The Frozen Rabbi

by Steve Stern

  Then a message arrived at the icehouse, relayed from the foreman to the chief engineer, requesting Shmerl’s presence for dinner at a posh address on the Upper West Side. Scarcely able to contain his excitement, Shmerl instantly tried to damp it down, pretending that there was nothing unusual in the invitation. No doubt Max only wanted to talk business, as what else did they have in common these days? Perhaps, now that the Castle had acquired its own head of steam, Max would inform Shmerl that his services were no longer needed. But that wasn’t right, they were partners, though Shmerl always deferred to Max as the de facto head of the Ice Castle, which nevertheless bore the name of Karp: a paradox. Then Shmerl remembered that he was essential to their enterprise and that this line of reasoning had no basis in reality—so why was it with such a mixture of dread and anticipation that he took the Elevated uptown that evening?

  On the train, though, he had the quickening sensation he felt whenever he traveled beyond the neighborhood, which made him ask himself why he didn’t do it more often. Because Max wasn’t around to accompany him, that was why. Unlike the flat grid of the ghetto, Riverside Drive rolled uphill and down, a complement of elegant cliff-hanging apartments facing the sandstone palisades on the river’s New Jersey shore. It was, incidentally, the week of the festival of Sukkot, and a number of balconies sported pergolaed bowers, poles apart from the squatters’ sheds sprouting lulavs like donkeys’ ears on fire escapes all over the Lower East Side. Beneath the marquee outside Max’s building stood a massive doorman in an epauletted greatcoat, between whose legs Shmerl was prepared to scramble if the man tried to block his path. But once he’d announced himself, the man actually touched a finger to his visor and led him through the lobby into a hand-powered lift, which he proceeded to operate by hauling on a steel cable. A little breathless from their swift ascent and the pavonian wallpaper in the sixth-floor hallway, Shmerl was convinced that Max must have graduated to a whole new order of existence; he was only slightly heartened at the sight of a tin mezuzah on the jamb outside his friend’s door. Knocking, he half-expected to be greeted by a servant, and was further relieved when Max himself, dressed informally in an unbuttoned waistcoat and pin-striped shirtsleeves, opened the door.

  “Gut yontev,” he greeted, then: “Forgive me, I’m a bit ongepatshket from toiling over the stove.” This vaguely disconcerted Shmerl, who wondered since when were apologies necessary between them, but in truth something about Max did look different, and as they shook hands, Shmerl was unable to meet his friend’s eye. Instead, as the yungerman showed him around the apartment, the inventor kept stealing peeks at his friend to determine exactly how he had changed. For one thing, his sable curls were a little longer, hanging over his forehead and ears in a manner as winsome as it was careless, and his features seemed to have softened a touch at the edges, as befitted his new affluence. He was still compact of figure, though he might have put on a pound or two, but otherwise there was nothing dramatically altered in his appearance. So why did Shmerl have the unsettled impression that this person was doing no more than a fair impersonation of his partner, Max Feinshmeker?

  He tried his best to shrug off his nervousness and revive the ease he and his comrade had formerly shared. Nodding his approval of the roomy apartment, he remarked upon its modern amenities: the steam heat, indoor plumbing, the ornate gas girandoles; it was spacious without being pretentious (he actually said this), all “tishelekh un lompelekh,” little tables and lamps, and in the bedroom an iron bedstead with a cotton-batting mattress and flat springs. There were other homey touches: a mizrakh plaque on the eastern wall, a silver menorah and a sewing kit containing a color wheel of spools on the sideboard—all made the more haimish by the savory aromas wafting in through the kitchen door. Having no domestic sense of his own, Shmerl was impressed that Max had developed his to such a degree. Though he was content with his compartment in the ice house, its windowless walls so conducive to dreaming, the inventor was not indifferent to his friend’s feathered nest, admiring its creature comforts in their warm contrast to the crisp autumn evening outside. Once again he was struck with what a long way they’d come in so short a time; it was truly the kind of rags-to-riches story so often hymned in the popular press. If ever his own family emigrated—and he’d begun a correspondence with his still breathing papa toward that end—he would see them housed in similar accommodations. For himself, though, Shmerl had no immediate plans for relocating, nor had his improved financial straits brought him any sense of personal triumph. The fact was, he could have wished that the two of them, he and Max, were back in the stableyard where he’d never been happier.

