Monday the Rabbi Took Off

by Harry Kemelman

  “Oh?”

  “I go when I feel like it now. It had become a matter of habit with me in America, and I didn’t want it to be a matter of habit.”

  “It will have to be when you go back, won’t it?”

  “If I go back.”

  Stedman waited for him to go on and, when he did not, decided not to press him. “Roy’s going directly to the auto dealer’s house,” Dan said as they set off in that direction. “And I thought this would be a good chance for you to meet him. I called and told him about our little visit to the garage and that I might drop in to see Memavet. Well, he was pretty excited. He suggested we go today, and I agreed because I didn’t want to disappoint him. You know, if I had said it was the Sabbath and maybe we’d go next week, he might think I was trying to put him off. I’m sure this is the key to the problem of our association.”

  “You mean buying his friendship?”

  “No, of course not. But while he’s at the university, when do I get a chance to see him? For dinner once a week maybe. And he usually has to get back early. But if I had a car, he’d take a few days off every now and then and we’d drive up to the Galilee or down to the Negev. We’d see a lot of each other. I know people all over the country. He’d get a chance to meet them, Israelis, and he’d get their point of view. Back at school, he’d have a different slant on things. He’d—”

  The rabbi saw the street sign. “Here’s Shalom Avenue now.”

  “Good. We’re meeting him in front of the apartment block. It’s quite a way down. Tell me, do you know anything about cars?”

  “I can drive one. That’s about all.”

  “Then if you don’t mind, I’ll just say that we had a prearranged date, and you agreed to come along.”

  “All right.”

  Roy was already there when they arrived, studying the sign in front of the new building. It was a large sign and was already considerably weathered. It stated that the Resnik Construction Corporation was going to erect a large complex of apartment houses—central heating, central gas supply, outlets for television and radio antennas, adequate closet space—and that it would cover the entire block. According to the architect’s drawing painted in one corner, there would be seven entrances on Kol Tov Street and a like number on Mazel Tov Street, and the two rows of houses would enclose a sizable area which would be landscaped with trees and shrubbery, shaded walks and terraces. Little stick figures were shown walking along the paths. The original notice stated that the apartments would be ready for occupancy early in 1971, but it had been painted over, and it now read: READY FOR IMMEDIATE OCCUPANCY.

  The rabbi looked about him, at the vacant lot they had just passed, an acre or two of stones and rubble with here and there a patch of grass or a low bush to give a touch of green to the yellow clayey soil. The few trees were low gnarled olive trees, with tortured, twisted branches. Beyond the house was another such lot, but this a little less depressing by the accident of a Bedouin sitting on a rock eating his lunch while his little flock of goats nuzzled at the few bits of greenery.

  Mazel Tov Street, like Kol Tov which paralleled it on the other side of the complex, was as yet unpaved, narrow and rutty, and slippery with the thick yellow mud of Jerusalem.

  “What was it, number One? Then it must be down at the other end,” said Roy. “This is number Thirteen.”

  Fastidiously, they picked their way along Mazel Tov Street—a street by virtue of a couple of passes by a bulldozer—hopping from one dry patch to the next until they came to the embankment at the end. They looked over it curiously at the roadway below, then walked back to the door of the house.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anybody living here,” said Roy.

  “There’s a name card in the letterbox,” observed his father. “This must be it.”

  He knocked on the door, and a gruff voice from within called out, “Come in. The door is open.”

  They entered to a large, bare room. They saw a few folding chairs, but nothing in the way of furniture—no tables, no rugs, no curtains, no lamps. The lone figure in the room did not rise, but motioned them to sit down.

  He was a short, thin man, and almost totally bald. He was in pajamas and bathrobe. A vein throbbed perceptibly in his right temple, and periodically a tic developed in the cheekbone below which he seemed able to control by a quick grimace, a pulling away of the right corner of his mouth. Otherwise, the corners of his mouth drooped so that the lower lip seemed to push against the upper in a perpetual pout.

