God's Ear

by Rhoda Lerman

  “Cute.” She wore a rough brown wool sweater jacket with big deep pockets, held a hand in one pocket as she marched. Yussel wondered if she had a gun. That would be all right with him.

  Just once if he could hold her face between his hands, kiss her, lay her down by the pool. Just once, if he could have her just once, he’d be done with her, with all of it. How long could it take? A couple of minutes? He could go on with his life and he’d really be finished with her. This was a good place, a great place. They’d never been so alone before. Is this what’s intended? Is this the other side of the Other Side, the reward, the final river to plunge into? Why is she put before me? Maybe it’s the end of the path? The last drop into evil? Hadn’t it begun here? He could end it here. Over by the flat rock, he could end it. On the rock he could spread her legs, cup her breasts, listen to his name, be done with her. “I have nothing to give you. My father quotes Carlyle. ‘In order to find your inner being you have to have a great love or a great tragedy.’ Well, I found my inner being. It’s garbage.”

  “You told me that once, when you filled my car with garbage. You’re wrong.”

  “We’re finished, Lillywhite. I can’t see you.”

  “Abraham’s tent had four doors, right?”

  Yussel panicked. Who had she been talking to? His father? Who else was in on this she should have Talmudic weapons? “So?”

  “So a person could enter his father’s house no matter what direction he came from. Open another door for me.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Someone told me.”

  “I’m Abraham? I have no other doors. I have no tent. Between us there’s only one door … the door between a man and a woman. It’s closed, nailed shut.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t slam the door on me. You’re slamming the door.” Lillywhite turned her face away from him for a moment. From her back he could see her take a deep breath. “All right. Okay. Before you slam the door, I want you to take me to my father’s grave.”

  He didn’t know if the sorrow in his heart was for her or for himself. “You don’t know how to get on a plane? I’ll tell you. You get on the plane in Denver. You get off in New York. You take a cab. You go to the cemetery. They’re all in the same place. You go into the office, tell them your name. They give you the …”

  “I can’t do that. Don’t you understand? I told you, I can’t do that. You have to come with me.”

  “They give you a map. You take the map …”

  “I saw you put your father’s body into the grave. Your father’s corpse. I saw that. I saw you predict the winning numbers at the Paradise. I saw you touch death. Why won’t you help me?”

  He heard his father’s voice. “Yussele,” his voice was low. “Didn’t I tell you you couldn’t hide your heart forever? Didn’t I tell you someday someone would figure you out?”

  “You want to ruin my life? You want to kill my baby?”

  “I want you to take me to my father’s grave. I want to speak to my father. How will that kill your kid?” Lillywhite took a paper from the pocket of her sweater. “These are your water rights. If you take me to my father’s grave, I’ll give them to you. If you don’t, I’ll ruin you and your friend and all your people and all his people.” She thrust her lower lip forward, watched him.

  Lillywhite was the first woman he’d ever been in love with. He couldn’t dismiss her. How many other women had he pushed away? Leave me alone. I’m comfortable. Leave me alone. Natalie he dismissed as nuts, Babe as bitter and barren, his mother as revengeful. Shoshanna, God forgive him, as dumb. All of them he’d found a reason to dismiss. This one stood in front of him with her hands on her hips and he couldn’t dismiss her. And all the rest of them were lined up behind her. For what he’d done to Shoshanna, that she should hide herself all these years to keep him happy, he could cut out his heart. And Natalie who was filled with sparks and devotion, he’d made her feet bleed. And the Flower Child? What was his excuse for her? That she was after him? Was she? Maybe she was after something else? Like a place to stay, an understanding heart? And this one? This one in front of him with his livelihood and Chaim’s livelihood and the welfare of all their families and their congregations’ families shaking in her hand? He could find plenty of reasons to dismiss this one. This one wasn’t Jewish. This one was a sexpot, a whore, the work of the Yetzer Hara. On the other hand, also maybe possibly Lillywhite and he were fragments of the same soul. Why else would they have snapped together like puzzle pieces? Why else would he be in agony without her? Someone, for good or evil, had put in front of him a woman he couldn’t dismiss. “I’ve been to see your mother, Yussele. She’s taking the baths in Switzerland. She was covered with mud. I thought she was dead. I think I got through. She smiled. I think she’s going to marry again. Someone rich. Where could she get the money to take mud baths in Switzerland?”

