Kagan's Superfecta: And Other Stories

by Allen Hoffman

  Such an idea struck me as fantastic and cruel. Fantastic because who could believe such a thing! Cruel because the children should be at a father’s burial. For their sakes — to avoid denial, and for his sake — to show respect. Although I was shocked, I was also fascinated by the novelty of the concept.

  Still, once the premise is accepted, then the children’s returning straight home makes a certain amount of Superbowl sense. If you can’t rely on execution the way the old Green Bay Packers and Cleveland Browns did to run straight over the opposition, then you have to employ a little deception: if your angelic fullback can’t destroy the demonic middle linebacker with a crunching head-on block, then you have to get the accusatory devil to take himself out of the play through a few good fakes. More your Dallas Cowboy multiple-set offense. Although what happened should be termed a naked reverse; for after the sons had approached the father’s body at the mortuary and had placed dirt upon the closed eyes, they went rambling home around left end with their half-brother spirits in swift pursuit. While they were heading that way, the real funeral procession plunged off right tackle and angled for the cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

  Once I understood how the play was shaping up, I had no choice. Since my neighbor couldn’t attend, I had to do it for him, and given the nature of this Kabbalistic offense, I was all the more important. You can’t tell the players without a scorecard, as they say, which is true enough, but as I had never met nor seen his father, even if there were a scorecard in the pressbox of the impure my name and number wouldn’t be listed.

  So I arrived at the cemetery ready to play. And I did, too. After the members of the burial society removed the prayer shawl, lowered the body into the grave (wrapped in a simple muslin cloth — anonymous and white; no uniforms here! — let the impure spirits guess), placed the thick concrete tiles above him, and began quickly to shovel the dirt back into the grave, I, who wasn’t in anyone’s game plan, stepped forward to shuttle in the first play. I grabbed a mattocklike shovel and went to work pushing the dry, heavy clods over the lip of the narrow grave, reaching and pulling the farther earthen remnants back into place, though this time with Shraga Feivel Tsur né Glattstein tucked humbly beneath, and finally scraping, broomlike, the loose pebbly soil along the ground into the rapidly diminishing pit. Others wanted the merit of helping bury a man who had been a brother, a friend, a companion, an acquaintance, but to me he was anonymous, and in this Coliseum of Kabbalah I knew I had Shraga Feivel on the road to glory. Let them stare; I kept on: four yards and a cloud of dust.

  Finally, I surrendered the shovel and stepped back to watch the second team bury the Devil’s chances and end the terrestrial appearance of a man from Jerusalem. If he hadn’t made it into the end zone, he was mighty close. I felt confident that our brilliant burst down the sideline had succeeded and there would be no undue criticism in the postgame interview.

  Feeling more relaxed as the clock ticked off the final seconds — time had become intelligible! — I looked around, first up at my roof on the hill across the valley. From that distance the stones seemed to blend together and I couldn’t quite pick it out of the crowd. I turned to examine the cemetery that I had constantly viewed from afar. It was both very personal and very communal, the stones worn, the ground ungraded, the weeds natural and profuse. The graves lacked that perfect Euclidean geometry that we associate with our average American right-angles-only approach to death. The Mount of Olives offered more freedom of arrangement, a random mumbo-jumbo that followed the lay of the land. All very surrealistic. Almost planned in a dilapidated, slightly chiseled, slightly eternal way. All very comfortable.

  And the view! The view was magnificent: the east side of the Temple Mount with olive trees nestled at its base; down to the left the Kidron Valley; directly across the valley — the Jewish Quarter inside the Old City walls.

  I’m not saying I was in a rush to join Shraga Feivel, but I did feel a debt of gratitude to him. Tradition has it that the Messiah will first restore the dead to life on the Mount of Olives. Standing by the nearly filled grave, I suddenly realized that the tradition has it right. I resolved to thank the deceased at the first opportunity — after one hundred and twenty years, of course.

