Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet

by Harry Kemelman

  Dr. Cohen knew he should be adamant and refuse, but he could also picture the old man lying in bed, suffering. “All right,” he said, “I’ll drop by and take a look at him.”

  He hung up and said to his wife, “I’ve got to go out.”

  “But you were going to the Kaplans,” she objected.

  “Oh, I won’t be long.”

  “Who is it?”

  He hesitated, remembering how indignant she had been at the time. “It’s Kestler, the old man,” he said reluctantly.

  “And you’re going to see him?”

  “Well, he is my patient.”

  “But a man who is suing you!”

  “I suppose he feels one thing has nothing to do with the other. In a way, it’s a compliment. Here, he’s suing me and still wants me for his doctor.”

  “That’s because he can’t get anybody else on a Wednesday.”

  “So I guess that’s another reason I’ve got to go.”

  “Well, if I were treating him, I’d give him something to remember me by. He wouldn’t call me again in a hurry.”

  He smiled. “That’s an idea.”

  When he was at the door, she called after him, “You going to want any supper?”

  “Maybe something light. I expect they’ll be serving at the Kaplans.”

  “Better take your raincoat,” said Miriam. “If the storm should hit—”

  “I was just out on the porch,” the rabbi replied, “and it’s positively balmy. Besides, I’ll just be going from the car to the house.”

  “I don’t see why you have to go at all. Kestler isn’t even a member of the temple.”

  “That’s why I make a point of visiting him regularly. To visit the sick is enjoined on all Jews, but the congregation palms it off on the rabbi and thinks of it as a special service they offer their members. ‘Join our temple for free visits from the rabbi when you’re sick.’ So visiting a non-member gives me the illusion that all my sick calls are purely voluntary. And Kestler is such an incorrigible old scoundrel that I feel it’s a real mitzvah to go see him.”

  She laughed. “You coming right home afterward?”

  “Yes—no, I think I’ll stop at the Kaplans. He has an At Home Wednesday evenings, and I’ve never been.”

  “But—”

  “Mort Brooks hinted this morning that Kaplan and his group were planning some skullduggery.” He smiled. “Maybe I can get a clue.”

  Dr. Muntz ripped the sheet off his prescription pad and handed it to Safferstein. “It’s a bacterial infection, I’m sure,” he said. “I’m giving her penicillin, four times a day for five days. And I want her to take all of them. That’s important. She may be all better by the second or third day, but she’s to continue with the pills until she’s finished the bottle. Understood, Billy?” The doctor’s pale blue protruding eyes stared meaningfully at Safferstein.

  “Oh sure, she’s to take all of them,” Safferstein said. “I’ll get them right away.”

  Dr. Muntz glanced at his watch. “The drugstores are closed by now. Tomorrow will be all right.”

  “Town-Line Drugs is still open.”

  “Yeah, I guess they are at that. Then give her the first one tonight.”

  Safferstein helped him into his raincoat.

  “You coming to Chet’s tonight, Billy?” asked the doctor.

  “Gee, I don’t think I should with Mona feeling this way. You’re going, I suppose.”

  “Oh sure. Chet expects me. I’m the official agnostic and cynic, you know. He needs my opposition to give some pep to the meetings.” He chuckled. “Or maybe I’m the horrible example.”

  Safferstein grinned. “I always figured you were putting on an act.”

  “Oh, it’s no act,” said the doctor quickly.

  Safferstein held the door open for him. “Then you’re missing something, Al,” he said seriously. “I know since I joined, I got this feeling of certainty, like I can’t go wrong. I’ve made some long-shot deals, and they’ve all worked out.”

  The doctor chuckled again. “If you say so, Billy. If you say so.”

  It was Mrs. Kestler, Joe’s wife, who answered the doctor’s ring. She was blond and fleshy and faded and reminded him of the little girl who had sat next to him in the third grade. She had been pink and white, and plump and blond, and he always felt a little sad at the thought that she probably looked like Mrs. Kestler now. She was gentle and slow, and he assumed as a matter of course that she was bullied by her husband and imposed on by her father-in-law. When she had last had a checkup, she had asked him to do a Wassermann, too, because “Joe was out of town on business and you know how it is when men go out of town.”

