For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories

by Nathan Englander

  “You?” she said, lifting her head and smiling. “My knight in bedclothes has returned.” The others went back to their drinks as she scanned the room in half consciousness. “Barman,” she called. “A drink for my knight.” She rested her head on the crook of her arm and slid the horn over so she could see Mendel with an uninterrupted view. “You were in my dream,” she said. “You and Günter. I mustn’t tell such stories anymore, they haunt me so.”

  “I’ve torn my costume.” Mendel said, “the only one I have. And in a most embarrassing place.”

  Shielded by the table, she walked her fingers up Mendel’s leg.

  “I can’t imagine where,” she said, attempting a flutter of alcohol-deadened lids.

  “Thread,” Mendel said, “and a needle. You wouldn’t happen to have—”

  “Of course,” she said. She tried to push herself up. “In my compartment, come along. I’ll sew you up there.”

  “No,” he said. “You go, I’ll stay here—and if you could, if you wouldn’t mind making an introduction, I’m in desperate need of advice.”

  “After I sew you,” she said. She curled her lip into a pout, accentuating an odd mark left by years of playing. “It’s only two cars away.”

  “You go,” Mendel said. “And then well talk. And maybe later tonight I’ll come by and you can reinforce the seams.” Mendel winked.

  The horn player purred and went off, stumbling against the rhythm of the train so that she actually appeared balanced.Mendel spied the open horn case under the table. Rummaging through it, he found a flowered cotton rag, damp with saliva. Looking about, nonchalant, he tucked it into his sleeve.

  “It’s called a Full Twisting Voltas,” Mendel said, trying to approximate the move as he had understood it. Aware that, as much as had been lost during a half demonstration in a smoke-filled bar car, twice that was again lost in his return to the Mahmirim, and another twice that lost again in his body’s awkward translation of the move.

  Shmuel Berel, intent and driven, attempted the move first, proving—as he would throughout the afternoon—to be almost completely useless when it came to anything where timing was involved. Under protest, for he wanted to do his share, Shmuel was told to scuttle about the stage continuously during the performance doing his upside-down backward walk. Coordination proved to be a problem for Raizel the widow and Shraga’s mother, and—not surprisingly—the Rebbe as well. For them Mendel returned again to the bar car in search of simpler, less challenging moves. For Shraga, a live wire and a natural performer, he inquired about some more complicated combinations on which to work.

  Mendel paused between cars, pondering the rush of track and tie and the choices it raised. How would it be if he were to jump off and roll, in faulty acrobatic form, down an embankment and into a stretch of field? What if he were to start himself off on another tributary of the nightmare, to seek out a scheme as random and hopeless as the one of which he was a part; and what of the wheels and the possibility of lowering himself underneath, thrusting himself into some new hell that would at least guarantee a comfort in its permanence—how much easier to face an eternity without wonder? Over and over again, Mendel chose neither, feeling the rush of wind and moving on into the next car, passing and excusing, smiling his way along, his senses sharpened like a nesting bird’s, eagle-eyed and watching for scraps of cotton or lost ribbon, anything to bring back to Raizel and her needle.

  Two men, forever at the same window and smoking a ransom’s worth of cigars, had come to recognize Mendel and begun to make friendly jokes at his expense. The pair particularly relished the additions to his costume. “The Ragdoll Review,” one would say. And the other, rotating the cigar, puff, puff, puffing away at it like a locomotive himself, would yank it from his mouth and say, “How many of you are there, each adorned with one more scrap?”

  As many as the ears, Mendel thought, and the trains, and the lengths of track. As many as have been taken and wait at the stations and right now move toward another place. As plentiful as the drops of rain that puddle the world over, except in Chelm, where they gather in the gutters into torrents of sour cream.

