The Witch and the Borscht Pearl

by Angela Zeman

Before I could respond to this, a tall man standing near the head of Solly’s casket suddenly cleared his throat in that way people do who are about to announce something. He held up both arms for attention, which he got, and then announced that the ‘shivah’ would be held at Solly’s house in East Hampton. He said some other things I didn’t catch, and then suddenly there was a surge towards the chairs.

  “Let’s find a seat,” said Mrs. Risk.

  Bella, Pearl, and the ever present Zoë had already gone to a small side alcove at the head of the room, to the left of the casket. We found two chairs together at the back of the room. Roselle, Simon, Leeann, Ilene Fox, and others I recognized took up the first few rows.

  Dr. Savoia sat just behind Pearl with his elegant wife, Fran. His presence reminded me of Pearl’s heart condition and I had a hard time tearing my attention away from her.

  Suddenly the Rabbi entered from the right, clothed now in a robe beneath his silky tasseled shawl, and positioned himself behind a narrow podium that’d somehow appeared in front of the casket.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Rabbi David Gessner. We’re here today to pay our respects to a beloved friend, Solomon ben Mordecai. I regret that I never met Mr. Mansheim. What I’m about to say here has been given me to say from his friends. Solomon—Solly, as he was most often called—although never having married, and not blessed with siblings or relations like most of us,” intoned the Rabbi, “was not a solitary man. He had a family to which he was devoted, a unique family: his business associates, which is also to say, his friends. He gave himself entirely and tirelessly to the nurturing of these friends. Until just recently.

  “Before being stricken down in this untimely manner, Solomon had finally found a lasting love with the sister of his long time client and friend, Pearl Schrafft. In the November of his life, he met someone with whom he wanted to unite in the eyes of God. I’m speaking of his fiancée, Mrs. Bella Fischmann.” He bowed deeply towards Bella.

  “Our sympathies are with Bella, for not only has she been abruptly deprived of her promised life with the man whom she loved, but she never had the chance to get to know him through long, loving years, like his closest friends all knew him. This loss can never be remedied. He was a loving man, a compassionate man. His many generous contributions to …”

  My attention wandered back to Pearl. She sat staring bleakly across the floor, past the Rabbi, off into some space and time of her own. I wondered if she would be able to fulfill her commitment at Krasner’s Hotel on Thanksgiving, and resolved to ask Mrs. Risk more about it. She might have talked things over with Pearl again since yesterday. Maybe Pearl was going to cancel. I would’ve. Careers are great, but when you’re already financially secure, and when a suspicion of murder is hanging over your head, and the head of the only other member of your family, how could you concentrate? I drifted from that line of thought and wondered what it was like to have a sister, even a sister as apparently troublesome as Bella had been to Pearl.

  I’d been alone all my life, it seemed, including during my fatal marriage, until I met Mrs. Risk and started my florist business. My parents had evidently not been thrilled with parenthood enough to try it twice. I, like Solly, had no family anywhere, as far as I knew. Just as well. I wasn’t too excited to run into more people like my mother and father. I took a moment to test myself with an exercise I practiced now and then: I tried to remember what they looked like. I brightened when even their vaguest outlines couldn’t be fetched from memory at this moment.

  How long I sat in a reverie, musing randomly about families and so on, I have no idea. But eventually I felt Mrs. Risk move beside me, which brought me back to the present.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “No. We’re traveling to the grave now. Thank heaven the rain stopped yesterday. Pearl told me that Solly outlined in his papers just how he wanted things done.”

  “That’s gross. I’ve never given a thought to how I want to be buried. He must’ve been one of those compulsively organized guys.”

  Mrs. Risk glanced sideways at me. “Planning one’s own burial is not something a woman your age usually thinks about. I, myself, have left detailed instructions with my lawyer on the same subject. Many people do.”

  “Yes, well, you’re a control freak. But we put up with you.” I mugged a smile.

  She made that noise of hers, ‘tchah!’ that means she can’t think of a clever reply. It felt sweet to get in the last word—this time. A friendly little competition we have going.

