by Rhoda Lerman
He called her from the Texaco.
“Lillywhite?”
“You medieval son of a bitch. You promised not to slam the door on me.”
“Lillywhite. Lillywhite.” Yussel groaned. “My baby’s sick, Lilly-white, maybe dying. It might be connected. I touched you that night. They called that night and told me my baby was sick.”
“And I’m killing your baby? What an asshole you are.”
“I’m being punished. Lillywhite. I can’t see you. I can’t look at you. I made a terrible mistake. What do you want from me?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Lillywhite. I’m…” he whispered into the phone, “I’m so afraid.”
Babe brought Grisha home for Tishabav. His eyes were as big as boiled eggs. The north wind whistled in his chest.
Before the last meal, before the fast began, Yussel called the congregation in to hear the rules about the night of the fast and the fast day. They sat around tables, drank coffee, ate cake, said nice things to Grisha, which he wouldn’t acknowledge. “First of all, we’re again short of a minyan so we have to go to Chaim’s.” This was Yussel’s fault because he’d ignored Grisha. Grisha looked over Yussel’s head at the wall. Babe kept covering him with a pink lambswool stole. Grisha kept throwing it off his shoulders. Ernie propped his chair against the wall and slept. Everyone else, except for the kibbutzniks who had no understanding of what was happening, watched Yussel with hostile anticipation. “I guess it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let him go to see his grandmother before she died. Right?” No one said anything. They were wishing he was his father. So was he.
Yussel told them exactly what his father used to tell them. “By ritual we re-create the past. The fast begins before sundown. It lasts until after sundown tomorrow. So you shouldn’t eat too much salt tonight because you can’t drink water. No more washing than the tips of your fingers. No brushing your teeth, no sexual relations.”
Ernie’s head rose from his chest. “Who wants sex if no one brushes their teeth?” Ernie’s head dropped back on his chest.
“Sometimes people who fast twenty-four, twenty-eight hours reach a different plane, a different level of perception. If anyone needs special dispensations for illness, you should discuss that with me. Women wear white clothes. No one wears leather shoes.” Yussel desperately wanted them to feel the fear he felt, to pay attention so they wouldn’t suffer. He didn’t know how to tell them.
“What do we wear?”
“Sneakers.” The next line would be, “But my sneakers are leather.” It was.
“So put a tack in your shoe or get some dried peas from Babe. The point is you should be uncomfortable. In the days of the Temple, leather shoes meant your feet were comfortable. So wear something that isn’t comfortable. We’re trying to recapture the essence of that awesome day.”
“Rabbi,” Natalie was waving her hand in the air like a school child, “if we’re really going to try to recapture the essence of Tishabav, why don’t we invite the Indians to come and burn down the Arizona, rape the women, kill the men, and I myself will cut off the hand of a child and cook it. Like they did then back in Jerusalem.”
“That’s cute, Natalie. What amazes me is how you can know so much and get it so wrong.”
“I just want to know who decides what applies and what doesn’t apply. I mean one day you guys are absolutely literal and the next day you interpret. So who decides when to be literal and when to interpret. I’d like to know once and for all. A cow is meat and gives milk. Suddenly it’s a sin to have meat with milk? Is the cow committing a sin? Who makes these things up?”
Yussel banged his fist on the table. Bingo fell off his chair. The silverware jumped. A fork flew from the table. Yussel roared. He sounded to himself the way his father had sounded to him, to his mother, to his congregation. “What’s the matter with you? Tomorrow’s the ninth day of the fourth month, the most dangerous day in the year. The Temple was destroyed. Tishabav is a day of punishment, of bad luck. You don’t take chances on Tishabav. You don’t mess around. You don’t swim. You don’t drive. You don’t bathe. It’s a dangerous day, so don’t take it lightly. Next day, God willing, you’ll wake up in the morning. For the same money, you won’t wake up in the morning. You’ll wear sneakers or you’ll go barefoot. Natalie, I want you at Chaim’s. The other women, it doesn’t matter.”
“I can’t sleep on the bus with you guys. I can’t sleep in a house where there are no women.”
“You like to walk. You’ll walk over in the morning. And you’ll wear a skirt.”
“Why just Natalie?” the women objected.
“Ask Natalie,” Yussel answered. Everyone looked at Natalie, who, this time, didn’t have an answer.
