Monday the Rabbi Took Off

by Harry Kemelman

  “All right,” he said. “You know I left the network?”

  “I heard. Trouble with Ryan again?”

  “Not really.” He got up and began pacing the room. “I was just fed up. What kind of life is it for a man, running around, sometimes halfway across the world, to broadcast news that his listeners have already read in their newspapers?”

  “But you also made news,” she pointed out. “You interviewed important people, high government officials.”

  “Sure,” he said shortly, “and they never said anything that wasn’t already well-known official government policy.” He sat down again. “I’ve got a line on a job with educational TV. The same sort of thing, but there’s a lot more freedom to comment and to give background information. And in the meantime, I’m doing a book for Dashiel and Stone.”

  “Wonderful. Did you get a good advance?”

  It was typical of her, he thought, to ask about the financial arrangements before the subject. “Just barely enough to cover expenses.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s a book on public opinion,” he went on, “what the man in the street really thinks.”

  “But you did all that on television,” she said.

  “No,” he said, warming to the discussion. “There they knew they were being interviewed. But for the book I’m going to be using a lapel mike and a pocket tape recorder. Suppose I’m in a restaurant and a couple of people at the next table sound interesting. I just switch on the recorder and tape their conversation to play over and analyze at my leisure.”

  “I’m sure it will make an interesting book,” she said politely.

  He finished his drink and put the glass down on the end table beside his chair.

  “Refill?” she asked.

  “No, I guess not.” He leaned back for the first time and looked about him, relaxed. “No need to ask you how you are. You’re looking beautiful as ever.”

  She gave him a quick glance to see if there was anything more intended than the polite gallantry in the remark. “I’m working pretty hard,” she said.

  “Well, I must say it agrees with you, Laura.” He nodded at the wall. “That painting is new, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s a Josiah Redmond. He’s doing a cover for us. I don’t own it—yet. It’s on loan. I want to live with it for a while first to see if I want to buy it.”

  He knew of Redmond by reputation. He was a chaser, and his work came high. He wanted to ask her jokingly if she was pursuing the same policy with the painter as with the painting, but he held back; he knew it would come out harsh and bitter. Besides, she could well afford to buy the painting in the usual way. As a senior editor at Co-ed, she must be making a good salary. So he merely nodded, and focused on the picture while he waited for her to tell him why she had written that she must see him.

  “I must see you,” the letter had said. “It is of the utmost importance that we discuss Roy’s future. I am extremely worried …” for a couple of pages, every sentence containing at least one italicized word. Her speech was a little that way, too, and when they first went together, he had found it strangely attractive, giving a kind of breathless excitement to her discourse. Later he had found it a little trying.

  “I got a letter from Roy,” she began.

  “Oh, he writes you, does he?” And this time the bitterness slipped out. “I haven’t heard from him since he went to Israel.”

  “Perhaps if you wrote him—”

  “I wrote him twice. Am I supposed to continue in the hope that he’ll break down and answer?”

  “Well,” she said, “he’s unhappy.”

  “That’s nothing new. He was unhappy at college. His whole generation is unhappy.”

  “He wants to come home,” she went on.

  “So why doesn’t he?”

  “And lose a year in his studies? If he comes home now, he won’t get any credit for the courses he’s taking at the university.”

  “That doesn’t bother these kids nowadays,” Stedman said. “They switch from one major to another and from one college to another the way I change my shoes. And when they finish, they’re not prepared to do anything, or willing to. What’s he unhappy about?” he asked. “Something specific like a girl, or something general like the state of the world?”

  Laura nervously lit a cigarette. “I don’t see how you can be so flippant about it all when it’s your son who’s involved.”

  “My son!” he exploded. “I fathered him, I suppose, but I don’t know that I had anything to do with him afterward.”

  “Daniel Stedman, you know I consulted with you on every step of his career, every school he went to, every—”

  “All right, all right,” he said. “Let’s not get started on that again. What do you want me to do?”

