Monday the Rabbi Took Off

by Harry Kemelman

  “Well, as a friend you might be able to.” The rabbi could see that Stedman was disappointed and that his advice was not likely to be taken. They walked along in silence for a block, and then suddenly Stedman seized his arm and pointed.

  “There, that could be the answer.”

  The rabbi looked about, but saw nothing unusual.

  “That sign: Memavet Auto Brokerage Agency. When I first came, I told Roy I was planning to get a car to tour the country, and I invited him to come with me to pick one out. Come to think of it, he was pretty enthusiastic about that.”

  “And you think if you got a car, that would do it?”

  “Rabbi, unless you know how kids feel about cars, you don’t know kids. Do you mind stopping in for a minute? This place advertises in the papers. I’ll just see what the deal is and what sort of cars they have to offer.”

  It was a repair shop with several disemboweled cars being worked on. In one comer, near the window, was a flat-topped desk, untidy with dusty papers, with a cardboard sign set in a wooden holder: MEMAVET AUTO BROKERAGE AGENCY. An elderly mechanic with a beard approached them.

  “Mr. Memavet?”

  The mechanic pointed to the desk. “You want the Memavet Agency? That’s it.” He pointed to the desk. “Memavet is not in. He’s been out sick a couple of days.”

  “Isn’t this his place? Isn’t there somebody else I can talk to?”

  “No. We got nothing to do with Memavet. He just rents the desk space.”

  “Oh.” Stedman was disappointed.

  “You wanted to see him about a car, maybe? Buying or selling?”

  “I’m interested in buying, but—”

  “So go to see him at his house,” the bearded mechanic said. “It’s all right. Sometimes, even when he’s well, he stays home for a few days. The same business he does here, he can do there.”

  “Well, I thought I’d look at his stock and—”

  The mechanic laughed. “He has no stock. He doesn’t work that way. You tell him what you want, and he tries to get it for you. He’s a crazy old man, but I’ll say this for him, he knows cars and he’ll give you a good buy.”

  “In what way is he crazy?” the rabbi asked. “Is it because he gives good buys?”

  “Your young friend is a joker,” said the mechanic. He went on to explain. “He’s crazy because his mind works funny. He’s had troubles that he’ll tell you about at the drop of a hat. But who hasn’t had troubles, especially in this country? Take his name: Memavet. ‘From death’—is that the name a sane man would choose?” He shrugged. “But he knows cars, and he’s honest. If he sells you a car, he’ll tell you exactly what condition it’s in, and you can believe him.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll call him,” said Stedman. “Do you have his phone number at home?”

  “He doesn’t have a phone yet. He moved into a new place. There’s a public phone in the lobby of the house, just outside his door, but I don’t know the number. But you don’t have to phone him in advance. Just go to see him. He’ll be home, all right.”

  “Well, if he’s sick—”

  “He’s got a cold. Believe me, he won’t mind.”

  “Well—”

  “Here,” said the mechanic, “take down the address: Number One Mazel Tov Street. It’s a new street that runs off Shalom Avenue. You know where Shalom Avenue is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know Shalom Avenue,” said Stedman.

  “So this is a new street running off the avenue. It’s a block of apartments. You can see him anytime—today, tomorrow, the day after—”

  “The day after is the Sabbath,” said the rabbi, smiling.

  “So? The Sabbath means nothing to him.”

  “Are you going?” asked the rabbi when they left the shop. “Is it within walking distance?”

  “Every place in Jerusalem is within walking distance. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The day started for Miriam much as usual, except that her morning sickness was a little more acute, and as a result, the common sounds of the morning which she thought she had got used to were more than normally irritating: the noise of cars and trucks shifting with a great grinding of gears—their house was on a slight hill—the ozzereth across the way thwacking at rugs spread over the railing of the porch with a large bamboo carpet beater—seemingly the only way of cleaning rugs in Israel—the ozzereth in the apartment above sloshing buckets of water on the stone floor and then sweeping it with a squeegee where it gurgled down the drain—presumably the only way to clean a floor—while her mistress was already preparing the noonday meal, the main meal of the day, by chopping something in a wooden bowl, where every stroke of the chopper was transmitted through the bowl to the table to the floor and thence to the ceiling above Miriam’s head—seemingly the only way to prepare a meal.

  And because this was one of the mornings when her husband had decided to go to the synagogue for the morning prayers rather than recite them at home, he was not there to complain to, and worse, was not there to help ready Jonathan for school.

  And Jonathan had been cranky. Normally, he went to school with Shaouli, a child in the upstairs apartment and his bosom friend; but Shaouli had a cold and a little fever, and his mother had announced the night before that he would be staying home today. So Jonathan wanted his mother to walk to school with him. She had refused since it was only a block away and involved no street crossings, and he had finally set off alone but not without complaining, and it was a further aggravation.

  And it took time, precious additional minutes she needed to make a bus to get her to the Hadassah Hospital in time to keep her appointment at the Obstetrics Clinic.

  Then Gittel called from Tel Aviv.

