The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick

by Morley Torgov

  In the bleachers Morris Moskover declares, “The boy’s a natural wonder and that’s all there is to it!” Two seats away, Amos Kerkorian is busy taking credit for having supplied groceries to the Boy Wonder all these years. Sarah and Henry Glick stand and take a bow. Now the spotlight shifts from them to Augustus and Bryna Glick and they, too, stand and take a bow, Augustus waving grandly like a monarch, Bryna blowing kisses like an opera star.

  Back again to Ring One. The court clerk is still reading the same charge. “And furthermore, Your Honour, this man is charged with committing treason by betraying a sacred confidence.”

  Suddenly the audience is hushed. Only the voice of the clerk is heard, droning on with the list of charges. “And furthermore, the accused is said to have become intoxicated in public.”

  “Do you have a lawyer?” Judge Glick asks, glaring down from the bench at the miserable accused.

  “I am my own lawyer,” replies the accused man.

  “Then you are a fool twice, for a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a lawyer and a fool for a client. Guilty as charged!”

  The man in the prisoner’s dock begins to protest. “But you can’t condemn me, Your Honour. You haven’t heard my defence. You have not given me the fair trial to which every man is entitled.”

  The ringmaster calls out, “Maximilian, be fair, be just. Maximilian, you must do what is right.”

  “Guilty!” declares Maximilian Glick, accentuating this verdict by pounding his gavel.

  The poor man in the dock cries out, “Justice! Mercy! It was only a mistake. To err is human, Your Honour.”

  “Maximilian, forgive!” orders the ringmaster.

  But something is going wrong in the three rings.

  In Ring One, Judge Glick has put on his black hat, which means he is about to pronounce a very severe sentence upon the unhappy man who stands before the bench in shackles. Will it be death?

  In Ring Two, there are now hundreds of grand pianos all playing Mozart’s Sonata No. 3 in different keys and the music sounds as though it was composed at a convention of devils and madmen.

  In Ring Three, the chanting boy in the prayer shawl and skullcap seems to have gone haywire, like a computer full of short-circuits. “From the tribe of Blatherblather, 89,487,793… from the tribe of Mumbojumbo, 119,748,482.” The numbers become more and more preposterous.

  “What is happening?” the ringmaster asks himself. He is losing control of the circus. In each ring the star has gotten out of hand, the act has gone crazy. The audience is becoming uneasy, fearful. They are beginning to eye the exits.

  Frowning, the ringmaster consults his program. No, this was definitely not on the schedule. He summons his assistant and whispers, “Tell Maximilian Glick he is not playing the game, not sticking to the contract. Tell him he’ll never work in this circus or any other circus again unless —”

  But it’s too late.

  In Ring One, Case No. 22 has just been disposed of. The prisoner has been sentenced: banishment for life outside the Gates of the World. The guards, two burly men who resemble furniture movers, are stripping the accused man of his uniform: a black hat, black frock coat, black shoes. The man is forced to put on a clown’s costume, constructed of patches of cloth containing every colour known to man, complete with matching hat and shoes. “Take him away!” orders the judge.

  In shame, the new clown is led away to his banishment.

  The judge smiles with satisfaction.

  Sputtering angrily, the ringmaster shouts, “No! No! This was not called for. This was not expected, Maximilian. You must not do the unexpected. It is simply out of the question.”

  “Call the next case,” the judge says, ignoring the furious ringmaster.

  “Case No. 23.” The court clerk, also satisfied with the way things are going, smiles at the judge. The court clerk is a girl. She is about twelve or thirteen, a bit tall for her age but with excellent posture, a kind of elegance despite her youth. Her resemblance to Celia Brzjinski is remarkable.

  By now the ringmaster is beside himself with rage. He has lost control of the three-ring circus. In one of the rings a tail is wagging a dog, a tree is shaking the wind, a birthday cake is suspended in mid-air, upside-down, with countless candles burning, their flames shooting downward like rocket trails. “Impossible! Impossible!” the ringmaster cries.

  “Nothing is impossible,” Maximilian Glick cries back.