  “You are the people who made inquiries at the shop the other day?” He spoke in a throaty, guttural Hebrew.

  “That’s right,” said Dan. “My name is Stedman, and this is my son. This is my friend, Small.” A natural delicacy kept him from identifying him as a rabbi.

  On a narrow marble shelf attached to the wall about shoulder height, a kind of mantelpiece, there was a bottle and some glasses. Memavent poured himself a glass and looked inquiringly at his visitors. “Some brandy? I’m afraid it’s all I can offer you.” When they shook their heads, he went on, “I’ve got a little cold and this helps.” And indeed, his voice was very hoarse, and he ended with a spasm of coughing.

  “That sounds like a pretty bad cold,” said Stedman.

  “Yes, my neighbor across the way, who is herself not well, recommended her doctor to me. He was on my Kupat Cholim list, so I called and he said he’d come—today, tomorrow, maybe the day after, whenever he gets here. In this country you have to learn to be patient. My furniture, rugs, a sofa and some chairs, I ordered them more than a month ago, before I moved in. I’ll be lucky if I get them in another month. These chairs and my bed and a table in the kitchen, I brought them from my old place. But you’re not interested in my troubles. You want to buy a car. Tell me what you want, how much you want to spend, and I’ll get it for you.” He had switched from Hebrew to Yiddish and, when he got on the subject of cars, to a heavily accented English, as if he wanted to be sure they understood every word. This was the pattern he followed for the rest of the meeting—Hebrew for general matters, Yiddish for personal matters and English when he talked business.

  “You don’t have any cars actually in stock?”

  “No, I’m a broker. You wish to buy an apartment or a house, you go to a broker. You don’t expect him to be the owner of the house. The same with stocks and bonds. Why not with cars? In this country, a man comes to stay for a year, a university professor maybe. Then there’s a death in the family, and he has to rush back to England or the States, and he has no idea when he will return. The best thing for him to do is to sell his car. If he takes it to a secondhand dealer, he will get a fraction of its value. If he advertises in the papers, he may have to wait who knows how long. But if he comes to me, I can probably sell it for him in a day or two and at a better price than the secondhand dealer will offer him, although perhaps not as good as what he could get if he sold it himself. How do I do it? People know of me. One tells another. So people come to me—those who want to buy and those who want to sell, and it’s just a matter of matching them up, the buyers and the sellers.”

  “Are there many like you in the used car business?” asked Roy.

  “I don’t know of any others, young man, and if I did, you wouldn’t expect me to give you their names, now would you? And it’s not always used cars. You’d be surprised how many times a dealer in new cars finds it necessary to sell off one or more of his cars at a sizable discount—quietly, discreetly. And at how much of a discount will depend on what his situation is. And I am apt to have information about that, too.”

  “You got a line on a new car now?” asked Roy eagerly.

  “Not right now. How soon do you want a car? How much do you want to spend? What make are you interested in?”

  They talked cars for a while, largely Roy and Memavet, with Dan Stedman occasionally interjecting a remark. They discussed the relative merits of Fiats and Peugeots, of Renaults and Volkswagens; power and fuel economy; cost and resale value. Fina
lly Memavet said, “I think I know what you want, and I’ve got a line on just the car for you. Be here tonight at seven o’clock, and I’ll have something for you.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Dan.

  “When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, my friend, you get to know your customers,” said Memavet.

  “Did you originally have a car agency?” asked the rabbi, curious about this strange man and his gruff manner. “Or did you start out as a broker?”

  Memavet grimaced. “I came to this country without any money, and with no friends or relatives to help out. I came with just the clothes on my back, and they were practically rags. I knew cars, or rather gas engines. So if I had been healthy, I would have become an auto mechanic. But since I was a sick man, just risen from the dead you might say—”

  “What do you mean, risen from the dead? Then your name—”

  “That’s right. Memavet means ‘from death.’ The government here is eager to have you change your name to a Hebrew one. You pay a lira and fill out a form and that’s it. So why should I continue to carry a name given to my grandfather or great-grandfather by some Cossack, when for a lira I could change it to something meaningful. I rose from the dead, so I called myself Memavet.” He laughed, a throaty gurgle of a laugh, pleased at the effect on his visitors.

