Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  He gently unwrapped the horn and lifted it to his mouth. The plaintive note echoed around, blending with the guttural rumblings of the supernatural nasal emission. The snore stopped politely for a second, then started up again even louder.

  Exhausted, Hillel leaned against the bed. He would now have to use the most powerful magic he knew: the clay doll. He carried it ceremoniously over to the bed and placed the small facsimile, now doused in Aaron’s aftershave and wrapped in his tefillah, on the dead man’s pillow where it lolled irreverently.

  Miriam, cowering at the bathroom door, couldn’t help but be fascinated by the kabbalist’s intensity. Myra, collapsed in resignation, sat on the closed toilet, her head in her hands.

  “Three generations of rationalist socialists and it has come to this,” she said. “For what did I become frummeh?” Nevertheless, worried for her soul, she whispered a quick prayer.

  Hillel joined the women in the bathroom. “Now we wait. Notice I have removed myself physically from the room; this will prevent the snore from entering my own body,” he confided in a scientific tone that was not the least reassuring to Myra.

  And so it was that the kabbalist Hillel Ben Shloechem and Miriam and Myra Gluckstein found themselves squeezed into a tiny bathroom while the snore whirled around the bedroom like a demented djinn, finally hovering above the doll whose prominent clay nose and belly jutted out like a beacon.

  Hillel held his breath, Miriam started praying, while Myra moaned in disbelief as the sound pulsated in volume then suddenly vanished. A second later, a thinner more nasally version of the snore emanated from within the clay figure. Immediately Hillel ran into the bedroom and grabbed the doll. Miriam followed.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Bury it, bury it immediately!” he shouted, thrusting the clay mannequin into his rucksack, where the snore continued to purr like a bagged cat.

  He ran out onto the landing, followed by the young widow, and down to the living room. There Hillel took out the clay doll and placed it on the coffee table, where it lay snoring loudly. Miriam, on Hillel’s instructions, filled a shoe box with lamb’s wool (kosher).

  “Now say something to put Aaron’s soul to rest,” Hillel ordered, noticing for the first time that under the black wig and heavy clothes the widow was quite pretty.

  Miriam whispered into the small clay button she assumed was the doll’s ear. “Aaron, I will make a moral decision for both of us, I promise.”

  Unnoticed by either Miriam or the kabbalist, a group of neighbors—the whole Fleischmann brood plus the family from the other side of the house—peered in through the windows, their faces pressed eagerly against the glass as they struggled for a glimpse of the bereaved woman performing strange rituals with this so-called brother of hers, who was obviously not a blood relative and quite evidently a kabbalist.

  At that point, the snore flew out of the doll and up the stairs, hovering for a few seconds on the landing. It whizzed passed Myra, who was coming out of the bedroom, almost knocking her down, then zoomed straight back into its usual space where it settled happily around the filing cabinet. Miriam and Hillel followed, using their ears.

  “There is some evil happening here that even I cannot cure!” Hillel cried out as he watched the pages of the day calendar on top of the filing cabinet spin around in the breeze of the snore.

  Grabbing his rucksack the kabbalist bolted, dreadlocks flying. After struggling with the locks on the front door he had to push through the crowd of curious onlookers that had filled the front yard.

  “Kabbalist! What is the trouble?!” they shouted, jostling to reach him. “Is the old woman a sorceress?”

  But Hillel said nothing until he collapsed an hour later into a seat on the last number three train. There, to his horror, a single faint snore came suddenly from deep within his chest.

  The next day Miriam made a momentous decision. She took the illegal file from the filing cabinet and photocopied every one of its thirty pages. Then, after a hurried call to her mother, she posted the duplicate to her in Chicago, insisting that she promise neither to read it nor to disclose its existence to anyone else. It was insurance for the widow in case the file should be stolen or destroyed. There was no doubt in her mind, after mulling over Aaron’s anxious behavior before he died, that both O’Brien and Safecom were not to be trusted.