Babe said, “You don’t have to go, Natalie. It’s five miles.”
“Natalie knows what she has to do and why. Leave it alone, Babe.”
Natalie was crying into Babe’s shoulder. Babe gave Yussel a look he had gone too far with Natalie. Everyone else filed out. Babe called out after them she had peas for their shoes if they needed any.
Before sundown, they ate a light, tasteless meal of hard-boiled eggs, cold chicken, cold farfel kugel. The men tossed their sleeping bags into Babe’s bus and left. The women wanted to stay home. They didn’t want to sleep in the houses of Chaim’s Miracles of Creation.
The men davened by Chaim. Yussel thought he heard noise upstairs. Chaim said he thought he had raccoons. Yussel asked Chaim if Grisha could sleep inside his house. Chaim said it was inconvenient, suggested they go by Mendl. Yussel didn’t bother asking Mendl. Chaim offered to take the dogs inside so they wouldn’t wake up Yussel’s men. That Yussel accepted. After services, about midnight, everyone from the Arizona climbed into the bus that was parked outside Chaim’s house, pulled their sleeping bags over their heads, and slept.
Yussel stretched out on the long backseat of Babe’s bus, his arms wrapped around a pillow, his face stuck in the softness of Lillywhite’s belly, dreaming about God, her. When he pressed the pillow, he smelled egg roll. Moonlight streamed along the floor, lit up the faces of the sleeping men, some curled up on the floor, some on the fold-out couches. Except for Grisha, the men looked like boys. Grisha still looked like butcher paper, stiff and waxy.
In his sleep, Yussel smelled something burning, a cigar. A pale figure stood above Yussel, cleared his throat. Yussel clutched his pillow, pulled his knees up to his chest to make room on the backseat. But he couldn’t feel him sit. It wasn’t his father. His father had weight, bulk. Even in a dream this thing scared him. It was a shadow of a figure, shifting, small, like a bantam-weight boxer on a bad TV set. Moonlight passed through its shroud like a flashlight. He wore Church’s oxfords. Yussel watched the red dot of the cigar tip move up and down. Yussel sat up straight.
“I’m your father’s friend. Pecky. Maybe he talked about me?”
“Where’s my father?”
“Fighting a decree, a terrible decree. Poor soul, how he suffers for all of you. Listen, it’s better if you make believe you’re sleeping. I’m only supposed to come in a dream to you.”
Yussel lay down, closed his eyes. Still he could see the red point of the cigar moving around in the dark.
“You know the story about how Rabbi Akiba meets a man with a black face, shlepping wood, and he finds out the man is shlepping wood to the fire and it’s the fire in which he is roasted every day for eternity because he’s being punished in Hell? You know that story?”
Yussel nodded, in or out of his sleep. He could smell the wood burning. He clutched the pillow, buried his face in Lillywhite, smelled egg rolls.
“So, because he was a cruel tax collector, he was in Hell and the only way out of this punishment was if his son would say Kaddish for him, but his son wasn’t even circumcised, didn’t go to shul?”
“I say Kaddish, Pecky. I go to shul.”
“Shah, I’m not talking about you. Shluf, sleep. So then Rabbi Akiba g
oes to the town the man came from, where he had been a cruel tax collector and had made everybody suffer, and Rabbi Akiba finds this uncircumcised son and teaches him, and gets him circumcised. Finally the son stands before a congregation, says Kaddish, and his father goes up to Heaven.” Pecky sighed, blew out a ring of smoke, was a ring of smoke. “You know the story?”
“I am the story.”
“I don’t have a son.” Pecky tapped Yussel lightly on the thigh. “Your father says, I should ask maybe you’d include me when you say Kaddish.”
“My father thinks I can elevate a murderer into Heaven?”
Pecky tapped him on the thigh once again. “Your father also says …” Pecky tossed his cigar out the window, pulled a fortune cookie from a pocket, snapped it open, held a little piece of parchment up to the moonlight. He read with difficulty, “God weaves your destiny from your choices. Now shluf, sleep. Tomorrow’s a tough day.”