  “You mean you were so sick?” the rabbi persisted.

  “No, I mean that the Russians—may the sun stop shining on them—left me for dead. That the spark had not actually gone out is a minor detail that they overlooked. It’s a national characteristic with the Russians—may all their children be girls—to overlook minor details. Their machinery frequently doesn’t run because they cannot be concerned with minor details like oil or even small parts that drop off. As they say, it’s only a little part and it’s such a big machine. Officially, I was dead.”

  “This was during the war?” Stedman asked, picking up the lead.

  “World War Two. Because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I found myself in a concentration camp. The rest of the camp was made up of Poles mostly and a few Russians. I was the only Jew.” His voice suddenly became dry and didactic like a professor lecturing a class. He spoke in Yiddish. “The Germans are efficient. When they are engaged in a sadistic cruelty, they do it efficiently. But the Russian is inefficient. Much of the time, his cruelty comes from his negligence and inefficiency. He tends to forget minor details like food or the clothing and shelter needed to face a Russian winter.

  “I was an educated man, and there weren’t many there. I was a mechanic, an engineer. Nevertheless, I was put to rough work, unskilled work out of doors. In the first month I lost fifty pounds. The only thing that sustained me was the knowledge that we were due for a visit from the district medical officer. He checked on the health of the prisoners, and it was on his decision that we were assigned to various details, inside or outside, or worst of all, the Forestry Detail. And he was a Jew.”

  Memavet tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “I can see him now: Dr. Rasnikov of Pinsk, scientist and good party member, the new breed of Jew in the Socialist paradise. You wouldn’t believe what it cost me for the chance to see him, but I managed it, just long enough to tell him I was a Jew and that if I were continued at the outside work, I would be dead in a month. I was sick and running a fever, and the only shoes I had were a couple of pieces of cloth I had torn from my coat and wrapped around my feet. He didn’t answer me, only stared. And I withdrew. It was enough. I didn’t expect him to answer. But he would remember my face. He could not answer because it was dangerous for him, too.

  “The next day we were lined up, and he walked along the line, putting a hand to a forehead of one, ordering another to open his mouth wide, taking the pulse of a third. That was the medical examination. An aide had a list and called off the names and then noted down his recommendation beside each name. He came to me, looked me over, and then said to the aide, ‘Forestry Detail.’

  “This Forestry Detail was engaged in clearing a road through the forest by chopping down trees, clearing out brush, piling up logs. Because you were working in a forest where it was theoretically possible to escape, the discipline was brutal. Small groups worked in marked-off areas. If you stepped outside the line, you were shot. You were led out on the double before dawn, and you worked until after the sun set and then marched back to camp. Anyone who couldn’t keep up was beaten, and then if he still could not keep up, he was shot. Every day fewer came back than went out.

  “I managed for three days, and then on the fourth when we were being marched back to camp, I slipped and fell. It had begun to snow, and they were racing us back against the storm when I fell. The guard kicked me and ordered me to get up. I tried. How I tried! I got to my knees only to collapse again. Another guard shouted back to the one who was standing over me to hurry up. Again he ordered me to get up, and when I could not, he pointed his rifle at me. Again the other guard shouted, and my man pulled the trigger of his rifle with as little concern as if I had been a rabbit scurrying across an open field.”

  “He shot you?”

  “He shot me, and I don’t suppose he wasted another glance at me. If the shot were not fatal, I would freeze to death—if the wolves didn’t get me first. He would report the matter back at camp, and the next day they would send out a burial detail to bring me in. It’s a curious thing, but do you know the last thought that ran through my mind before I lost consciousness? It was, now will Dr. Rasnikov think I was fit for the Forestry Detail?”

  “But you obviously did not die,” said Stedman.

