by Al Zuckerman
Yet Khayim was humming to himself, a melody only snatches of which Iz could hear, but that resonated a crooning sweetness which roused in Iz a pang of envy. The old man who had nothing: a broom, a shabby shul, a God who didn’t really exist—nonetheless seemed to have all his soul required. Iz snorted wryly, bitterly. When did he hear himself humming, and with such fervor?
Odd mixture, the contempt and the love he felt for the old guy. How he’d seethed as a youth at seeing his father practically on his knees begging The Uncle for a piddling loan, and, turned down, walking meekly away, prepared to eat shit if he had to. And the disgust—Iz remembered nearly choking on it—at Pop’s trotting off to Rosh Hashanah services and losing out on a refrigerator delivery job, even though the electric company had already shut off their lights. The unswerving, dogged, endless devotion his father had kept pouring into that superstititon, and getting back nothing.
Or so Iz had believed. Now he sensed he’d been not quite so all-knowing. The old man, though he had nothing, except for the chunk of real estate Iz had given him, in a way did have something. It had nothing to do with what Iz himself had always been scrambling for, what he’d considered to be the number one wallop, climbing out on top. Pop’s kicks, what there were of them, seemed to play on a wave length Iz had never been able to tune in on. Serenity, rapture even, from submerging himself in a tired-out, pushover group, and rocking himself off into cloudland with broken-record prayers. But somehow they seemed to make Khayim accept his constantly getting clobbered. And the spooks of untold generations of Jews here in this darkish prayer house did more. They prompted the old man to hum . . .
Izzie stood at the portal waiting to say so long to his pop. The old man was important to him in ways Iz could only vaguely put his finger on. Not for companionship. He and his father just hadn’t had it. Nor hardly any sharing of each other’s strivings and dreams. Which left what? A tenderness for an acquaintance that went back further than any other Iz had had, a nostalgia for moments largely forgotten but a few of which may have been sweet; probably most of all, a sense that on his return, were he to find the old man no longer around, he’d miss him, a lot. …
Iz tapped his father on the arm, and Khayim was startled. The broom slid through his fingers and clattered to the floor.
“Hello, Poppa,” Iz spoke gently, “how are you?”
The oldster eyed him with suspicion, apprehension. “Whatsa matter, what is it?” his voice hoarse, breathless. “Tell me, Sroolik.”
Iz stood and retrieved the broom. “What’s the matter? I can’t come see you, without you thinking it’s the end of the world?”
The old man folded in his lips, his white-stubbled face forming a worried grimace. “Who you kidding? You been inside a shul since David’s Bar Mitzvah? So all of a sudden, how come now?”
“Pop, look at me. I don’t look sick, do I? And the kids couldn’t be better, happy as sunshine. So put away the black look, will you? Come. Sit down. I just want to talk to you a little.”
“You didn’t take no spin all the way up the Bronx just to sit a little. But if that’s what you feel like telling me, all right, sure, come, I’ll sit and you’ll sit, and then you can hit me with your happy as sunshine.” Snorting and shaking his head, he turned and led the way through a door in the vestibule, and slowly, one step at a time, down a flight of narrow squeaky stairs.
In the gloom and in disarray everywhere were books—piled on benches, shelves, in cabinets, even stacked here and there on the floor. At the far end of the basement, half-reclining and half-sitting, was a youngish man whose voice rose and fell in a sort of dreamy chanting and whose face shone with pious ecstasy.
Khayim drew him into a corner, near the entrance and far from the rapt figure at the table. “Here is better, because upstairs any minute the others’ll be arriving.”
“Who is he?” Iz pointed with his chin.
“You worried? You think he cares about your business, your secrets even?”
Iz chortled inwardly at the old man’s belligerence, which seemed to be increasing with the years. Too bad Pop hadn’t had more of this hard edge when he was younger.
The old man was peering at him. “You don’t look so good, you know.”
“You look terrific.”
“You take vitamins?”
“Every day.”
“I don’t believe you.” Khayim bent his head, and began moving books, making room at one end of a bench.
