In the lead, as usual, was Morton Kelly, whose legs at times like this moved with remarkable swiftness, considering they supported twice the weight God intended. Morton’s midsection reminded Maximilian of the earth’s equator, a bloated circumference barrelling headlong through the streets toward that mystical ring of fried dough that would keep him alive until six o’clock when Mrs. Morton yelled his favourite word: supper!
Well behind him followed Maximilian in company with Duncan Sargent (“Sarge” to everybody), who lived a few doors away. The two were engaged in a contest to determine who could list the greater number of detestable things about the first day back at school.
“The smell of varnish, fresh paint … and floor wax,” said Sarge.
“The smell of wool sweaters,” said Maximilian, referring to pullovers freed from dozens of musty closets and chests. “Also Mr. Hussey’s aftershave lotion and Miss Irvine’s perfume.”
“You got it all wrong, Glick,” said Sarge. “He uses perfume; she uses aftershave. You ever take a look at what’s over her upper lip?”
They continued with the list, each new item eliciting heartfelt groans of distaste.
“My older sister started Latin today,” Sarge said. “I can tell already I’m really gonna hate Latin.”
“Who speaks Latin anyway?”
Sarge, whose father owned a pharmacy, said, “Funny you should ask. My dad does. You gotta know Latin to run a drugstore.”
“How come?”
“I dunno. So you can talk to your customers, I guess.” There was a momentary lull. “Know what depresses me?” Sarge frowned. “History. People really did boring stuff, like cutting off this king’s head and that king’s head. We got Old Stoneface Stone this year for history. She says anybody that ignores history is doomed to repeat it. I wonder what that’s supposed to mean.”
“It means if you don’t pay attention you have to take the same course all over again next year.”
Sarge shook his head woefully, as if sentence had already been passed.
“Know what depresses me?” Max said. “All those phony teachers’ smiles on opening day. You watch, tomorrow morning every single one of ’em will show up with horns and fangs.”
Sarge agreed wholeheartedly. “And covered with slimy green scales,” he added, cringing as if he were about to be brushed by one of the hideous teaching-monsters.
“All except Miss Creley,” Maximilian said.
“Who’s Miss Creley?”
“Our new math teacher. She’s really something!” Max whistled softly.
“Is she the one with the real bright purple dress?”
“Oh, you noticed, huh?”
“Noticed! You gotta be blind not to notice.”
“Know what she did?” Max asked. “She climbed up on her desk, see —” Max stopped in his tracks to demonstrate
— “and she stands there with her hands down at her sides, tight, like this, and her legs apart, like this. ‘Know what this is?’ she says. ‘It’s an isosceles triangle.’ And Frank Ianucci, who’s sitting in the front seat right in front of her desk, says, ‘Gee, Miss Creley, I thought it was a slice of pizza.’ Everybody laughs and Miss Creley says, ‘Okay, Frank, for showing off you stay half an hour after class.’ And Rosenberg puts up his hand and says, ‘Miss Creley, can I stay instead ’cause Frank’s gotta go to his grandmother’s funeral as soon as school’s over?’ So Creley gives Rosenberg a detention, too. By the time she’s finished showing us what an isosceles triangle looks like, eight guys in the class have detentions. I would’ve tried to get a detention except I gotta be at my Hebrew class sharp at four.”
“Hebrew! What’re you gonna do with Hebrew?” Sarge asked.
“Same thing as I’m gonna do with Latin. Be a shepherd. S’long. See you tomorrow, Sarge.”
Breaking ranks, Maximilian took off in the direction of Rabbi Kaminsky’s house. He carried an armload of textbooks the rabbi had prescribed a few days earlier for his bar mitzvah course. With cheder suspended during the summer months, the boy hadn’t seen much of the rabbi and he looked forward to this, his second private lesson, especially since the first had come with what Mrs. Kaminsky called “a bonus.”
