by Jack Grochot
Iribarren twisted his head from side to side; the crack of his spine was audible in the calm, warm night.
“No, Colonel,” Sampedro said, “the game continues. And the prospects are good for us to force your position.”
Iribarren, without warning, charged the first row of the dead, though he failed to surprise them. They moved aside, and Iribarren stumbled and fell inelegantly into the undergrowth. Laughter echoed and then died out.
“Don’t try to prove that we’re ghosts,” Zelinsky said. “That’s not the question, Iribarren.”
Iribarren got up with dignity, and started toward his house without a backward glance. He told himself that nothing remained behind him but a few threadbare wisps of delirium, and that he would not give those low-life dead people the pleasure of seeing him look back.
* * * *
The closer Iribarren got to his house, the more insubstantial it all seemed. He knew that a little normalcy, finding everything in its familiar place, would sweep away the last vestiges of the hallucination. It had to have been a hallucination.
He knew what waited for him, and the knowledge tucked around him like a cloak. He recalled each detail with precision, and the inventory gave him psychic strength. The garden, the dog, the grill where he cooked his sausages and steaks, the orange tree, his gun cabinet—they all brought him back to reality. He was sure now that it had been a nightmare, or the ill effects of something that he’d now shaken off.
He thought of Lucia, maybe a little irritated by the delay, going back to warming the food; of Martita, rubbing her eyes, stubbornly resisting the tidal waves of sleep; and of Gonzalo, impatient but disciplined, obedient to his father’s command that he not go out without exchanging a few words. Strong habits are hard to break, they said.
A single shiver went through him from head to foot when the house came into view. The lights were out, as if there were nobody home. It was deeply wrong, somehow. Between his previous life and the eternal and superior life that would surely follow, there had been nothing but fundamental, foreseeable events; he had worked hard to make it that way.
He blinked, and the lights came on—with a flash, like the ones in the park. Was there an incompetent cameraman moving in the shadows of the willows, a clumsy pawn who was distracted by the slightest thing and forgot to put the necessary elements in the scene?
Iribarren recovered and walked the last few meters to the front gate. The barking of Bismark, his Dalmation, who had caught his scent from afar, closed the circle of invisible signs. He let the dog jump on him like a brazen acrobat as he opened the gate, then finally pushed him aside with a slap of the hand. He slid the key into the lock of the massive wooden door and, unable to contain himself, cried out, “Lucia, I’m home!”
In response he heard a strange kind of silence, composed of minute particles of noise. Noises that folded into themselves, noises of toys rolling over a pile of sand, noises tossed across a room by a clumsy hand, odd, obtuse noises. The noise that actors made, he suddenly realized, changing costumes between one act and the next.
He sensed the whisper of dull and murky thoughts, and their names knotted up in his throat. Lucia, Martita, Gonzalo. He wanted to speak them aloud and couldn’t.
“Here I am,” said a gruff voice. The shadows of the kitchen spat out a woman. She was drying her hands, dragging her feet, snorting. She was Rosa Naranjo.
“What are you doing in my house?” said Iribarren, or almost said it, because the words dried up in his mouth. But the woman knew how to interpret his grunt.
“What am I doing in my house? Cooking for the señor, who’ll be home any minute.”
“Where’s Lucia?”
“Who’s Lucia?”
“The children, where are they?”
“Here I am,” said the child that Rosa had held by the hand in the park. Iribarren looked at the child for the first time. She was dark, with bulging eyes, and she looking nothing at all like Martita. But she wouldn’t leave him in peace. “Marcelo won’t let me play with his toys.”
Marcelo. Toys. It wasn’t possible. How could this have happened? Where was his real family? Lucia. Martita. Gonzalo.
“Your father’s here,” the woman said to Iribarren. “With no warning, as usual.”
“My father?” Iribarren turned to look at the walls, not understanding how his father could be part of the conspiracy.
“He’s in the den, playing chess with Marcelo.”