  “Impossible!” This time it was the voice of Henry Glick.

  “I must have forgotten to set the alarm last night. Wake up, Maxie. It’s a quarter past eight. We’ve all slept in. Hurry, or you’ll be late for school.”

  With the bone-weariness of a young man who had just spent an entire night performing all three acts in a three-ring circus, Maximilian got slowly out of bed and raised his window blind. Though it was the first day of March, he had expected to see the grey overcast sky of a typical February morning, for February had a way of locking Steelton in its grip, sometimes holding it there until well into April.

  To the boy’s astonishment, the sun was shining in a cloudless sky. On the eaves of the old house icicles were dripping their way into extinction. Except for the snow on the ground, he could have sworn it was a day in April.

  “Maxie, it’s late.” Henry Glick was calling up to him again. “Are you out of bed? Maxie?”

  “I’m up, I’m up,” the boy called back.

  Maximilian stared at the sky and the sun again. Something told him this was going to be a strange day. An unusual day. A day full of the unexpected.

  Sixteen

  Through the only window in his living room, Rabbi Teitelman, too, saw that March had arrived in its own way, warm and sunny, with seemingly no ties whatever to the heartless month just ended.

  Looking down into the yard behind the apartment building, he saw another sight that was unexpected. His landlady, Mrs. MacWatters, was feverishly engaged in what appeared to be early spring cleaning.

  Normally a gentle person who spoke with a soft Scottish brogue, Mrs. MacWatters was noisily and vigorously beating several small rugs, shaking a blanket until it flapped and slapped, punching a large pillow as if it were a sparring partner and she were going for a knockout in the first round. Amused by the sight of such violence, all done in the name of good housekeeping, the Lubavitcher rabbi opened his window. “Good morning, Mrs. MacWatters,” he called down.

  Mrs. MacWatters gave the pillow a moment’s respite from her punishing blows. “Good morning, Rabbi,” she responded cheerfully. “It’s a beautiful morning. You must have said some special prayers for good weather.”

  The rabbi laughed. “I’ve been praying for decent weather since last November.”

  “Sometimes it takes the dear Lord a bit longer to hear prayers from Steelton. You have to say them quickly or they freeze before they reach His ears, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that,” admitted Rabbi Teitelman. “Thank you for the tip.”

  “I’ll give you another tip, Rabbi,” said Mrs. MacWatters in her Scottish brogue. “If you intend to get your share of this sunshine you’d better get it quickly. One never knows what the next hour will bring in this part of the country.”

  “Good idea,” said the rabbi. “But first, I’m going to do a little spring cleaning, too.”

  Rabbi Teitelman went to his desk, checked his daily dairy and saw that he had no appointments until mid-afternoon. Perfect. That would give him an opportunity to follow his landlady’s lead.

  Covering his slight frame in an oversized flannel bathrobe, he went into the backyard where he proceeded to hang up on the clothesline his long frock coat, his black suit including jacket, pants and vest, as well as several other garments that needed daylight and fresh air after months of confinement in his closet. To be certain they were secure in the event of a sudden stiff breeze, he buttoned the coat, jacket and vest and checked the hangers carefully. With the aid of two stout clothes pegs he fastened his wide-brimmed black hat to the l
ine. A pull at the brim of the hat, a tug at the hem of the jacket, satisfied him that all was in order and he retired to his small apartment.

  From his bookshelf he withdrew an old leather-bound book, sat himself in his rocking chair and began to study the commentaries for the Torah portion he was to read at the next Sabbath morning service.

  Through the window, which he had left open, an unseasonably balmy breeze drifted into the room. It ruffled the thin pages of the text, tumbling the words gently and rolling them into a blurry ball. In a moment the young rabbi’s head drooped, his red beard fanned out across his chest and he was fast asleep.

  He hadn’t intended to sleep at all, for there was plenty of work to do. The Torah portion had to be studied, a sermon had to be written, there were test papers to be marked in time for the cheder class later that day. And most troubling of all, Maximilian Glick was due at four for another bar mitzvah lesson. It would be the first meeting between rabbi and pupil since the debacle at Maximilian’s home.