Iz helped, and they both sat.
“So?” Pop resumed.
“Nice little shul you got here.”
“Yeah, but we can’t keep up with the mortgage. You want to contribute, we’ll accept.”
Iz chuckled to himself. He was being baited. “How much you got in mind?”
“Seventy-nine hundred, and we could pay off the whole thing.”
“And you’d still be the shahmes?” Iz bantered back.
“You want to contribute that big, so we can hire a professional?”
“You like the job?”
“A little sweeping up in this place suits me very nice. I wish—and from my mouth to His ear—you had something that suited you so good.”
Iz winced. Back during bootleg, the old man had gibed at him all the time, and Iz had accustomed himself to think nothing of it. Now though, it came as a shock. Iz felt touched on a raw spot. “When you gonna stop picking on me?”
“It bothers you?”
Iz nodded. “Yeah, it does.”
“Then who knows? There’s maybe some hope for you.”
The old man, Iz knew, was teasing and serious at the same time. “Thanks for the compliment,” he answered a bit sadly. “I knew I could count on you for at least one.”
Khayim looked down at the floor. “Why’d you come here, Izzie?”
He’d come—why?—to say, good-bye, cause maybe before I can see you again, you’ll die, or I might. He saw his father’s bent head begin to bob in the steady, age-old rhythm of prayer, and Iz knew that the old man understood, without Iz’s having to say any of those cruel words.
But then anybody in New York who’d looked at a Sunday paper or just turned on the radio knew about Harry Klauber and about Izzie Hargett’s car, and Pop had been at the party when the news first came.
“I’m going away,” Iz finally responded. “You won’t be seeing me for a while.”
“So I see you now so much?” Then more softly Khayim asked, “You’ll still phone me once a week?”
“Sure. If I can.”
“Where today could you go where there’s no phone?”
“I’m not sure.”
“From me, secrets?”
“If it would help you to know, believe me, I’d tell you.”
“Could it hurt me?”
Iz shut his eyes, then nodded, reluctantly. “It might.”
The old man winced. The maze of his forehead lines deepened. He shook his head, making sad little clucking noises.
“Nah nah nah NAH! Now don’t you say it, Pop.” Iz became jovial, making an effort to lighten the mood.
“What?”
“That I should have stayed with fixing up cars.”
“That’s not a good business? Still?” Khayim challenged, joining into an old argument which had now grown into a kind of game between them. “Five million they manufactured last year. In one year, five million.”
“Listen, I’m thinking about it. And very seriously now.”
“Ai yai yai ai yai,” the old man sighed-crooned. “Sroolik, what can I do to help you?”
“Say an extra prayer for me. Can’t hurt, can it?”
“Shhhhhh.” Khayim cocked his head and put a gnarled finger to his lips. “I hear upstairs they’re starting to arrive. Listen, I know. I want you to stay for the service.”
Iz frowned, then shook his head. “No, Pop.”
“Why can’t you?”
“People are waiting for me, and they’re nervous.”
“I’m asking you—as a favor
.”
“Another time,” and Iz rose.
Khayim too hoisted himself up. “God’s tongue, stay and speak in it, and you can talk to God.”
Iz wanted to please the old fellow, but he couldn’t endure the jibber-jabber for a whole hour, giving thanks and more thanks—for what? And hanging around any longer could be risky. “I’ll pray with you after I come back,” he promised.
About to start up the stairs, Iz felt something, a change of some kind, a silence. Yes, that was it, no more dreamy chanting. Then something drew his head back toward where the youngish devout had been. The Talmudist was still at his table, but motionless now, sitting stiffly erect, staring with the full force of his burning eyes directly at Iz.
Iz felt curious, uneasy. Why? This young fellow, had he seen him somewhere before? Odd, the profound peacefulness that seemed to radiate from him despite the ramrod posture.
Then it dawned, Iz remembered, yes, Kremish’s office, of course. The kindly face that had seemed so different from all the other Dynamic brass. Even the name, singular too, Aaron Grodno, filtered back to him.
