by Rhoda Lerman
“What else do I have?”
“How can you have sex with Rosebud but not let the firemen touch you?”
“I’m married to Rosebud.”
Whether the fire that burned down seven of Chaim’s houses was caused by Pecky’s cigar, or the fire caused Pecky’s appearance, or Pecky brought the fire from Hell, or one of the Miracles of Creation tossed a cigarette into the gas fireplace, or the raccoons in the attic were chewing on matches, or maybe Chaim and his Miracles of Creation had reached such a high plane of ecstasy, the wheel of time stopped and the fires lit by the Romans in the Temple two thousand years ago started up in Chaim’s house, no one would ever know. His father, of course, would say you can find a million logical reasons after the fact, but the fact is HaShem intended it. After that, just pick a reason. Yussel would find out tomorrow how much money had been in the ceiling and how much it would cost him to support Chaim’s mortgages on eighteen houses and the mainframe empire. One thing Yussel wouldn’t find out tomorrow was where he would get such money from.
Firemen stretched ropes around the seven houses, hung No Trespassing signs. Yussel’s men, Chaim’s men came over to congratulate Yussel on his decision, stepped over Natalie, who was wrapping bandages around her feet. They shook Yussel’s hand, hit him on the back, the shoulders. Even the firemen, who couldn’t have understood the ruling that when a member of the community has a loss you have to take care of him in the way he lived before, even the firemen came to shake Yussel’s hand.
Grisha whispered, “Good decision, Rabbi.”
Yussel answered, “A rule’s a rule. I had no choice.”
“Still it was good. Your father would be proud.”
“You called me Rabbi, Grisha?”
“Today. Tomorrow, who knows?”
Yussel didn’t know what to do with Natalie. He needed a woman to get her into the bus. In the end he picked Natalie up and carried her up the bus steps himself. She put her arms around his neck, whimpered into his chest like a little kid. “You’re breaking the rules, Rabbi.”
“Natalie, Natalie. When I first came out here you said to me, ‘I know who you are.’”
She nodded. “I do. I knew who your father was too.”
“I don’t know who you are, do I?”
“I’m somebody.”
“I’ll say.”
“We’re not formally married, Rosebud and me.” She smiled up at him, closed her eyes, let him put his fresh socks on her feet, wash her face, cover her with a sleeping bag. She’d sleep on the bus with the men. It didn’t matter. The rest of them went to Mendl’s house to daven and fast. Mendl forced a sleeping pill down Chaim’s throat, held him down until he passed out on Mendl’s bed.
23
THE DAY AFTER TISHABAV, THE MORNING SUN SLID OVER THE lip of the mountain like a rotten egg. The flagpole clinked. The wind was still hot and dry from the south, smelled of yesterday’s ashes. Yussel sat on his father’s grave, prayed Shoshanna would have a safe trip, wept at the thought of losing them, knew he deserved to lose everything he loved, wondered how he was going to get money for Chaim. His father’s grave was littered with dozens of slips of papers, now all the same size, flapping around under stones and pebbles.
“You! Yussel!” A call, an accusation, a condemnation. Both doors were double-lead bank-vault doors, studded with wheels, locks, clocks. They groaned open. His father wore a black coat over black silk pajamas, a black shtreimel of a lustrous flat fur, maybe sheared beaver, maybe some creature from the World to Come. Red fox tails hung from the brim. His face was high-cheeked, slant-eyed, severe, like a mandarin, alien.
Yussel felt a cold slice of terror in his soul. “He could’ve bought homeowner’s from someone else. I don’t even have a territory. Why are you blaming me?”
His father picked up the kvitls, stuffed them into his pockets, replaced the pebbles, took his beard in his hand, twisted and curled the bottom of it. “Listen to me,” he said in a monotone. “A Jew comes to the Besht and the Besht says, ‘What do you need? What can I do for you?’
“The Jew says, ‘I need nothing. I have my health, wealth, a family.’
“And the Besht says, ‘Really? You need nothing?’
“‘Nothing.’
