I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. – Frank Herbert, Dune
The Ukraine Peninsula
Winter 1896
The Vishnovet Shtetel in the Pale
Fifteen-year-old Sirota stood alone in the center of the circle of villagers. He was covered in blood. He still clutched the kinjal - the short Cossack dagger in his hand. The village’s feared enemy lay dead at his feet, throat slashed from ear to ear. Sirota stared silently at the villagers as he thrust the bloody dagger into the rope belt at his waist.
The inhabitants of the shtetel were familiar with the deadly, double-edged dagger in Sirota’s hand. The Cossacks used the kinjal to kill dangerous enemies and defenseless Jews. But today the villagers had seen a fifteen-year-old boy wield the Devil’s sword with an inhuman fury and fearlessness that frightened them.
Hesitantly, more timid villagers emerged from their huts and the circle around the boy grew larger. The people of the shtetel had never completely understood the one they called Sirota. They had found him when he was two years old in the smoldering remains of a neighboring shtetel thirteen years ago. The Cossacks had left no one else alive in the village. The suspicious Vishnovet peasants didn’t know if the only survivor of the massacre was God’s blessing or the Devil’s curse, but they could not leave him there to die. They took the infant to Vishnovet where he lived among them but was never really one of them. Even the name they gave him made him different. He was called Sirota, Russian for orphan. They could have called him Yosell, the more familiar Yiddish word for orphan but they chose to identify him as an outsider. When he reached the age of reason Sirota knew he was unwanted. He was not shunned but neither was he included. The other children feared him after watching him beat a much larger boy unconscious in a fight over food. Sirota was never loved and he did not know how to love. As soon as he was able to fend for himself he built a hut of his own away from the others. He did his share of the work but shared nothing else. Everyone knew that Sirota would leave Vishnovet one day. It was not his home. It was a place where he survived.
Now that he had saved the villagers by killing a deadly enemy Sirota felt his debt to them had been paid and it was time for him to go. He had stayed long enough in a world where he did not belong.
Rabbi Kaminsky, holding the hand of his terrified twelve-year-old daughter, stepped inside the circle of villagers. Sirota glanced at the girl, who stared at him with large, brown eyes. They exchanged small smiles.
Sirota nodded to the villagers in a gesture of thanks for saving his life so many years ago. Some of the people returned his nod. Most did not. Still drenched in blood, Sirota covered himself in a heavy animal skin and walked alone toward the road that led to the frozen Ukraine wilderness. As he neared the forest he heard the rabbi’s daughter weeping. She wailed, “Don’t go, Sirota. Please don’t go. Who will save us now?” No one answered.
In the last month of the last year of the nineteenth century, after many weeks of a desperate journey across the continent, Sirota departed from the port of Hamburg as a steerage passenger on a ship bound for Boston. He wore a dead man’s clothes.
In 1903, deadly pogroms, incited by Czar Alexander the Third, descended on the Pale. No sensible reason was ever given for the carnage that turned the shtetels of the Ukraine into what became known as Cities of Slaughter. Jews of the Pale were either conscripted into the Russian army, murdered in cold blood, or forced to run for their lives.
The Russian Ghetto
Dorchester, Massachusetts
Winter 1900
Elijah Fleischman, a sixty-year-old butcher, discovered Sirota’s half-dead body lying face down in the snow behind his tiny butcher shop. Elijah immediately brought the boy into the warmth of his shop and ultimately into the warmth of his heart.
Elijah had immigrated to America from Russia many years before. The journey that nearly took his life had devastated his soul. He trusted no one. He loved no one. For many years he chose to live alone. Eventually, Elijah’s heart thawed, but by the time he was ready to rejoin the human race, it was too late for him to start a family of his own. So he lived a lonely, loveless existence in a ghetto of fellow immigrants, until the day this boy mysteriously appeared in his life.
Elijah never questioned the sullen Russian boy about the wrinkled, bloodstained immigration papers that identified him as Hans Perlmutter from Germany. Elijah simply accepted that one lost soul from Russia had made it to the new world, while one poor soul from Germany had been left behind.
