by Rhoda Lerman
And a penciled letter came: “I’m writing this for Ernie. He built the house, not too big, so when he goes there he has a roof. Also two others.”
And from Grisha, his father’s sidekick: “Dear Yussy, We have a real problem. There is a person lives above us by the name Lillywhite, up in the hills, not exactly the mountain, and she has a sound system. It plays music like an orchestra and she sings along. It isn’t right that we listen to her. The sound comes right down on our heads. Yesterday I called the Saguache County sheriff and he said there was no such thing as a noise ordinance, but he called her up and then he called me up and said she said to leave her alone. So I explained to the sheriff how it’s against our religion for a man to listen to a woman sing, so he said he’d call her again, but we should know he’s heard she dances naked in a room full of books, so we shouldn’t expect much from her. So then he called me back and said he told her about how it’s against our religion and she said, according to the sheriff, that’s why she’s singing. Exact words, you should know. So maybe she’s even Jewish? Everyone’s stuffing their ears with cotton and those little things swimmers use but it doesn’t do any good. She also sings terrible. Bing Crosby, the Mills Brothers, sad stuff. What should we do. Grisha. P.S. She turned it up louder. It just comes right down here, the sound, her singing. Please answer asap.”
Yussel wrote back, thanked Grisha for his concern, wondered if he was still playing solitaire, wrote a check for a thousand dollars, told him to order a sound system himself and play “Hatikvah” until it drives her out of the hills. Ernie called to say he found some Jewish aerobics music but what should he do about Shabbas. Is it better to play or worse to listen? Yussel told him to turn it off on Shabbas but have everyone sing loud, and hoped it would be okay. Ernie said it depended on how the wind blows off the mountain.
Yussel couldn’t understand why they were already out there. The land didn’t belong to them. He called Grisha. Grisha explained that Indian Joe invited them, told them it was just a matter of time before the deal went through, told them the land needed religious people to live on it. Yussel told Grisha he should be prepared to leave. He had no idea whether he was buying it or not. Which, after he said it, made him realize that now he was seriously debating the purchase. Before, it was an absolute no. Then a letter from Natalie. Could she maybe make some curtains for the Arizona? Then the Flower Child called Shoshanna to ask her to please make him make a decision because everyone was driving her crazy and she personally didn’t know what to do. Also there was a problem with money. Yussel sent her five hundred dollars and stayed up half the night wondering about the crayons, which had just entered his head like bullets, all of them, reds, blues, greens. He didn’t answer the Natalie letter. He called the insurance company home office and asked if he could take a leave of absence for a year or two, what would they do about his home territory. Could he keep it and come back? Neighbor Chaim wanted to discuss buying homeowner’s policies from Yussel. Yussel refused to do business with him. Yussel was fighting with the Burial Society. They wanted to move his father’s body to the Arizona, maybe near the mountains or onto some high ground near the road.
Yussel dreamed a dream about the Flower Child. In the dream he followed her into the bathroom. For three days afterward he didn’t drive his car, something could happen to him for such a dream. He called his lawyer. It was his right to leave the body, of blessed memory, where it was as long as he was paying the plot upkeep. Then the lawyer called back. “On reexamination of the will, it is duly noted that the deceased wishes to be interred….” Yussel chewed a handful of Maalox tablets. His heart attack went away. He called his Uncle Moses. “I’m surprised, Yussel, that you are acting in this self-destructive way.” Yussel hung up. He felt a little pain. Nothing shooting, nothing biological. When you bequeath, you bequeath! He flung a fist at the ceiling. How could he curse his father when he should be praying his father’s soul higher and higher with each word he uttered? Nevertheless, he cursed. And then something strange happened. His heart told him to invite Chaim for Saturday lunch. “No!” He banged his fist on his desk. He called Chaim.
“It’s about time.”
Yussel kept his mouth shut. Chaim came from morning services at his shul. Yussel walked with Schmulke from his uncle’s shul, a half-hour on the boardwalk. Very slowly. Chaim came in a gorgeous blue satin caftan. He had brought Carmel wine over before the Sabbath. Yussel didn’t bring it out.
“Something’s wrong with my wine, Yussel, that you don’t use it?”
Yussel’s children and Chaim’s children looked at one another in some silent agreement.
“I drink only Kedem.”
