The Entertainer and the Dybbuk

by Sid Fleischman

  “We’ll be a sensation!” Freddie exclaimed, rising to his feet. “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “Mount Everest.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Great Freddie broke in his new act on the Left Bank at a small theater around the corner from the Sorbonne University.

  “Ready?” he muttered. “You know your lines?”

  “Backward,” replied the dybbuk. “Break a leg, Professor.”

  It was a show-business prayer for a good performance, and it now floated inside Freddie’s head. He took the spotlight and sat the dummy on his knee.

  “Count,” he said. “I’m thirsty. Why don’t you recite the alphabet while I have a drink of water?”

  “Shoot,” said the dummy. “Aleph, bet, gimmel…”

  “The English alphabet, if you don’t mind. A, B, C—”

  “D, E, F—”

  Freddie picked up a bottle of Perrier water and began to drink.

  “G, H, I—”

  The sound of scattered applause, like a flight of pigeons, arose from the theater. It quickly thickened as astonishment grew. How was the ventriloquist doing it? His lips couldn’t move. They were clamped to the Perrier.

  The Great Freddie put down the bottle to a furnace blast of applause.

  “Not bad,” the count remarked.

  The Great Freddie shrugged. “What if I were to tape my mouth?”

  “Quite impossible!” declared the dummy.

  “Quite astonishing, pal.”

  The ventriloquist slapped adhesive tape over his mouth until his lower face looked as wrapped as a mummy.

  “What a show-off!” shouted the wooden puppet. “You and your cheap tricks. Just don’t ask me to whistle!”

  Almost at once, the dummy began to whistle and the audience burst into another thunderclap of applause.

  Said the dybbuk, “Look at The Great Freddie. He’s going to have to peel that tape off his skin. Ouch! Now, I ask you. Which one is the dummy?”

  The Great Freddie was a hit!

  Word quickly got around Paris that an American ventriloquist was throwing his voice with his lips sealed with tape or while drinking a bottle of Perrier. Theaters clamored for The Great Freddie. Overnight, he had become a star attraction.

  The gloom in his agent’s office had lifted. “The Crazy Horse?” declared Viktor, his gravel voice rattling. “The longer we make ’em wait for The Great Freddie, the more they’ll pay. I’ve already got you booked around town for the next couple of months. That’ll give you time to polish your material and get some class. Here’s a fistful of francs to tide you over. Buy yourself a new suit of tails and a flower for your buttonhole.”

  Freddie moved to the old Grand Hotel, a big barn of a place in the center of Paris. Night after night, Freddie stepped into the spotlight in outlying theaters and cabarets. The dybbuk was a natural. He knew how to get laughs. Sometimes he seemed to amuse himself by changing voices. One night the dummy might speak with a Hungarian accent; another night, Polish.

  But trouble loomed.

  At a late Friday breakfast, the dybbuk said, “Mr. Big-Shot Ventriloquist, I’m not going on tonight.”

  “What are you talking about? We’re booked.”

  “It’s Friday.”

  “Yes. Friday turns up every week.”

  Said the dybbuk, “It’s Shabbes. The Sabbath. When the Friday sun sets, the holiday arrives. On Shabbes, I don’t work.”

  “But you must!”

  “On the holy day, Jews don’t lift a finger. Not until the sun sets on Saturday. So, no matinee shows. You’ll have to do the act without me.”

  Freddie felt a wave of distress. “People come to see me drink a bottle of water!”

  “I don’t lift a finger.”

  “I’ll get booed off the stage.”

  “Gut Shabbes.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “Tell ’em to come back Saturday after the sun sets.”

  For a week, Freddie barely spoke to the dybbuk except on stage. He had to cancel all Friday night performances and all Saturday matinees. Viktor almost choked on his cigar. But how could Freddie tell him that a dybbuk was doing the talking?

  After a few weeks, word got around that The Great Freddie wouldn’t work Friday nights or Saturday afternoons.

  “Do you know that gossip has sprung up?” Freddie reported. “Theater managers are wondering if I’m Jewish.”

  “Oy, such a crime,” said the dybbuk.

  “But I’m not!”

  “That’s not a crime either.”