When the boy and the old man had lived together for two years a bond of trust developed between them. Their trust slowly grew into the loving bond of father and son. Elijah taught Hans the hybrid language of the ghetto - a combination of Russian, Yiddish, and broken English, but the quiet young man rarely spoke to anyone. He kept to himself, even after he had lived among them for two years, and no one in the ghetto could claim to know him well. Then one day Hans Perlmutter stepped out of the shadows and ended his silence.
Victor Dragoff was a monster of a man who had extorted money from the merchants of his shtetel in the Pale for many years. After immigrating like so many other Russian Jews, Dragoff renewed his reign of terror in Dorchester. He always carried a large club with him, which he used to crack the skull of anyone refusing to pay. Hans had watched Elijah pay Dragoff his “protection money” every Friday for two years. Then one Friday afternoon when the store was busy with Sabbath shoppers, Hans stepped between Victor and Elijah as the money was about to change hands, saying, “No more” with his eyes.
Dragoff, growling like an animal, raised his club above his head. Everyone in the shop cringed except Hans Perlmutter. The small young man withdrew the foot-long double-edge dagger from its sheath beneath his apron and drove the weapon into the bully’s inner thigh by the groin. As a butcher, Perlmutter knew he was cutting into a non-vital but extremely painful area. Dragoff grunted and stared down in disbelief at the blood seeping through his filthy pants. The club toppled from high above Dragoff’s head, crashing to the floor behind him. He clutched at the wound with both hands, leaned forward, and vomited. His head was now within striking distance, and with one violent slash of the blade Sirota severed Dragoff’s right ear. A woman screamed. Dragoff collapsed to his knees, moving one hand to his ear and the other to his bleeding groin. He screamed in pain. Everyone in the shop averted their eyes from the bloody scene. Hans moved quickly behind Dragoff, grabbed a handful of his long, straggly hair, and pulled his head back. The kinjal was at Dragoff’s throat. In a raspy whisper, Hans Perlmutter hissed, “If I see you again after today, I will kill you. Do you understand?”
Dragoff nodded in terror.
“Go!” Hans ordered.
Victor Dragoff struggled to his feet and stumbled from the store. He was never seen in the ghetto again.
The store closed for the Sabbath, but on Sunday it was filled with the curious and the grateful. Elijah basked in the attention. Hans was uncomfortable but polite. Some in the ghetto were concerned that a new monster had simply replaced the old monster, but the young man quickly calmed their fears with his gentle manner. At the end of the day when the store was empty, the bell above the door rang once again. A young woman entered. She was short and sturdy with a plain, serious face. She walked directly to the counter and looked intently at Hans. She studied his face. Elijah watched the woman curiously, but Hans did not look up from his work.
“Sirota,” she finally said to Hans, “I knew it would be you.”
“He is no orphan,” Elijah challenge
d the young woman. “He is my son.”
She looked at Elijah kindly. “He is your son now. But once he was Sirota.”
“How did you know?” Hans asked softly.
“I’m from Vishnovet,” she said. “I’m Rabbi Kaminsky’s daughter, Golda.”
“You were a little girl when I last saw you,” Hans said. “Is Rabbi Kaminsky well?”
“He’s dead.” She sighed. “They’re all dead. There is only you and me.”
Hans Perlmutter married Golda Kaminsky a year later and they settled in the Dorchester ghetto near Elijah. Golda gave birth to two stillborn daughters before she brought a healthy son into the world in November of 1912.
They named their son Harry in memory of her father, Hyman. They gave Harry an S as a middle initial but no full name or explanation was ever provided. Harry S. Perlmutter, the son of Hans and Golda Perlmutter of the Pale, would work his way to middle-class respectability, never really knowing or caring about the desperation from which his parents came.