  Gittel called frequently, usually for some specific purpose—to say she had received a letter from Miriam’s mother, to give her a recipe she had tried and found good, to say she would be in Jerusalem for an hour or two in connection with her work and to make elaborate arrangements for a meeting for a few minutes. But today she called merely for a nice long conversation with her niece before starting work. And Miriam, watching the minutes flit by, had in desperation explained that she had an appointment at the hospital and would have to hang up. She mentioned the hospital on the assumption that her aunt would not have accepted any other kind of appointment as sufficiently urgent to justify cutting short their conversation.

  But immediately Gittel was alarmed and demanded to know what was wrong. “Who’s treating you, Miriam? It may be someone I know. If it’s something serious, perhaps I can arrange to have the head of the department look at you.”

  Since she was planning to tell her anyway when next she saw her, she told her now over the phone that this was a routine visit to the obstetrical clinic because she was going to have a baby.

  “Oh, wonderful! Mazel tov! The best of luck! When will it be? Oh, Miriam, the baby can be born in Israel. When David has to go back to his work, you can stay on here. You can come down to Tel Aviv with Jonathan. And I can take care of Jonathan while you’re having your baby. It will be a little crowded, but here in Israel we can always manage, Miriam dear. If Uri should come home on leave, he can sleep on the divan in the living room, or I can if necessary.”

  When Miriam finally managed to break off and hurry to the bus stop, her bus was just pulling away. Then because she was late, she had to wait all morning at the hospital. And then the doctor was annoyed with her for missing her appointment, and neither his English nor her Hebrew was up to an explanation of the events of the morning. He was cold and his manner forbidding, which made it impossible for her to ask him all the questions that bothered her.

  It had continued. The bus going back was crowded, and although she got a seat, the young man standing in the aisle near her was eating away at sunflower seeds, cracking them between his front teeth and spitting out the husks on the floor near her feet. It disgusted her, and again because her Hebrew was
not good enough to enable her to hold up her end of the argument that would certainly ensue, she did not ask him to stop and suffered in silence. Her relief when he finally got off turned almost immediately to acute embarrassment when a new passenger, moving up the aisle to a seat, saw the husks on the floor at her feet, assumed she was responsible, and glared his indignation at her.

  When she got home, she found that her husband had eaten his lunch and gone out, leaving his dishes in the sink. And the water, although she let it run for some time, continued tepid. Then the doorbell rang, and it was Gittel.

  “Oh, Gittel!” She embraced her aunt, tears of relief streaming down her cheeks, as she clung to her until she regained control. Only then did she ask how in the world she ever managed to get away.

  “Any social worker in Tel Aviv who can’t scare up some business in Jerusalem should be in another profession. Besides, when my sister writes me and asks me what I did when I found out that her daughter was pregnant, am I going to answer that I couldn’t get away?”

  She listened to her niece’s recital of the events of the morning, and finding in Gittel a sympathetic listener, Miriam went on, luxuriating in self-pity, to recount whatever had troubled her since her arrival—her difficulties with the language, the new kind of housekeeping she had to adapt to, and even her uneasiness over the change in her husband’s attitude toward his work.

  Gittel held up a hand. “David’s desire to leave the rabbinate, I can understand. It is not work for a modern man of ability. And I can only applaud his desire to settle here. I may have misjudged him. But you are about to have a baby, and we must be practical. Your mother is not here, so I must act in her place and advise you as she would. There is the problem of making a living. Your husband cannot simply walk away from his job and his profession. If he wants to leave them and come here, he must make preparation. He must plan and make arrangements. Even if he should find a job here tomorrow, you would still have to go back to the States to wind up your affairs. And much as I would like you to stay here, I’m afraid for this you would have to go. Husbands can’t be trusted to pack furniture, close up a house properly, especially if the husband is a rabbi.” She eased her niece back into a chair and slid a hassock under her feet. Then she placed a chair in front of her and sat down to face her. “So, let us be practical—and methodical. First we must deal with your particular problem. You are in the early stages of pregnancy. What you need is calm, tranquillity, freedom from fear and doubt. You don’t need a lot of tests and X rays; you don’t need a specialist who thinks of you only as a line on a chart. What you need is a nice family doctor, a general practitioner, someone who will sit down with you and answer any questions you may have and tell you what to expect from time to time.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful, Gittel, but who do I go to? Do you know a doctor who—”

  “In Tel Aviv I could give you the names of a dozen. Here in Jerusalem—but just a minute—my friend Sarah Adoumi, the doctor who’s treating her, Dr. Ben Ami, he’s been wonderful, a real old-fashioned doctor. When he comes to see her, he’s never in a hurry. He sits down to a cup of tea with them afterward. Maybe it’s good for him, too; he’s a widower or a bachelor, in any case alone. He even got them their present apartment because she mustn’t climb steps. He’s that kind of doctor. Give me the phone book…. Ah, here he is, Dr. Benjamin Ben Ami, 147 Shalom Avenue. I’ll call him.”

  “Maybe I ought to talk to David first,” Miriam suggested doubtfully.

