by Rhoda Lerman
“I told you already. You’ll live in my father’s house. It’s only for a year. We’ll drive the three hours to the Arizona for holidays and Shabbas. That’s why I’m buying a bus, so we can sleep at the Arizona on the bus.”
“Please, Yussel, just in case.”
All week Shoshanna begged Yussel to call Chaim. “Just call and tell him to keep an eye open.”
“I don’t want to get involved with him with money. It’s a bad combination. The man is like death, he can’t get enough. Also I don’t want to live in his neighborhood. He has the only minyan in America that’s on parole.”
Finally she cried; finally he called. “So, Chaim, I hear you’re buying a lot of real estate out there.”
“Yeah, yeah, a regular neighborhood.”
“Shoshanna asked me to call maybe you saw something she’d like just in case. A two-story with plenty of bedrooms.”
“They got a two-story out there. It’s the old whorehouse. By the dump. Nobody wants it. You can still see the numbers on the bedroom doors. It’s got a lot of bedrooms. Ha ha.”
“Well, if you hear of anything. And the prices?”
“High, low. Six families I had to make rich. They loved me.”
“And twelve you had to make poor, they hate you?”
“Anti-Semites.”
“Chaim, we have to live out there.”
“They moved.” Yussel could see Chaim shrug. “Listen, Yussel, before you make your judgments on me. First I offered everyone forty grand. Okay? No one would sell. They didn’t want Jews. So then I offer six of them a hundred grand. That they can’t refuse. So then the other bloodsuckers want a hundred grand. So I wait. I string wires so we can carry on Shabbas in the neighborhood and I wait.”
Yussel had a headache slicing from above one ear to above the other. He pressed his forefingers into the pain, held the phone with his chin against his shoulder. “Go on.”
“They complained about the wires. They complained how we dress, how we don’t say hello, how we talk a foreign language, how we leave the garbage outside the wires on Shabbas, how we throw stones at their dogs who pee on our lawns, at their wives who walk around in front of us, up and down, in pants yet. They made a lot of trouble for us. Finally they took what I offered and left.”
Yussel thought maybe he was allergic to Chaim. His head pounded. “How much?” Blood would soon gush from his ears.
Chaim mumbled, “Twenty-five.” Then he blurted out his excuses. “But it averaged out, Yussel. It averaged out to a fair price for everyone.”
“You squeezed them out?”
“They didn’t like living near Jews.”
“You forced them from their homes?”
“They haven’t forced us? For two thousand years they haven’t forced us from our homes?”
“HaShem can take care of His own justice. He doesn’t need you.”
Yussel wanted to hang up, go to the mikveh and purify himself, take a handful of Maalox. His heart made him continue. Someday he’d get even with his heart. “Chaim, where do you get such money? That’s maybe five grand a month in mortgages, a big nut to crack, Chaim. There’s no jobs out there.”
“I’m setting up computers so we’ll have jobs.”
“Malcolm Forbes adopted you, suddenly you have for eighteen houses and computers?”
“HaShem provides.”
“Yeah, He also provides pogroms, Chaim.”
“I don’t see it that way. Also I’m not asking you for advice. You called me!”
“For that I’m sorry.” Yussel conquered his heart and slammed down the receiver.
He told Shoshanna she’d have to make do with his father’s house. She might have been unhappy. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. Probably her mother was pushing she should have a nice house, be a rabbi’s wife. Yussel was busy figuring out where Chaim could get so much money, where his goons could get so much money. Eighteen houses and a mainframe empire. The schlemiel.
Chaim called back. “Ruchel says you told Shoshanna I was playing with fire. I want to know if you really are worried for me. I would like to know a Fetner is worried for me. It would make my heart swell. Also, I have to tell you, it came to me in a dream I should buy the neighborhood, so what could I do? A dream’s a dream.”
“I hate to disappoint your heart, Chaim, I’m worried about myself, that what you and your zoo do out there I’ll get punished for.”
“You’re calling my court a zoo? At least my people pay me a salary. Who did your father have? Certifiables who couldn’t scrape two pennies together. That’s what you’ll have.”
Chaim was still talking when Yussel slammed the phone into its cradle.
