Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out

by Harry Kemelman

  “As for the honor of being called to the Reading, that’s what it is—an honor. Only a handful at any service are called. Does that mean that the rest of the congregation are discriminated against? It’s really more of a social than religious honor, and there are people who have never been called all their adult lives.”

  “What if the congregation as a whole votes for it?” asked Maltzman.

  “Ah, that’s something else. If a sizable majority of the congregation wanted it, it would indicate that a major sociological change had taken place in the community and that this was an expression of it.”

  Maltzman looked uncertainly from the rabbi to his wife and then said, “How do you feel about it, Mrs. Small?”

  Miriam laughed. “To tell the truth, Mr. Maltzman, there have been some terribly cold and snowy days in the winter when David has gotten up early and gone to the temple to insure the likelihood of a minyan; I remember snuggling deeper into the bedclothes and thanking God that I had no such obligation.”

  Maltzman grinned. “Yeah, I suppose. All right, I’ll tell them how you feel about it, Rabbi.” His grin broadened. “And how you feel about it, Mrs. Small. It won’t end the matter—”

  “I know,” said the rabbi. “My calendar shows a meeting with a delegation from the Sisterhood.” He turned to Miriam. “Perhaps now Mr. Maltzman would like a cup of tea. I would.”

  She looked questioningly at Maltzman, and after a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Well, all right. Yes, I think I’d like a cup now.”

  Miriam immediately left the room and Maltzman said, “You know, Rabbi, I don’t agree with you. I don’t agree with you at all on this matter. Other congregations, and Conservative congregations at that, have women participating in the services. They’ve got rabbis, too, so I suppose there are arguments, I mean rabbinic arguments, on the other side.”

  “It’s a matter of where you want to put the emphasis,” Rabbi Small agreed affably.

  “Well, with me, the emphasis is on membership,” said Maltzman. “I see a lot of our people in the community, and they are not members of the temple. This could be just the gimmick that would get some of them to join.”

  “Would more join than we’d lose if the Orthodox pulled out?” demanded the rabbi.

  “It’s a consideration,” Maltzman admitted.

  Miriam came in with the tea, and as she handed Maltzman his cup, she said, “Did you hear what happened at the selectmen’s meeting last night? Was it reported to you?”

  He listened intently as the rabbi told of Lanigan’s visit.

  “Oh, that sonofabitch, that dirty anti-Semitic sonofabitch—I’m sorry, Mrs. Small, but—”

  “You mean, Megrim, the selectman?” asked Rabbi Small.

  “Oh no, Megrim is all right. I was referring to Ellsworth Jordan.”

  “Why do you call him anti-Semitic?” asked the rabbi.

  Maltzman glared. “What other reason is there for him to oppose the traffic light? He’s against it because we’re for it. Let me tell you something about Jordon, Rabbi. He owns land all over town and I’m in the real estate business, so I have some sort of contact with him. And not once have I been able to deal with him. He owns land under various titles—Jordon Realty, Ellsworth Estates, E. J. Land Corporation—”

  “E. J. Land Corporation?” Miriam echoed.

  Maltzman nodded. “That’s right, the company that owns the land near the temple, that we’ve wanted to buy for the new religious school. I wrote E. J. Land Corporation, asking the price of the lot. And I got no answer, no answer at all. So after a while, I asked my good friend Larry Gore at the Barnard’s Crossing Trust, because you write to E. J. Land Corporation care of the bank. I asked him what gives. And he tells me the land is not for sale. So what is it for? Jordon is crazy about paying taxes? He’s planning to farm it?”

  “Maybe he’s planning to build,” the rabbi suggested mildly.

  “Practically next door to the temple? Nah. He’s crazy but not that crazy. Besides, he hasn’t built in twenty years. Back then he put up some houses—he’s an architect or an engineer of some kind—and sold them at just the right time. Then he bought up a lot of land, planning to build lots of houses, big housing projects. But he got sick and didn’t go ahead with it. Well, just about then, land values began to climb. They’d built the bridge and the tunnel, so getting into Boston was a matter of thirty or forty minutes, and the town became suitable for all year round living instead of just a summer vacation place for the rich. Land values climbed, and he had acres of it. Some of it could be sold for more than ten times what he paid for it. He’s a crackpot and a nut but—”

  “That doesn’t sound like a nut,” Miriam observed.

