A Horse’s Head

by Ed McBain

  “I’m Solomon,” he said.

  “How do you do?” Mullaney said. “Mr. Solomon …”

  “Come, I’ll get you a Siddur,” Solomon said. “You’re from the neighborhood?”

  “No. As a matter of fact …”

  “You’ll forgive me, Melinsky,” Solomon said, “but you forgot to put on your yarmoulke,” and tapped the top of his head.

  Mullaney hesitated a moment. Then, thinking a bare head might defile the temple, and not wishing to offend either Solomon or especially God, he quickly put the skullcap on and said, “Mr. Solomon, there’s something …”

  “We’re Orthodox, you know,” Solomon said.

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes. So you’d suppose, in this neighborhood especially, it would be easy to find ten men for a minyen, nu?”

  “I suppose so,” Mullaney said.

  “Especially on the shabbes.”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “But it’s very difficult. Believe me, you are performing a real mitsva.”

  “Yes,” Mullaney said.

  “You didn’t take a tallis. Take a tallis, hurry. Goldman gets impatient. We’ve been waiting here since seven o’clock this morning. These days, religion is a difficult business. Nobody cares, nobody comes, only the old men who are already dying. Look, we have to send somebody out on the street yet to find a Jew so we can pray. Ach,” he said and shook his head.

  “I see,” Mullaney said, beginning to understand at last.

  Solomon took one of the silk shawls from the rack and draped it over Mullaney’s shoulders. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “We all know you’re a stranger.” He smiled. “It’s no sin to pray with strangers.”

  “I guess not,” Mullaney said.

  “I’ll get you the Siddur,” Solomon said, moving toward a shelf of books on the left-hand side of the room. “Do you remember your Hebrew?”

  “Well … well, no. No, I don’t. As a matter of fact, Mr. Solomon …”

  “It’s in English also, you’ll be able to follow. Besides, it all comes back. You’ll be surprised how it all comes back.”

  “I’ll be very surprised,” Mullaney said.

  “Why? When was the last time you were inside a temple?”

  “When Feinstein died.”

  “Isadore Feinstein from Washington Heights?”

  “No, Abraham Feinstein from the Grand Concourse.”

  “Anyway, a person shouldn’t have to die for people to pray. It’s almost too late already by then.”

  “I guess so,” Mullaney said.

  “Come, we’re starting. Goldman is a good reader. He could have been a khazn.”

  “Mr. Solomon,” Mullaney said, “I really feel I should tell you …” and suddenly heard footsteps on the street upstairs. He hesitated. The other old men had taken seats already and were watching Goldman, who had his back to them, a book open on the altar before him. The room was silent as they awaited the opening words of the service. Into the silence came not Goldman’s voice, but K’s from the sidewalk outside the open windows.

  “Where’d the bastard go?” he shouted, and the words would have sounded obscene even if they hadn’t been.

  “How about that store across the street?” Purcell answered. “You think he’s in there?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s take a look.”

  “Wait! What’s this door here?”

  Mullaney held his breath.

  “I think it’s a synagogue,” K said.

  “Shhh.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” K said.

  “Don’t they pray in synagogues?”

  In that moment (and Mullaney could have kissed him, beard and all) Goldman began reciting the opening words of the service. His voice rang out in clear and vibrant tones, the Hebrew filling the room in ancient meter, carrying across the heads of the old men sitting in their prayer shawls, rising to the high open windows at street level.

  “It’s a synagogue,” K said, “I told you.”

  “Let’s try that store,” Purcell said.

  Mullaney let out his breath.

  “Page eleven,” Solomon whispered beside him.

  He listened to their retreating footsteps. Over the sound of the footsteps, fading, came Goldman’s resonant voice, and the answering chant of the old Jewish men. He found page eleven. Each right-hand page of the prayer book was printed in Hebrew, he saw, each left-hand page in English.

  “Here,” Solomon said, and pointed to a line on the English page.