  That cemetery is just not like other cemeteries. It really is a wonderful place. If you have to die, that’s the place to go under, especially with the resurrectional talents of the Messiah. It’s dust to dust, but in that earth on that mountain, I sensed that a physical joining occurred simultaneously with the physical departure. I felt sorry for those poor souls whose bodies were lost at sea or left without proper burial. No doubt the Messiah can take care of all his customers, but in the interim they are missing a lot of the fun, if you know what I mean, because the old, decrepit Mount of Olives radiated anticipation. It was three steps above hope. It was high up on the ladder of anticipation. The only question was when? When was the Messiah coming?

  I SUPPOSE I had always believed that the Messiah was coming sometime or other. His arrival is an article of faith, as they say. I was never one to go out of my way to deny an article of faith. So far as I can remember, when I was growing up in St. Louis, no one worried very much about the Messiah. There were always enough other things to worry about. Personal things like how to make a living, what car to buy, whom to marry. Things that can take up most of your day. Communal worries: synagogues, the St. Louis Cardinals, hospitals, schools, old folks homes, the price of kosher chickens, and the poor Jews of Israel.

  No, the Messiah’s coming was not a pressing matter. Had it not been an article of faith but, say, an article of clothing, it might have been an old leather aviator’s helmet dragged home by someone’s father or uncle from World War II and promptly relegated to a dusty attic. The kind of thing no one would ever throw out nor know exactly where it was. So it was with the Messiah.

  The Messiah, however, unlike an aviator’s helmet, was — is — an unknown quantity. After the Depression, the Second World War, the Holocaust, people everywhere, including the Jews of St. Louis, were fairly burning for known quantities: houses, lawns, automobiles, vacations, security, the good life. It was no mistake that Eisenhower clobbered Stevenson twice. Eisenhower was a known quantity, a successful one. Stevenson was yearning, theorizing, trying to articulate the contradictions and explore the paradoxes. It wasn’t a time to articulate; it was a time to consume. The Son of Jesse wasn’t in any of the Sunday supplements with garden hoses, seeders, lawn mowers, and other outdoor specials designed to save you time and effort while improving the appearance and value of your property.

  You might argue that for the Jews of Missouri, the State of Israel was also an unknown quantity, but it was far away and they tended to view it as left-over business from the Holocaust, a Marshall Plan for the Jews. They themselves were working hard to move, but not to Israel. They were killing themselves to get to the suburbs west of the city, the real promised land. Lightning out of Zion might have occupied a subtle recess of their consciousness, but it was horsepower out of Detroit that was in their eyes. In all our eyes. As kids we knew every model of every year. Roadmasters, Eighty-eights, and Chiefs. All of them, oleihem hasholem: the gracefully low-slung Hudson, the impressive boat-hulled Packard, and the slightly discombobulated Studebaker. And, yes, we too joined Henry Ford’s grandson in sitting shivah for the Edsel with its weird, vertical grill.

  If the establishment of Israel depended upon a Messiah, he was not featured as David, son of Jesse. The men and women who created the state did so precisely because they had given up on divine processes — if they had ever believed in them at all. They had had it with being a light among nations. They wanted to be a nation among nations. If American Jews were looking for cars, the Zionists were looking for a garage in which they could park their wandering nationalism. Who needed another Messiah as long as Ben-Gurion was on center stage? So it was all stacked against the Messiah. Nobody was advertising about him in the classifieds either way — Messiah Wanted or Messianic Position
Desired, résumé supplied upon request. Given the times, my new situation came as a surprise. It was only the first.

  I RETURNED to my roof and began awaiting the Messiah, a position for which I was not trained, but for which I did possess certain virtues. Some people go to pieces if they aren’t busy; I’m not one of them. I just happen to like to paint. Everything I see possesses visual interest — a structure or design that can absorb my attention. To what extent the fruit of this aesthetic observation appears in my work has always been a question of interest to me. The connection is not obvious, if, indeed, it exists. It is as if I see with my eyes and paint with my gut or whatever viscera contain those deepest feelings and responses that are not developed but just are there. The artist and sports fan share this gut response that does not permit them to surrender to “obvious” facts and events. So it was I believed in the Messiah’s imminent appearance; a people who refuse to surrender Messianic expectations after thousands of disappointing years can only survive on this deeper, gut level. Is it any wonder we make such loyal sports fans?

