Monday the Rabbi Took Off

by Harry Kemelman

  “And he knew what your position is, the kind of work you do?”

  “Oh, certainly. Not because he was a friend, you understand, but”—he smiled faintly—“because there was a possibility that my wife’s sickness might have some connection with my work. Gittel never tires of telling me that if I want my wife to get well, I should give up my job.”

  Gittel nodded vigorously. “And you should, Avner.”

  Before Adoumi could retort, the rabbi said, “It explains things, doesn’t it?”

  “What does it explain?” demanded Adoumi.

  “It explains why he did not notify the police when he found the bomb,” said the rabbi triumphantly.

  “What bomb? What are you talking about?” Adoumi was exasperated.

  Stedman and Gittel were equally mystified, but they remained silent.

  “Look here. Dr. Ben Ami comes here and parks his car in front of your door. Then he realizes that you are probably not at home because the apartment is dark. Some doctors are reluctant to see a married woman alone, or the women are, or the husbands. Whatever the reason, he decides to see his other patient first. He probably knows you’ll be along shortly, and he can see your wife after he’s seen his other patient. But the other patient is in the corresponding apartment on the next block, and there is an alley between the two streets. So he takes his bag and walks down the alley.” He got up and walked over to the window and stood looking out into the alley between the house and the embankment. “It was a cloudy night, misty. Later it began to rain, if you remember. So probably he used his flashlight to light his way along the alley, which must have been pretty dark at the time. My guess is that he saw the bomb on the sill of this window which can’t be seen too easily from the street.”

  “This window? You are suggesting it was on my window?”

  The rabbi nodded. “I would think so. Gittel claimed all along it was you they were after. I think she’s right. She has said that you have a very important position in the government.”

  “Of course, I was right,” said Gittel smugly. “Why would the terrorists be interested in this old used car dealer? I’ve said from the beginning it was you they were after, Avner.” To the rabbi she said, “Avner has a very important position. Why, in Tel Aviv, before he came here—”

  “Sha, Gittel. You talk too much,” said Adoumi. “So you think the bomb was on my windowsill, Rabbi? And Ben Ami saw it?”

  “I would say so.” He leaned back so that he was sitting on the edge of the windowsill. “I don’t know what I’d do if I came across a bomb as Dr. Ben Ami did. I’d be scared to death, I suppose. It was armed and could go off at any moment. What could he do? Run? Try to hurl it away? He had no way of knowing how long it had been there and when it was due to go off. I’d say he acted very sensibly. He remembered that the stories in the newspapers carried instructions on how to disarm it—by pushing in the plunger. Then normally, he would have called the police, and they would have come in several cars and searched the area and frightened your wife out of her wits in the bargain. So instead, he called you because he knew, I suppose, that the terrorists and their activities were even more your concern than they were the concern of the police. In any case, he knew you’d know what to do. He called you and said that he had something important to tell you.”

  Adoumi nodded slowly.

  “And what did he tell you when he saw you?”

  “Only that after he examined her, he said he thought she ought to come into the hospital for observation and some more tests.”

  “But he phoned you before he had examined her.”

  “Well, I suppose he had been thinking of it—”

  “Then wouldn’t he have said there was something he wanted to discuss with you or talk over with you rather than that he had something important to tell you?”

  “I get what you’re driving at,” said Adoumi. “He goes down the alley and sees the bomb. He disarms it by pushing in the plunger and then calls me. Then instead of waiting around for me to come home, he goes to see Memavet first. No reason why he shouldn’t. He wouldn’t just stand there. But even if I accept your account of what happened between him and Memavet, I don’t understand why he would then reactivate the bomb. You said it was to make the killing look like a terrorist crime, but why did he have to? He could have said he rang Memavet’s bell and there was no answer—”

  “Because Roy was there!” the rabbi exclaimed. “When he opened the door to leave, there was Roy. To be sure, the death was accidental, but it was the result of violence. There would have been an investigation, and would everyone have believed it had been purely accidental? He had established himself here in Israel and was liked and respected. Would that continue after the police started digging? And if he did nothing, the body would be found, the next day perhaps, and Roy would come forward to say that he had seen the doctor leaving the apartment and closing the door behind him. But then he thought of the bomb and realized he could make it appear a terrorist act—and he knew they would immediately claim the credit for it because they always do. And of course, they did plant the bomb originally. So he reactivated it and placed it on the corresponding window of Memavet’s apartment.”