  “Well,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette, “I think you could write him a strong letter, ordering him to stay until he finishes the year or you will cut his allowance.”

  “I see. I have to play the heavy.”

  “Discipline is a father’s duty,” she said primly.

  “And this will make him happy?”

  “At least it might keep him from doing something foolish.”

  “I’ll do better than that,” he said, getting up from the chair. “I’ll go and see him.”

  “But you can’t just pick yourself up and go halfway across the world.” Then she saw that he was smiling. “Oh, you were planning to go to Israel?”

  He nodded. “That’s where I’m doing the book. It’s a book on Israeli opinion.”

  “When are you going?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ve got a flight to Zurich by Swissair.”

  “Not El Al? They say it’s safer, that they’re more careful.”

  “It’s also a lot more crowded. And it’s a long trip, and I like to break it up. This gives me a stopover in Zurich,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual.

  “Zurich?” She shot him a quick glance. “You’re not involved in anything, are you?”

  “Involved?” He laughed. “How do you mean involved?”

  “I still worry about you, Dan,” she said simply.

  He shrugged his shoulders in a little gesture of annoyance. “Nothing to it. I go right on to Israel from there.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  From her office on the fifth floor of the hospital, Gittel Schlossberg of the Social Service Department could see the rooftops of a considerable section of Tel Aviv, each with the black glass panels set at a forty-five-degree angle to catch the heat of the sun to supply warm water for the apartments below. A tall building blocked her view of the sea beyond, but she knew it was there, and sometimes she thought she caught the swish of the surf over the sounds of the traffic in the street below. She enjoyed the view from her window as she enjoyed driving to work through the narrow, crowded streets with their rows of houses in stained and crumbling stucco, not because it was a pretty view, but because it showed increase and growth.

  She had lived in the city most of her adult life and could remember when there was space and gardens between the houses, but she preferred it cramped and crowded, with every bit of spare land put to use and pushing toward ever-increasing suburbs. It meant that more and more people were coming, to settle and work and make the city more prosperous and strong. And as she read Miriam’s letter, teetering in her swivel chair, she day-dreamed: Her niece was coming with her family; she was coming on a visit, but perhaps she could persuade her to remain.

  Some of her colleagues on the staff were inclined to fault Gittel Schlossberg for being unprofessional in her methods. Hers was a purely pragmatic approach. If the problem, for example, was to get a job for a client, she was not above using a little genteel blackmail on a prospective employer to achieve it. And since she herself did not profit from the transaction, her conscience was clear. At the national game of protectsia, or influence, she was a past master. Needless to say, little of this ever appeared in her case records, which were spott
y at best since she regarded them as a nuisance which agency directors forced on their subordinates in order to show their authority. Whatever was important about her clients she kept stored in the highly efficient record file of her memory.

  All this was highly distasteful to her younger colleagues, who tended to be professionally objective in their approach and as scientific as the discipline permitted. On the other hand, the older members of the staff, those who knew her when she was a member of the Haganah in the days of the British occupation and remembered her numerous successes at wheedling food and medical supplies and even guns and ammunition out of the British soldiery, were devoted to her and ready to forgive her most outrageous breaches of standard operating procedure.

  When her husband was killed in the terror that preceded the War of Independence, she was left with an infant on her hands. She could easily have elected to give up her activities with the underground and assume the passive role that her new motherhood justified; instead, she had chosen to bury her grief by throwing herself into the work of defending Jerusalem, where she was living at the time. She had even enlisted her infant son in the battle; many a time she had been able to cross the lines the British had established around the Jewish Quarter, to deliver an important message or even needed medicines, by approaching the guards with her babe in arms. Rather than turn back a mother and child, they had let her pass.