“You staying?” Khayim softly pleaded.
Iz didn’t answer, didn’t move either, but now he felt that he was staying. Grodno somehow was making Iz want to remain, to be warmed by his aura—for a while anyway.
CHAPTER 14
Scott heard ringing, a phone, far away, but then louder, so it couldn’t be part of the dream. Something delicious was about to happen with Elizabeth Taylor there, and she was taking her dress off while on the cover of Life magazine; but the ringing pushed her into blackness. …
His head felt as if someone’d been sitting on it. He opened his eyes, but instantly shut them. The sun was too bright. Then his nose came awake, smells, stale beer, empty cans from last night; Stevenson, the shit-eating election, that beautiful man conceding. …
The American people were soulless morons, at best pathetic sheep. Even here in Hanover, guys with I.Q.s, the country’s future decision-makers, had given a solid majority for Eisenhower. It defied all reason.
Scott wrenched himself up. He marveled at his roommate snoring on peacefully, totally unaffected. Grossbeck would sleep through an earthquake.
Scott clutched at the phone. “Hello,” he mumbled.
“Is this Scott Kremish?”
Strange voice, yet familiar. Foreign sounding.
“Tell me, please, is that you?”
And gentle, almost pleading, Scott thought, and then answered, “Un hunh, yeah.”
“This is Aaron Grodno calling.”
“Who?”
“I work with your father. You’ve met me. I’m the fellow who, well. …”
Yes, with the smoldering eyes, who sometimes wore a strange white vestment; Scott pictured him now, his dad’s vice president for magic. “Oh yeah, of course, Reb Grodno. Well uh, what’s happened? Is something wrong?”
“Okay, your father was in a—hold-up, with robbers. And they hurt him, but not bad. He’s going to be okay. So then why I’m calling is, your mother. It’s her neshawma, her spirit, if you know what I mean. So for her, it might help, if you were to fly an airplane right away home.”
Scott imagined his dad sprawled on a sidewalk, bleeding, a puddle of blood. … “Look, please, you’re being straight with me now, aren’t you? I mean, he’s going to be all right?”
“He said not even to bother you. I think though it’s fitting you come.”
At Logan Airport, Scott eyed the newstand, then asked for a New York Times, but had to settle for a Boston evening paper, The Globe. In a small box, toward the bottom was the only thing on page one not about the election, LADY FRIEND SLAIN, MILLIONAIRE MUGGED, the caption read. Scott groped for a bench, then forced himself to read on. There wasn’t much. “Struggling with an alleged rapist, a beautiful young woman, Maureen Phelps, was knifed last night in the shadow of New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and bled to death. Her companion, Leo Kremish, 51, Chairman of Dynamic Industries, a billion-dollar corporation, suffered head injuries and was hospitalized. He is expected to recover. The assailants’ identities remain unknown. A large force has been assigned to investigate the incident.”
Scott wiped his forehead. Crazy, Mr. Hargett’s car bombed, and now this. Was there—could there be a connection? No, he told himself, no, that’d be too—too terrible.
“What should I do?” Scott blurted. Their dismal visit brusquely terminated by an officious nurse, he and Reb Grodno were getting into a cab outside Lenox Hospital.
The thin scholar slowly, sadly shook his head. “I have no signs, no spells, no surefire magic, nothing you yourself probably haven’t already thought of, or felt in your heart.”
“But I—what I feel—is just so lost.”
“And feeling so, then the one thing you surely would do would be to stay close by, come to him, be with him, no?”
“But there’s got to be something more I can do. There is, isn’t there?”
The devout again shook his head. “These things would not be for you.”
“Tell me anyway, please.”
“Well, you could fast from Sabbath to Sabbath, or try to. You could pray, perform the holy ablutions continually, or try to. You could study, attempt to penetrate the mystery of the mighty double name of God, the flame of which it is said has power to weld together the loftiest mountain peaks and the deepest valleys below them, or you could try to.”
Half-wanting to laugh and yet sensing this was meant to be taken seriously, Scott felt numb, paralyzed.