  Mullaney realized at once that, despite the English translation, he would have difficulty following the service, the Hebrew words tumbling in ritual splendor from the front of the temple, the mumbled answers coming discordantly and out of phase from the congregation—he wondered suddenly where the rabbi was, wasn’t there supposed to be a rabbi around? Solomon, ever helpful, turned pages for Mullaney, pointed out new lines to him, and each time Mullaney nodded, and read the words in English and finally despaired of keeping up, and decided instead to conduct his own service because he hated to see a sabbath go to waste. He roamed through the prayer book at will, learning, for example, that the prayer shawl around his shoulders was called a tallith (though it most certainly had sounded like tallis when both Goldman and Solomon pronounced it). He was amazed by the numerical significance attached to the threads of the fringe, because apparently four threads were separated from the others and then twisted tightly seven times around the remaining seven threads, after which a double knot was tied. It was then twisted another eight times and fastened with a second double knot; eleven more times and yet another knot; and then another thirteen times and a final double knot. Seven plus eight, Mullaney learned, equaled fifteen, which was the numerical value of , a Hebrew symbol he could not translate. Eleven, on the other hand, equaled , and thirteen equaled , meaning “The Lord is One.” Furthermore, Mullaney learned, the numerical value of the word was 600, which, together with the eight threads and five knots, made a total of 613, the exact number of the 248 positive and 365 negative precepts of the Torah. He did not know what the Torah was, but he was enormously impressed by the very logical mathematical precision of the religion. So engrossed was he in learning all about the tallith (he would have to tell Solomon how to pronounce it correctly) that he did not realize the congregation was standing, and only joined them after Solomon tugged at his sleeve. He had always been a sucker for God, Mullaney supposed as the Hebrew words rang around him, always a sucker for the Latin mumbo-jumbo of the Catholic church in which he’d been raised, the trappings of the priests, he had to admit Catholics knew a lot more about show biz than Jews, at least when it came to costume design; you couldn’t compare any of these talliths (was that how the word had got corrupted) with what Catholic priests and altar boys wore during mass. The church, on the other hand, had never come up with a triple parlay like 600, and 8, and 5, combining to form the exact number of precepts in the Torah, whatever that was. He could remember even now, and he missed the aroma here in church on the sabbath, the musky smell of incense, the priest swinging his thurible, and the words et cum spiritu tuo—the congregation was sitting now, he wished there were some incense here.

  “Page twenty-six,” Solomon whispered, and when Mullaney had found the page, he pointed to a line in the English text.

  “Thou wast the same,” Mullaney read silently, “before the world was created; thou hast been the same since the world has been created; thou art the same in this world, and thou wilt be the same in the world to come,” a premise he could not buy because it seemed to negate the motivation for taking any gamble; if nothing ever changed, if you remained the same now and always, then what was the sense of—and then, reading back, saw that the passage was prefaced with the words “Blessed be the name of his glorious majesty forever and ever,” and realized they related to God, and thought again of the incense flooding over the altar railing and wafting back over the pews, et cum spiritu tuo.

  It
had been so simple then to accept without question, why does the world get so complex? Mullaney wondered. Well, he thought, it gets complex because sooner or later you’ve got to say No, you have got to shake your head and say No, I will not accept this, I will not be bound by this, I will be free. And so, despite your mother’s sorrowful look (oh those soulful brown eyes, I think she’d wanted in her heart of Irish hearts for me to become a priest like my Uncle Sean in County Wicklow) you must break the old lady’s heart by saying No, my dear Mother darling, I do not wish to accompany you this Sunday to St. Ignatius, I am terribly sorry but this Sunday I would like to sleep till noon, and then write myself a sonnet or two and then stroll in the park by the river and build a castle on the further shore, that is what I wish to do—you must say No sometime in your life. And, perhaps, I don’t know because I am new at this game of Taking the Gamble, I have only been at it for a year now, and losing steadily, but perhaps you have got to take the gamble more than once, turn your back more than once, say No, and No again, rush out into the wind and find whatever it is out there that’s beckoning you. Because, you see, you’re not really his glorious majesty, you are only Andrew Mullaney and you were not the same before the world was created, nor will you be the same in the world to come. Say No to Irene who begged you to stay, with her mascara running down her face and looking very much like a little girl who had put on her mother’s heels and makeup, weeping in the chair as I took a last look back at her and started to say something, but could not because Goodbye is very final, and I loved that woman, you do not say Goodbye to someone you love, and yet not sufficiently debonair to say au revoir or ciao (I have never yelled Banco! in my life, how could I even pretend to say those other things) and knowing that So long was far too casual for a woman who had given me seven years of very happy times—but you’ve got to say No sometime, you have got to say No or die, and I could not die, not even for you, Irene my love.