His uncles came, wished him well, blessed him coldly. His Uncle Gimbel from Humanities took him aside. “Get yourself a rich congregation, build a fine synagogue on the best side of town, make a place for yourself in the Rabbinate, write articles for The Observer, travel, make speeches, get respect, write best-sellers on why smart people die. Your father of blessed memory killed himself with his radical shtick. You don’t have to grovel, Yussel. You don’t have to host the halt and lame of the universe like your father did. You don’t have to reinvent Judaism, rewrite the Torah. You understand? You don’t have to do what your father did.”
This Yussel understood.
His Uncle Nachman from Law took him aside. “You don’t have to sacrifice yourself. Your father was a little crazy sometimes.”
“He was a saint, Uncle Nachman, a zaddik.”
“So where is he now?”
Moses from Abnormal Psychology joined them. He lit a cigar, blew the smoke to the ceiling, spoke with consideration. “We’re all saints. But your father, tackeh, he was crazy.”
Nachman finished the advice for them all. “Look, just don’t get involved. You feel you have to go out and help, get his congregation on their feet, okay. But don’t get involved the way your father did.”
Shoshanna came in with a tray of coffee and chocolate-covered mandelbrot. Her face was small with fury. “Leave him alone. He knows what he has to do.”
They all left without taking a sip of coffee, a crumb of cake. Yussel stood over her shoulder as she poured the coffee into the sink. “A year, Shoshanna. A year. That’s all. Don’t expect any more from me.”
That night his father came again to him in a dream. Yussel had been lying in bed listening to Far Rockaway. He heard ocean, the clang of the buoys, the long cries of silver-tipped gulls, a girl screaming “Tony!” under the boardwalk, sirens. He was comforted by the sounds. He fell asleep thinking how much he loved Far Rockaway. His father was wearing vanilla silk pongee pajamas under a mandarin-collared quilted vanilla silk pongee robe. They were in the Shanda again, on the highway, in the desert. They passed the sign about Coronado. Yussel read the first line, still couldn’t read the second. Kansas was too quiet. He was eating a meat loaf sandwich as he drove. A bit of aluminum foil stuck in a molar.
“I came to tell you a story about your great-great-grandfather, may his soul rest in peace.” Yussel’s father held his beard with his right hand. “He had in his congregation a very rich Jew, a Jew so stingy he used other men’s handkerchiefs. With a wife so terrible he wouldn’t wish her on his enemies. Cold, mean. One day near Rosh Hashonah the Jew goes to the Rabbi and says, ‘Rabbi, I want you to say a prayer my wife should die in a year.’
“The Rabbi, you can imagine, is shocked. ‘I can’t do such a thing.’
“ ‘Rabbi,’ the Jew pleads. ‘She won’t give me a divorce. She never cleans, cooks. She never gives me to eat what I like. She shrieks at me day and night. Please, Rabbi, I can’t bear her anymore.’
“ ‘Impossible.’
“ ‘I can’t go on. I’ll kill myself or her.’
“The Rabbi thinks hard. ‘The Talmud says if a man pledges charity and doesn’t make good on his pledge, someone close to him will die in one year. So make a big pledge to the shul and don’t pay. In one year, she’ll be dead.’
&n
bsp; “Of course the rich Jew pledges a thousand rubles, what does it matter? He dances home he is so happy. When he sees his wretched wife, his face breaks into a smile. He sings songs through a miserable supper of groats and watery soup. Once he notices she’s looking at him. The next day she makes a delicious kugel. Weeks pass. He sees a gorgeous dress in a shop in Kiev. He thinks at least she should look good for him and at the end of the year he’ll find a pretty young thing to wear the dress. His wife is very surprised to have such a gift from him. Now his pillows are fluffed up. She makes strudel all the time. His house is clean. A few months pass. He sees a gorgeous diamond ring in Kiev. A ring is an investment. In a year he can sell it maybe even for more than he paid. So he buys it. She kisses him on the cheek. She dances around the house in her new dress with her new ring. The house sparkles like the ring. She looks younger than he remembers. More time passes, winter, spring. He forgets the pledge. He thinks of nothing but this lovely human being who cooks wonderful food, brings in fresh flowers, sweeps ten times a day, warms his bed. And then suddenly it’s Rosh Hashonah and he remembers the pledge. He runs to the shul. ‘Rabbi, Rabbi, what should I do? I don’t want her to die. She’s my life!’