  “Oh, I guess he’s shrewd enough in money matters. But he’s still a nut.” He began to laugh. “Last year I was collecting for the United Appeal and I drew his name. He lives in this old ark of a house all boarded up—”

  “On a hill?” asked Miriam.

  “That’s right. It’s a great big lot of land with an iron fence all around.”

  “The children called it the haunted house,” said Miriam. “Remember, David, when we drove by there? But it’s all boarded up. I didn’t think anybody lived there.”

  Maltzman nodded. “That’s because of the trees, but as you come up a long driveway, you see that it’s only the top two floors that are boarded up. I drove up and rang the bell. From inside somebody shouted, ‘Come in, come in.’ So I pushed the door open and found myself in this big room lit by one ceiling light with maybe a twenty-five-watt bulb. Then I hear a voice that says, ‘What is it, young man? What do you want? Speak up, young man. State your business.’ Well, I look around and don’t see anyone, and for a minute I thought the voice was coming through a loudspeaker, like in one of those spy films. Then, I saw a couple of feet waving in the air, it was him. He was standing on his head in a corner of the room! Now, is he a nut, or isn’t he?”

  “Lives alone, does he?” asked the rabbi.

  “Uh-huh. Maybe has a day woman come in to cook and clean for him.”

  “And he has no family?”

  Maltzman shook his head. “So I understand.”

  “Then that accounts for it,” said the rabbi. “He doesn’t have anyone he’s responsible to so he doesn’t have to worry about embarrassing anybody. He can say anything he likes, or wear any kind of clothes, stand on his head when he feels like it. Poor devil, I feel sorry for him.”

  “But if he’s an anti-Semite, David,” said Miriam.

  “What’s this,” sneered Maltzman, “turning the other cheek?”

  “Not at all,” said the rabbi. “If it is anti-Semitism, it’s irrational, and sometimes an irrationality can take hold of a man’s mind if there’s no one to oppose him or contradict him or that he has to explain to and then it’s like being possessed by devils. A man shouldn’t be entirely alone. Yes, I’d say he was to be pitied.”

  “You mean, if he had a wife or kids, then he’d have to behave himself? Maybe. But it’s been my experience that an anti-Semite is an anti-Semite is an anti-Semite. The only difference is that the one with a family and kids is apt to infect them, too. Right now, the question is the traffic lights.”

  “Maybe if I went to see this Jordon,” the rabbi began.

  “No! I’ll take care of Jordon and that’s an order.”

  The rabbi colored at the peremptory tone, and Miriam lowered her eyes in sympathetic embarrassment. Maltzman noticed and promptly sought to make amends. “What I mean is that a man like Jordon takes a man like me to handle. I mean, it’s a political matter and it takes political experience. Besides, I’m president of the temple, so it’s my baby.”

  When Maltzman left, Miriam said, “I don’t think he likes you, David.”

  “Really? You mean you think he dislikes me?”

  She nodded.

  “He seemed friendly enough.” He colored and then smiled. “Except at the end there when he gave me my orders. And that was just a mann
er of speaking with him. I don’t think he really meant it.”

  “Oh, he was respectful enough—the way the army officers were always respectful when they talked to the chaplains. He thinks of himself as very much of a he-man. You’re a scholar, and it’s something he doesn’t understand, and he’s wary of it—and hostile.”

  “Well, that’s not unusual, his hostility, I mean,” he said philosophically. “I’ve had it from previous presidents, and other members of the congregation, too. Doctors, lawyers, successful businessmen. I suppose they wonder why anyone would become a rabbi. ‘Is this a job for a Jewish boy?’” He laughed. “Maybe they’re right.”

  “He could make trouble for you,” she observed.

  “Of course he can. Other presidents have. From my first year. But it’s twelve years now, and I’m still here.”