  Each time Mendel returned to the Mahmirim, he found the car seemingly empty. At most he’d catch a rustling of curtains, or find Raizel smiling sheepishly—too slow to seal herself into a compartment before his entrance. It reminded him of the center of town when strangers stumbled through. All the townspeople would disappear, including Cross-eyed Bilha, who also ran the inn. (The inn was a brainchild of the Wise Men—for whether or not strangers were welcome, no one should be able to say that Chelm was so provincial as to lack accommodations.) Eventually, out of curiosity or terror, a resident who could stand the suspense no longer would venture a look outside. The circus, prepared for a three-day extravaganza, whip and chair already in the ring and tigers poised on overturned tubs, had sat three times three days until one of the Wise Men first dared peer into the tent.

  “Open up,” Mendel called, “it gets dark and there’s work to be done.” Compartment doors opened and Mendel told everyone to remain in their seats. “Just Shraga,” he said, “and Feitel and Zahava. We are going to break the routine down into sections, and each will learn his own part.”

  “No,” the Rebbe said. “There isn’t time. What if we should arrive in an hour before all have learned what it is they are to do?”

  “There is time,” Mendel said. “The train barely moves now. Up front they get off and walk alongside only to climb on a few lengths back. We will have the whole of tomorrow morning and up until noon. The horn player told me—we are headed to an evening performance.”

  “It sounds like they are trying to make a fool of you,” Feitel said. “As if maybe they know.”

  “Do they know?” Zahava asked.

  “What is it they know?” Little Shraga came out of his compartment, frightened.

  “No one knows,” Mendel said. “If they knew it would be over and done with—of that you can be sure. As for practicing, there is great wisdom in the sections. They will allow you to rest, Rebbe, and for Raizel to sew.” Mendel smiled at Raizel as she fastened a cork to Feitel’s chest. Feitel chewed on a bit of thread to keep away the Angel of Death, for only the dead wear their garments while they are sewn. “It is called choreography, Rebbe. It is the way such things are done.”

  That understood, they worked on the choreography in the aisle that ran the length of the car. Those watching sat in their compartments with the doors slid open and tried to pick up the moves from the quick flicker of a body in motion passing before them. It was like learning how to dance by thumbing through a flip book, page by page.

  While some worked on cartwheels and somersaults, rolling in a line first one way and then the other, Shraga, reckless and with more room in which to move his spindly body, actually showed a great deal of promise. So much that the Rebbe said, “In another world, my son, who knows what might have become of you.”

  The Mahmirim worked until they could work no more. That night they rolled in their sleep while the engineer up front tugged his whistle in greeting to the engines pulling the doomed the other way.

  Shraga was the first to rise, an hour before dawn. He woke each of the others with a gentle touch on the shoulder. Each one, snapping awake, looked around for a moment, agitated and confused.

  They began to practice right off doing the best they could in the darkness. The Rebbe interrupted as the sky began to lighten. “Come up from there,” the Rebbe said to Raizel. She was on the floor tearing bits of upholstery from under the seats, from where the craftsmen had cinched the corners. These she would sew into a moon over Zahava’s heart. “Come along,” the Rebbe said. Mendel, who was fiddling with a spoon Raizel had fastened to a sleeve and advising Shraga on the length of his leap, came with the others to crowd around the Rebbe’s compartment.

  “More than one kind of dedication is required if we are to survive this ordeal.” The Rebbe looked out the window as he spoke.

  They separ
ated the men from the women and began to say their morning prayers. It was not a matter of disregarding the true peril to which it exposed them but an instance in which the danger was not considered. They called out to the heavens in full voices. When they had finished there was a pause, a moment of silence. It was as if they were waiting for an answer from the Lord.

  The train stopped.

  Feitel was in the air when it did. He landed with a momentum greater than the train’s and rolled pell-mell into the hardness of a wall.

  “I’ve broken my back,” he said. The others ignored him. There wasn’t the urgency of truth in his voice. And outside the windows there were tracks upon tracks and platform after platform and the first uncountable stories of a building, higher, surely, than the Tower of Babel was ever meant to be.

  By the time Feitel got to his feet, the performers had already begun to pour out onto the platform, lugging trunks and valises, garment bags and makeup cases with rounded edges and silver clasps.

  The door to the car slammed open and a head and shoulders popped in. On the face was a thin mustache that, like a rain gutter, diverted the sweat away from pale lips. And how the sweat ran; in that very first moment the face reddened noticeably and new beads of perspiration drove on the last.