  Over and over again, since that event, Maximilian’s words had echoed in the rabbi’s ears. “You’re not my friend.” Hourly, with the regularity of the clock atop the town hall, Rabbi Teitelman had berated himself for what had happened and pondered various ways to restore his relationship with Maximilian. Should he have a long talk with the Glicks? Should he have a long talk with Maximilian? He had already had several long talks with God, but these gave him little comfort and no solutions. What to do?

  In the meantime, his nights had been restless. And so now, seated in his rocking chair, with the heavy volume lying open across his lap, he slumbered, his cares nudged into the background by a steady rhythmic snore.

  But not for long.

  Something, probably a particularly loud snore, acted as an alarm, jolting the rabbi awake. He glanced toward the open window where the thin curtains flailed the air like angry tentacles, fanned by a storm that was supposed to bypass Steelton, but apparently changed its mind at the last moment. “Oh my God!” the rabbi whispered. Still in his bathrobe, he dashed down a flight of stairs to fetch his garments.

  But the hat, the pants, the vest, the frock coat — gone, each and every one of them.

  Feeling ridiculous in his bathrobe and slippers, the rabbi knocked frantically on Mrs. MacWatters’ door. Had she seen what had become of his clothes, hung out in the yard? No.

  Within moments the landlady was on the telephone to the police.

  Moments after that, a reporter from the Steelton Daily Star, assigned to cover police headquarters, caught the scent of the story and was on the phone to his city editor. “Joe,” said the reporter to his boss, “you’re always complaining that I don’t come up with unusual human-interest stuff. Have I got a story for you!”

  The afternoon edition of the Star carried the tale of the rabbi’s missing wardrobe on the front page, dead centre and, by dinnertime, on several thousand television screens in Steelton, there was Mrs. MacWatters in her Sunday going-to- church coat, green cloth with a genuine fox collar, pointing to the clothesline in the backyard, explaining to reporters in her Highland accent her theory as to how precisely the clothes had disappeared. “Anything could have happened, and did,” said Mrs. MacWatters.

  With this explanation the reporters would have to be satisfied, for the “hero” of the story — the rabbi himself — declined to be interviewed. After cancelling his appointments for the day, the rabbi agreed that he would see a police inspector, but no one else.

  At the bakery next morning, Cal Irwin and his cronies jokingly accused each other of the theft. Irwin pointed to Doc Larue, the optometrist, who sat three stools away in a white cotton jacket. “I bet that black coat’s a darn sight cleaner than the one you got on!” Everybody, including Doc Larue, roared with laughter.

  In the hotel beverage rooms and the pool halls, men who had never outgrown Hallowe’en engaged in similar joking accusations. But in these places, ribaldry and truth often went hand in hand. One never knew for certain if one drank or played a billiard shot in company with a harmless prankster, or a man with a criminal record the size of a phone book.

  Two days passed and no sign of the missing garments. No clues. No confessions. The rabbi, in the meantime, having no suitable clothes to wear in substitution for the ones that had disappeared, remained in seclusion in his small apartment. What little food he required Mrs. MacWatters was kind enough to purchase for him at Kerkorian’s. He slept little and spent most of his waking hours in his bathrobe and slippers, his skullcap crowning his head of red hair like a black mountain peak.

  The rabbi’s congregation, in the meantime, became divided and quarrelsome over the matter.

  Some were sympathetic to the young Lubavitcher. They understood how much the traditional hat and frock coat meant to him. They understood that a Lubavitcher did not simply shrug and say, “Oh, well, I’ll just wear something else.”

  Others took the opposite view, however. Men like Harry Zwicker and Milt Katzenberg, who hadn’t been happy about the Lubavitcher since the first moment he’d stepped off the airport bus, and Augustus Glick, would gladly have sent him packing months ago.

  “We are now the laughing stock of the town,” Harry Zwicker declared bitterly. Many heads in the congregation nodded in agreement, including that of Zelig Peikes. In fact, Peikes recalled, this was the first occasion in more than twenty years that a hostile act had been committed against any Jew in Steelton.