  “But it’s different now, David.”

  “Why is it different?”

  “Because there are new rules now. The board consists of only fifteen. It’s like an executive committee. Eight members could vote you out, and they could do it just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Because all you have is a one-year contract.”

  “It’s the way I wanted it,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t ever want to stay longer than I’m wanted.”

  “I know, and I understand, but it makes it a little hard to plan ahead.”

  3

  Slouched down in his recliner, one long chino-clad leg crossed over the other, a worn laceless sneaker dangling from the upraised bony foot, Ellsworth Jordon reread with satisfaction the report on the selectmen’s meeting in the local newspaper.

  “But can I make it stick?” he asked of the empty room. “Or will they vote on it at the next meeting? I think, maybe, I can get Al Megrim to hold. I’ll talk to him about it next time I see him at the club. But he’s only one vote.” He tossed the newspaper on the floor and made a tent of his hands by pressing the fingertips together. “Let’s see, there’s Sturgis, he’ll vote against almost anything that’ll cost the town money. Same as Blair and Mitchener will vote for it,” he added angrily. He got up and began to pace the room. “So that leaves Cunningham. He’s the swing vote.” He faced himself in the wall mirror. “He’s the key. You realize that, don’t you? All right.” Satisfied that he had convinced the image in the glass, he resumed his pacing. “So what do we know about Cunningham? He’s retired, but he gets an occasional commission as the agent for the Steerite Boat Company of Long Island. And the president of that company was here last summer and was crazy to buy my land on the Point.” Once again he stopped in front of the mirror and looked sharply at his image. “Now, what if I were to go down to New York and drop in to see him accidental-like, and mention I might be induced to sell that piece of land if I weren’t so upset about his Mr. Cunningham planning to vote for some unnecessary traffic lights…. How do you suppose he’d respond to that?”

  The wrinkled face with the scrawny neck in the mirror smiled back at him. Then the pale blue eyes narrowed as he thought of what the trip would involve. He’d have to dress up in a regular suit—with a tie, and shoes. He’d have to pack a bag and drive out to the airport, unless maybe Billy could take the morning off from the bank. But then he’d have to arrange to be met on his return. And what would he do in New York after he’d seen his man—what was his name? Leicester? Yeah, what would he do after he’d seen Mr. Leicester?

  The usual was out of the question since Hester was in Europe. So he’d have to sit in his hotel room and watch TV. Hell, he could watch TV at home. Besides, Leicester might be out of town. “It’s not worth it,” he announced, and resuming his seat in the recliner, he picked up his newspaper. “Maybe I’ll just talk to Cunningham,” he said.

  In recent years, Ellsworth Jordon did not get to New York too often, but whenever he did, he tried to arrange matters so that he would spend some time with Hester Grimes whom he had first met in the fifties when she was twenty-two and studying at the Actors’ School. He was working for the prestigious architectural firm of Sloan, Cavendish and Sullivan, and though almost forty, his rank was still that of junior architect. She was Esther Green in those days, thin with jet black hair and large dark eyes, intense, serious, determined that someday she would play the great female dramatic roles—Nora, Lady Macbeth, Joan of Arc.

  He was tall and blond and handsome, for all that his hair was beginning to thin and he was beginning to put on middle-aged weight. He treated her with a kind of whimsical gallantry which she found all the more attractive because it was not common in the Bohemian circle in which she moved.

  In spite of the disparity in their ages, they had been very much in love. For the six months or so that it lasted, it had been a hectic affair, marked by frequently violent quarrels followed by teary reconciliations. Then his big chance came. He was to be sent to Berlin on a major project which would take several years to complete. He wanted her to go with him.

  She demurred. She had her own career to think of. And besides, although neither religious nor in any way connected with the Jewish community except by accident of birth, the thought of living in Germany was repugnant to her. The discussion quickly degenerated to an argument, and then, as happened frequently with them, to a quarrel. Annoyed by her resistance, he was led to minimize the importance of her ambitions and then even to disparage acting itself as a valid art. “While I admit that it might be a legitimate way of earning a living,” he declared loftily, “it is essentially one that appeals to a childish urge to show off.” As for her reluctance to live in Germany, he felt that it showed that she still retained the paranoia of her race and that it proved that she was still bound by a narrow ethnic parochialism.

