Big League Dreams (Small Worlds)

by Allen Hoffman

  “If the syndicate isn’t involved, then Matti’s was the only bet,” the rebbe said, turning to Matti for confirmation.

  “Yes, that’s right. There is no other bet. They don’t know anything about it,” Matti said.

  “Then why are they talking about you in Chicago?” Boruch Levi asked.

  “Because a man named Abe Levin met me in New York and tried to get me to fix a game, but I turned him down. Although I liked the idea, I didn’t need him. I suppose he’s in trouble and is trying to convince them that he is cooperating.”

  “It sounds suspicious,” Boruch Levi insisted.

  “I’m sure it does. In fact it is suspicious, but they don’t know anything about tomorrow’s game and wouldn’t have any reason to bet on it. Since you picked up the money, there’s no reason for anyone at all to bet.”

  “I didn’t pick up the money; Inspector Doheen did,” Boruch Levi stated.

  “All the more reason for no one to bet,” Matti said.

  “I hope so,” Boruch Levi replied, unconvinced.

  “That is all the chief said?” the rebbe asked.

  “They’re waiting for an answer. If we can’t stop this business right now, then they’ll have to enter the case in their official capacity. They said that that would be very embarrassing for everyone. The chief himself said that if cards, dice, and horses—” Boruch Levi began to repeat himself, but the rebbe cut him short.

  “When do you have to report to your friends?”

  “Whenever we finish. The chief lives across the street from me, and Inspector Doheen will wait for me there.”

  Boruch Levi wondered whether he had to mention that, since the rebbe seemed to know everything, but he didn’t want the rebbe to think that he had violated the Sabbath by driving or using a telephone.

  “Oh, one more thing. They said that they would provide any help that I might need,” Boruch Levi added as an afterthought.

  “Have you eaten yet?” the rebbe asked Boruch Levi.

  “No,” Boruch Levi answered, thinking that was a ridiculous question, “but I’m not hungry.”

  “The first Sabbath feast commemorates the first Sabbath, when the world was created; it must not be delayed. Reb Mattus, have you sanctified the Sabbath and partaken of the first feast?”

  “Yes, thank you, I have,” Matti said.

  “Good, that’s most important. That’s where we start,” the rebbe said. “Reb Boruch Levi, please tell the rebbetzin that you have not eaten. You must concentrate on all the blessings to effect the divine unions.”

  Boruch Levi stood up to execute his rebbe’s command, but he did so with a troubled heart; the rebbe didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation.

  “The Detroit Tigers had better lose tomorrow,” he exclaimed.

  The rebbe looked at him with his absurd wide eyes.

  “That’s the opposing team that Matti bet on. They’re from Detroit.”

  “Tigers?” the rebbe asked, as if he had heard of them somewhere.

  “Yes, teams have nicknames. St. Louis has the Browns and the Cardinals. Chicago has the White Sox and the Cubs. Detroit has the Tigers, the big striped cats.”

  “Yes, I know,” the rebbe said.

  “Oh,” Boruch Levi replied. He was beyond embarrassment. How was he to know what the rebbe did and didn’t know?

  The rebbe stood up. “Thank you, Reb Boruch Levi,” he said, pointing toward the kitchen.

  After Boruch Levi had left, the rebbe carefully closed the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WHEN YAAKOV MOSHE FINEBAUM, THE KRIMSKER REBBE, said that Matti’s attempt to fix tomorrow’s game was good, he meant it, for he was certain that Boruch Levi had brought him the American Moses. It was all so perfectly obvious, and yet who would have guessed? Certainly not even the rebbe, and he should have. Pharaoh’s daughter had plucked Moses from the River Nile and raised him as her son in her father’s royal palace. Who could have led the Jews out of Egypt? Not an intimidated, scourged slave but a proud free prince. Moses could contend with pharaoh because Moses knew the enemy as he knew himself; for indeed he himself had been the enemy as a member of the pharaonic house.

