As the widow ranted on about the spirits, Rabbi Joachim emerged from his meditative moment and reluctantly sat down on a silk butterfly chair that was too small for him. Just then a maid entered with three tea cups and a basket of croissants on a lacquered tray.
“Is this Kosher?” the rabbi asked. He reached into the basket and held up a croissant to inspect.
The maid patted the corners of her apron and stared at him.
“What?” shrieked the rabbi’s visibly jolted patroness.
“I asked if this pastry is Kosher.”
“Well, uh,” Mrs. Wolstein stuttered, eyeing the smirking maid. “But of course, dear Rabbi Joachim, of course it’s Kosher.”
“Are you sure it isn’t baked with lard?”
The maid shuffled her weight from one leg to the next.
“Stop that fidgeting, Mary,” Mrs. Wolstein snapped. “Why, no, it’s pure butter, I think….” She trailed off.
Sharon tried looking away, but Mrs. Wolstein had caught her eye and gave her another frigid smile.
“Butter, that’s all right if it’s not combined with meat. Do any of these pastries contain meat?”
The maid shook her head.
“Okay, then, which way is the bathroom?” asked the rabbi, getting up to wash his hands.
Mrs. Wolstein had the maid show him to the front hall bathroom.
Sharon was wondering why people were always calling toilets ‘bathrooms,’ ‘lavatories,’ ‘rest rooms,’ and ‘powder rooms’ instead of just plain ‘toilets’ when Mrs. Wolstein, taking advantage of the rabbi’s absence, turned to her and pleaded, “What shall I do, Mrs. Berg? I certainly don’t know whether these croissants are Kosher or not.”
Shrugging her shoulders, Sharon returned the widow’s frigid smile.
“Oh!” On the verge of tears, Mrs. Wolstein slapped at the sofa under which, Sharon presumed, the starving Persian cats were lurking. “Mary! What are you standing there for, go get the tea!” the widow screamed, causing the maid to flee to the kitchen.
Rabbi Joachim returned, and was about to take a bite out of his croissant when the room was suddenly filled with the muffled sound of an explosion and the smell of burning rubber. The maid bolted into the living room, wringing her hands.
“The teapot’s burst—the water boiled out and the teapot’s burst. Even the Pyrex, madam, and there’s melted plastic everywhere!”
“So it’s not Kosher, just as I expected,” Rabbi Joachim announced jubilantly, and tossed the croissant back on the plate. “That was the sign. What made you think you could get away with such a lie?”
“But, Rabbi,” Mrs. Wolstein pleaded to no effect, for Rabbi Joachim had put his hat on over his yarmulke and was already beckoning Sharon to follow him to the front door.
“You can eat what you like, Mrs. Wolstein, but you should know better than to serve non-Kosher cakes to an Orthodox rabbi,” he admonished the desperate woman, who was now clinging to his coat sleeve.
“Wait, don’t go! Please! I’ll send out for some Kosher food,” the widow cried, blocking his exit. Rabbi Joachim did not move; religious conviction prohibited him from prying her fingers from his person.
Mrs. Wolstein then opted for a more dignified approach to her situation. In a milk-curdling voice, she said, “Very well, my dear Rabbi Joachim, about that ten-thousand-dollar pledge of mine—you can just forget it.” Loosening her grip on his sleeve, she shook her wrists and jangled her bracelets for emphasis.
“Suit yourself,” said Rabbi Joachim, stepping out into the street with Sharon following close behind him. “We don’t need bribes, thank you.”
“Goodbye, and don’t bother calling me if you change your mind and decide to apologize tomorrow,” Mrs. Wolstein screamed. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re finished!” She walked back into the house, slamming the door behind her.
The widow stood by her promise, for the money, due to be transferred into the Center’s account that very week, never arrived. But that wasn’t all. Vowing to destroy him, she would use her insider’s knowledge of the proposed “clover cure,” and her powerful social and political connections, in honing her revenge against the Rabbi.