Iribirren had had enough. It was time to skip the maneuvering. He threw himself against the door to the den, and the force of it knocked over the chessboard and chessmen. It was Zelinsky and Metralla.
“What are you so nervous about?” said the old man. “Something wrong?”
“Wrong?” Iribarraen stared dumbfounded at the four knights, which by chance had landed together on the white rug. “You sons of bitches! Trash!”
“Jorge, what’s going on with you?” said Zelinsky. “You’re scaring me. Marcelo, your father is—”
“Crazy?” Marcelo shook his head. “He’s not crazy. He’s just a little upset by something that happened in the park. Isn’t that right, Papa?”
“Nothing happened to me in the park. What could have happened?” Iribarren suddenly snapped his hands out like whips, and was shocked when his fingers touched the old man’s throat and managed to close around it in a steel grip. Outside, Bismark barked.
“What…are you doing?” stammered the old man. Marcelo pulled Iribarren’s arms apart easily; all the confusion had sapped Iribarren’s will. The solidity of the old man’s flesh. The texture of the vertebrae, the prickly hair at the nape of his neck. The freezing tentacle of a nightmare that had gone on too long.
“What did you do with them?” Iribarren said.
“With who?” Marcelo said calmly. He was a few years older than Gonzalo, fatter, and cold. It would not have taken much for him to kill Iribarren’s son.
“Are we going to eat tonight or what?” came the coarse voice of Rosa Naranjo. “The baby is dying of hunger.”
“You don’t exist,” Iribarren said again. But once the words were out, he lowered his arms, defeated.
“Okay,” he said. “You win. You want me to say it? Okay, I’ll say it. I’m a bastard, a killer. I humbly beg your pardon for everything I’ve done, for what I made you suffer, and for having killed you. Is that enough? Now give me back my family.”
He knew he didn’t sound credible, but he was out of ideas. His guns were out of reach, and he was sure they wouldn’t do any good. It was too late for any of that.
The imposters, the substitutes, the frauds, the fakes, moved as if they had learned to dance in an elevator, with tight little steps.
“So we don’t exist?” Zelinsky said. “How much more proof do you need before you accept reality—the reality that is not what you want it to be? Family? We are your family, your only possible family. You’ll learn to live with us, don’t worry.”
“You’re not real,” Iribarren sobbed. “I killed you. I killed Bernal with a full clip. All of you. Do you need me to put it in writing? Do you want me to go to the newspapers, the TV networks? Fine, I will. What more can I do?”
“Again with the show of guilt?” Rosa waved her hand in annoyance. “Once a week now, soon every day.”
“What’s the matter with Papa, Mommy?” said the little girl, who was not Martita.
Iribarren raised his eyes and got some strength back. “Very clever. Very shrewd. So you are the only family that I deserve. I never thought you could be so ingenious.”
“Are we ever going to eat?” Rosa asked, impatient.
“No, I’m not going to eat,” Iribarren said. “I have things to do.”
“Now what?”
“Carry on with your game, since you’re having so much fun.” Iriba
rren turned his back on them and left the room, left the house. Nobody tried to stop him from taking out the car, or got in his way as he drove to the barracks. It was late, he knew, but he had no other choice.
He drove like a man possessed. He drove though all the red lights and got there in ten minutes. His tires skidded on the gravel as he pulled up in front of the barracks. He left the engine running and the car door open. Taking the three steps in a single leap, he burst into General Pozzi’s office gasping and shaking.
“What’s wrong, Colonel? Are you sick?” Sampedro took a cigarette out of his jacket and lit it with the same hand, in a gesture that Iribarren found neither magical nor natural. He looked into the eyes of the man behind the desk, with his dark complexion and curly hair, his aviator’s jacket, canvas pants, and leather boots, and knew that the circle had now completely closed, and there was no force in the universe strong enough to break it and set him free.
THE CANTOR AND THE GHOST, by G. Miki Hayden
The cantor, Mordechai Samuelson, was called in to rid the Alexander apartment of its ghost. Why the cantor and not the rabbi? Because the rabbi was dead, and likely the one haunting the Alexanders—and because everyone trusted and relied on the cantor.