  “He’s upstairs, Doctor,” she said. “Joe is with him.”

  “All right, I know the way.”

  The examination did not take long, and when Dr. Cohen was finished, he nodded the son out of the room. As they proceeded down the stairs, Joe Kestler said, “Gee, that was quick. You guys got it made.” He was a big powerful man with grizzled iron-gray hair covering a bullet-shaped head and with the flattened nose of a prizefighter.

  “Your father has a bacterial infection of the urinary tract,” the doctor said, professionally impersonal.

  “Sounds bad. What do you do? Can he take one of those wonder drugs like penicillin?”

  “Your father is allergic to penicillin, so I’m giving him one of the tetracyclines instead. It works the same way. He’s to take one four times a day. And he’s to take all of them, even if the infection clears up after a day or two. That’s important. I’d like him to get started on them right away.”

  “You got samples with you, Doc?”

  “Samples? No, I don’t carry drug samples around with me. I’ll write you a prescription.”

  “Where am I going to get a prescription filled this time of night? The drugstores are as bad as you guys. They all close early Wednesdays.”

  “I believe Town-Line Drugs is still open,” said the doctor stiffly.

  “I don’t go in there.”

  “You mean you don’t trade with them?”

  “That’s right. I wouldn’t set foot in there,” Kestler said doggedly.

  “But with your father sick—”

  Kestler shook his bullet head like a boxer clearing his brain of fog. “Makes no difference.”

  Dr. Cohen considered. “Maybe I’ve got some samples at home.” Another idea occurred to him. “What if I called in the prescription and they delivered it?”

  “So long as I don’t have to go in there. But look, Doc, why don’t you check first and see if you got the samples? I could follow you in my car.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’m going out a little later and I can drop them off here. If I don’t have the samples, I’ll call in the prescription.”

  “Okay, Doc, but first look and see if you’ve got the samples, will you?”

  There were half a dozen cars parked along the curb in front of Town-Line Drugs. Inside customers were milling around, impatiently waiting for someone to take their money and wrap up their purchases. It was the approaching storm, of course, that everyone was concerned about. They were buying flashlights and batteries; small first-aid kits and aspirin; cigarettes and candy. The supply of candles—the store carried a line of fancy dinner table candles—was all sold out.

  Marcus Aptaker was out front, the only one available to wait on trade, and he scurried from one part of the store to the other, smiling, courteous, brisk. Whenever he glanced to the back of the store, he was filled with a quiet joy, for he would catch sight of his son in a white tunic working at the prescription counter with Ross McLane. Earlier, a high school lad, Jimmie, had helped wait on trade, but he was out making deliveries now, the last of the evening, and would not be back.

  Bill Safferstein entered, glanced around, and strode purposefully toward the proprietor, who was momentarily free. “Look here, Aptaker, I want—”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Safferstein,” Aptaker said, gesturing to
the customers in the store. “Not now, you can see I’m busy. This is no time to talk.”

  “Oh, I didn’t come in about that. It’s my wife. She’s sick. Could I get this filled right away?”

  Aptaker glanced at the prescription. “It will take a few minutes.”

  “I don’t mind waiting.” He looked around. “I see you’ve put on another pharmacist.”

  “My son,” said Aptaker proudly, and hurried away as a customer called to him.

  Jackie had gone to bed with little fuss and had fallen asleep almost before his mother had tucked him in. Leah looked around the room, adjusted the window and put out the light. Then she washed and put away the supper dishes and went into the living room. There she consulted the television column of the morning paper, and although no program held much interest for her, she turned the set on anyway. There was a lot of static, and the picture wavered and became snowy. She tried each of the other channels with the same result and finally turned off the set in disgust.