Chaim blanched. “This week I told my congregation about interpreting dreams.” He went solo until they sat down. Chaim started in again, expounded on Kabbala.
Yussel, with an eye on Shoshanna, interrupted Chaim. “That’s the sort of thing you aren’t supposed to teach to more than one person at a time, Chaim.”
“It’s a new age, Yussel.” Then he asked himself questions and answered his questions until everyone left to wash. After Yussel made kiddush, with the wine and the challah, he took Shoshanna into the kitchen and said, “Make him leave.”
“You invited him.”
Yussel and Shoshanna whispered, snarled together.
“Litvishe gangsters, Borough Park bagmen, refugees from the Satmars, rejects from the Lubavitchers. The original anything-anybody-ever-said-bad-about-Jews-is-true guys. That’s who he has; that’s who he is. And I should sit with him? At my table?”
“Fancy people come to him, from the Upper East Side they come, professionals.”
“His court, Shoshanna. I’m talking about his court, his inner circle, his goniffs, his thieves, who murder one another for the crumbs off his plate, who feed him grapes, suck the bones from his fish, brush him clean, run for his cigarettes. If his yarmulke slips off, they put it back on.”
“This is the way they treated your ancestors.”
“Chaim’s a nobody. He has no line. You know what he is, Shoshanna? He’s Father Divine with Jewish room service. You’ve seen some of the wives?”
“They’re very frum.”
“Converts.”
“So? They raise their children right. They keep kosher. They observe the Sabbath. What’s so bad?”
“Not a spark of Jewishness in them. Denise and Wanda became Zipporah and Rivkeh. They change their names, buy wigs—they’re Jews? No inclination to Yiddishkeit, no spark. Sexy shicksas the goniffs wanted. Too stupid to be even kapore chickens, Shoshanna. You know where they find them? When they deliver traif meat to Catholic nursing homes on Staten Island. They take home the Polacks who work in the kitchen and wear nets on their hair. And Chaim converts them, makes them Jewish so his criminals can reproduce. That’s what’s sitting out there at my table I have to be nice to. Scum. Saloon boys.” Yussel’s voice rose. “You hear about his mixed mikveh, men and women together in the pool before Shabbas? You hear about that? Together? Undressed?”
“Together? Undressed?” Shoshanna’s face went white. Then she caught herself. “That’s just gossip. Ruchel never told me such a thing.”
“You think he’d tell his wife? Hah!”
“Number one, Yussel, if it’s true, which it isn’t, you should help him, guide him. Number two, such words should never leave a rabbi’s mouth.”
“I’m not a rabbi.”
“You’re a Fetner.”
“Whose side are you on, Shoshanna?”
Shoshanna put her hands on her hips.
“Your hands light the Shabbas candles. I love your hands. Your hips make me children. I love your hips. But your mouth, Shoshanna, God protect me from your mouth.”
“Then tell me, Yussel, why does Chaim have such a big congregation?”
Yussel shrugged. “He’s charming when he wants to be.”
“He’s brilliant and he has power.”
“Yeah, well he uses it wrong … he uses it for his own benefit.”
> “And which is better, using it wrong? Or not using it at all, like you?”
Sometimes Shoshanna saw things too clearly. Yussel felt pain. She saw his pain because she took his hand in her own and led him from the kitchen. “He’s insecure.” Shoshanna was taking a psychology course in the mail from Empire State College. She wanted to be a social worker. Maybe Chaim was her first client. “He’s trying to impress you. He’s lived next door seven years and you haven’t ever invited him. Also who are you to criticize him? When you have a congregation, then you can criticize.”
In the dining room, Chaim, Ruchel, all the children were wreathed in smiles. Shoshanna smiled too. There was something going on among all of them. “I hate the guy,” he whispered to Shoshanna. She smiled benevolently at him. Yussel passed a plate of cholent. He put it in front of Chaim, who pushed it around with his fork.
“You lose something, Chaim? A tooth from too much smiling?”
Chaim looked at Ruchel and then at Shoshanna. Now Yussel was certain they shared a secret. “I don’t eat lima beans,” Chaim explained.
“Oh.”
It was a long incoherent lunch. After sponge cake there was a moment like a thud in the attic: both families stared at Chaim as if he should make a speech. Finally, Shoshanna said, “Go on, Chaim, tell him.”
Yussel was ready to kill his wife. Ruchel said, “Tell him, tell him.”