  “Who are you?” the man asked. “What might this ragtag bunch perform?”

  Mendel stepped forward.

  “We are the tumblers.”

  “Have you tumbled off the garbage heap?”

  Feitel felt the ridiculousness of his costume and put his hand over the five-pointed star of champagne corks fastened to his chest.

  “No matter,” the man said. “How much prep time do you need?”

  “Prep?” Mendel was at a loss.

  “I’ve no patience for this. We’re three hours late already. They’ll have my head, not yours.” A hand plunged through the door. The man looked at the watch on the wrist and wiped the sweat from his brow as best he could. The hand appeared an odd match, as if this intruder were constructed of loose parts. His face reddened further and he puffed out his cheeks. “Prep time,” he said. “Trampolines, pommel horses, trapezes. What needs be set up?”

  “Nothing,” Mendel said.

  “As plain as you look, eh? Fine. Then, good.” He appeared to calm slightly—ever so slightly. “Then you’re on first. Now get down there and help the others lug their chattel to the theater.”

  The Mahmirim rushed out the door, Mendel’s mouth opening wide as he followed the rest of the building into the sky. He let out a whistle and then continued to gape. It was beautiful and menacing. The whole place was menacing, for every wonder was in some way marred, every thing of beauty stained gray with war. To try to escape from it, to schedule galas and dress for balls, was farcical even for the enemy. The gray mood was all pervading. The performers hurried along with their preshow expressions, looking dyspeptic. Impostors, one and all. Their stage smiles, Mendel knew, would sparkle.

  Raizel the widow led a monkey on a leash. The monkey held a banana, the first any had seen in years. The widow would pick up her pace and then stop suddenly. The monkey did the same. Her crooked fingers were bunched into a single claw, ready to snatch the prize away at first chance. Mendel stood behind her, a trunk on his head, watching Raizel try to trick a banana from a monkey. He was surprised, as always, to witness a new degradation, to find another display of wretchedness original enough to bring tears to his eyes. He took a deep breath and ignored his sense of injustice, a rich man’s emotion, a feeling Mendel had given up the liberty of experiencing horrors and horrors before.

  It was only a short time until they reached their destination, a building as wide as the train was long. The interior promised to be grand. But the Mahmirim didn’t get to see any of the trompe l’oeil or gold leaf that adorned the lobby. They were ushered backstage through double doors.

  As the procession filed in, the mood of the entertainers transformed. There was a newfound energy, a heightened professionalism. Even the drinkers from the bar car and the tired smokers Mendel had shuffled past in the passageways moved with a sudden precision. Mendel took note of it as a juggler grabbed the monkey and began, with detached brutality, to force the animal into trousers. He noted it as the aging dancers hid their heads behind the lids of mirrored cases, only to look up again having created an illusion of youth that, from any seat in the house, would go unchallenged. Mendel went cold with terror, watching, trying to isolate what in these innocuous preparations was so disturbing.

  As the stage manager hurried by, his shirt transparent with perspiration, his arms full of tin swords, and screaming “Schnell” at anyone whose idle gaze he caught, Mendel understood to what his great terror was due. It was the efficiency displayed by each and every one, the crack hop-to-it-ness, the discipline and order. He had seen it from the start, from the day the intruders marched into town and, finding the square empty, began kicking down doors, from the instant meticulousness demanded that a war of such massive scope make time to seek out a happily isolated dot-on-the-map hamlet-called-city where resided the fools of Chelm. It was this efficiency, Mendel knew, that would catch up with them.

  “It’s like we are in the bowels of the earth,” Raizel said, motioning to the catwalk and the sandbags and the endless ropes and pegs.

  “Which one to pull for rain?” Feitel said. “And which for a good harvest?”

  “And which for redemption?” the Rebbe said—his tone forlorn and as close as he came to despair.

  “You did a wonderful job,” Mendel said. He, against all they had been taught, put a hand to Raizel’s cheek. “The costumes are most imaginative.” He knocked his elbows together, and the spoons clinked like a dull chime.