  She picked up from the coffee table a book that she had been reading for the last several days, but she could not concentrate and found herself reading the same sentence over and over again. Realizing she was only looking at words, she closed the book and tossed it on the table.

  She walked around the room, straightening a picture, moving a chair. She noticed that the barometer on the mantelpiece was low. She tapped it, and the needle moved lower still. She went to the window to stare out at the road and the sea beyond. She was restless and wanting to be doing something and didn’t know what.

  If it were not for Jackie upstairs, she would not be bound to the house. She could get into her car and drive along the dark country roads until perhaps she came to a diner where she might stop for a cup of coffee. There would be a truck driver who was a college graduate, with a blue denim shirt open at the throat and a cap perched jauntily on the back of his head, who would bring his coffee cup to her booth…. Or she could take a walk along the shore in the darkness, barefooted, and the water would be warm and she would slip out of her clothes and go for a long swim. She turned over on her back to float and she heard the splash of another swimmer….

  Suddenly, the room became daylight bright as a jagged bolt of lightning struck the water. The lightning was followed immediately by a crash of thunder, and the house was plunged in darkness. And then the rain came pelting down. Leah ran to the window and saw that the street lights had also gone out. She went onto the porch and looked up and down the street. All the houses were dark, but here and there she saw a flicker of light from a window as people lit candles. She went back inside and felt her way to the kitchen, where she found a stump of a candle. By its light she tried to dial her parents’ home, but there was no dial tone, only a faint hum. Back in the living room, she dragged a hassock to the window and knelt on it with her arms resting on the sill, staring out at the raindrops bouncing off the road.

  Ross McLane took the call, since his station at the prescription counter was nearest the phone. Because he was hard of hearing, he normally tended to speak loudly, but when he got on the phone you could hear him all over the store. “Town-Line Drugs … Who? … Oh, hello, Doctor. What can I do for you?…. Just a minute. All right, shoot…. Yup…. Yup…. Kestler, yup. What’s the initial… J? Got it…. Minerva Road, forty-seven? … Uh-huh…. Okay…. Gee, I don’t think so. The boy who makes the deliveries is gone…. I don’t think so, but hold a minute and I’ll ask.” He cupped the receiver and called out, “Say, Marcus, it’s Dr. Cohen on the phone. He wants to know if we can make a delivery tonight? Forty-seven Minerva.”

  “Tell him, no.”

  Into the phone, McLane said, “Look, Doctor, I don’t see how we can. We’re awfully busy and we’ll be working late. We got a stack of prescriptions for the nursing home. There’s just no one here to …” He cupped the receiver again. “He says it’s very important, Marcus.”

  “Look, I’ll deliver it if you like,” Safferstein volunteered.

  “You know him?” Aptaker asked.

  “No, but if he needs it … and I live on Minerva. Forty-seven is on my way home.”

  “It’s coming down in buckets,” Dr. Cohen said, staring out of the window. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kaplans called it off. I mean with a hurricane—”

  “I got the news broadcast while you were out,” his wife told him. “They said the storm was going out to sea and we’re just getting the edge of it, a kind of backlash. They expect it’ll be over in an hour or so.”

  “Whether it’s the real thing or just the backlash, it’s pretty bad. I think I’ll pass up Kaplan’s meeting and stay home.”

  His wife was doubtful. “I don’t know, Dan, Al Muntz seemed to think it was important, from what you said.”

  “Well, what if they called it off? I’d feel like an awful fool coming there in this kind of storm and there’s no party.”

  “Wouldn’t they have phoned?”

  “Sure, but they may have called earlier, and we’ve been away all day.”

  “So why don’t you call them?”

  “Yeah, I guess I will.” He picked up the phone. “No dial tone,” he announced. He tried dialing anyway, but there was no answer. He jiggled the hook and then dialed the operator. He listened intently with the instrument pressed tight against his ear. Finally, he replaced it on its hook. “Out of order. Funny, it was all right a few minutes ago when I called the drugstore. Maybe that last lightning bolt hit a transformer, or the line may be down.”