“ ‘So pay the pledge.’
“Without thinking he pays the thousand rubles, an extra five hundred just in case.
“ ‘You see,’ says the Rabbi, ‘now you’re not only like a bridegroom, you are also a generous man’ You see,” Yussel’s father concluded, although Yussel knew the conclusion, “Perception creates reality.”
Yussel pulled the dream car in front of a dream Texaco station. His father got out, stretched, bought a Hershey’s bar with almonds, swiped some Sweet ’N Low. “You’ll feel better about this once you get started. So, listen, get started.”
“What’s to listen? I’m doing it, aren’t I? Right? Right.” In his dream he was surprised at his own anger. “The feelings I can do without.”
Chaim returned. He brought home cowboy hats for his children and for Yussel’s. He was full of himself. Yussel wouldn’t listen to him. Yussel was going to leave right after Shavuos. The day before Shavuos, Yussel packed the bus. Both families stood around the bus while Yussel packed. Ruchel gave the kids a box of Raspberry Joys for the trip. Chaim nailed a mezzuzah to the front of the bus and stuck a honk if you love Jesus bumper sticker to the back. Yussel didn’t think it was funny. Everyone else did. “It came to me,” Chaim explained, “that you should have protection.”
“Funny, Chaim,” Yussel said from the corner of his mouth so Shoshanna wouldn’t hear. “It didn’t yet come to me that I should have protection, particularly from you.”
Chaim spread his hands. “A dream came to me that you needed protection. A dream’s a dream.”
“Don’t put your dreams on me. Do you hear?”
“Okay, Yussel, okay.” He stretched out a hand to say good-bye.
Yussel mumbled something, refused Chaim’s hand. Yussel took his client list, their phone numbers, addresses, the deeds to the Arizona, put them in a briefcase, slipped the briefcase under the front seat. Schmulke wanted to wear his Darth Vader suit on the trip.
“No.”
“Why not, Totty?” Schmulke hung on him.
Yussel had a lot of things on his mind. Yussel had to take the SL to Bernie who’d promised to sell it. Then he had to make out the lease for their beautiful three-story house near the beach. He was ripping up roots. Why did he listen to his crazy father? A man could be crazy when he’s dead as well as when he’s alive. Also it was possible Chaim did have a dream that they would be in danger crossing the country. Sometimes dreams don’t predict events but create them. Yussel knew Schmulke was upset, didn’t want to hear his tzuros, his troubles. Yussel had enough of his own. The answering service wanted him to call two clients who were having an argument over next season’s skirt length. The home office said if the new agent replacing Yussel worked out, the territory belonged to the new guy. They offered Yussel a territory in Kansas, which was worth beans.
“Why not, Totty?”
“You can’t wear your suit because I said no. And I’m not going to argue with you because you can argue the schmaltz out of a matzoh and I haven’t got the strength for that today.” Yussel wondered what Chaim had dreamed, whether he should ask him. There was a midrash about a dream that created danger. Twice a woman went to a rabbi and said she dreamed her house burned down. Twice he told her she’d have a baby. Twice she had a baby. The third time she had the dream she went to ask but the Rabbi wasn’t home. Some kibbitzers in the Rabbi’s house told her the dream meant her husband would die. Her husband died. The Rabbi found out and told them they’d killed an innocent man. Dreams have power. Now Chaim has a dream that Yussel needs protection. Yussel felt his kishkes turn over. What was ahead for them all? Maybe Chaim’s making danger for Yussel like the kibbitzers did for the woman?
“Totty, there’s no schmaltz in matzoh.”
“Right, Schmulke. Think about it.”
“Why can’t I wear my Darth Vader suit?”
“Because we Yiddehlach are strange-looking enough without bringing along Darth Vader.”
“Why are we strange-looking? Maybe they’re strange-looking?”
Yussel sighed and sat down on the steps of the bus. Shoshanna brought him iced tea and said he should have shook Chaim’s hand. He told her he didn’t like his business of dreaming and manipulating people. Yussel took Schmulke on his lap. “Schmulkele, out there it’s a different world. You know that. When your grandfather came to America, they called him an Oriental, like a Chinaman. Those who stayed in Europe, they called them junk people and killed them. Here they call us Christ killers.”