  His father wore the Milk of Magnesia blue mandarin silk pajamas, with the black-fringed belt, the blue slippers with gold Chinese medallions on their fronts, carried a soft overnight bag of Pierre Deux fabric, which Yussel recognized because Shoshanna once bought such a bag for her mother and Yussel couldn’t believe how much it cost. His father’s left door was a jalousie blind, slatted, enameled, electric blue aluminum. The other was the same lead door. He looked drained.

  “I’ll ask Babe. Listen, Totte. I’m in a situation.”

  “I know. Gevalt.”

  “I don’t think I have any choice.”

  “He’s taken away your free choice. So now you know free choice is intended.”

  “Shoshanna wants to leave, take Schmulke. Dina’s very sick.”

  “I know.”

  “My money’s gone. And this woman …”

  “You’re suffering. He’s correcting the distance between you and Him. You’re feeling the correction. The purpose of suffering is to correct the distance between you and HaShem. You get exactly the right amount of suffering for the same amount of correction. No more, no less.”

  “What if he takes my Dinela?”

  “What if he takes any of us? Death is a miracle just like birth. He gives; He takes. He knows what He’s doing.”

  “Totte,” Yussel groaned, “what am I supposed to do?”

  “Trust.” His father pulled his hat down over his forehead. Yussel couldn’t see his eyes.

  “Okay, Lillywhite, I’ll think about it.”

  “There’s a train out of Denver on Sundays at six.”

  “Why a train?”

  “So we can be alone.”

  Terror squeezed his heart. “I said I’ll think about it.”

  “You can’t see my soul for my tits, can you?”

  Yussel knew why she’d been given to him. She was here to break his heart. He let her drive down the road first, watched the dust behind her car. When the dust cleared his father was leaning against Bingo’s cab. His aluminum slats caught the sun.

  “You got a new door?”

  “Lightweight. What a relief. It gets worse for you. It gets better for me. You’re almost halfway there, Yussel.”

  “Totte!” Yussel groaned. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  He shrugged, brushed pine needles from his silken shoulders. “You’ll see. They don’t want me to tell you anything. I can tell you stories. That’s all. So come.”

  His father put the Pierre Deux overnight case on the flat rock, sat next to it, pointed for Yussel to sit with him, put one thin arm around him gently, held his own beard in his right hand. “Once a Jew was sentenced to twenty-five years hard labor For twenty-five years he stood grinding something. The grinder and the wheel were on one side of a wall. He had no idea what he was grinding. He just turned that wheel, day and night. He imagined maybe he was grinding wheat to feed a family, two families, a whole village. Maybe he was grinding stones into sand for building. Twenty-five years, he had a lot of maybes. At the end of the twenty-five years, his jailers released him. He was a ruined man. There was no strength left in him
. He walked around the wall. He thought, now he would find out what he was grinding for all these years. He wouldn’t mind if it had been grain, stones, as long as he was helping someone, accomplishing something. He got around the wall—there was nothing on the other side.”

  His father turned the handle on his jalousie, the louvers opened and closed. “That’s all I can give you. You’ll get around to the Other Side, you’ll see.” His father pulled a handful of wax candles from the overnight, gave them to Yussel.

  “What if He takes Dina?”

  His father looked into Yussel’s eyes. Yussel could feel the burning. “I don’t know, Yussele. This is a very complicated computer He has. If He takes, He takes. Who are we to question? My platform isn’t high enough. It’s only high enough to know He has a reason for everything and everything’s intended.”

  “So he ruins my family, makes my kid sick?”

  “He gives you choices. Your choices determine your destiny. Only he knows the consequences. You told the young lady you’d think about it. I think you better think about it.”

  “What He asks is I should climb into bed with a strange woman?”

  “Listen, he asked Abraham to kill his son, didn’t He? Let’s put this in perspective. This is what I mean by sublime: not to save Chaim’s life would be a worse sin than a little yentzing, a little mixing it up with some wet muscles.”

  “No wonder you never had a respectable congregation.”

  “It surprises you I’m human?”

  “Okay, Totte, say I sin. You know what worries me?”

