Kagan's Superfecta: And Other Stories

by Allen Hoffman

  Of course, I had been present for the morning prayers. At their conclusion the minyan attempted to find a time for minchah. Eight o’clock? Too soon! You can’t eat till nine o’clock!! Eight-fifteen? Too late! At nine o’clock you can eat already! Eight-ten? Eight-ten? Good!

  No, they couldn’t start minchah late enough for me. My goal is always to avoid the business of the day. I was annoyed that we would have to wait so long between the afternoon and evening prayers. Waiting for a fast day to end is the deadliest, dullest waiting of all and not simply because one is hungry. That’s the least of it. You want the day to end and to get back to your normal, confused life. Of course I eat when it’s over. I overeat, but not because of need, rather it’s the principle of the thing. Why not eat when you spent a day not eating! It places the day in perspective; you were famished. What an ordeal that was! No, it is not the eating. It is those final moments when the day is technically over, when the darkness begins to descend, the bright, harsh light relaxes, and the true, luminous inner nature of the day emerges. The barest moment before the screen door slams against the frame when the agitated smidgen enters, unintimidated, unhurried, unavoidable, and one is faced with the reality no architect ever envisioned: a fly is in the house. And it is His house. You are trapped.

  So it is between minchah and ma ‘ariv. When you are standing in the comfortable little wood- and book-lined room staring at the impending darkness or checking the liturgical calendar to see when it is time to pray or even wondering why your shoes get scuffed the way they do, the day rises up from the worn wood floor, comes over the heavy wooden benches, and taps you on the shoulder, whispering, “The night is for hiding, do you think you can hide from the day? Here I am, all twelve sun-filled hours of me.” And what can you do? You turn around to face the day, all of it. So when the minchah prayer was finished (it went quickly since I had missed the first part) and Mr. Isaacson sat next to me at the little table in the back, I welcomed him. A few pleasant words with a charming man, a righteous man, and the day would be over. Who wanted to look Shivah Asar be-Tammuz in the eye?

  He turned to me and said, “Some things come to mind, you mention Russian.”

  I had mentioned Russian because Mr. Isaacson is the man who makes the minyan. He’s not the tenth man, but he is responsible for him and for seven, eight, and nine as well. In the summer it is hard to find a minyan, and when it becomes apparent that no one is going to walk in the door, Mr. Isaacson takes his tefillin off and goes out to help numbers seven, eight, nine, and ten find us. He shanghais the unwary up and down Ninety-first Street. He cadges them on the corner of Broadway. He plunders other minyans. This last is like asking Othello to lend you his wife, but Mr. Isaacson is a hard man to say no to because what’s in it for Mr. Isaacson? Is he paid for it? No, thank God, he has a good business. Does he have to say kaddish? No, thank God, his family is fine. Does he have to run around like a meshugginer? No, he could pray anywhere. Who would want to start his day by saying no to Mr. Isaacson? Not numbers seven through ten. And so when I didn’t attend regularly, I wanted Mr. Isaacson to know why. Why? My wife was taking a Russian course which started quite early and I had to get the baby dressed and over to her play group. And who gives the baby a lollipop on Shabbes? Mr. Isaacson. So I understood his mentioning my mentioning Russian.

  He had a distant look in his eye. He was clearly moved by the long summer fast day — waiting for the sun to set.

  “I was in the Fourth Russian Army; we hadn’t eaten for days. They were shelling us something terrible and then on the fourth day they told us to move forward. So we began climbing this hill. It was a big hill and we were carrying everything. They had even given me a big, heavy ammunition box to carry, too. I struggled up the hill and they told us to dig in so I dug a trench and when I finished a sergeant or an officer would say, ‘You with such-and-such a group?’ And I would say, ‘No, I’m with the Fourth Russian Army,’ and they would say, ‘They’re over there.’ And I would move over there and I would start digging again. I would dig in and they would ask, ‘You with such-and-such a group?’ and I would say, ‘No, I’m with the Fourth Russian Army,’ and they would say, ‘Oh, they’re over there.’ And I would move over there and dig in again and the same thing would happen. ‘You with such-and-such a group?’ ‘No.’ ‘Go there.’ It wasn’t like today; you didn’t ask questions. You did what they told you.”

