by Howard Fast
part nine RABBI FREEMAN
I WAS AWAKENED the following morning at six forty-five by my telephone, and when I picked it up and mumbled into it, there was Dmitri Grischov, as bright as a beacon and telling me that he had to see me.
“Not today, Grischov,” I said. “For heaven’s sake, whatever you want to see me about can wait.”
“It has to be today,” he insisted.
“I have a funeral today. Can’t you understand that? I have things to do, Grischov. For God’s sake, it’s a quarter to seven in the morning.”
“I know where you live,” Grischov said. “I’ll be over in half an hour.”
I was shaving when he came in. I came out of the bathroom with the lather on my face to open the door for him and then I went back to finish shaving, leaving the bathroom door open and able to observe him in the mirror.
After he took off his hat and coat, he paced slowly around the room, looking at the chaos and at the debris. I had made some attempts at straightening up the place, at restocking the drawers and clearing away a little of the general confusion; but all this hardly made more than a dent in the general disorder. In the mirror I saw Grischov pause, pick up a smashed picture, examine it. I saw him give his attention to the big armchair that was torn and shredded. When I came out of the bathroom finally, through shaving and ready to face the world, Grischov was standing in the middle of my living room, hands in pockets, brooding over its condition.
“I don’t always live like this,” I explained to him as I set about making coffee and opening a can of frozen orange juice. “Only now and then.”
“I didn’t think you did,” Grischov said somberly. “Who visited you?”
“I don’t know. Probably the same madman who murdered Anna Goldmark.”
“What was he looking for?”
“One hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
“Oh? Did he find it?”
There were moments when I found Grischov almost bearable; I mean there were moments when I overcame my conditioned dislike of what he was and what he stood for and was able to credit him with a sense of humor of sorts—not that I was ever actually certain. Apparently Grischov had been trained not to laugh. There were times when he smiled, but such an action was always accompanied by a certain amount of reluctance, and I would think of him as saying to himself, “This is precisely the correct time for me, Dmitri Grischov, to smile.” Of course that implies prejudice on my part, and prejudice is a hard thing to overcome. The fact that I could always recognize when Grischov was going out of his way and making a difficult effort to be pleasant to me should not have lessened the virtue of his gestures. Now I told him that they had not found the one hundred fifty thousand dollars, and he allowed himself a fleeting trace of a smile as he asked me whether I always kept that much money on hand.
“Not always,” I admitted.
“It is a rich country,” Grischov said, “but even in our country, which, if given ten peaceful years to build its economic structure, will be a good deal richer than yours, policemen are not that well-paid.”
“I was bribed, Grischov,” I said. “Two unbelievable men came here and gave me one hundred fifty thousand dollars as a bribe.”
Grischov raised his brows. “That’s a large bribe. What did they want?”
“They wanted Horton and his atom bomb.”
“But you don’t have either Horton or his atom bomb.”
“The bribe was payment in advance. You see they trusted me. They figured that one hundred fifty thousand dollars buys a certain amount of trust—no matter what. Then from somewhere they got the idea that I had turned the money in and that I was no longer trustworthy. That’s when they came here looking for the money. I haven’t had a chance to clean up yet. You can observe it and put it down to capitalist degeneracy. When they didn’t find the money, they killed Anna Goldmark to make a point.”
I put the orange juice on the table, two glasses of it, and put toast in the toaster. Grischov needed no urging to join me. He drained his glass of orange juice and observed that our frozen orange juice was very good.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it’s a pale imitation of the real thing.”
“You can afford real oranges, Clancy. This country overflows with real oranges. There are more oranges here,” he said bitterly, “than in all the rest of the world put together.”
“For God’s sake, Grischov, I don’t control the orange crop and neither do you. If it helps any, I can assure you that if I was an orange magnate, I’d make a deal with you. The trouble about real oranges is that I’m too lazy to squeeze them.”
“Typically American. Do you know who the murderers are?”
I brought toast and butter and coffee to the table. Grischov liked my coffee and liked my toast. He ate heartily.
“I think I do,” I said.
He watched me thoughtfully for a moment before he asked me. “Or are these things top secret?”
“The hell with that, Grischov; I don’t know what’s top secret or what isn’t. I don’t work for U. S. Intelligence or for the Department of State. I’m a second-rate cop pretending I’m a physics teacher and all I have is guesses. I’m guessing that this crowd comes from a dirty little island in the Caribbean.”
It was at that moment, at exactly ten minutes to eight, that my telephone rang again. It was my morning for early phone calls. I picked up the phone and a voice told me that it was Maximilian Gomez—nor did I question the information. I knew the voice. It was a very polite voice. It apologized for calling at such an hour. According to the voice, Maximilian Gomez had read in the morning papers of the murder of Anna Goldmark. He was calling me as a friend of the family. Did I know when the funeral would be and where the funeral would be?
As a matter of fact, I did not know; and I reminded him that he could find out as easily as I could. He remained polite and he thanked me.
“This is a terrible thing, Professor Clancy,” he said.