  “But Sarah, he was endangering her,” Gittel objected.

  “Was he, Mr. Adoumi?” asked the rabbi. “In the newspaper description of the bomb, it said that it was of limited range and power.”

  “That’s right,” said Adoumi. “The noise and the shock, of course—but he gave her a sleeping pill. She awoke but went right to sleep again. Poor devil—I can’t help feeling sorry for him.” He got up from his chair and began pacing the floor while all three of his visitors sat silent, following him with their eyes. “Maybe we haven’t got anywhere with Abdul because we’ve been harping on the connection with Memavet,” he mused, seemingly oblivious of his guests. “Maybe if we change our line of questioning—” He broke off to turn to Stedman. “I—I am sorry,” he said awkwardly. “Sometimes, mistakes are made—you understand—it is the safety of the state—”

  “I understand,” said Stedman. “I have no hard feelings toward you.”

  “Thank you.” Adoumi smiled sheepishly. “And he was responsible for the bombing, you know—just by being there.” He looked from one to the other of his guests uncertainly. “Rabbi, I want to thank you, and you too, Gittel, for bringing them here—I—”

  “You should have known, Avner,” she scolded, “that the son of a man like Mr. Stedman would not be mixed up with terrorists—or a friend of a nephew of mine.”

  “I—I should have known.”

  She looked sharply at him and then at her nephew and his friend, who were both grinning. “Men!” she exclaimed, striding to the door. “Well, are we to spend the whole afternoon here and Miriam at home wondering what happened to us?”

  Meekly, Stedman and the rabbi followed her to the car.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY

  They’ve got a flight out Monday,” said the rabbi. “Dan said he’d try to drop by sometime tomorrow to say goodbye.”

  “But why can’t Roy finish the year?” asked Miriam.

  They were alone in the apartment, Gittel having taken Jonathan to the park. The rabbi shrugged and didn’t answer immediately. He went to the stove and poured himself a cup of tea, looked questioningly at her, and poured another.

  He brought both cups to the table. “It’s probably best,” he said only after he had sipped cautiously at the cup. “The boy got off on the wrong foot. And then he suffered a pretty traumatic experience. I don’t think he’d be able to do much in the way of studying the rest of the year. Besides, there might be some danger—from Abdul’s Arab friends, who wouldn’t know what had happened except that they had gone off together, he and Abdul, and he is free while Abdul is in custody.”

  “And Dan?”

  “Under the circumstances, he couldn’t very well just ship him off alone.”

  “But his book—”

  “So he’ll come back a lit
tle later. Or maybe he’s got enough material now to sit down and write it.” He drained his cup. “At the end of next week, we will have been here three months. We ought to begin thinking—”

  “Oh, but Gittel said she had seen Mrs. Klopchuk and she was quite agreeable to our staying on for a while if we wanted to.”

  “No, I didn’t mean just this apartment,” said the rabbi. “I meant that we ought to begin thinking of going back to the States.”

  “Oh?” She controlled her surprise, waiting for him to go on.

  He was embarrassed. “The last thing they need here in Israel is another rabbi. It’s outside that they need them. Don’t you understand? A doctor goes where there’s sickness, and a rabbi, too, goes where he’s needed.”

  “But your idea was to give up the rabbinate if you stayed on.”

  “I know,” he said sadly. “That’s a kind of daydream that occurs every now and then to anyone whose work carries with it responsibility for others. But it’s only a daydream, and sooner or later you have to come back to reality and pick up where you left off.”

  “Was it this business with Roy….”

  “I suppose it helped trigger my decision, but I imagine I came to it a long time ago. I’ve been wrestling with the problem for some time you know, even before we came here.”