  He shrugs his shoulders, nu, and holds his hands out palms up — what can you do? He lifts his eyes in a perplexed look. What can you do? And what could the sergeant or officer do? This man, Mr. Isaacson of the Fourth Russian Army, is digging. He is honeycombing half of Rumania.

  “I went from here to here to here.” He points to various positions on our table, the Rumanian hilltop, in front of us.

  “Finally I found where I was supposed to be. I was digging in, it must have been near dawn because I looked down and saw water. There was a stream at the bottom of the hill. I went right down there. I didn’t walk. I ran right down and threw myself in. My head and arms and everything right into the stream.”

  He pantomimes his immersion. He smiles: it is refreshing.

  “It felt so good. We were so thirsty and tired. The others saw it, too, and they started coming down. Pretty soon the whole army was in the stream. Then they told us to get moving so everybody got up and we started marching along. I felt something under my foot, kind of unsteady, and looked down. We were walking over trenches. We were supposed to replace the garrison. We moved up and took their places and they started bombing us. It was terrible. For three days nobody moved and then in the morning they told us to attack. We went running out a little way and dug in. I started digging. They were shelling us awhile and stopped. I was so tired, I hadn’t slept in several days. I guess I fell asleep. Just like that. And the next thing I knew, everybody was running over me. They had given the order to attack and I was asleep.”

  Mr. Isaacson laughs at this. What kind of soldier is that? The Angel of Death yells “Forward!” and he is asleep.

  “So I jumped up, too, and started running. It was terrible. We were attacking toward the north and the Germans were to the east on our flank, so they opened up their machine guns and caught us in a crossfire. We had to turn the entire army to the east.”

  On our table Mr. Isaacson has the entire Russian Fourth Army wheel ninety degrees to the right to face the darkening windows and the entrenched Germans.

  “I saw that they had us in a crossfire, and instead of going east I got down and ran south to the other end of the battle. People were dropping and I was running low. I saw this ditch filled with dead bodies and I thought to myself, ‘Moishe, men ken geharget vern,’ so I jumped in and lay down. The whole thing kept going on. After a while a Yettaslav jumped in and said, ‘What are you doing?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know.’”

  Mr. Isaacson shrugs his shoulders for both of us, the Yettaslav and me. What can you do? I asked who the man was.

  “The Yettaslav was a big, strong fellow.”

  Mr. Isaacson straightens up and thrusts out his chest and shoulders. “He was from Yettaslav, a town near Odessa where all the men are big and strong. He said, ‘Let’s shoot at them,’ so I took my rifle and put a bullet in and shot, but the bullet wouldn’t come out, so I tried pushing it through, but I could not do it. I put another bullet in and shot and pushed. Again nothing, but that must have done it. It didn’t work. I didn’t know what to do, so I picked it up and gave it a klop.”

  The bullet-stuffed rifle comes crashing down on our table.

  “And it broke in two. It fell apart.”

  We stare in astonishment and dread at the two pieces of the no-good Czarist rifle before us.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I looked over to the Yettaslav to see if he knew what happened, but he was right next to me shooting away. I was afraid if he saw, he might kill me. He might think I did it on purpose.”

  “Did he know you were Jewish?”

  “Yes, he knew.”r />
  “How could he tell?”

  “He was from my unit of the Fourth Russian Army. He knew me. ‘Jew, dirty Jew,’ he would yell and shoot at me. So I leaned over the broken rifle and pretended I was shooting.”

  Mr. Isaacson leans over the broken rifle, resting his extended rifle-cradling arm on the chumashim stacked on the table. The Yettaslav and I are to the left shooting away at the Germans and can’t see what is really going on — nothing. Mr. Isaacson continues to hide from us. I can only hear his voice.

  “I was like this a long time. The longest time. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to look over and see what he was doing. The whole battle was going on and I was afraid to look over at the Yettaslav. Finally, I looked over a little.”

  Mr. Isaacson twists only his head around for the briefest glance before returning to his hiding.

  “I couldn’t see anything, so I turned around again. And this time I looked.”

  He looks.

  “And you know what? I saw the Yettaslav just sitting there. He wasn’t doing nothing. Just sitting there like this.”