“The Besht says, ‘So let me tell you a story. Two friends grow up together, go to Yeshiva together. They’re inseparable. They get married together. And then they drift apart. Chaim becomes very wealthy. Yankel doesn’t. Yankel tries a dozen things. Everything fails. Finally he’s destitute. He’s borrowed from everybody. He’s facing ruin. He sits down with his wife. ‘I have no place to turn.’ His wife says, ‘You know, Yankel. I heard about Chaim. He’s doing very well. Maybe you should go to him?’ Yankel says, ‘Go to a friend I haven’t seen in years? How can I go to him?’
“There’s nobody else so Yankel goes off to find Chaim. He comes to a beautiful house, people walking in and out. He walks in. Chaim comes down the stairs, sees Yankel.
“‘Yankel! How are you?’
“‘Listen, Chaim, I’m very uncomfortable. We haven’t seen each other in years. I’ve been very unlucky. Could you help me?’
“‘Of course. What are friends for? How much do you need?’
“‘I don’t know … I …’
“‘Never mind. I’ll give you a blank check. Make it out. Thank God I have what to give you.’
“So Yankel takes the money and invests it and thank God he is very successful. But as he becomes more successful, Chaim becomes more unlucky. Now Yankel is a wealthy Jew. Chaim sits down with his wife. ‘You know, Yankel came to me and I lent him money. I’m sure he’ll help me.’
“So off goes Chaim to find Yankel. This time Chaim comes to a beautiful house. But there are guards, gates. You have to have an appointment. Chaim tells the guards their master, Yankel, would want to see him, they’re childhood friends. It would be a terrible mistake not to let him in. The guards send him around to the back, to the servants’ entrance. Chaim sits and sits and thinks to himself, ‘If Yankel knew I was here, he’d come out to greet me.’ Then he sees Yankel.
“‘Yankel! It’s your old friend Chaim.’
“‘Hello, Chaim.’ He isn’t so excited to see him.
“‘Yankel, I come to you for help.’
“‘Look, Chaim, when I became successful you became poor. Our fates are interconnected. If I help you, you’ll become wealthy and I’ll become poor. I’m not ready to become poor.’
“So Chaim works and slaves and toils to make money and he does. And again the tables are turned.
“This time Yankel is poor. He goes to his wife. ‘We’re destitute, poor, hungry. What should we do?’ She tells him to go to Chaim. ‘How can I? I turned him away. Like an enemy.’
“Anyway he goes. Chaim greets him at the door of his beautiful home. ‘Yankel, my friend! How are you? Sit down. What’s the matter?’
“‘I’m embarrassed to ask.’
“‘What are friends for? Only when everything is so rosy between us we should be friends?’
“So once again Chaim gives Yankel a blank check. Yankel gets rich; Chaim gets poor. And now Chaim has to go to Yankel.
“Yankel stands at the top of the stairs and doesn’t come down. ‘Remember what I told you last time? I’m not interested in being poor.’
“Chaim says, ‘Yankel, I’m shocked.’ Chaim is so shocked he has a heart attack and drops dead at the bottom of the stairs.
“Well, God decrees that Yankel should also be taken at that moment for having caused the death of his friend. So the both of them stand before the Court. ‘Yankel,’ the Almighty Judge says, ‘you are a cruel and mean man. You will go through Gehinnom.’ And to Chaim, ‘And you, Chaim, will go to Heaven for your generosity and your kindness.’
“Chaim refuses. ‘I should go to Heaven while my friend goes to Hell? I refuse. He goes to Hell, I go with him.’
“‘He caused your death.’
“‘No,’ says Chaim. ‘If he doesn’t go into H
eaven with me, I don’t go. A friendship is a friendship.’
“So the Almighty Judge says, ‘All right. This one time. Both of you will be sent back down to earth. This time you will not know each other. Chaim, you will be born into a wealthy family. Yankel, you will be born into a poor family. Yankel, if you don’t do the right thing this time, Chaim will go to Heaven without you.’
“Chaim says, ‘I know my friend. He’ll do the right thing.’
“So the two souls are sent down to earth in other bodies.
“The Besht sits back, looks at the Jew who is visiting him. ‘That’s the story.’
“The Jew says, ‘How does this concern me?’
“‘Today these two souls came together. Chaim had barely enough strength and he came to Yankel today begging for help and Yankel turned him away. By the end of the day Chaim will die from hunger and Yankel will go to Hell. It is almost sundown.’
“The Jew leaped up, alarmed.
“‘Where are you going?’ asked the Besht.