FOUR
HENRY NOVALIS, A CITY COLLEGE ENGINEERING graduate student and recent Hare Krishna defector to the Center for Mystical Judaism, had introduced Rabbi Joachim to Seymour Priceman, the Center’s publisher and distributor. While complaining to anyone who would listen of declining sales, the cost of keeping up with the new technologies, and threatening to close his bookstore for good, Seymour had managed nevertheless to expand what had once been his father’s hole-in-the-wall “magic shop” into a two-storey gold mine of the occult. From his profits, he’d contracted with a Varick Street printer to publish out-of-print theosophical books, a “sideline” that had caught on so well as to bypass his enormously successful bookstore trade. It did not take long before several big uptown publishers were offering to buy him out, yet despite his eighty-hour week and increasingly troublesome varicose veins, Seymour refused to sell.
Professing never to have read even one of the thousands of books lining the store’s shelves, Seymour enjoyed putting off newcomers with his apparent indifference to anything but hard cash. And to the casual browser, he certainly must have appeared out of place among the ornate Indian incense trays, Tibetan mandalas, and Chinese acupuncture posters cramming his bookstore. But among his intimates, Seymour Priceman was known as a true believer, ready to extend a helping hand to the yogis, astrologers, water-diviners, vegans, and witches who’d cultivated his friendship over the years.
In addition to his father’s magic shop, Seymour had also inherited the old man’s mild-mannered disposition. Nothing seemed to rattle him, not even the ill-tempered crew who worked for, and in the case of his relatives, against him, or Wanda, the sweet but absent-minded medium who erratically maintained his correspondence. In the course of a year, Sharon had gotten to know them all, the ubiquitous Priceman nephews, the sons and daughters-in-law—the whole sullen lot of them. And as she’d gotten to know them better, they began confiding in her their schemes for building condominiums in Las Vegas, their worries over the increasing not-so-petty thefts of expensive first editions, and their frustrations over Seymour’s maddening nonchalance in the face of those thefts. She had been insulted only once, by her least favorite Priceman relative, Seymour’s bald uncle, Morris, who had called Rabbi Joachim a “con artist” and Sharon “the rabbi’s bimbo” to her face. But that hadn’t stopped her from loving the store with its thousands of tightly crammed volumes on shelves circled by steel tracks and mobile ladders, sale tables overflowing with a mixture of dusty treasure and junk, and best of all, the disembodied mannequin hand with beringed fingers pointing to way to the Occult Specialty and Personal Service Department downstairs. There, in a cavernous basement dominated by an ancient green sofa flanked by equally ancient chrome tables, she would poke around in the books, walking among the Haitian priestesses, turbaned Indian yogis, and garishly rouged psychics who frequented the place while Rabbi Joachim privately “talked business” with his publisher.
Late in the afternoon on the day of their Palisades adventure, as the rabbi sat in Seymour’s office describing the long-range benefits of clover on the ills of mankind, Sharon came across an earlier edition of Mrs. Wolstein’s book on wildflowers among a pile of discards in the Occult Specialty and Personal Service Department. Its cover was shredded and its title page had been marked by a shoe heel. Wondering if there were some significant connection between the unfortunate day at the widow’s townhouse and her coming upon the same book now, Sharon turned to the index, found the entry on “Clover,” and sat down to read.
Rabbit-foot, Old Field, or Stone Clover Trifolium arvense Linnaeus. An erect, usually much-branched annual, 5 to 18 inches high, silky-pubescent. Leaves very short petioled, three-foliate, oblanceolate or linear, minutely toothed, blunt and sometimes notched at the apex, narrowed at the base, one-half to 1 inch long. Flowe
rs sessile in dense, terminal peduncled, oblong or cylindric heads, one-half to 1 inch long; calyx very silky; corolla whitish, shorter than the elongated, slender, plumose calyx lobes. Fruiting pod very small.
In waste places, dry and sandy fields, roadsides, etc. Quebec and Ontario to South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Missouri. Naturalized from Europe. Flowering from May to September…
There seemed to be nothing special about the plant, and there was no mention at all of its curative properties. The author evidently had felt that clover didn’t even warrant a photograph. Sharon turned the page and immersed herself in the entry on foxgloves, which included a glossy color plate. How nakedly sexual, these plants, she thought. Here was one that resembled a man’s penis, and there, another, a violet-colored flower with the soft, undulating mound of a woman’s vulva—
Someone was motioning to her.
