Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

by Harry Kemelman

  “Peter Dodge. A clergyman.”

  “Well, that’s where we don’t agree, Hugh. You can’t think of a clergyman in connection with a woman, but to me, they’re men just like anyone else. I don’t care whether he’s a priest or a minister or a rabbi. The right kind of woman comes along, and he’s going to feel his pants tighten. And this Dodge fellow—he’s pretty new at the game. Before this, I understand he was a professional football player. And he’s a big man—which would appeal to a woman her size. And he’s young, her age. And he’s not married. And he left town.”

  “Are you trying to suggest that he ran away?”

  “All I’m saying is look at the facts, Hugh. This group he’s connected with, they aren’t scheduled to leave for a couple of days yet. He had planned to go with them but instead he went early.”

  “So what do you have in mind?”

  “Isn’t it funny that he left right after that item ap­peared in the Examiner? The one that hinted at new de­velopments about Hirsh’s death?”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  On Friday there were two evening services at the tem­ple: the regular minyan at sunset primarily for mourners that lasted about fifteen minutes; and a more comprehen­sive family service that began at eight, ran for about an hour, and was followed by a collation in the vestry. Miriam always attended the later service, not only because it was expected of her as the rabbi’s wife, but because she felt he appreciated the encouragement of her presence as he delivered his sermon.

  But this Friday had been one of her few bad days dur­ing a comparatively easy and uneventful pregnancy. She was tired and her feet were swollen from the extra housework required to prepare the house for the Sabbath. Rather than upset him by suggesting she stay home, she asked if he’d mind if she rode to temple.

  Immediately he was solicitous. “Aren’t you well, dear? It isn’t—”

  “No, it isn’t time yet.” She smiled. “It’s just that I’ve been on my feet all day and I’m not up to walking. I’ll call the Margolises to pick me up.”

  “Nonsense, I’ll drive you.”

  “But David, you don’t ride on the Sabbath—”

  “It’s not really a religious scruple, Miriam. That would be hypocritical of me as rabbi of a Conservative congre­gation where the whole congregation rides. No, it’s just a matter of habit really; I’ll take you.”

  “But when they see you drive up, won’t they possibly connect it with the rumors of your resignation—”

  He laughed. “You mean they’ll think I’ve been a hyp­ocrite all along, and now that I’m resigning I’m showing my true colors? Well, if they want to think that, let them. Come on.” He took her by the arm and marched her out to the car. Flinging open the car door, he waved her in.

  It would have been a grand gesture if the car had started immediately. But five minutes later, he was still jabbing his toe at the starter—and producing nothing more than an angry whir. He muttered under his breath, and she had just about decided to remark brightly that she was no longer tired and would now like to walk when the motor caught.

  He drove to the end of the street and slowed down to make the turn.

  “Turn left,” Miriam said.

  “But the temple is right,” he protested.

  “We’re driving, so we’ve got plenty of time.”

  He shrugged as if to say, who can argue with a preg­nant woman, but did as he was told.

  They went a couple of blocks and she said, “Pull up here.” He realized he was abreast of the office of the local cab company, and at last understood.

  “My husband has been having some trouble with his car,” she said when the proprietor came over, “and one of these days he may have to get me to the hospital in a hurry. Are you available all the time?”

  “Twenty-four hours a day, Mrs. Small.”

  “What happens if all your cabs are busy?” the rabbi asked.

  “Don’t worry, Rabbi. We’ve got four cabs, and in the last couple of months the only time I’ve had them all out at one time was that Friday night you had your important holiday. They were shuttling back and forth to your tem­ple until half-past seven or quarter to eight. And then we didn’t have another call until around midnight. Guess everyone drove home with friends.” He seemed somewhat aggrieved.

  “Then we can depend on you if my husband can’t get his car started?”

  “Nothing to worry about, believe me, Mrs. Small. With business the way it is these days, I could guarantee to get you there if you was to have twins.” He laughed uproari­ously at his own joke.