  “They never would have done this before the Lubavitcher came to town,” said Milt Katzenberg.

  One voice rose to challenge Katzenberg. It was Morris Moskover, the Local Sage. “They?” said Moskover. “Who’s ‘they’?”

  But Katzenberg had little use for sages and for Moskover in particular. “They. Them. Who else?”

  Moskover screwed an index finger high into the air, his favourite gesture when about to make a point. “How do you know it was not one of us?” he asked.

  This suggestion ignited the circle of Jews within hearing. Cries of “Shame!” rained down on Morris Moskover like fragments of a bomb.

  “I still say it’s a distinct possibility,” Moskover retorted. Pointing accusingly at the Local Sage, Katzenberg shouted, “Then it must have been you, Moskover.” Katzenberg, of course, didn’t believe this for a moment. But it was one way to stifle the man and it succeeded. Morris Moskover said nothing more.

  After three days of diligent search, the police turned up not a thread, not a button.

  Deeply troubled, the police inspector assigned to the case, Wilbur Barnswell, prepared to call upon Rabbi Teitelman to report failure.

  A veteran with twenty-five years’ experience, Inspector Barnswell was totally baffled by the case of the missing rabbinical property. Local crimes tended to be committed by ordinary wrongdoers doing ordinary wrongs: vagrancy, drunkenness, common assault. More often than not the culprits were caught red-handed, more often than not there wasn’t the slightest mystery about their crimes. Investigation, arrest and judgment followed in swift sequence, permitting Inspector Barnswell ample time to indulge in his first love: growing prize roses.

  “I’m sorry to have to say this, Rabbi, but we haven’t uncovered a single clue,” Inspector Barnswell confessed.

  “Is there anything more to be done?” Rabbi Teitelman asked calmly.

  “I could post a reward for information leading —”

  The rabbi interrupted. “Rewards only God can grant.” The inspector thought a moment. “I have sources, two or three people who frequent the hotel beverage rooms, the pool halls, that sort of place. Occasionally they come up with something useful.”

  Politely the rabbi again objected. “I would find the use of information distasteful in this case. Anyway, it’s possible that my things were carried off by the sudden storm. And who in the city of Steelton is so bold as to inform on the winds?”

  Never having dealt with a Lubavitcher rabbi in his twenty-five years on the police force, Inspector Barnswell wasn’t quite certain he unders
tood this last question. “It doesn’t matter,” said the rabbi, still calm. “I have made other plans.” He thanked the inspector, blessed him for his concern and saw him to the door.

  On the fourth day following the disappearance, Gerry O’Grady, proprietor of the largest used car business in Steelton, stood at the open door of the small frame one-room building that housed his office, idly surveying the inventory on his gravelled lot. At the far end he noticed a man strolling between the rows of cars. The man was wearing a heavy fisherman’s cardigan over a turtleneck sweater and dark corduroy pants. On his head was a black knitted seaman’s cap, pulled well down at the sides to cover his ears against the cold. Concealing much of his forehead, it left enough, just enough, red hair showing that, taken together with the red beard, there could be little mistake about who the caller was.

  Not quite able to believe his eyes, O’Grady put on his eyeglasses and peered again. Then he stepped from the open door. “Good afternoon, Rabbi,” he called.

  “Good afternoon. Are you the owner of this establishment?”

  “I like to tell people this is my lot in life.” O’Grady smiled, advancing toward the visitor.

  They met over the hood of a 1976 Pontiac. The rabbi studied Gerry O’Grady’s face, a wide-open territory free of shadowy and suspicious crevices. Rabbi Teitelman decided that Gerry O’Grady was the kind of man from whom one would buy a used car.

  “I’m looking for a reasonably good car,” said the rabbi.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Isn’t everyone?” Even with Gentiles the young Lubavitcher more often than not answered one question with another.

  “You looking for basic transportation?”

  “What else is a car for?”

  They walked together past several ranks of cars, like officers inspecting a company of infantrymen. At last, the rabbi touched Gerry O’Grady’s arm. He pointed to a small Japanese sports car, about five years old. Black, of course.