  She walked home pensively, and couldn’t help wondering whether Safecom weren’t trailing her somehow. She tried to place herself in Aaron’s frame of mind during the last hours of his life. He must have been both petrified and deeply torn. Her husband had loved his company, had always spoken about his colleagues as if, after the community, they were his family. Safecom had recruited him in his last year of university and he’d always felt honored to have been selected. Aaron had testified many times in court for the insurance company, believing entirely in both the morality and honor of his employers. He had even been elected employee of the month several times over. The discovery of the file must have been a huge shock to him; a perfidy of the worst kind for an ethical man. Whatever the risk, Miriam did not want her husband to have died in vain.

  As she turned the street corner a small crowd gathered in her front yard came into view. Thinking that Myra might have died Miriam broke into a run.

  She pushed past the queue of people to get into the house. Her mother-in-law was sitting on the top step in a wooden chair that was pushed up against the front door. “You can’t get in! You can’t!” she was screaming to those assembled.

  Miriam rushed to her side. “Mother, what is going on?”

  “Thank God you’re here. Somehow the word is out. They all want to talk to their dead relatives—idiots!” The last was shouted at the bunch of onlookers who stood solemnly in their best clothes, men on one side, women on the other, as if they were attending a wake.

  Myra turned back to Miriam. “What can we do? They won’t go. Oi! If the rabbinical council hears of this we’re in big trouble.” Her wig was on crooked, her dentures were slipping, and she looked exhausted.

  The young widow turned back to the crowd. Some of the faces she recognized from temple: several widows; Mr. Rubens who still mourned his wife thirty years after her death; Sara Rosenberg who had lost her entire family including twin babies in the holocaust; and young Rachel Schoff whose son had died of an asthma attack three months before—all searching Miriam’s face for understanding.

  Mr. Rubens shuffled forward. “Please, we promise not to cause any trouble, we just want to make contact. We know something supernatural is going on here. Aaron was a good man, a kind man, surely his ghost is too?”

  “There is no ghost here, go home! This is blasphemous! What do you think the Rebbe would say about this if he was alive? God bless his soul,” Myra retorted before Miriam had a chance to reply. But the onlookers ignored her, their faces all leaning toward the young widow.

  “Myra is right—there is no ghost as such. But you can stay if you like and see for yourselves,” Miriam answered, not having the heart to disillusion them entirely.

  And so it was that the community’s bereaved spent that night in neat rows on the floor of the bedroom and the landing. All listened respectfully, some clutching their stars of David in awe, others rocking and praying, as the snore whistled above them.

  Within the week pilgrims were coming from as far away as New Jersey to listen to the miraculous snore, now rumored to communicate all kinds of messages in the nuances of its grunts and gurgles, from financial advice from dead loved ones through to racing tips.

  By the end of the week the snore had become audible at the end of the street and entrepreneurial vendors had sprung up outside, selling earplugs and plastic effigies of Aaron’s nose.

  “Any day now that phone is going to ring and we are going to be summoned to the rabbinical council to be chastised and maybe excommunicated,” Myra announced grimly, pointing at the china 1930s’ telephone she had placed ominously at the head of the breakfast table. “Lik
e the fall of Leningrad it is only a matter of time. And all over a stupid nasal phenomenon that has nothing to do with my son!” she finished, slamming the table with her knobbly fist.

  But Miriam was too busy wrestling with her conscience to notice the burgeoning industry around her dead husband’s affliction. Three times she’d gone to ring up the lawyers and three times her courage had failed her. What was she frightened of? It wasn’t the possibility of losing her rightful inheritance from the company, although that was a factor; it was more the courage of initiating action for the first time in her life and having the strength to withstand the immense publicity and hostility such an action would incur. But surely the snore was urging her to act?

  On Friday night Miriam and Myra relaxed, knowing that everyone would be at their family tables. They had just sat down to their own shabbat meal when the squeal of truck brakes sounded outside.