It was one of the new clerks, an angry, stringy-haired girl wearing thick glasses. “Please put that book down,” she said in a sharp, nasal voice. “That group is not for sale.”
A gnome-sized man who had been reading avidly at Sharon’s side commiserated with her in a whisper. “They’re tough here, aren’t they?” He winked, giving her a buck-toothed grin. “I’d go somewhere else, but they got the best selection in the city.”
Sharon smiled and nodded politely. Not wanting to open a conversation with the man while at the same trying to avoid the familiar sneer of Seymour’s Uncle Morris, she sat down on the sofa and was rescued by the white-haired medium’s offer of a cup of coffee.
Seeing Rabbi Joachim emerge from the glass-enclosed office with Seymour behind him, Sharon knew immediately that it had been a hard battle, but that the rabbi had managed to enlist his backing on the clover project. Seymour’s surly Uncle Morris had also been watching. Seeing the triumphant look on his enemy’s face, he slunk away to eavesdrop on the two men from behind the bookshelves.
“One more stop, Mrs. Berg, then I’ll drive you home,” Rabbi Joachim said, hurrying her up the stairs. Reaching the top step, he turned and called over his shoulder to Seymour, “I’ll talk to you more about the trip over the telephone, Priceman. And remember, your full participation, no matter what happens!
Minutes later, Sharon found herself on the Bowery, waiting in the car in front of a basement herbalist’s shop while the rabbi deliberated with the owner among barrels of Korean ginseng root. Judging from his determined stride as he emerged from the shop, she knew he’d been unsuccessful at getting the herbalist’s endorsement for the clover cure but remained undaunted. It wasn’t until ten o’clock that night when, after driving around the city for hours, Rabbi Joachim finally located an herbalist working out of an apartment near the Bronx Zoo who was willing to work with him on the clover project.
When he pulled up in front of Sharon’s house at eleven-thirty, the rabbi did not get out of the car to open the door for her. Nor, after pushing up his hat and revealing the furrow mark on his forehead—a mark as startling as a flower stalk, as distinctive as a clover leaf, which, as the book had told her, grew only in barren wasted places—did Rabbi Joachim wish her good night. He simply leaned out the window and called to her as an afterthought, “By the way, Mrs. Berg, I’ll be leaving for about three weeks—to Israel and then on to London. There’s some research I must do myself—some basic groundwork to cover before we start to try this thing out. Take care of the office while I’m gone, will you? Come to think of it, you don’t have to go in every day. Rabbi Tayson’s Zohar classes don’t start again until September. Turn on the answering machine. At the latest, I should be back by the end of August. I’ll call you.”
Dazed by the rabbi’s sudden, offhanded announcement of his departure, Sharon stumbled toward the house. Halfway up the walk to the porch, she heard him add, “Take some time off for yourself. You could use the rest.” Then he drove away, turning the corner at top speed with the tires screeching.
Now her head was throbbing as she felt the first tentacles of a migraine coming on. By the time she got to the door, she could barely see well enough to get her key in the lock. Once inside, on the foyer table, she found a partly effaced note on her daughter’s Magic Slate board.
There are some chicken breasts in the fridge when, and if, you get home tonight. You had two phone calls—one from Barney the pig, and the other from Rabbi Tayson. He doesn’t want Paulie in the day camp anymore, and he wants to see you about the fall term. Phyllis had a temperature today—100—so I didn’t let her go into the pool. Her nose is running also, I thought you might like to know. Don’t wake me when you go to bed tonight, my day was hell.
—Pinnie
P.S. The mailman brought this letter to the door today. He says it got to the wrong address first. I gave him a dollar tip.
Sharon was now so nauseated she could barely tolerate the lingering smell of the fried chicken breasts Pinnie had prepared for her, no less eat them. Still reeling from the Rabbi’s casual brushoff, and too distracted to fully absorb her mother’s bad news, she would have to delay dealing with the children’s problems until she’d recovered sufficiently herself. And not only from the migraine. It would be a long, painful night. She turned up the fringed table cover she’d tried sewing to calm her nerves during her dragged-out divorce proceedings. It was full of holes and looked more like a rag than a table cover. A blot of clay had been rubbed indelibly into center of the cloth. The letter she found underneath it invited her to bring her grievance against one Jorge Diaz of 171 East 118th Street, New York, NY to Room 104B of the Criminal Courts Building on Centre Street that Friday.