  His host invited him into the parlor with its oaken dining table set in a bay, spread with an embroidered cloth and hand-painted china, its centerpiece a seasonal bouquet of marigolds. “I was your guest,” said Max with a formal bow, “and now you are mine,” which statement had a certain spider-to-fly ring in Shmerl’s ears. Again he expected a cook or a maidservant, but excusing himself, Max disappeared into the kitchen, returning momentarily with bowls of creamy mushroom and barley soup. When they’d finished the soup course, there was baked fish with horseradish, knaidlech, and spicy brisket; a meal, commented Shmerl inanely, like a regular Belshazzar’s feast. Other attempts at conversation were just as forced, such as when Shmerl tried in vain to alleviate the tension with a jest—“Feinshmeker, you will make for someone a fine wife”—and heard how blustering and unnatural was Max’s surname on his lips. After that gambit, though food was never for him a priority, Shmerl limited his observations to the tastiness of the meat and roast bulbes. For dessert there was homemade lemon sherbet with macaroons followed by bronfen, the rye whiskey usually reserved for kiddish ceremonies, one sip of which went straight to the inventor’s head.

  In the end it was Max who punctured the strained atmosphere, rubbing his palms together expressively as he asked the inventor how he’d enjoyed the sherbet. For just as Shmerl had assumed, his partner wanted to talk about business; he had ideas, born in good part from Jocheved’s nostalgia, for the diversification of the plant: “How about, along with ice, we should manufacture different kinds ice cream?” It was already a popular item throughout the city, the hokey-pokey vans ubiquitous in the ghetto streets during summer. “So why we shouldn’t hop on the band wagon?” He began to discourse excitedly about the molds, caves, and various implements involved in the ice cream – making process, the palette of available flavors from vanilla and pistachio to bergamot orange. Shmerl was himself briefly caught up in the idea, picturing giant mechanized churns containing Ararats of frozen custard—which no sooner materialized than melted in his mind, so abbreviated was his span of attention due to strong drink. He was also a little stunned by the breadth of his friend’s ambition, and had actually to remind himself that whatever made Max happy made him happy as well. But even his less than wholehearted response seemed enough to encourage Max further, who had changed the subject again. He was recalling his recent reading of socialist tracts by the East Side’s own Morris Hillquit, who recommended progressive strategies for success in business: The reconciliation of capital and labor, he contended, could be achieved through profit-sharing alliances that would revolutionize the workplace of the future. What did Shmerl think?—not that Max gave him an opportunity to respond.

  With no head for the various isms so dear to the hearts of the citizens of the Lower East Side, Shmerl gave in to a general sinking feeling; he ceased listening and satisfied himself with simply observing his animated friend, his treasured companion whom God help him he wanted desperately to kiss. That’s when the inventor, his cheeks burning, realized he was well on the way to being shikkered. To try and distract himself, he picked up an apple from a bowl on the table and began to peel it with the bone-handled paring knife. The peel, still attached to the naked apple, assumed the shape of a corkscrewing tail like the trajectory of a small planet spinning out of its orbit. Contemplating it until his eyes crossed, Shmerl was aware that Max was also
focused on the apple, and had slowed his galloping monologue almost to a standstill—at which point, seized by a spasm of pot-valor, Shmerl interrupted his host to ask with sham devil-may-care: “So, Feinshmeker, do you think you will ever get married?” Replacing the uneaten fruit still trailing its spiral skin, he helped himself to another shot of the ritual whiskey, his throat having gone suddenly dry.

  Max, still fixated on the apple, snapped out of his trance to reply, “I like my freedom.”

  Shmerl nodded in emphatic agreement; they were on the same page. But in the awkward silence that followed, prey to the creeping mischief the alcohol inspired, the inventor was moved to pose another question. “Was you ever in love?”

  The yungerman looked abashed. “Was you?”

  “I’m asking first.”

  Max’s sloe-black eyes narrowed nearly to reptilian slits. “What kind question is this!” he protested.