  “But when you broached the idea to me—”

  “I was half hoping you’d object. It would have made it so much easier. But I’m glad you didn’t because, of course, it’s something I had to decide for myself.”

  There was a pounding on the door, and she got up to open to Jonathan and Gittel.

  “I played football,” Jonathan shouted. “Didn’t I, Gittel? Tell them. There were some kids, and they started to play, so I played, too.”

  “Why, that’s wonderful,” said his father.

  “He’s quite a kicker,” said Gittel.

  The rabbi looked at his watch. “It’s later than I thought. It’s time to go to the synagogue for Havdalah. Do you want to come, Jonathan? You’ll have to change your clothes.”

  “All right. It won’t take me long. You’ll wait for me, won’t you? Will you help me with my jersey, Gittel?”

  “Sure. Come along, Jonathan.”

  The rabbi leafed through his pocket diary and said to Miriam, “If we take off a week from Monday, we will get home three months to the day. I’d like that. Maybe you could call the airline tomorrow and see if we can get a flight.”

  When the rabbi and his son had left, Gittel said, “You know, Miriam, I didn’t have time to tell you before, and I didn’t like to say it in front of him, but Avner Adoumi was very impressed with your David, and—and, so was I. He did a fine thing for the Stedmans, but also it was very good for Israel.”

  “But not so good for Dr. Ben Ami,” said Miriam, “and I feel sorry for him. The one time you took me to see him, I was in something of a state, and he was kind and gentle and very helpful. I wonder what will happen to him?”

  “Dr. Ben Ami? Nothing will happen to him.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Of course not Adoumi is not police. The Shin Bet work largely on their own, I imagine. And if he does have to report to a superior, it would probably be merely to tell him that he is satisfied that Roy had no connection with the terrorists, and that will end it.”

  “But he can’t simply ignore what Ben Ami did.”

  “What terrible thing did he do? That business in Russia? There is no proof of that, only Memavet’s story. Always, when you make an administrative decision, the person affected thinks you had it in for him personally. In any case, what happened in Russia years ago is no business of Adoumi’s.”

  “But he killed Memavet,” Miriam protested.

  “Yes, but your David proved that it was an accident and that Ben Ami was acting in self-defense. It must have been something like that because Ben Ami wouldn’t recognize one former prisoner out of the thousands he dealt with, but Memavet would remember him. So what else? He didn’t report finding the bomb? He tried to; he disarmed it and called Adoumi to tell him about it.”

  “But then he rearmed it and exploded it.”

  “True, but essentially without doing any harm, because Memavet was already dead. He damaged the building, to be sure, but it’s his brother’s building. I doubt if he would want to lodge a complaint even if he were to find out about it. No, I’m sure by the time Ben Ami gets back, that’s the way Adoumi will think of it, and take no action against him, or even say anything to him. You’ll see, when Ben Ami gets back, he will probably go right on treating Sarah.”

  “I won’t be here to see, Gittel. We’re leaving and returning to the States, in a week or so.”

  For once, Gittel’s assurance and poise left her. “But I thought you said—”

  “That David wanted to stay on? I’m sure he does, but he knows he has to go back. He knew it all along deep down.”

  “It has been lonely here with Uri in the Army,” said Gittel sadly, “and I hoped that at last I would have a family—to visit, to help. And now you are going away, and Uri will get married, and I will be more alone than ever.”

  Impulsively Miriam went over to Gittel and sat down and put her arm around her. “Don’t be sad, Gittel, we’ll be coming back regularly—to relax, to renew and refresh ourselves.”

  “I am sad,” Gittel admitted, “but it is for you. It is sad to think of you returning to the Exile when you could have remained here in the Promised Land. But go in health and return in health. Your David is a smart man. Maybe next time he can arrange to stay.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-ONE

  When I got your cable, I was sure you were bringing home some girl,” said Betty Deutch as she maneuvered her car expertly out of the airport and onto the highway that led to Barnard’s Crossing and home. “You said, ‘We are arriving’ instead of just ‘Arriving.’ It seemed an uncharacteristic extravagance to use two extra words, and then I thought it was your way of alerting me that you were coming with a girl you had picked up or who had picked you up.”