  “You could do me a big favor. Show up Friday night and put an end to the gossip!”

  Replied the dybbuk, “I don’t lift a finger on Shabbes.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Freddie awoke in the night. He had been quietly sobbing in his sleep. What had he to be so sad about? Then he realized it wasn’t him. It was the dybbuk softly, softly crying.

  Freddie turned on his side, and the sobbing stopped.

  The next morning he went to a tailor. He had knockabout clothes made for the dummy, to be more in keeping with its new voice and saucy character.

  Freddie said nothing about the sobbing in the night. A flashback to some terror of the kid’s war? He forgave his young partner for refusing to work on the Shabbes, as even he now called the weekend holidays. But he was quite unprepared for the favor Avrom Amos was soon to ask. The dybbuk sprang it on a Tuesday as they settled under the spotlight and began their midnight performance.

  “Is it true that you’ve decided to become a vampire and bite people on the neck?” asked the ventriloquist, script perfect.

  The dummy replied, “Who do you think I am? Count Dracula?”

  That wasn’t the right line. Freddie twisted the dummy’s head sharply stage left. Eye to eye. Was the dybbuk rewriting the script?

  “I said, you’ve decided to become a vampire.”

  “Not me,” remarked the puppet. “Blood-sucking I leave to the Nazis.”

  This was no place for the dybbuk to speak his mind. But Freddie sensed there’d be no shutting off this burst of anger. He considered walking off, but that would create a backstage scandal. Who would hire him again after a stumble like that? There was only one thing to do—give the dybbuk his head. After all, it was a late Tuesday show; not a big night.

  “If you’re not Count Dracula, who are you?”

  “A dybbuk.”

  Freddie gulped. Was Avrom Amos cueing him? “A dybbuk? What’s that?”

  “A Jewish spirit.”

  “Is that like a ghost?”

  “Third cousins.”

  “I’ve never heard of a ghost in a striped sweater,” said Freddie.

  “Remember the war, Professor? Heaven is so full of new arrivals, their toes are sticking out the windows. The place ran out of white sheets. Us brats had to take whatever we could find.”

  “You’re a child?”

  “Why not? Millions of us Jewish kids up there.”

  The Great Freddie paused to get a fresh grip on himself. They weren’t getting any laughs. Still, the audience was listening. It was not every day they heard a ghost talk.

  “If you’re a dybbuk, how come you don’t smell of brimstone and fire?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I don’t believe you dropped in from the sky.”

  “Why not?”

  “Everyone knows you have to accept Jesus to go to Heaven, and that lets you out. You know that Jews are doomed to go to Hell.”

  “Have you talked to any eyewitnesses lately?” replied the dybbuk. “Heaven is packed with Jews. Like sardines. The door is always open. Any nice person can walk in. Like me.”

  “Says you.”

  “I heard there was a Christian heaven around the corner. And for Muslims, paradise? A big place with palm trees, down the road.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?” asked Freddie.

  “Funny, Mr. Yankel Doodle?”

  “That’s Yank
ee Doodle.”

  “You want jokes straight from the clouds? Why did the Almighty give food to the rich and an appetite to the poor?”

  At last, a nervous laugh erupted.

  Said the dummy, “Did I tell you about the time I threw a rope to a drowning Nazi general?”

  “That was a Christian thing to do.”

  “Jewish, too. I threw him both ends.”

  A bigger laugh came roaring up from the seats. But Heaven, and now Nazi generals! The act was on thin ice. Freddie needed to regain control. To get back to the script.

  He picked up the bottle of water. “Care to do something entertaining while I have a long drink?”

  “You like to see my war wounds? I’ve got so many bullet holes you could look through me and see the Eiffel Tower.”

  “Some other time. Maybe you’d better sing a tune. How about ‘Song Without Words’?”

  “I don’t know the verse,” said the dybbuk.

  “Just whistle.”

  The Great Freddie lifted the bottle to his lips. The dummy bent his head back and the dybbuk began to whistle.

  The trick brought down the house. The Great Freddie broke into a farm-boy smile. Whaddya know? They went for the dybbuk. Freddie and the wooden dummy took a relieved bow.