  It ended as so many of their quarrels did with his agreeing with her that they were no good for each other and leaving, as always, presumably never to return. Shortly after he went abroad, she discovered she was pregnant.

  Had he still been in the city, she would no doubt have arranged to get word to him, even if she would not herself have called him. And of course, he would have come, and of course, there would have been a reconciliation, and of course … But he was not in the city; he was three thousand miles away. Had she had family, or if her friends and associates had been of the middle class in which she had grown up, she probably would have undergone an abortion, even if it would have involved the services of some quack in a sleazy tenement. Or she might have gone out of town and had her baby in secret and then given it up for adoption. But her associates were all Bohemian and long on ideals, especially where the necessity of living up to them was someone else’s. When she suggested that she had even considered having the baby and bringing it up by herself, they immediately hailed the idea and warmly applauded her resolution. She did change her name to Hester Grimes, but that was for professional reasons.

  It was almost two years before Ellsworth Jordon saw her again, and then it was on the TV screen. He had just returned from Berlin and was in his New York hotel room watching the late night Damon Parker Talk Show when she appeared, dressed in a low-cut, skintight evening gown to sing a blues ballad in a deep throaty voice. Afterward she offered her cheek to be kissed by the master of ceremonies and took her place on the dais with the other guests to spend the rest of the hour in idle chitchat. From Damon Parker’s questions about the progress of her career, it was obvious that though not a “regular,” she had appeared on the program several times before. Later, she told an amusing story of the party she had held the day before her son’s first birthday. Although her appearance on the screen had excited him, Jordon told himself firmly that he must close the door on the past and make no effort to see her. But the story of the birthday party made him change his mind. Why, on the basis of simple arithmetic, the boy must be his!

  Although she agreed to meet him, it was more to test herself than because she felt any desire to see him. And when he appeared at her apartment, she noted dispassionately that he was far less attractive physically than she remembered him. The skin at his throat
sagged and he looked old.

  “You’ve lost some weight, haven’t you?” she remarked.

  “That’s right. I was sick—a mild heart attack. They wanted me to lose some weight and take it easy.”

  “I’m sorry.” She was not really concerned, only polite.

  “The boy—he’s mine, isn’t he?” he asked eagerly.

  “No, Ellsworth. He’s mine.”

  “You know what I mean—”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Why didn’t you let me know? Why didn’t you get in touch with me? You could have got the address from the office here.”

  “What for, Ell?” She laughed. “So you could come back and marry me to give the baby a name? Or would you have insisted that I join you in Germany and have my baby there, or have it aborted there?”

  “But dammit, Esther—”

  “It’s not easy having a baby, Ell, especially when you have to have it all alone. But once you live through it, then it’s not so bad. From what I hear from some of my friends, there’s a lot to be said for bringing up a child without the interference of a father.”

  He thought she was trying to hurt him, and he felt he had to retaliate. “That’s the Jew in you,” he said spitefully. “You enjoy suffering for the pleasure of making us feel guilty.”

  If his words cut, she did not show it. She shook her head. “No, you’re wrong. There’s no pleasure in suffering. Not for me there isn’t. But it doesn’t last forever.” She smiled. “And as it turns out, having Billy all by myself was the making of me.”

  “It gave you new depths of feeling, I suppose,” he sneered.

  She chuckled. “No, it was just that because of him, I got my chance. I had got a job in this little nightclub. It didn’t pay much, but then I wasn’t very good. I’d sing a little, tell a few jokes and do a couple of impersonations. But one night Damon Parker came in with a party, slumming, I suppose. After my act, he asked me to join the party, and I told him I had to beg back for Billy’s night feeding. He’s an emotional, sentimental guy, and he got all worked up when I told him that I was bringing up the baby myself. He saw me as an original—the New Woman. And he invited me to appear on his show. Well, with the exposure I got, I was made.”