  Mr. Isaacson, still using the table as the wall of the trench, places one fist on top of the other and on top of the upper fist he places his chin so he sits there bent over and bemused, staring directly ahead like a stone monkey on some Asian temple frieze.

  “So I sat up and said, ‘Hey, are you all right?’ And he didn’t say anything so I reached over and touched him a little.”

  I feel a small tugging on my elbow.

  “His head turned a little, and his hat fell off. I saw a red spot on his forehead. He was dead. He had been shot right through the head. I thought, what do you do now, and I took his gun and gave him mine. And then our sergeant came running along and jumped into the ditch. And we lay there for a long time with the whole thing going on. Along about evening it got quieter and he said, ‘I wonder what’s going on?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘Take a look.’ So I climbed up carefully and looked around. I couldn’t see anything and I jumped back down. Then he got up to take a look — nothing. And after a while he said, ‘Take a look.’ So I got up — nothing. I got down. Then he got up again and nothing. So we were getting up and down and nothing happened but he was a little short fellow and I guess they couldn’t see him because he told me to get up again and I got shot, back in my side. It felt like somebody hit me with a strong iron rod. I bent over like this and fell back into the trench. I heard the sergeant say, ‘Probalt,’ finished.”

  “Nu,” someone calls out, “ma’ariv.” The evening prayer. Shivah Asar be-Tammuz is over. What! Not yet! I’m in the middle of a story. Wait a minute! But someone begins leading the evening prayer. I turn back to Mr. Isaacson, but he grabs a siddur, and jumps up with fervor in his eyes. He draws closer to the pipe that runs from down below and up to heaven. I hear him implore.

  “He is merciful, He shall forgive iniquity, and He shall not destroy. Often He turns away His anger and shall not stir up all His wrath. Lord, save us. The King shall answer us in the day we call.”

  The leader calls, “Bless the Lord Who is blessed.”

  We answer, “Blessed be the Lord Who is blessed forever and ever.”

  And I bless the Lord Who makes the evening. I glance up. Mr. Isaacson’s eyes are closed as he blesses the Lord Who turns the day away, Who evens the evening, Who turns His anger away and answers us in the day we call Him. Even then it is dark. Shivah Asar be-Tammuz is over, but the fast is not. Hungry supplicants rush through ma’ariv. For me the evening service after a fast is an anticlimax emotionally, but necessary intellectually. This service has always been a test of faith; one I rarely pass. I am purposefully, willfully patient. I thrust the day of affliction into the past in order to turn the day, bend it into experience, but the vanity of affliction rises hungrily from my stomach, disintegrating concentration. Have I not done enough? Only Mr. Isaacson entreats, blesses with the fervor of the day.

  The day of affliction is over, but what about Mr. Isaacson? We have left him probalt—finished. I see him lying in a Rumanian ditch on a Russian battlefield, bent and bleeding as the day turns into evening, a new day. Sorrows are never as discrete as the fasts that follow. How can they be, you can’t fast forever. The service halts. No one intones the mourner’s kaddish. Everyone looks around. Are you a mourner? Are you a mourner? No familial mourners. A voice calls to the leader, “Zugt kaddish.” A dispassionate kaddish pours forth. The rhythm tumbles forth — the building blocks of the universe rumbling against one another as their names are called. The roll call of cornerstones — granite of existence. So fleeting the call, so light the touch in this hurried, famished kaddish, yet they remain granite and radiate their power when called.

  It is over. We are standing. I turn to Mr. Isaacson.

  “We can’t leave you there, lying there like that,” I joke in fear. Fear of what? Fear of death? Fear of the day? Fear of the story? Do not give Satan an opening.

  Mr. Isaacson does not hear the joke, does not feel the fear, but his eyes are open and he desires to tell the story. People turn to say goodnight. “On the way home,” he explains, “I’ll walk with you.”

  The men who are studying the daf yomi, the page of the day, drift toward the room with the long table and the large books. A page a day and in seven years you are finished, done.

  A student of the entire Babylonian Talmud. What could be easier? What could be faster? Ah, but there is the Jerusalem Talmud! No matter, never mind. One thing at a time. And when you have completed it, what do you have? You have one. You have earned the privilege to start two. Begin again. What could be simpler?