“‘Rabbi, I’m Yankel!’ And he runs out to find his friend.
“The Besht calls out after him, ‘See, you thought you didn’t need anything.’”
Yussel’s father squeezed Yussel’s face between his hands. His hands were icy and strong. Yussel thought his eyes might pop. “Yussele, I don’t have to tell you you’re Yankel, do I?”
“I’m not Yankel.”
“Not only are you Yankel, God is Yankel. Not only man, Yussele, but God. You get it? HaShem needs you as much as you need Him. God is Yankel.” And his father slapped him across the face, one side, the other side. Yussel’s cheeks burned. It wasn’t an insult, his father’s slap. It was the slap a doctor gives to a newborn. “Wake up! Pay attention!”
“Pay attention to what, Totte? I saved Chaim from the fire. I didn’t lay a hand on your wife. I’ve committed no adultery, stolen no money, told Lillywhite off. What do you want you should come from Above and slap me on the face? Dina? Is that the message? Be kind to Chaim, save Dina’s life? Okay, from now on I’ll treat Chaim like a brother, better than a brother.”
His father said nothing, sat on his grave, sorted through the kvitls, put certain ones in certain pockets of his coat and his pants. Then a small whirlwind of dust and kvitls swept over him, encircled him, and lifted him away.
Yussel went to Mendl’s to see Chaim the afternoon after the fast. The day had turned crisp and blue with picture-book clouds. Yussel went to tell Chaim he could have the Arizona, the deed to the land. “Take my land. Take my shul. Take my congregation. Mortgage the land, pay off your mortgages. I can’t take it anymore. God’s testing me. I don’t want to be tested. Take, Chaim. Take anything I have.”
He rehearsed it as he drove into Moffat. “You see, Chaim,” Yussel would say, “I’ve talked to God and I told Him, ‘You leave me alone. I’ll leave You alone. I won’t bother You for anything again.’ Chaim, I’m offering you on my word a piece of property worth maybe two million bucks. Free. Sell subdivisions with lake rights, bring in a K-Mart. You’ll make a fortune. I’ll go home and sell insurance. You get a fresh start. What can you lose, Chaim?” That’s what he would tell Chaim. “I want to go home. I’ll never leave Rockaway again. I want to get carried out feet first on the Shabbas table from my house by the ocean when I die.”
Chaim’s houses still had puffs of smoke coming out of them as Yussel drove by. His SL was a shell, his leather sofa a grilled-cheese sandwich. He understood Chaim. Chaim was too human. We’re all too human.
Chaim wasn’t at Mendl’s. He was at his own house. Mendl walked over with Yussel. On the way over, Yussel told Mendl, “I came with an interesting proposition for Chaim.”
“You think today’s a good day for a proposition, Reb Yussel?”
It wasn’t a good day. They heard something terrible: Chaim shrying. His cries drove through Yussel like nails, leaving holes. Chaim was howling as the dogs had howled. A fireman let them over the ropes, shook his head. “He’s having a bad time over his dogs.”
Chaim was filling in a deep hole behind the dog kennels. Mendl stopped Yussel, whispered. “Let’s leave him.”
“Maybe we should help, Mendl?”
“I’m not his gabbai? If I thought we should help him, you don’t think I’d be helping?”
They sat on two kitchen chairs in the yard where Chaim couldn’t see them and watched him shovel dirt, listened to him howl.
“This is over dogs?”
Mendl shrugged. “You didn’t have an uncle who saw the skull of a cow in front of a tannery and stayed the rest of his life in his room? That was over cows. This is over dogs. Cows, dogs, women. A man breaks, a man breaks. God has weapons. For this man a shout, for this man a song, for this man a whisper. Who knows?”
“I thought he was trying to save his money last night. I thought that was why he wanted to go back in.”
Mendl shrugged. “There was money. In the kitchen ceiling. From New York.”
“Donations?”
Again Mendl shrugged. Chaim was almost to the top of the hole. A hot sharp wind from the south came up suddenly, covered them with ashes from the fire. They pulled their coat collars up for protection. Chaim’s face was streaked with grime, sweat, charcoal. He looked like the tax collector from Hell in Rabbi Akiba’s story. Chaim wept, wiped his nose and his eyes with his sleeve.
“Rentals?”