Chaim stood, cleared his throat, put his arm around his wife, which made Shoshanna draw in her breath sharply, and put on a wedding cake smile. “We purchased a house.”
“Yes?” Yussel responded politely. He would even wish them well, to get them out of the neighborhood. Him and his hippie, new-age ideas. Banjos in the shul. The mixed mikveh he wasn’t so sure about.
“Near yours!” Ruchel said.
Shoshanna giggled. Yussel felt everything in him tighten. This is what comes from dreaming of the Flower Child. This conspiracy between my wife and my enemy. Maybe Chaim with all his hockma with dreams and magic, maybe he’s making me dream this Flower Child dream to weaken me. Chaim’s eyes were squeezed almost shut, his shoulders raised as if for a blow from Yussel.
Shoshanna said, “Oh, that’s wonderful! Isn’t it wonderful, Yussel? Near us.”
“Shoshanna, Chaim lives next door. Already. How much nearer can he get?”
Chaim laughed. Ruchel laughed. Shoshanna laughed. They were giddy like kids with their laughter and their secret. Yussel drank his coffee, one cup, two cups. Chaim sat there with his eyes pinched, his shoulders raised. Yussel sat spellbound. Shoshanna poured into Chaim’s cup, but her eyes were fixed on Yussel and the coffee flowed out onto the linen tablecloth. She wiped it up with seltzer.
“So, ask, Yussel, ask.” Chaim was ripping at a fingernail with his teeth, viciously. When he removed it, he put it in his pocket to burn at home.
Chaim, Yussel said to Chaim’s fingernails, I hate you. I’m sorry I invited you into my house. “Ask what?”
Ruchel exploded. “Ask where!”
All the faces, his wife’s, Chaim’s, Ruchel’s, were raised expectantly. “Come on, Yussel.” Shoshanna stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. She had such little pink hands. Was she dumb or mean? Chaim was playing tricks with her mind. He was capable. “Ask,” she whispered, and squeezed. She never touched him in public. What was breaking loose here? New age? New age, I’ll give you new age. “Okay, okay. So.” Yussel leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath. “So where did you buy a house, Chaim?”
“Out there.”
No matter what Shoshanna said, no matter how Chaim pleaded from outside the door of his bedroom, Yussel would not come out. He heard hushed whispers, at last the front door, the screen door, footsteps on the sidewalk. Shoshanna didn’t come in. Yussel beat at his heart. It remained whole.
In the morning, Shoshanna said only, “Next to you is miles away from the Arizona. In a town. He paid a fortune for it.”
Yussel shouted. “What do you want from me? All of you. What do you want?” He knew Shoshanna knew he was not shouting at her. At the world. Never her.
At the dining room table, Yussel buried his head in his hands and wept. Shoshanna and the girls watched him. Schmulke leaped around the table in new cowboy boots. “What do you want?”
Shoshanna touched his arm. She was frightened and he was sorry. The look on the girls’ faces made him sorry also.
“What should I do, Shoshanna? What?”
Shoshanna stroked his arms. “It’s simple. It’s simple. Do what’s in your heart.”
He hit his forehead and his heart with a fist. His head rang with the impact. Shoshanna took the girls to school in the car.
Yussel called Bernie the auto broker, ordered a bus.
“A bus, Yussel?”
“A bus, Bernie. Sleeps eight, two sinks, two refrigerators, like the rock stars have.”
“You have a lot of company coming? You’re parking it on the lot?”
“To drive to Kansas.”
“Kansas?” Bernie started to laugh.
“We’re leaving right after Shavuos.”
“Listen, you want the back window should have a picture of the ocean?”
Yussel hadn’t realized he was leaving the ocean.
That night he heard someone downstairs, late. He found a black man with a ring of keys, a flashlight in his pocket, a ski cap in May. “Welcome,” said Yussel. “I own nothing in this house. Everything is yours.”
The thief looked at him, shined the flashlight in Yussel’s face.
“You crazy, man.”
“So you shouldn’t sin. If I tell you everything is yours, then you haven’t stolen anything, so when you die … ” But the thief was already gone in whatever way he’d come. Yussel could not believe he had done such a crazy thing. He decided not to tell Shoshanna. She would be scared. Also for other reasons he would not tell her. He went back to bed. He thought thoughts, his thoughts thought thoughts, he slept. His father came to him. He was wearing silk charmeuse pajamas in black-and-white zebra stripes, over them a silk charmeuse quilted smoking jacket with a shawl collar. The smoking jacket was leopard print in black and red.
