Big League Dreams (Small Worlds)

by Allen Hoffman

  The rebbe looked at her as if she, too, had gone mad.

  “Have you been getting enough sleep?” he asked.

  “Yes, why?”

  “It’s the middle of the night. Those are breakfast foods,” he explained.

  Shayna Basya didn’t know quite what to say.

  “I was hoping the night was over,” she said simply.

  He looked at her closely. “So was I, but it is not. It has only begun. But that is not why you came in.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I came to ask you something I meant to ask the other night when you were talking about Krimsk. Yaakov Moshe, I want you to send for our daughter Rachel Leah.”

  The rebbe didn’t answer, but he did sit up as if he felt some slight relief to his agony. This encouraged the rebbetzin.

  “Heaven knows what is happening in that Bolshevik land. She must come here,” the rebbetzin announced.

  “No, she cannot come here now.”

  “Why not?”

  “We buried him in the afternoon. Now our children must wait for the Messiah with all the others.”

  “I am not interested in the Messiah, Yaakov Moshe, I am interested in my daughter.”

  “That will delay his coming.”

  “Write her and tell her of the Messiah,” Shayna Basya suggested.

  The rebbe didn’t answer, but he appeared to be weighing the idea.

  “Yes, the Messiah,” he repeated.

  “Just write. Is that asking too much?” the rebbetzin demanded.

  “There is nothing to ask,” the rebbe said definitively.

  “But you will write?” she implored.

  “It is hard to know,” he said sadly, but not without feeling.

  The rebbetzin left, closing the door behind her.

  Yaakov Moshe, much to his surprise, felt somewhat better.

  “There is nothing to ask,” the rebbe repeated to himself. After all, the only question worth asking was the color of the river, and now the rebbe did not need to ask Boruch Levi the color of the mighty Mississippi. It was red, blood red, but not miraculously so as in the first plague. No, the taskmaster had slain Moses, and the river flowed with the redeemer’s blood. Red with blood; there was nothing to ask. The exile would be long and hard. Blood had been spilled. Idolatry and sexual lewdness could not be avoided either. All must wait, and all must suffer.

  The rebbe was mystified that his head felt better. The river was blood red, but something was happening in the city that was redemptive, and in his agony, that gave him courage. He tried with all his powers to concentrate on what that might be, but all he could discover was a voice faintly calling in the night. He remained mystified. Was it the lonely Shekinah? He could not discern that it was the voice of Barasch calling the name of his legal wife. The only thing that the rebbe could discern was the color of the Great Indian River—murderously blood red.

  THE LETTER

  FOR YEARS THE REBBETZIN DUTIFULLY PLACED POSTUM and Aunt Jemima pancakes before the rebbe at the appropriate time, in the morning, and Yaakov Moshe dutifully consumed them. After breakfast the rebbetzin placed pen and paper on the rebbe’s desk; but even though he spent long hours alone in his study, the rebbe never touched them. When she encouraged him to write to their daughter Rachel Leah in Russia, he would nod agreeably and explain, “When the time is right.”

  There were moments when the rebbetzin thought the time might be right. In 1923, after Warren Harding died and Silent Cal Coolidge entered the White House, the rebbetzin noticed that the pen and paper had been used. But one morning the rebbe pointed with disgust at a campaign picture in the newspaper of Calvin Coolidge posing in an Indian warbonnet. In the background, his chauffeur and limousine waited to whisk him away. “An impostor, a fake,” the rebbe declared angrily and stalked into his study. The next morning Shayna Basya again found the writing materials untouched.

  They remained that way until 1927, when Charles A. Lindbergh made his historic solo flight across the Atlantic. “The Spirit of St. Louis,” the rebbe mused conspiratorily, savoring the name of the heroic aviator’s crafts. “Our son-in-law Hershel Shwartzman could fly it back here for him,” he suggested, picking up the pen. The rebbetzin didn’t respond. As far as she knew, Grisha couldn’t pilot a plane. Even if he could, Lindbergh had flown solo; there wasn’t any room in the “Spirit of St. Louis” for Rachel Leah. It made no difference, however, for the rebbe suddenly ceased writing when the newspaper worshipfully referred to Lindbergh as the “Lone Eagle.” “A trayf bird, grasping impurity,” he pronounced, sadly shaking his head. Despairing of his ever writing to their daughter, Shayna Basya stopped providing him with pen and paper.