In his mind he kept seeing Dad in the bed, waxenfaced, eyes staring dully ahead, head swathed in gauze, sad, so indescribably sad Scott had had to struggle to keep himself from crying. And then the resident’s saying. “It’s a superficial wound. Your father’s collapse is mainly emotional.” That had stunned Scott in a different way. Leo Kremish, collapsed? Dad was fifty-one, true, but charged up as any Dartmouth undergrad, and much more than most. The name Dynamic was so suited to him. Except this seemed to have hit him like nothing Scott had ever seen.
Somehow—and Scott had no idea how—now he’d have to pitch in. And with his mother too.
The cab pulled up before the Regency-style townhouse the Kremishes had moved to the year Scott had graduated from Horace Mann.
“Reb Grodno, will you come in with me?”
“I would prefer actually not. Your mother, I think, is going to be a shock, more even than your father was. But the answer is, I’m with you now to help you if I can, so I’ll come.”
Scott fumbled in his pocket for change for the cab, but Grodno had already paid.
The visit with his mother was lacerating: outbursts of blistering fury, wrenchingly pitiful sobs, harangues, pleas, tirades, words that were hammer blows. Hours later, their mad echoes had only begun to abate. “You, you, no one but you! . . . Cruel, heart of stone. … Thoughtless, your fault, murdering your own father. … Ruin, handouts, the dole, relief, die a beggar. …” Her hysteria, he recognized, though, had had a gossamer strand of near-truth woven through the overwrought fears and maledictions. Linda was Izzie Hargett’s daughter. He, Scott, was Leo Kremish’s son. There had been an attempt on Hargett’s life last Saturday, and a man close to him killed. Now Dad in terrible shape, and his companion knifed to death. Was there a connection? No proof certainly, no solid basis for Mom’s rantings, except her same wild dread now multiplied a thousandfold by a chance happening.
But one thing undeniably real was the crash in Dynamic stock. From the minute Scott had entered the house, the phones hadn’t stopped: panicky trust officers, snarling mutual fund presidents, pension fund managers, oily Wall Street analysts. Very creepy. But that still was less real, less tormenting than his vision of Dad lying in that all-white room. And the money panic couldn’t be anywhere near the doomsday Mom was making it into. Shit, so if they had to give up the Modigliani—who had to have marble pillars on East Seventy-Fourth Street?
The second visit to the hospital had depressed hi
m more yet. Both the neurosurgeon and the plastic surgeon had been there reassuring in their warmest, wisest-sounding jargon. But Scott, hungering for hard, clear information, had sensed glibness, professional patter, the old spoonfed bedside manner. For all those illustrious doctors knew, Dad might lie there and stare up at nothing for another five years, or forever.
Dad, except for patting Scott once, had just shaken his head from time to time, sniffled, softly moaned, but hadn’t said a word, not even to Grodno, who’d crooned to him, whispered old Judaic parables, and intoned either mystical spells, or prayers, or both at the same time: Scott hadn’t been able to distinguish.
On their leaving, Reb Grodno had said something which gave Scott a shred of hope: “She, his light, went away and darkness has fallen upon your father. Our sages tell us, before a man can throw off such blackness and find the dawn, he must first walk a while through the night.”
Down in the hospital lobby Scott found Linda waiting. Despite her midterm tomorrow she’d come. With all her being, her every breath, she’d wanted to help, give comfort; but each time she began to speak, she choked up and cried. He’d put her into a taxi.
In the chilly night, walking westward across Park Avenue, Scott realized there was a person he ought to see, question, talk this through with, and who also maybe could help. Odd, Linda hadn’t mentioned her father, not once.
For much of two days, Scott had kept waiting his turn for the phone booth opposite the nursing station, calling local and long distance, number after number, searching for Mr. Hargett. Disembodied voices, booming, brusque, bubbly, one after the other would tell him, “Hang on, please. Mr. This or Mr. That will be with you right away, shortly, in a minute,” and then inevitably, “I’m sorry, but he’ll have to return your call, get back to you later,” which it became plainer and plainer he never would.