In 1936, Harry married Rachael Krantzman, the daughter of a tailor. For nine years they were unable to have a child. Finally, in March of 1945, Edward S. Perlmutter was born. He would be their only child. They named him after Elijah Fleischman, who had died peacefully in his sleep only a few years before “Eddie” was born. The S was passed on to Edward S. Perlmutter without explanation.
In 1950, Harry moved his family from Dorchester to a Jewish neighborhood in Brookline, an upscale suburb west of the city. Hans and Golda insisted on remaining in Dorchester despite the “white flight” that was taking place in the face of the black migration to their neighborhood.
Eddie Perlmutter was different from other boys his age. He could be polite and display a good sense of humor, but his behavior could be frighteningly erratic at times. With only the slightest provocation Eddie could explode into fits of rage and aggression. Before he was ten years old he became a fearsome fighter, who showed no regard for his own safety. Eddie’s parents were concerned and confused. There was no history of violence in the family, as far as they knew. Eddie’s grandparents, who had kept the legend of Sirota from their son and his family, understood that the same fire burning in Sirota’s blood had skipped a generation and was now their grandson’s legacy.
Many years later, a senile Hans Perlmutter sat in a crowded boxing arena with his son, Harry, watching fifteen-year-old Eddie Perlmutter in an amateur boxing match, battling a much larger opponent. Eddie was his grandfather’s favorite fighter. Hans compared his grandson’s determination to ex-champion Barney Ross. Harry Perlmutter, however, didn’t like his son’s fighting style. Harry thought Eddie was too reckless in the ring and showed no respect for his opponent or for the science of boxing.
The fight was going badly for Eddie that night. He was overmatched and outclassed. He had been knocked down three times in three rounds. After the third knockdown in the final round, Sirota thought he saw his grandson rise from the canvas and stab his adversary in the heart with a double-edged kinjal. In the ravaged wasteland of Sirota’s addled mind, the other fighter had transformed into a monstrous brown bear and his grandson was chopping the beast down with repeated thrusts of the sword in his hand. The bear was falling.
Suddenly, an explosion of light and the urgent clanging of a bell startled Sirota. A large crowd of cheering people reappeared around him. Sirota became dizzy and disoriented. He felt a sharp pain in his chest and put his right hand over his heart as if to protect it from further harm. But the damage was done, and the old man slumped slowly to the ground like a wilting blade of grass.
Sirota looked up from the floor at the faces spinning above him. His son, Harry, was kneeling next to him, holding his hand. His grandson’s face appeared. There were tears of sadness in the boy’s eyes, and his face was bruised. The old man motioned for Eddie to come closer. Harry saw his father whisper into his son’s ear. He saw Eddie’s lips move but could not hear the words. He saw his father wink at Eddie and saw Eddie wink back. Then the old man winced in pain and grabbed his chest. It was time to go.
In the twilight haze between life and death, there was no more pain. Sirota moved toward a bright light on the horizon that was slowly growing dimmer. A brown bear and a blond boy joined him at the end of the world. Then the light went out and there was only darkness.
The S in Edward S. Perlmutter was never explained to me. I had no middle name and neither did my father, Harry S. Perlmutter. In 1952 when I was seven years old, I asked my father about the unattached S. He told me that we were so poor we couldn’t afford an entire middle name. His explanation satisfied me until I shared it with a kid at school two days later. “Middle names are free, dummy.” He laughed at me, so I punched him in the nose and made him cry. He ran home and told his father. His father told my father. My father was upset.
“Why did you punch that boy?” my father asked.
“He was making fun of my middle name,” I explained.
“You don’t have a middle name.”
“I told him we couldn’t afford one.”
“Jeez, Eddie, I was only kidding.”
“I’m only seven. How should I know you were kidding?”
“Well, you’re always kidding,” my father said.
“I never kidded about my middle name.”
“Look, your grandmother and grandfather wouldn’t tell me about the S when I asked them so I really don’t know the reason.”
“They didn’t tell you they couldn’t afford to buy all the letters?” I asked.
“Give it a rest,” my father warned.
“You think Grandma and Grandpa would tell me about the S?”