  Being last in, we were also last out of the parking lot, so at the cemetery we were forced to take a space at a curb practically two blocks from the grave site. We reached the grave just as Solly’s casket had finished its slow trip on the shoulders of the pall bearers from the hearse to the tent that’d been set up. I trailed unenthusiastically behind Mrs. Risk, who I knew wanted to find a place as near as possible to Pearl and Bella. The pallbearers paused before lowering the casket. The rabbi chanted something rapidly in a sing-song baritone.

  I looked around with a shudder. The misty grey air limited visibility and made the treeless cemetery look like a decayed forest of dirty giant’s teeth. The chill damp permeated the wool of my coat and crept into not only my bones, but my mind, oppressing me. We seemed to be the last people alive on this drab breast of earth, and we were here to celebrate death.

  I pushed down my panicked impulse to burst through the cocoon of people and run.

  Mrs. Risk managed to wedge us immediately behind Pearl and her sister, who were seated side by side in small chairs beside the grave. A tent had been erected over the site, but as wide as it was, not everyone could crowd beneath. More people were still arriving.

  As the attendants slipped Solly’s casket into place in the contraption straddling the waiting hole, I noticed Mrs. Risk scanning the crowd, so I glanced around, too.

  Zoë and Ilene stood together across the grave from us. The bosomy still-attractive middle-aged bottle blonde who’d badly wanted a maroon Mercedes stood behind Zoë and next to Leeann. Mr. and Mrs. Simon Lutz stood together further down the line. Roselle busily whispered to the bleached blonde woman and Leeann, but it seemed to me that she studiously avoided looking in my direction.

  Pearl and Bella, in front of us, had the only chairs. Dr. Savoia stood beside Pearl, with a hand on her shoulder, while beside him his wife, Fran, struggled to maintain her balance on the soft ground in her spike heels.

  Suddenly, deep within the crowd across from us, I noticed the blue eyes of Detective Sergeant Michael Hahn gazing steadily at me. They crinkled momentarily into a smile as he caught my eye, then abruptly became grave again as his gaze moved on. Working.

  I nudged Mrs. Risk and flicked a silent glance Michael’s way. She followed my glance, then gave me a faint nod and continued her concentrated observation.

  A faint wave of involuntary movement, like a slow shudder among the crowd, caught my attention. The Rabbi recited something in Hebrew within which I only caught the name, ‘Solomon ben Mordecai’. The mechanism holding the casket began to move, hydraulically lowering Solly into his resting place.

  The blonde woman with cleavage standing behind Zoë let out a steam whistle sort of noise, like an uncontrollable shriek through compressed lips, making everyone jump. As I watched, she pushed her hand, balled like a fist, against her mouth, as if corking a leak. Zoë gave a small shudder then encircled the blonde woman with an arm and hugged her. They huddled together like abandoned orphans.

  Ignoring this by-play the rabbi continued with the task at hand, which was to stow Solly away for eternity.

  As if she’d heard her name called, Pearl suddenly stood up and made her way to the place where the rabbi stood waiting—at the head of the open grave. The crowd stirred and muttered as if there was some significance in Pearl appearing just now.

  She looked around for a moment and everyone grew quiet. Into the stillness, she said, “Forgive me, I—I have to say good-bye. I know it isn’t cus
tomary … but … Solly, since the day he saw me bomb so horribly in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” she paused as if to catch her breath. Bella leaned forward in her chair as if poised to rush to her sister’s side, but Pearl pulled herself together with a shudder and went on.

  “He told me then that I would hire him some day.” She gave a tremulous smile. “He never warned me that he would end up running my life and would become indispensable to me.” Her performing habit caused her to unconsciously project her voice, and we could all clearly hear her slightest word.

  We were breathless with fascination, but our motives varied. Most, I’m sure, were wondering what Pearl would say—she who twice had been rejected romantically in favor of her own sister, the second time by Solly himself And now she was cast in the role as the main suspect in Solly’s murder. Would this be her public confession? Frankly, if Pearl was the one who’d murdered Solly, I think she killed the wrong one. It would have been a better idea to kill Bella, seemed to me. But then I hadn’t been consulted.

