by Rhoda Lerman
His father sat down against him. He could feel the old knots of his father’s backbone pressing into his own strong back. “He says you should. All your money.”
“He says?”
“Bite your tongue.”
“I’ll sleep at a motel. How could you marry her?”
“It’s not up for discussion.”
3
THEY DROVE AROUND THE BLOCK, AROUND THE CAUSEWAY, ACROSS the river, out of the city. Factories gave way to airports, to silos, to nothing. They took matzohs, herring in cream, herring not in cream, hard-boiled eggs, jars of borscht, a bottle of schnapps, thermoses of water, school lunch packs of tuna fish you can pull open like a Coke can, cold meat loaf for sandwiches.
“Three tents and a palm tree?”
“Three palm trees and a tent.”
“Egypt. He wants me to buy Egypt.”
All the farmers in Kansas had emptied out their barns and spread the winter’s collection of manure across the plains. The sun beat down on it, steamed off. Great brush fires burned far from the highway. Lightning split the sky. The highway wavered and swam before Yussel like a serpent. “Did He say coconut palms or date palms?”
His father shrugged.
Miles later, Yussel said, “Maybe He doesn’t know from Kansas. Maybe He meant Kuwait.”
“Three palm trees and a tent.” His father sang Polish Army marching songs, kept time with his fist on the dashboard. They zigzagged around the state for three days. The signs weren’t good. “Don’t worry. If it’s intended, we’ll find it.” And he closed his eyes. “Relax.”
Yussel couldn’t relax. “Don’t give me intended, Totte. Please.”
“You hear about your friend Mayer Pinsky, who messed around with his models and got cancer of the testicles?”
“Totte, I’m doing this. I don’t want to hear anything else, okay?”
“And Rudi Gernreich, who designed the topless bathing suit, he didn’t die of lung cancer? And Malcha Lieberman, who had an illegitimate kid? And the kid grew up, goes to find her mother, but Malcha won’t see her? Six months later, guess what kind of cancer Malcha gets.” His father slapped his thigh with great satisfaction. “Uterine. Why the uterus? To remind her of her daughter. That’s how HaShem works. Intention. No accidents!”
“Please.”
They slept in the car, washed up as well as they could in gas stations and Pizza Huts. His father swiped Sweet ’N Lows every place they stopped. The Shanda trembled above forty-five. Yussel trembled but for him it was anger. All my money. Two million. He was personally worth two million. Nothing, as far as he could see in the flat baked horizon, was worth—could cost—two million. The whole state? Then they came to a mountain range. Two. One on one side, one on the other. Yussel didn’t like the looks of the mountains. The air was thin and dry. Sand chipped away at the windshield. It was no place for palm trees. He had a feeling they’d been climbing, although the road was flat and straight as a ruler. Like heads, tumbleweed rolled across the highway. Jewish heads, exiles, rootless, fine-boned heads. There was nothing to hold on to out here, nothing for comfort. It was all too big, too quiet, too goyishe. Now and then Yussel passed a bone-white tree, a vulture nest, nervous grasses by an irrigation ditch. They came to a historical marker. HERE CORONADO, SEEKING GOLD … Yussel couldn’t read the next lines.
The mountains looked like construction-paper scenery ripped out of the flat earth, went on forever.
“Okay, Totte, let me give you one. Last week Berel fell on the way to the office, broke his leg in four places. When he got to the office he found someone had robbed it over the weekend. How do you explain that?”
“Easy. There’s a piece missing. He was going to take a trip that week; the plane crashed, but he wasn’t on it because of his leg and his cash flow.”
“How about Betty Weinstein? Betty Weinstein never sinned in her life. Nothing bad went into her mouth; nothing bad came out of her mouth. Her husband and children were happy, well, prosperous. Betty gets breast cancer. The doctors said she ate too much dairy. Do the rabbis say she deserved it?”
“If your platform was higher you’d understand why Betty Weinstein suffered.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. My platform isn’t high enough.”
Yussel jammed on the brakes. “Yeah, Totte, well how about Hitler? What was God’s intention?”
