Big League Dreams (Small Worlds)

by Allen Hoffman

  Barasch had hoped that America could succeed where Krimsk had failed. Ever since the early morning telephone call telling them of Matti’s murder, Barasch had been reliving the nightmare of Faigie’s return visit to his hut in the Soffers’ factory yard. After three years’ absence, she appeared one summer’s night in his doorway right after he had gone to bed. Barasch believed that he was dreaming as usual.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “Faigie?” he whispered incredulously.

  “Yes, may I come in?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he answered and started to get up.

  “No, don’t get out of bed,” she said.

  He pushed back the cover so that she could join him, but instead she settled herself into the worn easy chair at the head of the table.

  “Barasch, my life is in your hands,” she said.

  “I love you. Only you,” he whispered hoarsely, feeling all the desires of his three celibate years descending upon him.

  “Then you will do what I say,” she responded.

  “Yes, yes. Whatever you say.”

  He started to rise.

  “No, stay where you are. I’ll only be a minute,” she protested.

  “Only a minute,” he agreed, asking no more of his goddess.

  “You must leave Krimsk,” she stated.

  Her voice was not sharp; indeed, it was delicate and soft, but definite, as if she had planned her words very carefully.

  “We are leaving?”

  “No, you are leaving. You must go.”

  “No,” he said. “I can’t leave you.”

  “You must. You know you must.”

  “Why?” he asked in simple innocence.

  “You don’t know why?”

  “No,” he answered in tremulous fear.

  “The baby looks like you.”

  “Moses?” he asked. “Like me?”

  Although he had thought the child might be his, he had always thought of the baby as hers, the child of the divine Faigie.

  “You must leave,” she repeated.

  “Where will I go? What will I do?” he asked in total consternation, like a child who is asked to perform a feat far beyond his juvenile abilities.

  “You will marry Malka and go to America,” she said simply, as if she were asking him to pass the salt.

  “No,” he begged plaintively. “I must be near you. Only you.”

  “I cannot leave my marital bed,” she declared.

  “No,” he insisted with spirit, refusing to believe that his dream of Faigie’s return had come true—but as a nightmare.

  “If you are not married by the Sabbath and on your way by the end of the month, I shall be dead,” she stated with unmistakable certainty.

  She stood up.

  “Do you understand?” she asked.

  “How can I?”

  “You must live, Barasch,” she pleaded.

  “Faigie, Faigie,” he moaned.

  Barasch took his bride Malka into exile far from his beloved. Faithful in an alien land, he accepted his lost love’s decree that he must live. In this epic struggle, he effected the miraculous metamorphosis that fascinated, delighted, and filled Krimsk with an unbounded pride in Barasch, themselves, and their new country. A country where, if gold did not literally lie in the streets, it wasn’t too far from the truth, for the old scrap metal, bottles, rags, and paper that did lie in the streets need only be dragged into Malka’s junkyard to be converted into riches. Riches that were real and could purchase fine shirts, elegant cuff links, shiny shoes, spanking clean spats, silk ties that even a regal monarch might envy.

  But such riches could not satisfy Barasch, for he had a hunger that could not be sated by gold in the streets. He dreamed of gold in the hair, of his divine Faigie. Through Matti’s love for Miss Penny Pinkham, Barasch came to believe that in America such a dream could come true. But the telephone had rung, and that, too, had ended in a nightmare, even worse than the original, for it meant the death of dreams. How could a cripple live without a dream? He descended into the yard to join the other maimed junk, bent, sprung, and useless, but Malka, used to turning junk into gold, had plucked him mercilessly from the mountains of rust and worn rubber, stuffed him into her truck, and brought him to the cemetery gates.

  There he heard the rebbe’s amazing words. He heard that he was correct to mourn, but also that he was correct to dream. Matti had been a pilot who was courageously flying into the future. Although Barasch had failed in Krimsk and Matti had failed in St. Louis, one day—some day—a new pilot would surely succeed. And so golden Faigie was right: he must live. Although that commandment seemed so harsh, he must try.

