An Orphan's Tale

by Jay Neugeboren

  They stood on the front porch together, under the trellis, and Danny wondered if Charlie would turn on him and blame him for what was happening. “It is a good thing to die in Israel,” Dr. Fogel said, “but it is not such a good thing to live there now.” He took one of Charlie’s hands in his own. “You think about our conversation and come back and talk with me again sometime.”

  Charlie didn’t say anything. “You’re both smart boys,” Dr. Fogel said. “So tell me: of what use to God is yet another earthly nation in which His children’s blood is spilled?”

  He walked down the steps, ahead of them, past his lawn. They all stood together beside Charlie’s car. “God likes jokes also,” Dr. Fogel went on, “and do you know what his favorite joke is? The joke he played on the Zionists! They worked and they worked and they worked, but in the end, why did the world give them the State of Israel? Because of all their work?” He spat, then answered his own question: “Because of the six million, that’s why. Who can believe there ever would have been an Israel if not for the six million? Who? Don’t you see what God is saying to us—?”

  “No,” Charlie said.

  Dr. Fogel relaxed at once, the passion leaving his voice. “Tell me,” he said, his hand on Charlie’s arm. “What do you think of my house?”

  “It’s okay,” Charlie said. “If you want to sell, I have a buyer.”

  Danny wanted to argue—to tell Dr. Fogel that he didn’t make sense—the Zionists had not wanted to pay such a price for the state of Israel….

  Dr. Fogel was laughing with Charlie. “It’s been good having you visit me. Please—you’ll think things over and you will come back, yes?”

  Charlie nodded, indicating he would, and when he did, Danny spoke for the first time: “Mitzvat Yishuv Eretz Yis-roel!” he recited.

  “Very good,” Dr. Fogel said, patting Danny’s arm. “Of course. But there are other commandments, equally important, yes?”

  *

  FRIDAY

  WE SAW DR. FOGEL

  WE SAW DR. FOGEL

  WE SAW DR. FOGEL.

  I want to write that sentence again and again because it contains everything, and since we saw him this afternoon Charlie hasn’t been the same.

  He’s downstairs now fighting with Mr. Mittleman and screaming that he wants his accountant to look at Mr. Mittleman’s books to make sure he’s been getting the right commissions. He’s learning not to trust anybody.

  Is that what Dr. Fogel wanted to teach him today?

  I have to write fast because he’ll be up in a few minutes for us to go to Murray, so this is the way it happened: I thought we were going to look at a big house Charlie was thinking of buying but it turned out to be Dr. Fogel’s.

  He was glad to see Charlie at 1st but when he called Charlie by his Hebrew name he scared him and Charlie froze. Later Charlie relaxed when they talked about the land but it didn’t fool me. Dr. Fogel was just setting him up. HE MADE CHARLIE BELIEVE THEY COULD HAVE AN AGREEMENT AND THEN HE KILLED CHARLIE’S HOPE!

  He asked Charlie if Israel was a land of the past or the future and said that if Charlie answered that right they could come to terms. I knew the answer he wanted and I tried to think the words into Charlie’s head but they never got there. Charlie said The Future and Dr. Fogel told him he was wrong! That was when Charlie started getting angry and he hasn’t stopped yet.

  Dr. Fogel also asked him about putting on Tephillin and being Kosher and observing Shabbos and he held out more hope to Charlie because when Charlie was truthful with him about not being a good Jew, Dr. Fogel told him to come back and talk some more!

  This is what Charlie said to me in the car, right after we left Dr. Fogel: “If Maimonides said it was OK to pay money for a friend, wouldn’t it be OK to become religious for money?”

  This is what I think his mind contains: arrows, muscles, spices, knots, glass, and salty tears!

  Dr. Fogel said things against Israel again and I quoted to him what the Rabbis say about it being the duty of every Believer to settle in Israel, but my words meant nothing to him. This is why you can’t argue with him: BECAUSE HE THINKS HE CAN UNDERSTAND GOD’S BITTERNESS.