  “Your breath?”

  “What if I like it?”

  He ran his fingers up and down the jalousie like a keyboard. “Yeah, well, that’s the danger, Yussele. That you might stay over there. The slippery path gets narrower and narrower until there’s no way to turn around.”

  “It feels like there’s no way to turn around now. It feels like He’s asking me to kill my daughter.”

  His father shrugged. “I don’t know, Tottele, I’m attached. I do what He wants. You’re not attached. You have to make the choices.”

  “I’m really on the Other Side?”

  “You expected a change of scenery? An intermission? I think when you gambled you went over.”

  “Totte,” Yussel groaned, “I had to get the money.”

  “Maybe before.”

  “When?” Yussel cried out.

  “When you figure that out you won’t be there anymore.”

  27

  THE BEDROOM AND BATHROOM WERE LIKE A HONEYMOON SUITE at the Marriott Inn. Yussel was in the Jacuzzi when Reverend Bismark of Moffat phoned. “My adult education class? Mutual understanding?” Yussel yelled when Shoshanna repeated the Reverend Bismark’s request. “Let Bismark teach his kids not to beat up my Schmulke.”

  Shoshanna had her hand over the mouthpiece. “Schmulke started it. You know that. Kids get mad. They use their fists. You can’t blame them.”

  “Chaim started it by cheating half the people in Moffat.”

  “Yussy,” she hissed, “he wants to know how many you can send?”

  “My scalp diseases? Like Castro I should empty my asylums and send Bismark my crazies? Natalie? Grisha?”

  “He’ll send his bus over.”

  “Paper cups, coffee only. Nothing to eat. Not in his church. In his home. And he’s not to mention Yoshke’s name once. If he does, we get up and leave.”

  “He wants to know who Yoshke is.” Shoshanna giggled.

  “I should teach him who Yoshke is? Yoshke, Yoisel, the guy on the cross, tell him.”

  Very carefully, Shoshanna said, “Your gentleman on your cross.” She was afraid of saying Jesus.

  Yussel was sending seven plus the four kibbutzniks who couldn’t understand a word of English. Babe took Grisha’s suit to the cleaner’s in Alamosa, ironed a white shirt. Shoshanna and Babe stood on each side of the door of the Assembly of God bus, checking fingernails and shoes. The Blondische wore her hiking boots but that was okay around Moffat. The four kibbutzniks wore terrorist camouflage gear. Babe wore all beige and no jewelry, not even her pearls. Grisha looked like he had been laid out. His suit two sizes too big, his skin two sizes too small. Natalie had to be sent back to change into a skirt. Shoshanna wanted to go only if Yussel would go. Yussel wouldn’t. The bus was to pick up Mendl and Steinberg in case Bismark said anything Yussel’s people shouldn’t hear, couldn’t respond to. Yussel stayed home. When Shoshanna went to the bathroom, he called Lillywhite, said very fast, “Not this Sunday and next Sunday I have to teach,” hung up.

  Later Yussel drove to the Arizona to meet the returning bus. His people were hoarse from singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” talked only about forgiving their enemies, loving their neighbors, turning the other cheek. Yussel smoked, pushed his hat back off his head, listened, nodded. When they were finished, he said very softly, “Let me tell you something. If Schmulke had turned the other cheek, he’d have two black eyes.”

  There was a long embarrassed silence. Finally Yussel said into it: “Five thousand years Jews have learned something goyim don’t know. You don’t forgive your enemies. You forgive your friends.”

  Again a long silence. Ernie broke it. “Maybe it’s time you started teaching us, Rabbi?”

  There was another long silence. This time Yussel was embarrassed, finally said, “You’re right.”

  When it was Yussel’s turn to teach the Reverend Bismark’s adult education class, Shoshanna again had to make the arrangements over the phone with Yussel yelling in the background. “What’s the matter with you, Yussel? It’s a wonderful challenge.”

  “Let Chaim’s Steinberg do it. Let Chaim do it.”

  “Chaim can’t put two words together.”

  “No covered dishes, no cameras. This isn’t the Indian reservation. And you’ll serve the cheap instant coffee, not my Zabar’s French Roast. And tell them I don’t shake hands with women.”