Though many in the small Brooklyn congregation had come to find Rabbi Wild a bit on the tactless side, none had been more critical than Saul Alexander, whose father had helped found this very synagogue. Alexander, a dentist, was perhaps hypersensitive to miniscule matters of tradition here, and needled the rabbi endlessly over every one of these.
In fact, though Rabbi Wild and the dentist had been at odds for the last 10 years, it had started (the way Samuelson understood the affair) as a matter of herring. Herring? Yes, herring, or really the issue of herring in cream sauce versus herring in vinegar.
The topic for the two men hadn’t been one of theory only. Called to advise on a dinner for Rabbi Wild’s 50th birthday at a nearby kosher restaurant, Mrs. Wild had suggested as an appetizer her husband’s favorite—herring in cream sauce. This became herring in vinegar under the stern command of Dr. Alexander. Herring in vinegar, though certainly thought to be more healthful by the dentist (and allowing for a meat entrée as well) wasn’t to the liking of the Wilds.
A bitter yet not fully stated dispute arose thereafter between the rabbi and the dentist, resulting in years of controversy over such heated concerns as extra guest tickets for the High Holy Days; whether the rabbi should be reimbursed for his trip to a rabbinical conclave in Safed; the recarpeting of the rabbi’s office; the very fraught debate regarding replacing the old seating in the sanctuary with theatre chairs; and any argument that could conceivably arise within the ordinary course of synagogue business.
So, if the rabbi had to pick someone to trouble after death, his selection of the dentist was entirely logical.
All this came to mind now as the cantor considered the rather antiquated but not completely non-Jewish idea of a haunting. After all, Samuelson mused, wasn’t that why Jews covered the mirrors in a house after a death—for fear the soul of the dead-one might snatch the soul of the living?
Of course Cantor Samuelson didn’t really know very much about ghosts. He wasn’t even sure he believed in them—probably not—but he did always try to be agreeable. Not so young any more, though still in fine voice resonating with what he believed to be a pure, spiritual quality, he nonetheless stepped lightly around the members—who, after all, paid his salary.
“What makes you think you and your family are being haunted, Saul?” Samuelson began. His tone, he felt, was both polite and businesslike. Sitting on the Alexander couch, he had folded his hands judiciously in front of his paunch.
“That mumser would choose to haunt me and mine,” Alexander fussed, an obvious nonanswer.
Samuelson summoned his meager knowledge of apparitions. “I mean, what manifestations, Saul?” He tried to smile at the dentist without revealing the discolored teeth in the back of his mouth. Dentistry, he feared, would alter his exquisite singing style, possibly affect his clear enunciation of the prayers.
“Well, someone or something blew out the Shabbos candles this Friday night, the exact moment that the rabbi died as we heard it later. I was very surprised.” Samuelson nodded as if this might be a telling point, though perhaps one of the children had left a window open and the candles had been struck down by an errant wind.
“All of them, in different rooms, all together,” added Alexander. “Malicious of him, don’t you think?”
The cantor pondered. Or an angry child’s prank?
“Well, afterward, I smelled that vanilla cigar he used to smoke. But that’s not all…The following evening I found every single pair of undershorts in my underwear drawer cut to ribbons. Not even buried in the grave, and the man immediately begins his spiteful behavior from the other side. Just like him though. What a disgrace.”
Samuelson squinched his face against the onslaught of terrible accusations. He hated to disagree, but really, how could he validate such a complaint?
He stood at once. “I’ll study the books over this one, Saul. Don’t despair. I’ll do my best.”
Hustling to the door, Samuelson had only a single regret: Saul hadn’t offered him a cup of tea even, or a taste of one of his wife’s famous strudels.
* * * *
Samuelson went home and made himself a glass of hot Visoztsky’s tea, which he drank with a lump of sugar in his mouth. Indeed Samuelson had been married once, but was a long-time widower; his son, a cantor in not-so-far-away Pittsburgh, came to see him briefly once or twice a year—but the older cantor enjoyed his solitude.