Like Mrs. Blackthorn, Mrs. Kaminsky served tea whenever pupils came for private lessons in her husband’s tiny study. The ritual here, though as pleasant as at the Blackthorns’, was a far different affair. Water was heated in a silver samovar brought all the way from Mrs. Kaminsky’s childhood home in Romania. The samovar sat on a heavy silver tray, which in turn rested on an immaculate white cloth that protected the polished top of the mahogany sideboard. To Max these objects — the samovar, tray, cloth, dark sideboard — seemed to be part of each other, as if assembled and maintained not simply for tea, but to keep something alive, something that existed ages ago and thousands of miles away, something about which a boy, born and raised in a northern city in Ontario, could have only a vague comprehension.
Rabbi Kaminsky drank his tea steaming hot from a thick glass, which he held at the rim almost daintily between thumb and middle finger, his index finger cocked stylishly high. He strained the strong black tea through a lump of sugar balanced deftly on his tongue. There was fresh sponge cake and poppy- seed cookies. The conversation was animated. It seemed as though teatime in the quiet Kaminsky household was when one’s thoughts, bottled up since morning, were suddenly uncorked and permitted to pour generously across the happenings of the day: the wars, the weather, anything and everything. Bits of gentle gossip filled the spaces between world news: whose house needed painting, whose car had been defendered during a particularly unruly few minutes at the corner of King and Queen, who was threatening to take whom to court because of it.
But to Maximilian the wonderful thing about the Kaminskys was that — unlike so many people of their generation — they were as adept at the art of listening as they were at the art of talking. It seemed to Maximilian that whenever groups of adults got together for whatever reason, everyone spoke at once, whether it was friends bantering or exchanging family news bulletins, or adversaries playing King of the Castle over some controversy, usually involving the management of the synagogue. But the rabbi and his wife, seldom if ever interrupting each other, spoke in a measured way, strolling through a topic as if on a Sunday walk and stopping every few paces to listen.
One thing about the Kaminskys, however, had puzzled Maximilian. “How come the Kaminskys never had any kids?” he asked his parents, after his first private lesson.
Henry and Sarah Glick exchanged hasty glances, but neither volunteered a reply.
“How come they never had kids?” Max said, looking first to one, then the other.
Henry coughed into his napkin.
“Well,” said Sarah slowly, “they had … I mean they have… a child. A daughter —”
“They do?”
“Yes. Eat your dinner, Maxie, it’s getting cold.” “Where is she?”
“She’s away,” Sarah replied casually, shrugging her shoulders in the hope that a show of indifference would end the inquiry.
“Away? Where?”
“I don’t know, Max. I think in the States someplace.” “How come nobody ever talks about her? I didn’t see any pictures of a kid on their walls, like we have all over this place.”
“That’s because your mother and I have this hang-up, Maxie.” Henry chuckled, hoping he’d managed to sidetrack his son’s questions for the night.
“I’m serious,” Max protested.
“Yes, I know you are, Max. Much too serious. Your fish’ll be like ice in a moment. Eat.”
“You know I can’t stand fish.”
“That’s fresh whitefish, straight from Lake Superior,” said Sarah. “Caught this morning.”
“Great,” said Max. “Tell ’em to go back and catch the rest of it. All they caught was the bones. Where is Rabbi Kaminsky’s daughter and how come they never talk about her?”
“If we tell you, will you finish your fish?” ask
ed Henry. “No,” said Maximilian bluntly.
“Waste not, want not.” Henry Glick leaned across the table and forked Maximilian’s uneaten fish onto his own plate.
Not content with partial victory, the boy pressed his inquiry. “Is somebody going to tell me about Kaminsky’s daughter? Is she a Russian spy or something?”
Sarah Glick sighed with resignation. “Maxie, the reason nobody mentions Rita Kaminsky is because … Well, it’s because many years ago, before you were born, while she was at teachers’ college in Nickel City, she met this young man. He was also at teachers’ college and, uh, they got married.” She hesitated.
“What’s so terrible about that?” Max said. “You and Dad met at college and got married to each other.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t quite the same. The man Rita married… Well, he wasn’t Jewish, you see.”
“What was he?”
“Oh, God,” Sarah said in exasperation, “you really should be a district attorney when you grow up, Maxie. How you cross-examine!”
“I don’t understand,” said Max. “What was the man?”