  When once again the rabbi had difficulty in starting, the taxi man showed professional interest. “Sounds like the carburetor,” he said. “Better attend to it right away.”

  Just then the motor caught and the rabbi raced it for the sheer pleasure of hearing the motor roar. “I’ll do that,” he called out as he drove off.

  “I’m glad you thought to ask about the cab service. It’s extra insurance.”

  “It isn’t because you don’t want to be indebted to Chief Lanigan, is it?”

  “Of course not.”

  The temple parking lot seemed fuller than usual for a Friday night service.

  “Do you think it’s because they’ve heard of your resig­nation?” asked Miriam. “And they want to show they’re behind you?”

  “More likely it’s curiosity. They may want to find out what’s happening with me, and they’ve probably heard conflicting stories about Hirsh’s death.”

  “You’re being bitter and cynical, David.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Not at all. Actually, it’s an indication that the temple is fulfilling one of its prin­cipal and traditional functions—as a center for the com­munity. In the ghettos of Europe, or for that matter in the voluntary ghettos of America, the moment something happened news traveled with the speed of a telegram from house to house. But here, where there is no real Jewish section, where every Jew has Gentiles on either side, if something happens that is of particular interest to Jews they come to the temple to get the lowdown. I don’t feel hurt. Quite the contrary, I’m pleased.”

  But those who thought the rabbi might speak of his rumored resignation and the reasons for it were disap­pointed; by no word did he suggest that this Friday eve­ning was different from any other. After the service, when he joined the congregation in the vestry for the tea and cake the Sisterhood regularly provided, his ear caught snatches of conversation; for the most part it seemed concerned with the death of Isaac Hirsh. Once he heard someone say, “I’ll bet the rabbi knows what it’s all about. I wouldn’t be surprised if his resignation had something to do with it.”

  “But how?”

  “Don’t ask me, but happening at the same time the way they both did—”

  Yet to those few who came up and asked him what he thought about the Hirsh business, in each case he replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t know the man.”

  He was pleased to see that Miriam, who would nor­mally have remained standing at his side, had shown sense enough to take one of the folding chairs against the wall. A small group of women had gathered around her and were being solicitous.

  “Above all, my dear, you mustn’t worry. That’s the worst thing you can do. When I was having my third, my Alvin, the doctor said to me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t worry; it tightens the muscles.’ I shouldn’t worry when my Joe was being transferred here from Schenectady, and we didn’t know if we were going to be able to get a house or have to live in a hotel, and what would I do with Mar­jorie and Elaine, with their school in the meantime. But I made up my mind that the baby comes first, and I told Joe to go ahead and make any arrangements he wanted and I’d live with them.”

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Green. “Mental attitude is im­portant. I know it’s old-fashioned to think that you have to think beautiful thoughts during your pregnancy, but when I was having Pat I had the phonograph going all day long, and didn’t she get to be the first d
rum majorette of the high school band? The instructor said she had an innate sense of rhythm, whereas Fred who had trumpet lessons for years could never even keep in step, let alone keep time to the music.”

  “It didn’t work with me,” said Gladys Moreland flip­pantly. “My mother went to the museum every Sunday right up to her seventh month, and I can’t draw a straight line.”

  “Oh, but you’ve got artistic temperament,” insisted Mrs. Green. “Anyone who sets foot in your living room can see that you’ve got exquisite taste.”

  “Well, I am interested in interior decorating.”

  Mrs. Wasserman, wife of the first president of the tem­ple, pulled up a chair alongside Miriam. She was a moth­erly woman of sixty and had been friendly from the day the Smalls first arrived in Barnard’s Crossing.

  “You feel tired these days, huh?”—her way of noting that Miriam was sitting down instead of standing by her husband’s side.

  “A little,” Miriam admitted.

  She patted her hand. “Pretty soon now. Nothing to worry about. And I’ll bet it will be a boy.”

