Monday the Rabbi Took Off

by Harry Kemelman

  “Avner? … Ben Ami…. I’m here at your house, in the lobby I mean…. No, I haven’t seen Sarah yet. The house is dark, so I guess she dozed off…. No, I thought I’d wait until you got home. But there’s something important I have to tell you…. No, I’d rather not over the phone. How soon will you be home? … Half an hour? That’s all right…. No, it’s quite all right, I have another patient in the next block. I’ll see him first.”

  At the corner of Shalom Avenue and Mazel Tov Street, Roy Stedman paused and looked at his watch. It was almost seven o’clock.

  It was a cloudy, misty night, and now it began to rain. He turned up his coat collar and trudged down the street. He came to Memavet’s house. There was no car there, new or used; there was no car anywhere on the street. His watch still showed a few minutes before seven, so he waited.

  By quarter past there was still no car, and he was quite certain that none would come.

  He crossed the street and was about to ring the bell when a man came out of the apartment and carefully closed the door behind him. He looked at Roy in surprise.

  Roy saw the black bag. “Oh, you must be the doctor. I’ve got to see Mr. Memavet.”

  “That’s right. I am his doctor. Mr. Memavet is not well. He’s in bed and I don’t want him disturbed. Besides, I’ve just put him to bed and given him a shot. He’d have to get out of bed to open the door.”

  “Oh, yeah, well in that case, I guess I can come back tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I guess I might as well go. Er—good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Roy started up the street. He looked back and saw the doctor standing there, watching him. Halfway up the street he looked back again, and this time the doctor was gone. Roy stopped and then turned and retraced his steps.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  The explosion was not loud. Save for the gaping hole in the wall of the Memavet apartment and a few broken windows property damage was not great. But unlike the explosion in which Professor Carmi had lost his life a couple of months earlier, because it was early in the evening, a large crowd had gathered, drawn by the noise of the fire engines, if not by the sound of the explosion itself, and the police were hard put to cordon off the area.

  Again, the reaction to the death of the old man was quite different from that to the death of the professor. After Carmi’s death, there had been speculation in the press about why he in particular had been selected. And after a few days, it had come out that he was engaged in important agricultural research which might have resulted in a remarkable increase in the yield of certain types of ground crops. The papers had been vague about the precise nature of his research, and while one paper had announced authoritatively that he was engaged in investigating a new miracle fertilizer, another announced equally authoritatively that his work involved using brackish water to open up for cultivation thousands of acres that were now considered useless. In any case, it was generally accepted that he was an important scientist whose death was a major blow to Israel.

  But Memavet was not anyone important and was not engaged in anything that could either help or hurt Israel. And this was all the more infuriating because it meant that the bombing was a senseless and meaningless taking of life.

  There were other reactions stemming from the irony of the situation as revealed by the statement of the doctor who had visited him just shortly before the explosion. Dr. Ben Ami’s statement to the police was widely quoted in the press:

  “He was a new patient who had chosen me from the Kupat Cholim list because I lived nearby, I suppose. I had a full schedule of patients for the day even though it was the Sabbath. Sickness keeps no Sabbath, you know. But I was able to squeeze him in since I had another patient in the next street and I was early for my appointment. It was just luck that I was able to see him at all. I got there a little before seven. I rang the bell, and he called to me to come in, that the door was open. He had a bad cold and had been coughing a great deal. He had not slept, for several nights, he said. I gave him something to relieve the irritation in the throat and a hypodermic to let him get some much-needed sleep. I saw to it that he went to bed, and then I turned off the light, locked the door and left, planning to look in on him again in the morning. But evidently he did not fall asleep immediately. He must have got up a little later to get a glass of brandy from the bottle on the living-room shelf. Had he stayed in bed, he would have been alive today, I’m sure, since the main force of the explosion occurred in the living room and his bedroom window was not even broken.”

  “Imagine, he calls the doctor, gets treated right then and there, and the doctor even sees to it that he goes to bed. Believe me, my doctor wouldn’t take the trouble. He looks at you and writes a prescription, and he’s gone. You want to talk to him, to ask him some questions? He’s too busy. Five minutes—that’s his limit. And where you’re going to get a prescription filled on the Sabbath, or any night after seven, that’s no concern of his. So after all that, the poor devil gets up to pour a drink for himself—and bang!”

  “How do they know he got up to get a drink?”

  “That was in the papers. I saw it in Hamaariv. He still had the bottle in his hand when they found him. The way they figured it, the force of the explosion knocked him against this marble shelf he had in the living room. So he must have been standing near it. Smashed his skull.”

  A shaking of heads and a moment of silent reflection on the tragedy of the human condition.

  On the other hand, in certain cafés in East Jerusalem where young Arabs were wont to gather for coffee and cards and heated political discussions and where the report of any Israeli mishap, however trivial, was received with considerable joy, a joke was gleefully circulated that the name of the victim of the explosion should have been Lamavet rather than Memavet—that is, “to death” rather than “from death.”