  Malka didn’t notice, but as the rebbe spoke, little by little Barasch’s bent head lifted off his chest. By the grave, Malka’s eyes were dry, but Barasch was weeping. The tears flowed in tragic dignity. On the way out of the cemetery, Malka noticed that Barasch dusted his jacket and straightened his collar.

  Boruch Levi had been anxious when the procession arrived at the cemetery gates, but when the rebbe asked to be lifted to the roof of his car, he had responded with alacrity, for in that commandment he heard all the old authority and certainty of the Krimsker Rebbe. Indeed, it reminded him of the rebbe ordering the benches to be overturned on that final Tisha B’Av in Krimsk. The communal mourning experience in St. Louis could only be compared to the magical evening prayer in Krimsk that followed the rebbe’s jumping on his table with the little idiot boy, Itzik Dribble.

  As they followed the coffin onto the cemetery grounds, Boruch Levi felt an unexpected surge of pride in his noble rabbi, the holy Krimsker Rebbe, who had worked the miracle of mourning at the largest Jewish funeral in the city’s history. Boruch Levi almost luxuriated in that sense of community and pride that radiated from Matti’s coffin. Krimsk and St. Louis had never seemed closer; for the first time they seemed to inhabit the same world. The blocky Model T Ford even looked like the rebbe’s dark, ugly table in Krimsk. Matti lay dead, but even in failure, the rebbe had succeeded. Let these modern Jews hear a real rabbi! It would do them a world of good. His advice about “forgetting the fancy talk” spoke to the depths of the junkman’s soul. The rebbe’s words that others would succeed where Matti had failed made poor Matti’s death seem less tragic. It was, after all, part of a process that was certain to succeed.

  Boruch Levi had arrived at the cemetery mourning the world and himself. He had felt threatened by an all-encompassing chaos: Matti, an irrevocable failure; the rebbe, a useless artifact; and the police, murderers. The other night Matti himself had not quite understood what the rebbe meant by calling the police murderers. Poor Matti never did receive the “good news” that Boruch Levi had to deliver. It was just as well, since the good news wasn’t very good at all. Matti had won a fortune and lost his life. Boruch Levi wasn’t sure what his relationship with the chief and Doheen would be, but some of the boiling anger had subsided. When the rebbe said that Moses had struggled with the overseer and lost, Boruch Levi realized that they were all involved in some grand drama beyond anyone’s comprehension—except for the rebbe’s, but even he had his limits: he could not control events and he understood them fully only after the fact. If America was Egypt, well, then everyone was performing a role beyond himself, doing things he had to do. It was all very confusing and impersonal. Why, the chief and Doheen had never even met Matti. Since someone would surely succeed where Matti had failed, it wasn’t as if anything so final had occurred. But poor Matti was dead. That was final enough.

  When Boruch Levi had called Isidore Weinbach, Isidore was deeply saddened at the tragic news, but he was also aware that the funeral would spare him his annual necessity and embarrassment, the memorial tea party for his late father. His wife Polly didn’t welcome his Krimsker brethren into their elegant mansion, and the Krimsker community refused to eat anything in his nonkosher house. Since he shared both attitudes, he didn’t know who offended him more. The only one who emerged from the affair
with any honor was his late father, who had had the decency to die in the warm summer weather when one could invite guests for a garden party, or in this case a memorial gathering, absurd as it was. Isidore encouraged the idea of a great communal funeral, since that would completely obviate any need for his hosting Krimsk to little cucumber sandwiches in his rose garden. He was even willing to foot the bill. Yitzhak, now Isidore Weinbach, was the wealthiest Krimsker in the world. Unlike Boruch Levi and several other “Yiddish millionaires”—what do you mean, he’s not a millionaire? He’s got twenty thousand dollars in the bank!—Isidore Weinbach was worth over five million dollars.