  On my roof, I began to await the Messiah full time with a sense of vocation that had all but disappeared from my life since arriving in Jerusalem. And why not? Forget about your zone defenses and end-zone cameras. There is no instant replay for the great event and I have a seat on the fifty-yard line of the Temple Mount and Mount of Olives!

  At half-time I left the roof and descended to the Wall to count the crowd and see whether the Messiah had wandered in without a ticket and was refraining from announcing himself for want of recognition. I would stroll among those present — some prayed, some stared, some just sat and basked in the Wall’s presence like old men sitting on wooden benches across the street from the park. Close enough for “being at the park” with its sylvan aromas but far enough away to avoid ants and poison ivy. No Messiah in any of the groups.

  I would finish my patrol by touching the Wall, my fingertips gently grazing the scoring of the stone — those random, patterned nicks from the stonemason’s hammer. Each one was the work of a single man’s single blow: personal and unique. Now the indentations were worn and smooth, but with my touch I felt the hammer’s unyielding cacophonous assault when its head met the chisel’s tail in screeching metal agony and the stone chips flew like crazed, driven snow-flakes. The Creation Moment. It encouraged me; for beginnings imply ends: births, deaths, which are all part of the grand cycle of renewal that means time will have an end when the Messiah comes and everybody lives on the sunny side of the street with doves gently singing.

  So I waited. I waited on the rooftop, and I waited by the Wall. I waited in the bus, and I waited in the grocery. I waited at my neighbor’s during the week he sat shivah, and I waited at the cemetery again thirty days later when we dedicated the gravestone. He continued saying kaddish and I continued waiting. In the frenzy of this waiting, I didn’t paint. How could I with the Redeemer coming at any moment? Just wait a minute, Mr. Messiah, until I get the green right, then I’ll remove the paint from my hands with turpentine and welcome you properly.

  Waiting as an act of faith demands expectancy. Expectancy demands attention because without attention, I would just be killing time, a low form of waiting, not the high pinnacle of expectation that places great prodding weights on the Messianic conscience to arrive already and get it over with. I tried to keep my mind on what I was doing. I waited so diligently that inadvertently I developed a new life style.

  I realized that I no longer changed underwear very frequently. Only for the Sabbath. In this I was correct. According to the Talmud, the Messiah will not arrive on the eve of Sabbath or the eve of a holiday. When everyone is rushing around trying to get ready for the coming festivities, it would be terribly inconvenient for the Messiah to pop up. The Messiah might be slow, but he’s thoughtful. So there was no problem changing underwear for the Sabbath since it was a day off for both of us.

  Although I could have spared the time during the rest of the week, it would have been like purchasing a new calendar when the end is approaching. To order one both denies and reduces one’s participation in the arrival. You might argue that it never hurts to take out a little insurance — straight-term B.V.D. — in case the Messiah doesn’t make his move and it is time that marches on instead, accompanied by its human secretive essences and gatherings of lint.

  The answer is simple. Faith is necessary to bring the Messiah, and faith, by definition, precludes looking before leaping, testing the water, and changing underwear. My underwear grew flat, tired, and gray. I itched because the body serves its earthly master as its Heavenly Master ordained. My underwear developed a palpable presence that was interesting, alarming, and unheard of in our family history. Well, not quite unheard of. To my surprise I did recall the odorific uniform. My Uncle Maxie hadn’t always changed underwear either and it was to him, a man I had never considered seriously, that my thoughts were drawn as inexorably as an irrepressible itch. An itch of faith.