  In America, however, the people were sovereign. Although the rebbe harbored high hopes for vice president Silent Cal Coolidge, the presidency just did not possess majesty. In America the people ruled; their royal court was the ballpark, and their princes were the players. Matti Sternweiss of lowly Krimsk birth had forsaken his people and had been raised in the populist pharaoh’s palace, behind home plate, calling the signals in republican majesty.

  “Come join me on the couch,” the rebbe said to the majestic republican leader who could contend with the unholy adversary as an equal.

  The small, shaded desk lamp threw a meager pool of light that barely reached their feet. Seated in the enshrouding shadow, Matti couldn’t see the rebbe any more distinctly now than he had from the table, but nevertheless, Matti joined him. He had an inclination to reach out and place his hand on the rebbe’s knee, physically demonstrating their bond.

  “Why is it good, Rebbe, that I tried to fix the game?”

  “Because it is only from the depths that we reach the heights.”

  “What are the heights?” Matti asked sadly, as if he wanted to believe but simply could not delude himself.

  “Once you extricate yourself from the depths, you will be there,” the rebbe said, almost cheerfully.

  Matti felt that the rebbe had no idea who his uninvited guest really was.

  “I didn’t do it just for the money. I did it because of a woman.”

  “Sexual passion has great power; it always tempted our leaders. Here they worship plain money. Paper, not even real gold.”

  “Rebbe, she isn’t Jewish,” Matti protested.

  “In Egypt, Joseph the Righteous was tempted by Potiphar’s wife. He managed to escape, and so will you, Reb Mattus.”

  “I met her in the hospital when my father was dying,” Matti whispered, humiliating himself. Boruch Levi had known the location of his true shame.

  “Only after Joseph’s death did the children of Israel descend into slavery’s degradation. Of course, in America things move much more quickly. Here Joseph doesn’t have to die before Moses appears. It’s about time progress was applied to the spiritual realm.”

  Matti recoiled ever so slightly from the rebbe. None of his confessions disappointed the holy man; rather, he welcomed them almost as if they fulfilled specific prophetic criteria. Could the rebbe be suggesting that he, Matti, was the redeemer? Matti was flattered by the idea. Who wouldn’t be? And it put his less than noble behavior in a good light. He felt great affection and appreciation for someone who, however mistakenly, could think so highly of him. Out of respect, he wanted to protect the rebbe from the dangers of such illusions.

  “Baseball is such a silly game,” Matti said.

  “What did you expect from impurity?” the rebbe asked rhetorically.

  Matti, however, treated the question seriously and carefully weighed his answer.

  “Well, I expected ... majesty, I suppose,” he admitted, surprised by his own answer.

  “That’s exactly what it is. Was pharaoh any different?”

  Matti thought the Egyptian business was mad, but he was fascinated by the neat logic of the metaphor. Baseball was silly because impure majesty must perforce have no real value. Baseball certainly was king in America. That’s what had attracted Matti. Penny Pinkham, too. Insofar as she was attracted to him, it was because he wore the royal purple—or in this case, brown—robes of the American League St. Louis Browns. That was all very true—as far as it went.

  “I think, though, you’re making a mistake, rebbe,” Matti said quietly.

  “About what?”

  “About me.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m a baseball-playing bum.”

  “What did you expect?”

  Matti understood; the rebbe meant that an immor
al action must degrade the actor.

  “Perhaps I was drawn to such impurity because of the impurity within me,” Matti suggested.

  “No doubt you were.”

  “Then I think you have the wrong man.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “An Arabian king far from Egypt who had heard of Moses’ greatness wanted to see exactly what the great man looked like, so he commissioned an artist and sent him to paint a portrait. When the artist returned with the picture, the king called his ministers and advisers. The experts in physiognomy looked at it and said that this was the portrait of a mean, vile, base individual. They suggested that the artist must have painted a portrait of the wrong man. The artist, however, insisted that he had faithfully executed his charge and that the experts were mistaken. Deciding to find out for himself, the king traveled to see Moses; he discovered that the artist had perfectly portrayed the face of Moses and concluded that his experts were of little value. When he told Moses the story, the great leader informed him that both the artist and the experts were correct. Moses confessed that indeed he possessed all the baseness that the experts had perceived in him, but that through willpower he had overcome his natural villainy and attained great virtue. He added that had he been born naturally good, then he would have had no more merit than a block of wood.”