“They’re all dumb anyway. Every shaigetz is a moron.”
“They teach you that in Yeshiva?”
“It’s true. Everyone knows.” Which meant no, they did not teach that Christians were stupid. Maybe they taught that Christians had no souls, which was just as bad.
“That kind of talk is going to get you in trouble out West.”
Schmulke looked at him crookedly, climbed from his lap. Yussel wondered what was coming next. Every generation increases its perception, but they don’t learn any better to live together. Schmulke, if it were possible, was a tougher kid than Yussel had been.
Yussel could feel Schmulke rummaging around in his Talmudic head for an angle. He had to have a Kissinger for a son.
“Look, Schmulke, Tottele, out there you don’t rub that you’re different in their faces or they could rub it in your face. Don’t make trouble. Cool your Yeshiva ideas, okay? We have to live with these people.”
He could tell by the look on Schmulke’s face that he’d found the angle. “So that’s why I want to wear my Darth Vader suit so I’ll look like everyone else.”
“Go help your mother.”
Schmulke shouted from the front porch. “I wear it or I don’t go. I’ll live with my grandma.”
“All right, all right. If together we see one other kid who looks like Darth Vader, you can wear yours.”
“She put it on top of the bus. I want it in the bus, in case I need it.”
“If you need it, Tottele, you’ll have it.”
Yussel checked his client list, shoved it even farther back under his seat. Maybe the new guy wouldn’t work out.
At the rear of his great-uncle’s little shul in Arverne, a rat hole of a town up the beach, Yussel sat in the weak sunlight filtering through dirty windows. He sat on an oak bench sculpted from wear. Columns of dust hung like searchlights. There was an old smell of incense, smoke, mildewed prayer books. A samovar bubbled in the hallway. The caretaker, who knew him from the day he was born, greeted him. This caretaker, in Liga, when he was a boy, as he was marched off to the camps, he saw his father’s head in a butcher shop window. Yussel sat in the dark, wove the letters of one Name of HaShem with another Name of HaShem, something he’d learned from the great-uncle. Yussel didn’t ask HaShem for any favors, like messages, foresigh
t, revelation of danger. He knew if he asked, he’d have to pay back from his heart and he didn’t want to start that kind of relationship. It was the first step to circumcising your heart. When something came in on the screen, something that would protect his wife and kids, not even himself, then and only then would he listen.
Sacred letter by sacred letter until his breath grew short, rhythmic, he weaved, waited for the screen, thought about his ancestors, the whole line, the melancholics, the saints, the nuts. Schmulke already bore all the marks of the Fetner generations: anger, allergies, weak eyes, impatience, great generosity. Anger was the wrong word. Wrath was better. The first Nachman Fetner of blessed memory, when he ascended to a higher rung, he came down and wept for weeks. The fourth Nachman Fetner of blessed memory saw a cow’s skull at a tannery, went home, climbed the stairs to his attic, and didn’t come down until they carried him out of the house on the Shabbas table. It was healthier to stay off the rungs, play football, eat ice cream, marry, have kids, be a good Jew, but stay off the rungs. Maybe Schmulke should stay with Shoshanna’s mother and go to Yeshiva in Toronto. Maybes, maybes. Yussel had to start weaving the Names all over again. This time he concentrated, saw thunderstorms over a lake, decided to go by the southern route. He went home, called AAA to change the TripTik. His mother called from Haifa to tell him to avoid Chicago, also to avoid someone named Chaim.
The AAA people also told him there would be storms over the Great Lakes. Yussel marked the maps with pink underliner late at night before they were to leave. The pink underliner was almost to Harrisburg, when Dina, the eldest, eleven, soft and lovely, day by day more secretive, climbed into his lap. She wanted to see Safari Adventureland in New Jersey. She was in her pajamas with red spots of sleep on her cheeks. “Lions, Totty, monkeys, zebras.” She rocked on his lap, chanted baby dreams, reminded him he’d already promised he’d take her and he’d forgotten and she’d never have a chance to go to Safari Adventureland again, that he always promises, always forgets. He carried her up to bed. “Lions, monkeys, zebras,” she hummed as he tucked her in. He went downstairs to his study, redrew the map so Dina could go to Safari Adventureland.