  So Solomon, where are we now? where are you pointing now with your old and withered finger? what are you showing me in your ancient book, is this the Siddur, does Siddur mean prayer-book or missal or some such, what are the words? let them speak to me, Solomon, because I am, and always have been, a sucker for God, though a gambler besides.

  “Here,” Solomon said.

  Here, Mullaney thought, and read On your new moon festivals you shall offer as a burnt-offering to the Lord two young bullocks, one ram, seven yearling male lambs without blemish, numbers again, Mullaney thought, and a partridge in a pear tree, he thought and remembered the third Christmas they were married, he and Irene, when he had given her the Twelve Days of Christmas, carrying each of the days in his head for a month before the twenty-fifth, he could still remember each and every damn word of that song, it had driven him crazy for the better part of December. But oh the joy on that Irish phizz of hers when she opened them all on Christmas morning, each package wrapped and appropriately numbered. “One,” of course, was the partridge in a pear tree, he had bought her a small flowering pear and a tiny cotton-stuffed bird whose wire feet he had attached to the uppermost branch. For “Five,” he had bought five gold rings in Woolworth’s, enormous rings with rubies and emeralds that looked like the real McCoy, and diamonds every bit as genuine in appearance as the collection that had been stolen on Forty-seventh Street Thursday night—“Lots of money involved here,” Bozzaris had said—the whole thing had cost him two dollars and nineteen cents, Irene’s face worth a million dollars when she opened the box and the rings came tumbling out. For “Eight,” he had bought eight paperback novels with the bustiest half-clad beauties he could find on the covers, maids with milking breasts bursting out of peasant blouses, unimaginable titles like Up in Mabel’s Cooze or whatever; he had felt like a complete pervert buying the novels in a Times Square bookshop where scurvy characters thumbed photographs of long-legged girls in black lingerie, and he a respectable encyclopedia salesman. The Twelve Days of Christmas, one to twelve, each box numbered and each gift clever, if he had to say so himself, though inexpensive because that was a prime requisite in those days, clever but cheap. He had hated that bloody song ever since because in order to remember that “Nine” was nine drummers drumming, for example, he always had to sing the whole damn thing from the top, oh, what a Christmas that had been.

  “They want you to hold up the Torah,” Solomon said.

  The men had parted the red velvet curtains under the hanging caged candle and had taken from the wooden cabinet there a large—well, he didn’t know quite what it was at first, a red velvet case or cover with two carved silver handles protruding from its top. And then someone removed the velvet cover, but Mullaney still didn’t know what it was until Solomon said, “The Holy Book, they wish you to hold it up.”

  “Why?” Mullaney said.

  “It is an honor,” Solomon said.

  “I appreciate it,” Mullaney said, “but no. Thank you, I don’t think it would be right. For a stranger,” he added hastily. “Thank you, Mr. Solomon, but it would not be right.”

  Solomon said something in Yiddish to the old man who was anxiously leaning over them. The man smiled, and nodded, and then chose someone else to come to the front of the temple. The man walked to the altar, seized the Torah by both silver handles and held it up for the congregation to see the holy words. The service was coming to a close. Someone was reading more Hebrew, Mullaney no longer tried to follow even the English translation, some of the older men were impatiently beginning to take off their talliths (See, Mullaney thought, I learned a word). And then the Torah (another word) was rolled up and put back into its cover and carried back into the wooden cabinet behind the velvet drapes, and the drapes were closed, and there were more words in Hebrew, and the men were rising, and Solomon said, “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it, Melinsky?”