  The story was appropriately inspirational, but it only depressed Matti further. In fact, the more he protested, the more convincingly the rebbe argued. Matti retained his doubts about the rebbe’s ability to work miracles, but he had no doubt as to his intellectual abilities. As for Moses, it was all too fantastic.

  “I can assure the rebbe that I will do my best tomorrow against the Detroit Tigers. Since no one but Barasch and myself knew anything of our conspiracy, I can’t imagine that anyone else will bet heavily on the game.”

  “You don’t accept what I am saying,” the rebbe declared with a directness that made Matti squirm.

  “I appreciate the Rebbe’s confidence that I can and will become a better person,” Matti said rather weakly.

  “Why don’t you accept what I am saying?” the rebbe persisted.

  “Well, I’m just not Moses. For one thing, baseball isn’t pharaoh.”

  “But you yourself said it was majesty,” the rebbe reminded him.

  Yes, Matti himself had said that. “But surely there are differences?”

  “Such as?”

  “For one thing, Moses received his charge from God through the burning bush.”

  Although Matti stated this definitively—after all, he had seen no bushes that burned without being consumed—the more he argued, the more he seemed to be admitting the possible validity of the rebbe’s premise. And when Matti mentioned burning and consuming, Lieutenant Max Miller’s flaming airplane came to mind. That, too, made Matti uncomfortable. For the first time in their interview, the rebbe had no ready response. Encouraged by the silence, Matti pressed his case.

  “How can one possibly compare pharaonic Egypt with today’s America? There are too many differences. I’m not Moses.”

  “The times and the places are different. You cannot be Moses, but that might not work against you.”

  “What can the Rebbe possibly mean by that?”

  “You are right. You saw no burning bush, and God didn’t speak to you. We are no longer in the age of miracles, and we are forbidden to rely upon them. God conversed with Moses before the Torah was given at Sinai. Now that we have been given the Torah, God talks to any man of Israel every second if we choose to examine his words. You, however, are more fortunate than Moses in one respect. God asked Moses to perform strange, innovative acts that Moses never dreamed himself capable of, but you, Matti, have already done once that which you must do again.”

  “I have?”

  Matti had an excellent memory, but he didn’t know where to begin searching it for some redemptive, Mosaic act.

  “Yes, Matti, you must do it again,” the Krimsker Rebbe persisted.

  Matti struggled to recall this significant act that totally eluded him. Someone could put a gun to his head, but he wouldn’t be able to provide a hint to the answer. The rebbe had been amazing him all night, but what really disturbed Matti was the violation of his usually successful precept that what he didn’t know could hurt him. He strived to calm himself—that, too, had been another virtue—but he hadn’t the faintest notion what past action could be relevant to his present situation. His heart beating wildly and his eyes blinking, Matti felt like a frog about to be impaled by a boy with a pointed stick.

  “Do what?” Matti beseeched.

  The rebbe turned toward him, took Matti’s hands in his own, and brought his face so close that even in the dark shadows Matti could see the rebbe’s eyes glowing with a fierce determination that seemed to originate deep within his holy being.

  “Burn the cats!” the rebbe commanded.

  Matti closed his eyes in fright and tried to withdraw his hands, but the rebbe’s grip grew firmer as he rasped in hoarse fervor, “Burn the cats!”

  The rebbe released him, but Matti did not open his eyes. He saw himself again as a boy in Krimsk, leaving Grannie Zara’s burning cabin, where Zloty and the other cats were screeching as flames announced their fiery doom. At his side was Beryl Soffer’s wife, the mad Faigie Soffer, accusing him of being a witch and wanting to put her hand into his pocket. And the craziness about the magic frog; that was involved, too. He could smell the pungent, fragrant smoke that hung in the hot, still air like suffocating drapes. Had he touched his pants now on the rebbe’s couch, he would not have been surprised to find them once again soaked with urine. The furious cries of the witch’s imprisoned cats had risen above the crackling, fatal flames as Matti and Faigie fled into the darkness.