Equally exasperated, Henry Glick blurted out, “He was purple with green spots.”
“You mean anybody who’s not Jewish is purple with green spots?”
“Exactly!” cried Henry Glick. “There are two kinds of people on this earth: Jews and people who are purple with green spots.” He turned to his wife. “Sarah, for God’s sake, what’s for dessert?”
“Fresh pineapple,” Sarah replied.
“Straight from Lake Superior, caught this morning,” said Max.
“Don’t be a smart alec, young man,” Henry said.
“Then tell me what was wrong with the man Rita Kaminsky married. Was he a Russian spy?”
“I’ve told you what was wrong: he wasn’t Jewish,” Sarah Glick said. She rose from the table. “I’ll get dessert.”
“What? You’re leaving me here alone with him?” Henry shouted at his wife.
Sarah Glick sat down again. “Maxie,” she said, looking intently into the boy’s face, “you’re a bit young to understand.”
There it was again, thought Maximilian, the on-again off-again manhood. At this particular moment it was apparently off. “I want to know,” he said.
“I repeat, Maxie, you’re a bit young, but I’ll try to explain the situation. Rita Kaminsky married a Gentile, a man not of the Jewish faith. Her parents, being very religious, very traditional, were naturally greatly upset, so upset in fact that they observed a week of mourning — shiva, it’s called in Hebrew — as if their daughter had died. There’s been no communication between the Kaminskys and Rita ever since, as far as we know. They never mention her name and we’ve learned never to ask about her. The whole subject is extremely painful to the Kaminskys, especially since Rita was an only child.”
“What did they do during shiva, tear their clothes like people did in the Bible?”
“No, Maxie. Despite their grief, Rabbi Kaminsky is not a clothes-tearer. They simply stayed indoors, draped all the mirrors in the house with sheets, said special prayers, things of that sort.”
“But she was still alive. I don’t get it.”
Henry Glick spelled his wife at this point. “Max, a great many Jews, in fact most Jews, regard intermarriage — that is, marriage between a Jew and a Gentile — as if it’s a … well, I suppose ‘sin’ is the best word. To Rabbi Kaminsky and his wife, their daughter had committed a sin, an unpardonable one at that.”
Maximilian frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. Rabbi Kaminsky told us at cheder that one of the things that makes people different from animals is that people commit sins; the other thing that makes people different is that they forgive sins.”
“There’s an old saying: To err is human, to forgive divine. But one of the things that also makes people different from animals is that we don’t always practise what we preach, not even when we are rabbis and teachers. And I guess Rabbi Kaminsky couldn’t find it in his heart to forgive his daughter. Simple as that.”
But to Maximilian it wasn’t as simple as that, not at all. “Why is intermarriage a sin? Why is it so terrible?”
Now it was Sarah Glick’s turn to take the helm. “Your dad and I aren’t necessarily saying it’s a sin, or that it’s terrible. Those are pretty strong terms.”
“Then why do most Jews think so?”
“Because, uh …” Sarah shot a look across the dinner table at her husband, a plea for emergency assistance.
“Because we feel that intermarriage weakens our traditional values, our, uh, cultural heritage. It dilutes us as a people. Yes, dilutes is a good word.” Henry Glick sat back in his chair, satisfied with his choice.
“I thought ‘dilute’ is when you add water to something. Is that what happens when you marry a Gentile, you add water to the Jews?”
“Yes,” Henry Glick replied.
“What’s the difference between how Rabbi Kaminsky feels about Rita marrying a Gentile and racial prejudice?”
Henry asked, “Who’s been talking to you about racial prejudice?”
“Our teacher, at school. What’s the difference?”
Henry took a moment to reflect. “I would say,” he said slowly, “that racial prejudice is a negative thing. I mean, its purpose is to put down a certain race. But being against inter-marriage is a positive thing. We are proud of our faith, our customs, our language. We want to see these things preserved, you see. Otherwise, we Jews are liable to disappear off the face of the earth.” Max’s father paused to let this sink in. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Max?”
“If I ever marry a Gentile, will you go into mourning as if I was dead?”