“Some people,” his father said softly, “some people say we shouldn’t have gone to Palestine, we should have waited for the Messiah before we went back to Israel. I wonder about that.” His father poked him in the ribs. “But listen, how about Chernobyl? Thirty miles away is Babi Yar, the mass grave for thousands of Jews murdered by the Russians. The nuclear plant blows up and gets the children of the murderers of the Chernobyl Jews.”
“Totte, the fallout also went to Sweden.”
“So they must have had some Jew killers left in Sweden.”
This was an old argument. It was a mistake to get started. Yussel tried not to yell, tried to sound patient. “My company doesn’t cover acts of God because no insurance company can come up with statistics, probabilities about acts of God. You can’t be rational about acts of God.”
“I’m not talking about rational. I’m talking about how He works. After five thousand years, we can figure out how He works.”
“The fallout landed on Sweden, not because that’s the way He works. Because that’s the way the wind blew. Period. Random.”
“So Who makes the wind blow?”
“I’m arguing with a wall.”
“If you knew how to listen, I wouldn’t be a wall. We going to start driving soon? I don’t have so much time.” His father coughed once, hard, wiped his mouth with a stained handkerchief, slept with his mouth open.
Later his father yelled, “Back up. Back up!”
Yussel thought he was going to get another lecture. He jammed on the brakes, backed up along the highway in a cloud of dust, and when the dust settled he was looking at a roadside inn called the Arizona. Three palm trees were painted on its window. His father turned off the ignition.
“Baruch HaShem, palm trees.”
“No tent.” Yussel turned on the ignition.
His father turned off the ignition.
Someone had scrawled Closed under the palms. Yussel shook his head, just sat in the car, shook his head. “Can’t be. No tent.” Yussel turned on the ignition, put the car in forward, took off.
“What are you doing?”
“Goddamnit, I’m leaving. I’m taking you back and I’m leaving. What am I, some kind of Isaac you’re going to sacrifice in the wilderness? You, some Abraham who promises to kill your son?”
“I heard Him!” His father’s voice thundered. “I heard Him!” His father started to weep.
Yussel backed up, turned off the engine. From behind the Arizona, a ragged, small, filthy Indian weaved toward the car. He wasn’t drunk. He walked in another pattern. Yussel couldn’t tell what he was.
“You folks wanna look the place over?”
“Yes,” snapped the Rabbi. “Yes, yes, yes!” And leaped from the car. Yussel began to sweat, to sweat seriously. The Indian examined the beards, boots, and beaver hats. The long coats in between didn’t catch his attention.
“Beaver?”
“New York.” His father skipped behind the Indian.
“Figures.”
They walked around the Arizona, his father skipping, Yussel worrying already that his father’s enthusiasm would triple, quadruple the price. They came to a tent. The Rabbi punched Yussel in the ribs and then coughed on the dust rising from their footsteps. A milk snake the width of Yussel’s muscular forearm slithered into a hole beneath the tent. Ahead of them lay nothing. Flat dusty nothing, some scrawny wind-twisted pines like bushes, knobs of cactus, gashes in the land. Far in the distance three peaks towered above the land.
“Holy land. When world comes to end will be lake.”
“No kidding?” Yussel was being poli
te for the Indian, critical for his father.
“Those mother mountains. Here is sacred lake beneath our feet. When world comes to end, you have water.”
They walked around although there was nothing more to see except the snake holes as large as grapefruit and the scratchings of a clawed animal against the boards of the Arizona. The Indian bent down, smelled the ground beneath the claw marks. “Cat! Big. Big cat.”
His father fell to his knees, thanked HaShem. His father really knew how to negotiate a deal. Yussel could hear the adding machine clicking in the Indian’s head. “So, you want to buy whole reservation?”
“Whole reservation?” Yussel choked on the dust.
“You got two million?” Something was out of synch with the Indian’s teeth. Yussel felt faint. His father continued to pray on his knees.
“That’s too much, huh? You wanna look inside?” Indian Joe made an arc with his arm as if the Arizona were the Taj Mahal. It was a long building, with a front door, a side door, a dumpster.