  Taking his friend’s show of temper for a negative, Shmerl assured him, “Me too never,” giving his head a sharp shake, which set his brain throbbing, his ears aflame, his entire anatomy in revolt against the lie. “That is,” he began again, “I mean…” But what did he mean? That he loved Max Feinshmeker, a man? Of course he loved him, but in a way that had nothing to do with the kind of love they were talking about. That kind was impossible between men in the world as he understood it, an abomination, in fact. But why? He realized it was only his intake of spirits that even allowed him to entertain such a question… despite which he took another drink. As if not to be outdone, Max followed suit. Then Shmerl felt the words rising like some kind of volcanic rudeness from deep in his gut, an utterance he could no longer withhold. “I—,” he pronounced, while at the same time Max fell victim to a sneeze.

  “Gezuntlikheit,” said Shmerl, grateful for the reprieve. Then realizing his slip of the tongue—he’d wed the blessing with the word for a cozy congeniality—began helplessly to giggle, making an effort to bite off the laughter when he saw that Max remained unamused. “They say,” he tried again, apropos what?, “is not so important between men and women the division as it is the multiplication,” which only triggered another fit of giggling.

  His host had shut his eyes as if against a sudden cloudburst, and Shmerl endeavored once more to get hold of himself. Clearing his throat, he attempted yet another conversational sally, this time trying hard to preserve a neutrality of tone. “Do you know perhaps from the false messiah Shabtai Zvi?”

  This at least elicited a sardonic, “Not personally.” Max’s eyes opened one at a time.

  “The Jews in olden times, that they believed by him they would ascend to Gan Eydn until he converted to the cult of Ishmael. He was famous for the saying, ‘Praise God who permits the forbidden.’”

  Max squirmed in his chair, took another drink. “Apostates and epicurians we may be,” he offered, “but leastwise we ain’t in his camp, eh, Karp?”

  “God forbid,” said Shmerl, though with faint conviction, after which, feeling sufficiently chastised, he fell silent. He was surprised when a mirthless tear escaped his eye, and as he dragged it with the palm of his hand to his tongue, he clenched his stomach as if to close his ribcage like floodgates around his heart. So harsh was his judgment of himself at that moment that he thought he must have absorbed his friend’s censure as well—because Max had clearly let go of his disapproval. His expression had softened as he gazed at his friend with a sympathy that Shmerl had not invited and did not want. The inventor was on the verge of asking the alrightnik what he was looking at, but Max spoke first, the edge gone from a voice pitched perhaps an octave higher than its normal tone. “Shmerl,” he said, using the familiar form of address, “you can’t love me, you know.” And there it was.

  “I know,” Shmerl was quick to respond, though he didn’t know; he knew nothing then but that they seemed, the two of them, to have entered a zone wherein all bets were off. The universe was again formless and void, there were no laws or even names of things, and if the righteous so willed it, they could make a world—that was in Talmud. But who here was righteous?

  “No you don’t,” insisted his friend, his speech melodious if a little slurred. “You don’t know.”

  “I don’t?” Shmerl tried to remember exactly what it was he didn’t know.

  “You think you can’t love me because I’m a man.”

  Shmerl could see no contradiction.

  “But I’m not a man.”

  “You’re not?”

  Max shook his head.

  Thoroughly befuddled, Shmerl asked, “Then what are you?”

  His host took an instant to deliberate, then submitted evenly, “A who-er.”

  Shmerl wasn’t sure he had heard him correctly. “Vos du zogst?”

  Max was on his feet, repeating hotly, “I’m a who-er!” Whereupon he removed his waistcoat, shrugged off his suspenders, and tore open his collarless shirt, spraying a volley of studs that forced the inventor to duck. He lifted his head in time to see the yungerman haul the undervest over his head, upon which Shmerl had to shield his eyes again—because he was gazing at a pair of breasts so orient and ripe, their nipples like the stems of marzipan pears, that they stirred what he felt was a life-threatening ache in his vitals. It was an ache Shmerl thought he might be glad to die of.

  “You still don’t understand?” inquired his friend, disappointed that the revelation had apparently not had its anticipated effect; since instead of being revolted by a body deformed by abnormal appurtenances, the inventor appeared to be merely struck with awe. Furious now, tears starting in freshets down his cheeks, Max pulled apart the flies of his pants, launching another salvo of buttons as he shoved the pants to his ankles along with a pair of frilly drawers. Then the spare ivory legs stood exposed to their fur-brushed juncture and the bald nub nestled like a cleft fig therein.