  Charlie kept asking me to explain Dr. Fogel to him, but he talked so much I never had a chance. When I said something to him about taking it easy, this is what he said back: “I have two speeds—stop and go.”

  I’ve never known anyone like him! His moods change so fast I’m afraid to speak sometimes and just when I’m thinking he’s so depressed I need to find a joke for him, he’ll turn around and make one to me.

  He liked the joke I made this morning in Mr. Plaut’s jewelry store. He told Mr. Plaut I was his trainee and I told him he could deduct me as a business expense. But he said I wasn’t an expense, I was an investment.

  Then I drew a line across the middle of my body, right above my waist, and I said: I’m amortized up to here! He laughed a lot at that and Mr. Plaut did also, but the minute I said it I was thinking of the Chasidic Jews who tie belts around the middle of their bodies to separate the holy parts from the profane. I didn’t tell Charlie I thought that.

  On the way home he was talking as crazy as Dr. Fogel. He talked all about his money. He said that he always felt disconnected and that money made him feel connected. Money brought him closer to Murray again, money brought him to Mr. and Mrs. Mittleman, money made him able to help me, money would let him help Sol, and money would let him do what he wanted after he was 40.

  These are the things he feels disconnected from, in Danny Ginsberg’s opinion: his childhood, his mother and father, his not having real brothers and sisters, his separating from the boys he grew up with, his not living in the Home, his not living in the city.

  Also: being Jewish but not practicing Judaism, having had a family but not having one now, doing business with people he doesn’t really know personally, being in a business in which people come to him because they’re moving from place to place.

  He got very emotional trying to figure out why Dr. Fogel deceived him and he took my hand and told me he really meant it about becoming a Rabbi after 40. He said it was a feeling he couldn’t explain but that he always believed, since he was a boy, that when he became 40 his life would change.

  After lunch Charlie met with a black man who’s a dentist and he talked about selling the man one of Mr. Mittleman’s apartment houses. The black dentist works with a Jewish dentist in an office on Atlantic Avenue and he bragged about how much money they made in only 3 years. They have 6 chairs between them and they work on welfare and Medicaid people. They pull teeth.

  These were his words: You can always find 2 teeth to pull in somebody’s mouth.

  Mr. Mittleman wants to sell as many of his old buildings as possible and put the money into low income housing. You can get a special 60 month fast write-off on low income housing and if you reinvest the net proceeds of sales in more low income housing you can avoid the recapture rule on depreciation. Mr. Mittleman calls this the quick way to build A Tax Free Empire.

  He’s on the stairs.

  TO BE CONTINUED

  *

  Murray asked Ephraim to lead the bentshing that followed the meal, and Charlie was happy to see Danny, sharing a prayer book with Hannah, join in the singing.

  What he needed to do, he decided, was to surprise Dr. Fogel.

  In Murray’s study, Anita and Hannah sat in front of the fireplace on their knees. Charlie saw Hannah smile at Danny even while Danny was staring at her breasts. When Murray spoke about the Home, Anita held his hand. Her eyes, from the firelight, appeared to be violet.

  Once a month Charlie, Murray, and the other guys from their group at the Home got together, usually for a touch football game in Brooklyn, and Charlie had promised to take Danny to their game on Sunday. Murray was talking about the games and about what he felt every month after the reunions. “We’re not right,” he said. “That’s what I keep feeling. Don’t you see it?”

  “No,” Charlie said.

  �
��Whenever I go outside the boundaries of the life I’ve cut out for myself here in Mill River,” Murray said, “I feel like a helpless child somehow—and I’m not ashamed to admit it.” Murray looked at Charlie. “Don’t you ever feel the same?”

  “No,” Charlie said again.

  Murray was silent for a few seconds; then he pointed to Danny with his pipe. “I think the boy’s a lot like me—I think he has the same craving for roots and continuity.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Charlie said quickly, and laughed. “But what the hell kind of roots and continuity can you have out here in Mill River where you’re the only Jew in the whole place?”