  “It was a superficial wound, and maybe the cold congealed the blood. Anyway, I was found by an old peasant woman who was out gathering firewood. She kept me hidden and fed me until I was able to travel. It took me more than a year to get here, and believe me, many a time I regretted that the shot had not been fatal.”

  “Then here, here it must be a paradise for you,” Stedman said with emotion.

  Memavet’s face relaxed in a horrible grimace of a smile. “After you’ve been dead, my friend, you just live from day to day.” His voice suddenly became brisk and businesslike, and he shifted to English. “Come here tonight at seven, and I’ll probably have a car for you. Don’t fail. A good buy doesn’t wait.”

  Outside Roy asked, “What was that long rigmarole in Yiddish? Was he telling you the story of his life?”

  “No, the story of his death,” said the rabbi.

  “Oh, yeah?” He saw that the rabbi was smiling and assumed it was an example of rabbinic humor. “Well….” He was at a loss how to respond. He turned to his father. “Look, I got to split now. Do I meet you at the same place tonight?”

  “Oh, I have no intention of coming back tonight,” said Stedman.

  “But, Dad—”

  “If I return tonight,” the elder Stedman went on, “he’ll see that we’re interested and I’ll pay through the nose.”

  “But—”

  “He has my name, and he knows where to reach me. If he gets something, you can be sure he’ll call.”

  Seeing that Roy was obviously disappointed, the rabbi stepped into the breach.

  “Your father is coming to Sabbath dinner Friday evening,” he said. “Mrs. Small and I would be pleased if you would also come, Roy.”

  “Well, thanks. Sure, I guess I could make it,” he said.

  As they strolled along after Roy had left, the rabbi remarked, “That was quite a story that Memavet told us.”

  “It was,” said Dan, “and I have it all on tape.”

  “You taped it? Then this expedition was not to buy a car?”

  “Oh, I came for a car all right, but I thought it might make sense to have a record of our conversation. If there’s any hanky panky about the deal—if he’s peddling hot cars, for example—then the tape would show that my hands are clean.”

  The rabbi nodded. They walked in silence for a while, and then the rabbi said reflectively, “It’s quite a story, but
the man’s name suggests that it’s probably true.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s true, at least he thinks it is. But it’s not as unusual as you seem to think, Rabbi. Here in Israel, everyone has a story. Either they fled from the Nazis, or they fought the Arabs. Practically everyone is alive as a result of a minor miracle. Miracles are part of the climate here.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dr. Ben Ami, a big, stocky bear of a man, parked his Volkswagen against the embankment, extricated himself from behind the wheel together with his bulky doctor’s bag in one fluid motion born of long practice, and then realized that the Adoumi apartment was dark. He stopped to consider for a moment and then walked up the street a few paces to check the area between 2 and 4 Kol Tov Street where Avner Adoumi usually parked his car. It was not there. He was quite sure that his patient, Sarah Adoumi, had not left the house. She had probably dozed off before dark, and her husband had not yet returned.

  He could ring the bell, and that would awaken her. After all, he was expected, and perhaps she was not asleep but merely resting. On the other hand, he felt a certain reluctance about examining her when her husband was not present. It was almost seven, and Avner would no doubt be along in a few minutes. Perhaps it would be best to wait.

  Then he remembered his other patient, a certain Memavet whom he had never treated before, only the next street over at 1 Mazel Tov Street. Probably a minor upper respiratory infection from what he had said over the telephone. Aspirin, rest, perhaps a cough syrup to relieve the throat irritation. He could be out of there in ten or fifteen minutes, and by that time Adoumi would be home. And he rather liked the idea of ending up his day at the Adoumis. He could take his time, have a glass of tea and some friendly talk before going on home.

  Rather than get into his car and turn around in the narrow, muddy street, he set off down the alley between the embankment and the houses. It was dark and he swept his flashlight ahead of him to light his way.

  Halfway down he stood quite still and thought hard. Then he retraced his steps. There was a public phone in the lobby of the apartment house, and he rang Adoumi’s office number.