“You refuse to eat broiled whitefish once more and I may treat you as if you’re dead, young man,” said Sarah Glick. She rose from the table again, this time with an air of determination. Nothing was going to stop her from serving dessert. At the same time Henry Glick reached for the evening paper, which he liked to read over coffee and a cigarette, despite the fact that he knew his wife eyed every puff of smoke with hostility as it curled upward into the chandelier and dissipated among the crystal teardrops.
Maximilian understood these signs. They meant that the conversation had come to an end, at least for the time being. There was a hint of exhaustion in the way his father settled back in his armchair, the upper part of him hidden now behind the open newspaper. His mother’s shoulders seemed to sag a little, too, and she took a deep breath as she made her way through the swinging door into the kitchen to fetch the coffee pot.
In the boy’s mind there were still questions, and questions within questions, simmering like Bryna Glick’s famous all-day spaghetti sauce. But the answers would clearly not come this night. One day soon, Maximilian told himself, he would bring up the matter again with his mother and father. Better still, he would wait for the right moment and ask Rabbi Kaminsky himself. None of the answers he’d received over dinner had laid his curiosity to rest. “The timid cannot learn, the impatient cannot teach.” Yes, he would wait for the right moment and he would ask Rabbi Kaminsky himself.
The boy glanced at his wristwatch. Four o’clock. He was right on time. He knocked on the front door. There was no answer. He knocked again, this time a bit louder. From inside he could hear voices. Once more he knocked, rapping the door sharply. Still no reply. Setting his books down on the stoop, he tried the door. It was unlocked. Hesitantly he opened it.
“Oh, Max, it’s you, dear.”
To his astonishment the person greeting him was Bryna Glick. Behind her were Sarah, Augustus, Henry. In fact, the boy realized instantly that the Kaminsky house was filled with people. It seemed that just about the entire Steelton Jewish community was gathered in the house for some reason. Then he caught sight of Mrs. Kaminsky, seated on the chesterfield in the living room, between friends who held her hands, rubbing them gently, consoling her. The old woman rocked to and fro and from side to side, eyes half-closed, mouth slack. In the hall
way, a large mirror had been draped with a sheet, as had another mirror over the sideboard in the dining room. “What’s wrong, did Rita Kaminsky die again?” Max said to his grandmother.
Stunned by the question, Bryna Glick turned to her daughter-in-law. “What on earth is he talking about, Sarah?”
“It’s all right, Mother,” Sarah replied. She took her son’s hand and led him toward the door. “Maxie, there will be no lesson today —” Sarah Glick’s voice broke. She cleared her throat, but for a moment or two the words would not come. Her eyes, dry up to this point, became a blur behind tears.
“It’s Rabbi Kaminsky, isn’t it?” Max said.
Sarah nodded.
“He’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“A bus, the one that takes passengers to the airport … He was crossing the street against a red light —”
From the living room Mrs. Kaminsky’s voice was heard for the first time. “I told him a million times, a million times, never cross when a light’s red. He wouldn’t listen.”
Maximilian recalled the rabbi’s confident stride, more like a march most of the time, heels smacking the sidewalk, the sharp creases of his trousers cutting a path for him through the strongest wind.
“Is it okay if I stay?” asked Max.
“No, Maxie, there are no other children here. I think it’s best if you go on home. We’ll be along soon.”
“But —”
“Maxie, dear,” Sarah cut in firmly, “this is not the time or the place for children.”
“I’ll never see him again, will I?”
“No, Maxie. But tomorrow, you can come to the station.” There being no Jewish cemetery in Steelton or Nickel City, after the funeral it was necessary to transport the rabbi’s remains to Toronto.
On the following afternoon the platform at the railway station, usually bare except for a few railway employees and a handful of passengers bound for Toronto on the four-ten, was crowded. Everyone in the Jewish community, including several mothers with babes in arms, had turned up at the station to bid farewell to Rabbi Kaminsky. His coffin had been loaded carefully into a freight car earlier and now Mrs. Kaminsky, with two of her closest friends along for company, was boarding a passenger car for the sad voyage.
The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick Page 6