  “Ah,” Murray said. “But that’s just the point, isn’t it? Being the only Jew makes me understand more intensely what it means to be Jewish—as if I’m alone in the wilderness. As if—”

  “Oh come on,” Charlie said. “How can anyone think of suburban New Jersey as the wilderness?” He sighed, annoyed with himself for having been trapped into an argument he wanted no part of. “Look,” he said. “I’ll repeat for you what I said to the kid this morning—if I can’t help being a Jew then whatever I do, that’s Jewish too, right? So not being kosher and not putting on tephillin is as Jewish as being a rabbi. That’s the way I figure it.”

  “Very interesting,” Murray said. He turned to Danny again. “And what do you think of that?”

  Danny smiled. “Rabbis are Jews too,” he said.

  Murray laughed. “Very good—I’ll have to remember that.” He puffed on his pipe, and then Charlie heard the familiar words flow—Murray talked about how bringing into his life rituals that had been practiced for thousands of years by other Jewish men and families gave him a sense of being part of the Jewish people, especially in a time when people were always moving to new places and everyone’s values were shifting.

  Charlie hardly listened. He saw that Danny was wide-eyed, drinking the words in, but he figured it was all personal—these were things that made Murray happy and that was all there was to it. Maybe, he thought, I can send Murray to talk with Dr. Fogel in my place.

  “Being a Jew means being part of a special history,” Murray said, his eyes demanding Charlie’s attention. “And the less Jews practice Judaism, the more that history is lost!”

  Charlie smiled but said nothing. He remembered what he’d said to Danny after he’d visited the Home, about letting dying things die, but if he said something like that to Murray—if he told him he shouldn’t resist things that were natural—he imagined that Murray would reply that the craving for roots and continuity was natural too….

  When he looked at Danny he was surprised to see the boy smiling with him, as if he were reading Charlie’s thoughts. Charlie blinked. I don’t believe you, he could hear Danny say. I don’t believe you because of what you said to me about the groups of three!

  Charlie saw Dr. Fogel standing in front of the classroom, and, from behind, he saw himself raise his hand and stand. If the Torah says that God said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, Dr. Fogel asked, then how can we know the rabbis are right to say that God means something else—that He wants a different kind of punishment?

  He saw his own body tip to one side and he saw his shoulders lift slightly in a shrug. Dr. Fogel had taught them that God’s laws had to apply to all men for all times. Charlie answered the question with a question: Then what can you do to a blind man who pokes out somebody’s eye?

  The class had giggled, but Dr. Fogel had silenced them by telling them that Charlie was right. After class, he recalled, Dr. Fogel made him remain behind and had praised him in a way he never had for anything else. It was the one time Charlie had surprised him.

  Murray was laughing and telling another story about one of his children. They were in the kitchen, and, half asleep, Danny was staring into the flickering lights of the Shabbos candles. Murray said that last Friday he had promised to take Eli to the school football game, saying, “Tomorrow I’ll take you to the game,” and that when Eli had awakened on Saturday morning he had been terribly excited and had kept asking, “Is today tomorrow? Is today tomorrow?”

  Murray said that he was going to put those three words on an index card and tape the card to his office door. He looked around the table for approval. “Don’t you think it will encourage too much freedom?” Anita asked.

  Charlie nudged Danny with his elbow. “Come on,” he said.

  “It’s late,” Murray said, refusing to respond directly to Anita’s sarcasm. “And my wife—to whose question I would reply: perhaps, but my students are happy and creative-wants to talk about how severe Murray Mendelsohn is.”

  Murray tried to put an arm around Anita, but she pulled away. “Their happiness takes place in a vacuum,” she said sharply. “They’re culturally deprived.”

  “Ah,” Murray said. “And what do you propose—that we import blacks and Puerto Ricans from the city?”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” she said.

  “It’s late,” Charlie said, and he kissed Anita on the cheek. Her skin was warm. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t you see it?” Anita asked, barring the door with her body so that Charlie and Danny had to wait. “Don’t you see that Murray’s right—that there is something wrong with him?” She stepped aside. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with being an orphan,” she said quietly. “He can’t use that crutch forever.”

  “It’s not a crutch,” Murray replied. “It’s a ladder.”