I had no desire to talk to him and there was nothing I could think of that I wanted to say to him. I finished the conversation as quickly as I could, brought another order of toast to the table and asked Grischov whether he had ever heard of Maximilian Gomez.
Grischov considered the name for a little while before he nodded. “Your Caribbean island,” he said.
“It could be.”
Grischov finished his coffee, finished his toast, and leaned back comfortably in his chair. He lit a cigarette and puffed thoughtfully. Then he said, “What will you do when you lead them to Horton, Clancy?”
“You think I’ll lead them to Horton?”
Grischov nodded.
“When?” I asked.
Grischov shrugged. ‘Today—tomorrow—the next day—I have a great deal of respect for you, Clancy.”
“I don’t share that.”
“Ah well—that’s for you to say. You are very close to this. On the other hand, I have a notion—I want to talk to your Phyllis Goldmark.”
I shook my head. I got up, went to the kitchen, and returned with the coffee pot, pouring a second cup for each of us. Grischov didn’t object; he liked American orange juice and American coffee. “No,” I told him. “It won’t do any good for you to talk to her, Grischov, not today. She’s been through too much.”
“What she has been through,” Grischov said slowly, “is exactly what we needed. Don’t look at me like that, Clancy. I know what you’re thinking. Your ideas of Russians coincide with our ideas of Americans. You were wondering whether I was heartless enough and cold and calculating enough to have her mother murdered. Am I right? Tell me now, am I right?”
“A cop suspects everyone,” I said tiredly.
“Oh no, Clancy, not at all. Let me put you at rest. I did not have her mother murdered. I am just trying to make you understand that a shock like this will change all her thoughts. It will shake up her brains. She will forget things that two days ago she remembered quite clearly; she will remember other things that may
be she had forgotten. I want to talk to her. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be there. All I’m saying is that I want to talk to her. You can arrange that, can’t you?”
“I can arrange it,” I said. “I just don’t know whether I want to arrange it.”
“Well, think about it.” Grischov rose and put on his hat and coat. “Think about it, Clancy, and if you change your mind, I will be where you can reach me. I’ll take a place at the Biltmore Hotel. I’ll be there all afternoon. Thank you for the breakfast. You make good coffee and good orange juice.”
“Good toast,” I said.
“Good toast,” Grischov nodded, allowing himself a thin smile. “About your Maximilian Gomez, I will see what we have that may be pertinent. The way I think, Clancy, it doesn’t make any difference. Gomez and anyone else—they’re only waiting for you to find Horton. It will not change anything whatever we discover about Gomez. The only thing that will change sometiiing is Alex Horton himself. Do you see?”
“I see,” I nodded.
Then Grischov left. I cleaned up the dishes and finished dressing and it was nine o’clock. I called the Goldmark apartment and Phyllis’s aunt answered the phone. I told her that I was an associate of Phyllis from the University, Professor Clancy. She said that she had heard about me and that Phyllis was all right and that the funeral services would take place at half past ten at the Uptown Memorial Chapel. I thanked her and said that I would be there.
I went uptown to get my car first and then I drove the short distance from there to the Uptown Memorial Chapel. The chapel itself was a small, well kept building of yellow brick on a street that was rapidly turning into a slum. All the other houses on the street were shabby, poorly kept, and rundown; only the Memorial Chapel preserved its glittering exterior, its neat sense of middle-class respectability, its precise paint, and its clean sidewalk. Already in front of it a hearse and a single black funeral car were waiting.
I went inside and a somber man in a frock coat and morning trousers inquired as to whether I was a member of the family. I answered that I was a friend of Miss Goldmark and he said that, if I desired to, I could join the family in the sitting room or else I could take a seat in the chapel. I decided that I would join the family. It would not be pleasant, but I have never found anything about a funeral to be pleasant and, if possible, I wanted to be with Phyllis. The sitting room was a dimly lit room about twenty by thirty feet. At one end of it, the coffin sat on its trestles with some candles burning behind it. Phyllis sat on a couch with her aunt on one side of her and with Rita Golden on the other side of her; with Jack Golden, that comprised the family—a tiny family, almost as tiny as my own, pathetically small and pathetic in its loneliness here in the big room. There was one other man present—a tall thin man who wore glasses and whom Jack Golden introduced to me as Rabbi Freeman. The policewoman of the night before was also present. She was in plain clothes and she sat quietly by herself in a corner of the room. A little later two elderly women appeared, who were friends of Anna Goldmark. But that was all, and that was the whole of those who mourned for the senseless passing of a single and elderly woman who had died without apparent cause or meaning.
Phyllis did not see me when I came in. Jack Golden came over to me and shook hands with me and introduced me to Rabbi Freeman.
No one talks in such a place. Everyone whispers. “I am glad you could come, Clancy,” Golden whispered to me. “It was very decent of you to come.”
Rabbi Freeman looked at me thoughtfully and shook hands with me. Then Phyllis saw me and I went over to her. She had been dry-eyed until then, but when I put my arms around her, she began to cry. The two women drew her back to the couch. They regarded me with hostility, their expressions demanding to know what right I had there and by what right did I introduce embraces into a situation like this one. I walked across the room toward the coffin and observed, with some relief, that it was closed. Then Rabbi Freeman caught my eye and I walked over to him and he asked me to step outside with him.