  Pearl went on. “Solly meant many things to me. Not only was he judge and jury over my material, but he was my mother when I was sick, and my best friend when my feelings became trampled. And in this rough business, it’s best not to own any feelings, as some of you know. But I did, so he was my best friend … often.” She paused and looked away to her right, over the people’s heads, over the blackened skeletal trees and into the lead-colored sky, as if she saw someone hovering there, listening. The wind suddenly gusted in a soft moan of acknowledgment.

  “He picked my jobs, my clothes, and introduced me to new friends. He managed my income and my frame of mind.” She looked down, then. “I loved him.”

  These words brought a restless murmuring among the listeners, but she continued as if unaware.

  “Maybe I leaned on him too much. Maybe I had become his creation, his … his child, although we were nearly the same age. But what’s done is done. I’m sorry for everything, Solly. I wish I’d understood you better. But it’s too late to change anything now. Good-bye, Solly.”

  Ignoring the noisily reacting crowd, she leaned down and plucked a small long handled spade from where it leaned against the mound of waiting dirt. She turned it over and scooped up soil using the shovel’s back side. She held that over the gaping grave and tilted it, letting the morsel of dirt slide. The clumps hit the casket with a hollow clatter that came as a shock and added to the morbid atmosphere. She laid the shovel carefully back down and moved away.

  Bella stood, which again brought the murmuring crowd to attentive silence. After picking her way to where Pearl had been, she took up the spade, did the same thing, but stood poised some extra minutes over the grave as if examining it carefully before turning away. I wondered if she wanted to say a few words also, but she said nothing. She laid the shovel down and returned to her seat, but didn’t sit. Pearl hadn’t sat back down either. One by one, others came to take turns at sprinkling a bit of dirt on the casket.

  When the bosomy blonde arrived for her turn, she picked up the small shovel. Then, to my astonishment, she flipped it over, used the proper side of the spade, filled it to overflowing instead of scooping up a symbolic amount, and flung the whole contents at the coffin with a splat. She then cast the spade away as if it burned her hand. Everyone stared.

  Mrs. Risk whispered in my ear. “Snoopy Steiner, what do you bet!”

  The woman paled, then flushed. With hands clenched tightly around the sausage-shaped handbag that dangled from her shoulder, she sent a beseeching look to her friends, “I’m sorry,” she said in a muffled voice. To whom, I couldn’t tell. She glanced over at Pearl where she stood as frozen in place as everyone else. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m—I was furious for what he did to you, Pearl.” Pearl said nothing, and the woman stumbled back to her place behind Zoë.

  I watched Mrs. Risk for guidance, but she didn’t move. Eventually, the rabbi began what I took to be a prayer that began, “El male rachamim …”

  Mrs. Risk signaled me and we moved away. Slowly at first, we walked back to my car. Behind me I heard Solly’s friends and mourners begin chanting together. I paused to listen to the beautiful cadences, but Mrs. Risk pulled at my arm. “Quickly,” she said, “we must get to Solly’s house before the others,” but I hesitated.

  I saw Pearl and Bella turn away and walk toward their limousine. They walked side-by-side, but somehow didn’t seem connected. Thus together but separately, they entered their car.

  I heard at the end of the prayer some syllables that sounded like ‘virushalayim.’ “Does that mean ‘Jerusalem?’ ” I asked Mrs. Risk as I finally yielded to her tugging.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s beautiful, the way they said it. Why do we have to rush away? And why didn’t you take your turn dropping dirt into the grave like the others?”

  Mrs. Risk looked at me incredulously. “And take the chance of offending somebody? They think we’re intruders as it is. We didn’t know him that well. That’s something only the closest mourners do.”

  “Well, we’re sort of mourners.”

  “No, we’re not. We’re friends of the not-quite-yet-accused suspect. Don’t forget that. Get in and drive. I can’t wait to find out if that blonde woman who broke down was the loose-lipped Vivian Steiner. I’d bet a bushel of belladonna she was. Hurry up. And stop at the gourmet deli in Bridgehampton as we pass through because I forgot, we should take some food with us to the shivah.”