  Although not a religious woman, she had a mystical faith in the old Yiddish proverb that for every pot there is a cover, that in every problem the good Lord presented her there was a matching problem which provided the solution to both. There had been plenty of men when she was younger who had offered the problem of their bachelorhood as a matching problem to her widowhood with the idea that marriage would solve both. But this one problem she had refused to solve. She had remained single, faithful to the memory of her husband, and had been both father and mother to her child.

  A tiny woman, she was a shade over five feet, with a mass of gray hair not so much combed and set as piled on top of her head, which she would poke at periodically to keep from falling down. She was a dynamo of energy. Characteristically, no sooner had she finished reading Miriam’s letter than she reached for the telephone and began calling real estate agencies. It was in accordance with her system of keeping her desk clear of notes and memorandums by doing what had to be done, immediately.

  “Shimshon? Gittel speaking.” No need to announce which Gittel, even though it was a common name in Israel.

  From Shimshon, a cautious, “Shalom, Gittel.” Calls from Gittel frequently involved finding housing for one of her indigent clients and he would be expected to shave his commission to boot.

  “I have a very special problem, Shimshon, and so I’m calling the best first….”

  “A furnished apartment at this time of year, Gittel? And for only three months? I’ll look around, of course, but it’s not going to be easy. I have nothing on my books right now.”

  Next she called Mair and then Itomar and then Shmuel, explaining to each why she was calling him first. Finally, she called Chaiah, who being a woman required a slightly different approach and tone. “I’m calling you, Chaiah, because it’s a special problem that only a woman can really understand. You see, it’s my own sister’s daughter….”

  And it was Chaiah who voiced the difficulties that the others had hinted at. “Look, Gittel, you’ve got to be realistic. A furnished apartment like you want is not easy to get at any time, but right now, at this time of year, it’s practically impossible. And you want it in Talbieh or Rehavia. The university men and the doctors who are going outside to teach or do research have already made their arrangements. If you had approached me in August, I could have given you your pick of half a dozen, but they’ll be coming in January, you say. Who has a furnished apartment to rent at that time of year? I rented one last week, but it was for a whole year. And the kind of money they can pay, it’s out of the question. My advice is to look around for a place in one of the hostels in the Old City or one of the convents that takes in travelers. Of course, if I hear of anything….”

  Gittel herself knew that Talbieh and Rehavia were the two most desirable sections of the city and as such, expensive, but she was certain that no other place was suitable. She did not even know her niece except through snapshots and photographs that her sister in New York had sent over the years, and Rabbi Small only from the wedding picture, but she was quite sure she knew the kind of place they would want. She knew her sister and brother-in-law, so her mind worked, and hence she knew the kind of person their daughter would be and the kind of man she would pick for a husband.

  She tilted back in her swivel chair, closed her eyes, to let her mind play with the problem, and the thought of Mrs. Klopchuk, whom she had seen professionally only the day before, came to her. A few minutes later she left her office and headed for her car in the parking lot. It was a ten-year-old Renault that moved by prayers and imprecations if she remembered to fill the gas tank. This time the car started without difficulty, which she took as a good omen. By a sort of reverse magic, it was also a good omen if she had difficulty in starting. When Gittel was determined on a course of action, there were no bad omens.

  A quarter of an hour later she was in the Klopchuk apartment sipping at a cup of coffee without which social intercourse in Israel is impossible. “I’ve been thinking of your problem and I am beginning to have doubts about your idea”—it had been her own idea—“of renting your spare room to a college girl. The money she will pay you—”

  “But the money is not important, Mrs. Schlossberg,” the woman protested. “I told you I was willing to offer her a room and board in exchange for companionship and help with the housework.”

  “Ah, but that’s what bothers me,” said Gittel. “What kind of companionship can you expect from a young college girl? And for that matter, how much help will you get? You’ll end up working for her. One night she’s got a date, and the next night she’s got to study for an exam or she has a paper to write. And you’ll say, ‘All right, I’ll do the dishes. You study.’ And if you find out that she is not a very good housekeeper, are you going to send her away after she’s moved in? You know you won’t be able to.”