  In 1936 Reb Zelig fell ill and died. On a steamy summer day, they buried him next to Matti Sternweiss. Upon returning from the cemetery, the rebbetzin opened the icebox for a cool drink.

  “Would you like something?”

  “Yes,” the rebbe answered, sweat covering his smooth forehead with an unbroken watery film as if he had just surfaced from a deep pool.

  “What?” she asked.

  “A pen and paper,” he demanded.

  “Whatever for?” she asked.

  “If I don’t write now, the letter won’t arrive before Rosh Hashanah, the New Year,” he explained matter-of-factly.

  The rebbetzin followed him into the study and presented him with pen and paper. “Thank you,” he said, and began writing at once.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was sipping a cool glass of water at the kitchen table when the rebbe returned with the letter.

  “That was quick,” she commented.

  “Sixteen years, and you call it quick,” the rebbe said, slightly bemused.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked.

  “A beer, please.”

  She looked up in surprise. The rebbe had never shown any taste for the beverage.

  “Yes, Prohibition is over,” he stated.

  She placed the cool bottle on the table; at once a fine mist shrouded its dark surface. She pushed the letter away so it wouldn’t get wet.

  “Thank you,” he said, but she didn’t answer.

  She was staring down at the envelope addressed to her son-in-law. Prohibition had ended in St. Louis. The rebbetzin wondered how her daughter and son-in-law were welcoming Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, in Moscow in 1936.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALLEN HOFFMAN, award-winning author of the novel Small Worlds and of a novella and short stories, was born in St. Louis and received his B.A. in American History from Harvard University. He studied the Talmud in yeshivas in New York and Jerusalem, and has taught in New York City schools. He and his wife and four children now live in Jerusalem. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Bar-Ilan University.

  We hope you enjoyed this book from Abbeville Press. To write to the author or see our other titles, click here. (This link will open your device’s web browser.)

  Acclaim for Small Worlds by Allen Hoffman

  “Vividly chronicles the extraordinary daily lives of the citizens of Krimsk . . . [Mr. Hoffman’s] sympathetic presentation of these characters reveals much about the tension between human desire and belief, about the complexities of conscience and commitment.”

  —NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

  “Allen Hoffman tells a great story. Krimsk...is a wild place, reminiscent of nothing so much as a religiously intense version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s imaginary village of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

  —COMMENTARY

  “A welcome surprise. Hoffman has a distinctive voice characterized by dry wit and ironic asides....His insight into human nature invests this story with charm and wisdom.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “Every few years readers devoted to Jewish literature... can lift their eyes from the page and whisper, ‘This is it. This I will savor.’ Such is the case with Small Worlds.”

  —JERUSALEM POST

  “Hoffman deftly contrasts the religious
atmosphere of the shtetl with the ominous air of Russia at large.”

  —ST. LOUIS POST DISPATCH

  “There’s magic in Hoffman’s first novel.... It’s much in the tradition of

  Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer, but with a contemporary edge.

  Hoffman is planning a series; it should be a good one. “

  —DETROIT FREE PRESS

  Editor: Sally Arteseros

  Designer: Celia Fuller

  Production Editor: Abigail Asher

  Production Manager: Becky Boutch

  Copyright © 1997 Allen Hoffman. All rights reserved under inter-national copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any infor-mation storage and retrieval system, without permission in writ-ing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Abbeville Press, 137 Varick Street, New York, N.Y. 10013. The text of this book was set in Minion and Chevalier. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  FIRST E-BOOK EDITION: MAY 2011

  eISBN : 978-0-789-26005-5

  The print edition of this book is cataloged as follows:

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

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