maybe, Kagan thought, it will turn up yet. Aunt Yetta might have come across it. I’ll call her after the holiday.

  The shtibl was very still. Kagan hurried into the small chamber between the synagogue’s main room and the women’s section. This adjunct to the men’s section wasn’t really even a room. Architecturally, it was part of the same long narrow room that housed the women’s section. Functionally, however, it was separated from the women’s room by a waist-high wooden railing with a curtain above it. Usually eight or ten men, including Kagan, sat around a table, but tonight was not a usual night. The table had been moved out and in its place stood several additional chairs. When Kagan entered, only one final chair was available. He climbed through the small group of familiar and not so familiar people to the unoccupied seat. “We didn’t think you were going to make it,” Benny said.