  “A wonder with a needle and thread. It’s true.” This from Zahava in a breastplate of cigarette boxes and with pipe cleaners sewn to her knees.

  The widow slipped an arm around Zahava’s waist—always such a trim girl, even before—and pulled her close as she used to do Sabbath mornings on the way out of the shtibl. Raizel squeezed her as tightly as she could, and Zahava, more gently, squeezed back. Both held their eyes closed. It was obvious that they were together in another place, back outside the shtibl when the dogwoods were in bloom, both in new dresses, modest and lovely.

  Mendel and the Rebbe and Feitel, all the Mahmirim who could not join in the embrace or the escape to better times, looked away. It was too much to bear unopaqued by any of the usual defenses. They raised their eyes as Zahava planted a kiss on the old woman’s head, a kiss so sincere that Mendel tried to cut the gravity by half:

  “You know,” he said, “never has so much been made of the accidental boarding of a second-class train.”

  His observation, a poor joke, did not get a single smile. It only set the Mahmirim to looking about once again, desperate for a place on which to rest their gazes.

  It may have come from a leaky pipe, a hole in the roof, or off the chin of the stage manager darting about, but most likely it was a tear abandoned by an anonymous eye. It hit the floor, a single drop, immediately to the right of the Rebbe.

  “What is this?” the Rebbe said. “I won’t have it. Not for a minute!”

  Mendel and the others put on expressions as if they did not know to what he referred, as if they did not sense the somberness and the defeat rising up around them.

  “Come, come,” said the Rebbe. “We are on first, and Shraga has not yet perfected his Full Twisting Voltas.” He tapped out a four beat with his foot. “Hup,” he said. “From the top,” he said, exhausting all of the vocabulary that he had learned.

  They made a space for themselves and ran through the routine, the Rebbe not letting them rest for a moment and Mendel loving him with all his heart.

  The manager came for them at five minutes to curtain. It was then, from the wings, that they got to see it all. The red carpets and festooned gold braids, the chandelier and frescoed ceiling—full of heroes and maidens and celestial rays—hemmed in by elaborate moldings
. And the moldings themselves were bedecked with rosy-cheeked cherubim carved from wood. There was also the audience—the women in gowns and hair piled high, the men in their uniforms, pinned heavy with medals for efficiency and bravery and strength. An important audience, just the kind to make a nervous man sweat. There was also a box up and off to the left; in it sat a leader and his escort, a man of great power on whom, Mendel could tell, a part of everyone was focused. The chandelier was turned down and the stage lights came up and the manager whispered “Go” so that Shraga stepped out onto the stage. The others followed. It was as plain as that. They followed because there was nothing else to do.

  For a moment, then two, then three, they all stood at the back of the stage, blinded. Raizel put a hand up to her eyes. There was a cough and then a chuckle. The echo had not yet come to rest when the Rebbe called out:

  “To your marks!”

  Lifting their heads, straightening their postures, they spread out across the hard floor.

  “Hup,” cried the Rebbe, and the routine commenced. Shraga cartwheeled and flipped. The widow Raizel jumped once and then stood off to the side with her double-jointed arms turned inside out. Mendel, glorious Mendel, actually executed a springing Half-Hanlon and, with Shmuel Berel’s assistance (his only real task), ended in a Soaring Angel. Feitel, off his mark, missed his wife as she came toward him in a leap. Zahava landed on her ankle, which let out a crisp, clear crack. She did not whimper, quickly standing up. Though it was obvious even from the balcony that her foot was not on right. There was, after a gasp from the audience, silence. Then from above, from off to the left, a voice was heard. Mendel knew from which box it came. He knew it was the most polished, the most straight and tall, a maker of magic, to be sure. Of course, this is conjecture, for how could he see?

  “Look,” said the voice. “They are as clumsy as Jews.” There was a pause and then singular and boisterous laughter. The laughter echoed and was picked up by the audience, who laughed back with lesser glee—not wanting to overstep their bounds. Mendel looked back to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe shrugged. Young Shraga, a natural survivor, took a hop-step as if to continue. Zahava moved toward the widow Raizel and rested a hand on her shoulder.