  “If it don’t disgust you what I got,” she challenged, “then maybe makes you sick what I don’t got, fallen creature that I am.”

  But Shmerl was of another turn of mind. Rising from the table, dragging with him the tablecloth as the flowers and leftover dishes slid clattering to the floor, he came around to enfold the girl’s bare shoulders in the damask material. It was a gesture whose unconditional tenderness inverted Jocheved’s topsy-turvy logic and robbed her of her capacity for shame. Then both of them were sobbing feverishly, the girl for her joyful reunion with the lost daughter of Salo Frostbissen, the youth for the gift of a transformation that he alone, wizard that he was, had effected: for he had caused by simply wishing it the metamorphosis of his beloved companion into the woman of his dreams.

  2001.

  That night, from his coign of vantage somewhere in the empyrean, Bernie Karp viewed his body convulsed on a pastel toilet seat from the bout of diarrhea that had beset him after his encounter with the rebbe. Something about their meeting had apparently not agreed with him. Floating free, the boy felt what he’d felt so often before: a deep compassion for his own suffering self, the pity extending from his specific case to a general homesick concern for the wretched of the earth. It was a pity that compelled him, in the spirit of solidarity with his species, to want to reinhabit the poor kid doubled over with abdominal cramps, his pajama pants gathered around his ankles. In that way he would assume his share of the pain that was an inescapable part of the human experience. Previously, however, his embrace of mortal pain had resulted in the corresponding desire to escape the human condition altogether, thus perpetuating the ongoing tug-of-war between Bernie and the cosmos. Settled into his skin again, he would instantly conceive an impulse to shed his physicality and reinvite the shefa, the inpouring of divine emanation that displaced his consciousness, which was then free to wander in time and space; though the exile would in turn leave him lonely and pining for the human vessel he’d left behind. But tonight, while his parents slept a wall away, dreaming the dreams with which their “interface” with Rabbi ben Zephyr had filled their heads, Bernie discovered that, knotted intestines asid
e, he wanted achingly to hang on to his earthbound self and, by extension, the world.

  It was then that Bernie thought he understood what the resurrected rebbe was up to: He was practicing the discipline known as aliyah tzrichah yeridah, descent for the sake of ascent, an extreme corrective measure the boy had first heard mentioned in the writings of the eighteenth-century teacher Yakov Yosef of Polnoy. The Polnoy Zayde, as he was fondly called, had descended from his lofty rung of holiness to raise the fallen souls of his abject community to the source of light. “Sometimes, for the sake of the evildoer, the adept must fall from his height.” Familiar with the odious concept of redemption through sin as espoused by those guilty of the Sabbatean heresy, Bernie realized that this could be a dangerous undertaking. He knew the perils: “Descent is certain while ascent is not.” And furthermore: “The tzaddik must take special care how he will again ascend, and not, God forbid, remain below. For I heard from my teacher [said the wise Polnoy Zayde] there are many who did remain.” On the other hand, “Only he who is himself guilty can help remove the guilt of others.” It was time, thought Bernie, that he got himself truly defiled.

  Surrendering to what was at first a nebulous desire to coalesce with his own kind, he soon narrowed his focus to a single object manifest in the squirrely person of Lou Ella Tuohy. Her milky flesh, it suddenly seemed to him, was a necessary prerequisite for his own redemption, if not the redemption of the race at large. By the same token, the stay-at-home handmaiden who had so often blessed his solo flights to glory would also (Bernie flattered himself) be carried away. This was why, the next evening when they’d parked her mother’s Malibu in a long-abandoned drive-in theater, Bernie was resolved that their bundling should be more than just another mechanical prelude to his own transcendence. They had visited that petrified ruin on the southern edge of town before, a spot still anchored to the 1950s, with owls perched on posts that once sported metal speakers and skunk cabbage overrunning the wavy asphalt like a Sargasso Sea. Lou Ella liked to sit on the hood of the coupe of a starry evening, imagining black-and-white movies projected onto the kudzu-choked screen, its torn fabric illumined to saffron by the car’s high beams. Tonight she envisioned another monster movie of the type she’d seen on late-night TV.