As we came into the foyer or lobby of the funeral parlor, the attendant was arguing with two newspapermen and a cameraman. They broke away from him and came over to us and wanted to know who I was and who Rabbi Freeman was. He told them. The cameraman took his picture, the flash explosion bizarre in the darkened hallway. A reporter said to the rabbi, “Look, Rabbi, we don’t want to make any trouble for anyone, but we got to get some pictures of the family. We got to talk to someone in the family.”
“What are they going to say to you now?” the rabbi asked softly. “This is a small family. There are four people in there who belong to the family. A poor old woman was murdered by a thief—that’s not a story; that’s no different from a hundred other stories. What are you going to do with it?”
“Still, it’s a story.”
“Leave them alone for awhile now,” the rabbi said. Then he took me by the arm and led me into the chapel.
The chapel was empty. It was a small hall with pews for about sixty people, hung about with curtains, lighted as dimly as the sitting room, and with a modest organ at the front.
“Is it enviable being a rabbi, Mr. Clancy?” Freeman said to me. “I was called in last night to a family I didn’t know and had never met before to bury one of them. She is mourned by a tiny handful. I don’t know if I’ve ever run into anything just like this before. It’s hard to believe that people could be so much alone in the world.”
“A great many people are alone in the world. It’s not so hard to believe, Rabbi.”
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. The point is that last night I sat and talked for a long time to the girl. What do you think of the girl, Mr. Clancy?”
“That’s an odd question.”
“I expect it is. It’s an odd question for me to ask. This girl talked about her mother and she talked about you. She thinks that you know why her mother was murdered. Murder is a terrible thing. It’s become something we read about every day in our books and our newspapers and, if we are so disposed, we can watch it every night on the television. But I’ve been a rabbi for thirty years, Mr. Clancy, and I’ve never officiated at a murder before. Do you know why this woman was murdered?” He was watching me and I was tired of lying. I had lied too much already and about too many things, so I nodded and told him that I knew.
“You can’t tell me, of course.”
“No,” I said, “I’m sorry, Rabbi, I can’t tell you.”
“Phyllis said that you’re an associate of hers at the University—professor of physics—is that what you are, Mr. Clancy?”
“No,” I said, “not really.”
“Whatever you are,” Freeman murmured, “I doubt whether it is any more difficult or thankless than being a rabbi. That, I am sure, is something you never gave much consideration to, Mr. Clancy. I suppose there never was any good reason why you should have given any consideration to it. On the other hand, it is something I have lived with and tried to understand—that’s not so strange—I wonder how many of us understand what we are and why we do the things we do. I can tell you that we have fewer gratifications than you might imagine and, in the end, it comes down to comforting a person who needs you. I don’t suppose that there is much more than that that any priest can offer, and we are priests of a sort—if of a most peculiar sort. I mean that I was struck very strangely by that girl—by that woman, Phyllis. I have seen all kinds of agony, Mr. Clancy. I was a chaplain during the war and anyone who moves among Jews becomes used to the varieties of agony, but I don’t know that I have ever seen just the kind of agony that this woman suffered last night. Did you know that?”
“No,” I said slowly, “I didn’t know it.”
“I walk where angels fear to tread, Mr. Clancy. That’s a poor prerogative of my business. You know that she loves you?”
I nodded. “Yes, I know that she loves me.”
“She is on the edge of a precipice, Mr. Clancy; if she falls off it, her world will come to an end. All of this is none of my business, but
when I am called in by strangers to say prayers over the dead, I feel an understandable sense of futility. The living are something else. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes,” I said tightly, “the living are something else.”
“When I began this, Mr. Clancy, I expected you to be angry.”
“I am not angry,” I said. “I just can’t see what all this has to do with yourself and me. I have a relationship to Phyllis Goldmark, but that’s something that only I can work out.”
“Only you can work it out,” the rabbi agreed.
“Then exactly what are you getting at?” I wanted to know.
“Have you ever lived in a nightmare, Mr. Clancy?”
I nodded.
“Then you know the habitation. I don’t have to offer any arguments or persuasion. She is living in a nightmare Mr. Clancy. Let me say that in walking where angels fear to tread, I put two and two together and it does not add up to four. That gives me the right to ask you whether you led her into the nightmare.”
I was silent for awhile after he said that. The organist came into the chapel, nodded at us and walked up to the organ. He sounded a few notes, as if he were tuning it. Then he began to play one of the Bach funeral pieces. The rabbi walked over to him and said a few words to him, and the music stopped. When the rabbi came back, he explained to me that there was a considerable division of opinion among Jews as to the desirability of music at a funeral. It seemed to me that I heard him from a long distance away. I was absorbed in my own thoughts, of which I had only too many.
“I presumed a great deal,” the rabbi said. “Now it seems to me that perhaps I presumed too much.”
“I don’t think so. What else were you going to say to me?”
“I was only going to ask whether you could lead her out?”
“Like the blind leading the blind?”