FIVE
WHAT DID SHARON KNOW OF COURTROOMS ? One divorce and a reading of her father’s will comprised her entire contact with the law. On the subway, between the Nevins Street and Borough Hall stops, she thought of getting off the train and skipping court. Nobody would miss her, there were a thousand Jorge Diaz cases being dismissed due to “no-show” complainants today. Hadn’t the arresting policeman told her that himself? What would one less matter? But now it was too late; the train had already pulled into the Chambers Street station. As usual, her indecisiveness had cost her. Something apart from all her doubts and reasons for turning back had urged her on—a bracketed bit of curiosity, a wish to see whether any of the characters in her Coney Island drama would in fact appear. Would Jorge Diaz, for instance, be wearing his beanie? Had Officer Edward Pols been transferred to another precinct for accepting bribes from the numbers men along his beat? Was the girlfriend of her rescuer, Junior Cantana, delivering a baby on this very Friday? Did Junior Cantana even have a girlfriend? She didn’t remember his saying anything about a girlfriend or a wife when presenting himself as a witness to the attempted robbery. What if she were the only one to show up? In that case, she would have to salvage the day somehow, maybe take the subway uptown to the New York Public Library’s Forty-Second Street branch and gather lists of ancient references to herbal cures in preparation for Rabbi Joachim’s return.
Outside the open door of the courtroom a knot of policemen, caps in hand, had gathered around a drinking fountain in the niche of a wall, where an unbroken flow of water dribbled halfway up before turning back again into the drain. Every so often one of them would bend over and slurp up a mouthful of water before rejoining his comrades. They were an uncongenial crew, patting the guns in their open holsters and fanning themselves with their caps. One was pockmarked and another had the same narrow mean eyes of the defendant she expected to face in the courtroom. Not one of them moved aside to let her through.
Room 104B was air-conditioned, but insufficiently, and in the only open seat in the last row, which Sharon immediately took, it was stifling. The benches were crowded with overheated human flesh, much of it unwashed. The judge had not yet arrived. Various clerks and nervous young assistant D.A.s were flitting back and forth like moths in front of the empty bench; the court stenographer was already stationed at her post; and the security guards were standing at attention in their sweat-stained s
hirts. One of them, an elderly man with a bulbous red nose, stood meditating on a predetermined spot on the wall. Something in his manner, the way he’d cut himself off from the mundane proceedings around him, made Sharon think of Rabbi Joachim. But of course the comparison was ridiculous; the two men had nothing in common at all. The guard wasn’t meditating, he was probably trying to fend off a hangover from last night’s drinking binge. As for Rabbi Joachim, what, except for the story about his Kabbalist uncle, did she really know of his life beyond the office? Nothing. All she could say for certain was that on the very Friday she was seated on a bench in Room 104B between a black woman in a platinum blond wig wearing the tiniest, tightest pair of orange shorts, and a pink-faced young man with a sleeping baby in his lap, Rabbi Joachim, was aloft, on his way to his wife in Israel. Her next thought brought the blood rushing to her face: the Orthodox Jewish injunction commanding a man to lie with his wife on the evening of his return from a journey.
Rabbi Joachim’s absence gnawed like a rat at her heart.
Taking a tissue from her purse, Sharon dabbed at the beads of perspiration that had gathered above her lip then fanned her face, giving it up when the effort only made her hotter. Several people around her were talking to each other in Spanish. A snaggle-toothed woman in a red satin blouse with a gold crucifix dangling over her immense protruding bosom seemed to be complaining bitterly. Sharon wondered if the woman was related to Jorge Diaz. Could it be his mother? His sister? His girlfriend? How many Diazes were surrounding her, flashing their crucifixes on exposed bosoms? Overwhelmed by the heat of her neighbors’ bodies, Sharon felt herself on the verge of another migraine.
The Kabbalah Master Page 4