Yussel said, “I don’t want to look inside. Also, I don’t want to look outside.”
Indian Joe weighed this. “I know you’re the right people soon as I saw you. I know. These people I sell sacred land to. Okay with my tribe, all yours. And you got water. No one else for miles got water. Fifty thousand acres, maybe seventy-five thousand. This land …” The Indian walked over to talk to the Rabbi. He knew a good customer when he saw one. “This land belongs to all of us. This land is Mother Earth.” His father stood.
Yussel put his hand on the Indian’s shoulder. “So, tell me, Cochise …” His teeth were very expensive. “. if this land belongs to all of us, how is it you’re asking two million bucks for it?”
“Commitment. You give me two million bucks, I know you’re committed to Mother Earth.”
“Yussele,” the Rabbi whispered in his ear, “think of the wilderness and Who is exiled in the wilderness and Who do we do the commandments for to bring Her back to Him?” Yussel didn’t know his Kabbala well. But he knew he was hearing the real mysteries. “Think, Yussele, think. Think Moses, Yussele, leading his people to the Promised Land.”
“Yeah, Pop, think Abraham, sacrificing his own son in the desert.”
“Shame, Yussele.”
“We don’t have water until the world comes to an end, Totte.”
“So, then it will be worth a fortune.”
“Sure, Totte, and when they get rapid transit out here, we can all retire.”
Yussel grabbed his father’s arm. The father and the Indian grinned at each other. The Indian picked up a feather and stuck it into the brim of the Rabbi’s hat. “Eagle.”
“Eagle,” his father repeated.
In the car, Yussel handed his father his Swiss army knife. “Here, slit my throat now. Tell HaShem you’ll sacrifice me. Forget the ram. Slit my throat.”
“Sacred land, Yussele. Three palms and a tent, Yussele. You could mortgage …”
“I’m not doing it!”
“Yussel!”
“Did He tell you what I need it for? Did He tell you why?”
“I should go back and ask? He told me, Yussele. He spoke to me and told me. Intended is intended.” His father had a coughing fit, let his head drop on the back of the seat, slept. Yussel drove back to his father’s house. Something told him he’d have to buy cowboy boots for Shoshanna. And then he hit his fist as hard as he could against the dashboard. “No!”
In his sleep, his father said, in Yiddish, softly, “I told him. It’s okay. Not to worry.” Hours later, just as they passed under the light a block from his father’s house, his father stirred, whispered faintly in Yiddish. “He’s a good boy. Not to worry.”
Yussel slammed the door of the car. He was inside the house with the Flower Child in front of him, wearing the white blouse with the three-inch ants, with her luminous eyes examining him when he realized his father was still in the car. They both raced to the car.
The Flower Child called the Burial Society. Yussel called his mother in Israel. She already knew. The Flower Child answered phone calls, gave people directions to the house. The Flower Child threw her arms around Yussel, wept against his chest. He shoved her from him. She sat huddled in a corner, weeping until he yelled at her to answer the phone and make coffee and do things.
“What things?”
“Things!” he screamed.
“What?” she screamed back.
Yussel called his mother in Israel and asked her what the Flower Child should do.
“Yussele, put her on the phone.” His mother was also a saint.
There are some things, Yussel told himself, which exceed our earthly emotions. Death is one of those things. His father’s feet were very large. They stuck up. He bathed him, right side, left side. He thought there was a smile on his face. One of the members of the Burial Society said it happens as they stiffen. Yussel was certain he saw a smile.
“Why not?” the member answered and went for more water.
Yussel looked down at his father. There it was again. They said his feet didn’t touch the floor when he danced. They said he was a saint. They said he did prophecy. He said he heard the Voice of HaShem. Yussel was thinking his father had some kind of joke, was laughing at him, dead, laughing at him. He looked for the last time on his father’s face, pulled the shroud cap over it, broke down.