In his dreams, Yussel smelled the wood burning, the egg rolls burning, the cigar, maybe fresh roasting, feathers. He slept better because outside it sounded like Far Rockaway, with sirens, dogs, people yelling, tires screeching. He dreamed the strange dream. He saw the long line of people. His father was standing in the line holding a piece of paper, waiting to see the king. His father wore a silver fox fur coat down to his ankles over black pajamas. A strong wind rippled the fur of the coat like waves. His doors were folded against the wind, his father huddled inside, his face rippling with terror. He banged very hard on his doors for attention.
Then Natalie was banging very hard on the window of the bus. It was morning. She was covered with dust, tears streaking through the dust on her face. She stood on one foot, then the other. Yussel had a terrible pain on the spot on his thigh where Pecky had touched him. Flames danced on Chaim’s red tile roof. Cars and pickups with revolving blue gumballs were parked behind three gleaming new fire engines in front of Chaim’s houses. The fences around the houses were burning like a wall of fire. The strings Chaim had strung around his neighborhood were wicks for a thin line of flame. Firemen in yellow rubber pants and slickers leaned against their trucks, drank coffee from paper cups. One fireman ran around with a bullhorn yelling, “All personnel accounted for? All personnel accounted for?”
Yussel had seen it all before, on his screen, the first day.
Yussel’s men were already awake and off the bus. He saw Velvl and two others carrying out the couch, its leather sides curled and crisp, its yellow padding melted like cheese, dripping over iron mesh. They carried out the smoke-blackened slab of turquoise. Mendl came with one of the onyx tables and a pile of smoking siddurs. Torahs and tallisim and all the silver from the fancy breakfront were piled up on the roofs of cars. People were dragging Chaim out the front door. Chaim was screaming he had to go back in, pummeling the backs of firemen, spilling their coffee. They tried to ignore him. Chaim’s court were embellishing on Chaim’s argument. It did no good.
The fireman with the bullhorn stopped Mendl. “All personnel accounted for? Everyone out?”
Mendl looked around for a long moment, counted heads, Chaim’s men and Yussel’s men, said, “Yes. No personnel.” Something was wrong with the way he said it.
Yussel grabbed his arm. “Mendl, your brother-in-law who sold Chaim’s house? Is he in there?”
“Pinchas? Na-ah. What would Pinchas be doing in there?”
Yussel still smelled the cigar smoke on the bus. Chaim was screaming, “Let me in! I have to get something! Let me in, for God’s sake!”
The firemen were stony-faced. They offered both sets of Jews coffee and chocolate-covered cream donuts, which of course no one could accept because it was Tishabav. Chaim’s men were now holding Chaim back by his arms. Chaim’s feet tread the air double-time. He held his hands above his head, shaking them like propellers. He yelled gibberish about money in the ceiling, blood on their hands. Yussel cornered a fireman, took a cup of coffee he offered, just held it in his hands.
“I’ve got water,” Yussel said very quietly to a fireman with a ruddy face and a handlebar mustache. “I’ll replace whatever you use.”
“It’s not the water, Reverend. Your friend doesn’t have membership, so we won’t put out the fire. We’re only saving lives. It’s a by-law. There’s no one inside.” He shrugged. “We’re legal.”
“You wouldn’t let him have membership? How much is membership? I’ll buy his membership.” Yussel went to take money from his pocket, remembered he didn’t carry any on a holy day. “I’ll send you a check.”
“He can’t have membership unless he has homeowner’s and he doesn’t have homeowner’s. Association rules.”
“You can’t change the rules?” Yussel tried to negotiate, sounded he thought, like Natalie. “You made the rules. You can’t change them?”
Chaim yelled. “And I don’t have homeowner’s because that son of a bitch Fetner wouldn’t sell me any. This is your fault, Yussel. I’m ruined and this is your fault. The blood is on your hands, Yussel. You hear me?” Velvl held Chaim in a hammerlock.
“What’s with blood, Chaim? Money’s not blood.”
“Reb Yussel, how do you hold?” Mendl yelled.
“How do I hold what?”
“Can he go in there and get his money?”
“How do you hold, Reb Yussel? What’s the ruling?”
“Let Chaim decide!”
Natalie sat on the steps of the bus and pulled off a hiking boot. Her face was ribbed with pain.
“Reb Yussel, he has all our cash in the ceiling.”
“In the ceiling, Mendl? Cash?”