“Yussele, do you remember the story about the hiccups?”
Yussel remembered. In the morning he wished he’d asked about the pajamas.
“You drive, Yussele.”
Yussel drove. They were in the Shanda. His father held his beard with his right hand, laid his head back on the headrest. “When my grandfather of blessed memory was a teenage boy, his grandfather was a great rabbi, with a big court, horses, servants, a chair of gold. So great, hundreds, thousands came to him with their troubles, with their requests, a marriage, a son, a cow sick, even Gentiles, once a count with a barren wife, which is how we finally got out of the country and came to America. Everyone came. But mostly it was the poor, his Jews, who came. Crowds of them. Such angst, Yussel. Such pain his people gave him. One day my great-great-grandfather of blessed memory he got the hiccups. The Great Rabbi. For days. Nothing stopped the hiccups. He couldn’t eat, drink, sing, pray. So he agreed to go to Kiev to the University where a learned professor was curing hiccups. My grandfather of blessed memory who could speak Russian went along to help because the Great Rabbi couldn’t speak Russian.
“The professor said, ‘Tell your grandfather to take off his shirt.’ He told his grandfather and he took off his shirt. ‘Tell him now to sit still no matter how this hurts.’ The grandfather nodded. From behind the Rabbi the professor heated an iron until it was red-hot. And he touched the Rabbi’s back. The Rabbi didn’t move. But still he hiccupped.
“ ‘Tell your grandfather I’ll try again.’
“ ‘Grandfather, he’ll try again.’
“The Rabbi nodded. This time the professor heated the iron until it was white-hot and touched the small part of the Rabbi’s naked back. Still the Rabbi sat and said nothing.
“ ‘Tell your grandfather he’s a remarkable man. Just before he came, a Cossack came, also wi
th hiccups. When I touched the Cossack with the red-hot iron, he screamed and jumped from that window and ran away half-naked into the snow. There’s his coat and shirt. With white-hot, your grandfather sits still, makes no sound. Doesn’t he feel the pain?’
“So my grandfather of blessed memory told his grandfather of blessed memory what the professor had said. ‘The professor thinks you’re a remarkable man. A few minutes ago a Cossack sat here and when he felt the red-hot iron he jumped out the window and ran away. There’s his coat and shirt. But you sit still and make no sound. You don’t feel the pain?’
“When the Great Rabbi heard this he said to his grandson, ‘So. Tell the professor his pain is nothing compared to the pain I feel every day from my Jews. That’s pain.’ ”
In his dream, Yussel shook his head.
“Yussele, tell me, do you feel pain?”
“No way, Jose,” Yussel lied. “I’m not a rabbi.”
“You don’t feel pain even for poor Chaim and his envy eating him alive?”
“No.”
“Aha.”
That was all his father said. “Aha.”
“It’s not written against pleasure, is it, Totte?”
“No, but how does one distinguish pleasure until one knows pain?”
“I’m not buying.”
“Believe me, you will.” The Rabbi sighed, peeled an egg, threw the shell pieces from the window. “It’s in your blood. Pain, rapture. You don’t remember from your blood?”
Yussel knew the message. Eggs you eat for mourning. In his dream, his father mourned because his son felt no pain. “I never asked, Totte, did he get cured?”
His father shrugged. “I don’t know. What I do know is he never got rid of his Jews and when he died they followed him to Heaven, still to torment him.”
Yussel woke up in a cold sweat as if a great fever had broken in the night.
5
SHOSHANNA AND RUCHEL MADE LISTS, BROUGHT HOME LIBRARY books about the Wild Wild West for the children, shopped for denims, made orders, spent, spent, spent. Chaim took his court, his ten men, flew them west, left them there to get things ready. He didn’t say what things. Ruchel told Shoshanna. Shoshanna told Yussel. Yussel didn’t want to hear what Chaim was doing. Yussel saw on his screen a yellow sky, a salt-encrusted landscape. Ruchel told Shoshanna Chaim had eighteen houses already, a regular neighborhood, and Yussel better buy quick if he wants anything decent before the houses are all gone. Shoshanna noodged Yussel to call Chaim to find out about houses. “Just in case you change your mind, Yussel.”