  “David and his mother, especially his mother, won’t accept anything else.”

  Mrs. Wasserman laughed. “If it’s a girl, they’ll accept. And after two or three days, you couldn’t get them to swap for a boy. He’s nervous, the rabbi?”

  “Who can tell?”

  “Oh, they all try to be like that, like it’s not important, but you can tell. Before my first one was born, Jacob, he was so cool and calm. But he had the whole steam system checked over, he thought maybe the house was a little chilly. He had a carpenter come in and make a chute from the baby’s room to the laundry in the basement. In those days we didn’t have a diaper service. He hired a man to shovel the snow off the steps and the walk for the whole season. He took out extra insurance, God forbid anything should happen to him there would be plenty for me and the baby. I’ll bet your husband is the same way.”

  Miriam smiled faintly. “You don’t know my David.”

  “Well, he’s so busy—”

  “It was all I could do to make him stop at the taxicab office to arrange for transportation in case our car wouldn’t start. But for the rest”—she smiled—“he thinks it’s enough to examine his conscience and make sure he isn’t doing anything he thinks wrong.”

  “Maybe that’s the best way,” suggested Mrs. Wasser­man gently.

  “Maybe. Though sometimes—”

  “You’d like him to be a little more—excited?”

  Miriam nodded.

  “It doesn’t mean anything, my dear. Some men, they keep their tenderness all inside. My father, may he rest in peace, he was like that. When I was born—my mother used to tell about it, it was like a family joke—she felt the pains coming so she sent a neighbor’s boy for my father who was in the House of Study. It was in the old country, you understand. He was in the middle of a discussion, and maybe being a young man he was a little embar­rassed before the older men, so he told the boy to go back and tell her to cover herself up good and that it would probably pass. But a minute later, he excused himself and ran so fast that he reached home the same time as the neighbor’s boy.”

  Miriam laughed. “My David wouldn’t be embarrassed, but if he were really involved in a discussion he might forget to come. . . .”

  Morris Goldman who owned a garage drifted toward where the rabbi was standing, talking loudly: “—a little shrimp of a guy, bald-headed with a potbelly, and he turns out to be married to a big gorgeous redhead, a shicksa yet, who is half his age. Oh, Gut Shabbes, Rabbi. I was talking about this guy Hirsh.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I knew him like I know any customer. You know how it is, they’re waiting around for their car, you pass the time of day. Him I guess I knew a little better than most because he had an old car so he brought it in more of­ten—brakes, flat tire. Once I put a new muffler on.”

  “How’d he come to go to you?” asked one of the by­standers. “Your garage is way out of town.”

  “He worked at the Goddard Lab and I get all the cars from there. My place is off Route 128, maybe five hun­dred yards from the Lab. You know, right at the foot of the cutoff just before you get to the Lab. They leave their cars with me for a lube job, a tune-up, and then walk to work from there.”

  “You do all kinds of work?” asked the rabbi.

  “You bet, and if I say so myself I’ve got as good a crew of mechanics as any place on the North Shore. I’ve got one man, an ignition specialist, I’ve had people come from as far away as Gloucester just so he can service them. Why, your car acting up on you, Rabbi?”

  “I’ve been having a bit of trouble,” he said. “She’s hard starting. And sometimes when I come to a stop, she dies.”

  “Well, it could be almost anything, Rabbi. Why don’t you ride out someday and let me take a look at it?”

  “Maybe I will.” He thought he saw Miriam sending out distress signals, and excused himself. “Are you tired, dear? Would you like to go home now?”

  “I think I should,” she said. “I’ll get my coat.”

  He was waiting for her to find her things in the cloak-room when he saw a jubilant Jacob Wasserman and Al Becker bearing down on him.