Shoshanna came with the children. She took one look at the Flower Child and for some reason Yussel would never understand, unless his wife also was a saint, or women had secret understandings men would never know about, Shoshanna put out her arms and held her to her bosom. Chaim and Ruchel flew out. The world came. Yussel was so tired he couldn’t see straight. He spent most of his energy avoiding the Flower Child, in his head, in the kitchen, in the dining room.
After the funeral, Yussel called his attorney, his accountant, his broker. And then he told his Shoshanna.
“I’m not sure. We may have to move.”
She raised her chin high. “I am proud to be a woman in your family. I will do what is to be done.”
“This family? This family is crazy, Shoshanna. Sick, from generations, sick.”
“Your father was a saint.”
“I’m not.”
She shrugged. “You could be.”
“The snakes are the size of my thigh.”
“Yesterday you said forearm.”
She looked like his mother. Would he ever hear HaShem’s voice with her? He saw his father’s back at the window. He saw the slow sad shake of his head. He kissed his mother, his sister, his uncles, good-bye at the airport. The next day he flew home to Far Rockaway to the three-story house near the beach. From there his uncles questioned him closely. Gimbel, Dean of Humanities at Brown, and Nachman, Dean of Law at Yale, and Moses, at Oxford in Abnormal Psychology. They had a conference call.
“He said he saw light?”
“Yes.”
“Not lights?”
“No, light.”
“And he heard?”
“No, he heard, but didn’t hear. His body was about to break.”
“And there was a language?”
“Hebrew.”
“And physically?”
Nachman from Yale hung up when he told them when it had happened. Moses from Abnormal Psychology said it was all right what happened and when.
Gimbel said, “If Abraham can hear Him when he’s killing his son, certainly when a man and woman are loving each other is a far better time.”
“How did he tell you, Yussel?”
“He wept and held my ankles and kissed my shoes and begged me to believe him.”
“Did you?”
“Moses, don’t be a fool.” Nachman was back on the phone. “What choice did the kid have?”
Yussel’s uncles offered money.
“It isn’t the money. I don’t want to live in the wilderness. I don’t want to be a rabbi.”
In the silence, he could hear them shrug.
“Look,” Mo
ses’ voice was calm. “If you don’t do this, could you live with yourself?”
“Yussel, you don’t have to answer him …”
Yussel knew the answer. But he said, “I could try, Uncle Moses.”
“So try,” Gimbel decided. “Give it till Shavuos. Then you do it or you don’t do it.”
“Sit on it,” Nachman said. “As they say.”
So Yussel sat. He read books on restoring the desert. His father’s learning-disabled called him every five minutes, wrote him letters, those that could write. When they called, he’d say to Shoshanna, “Tell them, when I come I’ll be there. No sooner.” And he sat. And when the lawyers read to the family his father’s pathetic will, there was a terrible line in it. “And to my only son, Yussel, I leave my heart.”
4
YUSSEL DOUBLED HIS COFFEE INTAKE, WENT UP TO TWO PACKS OF Chesterfields a day, played handball right after lunch, ate pastrami on rye with Russian dressing, rugelach by the pound, chocolate cheesecake, all the cholesterol he could find. He thought maybe he was trying to kill his heart. When there were still no shooting pains up his arm, no shortness of breath, no fibrillations, he shouted to the bedroom ceiling: “What do you mean you give me your heart? What do you mean?”
Then it began. First a letter came from a friend of Ernie the out-of-work bricklayer. “I am writing this letter for my friend Ernie he wants to know if he can build a house, not too big. So when he goes there he has a roof.” Someone had signed it with an x in ink, tried to erase the x, drawn a circle in the inky schmutz. Yussel had Shoshanna write a letter back saying that the deal wasn’t made, don’t spend your money, he hadn’t made up his mind.
A second letter: “My friend Ernie says he built the house already.”
“Where does Ernie the out-of-work bricklayer get money to build a house? How does he build it in a week, ten days? What’s happening?” Anxiety, irritation, no shooting pain, no blue in the fingernails, no shortness of breath. Shoshanna wired Ernie at the Rabbi’s shul, care of the Flower Child. “Please explain.”