  Mr. Steimatzky approaches and asks me if I have been fasting. “You have? Good. Here!” He thrusts a strange, artificially green bag toward me.

  “Take.”

  I peer inside the long, distended bag to see nectarines gathered in the bottom like refugees. If I hadn’t fasted, they wouldn’t be mine. Mr. Steimatzky is not in the catering business. I gaze at them, their green splotches all the paler and purer in the chemical green dye of the bag.

  “Nu, take.” Mr. Steimatzky has a presence, a bearing. He did not flee two countries, two worlds, learn three languages only to hand out pale nectarines in poisonous bags. He is, in fact, a diamond dealer who enfolds his natural gems in conservative custom-made shirts, soft and natural, nothing like this garish sack with its bastardized New World hybrids from Key Foods. I stand there. I am keeping a man waiting with his arm extended as if he were a beggar. A man who shuffled through the express line, eight items or less, with its clanging cash register and garish, chipped fingernails prancing madly about its keys to register the value of his own garish sack — all in a custom-made shirt — just so his fellow congregants who fasted (when you flee two worlds you only bother about the very righteous) can rejoice a little sooner. I stare at the awful color of the bag. Who cares what color the bag is? “Though your sins be as scarlet!” It is a matter of respect. Of generosity. Of brotherhood! His arm is extended. Shall I refuse his kindness and take from him his good deed instead? Shall we both return empty when we both can draw back together filled and fulfilled; he with his mitzvah and I with my nectarine?

  “No, thank you,” I say. “I’d better wait until I get home.”

  He draws back his gift, offended.

  “No, I’d better wait for some juice, that’s easier,” I remark.

  What am I saying? I, who used to break the twenty-five-hour Yom Kippur fast at Glaser’s Drug Store on two vanilla shakes (and in those days they gave you the whole, cold shiny canister with its two-plus glasses lying thick and frigid inside) and an ice-cream cone kicker.

  “I bought them for you,” he entreats.

  “No,” I say touching my stomach apprehensively. “I’d better not. Thanks anyway.”

  “Awright,” he turns away hurt.

  I feel embarrassed, foolish, and I owe him an apology, at least an explanation. But how can I explain that the day isn’t over, that it
is twilight and Mr. Isaacson is lying broken in a corpse-strewn Rumanian ditch, when outside the very windows of the synagogue Mr. Steimatzky sees darkness and inside he sees Mr. Isaacson saying goodnight to Mr. Sobel? How can I break the fast when the day has not turned? How can I do a good deed with nectarines when the greatest of all mitzvahs, the saving of a life, lies before me? And anyway, they aren’t washed. God knows what is on them.

  Mr. Isaacson and I are together again.

  “We can’t leave you like that.”

  We are the last in the room. I am standing prepared to stay and listen.

  “No,” Mr. Isaacson motions toward the door. “Come, I’ll walk you home.” He takes my arm. We are in the narrow hallway moving toward the door.

  “No, please, let me walk you home.”

  “No, you’re hungry. I’ll walk you home.”

  “Please, Mr. Isaacson, it’s not right.”

  “Why?”

  Why? Because he lives nearby, down the block in the other direction. Because Broadway is unpleasant and unsafe. Because I should escort you and not you me. Because....

  “Kuvid, respect!” I cry, hoping to understand the meaning of the words, in a high croaky voice sounding and feeling like a bilingual frog, and having no more understanding than the Egyptians of the plague of those croaking amphibians. If I can’t whisper the words intelligently, why do I think I can understand by yelling them? Mr. Isaacson drops my arm.

  “Respect, kuvid!” I cry again uselessly and doomed. But, after all, the nectarine man gave me three chances with his green bag, shall I deal more harshly with myself than Steimatzsky did? What kind of respect is that? Yes, I feel like a fool screaming at Mr. Isaacson. I had hoped that when I intoned kuvid-respect it would be as a shofar blast up above and Gabriel would take not one but two unwashed nectarines (in the World to Come nothing can hurt you), place them in a green Key Food fruit-and-vegetable bag, check them to make sure they’re good ones (69¢ a pound, not the ones in the window), staple the bag closed, and write with a heavenly fat grease pencil “World To Come — Heavenly Reward — Pays Double.” Instead, Mr. Isaacson is intimidated by my outburst and says, “All right.”