  I don’t want to exaggerate; there are differences. It took my uncle, actually my great-uncle, over ninety years to learn not to change his underwear, whereas I progressed to such a sublime spiritual state in approximately one-third the time. In all fairness, I had advantages that he never had: education, an affluent and stable youth, to name two. He, for his part, was rich in talents. He could sing, dance, and juggle with professional skill.

  A short, bald man — in his younger years he was powerful, lithe, graceful, and dignified, but then, after seventy years, a rotund plumpness paraded above legs that bowed out under both the weight of the paunch and the weight of the years. He would carefully park a large two-door Plymouth in front of the house. It wasn’t so much a parking as an august arrival, an aeronautic landing. If we called to him, interrupting his measured ritual, he would smile and throw us a wave while he finished putting the car in park, engaging the hand brake, turning off the engine, and removing the ignition key. He did this with concentration and concern, as if he were following a mental checklist, the way an astronaut must before emerging from his capsule.

  When Uncle Maxie finally stepped out, you knew that Maxie was short for Maxwell. He had great bearing. Arrogant, but polite. A self-assurance and an ease that would have become a great aviator. He might have done better at Orly than Lindbergh. As it was, he had the airs without the achievement. When he entered a synagogue, the responsible dues-paying members detested him; for that little “fourflusher,” as they called him, walked the way they only dared to in dreams when the Dow went over a million. Uncle Maxie had at best only an indirect relationship with the stock market through his familial benefactors. Still, if we are all self-appointed, Uncle Maxie had a better appointment, and if we are not, then he was an impostor. Either way he wasn’t very popular with those who worked hard to earn their place and expected others to waste away in envy.

  To appreciate Uncle Maxie in those years (he changed underwear then), it was best to be a kid because Uncle Maxie could juggle eight eggs at once. Seeing is believing. Eight eggs, some white, some brown — count ‘em — never fell. For us, this Houdini was entitled to the airs he possessed. And what did he look like while juggling? Distracted merriment. Not the common touch of a buffoon, but not arrogant either. Rather an artistic dignity that is often appreciated in doctors. He enjoyed it all right. What a shame the pillars of the community couldn’t have seen him then. It would have made everything easier for everyone.

  Well, not everyone. My mother was mildly frantic during these performances, but Uncle Maxie was a great charmer. What woman could get mad at him without feeling that she was persecuting him? This juggling exhibition took place in the living room on the deep, plush gray carpet which we were constantly admonished was not some oversized doormat. On that score we could understand her hysteria. “Don’t worry, I won’t drop one,” he would assure his niece with outrageous confidence.

  “It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s the kids!” she would respond in tones of monumental exasperation. The
se were the principal, perhaps the only, tones the female line used on Maxie. She probably appreciated her uncle’s feat better than we could, for she knew just how old those hands were.

  “What’s wrong with the kids?” Uncle Maxie would ask, reflecting our feelings at the unjust accusation.

  “They’ll want to try it too!”

  Of couse we would, although at the moment, we still tumbled through the air with Uncle Maxie’s softly contoured floating eggs. All through the discussion the eggs were in the air. Tumbling, turning, soaring, floating, sailing, climbing, falling. Deftly controlled as if by suggestion from those small, well-proportioned hands. It was too much for the eye to follow. We saw only a pattern. One egg? Like trying to follow a falling leaf on a windy day when the trees seem to be raining them. His hands? Impossible without becoming hypnotized by their precise rhythmic prancings to and fro.

  “Don’t do it in the living room, kids,” he would say by way of appeasement to his niece, but this perfunctory instruction lacked all conviction and interest. What he really meant was — kids, don’t do it in the living room while I’m doing it. Uncle Maxie was not a rock-ribbed ally. In a pinch, he was not to be relied upon. We knew that he had deserted two wives, abandoning one with four little children. This predilection for hasty, unannounced departures distressed our parents and grandparents considerably more than it did us. We understood that that was part of the price one had to pay for greatness — the Benedict Arnold of Barnum and Bailey’s. Now you see him; now you don’t.