  “Tell him, Charlie,” Anita pleaded. “Once. Please?”

  Then she left the room. Murray walked outside with Charlie and Danny. “She gets this way when she’s pregnant,” Murray said. “It’s complicated—she wants the children and she wants her freedom too. She blames me for wanting them and then she feels guilty for blaming me and doesn’t realize it, so she attacks me in front of you. And you—”

  “I know the whole story,” Charlie said, patting Murray on the shoulder. “Thank her for us again, okay?”

  “It was brewing before you got here,” he said. “The truth is, I believe in cultivating my own garden.” He laughed. “I was explaining it to her while we got ready for Shabbos and I made a joke about planting Jewish seeds and tried to pat her stomach, and she froze on me.” Murray shrugged. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”

  In the car, Danny slept with his head against Charlie’s shoulder.

  *

  SATURDAY

  At our game today we won 34 to 6 and Charlie yelled the whole time. He hardly ever smiles at games. It’s the way he gets the boys to work for him: He saves up his smiles and uses them only when it really matters!

  I asked him once if Dr. Fogel shouted the way he does and he said Dr. Fogel was so good he never had to raise his voice. Because I’ve never really played sports Charlie thinks I can be a great coach someday like Dr. Fogel. But I don’t have the kind of brain which can plan things far ahead.

  For example: at the Home I tried learning chess a few times but I was no good at it.

  Murray stood next to me at the game and told me that Charlie could have been better than Sid Luckman or Bennie Friedman or Marshall Goldberg if he’d played football. And if he’d played baseball he could have been another Al Rosen or Hank Greenberg. Murray said he could have been the greatest Jewish athlete of all time, but he decided to get married instead! Sol got him a tryout with the Brooklyn Dodgers when he was only 16 and they offered him a contract but he turned it down. He was married by 17.

  There are a lot of married players, I said.

  But Murray said that Charlie refused to do anything that would make him leave his wife overnight. Everyone pleaded with him INCLUDING SOL but Charlie wouldn’t listen to anybody.

  Anita was wearing a beautiful orange and black plaid wool coat at the game with a big collar that turned up and made her hair look red and soft inside it. I looked at her stomach when her coat was open but it didn’t look any bigger.

  She’s in her 4th month now which means the baby already has everything a
baby has, including all the internal organs and fingernails and hair. She’s having the baby by natural childbirth the way she had her last 3 and Murray will be in the delivery room with her. Last night he talked about the last time and how hard the contractions were and this is what Charlie said: If they get too bad again tell her to subcontract!

  I saw the way the mothers of some of the players looked at Charlie. I was glad when the game was over and we were back in his car. He asked me what Murray was chewing my ear off about this time and I told him about what Murray said about giving up his sports career for a wife and he said that was bullshit.

  He told me he played semi-pro ball and he knew just how good he really was—good enough to make the major leagues but not good enough to make it big. He said he had more money now than he ever would have had if he had fulfilled Murray’s dream.

  Last night we spent Shabbos with Murray and his family but Charlie didn’t say anything about our visit to Dr. Fogel. Murray and Charlie argued about being Jewish and I agreed more with Murray who says that if Jews don’t practice Judaism then Judaism will die. Charlie tried to act as if he didn’t care and I hated him for doing that! But then I remembered what he told me he felt about imagining himself and his son at his grandson’s Bris and I felt better.

  He said that if I saw Murray at Eli’s Bris 4 years ago I would see that he really felt the things he spoke about. Charlie said he never saw a human being more proud and excited than Murray was on that day.

  He told me Murray used to be very different. He said that 10 years ago Murray was very active in civil rights and he and Anita spent summers together teaching at black schools in Alabama. He was once beaten unconscious during a march.

  While we were coming home from the game Charlie said there was one thing that stopped him when he thought about becoming a Rabbi.

  What is it? I said.

  That I’ll never be able to eat lobster again, he said.

  I never had lobster, I said.

  He thought I was kidding and asked me if I wanted to try and I said I thought he had to get back to the office since it was Saturday, but he smiled and we went to a restaurant.