  “No, that was very nice,” Mullaney said.

  “Not like maybe at a big fancy temple,” Solomon said with a wink, “but not bad for a bunch of old Jews, huh?”

  “Not bad at all,” Mullaney said, giving him a wink of his own, and following him toward the left-hand side of the temple where the other men were taking off their prayer shawls and carrying them to the scarred wooden rack on the wall. The flickering light on its long chain hung motionless from the low ceiling, casting dancing shadows on their faces as they folded the shawls over the long wooden bar. Mullaney followed Solomon to where the others were standing, being careful to imitate the exact way Solomon draped his tallith, the Hebrew lettering to the right, though he wasn’t at all sure this was part of the ritual.

  “Would you like a little Schnapps?” Goldman asked, and Mullaney suddenly thought of McReady and the burglary charge and of the jacket at the New York Public Library.

  “Well, I really ought to be going,” he said.

  “Come,” Solomon said, “it’s a b’rokhe.”

  Mullaney followed Solomon to a round table at the rear of the temple. The table was set with a white cloth. A small dish of cookies rested on the table alongside a fifth of Four Roses. Two dozen shot glasses were turned upside down in a loose circle around the bottle. An old man there was already pouring for some of the others.

  “Come,” Solomon said, “it’s very good for the intestinal tract.”

  “Well, just a little,” Mullaney said. He was still wearing the yarmoulke, and he wondered whether he was supposed to take it off now that the service was over. None of the other men seemed to be removing theirs, however, so he touched the back of his head once again (the yarmoulke sat so feathery light on his skull that he was certain it had fallen off), adjusted the cap, and then accepted the glass Goldman offered. The synagogue seemed so suddenly dark, had it been this dark when he’d entered not an hour ago?

  “L’chaim,” Goldman said. “To life.”

  “L’chaim,” the men repeated, and raised their glasses. To life, Mullaney thought. McReady had used those identical words in the cottage last night, l’chaim, to life.

  “To life,” he said aloud, and d
rank.

  The stained-glass window above the altar suddenly erupted in dazzling brilliance, showering incandescent bursts of color into the room (The earth was without form and void, Mullaney thought in that instant, darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters—and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light), blue and purple, green, a penetrating shaft of yellow, glowed intensely for only an instant, illuminating the faces of the men and the whiskey glasses they held to their lips. And then an explosion rent the silence of the room, just above the temple’s low ceiling, and Mullaney pulled his head into his shoulders and thought They’ve come to blast me out with bombs and mortars, I’m finished.

  “Rain,” Goldman said, and shook his head. “Why does it always rain on the shabbes?”

  “It is the Lord’s will,” Solomon said, peering through his thick glasses, tilting his head to one side, listening as the rain drops began pattering on the temple roof. The men sipped their whiskey silently. Another streak of lightning illuminated the magnificent stained-glass window, the rolling blue and green sea capped with white, the darker blue beyond, the nascent world’s blackness, the dazzling yellow pane of light, let there be light. Thunder boomed above. The drops fell more heavily now, beating on the roof of the old building. Solomon poured more whiskey into Mullaney’s glass and said, “You know what happened to my Uncle Aaron, he should rest in peace?”

  “We all know what happened to your Uncle Aaron,” Goldman said.

  “The khoshever gast doesn’t know.”

  “The khoshever gast doesn’t want to know,” Goldman said. “It’s a hundred times he’s told this story already, Cohen, nu?”

  “A thousand times,” Cohen said. “Ask Horowitz.”

  “A million times,” Horowitz said, and held out his glass for a refill.

  “If the Lord didn’t want it to rain, would it rain?” Solomon said.

  “The rain has nothing to do …”

  “If the Lord didn’t want it should be thundering and lightening, would he make it thunder and lighten?” Solomon asked.