  Miriam peeped through the curtains: a huge Fox News van had pulled up. Already a stream of cameramen and crew were disembarking with armfuls of equipment.

  “Gott im Himmel!” Myra exclaimed in shock, slipping into the Yiddish of her childhood and momentarily forgetting Aaron was dead, “Wo ist seinem Mann?”

  Still clutching a piece of herring Miriam rushed outside. An anchorwoman with immaculate blond hair and an inch of makeup perched on four inches of heel that were slowly sinking into the Glucksteins’ narrow strip of lawn.

  “Miracles are everywhere, even in these grim and sad times,” she said into her microphone, smiling at a camera balanced precariously on the shoulder of a disheveled man who, much to Miriam’s disgust, had neither beard nor skullcap. “We bring you a story of hope from here…” the camera panned along the row of brownstones, “the orthodox Lubavitch community in Crown Heights—a story about a miraculous snore that once belonged to one Aaron Gluckstein, who passed on only a month ago—”

  “Get away! Get away!” Myra flew out of the house and hit the anchorwoman firmly on the legs with her walking stick.

  The woman winced painfully as she wrangled her facial expression for the rolling camera.

  “We seem to have a disgruntled resident with us right at this minute.”

  Smiling bravely she thrust the microphone at the irate nonagenarian.

  “What’s our connection to the snore?”

  “Connection? I am the mother. Now get off my lawn—you are breaking both religious and state legislation. This is private property plus it is past sunset—it is already the sabbath and you should not be working.” She thudded her walking stick dangerously close to the reporter who backed away a few steps.

  “But, Mrs. Gluckstein, is it true the snore has predictive powers?” the anchorwoman asked undaunted, experienced as she was in frontline reportage.

  “Predictive? Don’t be stupid, how can a snore tell you the future? It is what it is: wind blowing through nostrils.”

  “Mother, I think it’s time we went inside.” Miriam stepped forward. Immediately the camera swung in her direction. Appalled, she lifted a hand to cover her face but the anchorwoman’s microphone jutted forward like a bludgeon.

  “And here we have the younger Mrs. Gluckstein. Mrs. Gluckstein, I do believe you are Aaron’s widow?”

  “Please, you are disturbing the community on the sabbath…We just want to be left alone…please…”

  As Miriam pleaded with the crew there came a sudden roar from the top of the street. Everyone turned to see four elderly rabbis approaching, flanked by twelve tall bearded yeshiva students who looked more like religious henchmen—which indeed was what they were. The four elders, ranging from seventy to ninety-four, strode vigorously toward the house, their tallises flapping like ominous black wings. Hobbling behind them came Mordecai Bergerman, struggling to keep up.

  Myra clutched Miriam’s arm fearfully. “I told you, the four horsemen are here. We are finished,” she said, cowering behind her daughter-in-law.

  Even the camera crew backed off, intimidated by the sobriety of the approaching posse. “Jesus, Mick,” the anchorwoman said to her cameraman, dropping into a Bronx drawl, “all we’re missing is Charlton Heston. Get the legals on the cell and check out our rights.”

  But before the cameraman had a chance to flick open his phone the rabbinical council was upon them.

  “You have five minutes to get out of Crown Heights before we smash your cameras and maybe even file a legal action,” the tallest and most handsome of the students murmured seductively to the anchorwoman who, unnerved by the combination of sex and violence, dropped her microphone in the melting snow.

  Meanwhile the most powerful rabbi placed himself squarely in front of Miriam and Myra.

  “Myra and Miriam Gluckstein, the council has discussed your case and this is our judgment. We give you one week, and one week only, to rid your house and souls of this abomination by whatever means necessary. If you fail to do so we will excommunicate you, purchase your property at cost price, then board the house up until further notice.”

  Myra reached out a hand but the rabbi had already turned his back on them and was marching back to his colleagues.

  “That schmuck,” she hissed to Miriam. “He will not even look into the eyes of a woman for fear of catching something terrible—like empathy.”