  There’s that word again. I made a mental note to ask Mrs. Risk what it meant at another time. At this moment, however, I had to give my concentration to the traffic, which had multiplied while we were burying Solly. So for now, I kept my questions to myself and drove.

  11

  ONLY PEARL AND BELLA beat us to Solly’s house, which was a good two hours from the cemetery in the best of traffic conditions, which never happens. I’d pounded the accelerator. Darkness had fallen as we’d pulled away from the grave site, but fortunately the weather had cleared on the East End, in the Hamptons. No shrouding fog or mist. Let’s not mention shrouds.

  Anyway, we arrived, hauling along a ten by fourteen inch eggplant five-cheese lasagna. I’d shuddered at the exalted Hamptons price tag, but I wasn’t paying.

  Bella and Pearl greeted us at the door. Although they responded politely to Mrs. Risk’s hug and my regrets, they seemed jointly disinclined to talk—both to us and to each other—so we passed beyond them into the depths of Solly’s house.

  A bulky woman, who, because of the apron I supposed was the housekeeper, trundled towards us from a room at the end of the hall and whisked the eight-pound covered dish from my arms. She wore black Converse high top sneakers in which she walked in a semi-stooped position, rolling on the outside of her soles like an arthritic cowboy—a career of scrubbing can do that to you, one reason why I think all housework should be done by men. Better them than me.

  After she disappeared, Mrs. Risk dug into her basket and pulled out two bottles of cabernet sauvignon of exalted origins.

  She made straight for the sideboard in the formal dining room and tucked her precious bottles behind some gallon jugs of red wine sitting there, of the type she liked to call ‘screw top wine.’ Obviously, Bella was no wine connoisseur. These jugs were accompanied by such an overwhelming selection of premium brand alcoholic beverages and mixes that I wondered if perhaps Jews have wakes like the Irish are famed for. A few bottles of beer and soft drinks had been jammed, like afterthoughts, into an antique silver ice bucket.

  Mrs. Risk uncorked one of her bottles with her own fold-out corkscrew, which she then dropped back into her basket, and poured into two highball glasses—no wine glasses in view. After popping her now much lighter basket out of sight behind the sideboard with the dust bunnies, she thrust one glass at me, sipped hers, said, “It needs to open a bit,” and strolled away, swirling the contents. She had the brightly attentive expression of a sight-seer.

  “Where are you going?” I asked as I caugh
t up with her. If it seems like she always moves faster than me, that’s an illusion. She just tends to charge ahead while I’m trying to figure out what she’s doing—which slows me down.

  “Oh, here and there. Bella and Pearl will soon be busy at the door, I don’t think we should impose our conversation on them just yet. We’ll entertain ourselves, like good guests.”

  “Is that what we are, guests? Is a shivah just a Jewish wake?”

  “A shivah, my dear, is derived from the Hebrew word for seven. Visitors come to pay their respects to the deceased and the mourners for seven days. Ten Jews, who regrettably must be men, if Conservative or Orthodox—I’m not familiar with Reformed custom—assemble in the morning and in the evening to fill out a minyan, or quota, which then enables the mourners to say a ‘Kaddish’, or mourner’s prayer. You heard it at the end of the service at the cemetery. You liked the sound of it, as I recall. I believe the language in which it’s recited is Aramaic.”

  “Oh.”

  “However, I’d venture to guess that today’s ‘shivah’ service will be Solly’s one and only, since he probably wasn’t a religious man. I say that because he evidently hadn’t known a Rabbi for his friends to call upon to officiate at the funeral. Haven’t you been to funerals before?” she asked.

  “Well, my husband’s. He wasn’t religious, and besides, I just buried him, I didn’t exactly mourn him.”

  “That’s it?”

  “When my parents died, I think.”

  She stopped walking, turned to face me, and pointed one of those loooong fingers at me. “What do you mean, you ‘think?’ They died just last year. Can’t you remember that far back?”

  I sipped some of the wine. “Okay, I remember. I had nothing to do with the arrangements, so it slipped my mind.”

  Mrs. Risk stared curiously. “I thought you had no other family. Who made the arrangements?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t interested enough to ask.”

  Her eyes softened, making me very uncomfortable. “You must have been very angry with them.”