  “Nice going, Avrom Amos,” the ventriloquist said as they reached the wings. “You stay in the act.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The Great Freddie kept adding tricks. He’d clamp an apple between his teeth. He stuffed his mouth with a yard of red silk. He gargled ginger ale. Nothing could keep Count Dracula from talking.

  Between Thursday night performances, a reporter from Le Monde, a Paris newspaper, showed up in his dressing room. She wore a stylish muffler wrapped around her neck in coils like a python. She pulled a yellow pencil out of her frizz of hair and set to work.

  “M’sieu Freddie, where did you get ze idea for ze dybbuk in your act? Extraordinaire!”

  Freddie cleared his throat to give himself an extra moment before answering. “The idea just grabbed hold of me, you might say.”

  “Ze dybbuk is a child, no?”

  “Yes. I’ll let him speak for himself, mademoiselle.”

  Freddie picked up the puppet and gave its head stick a turn to face the Frenchwoman.

  “Nu?” said the dybbuk.

  “May I ask how you were presumably killed?” asked the reporter.

  “In the usual way. With a gun. And what do you mean, presumably? You think I’m making this up?”

  She gave a small laugh. “But of course. It’s show biz, no?”

  “No,” Freddie put in. “It’s life.”

  “True?”

  Said the puppet, “I was the last Jew left alive in Olyk.”

  “Where?”

  “Between Lvov and Rovno, in southern Russia. The Ukraine.”

  “I’ll look it up,” said the reporter, tongue in cheek, making a note.

  “Look up August 22, 1944,” said the dybbuk. “That was one of the special days a certain SS officer in his vulture black uniform had put aside to hunt Jewkids, as he called us. He and his men regarded it as a national sport. Children, they’d snatch us out of yards. Infants, from the arms of our mothers. The soldiers knotted us in sacks and heaved us like potatoes onto trucks. The trucks took us to the cattle cars and then it was a free trip for Jewbrats to the death camps. You’re not taking notes.”

  The reporter ignored his comment. “You remember all zis? A piece of firewood?”

  “Yes, me, dodging Colonel Junker-Strupp for two years, sometimes dyeing my red hair, hiding like a chameleon among the Aryans. I joined the underground to blow up train tracks and spit at the Nazis. The colonel, smoking his Egyptian cigarettes, came to know about me.

  “But that day, in Olyk, my luck went kaput. German soldiers on motorcycles were chasing us, me and my nine-year-old sister, Sulka. We found haystacks to hide in. The soldiers flushed her out. Sulka ran like a mouse, but she was caught by the hair. They killed her on the spot. Another Jewbrat less for Germany. As soon as I felt safe, I slipped away.”

  “To where?”

  “My village. I knew better hiding places than a haystack. A dog began to bark and follow me. Soon a Jew hunter saw us. Finally German soldiers and the Ukrainian police were chasing me through the lanes. And my neighbors in the village, hearing such a commotion, joined in to rid themselves of vermin like me. I remember yelling back over my shoulder, ‘Dear sirs, let me go home to my mother! Dear sirs, let me go home!’ My mother was already dead, but I hoped to soften a few Ukrainian hearts. Our old neighbors. Hah! Their hearts were tangles of vipers.”

  The reporter peered at the ventriloquist. “Alors, that’s more make-believe than I need for my article, no?”

  Freddie gave a snort. “Make-believe? Trust me. The story is true.”

  The reporter shot back sarcastically. “But of course! You’re saying someone actually murdered zis carved hunk of wood?”

  “Six bullet holes,” said the dybbuk. “Colonel Junker-Strupp blocked the lane in his Mercedes open car. He stood, smoking a cigarette, a Luger pistol in one hand. There I came, around the corner, the mob after me. I was blocked. I picked up a stone and heaved it at the vulture.

  “‘With the compliments of Colonel Gerhard Junker-Strupp,’ he said, and shot. Quick! Schnell! No second thoughts. The bullet spun me around like a top. He emptied his pistol. He left me in the street, bleeding from six holes, the last Jew in Olyk.”