“Why would they tell you when they wouldn’t tell me?”
“Maybe they love me more than they love you.”
“Your grandfather does. You’re just like him,” my father said.
“Is that a bad thing?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” my father decided.
“Can I ask Grandpa about the S?”
“Sure you can. Right after you apologize to the kid you punched.”
“Why don’t you apologize? You started this.”
I apologized the next morning, and that afternoon I asked my grandparents about the mysterious S. Both of them laughed and offered me a chocolate chip cookie instead of an explanation. I was only seven. I took the cookie.
In 1952, I already knew I wanted to be a cop. A lot of little boys had dreams of becoming a cop, a fireman, or a cowboy when they grew up. We even had a kid in the neighborhood who wanted to be Superman and didn’t want to wait until he grew up. On his eighth birthday, he jumped off his front porch railing ten feet above the ground wearing a bedsheet for a cape. I remember the S on his tee shirt was written backward. He fell like a stone, landing face-first on the pavement below. He broke his nose, both arms, and left leg. I didn’t even want to think about flying after that. I just wanted to be an earthbound cop.
Jewish boys, I learned later, were not supposed to grow up to be cops. Usually young Jews were awakened from their childish dreams by their “first generation upwardly mobile American parents” who only saw cops and robbers in their nightmares. These parents had dreams of their children growing up to become doctors, lawyers, dentists, and the occasional CPA, but never a cop.
My parents were non-practicing Jews who never discouraged my dream of becoming a cop. They didn’t encourage me to become anything else, either. This void set me apart from the other Jewish kids in my neighborhood. I just didn’t fit the Semitic mold mentally, and physically I didn’t look Jewish. I was undersized and scrawny with dirty blond hair, a small pug nose, a street tough attitude, and an open cynicism toward Judaism. I wasn’t all that impressed with Christianity, either.
Christians and Jews made a whole lot of claims and counterclaims about their religion that I found highly suspect. For instance, the Old Testament insisted that their superhero parted water. The New Testament proclaimed that their guy walked on water. Stalemate!
&
nbsp; The Jews claimed that they had someone who was swallowed by a whale and lived to tell the story. The Christians had their own fish story. Stalemate!
The Jews had music for crazy-ass dancing like “Hava Nagila,” but the Christians had classics you could sing to like “Ave Maria” and “Amazing Grace.” I loved “Amazing Grace.” Check, Christians.
The Old Testament said that the infant Moses could have died in the bulrushes but was miraculously saved and lived for 120 years. Then the Good Book claimed Moses talked to a burning bush and received Ten Commandments directly from God. That story is hard to top. The Christians, however, did just that. In the New Testament, the Christians claimed that the baby Jesus was born to a virgin mother, died on a cross, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and was coming back when he felt like it. CHECKMATE, CHRISTIANS!
Nothing about organized religion made any sense to me but it always seemed to be in my face even when I turned the other cheek. When I was a kid the Jews secretly made fun of the Christians because they were afraid of them. Conversely the Christians overtly made fun of Jews because they weren’t afraid of them. A typical Jew versus Christian confrontation in those days went something like this:
“You kikes killed Jesus,” a Christian kid would say.
“Did you know that the word kike was actually invented by German Jews to describe Russian Jews?” a young Jew might respond.
“Who cares? You’re a kike and you killed Christ.”
“Who told you I was a kike and who told you I killed Christ?”
“My parents,” the Christian kid would claim.
“Your parents are wrong. No offense intended,” a Jewish diplomat would try.
“Says who?” the Christian kid would demand.
“My parents, with all due respect of course,” the Jewish negotiator might respond.
“Oh yeah,” the insulted Christian kid would challenge with a raised fist.
“Oh, shit,” the intimidated Jewish kid would say with raised anxiety.
Mostly the Jews won the debates but lost the fights. In my case, things were different. I never debated and I never lost a fight. When I heard the accusation, “You kikes killed Jesus,” my immediate response was a punch to the nose, bringing an immediate flow of blood and a stunned reaction from my accuser.
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