  “So what can I do? I can’t afford to hire anyone.”

  “How about your sister in Jerusalem?”

  Mrs. Klopchuk shook her head stubbornly.

  “Why not?” Gittel persisted. “She’s your sister. If you need help, she’s the logical one.”

  “My sister, God bless her, on the New Year she calls me to wish me a good year. After my husband died and hers was still alive, I used to go there for the Passover. And that was all we ever had to do with each other.”

  “You are both getting on in years,” said Gittel sternly. “These family quarrels, I know what they are. Someone said something and the other one answered, and you stop talking to each other except on the coldest and most formal basis. And most of the time neither party can remember what started the coldness in the first place. You have such a big family, you can afford to be on bad terms with a sister?”

  Again Mrs. Klopchuk shook her head.

  “Look what a wonderful arrangement it could be,” Gittel said. “She could rent her apartment in Jerusalem and she could share living expenses with you here. It’s a sister. You have so much in common. You’re both of an age—”

  “She’s older.”

  “So if she should happen not to feel so good one day, you can help her. You can take care of each other and you’re both alone now—”

  “I’d cut out my tongue before I’d ask her.”

  “But if I arrange that you don’t have to, that she’ll come down and visit with you for a few months?”

  “She won’t come, I tell you. And she won’t rent her apartment to a stranger. She’s so fanatic that she wouldn’t trust anyone not to mix up her meat dishes with her milk dishes—”

  “But suppose I arrange to rent her apartment to someone she can tr
ust absolutely?” Gittel asked. “A rabbi, for instance?”

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  You are cordially invited to meet Rabbi and Mrs. Hugo Deutch and to wish godspeed to Rabbi and Mrs. David Small, who are leaving for an extended visit to the Holy Land. At the Temple Vestry. On Sunday, December 28.4 to 6 P.M.”

  So ran the invitation sent out to all members of the congregation. The job of drawing it up and arranging for printing and mailing had been assigned to Malcolm Slotnik, who was in the advertising business (Creative Communications by Slotnik, Direct Advertising a Specialty) and presumably was expert in this kind of thing.

  There were objections, of course, when he submitted his draft to the board.

  Bert Raymond said, “Gee, Mal, I had in mind something like, ‘You are cordially invited to a reception in honor of…’ you know, something formal.”

  “Where you been, Bert? That’s from the Middle Ages. Today everything is simple and informal. You send the other kind of invitation and people are apt to show up in tuxedo or something.”

  “Maybe you’re right, Mal,” said Marty Drexler, “but you don’t say who Rabbi Deutch is. I mean you ought to say something like… ‘ta-da, ta-da, ta-da to meet our new rabbi ta-da, ta-da, ta-da.’”

  “Yeah, but then folks might get the idea that Rabbi Small was leaving for good.”

  “So?” Marty smiled and glanced at Bert Raymond.

  “So, then there’d be a lot of questions and we might find ourselves having to do a lot of explaining. You take Al Becker, he’s one of the rabbi’s strongest supporters. Now, I got the Becker Ford-Lincoln account, and—”

  “Yeah, I see your point,” said Raymond. “As a matter of fact, I just started doing some of Meyer Paff’s law work and I don’t know how he’d take it either.”

  Stanley Agranat suggested that they ought to say, “our beloved rabbi.”

  “Since when is he your beloved rabbi?”

  “Yeah, but they always say it.”

  “Only at funerals.”

  They stood at one end of the vestry, the two rabbis and their wives, waiting for the guests to arrive. It was early yet, and members of the Sisterhood were still busy with last-minute details, stacking cups and saucers, setting out plates of cookies and sliced cake, and arguing over the arrangement of the flowers and decorations. Every now and then one of the women would appeal to the rabbis’ wives for an opinion, either because by virtue of their position, they constituted the court of highest authority or merely as an excuse to talk to the new rebbitzin.