  A great Jewish communal event offered the added reward of diluting any honor accorded to the Krimsker Rebbe. Isidore Weinbach had never forgiven the rebbe for his affront on that final Tisha B’Av in Krimsk, when he had refused to honor his daughter Rachel Leah’s engagement to the then Yitzhak Weinbach. The rebbe’s accusation that the matches produced in Weinbach’s match factory had been responsible for burning the Torah never made much sense. The loss of Rachel Leah could be tolerated easily; Yitzhak hardly knew her, although if the truth be told, there was something wistfully ethereal about her that in her absence proved haunting. But rejection as a son-in-law was an unforgivable offense to the then-young industrialist’s pride.

  Isidore, too, had left for America, with the ruffian Boruch Levi as his traveling companion and bodyguard, and as they say in America, “He had showed them,” turning his original investment into a considerable fortune, marrying into an old Reform Jewish family. His wife Miriam-Mary-Polly Friedberg had built him one of the city’s most palatial homes.

  The home was the problem: the goyim and the Reform Jews didn’t consider it his, whereas all of Krimsk did so, in a very real sense; hardly anyone visited him in his own home. Only the boorish Boruch Levi, who for all his undisguised contempt for Polly, the trayf kitchen, and the botanically unique rose bushes (Polly had been assured that only the Mellons and Rockefellers had anything comparable) did visit, and he came precisely because it was his, Isidore Weinbach’s, home, and that was where Isidore was to be found. Isidore didn’t really like Boruch Levi, but with no brothers and few disinterested friends (the idea of loyalty among them was laughable), he had come to value the penitent junkman’s blind loyalty and sincere selfless concern for his well-being. Who offered him anything like that, even if it came from Krimsk along with the rebbe’s insult?

  The American Reform rabbis certainly didn’t show him any respect. After all, Isidore spoke with a Yiddish accent, lacked any formal education, and above all, maintained the incurably obsolete custom of his father’s yahrzeit, the memorial reception. The last distressed his wife Polly, and Isidore wondered whether the other two deficiencies might not also, but he supposed that the memorial service was the only one that she believed she could do something about. Or imagined she could, because Isidore, so compliant to almost all her wishes (he had asked her not to serve ham on the Sabbath) and still so very susceptible to her considerable American charms, steadfastly refused to give it up. At least once a year Krimsk visited him at his home, if not in it, and they had known his father, may he rest in peace.

  Isidore had the wisdom to know that any further renunciation of himself wouldn’t help his standing in Polly’s world. The real problem would arise when Isidore’s daughter asked him to stop. It would be more difficult to explain to her than to her mother that his facility for making money—upon which their world was based—was just as much a part of Krimsk as the memorial service for his father. Polly believed that her husband was a cosmopolitan mercantilist whom fate had dropped into the primitive cultural embarrassment called Eastern Europe. He knew better; the rag-filled Krimsk marketplace with its unshod horses and malnourished cows had spawned him.

  Since Isidore was already obligated to say the mourner’s prayer for his father this Sunday, Boruch Levi decided that he should do so at graveside for Matti. Isidore welcomed the suggestion insofar as he could thus slight the rebbe and honor the great Reform rabbi, Morgenstern, through Krimsk itself. It seemed the perfect investment; he couldn’t lose.

  Things had gone very well. Everyone had turned out for the event. The entire city—the mayor, the police chief, and all the newspaper people—gathered in full force. Isidore was concerned that he would be photographed and appear in the newspapers saying the memorial kaddish. It was one thing to represent Krimsk in St. Louis. It was quite another to be Krimsk! He considered having Boruch Levi request that out of respect no photographs be taken in the cemetery proper. That was his only concern as they arrived at the cemetery gates. If the Krimsker Rebbe wanted to speak there, well, that was his error, because there wasn’t a podium. He wouldn’t even be seen, much less heard.