  “What do husbands know about these things, especially a rabbi…. Dr. Ben Ami? I am a close personal friend of Sarah Adoumi. I would like to make an appointment with you for my niece…. You can see her now? Excellent, I’ll bring her right over.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Jerusalem Café in the Old City is not far from the Damascus Gate. Thousands of tourists pass its open doors daily, but few venture inside. A couple, tired and anxious to escape from the hot sun, to sit and rest over a cup of coffee or a glass of orange juice, might halt momentarily and look in, but probably would decide against it and hope for another place farther on. It is obviously not intended for tourists.

  The radio is tuned up to a deafening pitch, interminably playing melancholy Arab music in a minor key. In the dimly lit rear there is a pool table with several Arab youths usually playing, every stroke accompanied by noisy exclamations.

  A number of plain wooden tables are scattered over the remainder of the room where some sit drinking coffee and smoking and others play at cards. To one side is the cashier’s desk. He twists his head to listen better as the customer tells what he had, makes computations on little slips of paper, and then puts the money in the table drawer and offers change from little stacks of coins he keeps on the edge of the table. He is respected because he handles money and can figure rapidly and because he is also the owner. Just beyond his table, there is a sink where the dirty dishes are washed by his son, who is also the waiter.

  If the tourist pair had entered, the waiter would have politely taken their order, served them, and then paid them no further attention. The other customers would have ignored them, too, even to the point of not looking in their direction. Just as Abdul, with an open book in front of him as he sipped his coffee, was ignored. Because he was not of them. His clothes, the book—all proclaimed him to be of a higher status and even a student. He had already been there twenty minutes and was sipping at his second cup of coffee when Mahmoud came in. He did not hail Abdul but wandered over to the pool table in the rear and watched for a few minutes, then moved on to one of the tables where a card game was in progress. He spoke to several of the card-players in friendly joking fashion. Then he took a stool and brought it over to Abdul’s table and sat down beside him.

  Abdul continued to read his book, but he nodded the waiter over.

  “Coffee,” said Mahmoud.

  When the coffee had been brought and the waiter returned to his customary station by the sink, Mahmoud said, “We found out where she lives, but Leila thinks we ought to wait awhile.”

  Abdul shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s easy like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It’s a new apartment, a whole new development. He’s the only one in the block, and his apartment is on the street floor. The apartment house fronts on Shalom Avenue, but his entrance is way at the end, next to an embankment. And it’s a new street; no houses on the other side.”

  “So?”

  “So Leila thinks maybe it’s too easy. Maybe it’s some kind of a trap.”

  “Women!” said Abdul scornfully. “They worry all the time—about everything.”

  “No, Abdul, Leila is not like that. She’s got a head on her. And she’s as good as any man in the movement. But Leila found out that in Tel Aviv he lived on the top floor even though his wife was sick and the stairs were hard for her. Why would he take an apartment on a street floor here?”

  “Because his wife is sick and climbing stairs is hard for her. You just explained it,” said Abdul. “Besides, apartments are not so easy to come by in Jerusalem.”

  “But if he is ordered up here, wouldn’t the government see to it that he got the kind of apartment he’d want?”

  “The government doesn’t even bother finding apartments for some of their real big shots, heads of ministries, when they move them up here. Believe me, they wouldn’t go out of their way for him. If that’s what’s worrying Leila, she’s an old woman. Get word to the Swiss to have the gadget ready. And to check it. Last time it went off prematurely.”

  “There’s a place between two entrances where he parks his car,” Mahmoud said. “He rides right over the sidewalk and parks between those two buildings. There’s a little space. The Swiss can rig up something that we can attach to his car—”

  “Was that Leila’s idea?” Abdul asked contemptuously. “That’s a wonderful idea! You’d wait until late at night so that the raising and lowering of the hood can be easily heard. No, the best way is the regular ga
dget. It’s still daylight when we plant it, and if you’re walking along the street, no one would think of stopping you to ask what you’re doing there.”

  “All right, I’ll tell the Swiss.” He sipped at his coffee, and Abdul turned back to his book. Then, “Leila was wondering about this American you are so friendly with.”

  Abdul closed his book and turned to face his friend for the first time. “So Leila now feels she can decide who my friends will be? Does she approve of my friendship with you?”

  “No, but Abdul—an American and a Jew.”

  “I have plans for the American.”

  “She thinks maybe he has plans for you.”

  “Roy?” Abdul tossed his head back and laughed. “She thinks Roy may be playing me?”

  “She saw him in a restaurant with an older man once. They ate their whole meal in silence. But they stayed on after everybody had finished and left. They were just sitting drinking coffee and not saying a word. It looked suspicious.”

  “Tell Leila to stop looking for agents everywhere. That was his father.”

  “No, Abdul, because she went back after a few minutes. She told the waiter she thought she had left her scarf on the chair. And they were quarreling. The young one, your friend, was speaking harshly to the older man. No son would talk that way to his father.”

  Abdul smiled. “You don’t know Americans.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The rabbi met him at the King David where Stedman shook his hand effusively as though he were an old friend he had not seen in years. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you agreed to come, Rabbi. I called you on the spur of the moment. If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have because of the Sabbath.”

  “I gathered that you were anxious that I come. Besides, my Sabbath routine has changed since coming here. I don’t always go to the synagogue.”