  When Matti opened his eyes—how long had they been closed?—he found the rebbe calmly sitting back as if he were asleep.

  “Burn the cats,” Matti murmured. “Grannie Zara.”

  “Yes, you have done it before. In Krimsk, when you were a child, you destroyed the instruments of evil and evil itself. You overwhelmed unalloyed impurity on Tisha B’Av, the very day when impurity rages in the world. Burn the cats. Then Grannie Zara’s Zloty and friends, and now Detroit’s Tigers. You have done it before, and you can do it again.”

  “Faigie Soffer thought I was a Jewish witch.”

  “Yes, she understood part of what was happening. From her point of view, she was right. Immersed in magic and superstition, she could not distinguish between purity and impurity. Similarly, pharaoh tried to imitate Moses’ miraculous acts in order to reduce Moses to a mere sorcerer like himself. But pharaoh failed even when he thought he succeeded, for when Moses turned the River Nile into blood, he affirmed the heavenly host, whereas pharaoh’s feat denied the divine agencies.”

  Matti grasped the rebbe’s last point, but even in his confused state—he felt as if he had been uprooted—he was curious as to what the rebbe would make of the fact that Faigie had tried to seduce him. He dared not ask.

  “When she tried to reach into your pocket to retrieve the magic frog, you abused her—” the rebbe began.

  “But, Rebbe, I thought she—”

  “Again, she was partially right,” the rebbe said.

  Matti tried to puzzle out what the rebbe meant, but again he was at a loss. “She was?”

  “Well, she was not altogether wrong, just somewhat premature in her search. After all, if the photographs are correct, when you play baseball you squat down like a frog behind home plate with that rounded cage on your face and the large glove on your hand.”

  Short, stubby Matti could never have been a graceful gazelle in the outfield or a quick, sure-clawed cat in the infield. He had certainly noticed that there was something inherently awkward and froglike about catching; indeed, he was thankful for it. How else could he have succeeded in professional baseball? Some of his teammates even occasionally called him “Toad.” According to
the rebbe, Faigie was right: there had been a frog in his pants—him.

  “Is there anything you would like to ask me?”

  Matti’s first reaction was to shake his head. He had heard more than he had ever expected to hear. What could he possibly ask? Krimsk had certainly fallen out of the sky all over him—frog, Zloty, Grannie Zara, and all!

  “Rebbe?” Matti asked quietly. “I think I had an omen. Is the Rebbe familiar with the name Lieutenant Max Miller?”

  “The postal aviator who crashed and died in New Jersey?”

  “Yes.” Matti felt no joy at the rebbe’s omniscience. Had the rebbe named all of Penny Pinkham’s childhood friends, Matti would not have been surprised.

  “Did you know him?” the rebbe asked.

  “No, I just read about him. There was nothing for the farmers to do except walk around in the field collecting the letters.”

  When the rebbe didn’t respond, Matti turned to him.

  “So?” asked the rebbe.

  “So? It’s such a tragic waste!”

  “He wanted to deliver the mail by air, and he did. The mail went through, all of it.”

  “Does the rebbe think he died happy?”

  “He fulfilled his mission.”

  Matti sat considering the strange idea that Lieutenant Max Miller had died fulfilled. “I don’t think he was very happy.”

  “Do you think that he would have traded the life he had lived for another?”

  “No, I suppose not.” Matti reflected. “The newspapers said that many of the letters he saved were sent from Europe to people in the Midwest. I thought one might be from someone in Krimsk to me.”

  Matti spoke in a subdued, half-joking tone, but the rebbe answered in absolute seriousness.

  “Now you know,” he said.

  “I do?” Matti asked.

  “God has many messengers. Lieutenant Max Miller chose to be among them. You were right.”

  “I see,” said Matti, “but how did you know about the plane crash?”

  “I read the newspapers when I’m not on the reservation. But enough of this; now I want you to make a blessing with Boruch Levi.”