  Stedman laughed. “That was shrewd of you, Bet, but it wasn’t a girl; it was Roy. I thought we’d come here for a week or so; but Laura met the plane at Kennedy, and Roy decided to go home with her first.”

  “Oh, I would have loved to have him down for a while. You know how I feel about him, Dan.”

  “Well, he’s your only nephew—”

  “When you have no children of your own, a nephew becomes something more than a nephew, even more than an only nephew.”

  “Well, he’ll come down for a nice long visit after he gets settled,” he promised.

  “That’s wonderful. He must have worked hard to get through so early. He’s taken his exams already?”

  “Well no,” said Dan. “There was some mixup—”

  “He’s all right, isn’t he?” she asked quickly. “He didn’t get ill or anything?”

  “Oh, no. He’s fine. I’ll tell you all about it when we get home. No sense in my having to repeat it to Hugo. How is he, by the way?”

  She would have preferred to talk further about her nephew, but she knew her brother and knew he was not to be drawn. “Well, Hugo is in good health. He’s always in good health,” she added, “but he can be very aggravating at times.”

  Although she was intensely loyal to her husband, she was not blind to his faults, and although she would never mention them to an outsider, she did not hesitate to admit them to her brother, who was, after all, family and hence in a sense even closer than spouse.

  “It’s hard to be married to a rabbi; they’re home so much of the time. They’re around and underfoot. And then you never can tell when they’re going to have to run off to some special meeting, maybe to substitute for a speaker that didn’t show up. So you prepare a nice dinner and plan on going to a movie afterward, and there you are eating alone and watching TV afterward instead. Or it might be some youngster who is in trouble, or thinks he’s in trouble, and has come to talk about it.
And of course, it has to be right then and there because otherwise he’ll run away from home or commit suicide or elope with someone quite unsuitable, and you sit and wait while the dinner gets spoiled, wondering whether to go ahead and eat by yourself or wait while you listen to the murmur of voices in the study and try to guess from the sound whether they’re finishing up or will go on for a while.”

  Stedman laughed. “But surely you ought to be used to that by now.”

  “Some things you never get used to. When the roast is overdone, it doesn’t help to remember that it was overdone last week too. But what I was going to say is that all that is nothing compared to living with a rabbi who is not actually holding a pulpit. When Hugo retired, he was full of ambition; he was going to edit his sermons and publish them in book form; then another book was going to be worked up from his notes on counseling; and another was a book on the Jewish holidays. He was full of ambition, full of the wonderful things he was going to do now that he finally had the necessary time. He had his typewriter overhauled and he laid in a supply of paper and carbons and an extra typewriter ribbon and a special kind of paper that made it unnecessary to erase if you made a mistake. And for just three days he went to his study right after breakfast and stayed there for a couple of hours. Then the next day he decided to take a walk first. I went into his study, not to spy, you understand, just to clean up and dust. And all there was were a few sheets of paper on which he had typed things like ‘the quick brown fox’ and ‘Four score and seven years ago’—that kind of thing.”

  “Well, sometimes it’s a little hard to get started.”

  “He never did get started, Dan,” she said softly.

  “I suppose all people who retire have to take a little time to adjust.”

  “But it’s much worse for a rabbi,” she insisted. “There is so much that he can’t do. He has a certain image in the community that he has to live up to. Other people, when they retire, can play golf every day and cards every evening. They can go to the movies or read detective stories. But a rabbi is supposed to be on a higher plane; at least he thinks he is. It’s all right to play golf occasionally, but if he’s seen on the links every day, people will begin to wonder. We used to walk over to the library because it was a mile or so away from our house. It was a good distance for a nice brisk walk, and it gave us a destination of sorts. And we’d walk along the shelves and look at the books and every now and then he would point to a detective story and ask me to take it out on my card. The poor man didn’t want the librarian to know he was reading something light. He’d take out books on sociology and comparative religion, that sort of thing, on his own card. But it was the books he had me take out that he read.”