Tea by his side, Samuelson looked up at his bookshelves holding hundreds of volumes of Jewish law and lore in English, Hebrew, and in Yiddish. Surely some few lines in one of these—The Shulhan Arukh with Moshe Isserles’s commentaries, the earlier Arba Turim (the “Tur”) of Jacob ben Asher, or Karo’s Beit Yosef—had his answers plainly written out in black and white.
Samuelson grabbed down book after book and riffled through, but strangely, he could find nothing specially associated with unwanted ghosts. Then, abandoning the more deeply considered advice to the observant, he pulled out a few of his books of folk tales to see if he could locate a bisel fitting guidance. In the index of the first two, he found something of what he was looking for—references to dybbuks and to their exorcism.
Maybe that was as close as he could come, though the idea of such unholy mishegoss unsettled his stomach. Surely the rabbi hadn’t been so much of a sinner that he would turn into the most dreadful kind of demon.
Needing to take a break before even considering a ritual to send the recently deceased rabbi on to the world to come (a place Samuelson had no fixed concept of), he hopped up to boil more water in the kitchen for another go at the still-useful teabag. The Visoztsky’s was perhaps a small indulgence for a man who preferred to spend his money on the mitzvah of charity—but just once around would hardly gain sufficient benefit from an expensive tea.
Returning to his sitting room, Samuelson nearly dropped his glass. Posed in the cantor’s very own reclining chair as if it were a personal throne sat the recently buried Rabbi Wild puffing on a lit cigar.
“Lord of Hosts, protect me from all evil spirits,” cried out Samuelson.
The rabbi frowned and snubbed his cigar against the wooden side table by Samuelson’s La-Z Boy. “You call your rabbi an evil spirit?” he demanded of the cantor.
Samuelson, trembling, with the ends of his fingers about to burn from the hot tea, sat on the leather couch, and set his glass on his wife’s cherished, pistachio-hued Tabriz rug. He stared defiantly at the deceased. “You,” he said, using the word as an accusation. “You broke the Sabbath. Even a dead man should have more respect.”
The rabbi recoiled. “Who broke the Sabbath? I? Not I.”
The cantor,
having caught the rabbi in the act, nodded briskly. “You blew out the candles in the Alexander apartment—and then tore up Dr. Alexander’s undershorts—on Shabbos, yet.” He was about to launch into a worthy Talmudic dissection of whether a man without a physical body may or may not be considered to have performed work, when the rabbi answered.
“No, cantor, no—the candles went out merely as a result of my rapid appearance there—and I traveled to that shmendrick’s place completely under my own steam. As for tearing up his undershorts, I waited until the end of Shabbos to mete out justice.” The rabbi relaxed, then picked up the discarded cigar, which resurrected itself and began to burn for the dead man to puff on—a trick Samuelson found decidedly spooky.
Wild hadn’t violated the Sabbath at least. But Samuelson felt he needed to chide the rabbi, nonetheless, as a matter of fulfilling his scriptural duties. “Cutting up the man’s personal garments, rabbi…”
“I know, I know,” answered the surprisingly solid-looking apparition. “But Saul Alexander is a murderer. The man poisoned me—the reason you see me before you today in such lousy shape.”
* * * *
Duly troubled by the departed rabbi’s charge, the next morning Samuelson called the synagogue president, Joshua Lefkowitz, and was invited to come to the doctor’s office at 12:30, exactly, when Joshua had 10 minutes free. Samuelson arrived on time, of course, and was left to cool his heels in the waiting room for 45 minutes. God forbid he should have a terrible disease and be made to wait this long, whining in misery.
Finally, the cantor was ushered in to the doctor eating at his desk. Samuelson stared at Lefkowitz’s sandwich, not so much in hunger, but wondering where he’d gotten such a nice-looking meal. Samuelson was a man who cooked for himself, and dinner would be an apple and a can of tuna. But that was neither here nor there. He had only 10 minutes to get his point across.