  Behind them the camera crew were slamming shut the doors of their van. Blushing furiously Mordecai Bergerman hobbled up to Myra.

  “Myra, I did what I could. I have argued with them for days but in the end there was nothing I could do….”

  “So what do you suggest now, kid? We option the movie, nu?” Disgusted, Myra walked back into the house.

  The next morning had the atmosphere of a wake. Myra, convinced they were about to be evicted, had already begun to pack up her most precious objects—huge piles of ancient books and papers well over fifty years old. She sat in the infamous yellow dressing gown, a photo of Abraham circa 1946 sticky-taped to her breast in case she forgot him in the rush, staring mournfully at the fried matzo and egg on the plate in front of her.

  “So what is the point of eating? I might as well die now and save on the airfare to Chicago, assuming your mother will have us.”

  “Let’s not panic, I have a plan,” said Miriam.

  “So what do you know that I don’t?”

  Later that morning Miriam locked the bedroom door, propped up a shirt of Aaron’s with his photo perched in the empty collar, then sat before the effigy. She paused for a moment, staring into his deep brown eyes, then said aloud, “Aaron, I know why you haven’t left us; there is something you have left unfinished, something that I’m sure, had you lived, you would have had the courage to carry through. Well, darling, I’m going to do it for you. And may God protect both of us.” Fighting back the tears, she took a deep breath, then rang the number of the first lawyer mentioned in the file. Amazed to hear from her he immediately made an appointment to see her and insisted that she take every precaution against personal attack and possible burglary.

  “You don’t know these guys, Mrs. Gluckstein,” he told her, fear thickening his voice. “They will stop at nothing. Already I’ve had two clients mysteriously disappear. What you have in that file could destroy a corporation more powerful than half the countries in the world. Your husband would have known that.”

  Trembling Miriam put down the receiver, then immediately wondered if the phone was tapped.

  Two hours later she was riding the subway escalator up to Wall Street. Dressed in an elegant suit Myra had borrowed from a secular friend, her black wig exchanged for a chic bobbed one, her legs revealed in stockings from the knee down and wearing high heels, she was unrecognizable—which was exactly what Miriam wanted.

  I am not being irreligious, I am not breaking the law, I am playacting for a higher purpose, she convinced herself as she attempted to walk without stumbling in the high shoes. A handsome executive smiled at her—a Christian. For a second Miriam looked behind her, thinking the smile was for someone else, then caught sight of herself
in a window. The woman in the reflection was beautiful. She wasn’t hunched over in shyness nor covered from head to toe; she looked modern, confident—but she wasn’t anyone Miriam knew. Breathing deeply to check her fear she looked at the street numbers and finally found the building she needed.

  “You’ve read all of this?” John Stutton, attorney, placed the file carefully on the desk, then looked at the young woman sitting in front of him. For someone so beautiful she seemed decidedly uncomfortable in her clothes and he had a sneaking suspicion that she might be wearing a wig. The possibility of cancer treatment floated through his mind.

  “I have,” Miriam responded gravely.

  “And you would be willing to testify in court, despite the enormous risk to both yourself and your family?”

  “There is no family, just Aaron’s mother, and I’ve spoken to her. She is fully supportive. Myra was a radical once, before she became Orthodox.”

  “That’s right, Aaron Gluckstein was…”

  “We are of the Lubavitch movement.”

  Now the young woman’s discomfort was starting to make sense to the lawyer.

  “It must have taken some courage to make the decision to approach me. I appreciate it.”

  “Not courage. I have strong reason to believe it’s what Aaron would have wanted, still wants.”

  John Stutton, a staunch atheist and confirmed rationalist, decided he didn’t really want to go into the reason why the widow should have arrived at such a conclusion after Aaron’s death. He was just grateful that, out of all the lawyers mentioned in the file, she had chosen him. Trying to underplay the tremendous excitement that began to percolate at the thought of the biggest opportunity in his career, the attorney walked to the window. Outside the streetlights had begun to light up the city.