  “I’ll tell you what you do, Dan. Drive over there. If the place is all lit up and there are a bunch of cars outside, you’ll know it’s all right and you’ll go in. If it’s dark, or just ordinary lit, and there are no cars, you’ll know it’s been called off and you’ll come home.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

  Safferstein carefully tucked the two small manila envelopes, each with its bottle of pills, into the pocket of his raincoat. It was raining now, so he put up his coat collar and dashed out to his car. No sooner had he set the car in motion when a lightning flash momentarily made everything bright as day. A crash of thunder followed immediately. And then the skies opened and the rain came pelting down in large drops that danced on the black asphalt road. A continuous sheet of water coursed down his windshield, and his wipers were powerless to clear the glass. The windshield began to steam up and he put on the defroster, but to no avail. He pulled up under a lamppost and shut off the motor. This can’t last long, he thought.

  “Well, that was quick,” Mrs. Cohen said as her husband opened the door and wriggled out of his coat. “The place was dark, huh?”

  “I didn’t get to it. There’s a tree lying across the road, right at the corner. I had to back up all the way to Baird Street to turn around.”

  “Oh, that big old elm? What a shame! Maybe you ought to call the police and tell them.”

  “And how am I going to call them? With smoke signals?”

  “What I’m trying to get is a consensus,” Chester Kaplan urged. “Now are we all agreed that it’s pointless for the temple to retain and operate the Goralsky property?”

  The response was general and immediate.

  “Oh, sure. Who wants to be bothered collecting rents?”

  “Or making repairs, or renting a vacant store.”

  “You can always get some real estate company to manage it for us,” Abner Fisher pointed out.

  “Yeah, and they take ten percent of the gross.”

  “Five percent,” Fisher corrected.

  “So five percent, and they don’t do a damn thing except collect rents. I know. I’m with you, Chet, that we should sell the property, but can we, according to the terms of Goralsky’s will?”

  “Believe me, it’s okay,” Kaplan said quickly. “The will reads—and I’m quoting it exactly—‘To the temple I bequeath the store block known as the Goralsky Block with the land thereunto adjoining.’ Then he goes on to give the boundaries and then he says—now ge
t this—‘… so that the temple may derive therefrom an annual income to help meet the ordinary expenses of operation, or for the purpose of erecting a building such as a religious school or a permanent residence for the incumbent rabbi, or for any similar purpose that will be to the interest and advantage of the temple.’ Now as far as I’m concerned, that last clause does it. We can use the property any way we want as long as it is to the interest and advantage of the temple. Right, Paul?”

  Paul Goodman, who was also a lawyer, nodded. “That’s the way I read it.”

  “And I’d say selling it and using the money to buy a place for a permanent retreat is definitely to the interest and advantage of the temple,” Kaplan pressed on. “And the time to sell is now, because we’ve got an offer that we won’t see again in a hurry.”

  “Well, what I want to know is why is Bill Safferstein offering such a high price for the property?” asked Abner Fisher, who frequently played devil’s advocate to the group.

  Kaplan turned toward the questioner, his face full of candor. “I don’t know, Abner. All I know is what I said to some of you already. I was telling Bill Safferstein about the last retreat. He wasn’t at that one, see? The monsignor came down and we got to talking and he said how the church was willing to sell the property. Now, the price he mentioned seemed to me like a steal. I told Bill that for a hundred grand we could buy it and fix it up. So he said, ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a hundred grand for the Goralsky property.’ I thought he was kidding, but he wrote out a check right then and there for a thousand dollars as an earnest against his offer to buy. Now that’s all I know. Maybe that’s his way of making a contribution to the temple.”

  “Cummon!” Abner Fisher was derisive. “Billy Safferstein is a nice guy, and generous, but paying that kind of money for a block of crappy stores, and with one of them vacant yet—”

  “I got a letter the other day from the drugstore asking for a renewal on his lease,” Kaplan interposed.