  Of course; the terrorists immediately claimed full credit. All the various groups did, in fact. Al Fatah, based in Jordan, issued a statement: “Our brave commandos have demonstrated that they can penetrate the very center of the Jewish stronghold and that no Jew living in Palestine is safe from our vengeance. There will be no letup until the United Nations resolution is implemented and the Palestinian is given justice.”

  Intellectuals for Arab Independence, based in Lebanon, pointed out that the Israeli government was up to its old tricks of trying to enlist world sympathy by pretending that the victim of the bombing was a harmless civilian. It was well known that Memavet was connected with the Jewish Agency and had been on a secret mission to Zurich only a few days before.

  The Palestinian Committee, based in Syria, explained that 1 Mazel Tov Street was a secret Israeli Army installation, an electronic nerve center which their brave commandos had destroyed and that Memavet’s death had been purely accidental.

  Cairo’s Al-Ahram asserted that the Israeli government was concealing the true facts of the incident. It quoted the head of the Palestine Liberation League who said that a secret strategy meeting was being held at 1 Mazel Tov Street at the time, that it had been attended by a number of high Israeli officials and that the death toll might reach fifty.

  The Anglo-Arab Friendship League in its newsletter suggested that there was ample evidence that the bombing had been done by Israelis for the purpose of enlisting world sympathy as they had attempted to do by planting bombs in commercial airliners and blaming the Arabs for it.

  * * *

  The rabbi heard the news on the late radio newscast. The first shock of realizing that the man killed was someone he had been with, spoken to, only that very morning was immediately translated into the feeling that he hould take some action. He called Stedman.

  “Yes, I heard the news earlier around the lobby here. Shocking!”

  “I think we should go to the police,” said the rabbi.

  “To the police? Why should we go to the police? What can we tell them that will be of any earthly use, Rab
bi?”

  “We could tell him what he told us. You could play that tape for them. About his enemy—”

  “Forgive me, Rabbi, but you just aren’t thinking straight. If it had been whatsisname—Rasnikov—who had been killed, then our story of Memavet’s enmity might be of some use to them. But it was Memavet that was killed.”

  “Still, I think they should know.”

  “Believe me, they know. Or if they don’t they’ll know soon enough. They’ll just inquire at that shop where he had his desk and—”

  “How do you know he told the story there?”

  “Come now,” said Stedman, “you heard what the mechanic said. He said he was a crazy old man who’d tell you his troubles—how did he put it? Oh, yes—at the drop of a hat. You don’t suppose we were the first to hear that story, then, three perfect strangers? If he told it to us, you can be sure he’s told it to anyone who would listen.”

  The rabbi was uncertain. “But still, I think—I mean it would do no harm if—”

  “Rabbi,” Stedman said with assurance, “I’ve done a lot of traveling in foreign countries, and there’s one thing I’ve learned: You don’t get involved with police if you can avoid it. I know in Israel you think it’s different but take my word for it: Police are the same the world over. Now there’s nothing we can tell them except that we saw him on the morning of the day he was killed. There may have been any number of visitors after us. That doctor saw him just a little before it happened.”

  “Still, I’d like to talk to you about it Perhaps we could get together sometime tomorrow—”

  “I’m sorry, Rabbi, but I’m off to Haifa first thing in the morning. I’ll be away a few days. We’ll get together when I get back.”

  The rabbi hung up, but he was troubled. Everything Stedman had said was true, but he still felt that they ought to go to the police. And yet, he could not go alone. It might raise questions of why Stedman had not similarly reported, and that might make for the very involvement his friend was trying to avoid.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  Hey, how come the tan, V. S.? You been in Florida, or did you buy one of those sun lamps?”

  “Florida? No, Katz and I were in Israel.”

  “Israel? No kidding. Hey, guys, V. S. was in Israel. When did you get back?”

  “Day before yesterday. We just went over for ten days—on business.”

  It was the Sunday morning Brotherhood Breakfast, and the members were still drifting in, still standing around greeting one another, as the members of the committee set up the round tables, laid the tablecloths and silverware—quite unlike Sisterhood affairs where everything was made ready the day before.

  They crowded around Markevitch. “How was it there, V. S.?”

  “How was the weather?”

  “Any Arabs take a shot at you, V. S.?”

  “You starting a branch in Israel, V. S.? You becoming one of these international financial wizards?”

  “Tell me, are the people worried? Are they scared?”

  “Scared?” boomed V. S. Markevitch. “Let me tell you something: You can go out walking, any city there, anytime day or night. We’d go out for a walk after midnight, me and Katz, and on dark streets, and nobody thought anything of it.”

  “Did you get to see all the sights? Where’d you go?”

  “Oh, most of the time we were in the hands of the Ministry of Industrial Development guys. They showed us around, and they introduced us to some of the big shots in the government. It was quite a trip.”

  “Did you get to Jerusalem? Did you see the rabbi?”

  “Yeah,” said V. S., “we saw him. We were with him pretty much all one day. He showed us around.”

  “Did he show you King David’s Tomb?”

  “How about the Chagall windows? That was the first thing I saw when I went.”

  “You went to the Hadassah Hospital, didn’t you?”

  “I hope you visited Mean Shearim.”

  “The most impressive place we saw when we went over was the Yad Vashem. You got a chance to see that?”