  Isidore Weinbach had been horrified when the rebbe asked to be hoisted onto the automobile roof. When the rebbe proceeded to plant his shoe on Isidore Weinbach’s shoulder as if it were a stone or ladder, his fears and embarrassment increased. Once again, just as he had done so publicly in Krimsk, the rebbe seemed to be walking all over him. He wanted to run and hide, but the crowd was as thick as a carpet, and there was no room to move. A captive, he had to listen to the rebbe. When the rebbe finished, Isidore-Yitzhak accepted the rebbe’s command to mourn for himself. Isidore was a pilot trying to guide Krimsk into Polly’s world. He was on a lonely mission that could not succeed on its first run, but it was, as the rebbe suggested, an essential, noble one that would some day succeed. But what was Isidore-Yitzhak to do now? And where was he to mourn for himself, in the house or in the garden? Or maybe somewhere else altogether? In such confusion he had turned to the rebbe and asked, “What do we do now?” and had received the rebbe’s answer that they had no choice but to bury Matti. Isidore accepted that, too. As he followed the coffin to the freshly dug grave, he was determined to intone the mourner’s kaddish loud and clear in the hope that he would command the attention and respect of the newspaper photographers.

  Proudly erect, even with the imprint of the rebbe’s shoe on his shoulder—perhaps because of the imprint of the rebbe’s sole—he had stepped forward to begin when he felt a gentle but firm hand on his elbow and turned to find Reb Zelig restraining him.

  “It’s only fair,” the white-bearded patriarch admonished gently, “that if I say kaddish for pharaoh the tsar, I say it for Moses, too. After all, I killed them both.”

  Before Isidore could begin to comprehend his words, much less respond, the noble white-bearded sexton had begun to intone the memorial chant with a stentorian clarity, and the cameras clicked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  MANY PAUSED RESPECTFULLY BY THE GRAVE, BUT eventually everyone exited through the great cemetery gates. The reporters and news photographers left first. They drove away quickly, but the mourners whom they had deserted understood; after all, they were fleeing the cemetery for another deadline. The many mourners drove back slowly through the green county. At first the riotous green of summer foliage seemed an inappropriate contrast to their image of Matti’s raw grave, but by the time they reached the city, they had forgiven the trees and grass their intemperate outburst of life and had come to accept that this, too, was the way of the world.

  Returning to their various worlds, they resumed lives they had left earlier in the morning. But they remained mourners all that day, quietly harboring their hearts’ sharp pain amid the casual Sunday world around them. No one went to the ballpark because no one felt like it, which was just as well. The St. Louis Browns played with no signs of life and lost both games of the doubleheader. Ty Cobb, wrapped in tape like a mummified Tiger, exacted his revenge by burying Matti’s former teammates with three home runs. Immediately after the final out, the Browns descended into the tomb of the speakeasy below the grill to hide and to drown their sorrows. By the time they emerged, darkness had descended mercifully onto the world, and they could go home in anonymous privacy. The darkness that shrouded the ballpark also blanketed the cemetery, covering the gaping brown wou
nd of Matti’s grave. But most of all, the darkness eased the mourners’ agony. The earth had turned, the sun had set, and this was no longer the unrelenting day in which they had buried Matti.

  Boruch Levi paused outside his house in the enveloping darkness. After the crowds and ceremonies of mourning, it was good to be alone momentarily in the night. But there was still some unfinished business. As he stepped off the curb onto the hot tar, Boruch Levi felt the warmth of the day leaking slowly into the night. No, he thought, the murderer was only the man with the gun or the one who hired him. As for the rest of us, well, only the rebbe knows.

  Boruch Levi saw that the chief’s salon and dining room were dark. Nevertheless he knocked on the chief ’s door.

  “The chief had a long, hard day. That hot sun tired him out,” explained Doheen, who met Boruch Levi with a somber look appropriate for a mourner, but Boruch Levi recognized in it the inspector’s natural mien. The man really should have been an undertaker. He led Boruch Levi into the kitchen. On the table was a heavy paper bag. It contained something bulky and unrestrained, pushing indiscriminately against the sides. Boruch Levi felt as if he were identifying the corporeal remains of Matti Sternweiss. And all because the chief and Doheen had believed Boruch Levi.