“You’ll ask him.”
“What was wrong with a bank, Mendl?”
Mendl scratched his head.
“Then something was wrong with the money?”
“You’ll ask him.”
“Okay, I won’t ask.”
Yussel took a deep breath. Dogs, cows, women. A man breaks. A great tragedy, a great love affair. Both. If God wants to break him, He’ll find a way. For Yussel He was using a shotgun method. “So how can I help, Mendl?”
“A fourteen-hundred-dollar mortgage payment by next week is how you can help.”
Chaim dropped his shovel, tore his shirt with his hands, threw himself facedown on the grave. Mendl turned away, covered his face, wept. Chaim beat his fists on the dirt. Yussel shook his head in disbelief. His father in the same elegant black silk and fur of the morning stood next to Chaim over the grave. Yussel watched Mendl. Mendl didn’t see Yussel’s father, nor did Chaim seem to. But there was his father, taller and more angular than Yussel had ever seen him, drawn out in grief, standing above the grave, above Chaim, beating on his chest while Chaim beat his fists on the ground. It couldn’t be dogs and it couldn’t be money. Maybe his father was mourning for Yussel who had betrayed Chaim. Yussel couldn’t figure it out, any of it. His father’s landscape was chaos.
Yussel called out to his father. “Totte?”
His father turned, looked at him, his face black with fury, turned his back, disappeared.
“Mendl, have you talked to Ruchel?”
“They’re not speaking.”
“Call her. See if she’s okay.”
The fireman’s yellow rubber slicker flapped in the wind. “First sign of summer’s end, a wind like this.” He let them out with great courtesy. “A man gets attached. They’re only dogs, but you get attached.”
As if rain had cleansed the world, Shoshanna arrived that night. She tooted the horn on the bus again and again. Yussel raced to her. His children’s faces were shiny apples. Yussel held each child in turn, starting with the youngest, held them so tight against himself they squirmed loose from his need. Dinela he held longer than the others. She was incandescent, felt like a handful of tinder and feathers. Scabs speckled her face and legs. She clung as if she’d crawl inside him if she could find an opening. Over the heads of the children, over Dina’s head, Yussel wept. Shoshanna wept. He couldn’t hold Shoshanna, but they drank the tears from each other’s eyes and it was just as good as holding. Schmulke ran to the bus, came back with Kleenex. Everyone blew their noses hard and laughed. His Shoshanna was peace. Why would he want torment? Why would any man want torment w
hen he could have this? Who was this other terrible person in him who wanted, yearned for torment? What was wrong with him he should do such a thing, such a thing would happen to him?
“We’re staying, Yussel.”
“Sure. Sure. As long as I’m staying, you’re staying. Of course. Listen, Shoshanna, Chaim’s house burned. We have to support him.”
“Vey iz mir.”
“Where will I get the money from?”
“God provides.” It rolled off her tongue. What do women know? Yussel sweats. His wife says, “God provides.” His hand shakes on the calculator. “God provides.”
“Yussel, I said we’re staying.”
“Fine. Fine.”
“Gutzadunken. I thought you’d be mad at me. We’ll stay on the bus until the house is ready.”
“How can I be mad at you? How can I be mad at a person like you?”
What was wrong with him? To hurt this beautiful family? Chaim’s howl rose in his chest. Yussel prayed that when he went to his wife, God would keep him from thinking of Lillywhite. Apparently the answer was no. When he touched Shoshanna, he touched Lillywhite. When he closed his eyes, he saw Lillywhite. When he tried to enter Shoshanna, he was entering Lillywhite, and, for the first time in his life, he found himself unable to perform his duties to his wife. Shoshanna said, “This is what comes from being apart too long.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “We’ll never be apart again. I promise you.”
“It was wrong, Yussel.”
“Tell me about it.”
24
THE WEEK AFTER TISHABAV THERE IS AN ODD LITTLE HOLIDAY left over from the time of the Temple, even before. It was a holiday in which all the unmarried men and women went into the fields. It was the time of the joining together of male and female. If Tishabav was the fast of endings, Tu B’Av was the time of beginnings. Mystically it was the time of the joining of the letters of HaShem’s name, a fertile time. It was good, Shoshanna said, that Yussel was building the new house with the men. It was a good beginning. She did not say that anything had ended.