  Markevitch, grinning from ear to ear, turned from one questioner to the other. Finally, he held up both hands as if in surrender. “To tell the truth, guys, we didn’t get a chance to see any of those places. Like I said, the rabbi was showing us around. He figured we’d want to see the Wall, which we did. And he showed us through the Old City, which we could have done without. I mean, as far as I’m concerned it’s just a bunch of smelly little alleys. And then we went over to take a look at the university, and that took up pretty much the whole day. To tell the truth”—he lowered his voice to a loud whisper—“I got the impression that the rabbi didn’t know half the places you guys mentioned.”

  “Yeah? By now I would’ve thought he’d know every little nook and cranny.”

  Markevitch shrugged. “That’s what we figured. To tell the truth, that was one of the reasons we called him. We figured he’d know what there was to see.”

  “I guess maybe he just hasn’t had time to go sightseeing. I suppose he’s at the university library all day long—”

  “You kidding?” Markevitch was scornful. “When he took us out there, he admitted he’d only been there a couple of times before.”

  “So what’s he do there?”

  “As near as we could make out, he just loafs, maybe takes a walk, stops in at a café for coffee—like that.”

  “I know he’s no ball of fire, but I figure in Jerusalem and all—say, did he mention when he was coming home?”

  Markevitch shook his head slowly. “Not a word. And that’s kind of funny when you come to think of it. I mean, you’d think that saying good-bye, he’d say something like ‘See you in Barnard’s Crossing.’ But not a word. Just good-bye.”

  “What are you getting at, V. S.?”

  “Well, you know that idea I talked about at our last meeting, you know, about us having two associate rabbis. Well, I kind of sounded him out on it.”

  “You didn’t, V. S.!”

  “Sure, I did. You know my motto: If you don’t ask, you don’t get to know. Why shouldn’t I? Maybe I’m not a board of director, but I’m a member in good standing. My dues are paid up.”

  “All right, so you asked. What happened?”

  “Nothing!” said Markevitch triumphantly. “He wasn’t happy, and he wasn’t sore. He just wasn’t interested one way or the other. Just kind of polite.”

  “Maybe he was playing it cozy.”

  Markevitch gave the other a prod with his elbow and winked knowingly. “Maybe he was, and maybe he just wasn’t interested one way or the other. To tell the truth, we were kind of a little annoyed with our rabbi. I mean if he’s our rabbi, we got a right to expect him to rabbi for us. You go to Washington, and you tell your Congressman you’re there, and he’ll be interested in your problems. He’ll try to help you, or at least he’ll make you think he’s going to help you. The least he’ll do is have someone from his office show you around. Right? Well, we figured we could count on the rabbi the same way. Take like for instance we went to the Wall. Right? So you expect you’re with your rabbi right there, he’ll say a prayer for you at the Wall. That’s the holiest place we got, and if you got a chance to have a prayer said there, well that’s something you wouldn’t want to pass up. Right? So when we asked him, he says he’d rather not, and we should do it on our own. Well, of course we did, me and Katz, but you know it isn’t the same thing. We had to say it in English for one thing—”

  From the head table came the sharp rap of the gavel, and the chairman called out, “Will you take your seats please? Will everybody please be seated?”

  There was a scurrying to take places, while those still engaged in conversation automatically lowered their voices.

  “That sure is funny. What do you figure it means, V. S.?”

  Martevitch dropped his voice to a whisper that could not be heard much beyond the six or eight tables in the immediate vicinity. “Let me put it this
way: Markevitch is not one to shoot off his mouth, but Markevitch has a sawbuck which hell bet against anybody’s V-note that our rabbi when he took off for Israel took off for good.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  While the police, in the person of Chaim Ish-Kosher, and the Shin Bet, as represented by Avner Adoumi, were “cooperating,” the fact that they were meeting in Adoumi’s small dusty office on the top floor of Police Headquarters that had been temporarily assigned to Intelligence rather than in Ish-Kosher’s much more comfortable and spacious office on the first floor at the opposite end of the building suggested that the cooperation might be a little one-sided.

  The personal styles of the two men were different. Ish-Kosher, in blue uniform with a white shirt and black tie, his tunic pressed and buttoned, exuded an air of brisk, businesslike efficiency; but he also smiled easily, an executive type of smile, a quick flashing of even white teeth to denote interest and understanding. Avner Adoumi, on the other hand, a big, burly, bullet-headed man with close-cropped hair now gray with few traces of its former blondish red, was tieless and in shirt sleeves. His collar open at the throat, like the yarmulke worn by Ish-Kosher, was something of symbol in the involved politics of Israel. He was brusque, authoritarian, and rarely smiled, and when he did, it was almost against his will.

  “And how is Mrs. Adoumi?” asked Ish-Kosher politely.

  “She’s at Hadassah for a couple of days’ observation.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s nothing. Just some tests.”

  “The shock of the explosion?”

  “The doctor says not She’ll probably be home tomorrow. And then later she may have to go in again for a few days.” His eyes flicked at Ish-Kosher’s yarmulke. “I understand that you people have arranged things so that I couldn’t visit her on the Sabbath if she’s still there.”