“Yussel, if I don’t go in there, you’ll have to support me in the manner to which I’m accustomed. You’ll have to take care of me and all my people if you don’t let me go in.” Chaim’s hands were going around so fast Yussel was getting dizzy.
The bottom of Natalie’s sock was red. The top was white. She screwed up her face and pulled it off. Yussel looked away.
“Everything we own is in the kitchen, Yussel! Everything!” Chaim was crying. “You don’t understand.” The tears on his face had fire in them. It looked like his eyes were bleeding.
Natalie’s sock was wet with blood.
“It’s your fault, Yussel. You wouldn’t sell me homeowner’s. So they wouldn’t give me membership so now they won’t put out the fire and it’s your fault. There’s blood on your hands, Yussel.”
“That’s a lie, Chaim. You’re telling a lie!”
Natalie wrung blood from her sock. Then she shook out her boot. Red peas spilled out.
“Nu, Reb Yussel?” Mendl asked. “How do you hold?”
“It will endanger his life?” Yussel asked. Natalie wrung blood from her other sock. It was Yussel’s fault. Everything was Yussel’s fault. What have I missed this time? What haven’t I paid attention to?
“Once the roof goes…”
“It’s your fault, Yussel. Let me go in.”
“How could I sell you? I don’t have a territory. You should have bought from someone else. It’s not my fault, Chaim. It’s your fault.”
Natalie took off her other boot very gently, then the red-and-white sock, wrung blood from it, shook out the red peas. “Look at that, Reb Yussel. I guess I circumcised my feet. I found something to circumcise after all, didn’t I?”
“Reb Yussel, please.” There they were, the Miracles of Creation and his own men looking up at him with the faces of children, begging him to be a rabbi, to be a Solomon, to tell them the law, to apply the law. If Chaim didn’t get all his money out, Yussel would be responsible for him and all the families in Chaim’s court. It would have been the same if Yussel lost everything. Then Chaim would have been responsible. Although Chaim, Yussel knew, would find a way out.
“How much money you have in there, Chaim?”
Grisha took him by the arm, hissed. “Shmuck. The amount matters?”
The more blood Natalie wrung from her sock, the more ran from Chaim’s eyes. “This was your idea, Yussel. I hold y
ou responsible.”
Yussel’s leg was killing him. The spot Pecky made on his thigh pounded as if a butcher knife were stuck in it. “Okay. Okay.” Yussel took a deep breath, made his voice strong. “You can’t endanger a life for anything less than another life. Chaim can’t go in.”
Velvl released Chaim. Chaim sprang toward Yussel, ran around him in circles, pulled at his lapels. “You’ve got to let me go in, Yussel. Please. Protect yourself, Yussel. Protect your portion in the World to Come. Protect your poor family. I was a rich man. You’ll have to make me a rich man again. You’ll be ruined. You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“You can’t go in.”
“All our lives, you and me, Yussel. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do it to yourself! Your father will murder you for this.”
Then the roof collapsed and Chaim fell against Yussel, buried his face in Yussel’s chest, howled from his heart without words. As much as Yussel hated to, he put his arms around Chaim. Maybe because the firemen were there watching.
“Mendl,” Yussel said over Chaim’s shoulder, “how much money did he have in the ceiling?”
“A lot, Reb Yussel. It was a terrific decision you made. You should live to be a hundred and twenty.”
“There’s not enough money in the world for him to go so crazy. Chaim isn’t stupid.”
Mendl shrugged.
“Your house okay?”
Mendl nodded. “Baruch HaShem.”
“Take him to your house, sedate him.” Yussel jerked his chin toward the crowd. “They shouldn’t see us like this.”
Yussel stood in front of the firemen. “I want to ask you a simple question. You couldn’t break a stupid rule? You couldn’t put out the fire and forget the rules? Think of the loss.”
The firemen looked at him. “A rule’s a rule, Reverend. We don’t question your rules.” Yussel shook his head in disbelief, asked the firemen for a pail of water, and sat on the steps of the bus beside Natalie while she rinsed her feet. The red peas were on the ground in front of him. He wished there were another woman nearby to rinse Natalie’s feet, to comfort her, to put an arm around her. The firemen brought bandages, but she wouldn’t let them touch her. Yussel sat and held his head in his hands. “You circumcised your feet?”