  Shoshanna made a sweet kugel from leftover challah, canned fruit salad, lots of eggs. She made the French Roast coffee, defrosted rugelach her mother mailed from Toronto. Yussel wore a black sweater over a white shirt, thought he looked a little like a college professor, brushed his eyebrows out from his forehead so he could examine everyone from underneath them.

  Bismark sent thirteen, like a hostage exchange. Yussel took down the divider, let men and women sit together, greeted everyone at the door, pulled at his beard like a patriarch, examined them one by one from under his eyebrows. Three cheery ladies smelling of baby powder arranged themselves on the seats in the front row, smiled at him, took out needlepoint. Behind them the others took out notepads. Some he’d seen the night of the fire, also in the supermarket, in the bank, at the Rexall. They were, in a strange way, all neighbors. Part of him wanted to reach out, be neighborly, maybe enlighten and illuminate. The other part of him wanted to get even for what their kids had done to Schmulke, even though Schmulke deserved it. Rosebud, scrubbed and shiny in a three-piece western suit like his father’s, smelling expensive, shook hands with Yussel too energetically. The ladies poised in their needlepoint, smiled little contemptuous smiles at one another. Indians and Jews, two of a kind.

  Yussel knew what the Reverend Bismark’s adult education class was thinking. They were thinking he killed Yoshke. They were thinking the Jew in front of them could be five thousand years old. They were thinking maybe that’s what Moses looked like. Maybe even what Yoshke looked like.

  Bismark wore a navy blue suit. He was very tall and thin. He might have been the mechanic from the Texaco, but he was so clean Yussel couldn’t be sure.

  He felt Lillywhite in the room before he saw her. He moved away from the crowd at the front, stood at the coffeepot. She came over. He growled, “What are you doing here?”

  She smiled a surface smile. Her eyes were hot. “I’m looking for another door.”

  “There aren’t any more doors, Lillywhite.”

  “I’m waiting for an answer about the train.” />
  “I told you I had to think about it.”

  She drew her forefinger back and forth over her lips, weighed something, said almost under her breath, “There’s a boy at my house. He says two words: Mama and fire. All day long, Mama and fire. I took his mother to your friend’s house after you kicked her out. Be on the train or I’ll start asking questions.”

  The ashes of his father’s wife filled his mouth.

  And then Shoshanna stood next to them holding a tray of cups and spoons. “Is this the famous Ms. Lillywhite?”

  Yussel cleared his throat so he wouldn’t choke on the ashes. Buried like a dog in Chaim’s backyard, buried because Yussel threw her out. “Shoshanna, my wife. Lillywhite, our neighbor.”

  Shoshanna put the tray down very carefully, said, without looking up at Yussel or Lillywhite, “The Rabbi’s told me a lot about you.”

  “Nothing bad, I hope,” Lillywhite answered lightly.

  “Oh, no. The Rabbi would never tell me anything bad.” Shoshanna smiled brightly at Lillywhite and Yussel. “Well, enjoy the lecture. He’s a wonderful storyteller.”

  With a terrifying frosty little smile on her face, Shoshanna watched Lillywhite fold herself into a children’s desk chair in the back row, said to Yussel through her smile, “So maybe it wasn’t you who told me about her. Maybe it was someone else.”

  His father stood at the grave, slapped him across the face. Chaim howled, buried his dogs.

  “You have your speech, Yussel? You wrote it out?”

  “They want to hear how the Jews killed Yoshke. That’s what they came for. For that I don’t need notes.”

  “Yussel! You’re acting like Schmulke. Pull yourself together, Yussel. Act like a Fetner.”

  “You want to act like a Fetner? Be my guest. Don’t tell me how to act.”

  Natalie came, bright-cheeked, sat beside Rosebud, swiveled around to stare at Lillywhite. Lillywhite looked only at Yussel, who sat in the front of the room, facing the chairs. Yussel looked at the light bulb, thought to Lillywhite, You want to know what makes us tick? You dare to come into my shul, talk to my wife, sit on seats my children sit on? But Lillywhite continued to sit in his shul, in the same room as his wife, in the same chair his children sat in, sat there, looked at him, rubbed her forefinger across her lips, said from behind it, he knew, You better be on that train.