  “Well, Rabbi! Things certainly look a lot different now, don’t they?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “This announcement by the police, by the district at­torney,” exclaimed Becker. “Of course, the D.A. was pussyfooting. He’s a politician and all politicians have to double-talk, but there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Hirsh was murdered. He as much as admitted it. So you’re vindicated! He got you off the hook. You’re in the clear.”

  “If you’re referring to the burial service I conducted, Mr. Becker, I needed no vindication from the district attorney. And if I had, I would hardly consider it good news to be let off the hook as you put it, at the cost of a man’s murder.”

  “Sure, sure, nobody likes to hear someone has been murdered. I’m sorry about it. Who wouldn’t be? But don’t you see—it knocks the pins out from under Mort Schwarz and his gang. You heard that he called off the regular Board meeting Sunday?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You’ll probably get a card in the mail tomorrow.”

  “And what significance do you attach to the cancella­tion?”

  Wasserman rubbed his hands gleefully. “We think perhaps under the circumstances they want to see how the Hirsh business comes out before they bring up the matter of your resignation. I have it from a very reliable source that Marvin Brown refused to go ahead with laying out the road.”

  “Refused? Why?”

  “Because the district attorney may exhume the body.”

  The rabbi gave a wan smile. “It comes to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it, Mr. Wasserman?”

  “Oh, but Rabbi, there’s a difference. This is the civil authority, engaged in bringing a criminal to justice.”

  “Of course.”

  “What we’ve got to think about now is what steps to take. As far as Hirsh is concerned—” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it makes no difference to him what caused his death. He’s dead; we’ve got to concern ourselves about the living. Now, the business about your res­ignation. You don’t really want to resign, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t have if this matter hadn’t come up.”

  “Good. So we have to figure out a way to keep Schwarz from reading your letter to the Board. I’ve dis­cussed it with Becker here, and we both decided the easi­est and best way would be if you wrote Schwarz recalling your resignation.” As the rabbi was about to interpose, he hurried on. “You could say that in the light of recent events there is no longer any difference between you and the administration, and for that reason you are revoking your previous letter.”

  “No.”

  “But don’t you see, Rabbi, without that there’s just your letter of resignation. All he has to do is to read it and call for a vote. Strictly speak
ing, he doesn’t even have to call for a vote. He just announces, it. But if there are two letters, he’s bound to read them both and then he’ll have to explain the issue between you. Even then, you’re not out of the woods but at least we’ll have the advantage.”

  The rabbi shook his head. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but—”

  “Now look here, Rabbi,” said Becker sternly. “Jake and I have gone all out for you. We’re trying to help you the best way we can, but there’s a certain amount you’ve got to do for yourself. You can’t expect us to work our heads off, calling up people, going to see them, explaining, when you won’t do your part.”

  “I expect nothing.” He turned to Miriam, who was emerging from the cloakroom. “You’ll have to excuse me. My wife is very tired.”

  Becker watched his retreating figure, then turned to Wasserman. “That’s what you get for trying to help a guy.”

  Wasserman shook his head. “He’s been hurt, Becker. He’s a young man, practically a boy. And he’s been hurt. . . .”

  As they walked through the parking lot to their car, Miriam said, “Mr. Becker and even Mr. Wasserman seemed rather cool, David. Was it something you said to them?”

  He reported the conversation, and she smiled wistfully. “So now you have no one behind you—not Mr. Wasser­man, not Chief Lanigan, not Mr. Schwarz. Do you have to quarrel with everyone, David?”

  “I didn’t quarrel with them. I just refused to ask Schwarz to disregard my letter. In effect, it’s begging him to keep me on.”

  “But you do want to stay, don’t you?”

  “Of course, but I can’t ask. Don’t you see I can’t ask? The relationship between the rabbi and the Board of Di­rectors requires maintaining a delicate balance. If I have to beg them to let me stay when I’m only doing my job, how can I ever have any influence on them? How can I guide them? I would be just a rubber stamp for anything they wanted to do. Once they realized they made me knuckle under while exercising my official function as rabbi, what could I do? And what could they not do?”