  “Mon Dieu! A wooden dummy bleeding in ze street?” With a roll of her eyes, the reporter closed her notebook. “Am I to believe a real live demon hides under zees clothes—when it is you doing all the talking, M’sieu Freddie? I do compliment you. I couldn’t see you move your lips at all!”

  That night the dybbuk sobbed in his sleep. Freddie awoke and let him cry. He had to remind himself that he was possessed by a mere child. The dybbuk’s scorn and bluster were grown-up battle wounds.

  CHAPTER 10

  By the time the act opened at the Crazy Horse, Freddie had forgotten why dybbuks chose to leave their graves. But Avrom Amos had not forgotten.

  “A small favor? Can I ask?” the dybbuk muttered. Freddie was facing the mirror to apply makeup for the first show of the evening.

  “When you say small, I duck.”

  “Remember, the Germans killed me? Two weeks before my bar mitzvah?”

  “You mentioned it,” said Freddie.

  “You know what is a bar mitzvah?”

  “A ceremony of some sort.”

  “To be declared a man among Jews, a boy must have his bar mitzvah when his thirteenth birthday arrives. By then, my parents were dead. My sisters and little brother—even I was dead.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, Avrom Amos.”

  “I told you dybbuks return to finish something left undone among the living. But it’s not too late.”

  “For what?”

  “My birthday is coming up. I want you to fix up my bar mitzvah.”

  “Ah. So that’s why you possessed me!”

  Said the dybbuk, “Not exactly. But it’s a start.”

  “For what?”

  The dybbuk ignored him. “Listen. For what I came back to do, I need to be a man. A mensch. It’s not for a boy in short pants.”

  “So you need a rabbi or someone to declare you a grown-up—is that it?”

  Freddie could almost sense the dybbuk giving a shrug. Avrom Amos said, “Can you imagine a dybbuk walking into a synagogue and saying, ‘Rabbi, I just dropped in from the sky. How about a bar mitzvah?’ The rabbi would strike his head and shout, ‘Meshugge! Crazy! Out!’ That’s why I need you.”

  Freddie now felt on guard. “For what, exactly?”

  “You walk into the synagogue and let me do the talking.”

  “Stand in for you?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “But I don’t look thirteen!”

  “It doesn’t matter. Older, even, is okay. Do you think I am thirteen? I feel I h
ave grown a hundred years older.”

  “And I’m not Jewish!”

  “You don’t have to shout,” said the dybbuk.

  “I’d like to help. But count me out.”

  Said the dybbuk, “You may have noticed, Professor. I stand in for you.”

  Freddie asked himself if he’d ever won an argument with his new partner. He had a feeling he was going to lose this one. He needed the dybbuk in the act. How would he pull off his great tricks without Avrom Amos?

  He finished dressing. “Okay.” He sighed. “But don’t expect me to wear one of those funny hats.”

  “It’s a package deal,” said the dybbuk. “I guarantee nothing.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Freddie ran into a former girlfriend at his agent’s office. Their old romance quickly burst into flames.

  Playing small parts in French-made films, Polly Marchant was a showgirl from the American South. She was bouncy and bright and given to making faces. Polly could cross her eyes. She’d muss her blond hair when she felt like it. She had changed little since they had broken up the year before, though now she wore her hair cut short and as tight as a bathing cap.

  They began to joke about getting married. Nothing serious. Joking. Polly confessed that she had announced in her diary that she had fallen madly in love, if he’d care to peek. Freddie didn’t keep a diary, but his face announced it to the world.

  The dybbuk had little patience with the flirtatious sweet talk he heard. He could do voices, and occasionally dropped in a comment from the cowboy actor Gary Cooper. “Yup. Yup. Yup.” He abandoned Freddie for hours a day, mumbling to himself as he brushed up on his Hebrew. And he needed to go over the prayers he remembered from the past. Baruch atah Adonai… He would have to read out of the Torah scroll, something from the first five books of the Bible. But memory wasn’t enough. He’d need last-minute schooling. Some polishing.

  On his dates with Polly, Freddie was glad to find himself free of the dybbuk. The two Americans were walking along the Champs Elysée when she said, “Darling boy, why didn’t you tell me you were Jewish?”

  He stopped short. “Where did you get that idea?”