More Wandering Stars

by Jack Dann (ed)

  “You know I don’t, Molly,” he replied quietly, without looking up.

  Slowly she took her fists off her hips and unstraddled her firmly planted feet. She knew she was helpless against his passive resistance.

  “Ira, I don’t feel so good. Is it all right if I don’t work?”

  “I’ll get along somehow,” he said gently. “Stay home till you feel better, darling. I’ll manage.”

  For several minutes she watched him work. He had a new method of brushing pockets. Although she realized it was new to him, he appeared to have it pat. He pulled the pockets inside out with a hooked wire, brushed them, stuffed them back with a stick of clean wood.

  “Ain’t it easier to do it by hand?” she asked helpfully.

  When he shook his head abstractedly, she shrugged, kissed him uncomfortably, and walked hesitantly toward the door. She paused there.

  “You sure you feel all right, Ira? You won’t need me?”

  “I’ll get by, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about me.”

  He displayed no sign of relief when she left, for he felt none. He had connected the hideous things in his customers’ pockets with the tramp’s threat. Somehow Salindrinath had managed to put them there, and neutralizing their effect on him had been Kaplan’s problem. The hooked wire and the stick solved it. Therefore he no longer had a problem. He had observed that when the pockets were turned out, the small globes vanished. Where they went, he had no idea, but that wasn’t important.

  He locked the store at ten thirty to make his calls, and again at twelve, when he went home for lunch and to see how Molly felt. She was in bed, outwardly looking fine, but so baffled by his changed character that her slight headache had become hysterically monumental.

  He went back to work. Now that he had cleverly, sidestepped the tramp’s strategy, nothing delayed or upset the care or tempo of his work. Twice he forgot and put his hand in breast pockets to straighten the lining. The sensation nauseated him, but he merely snatched out his hand and continued working with his new method.

  At four thirty he gathered the garments to be dry cleaned.

  “Now the bum’ll come around so he can make fun,” Kaplan stated doggedly. “Will he be surprised!”

  Halfway to the bandbox machine, he heard the door click. Glancing casually at Salindrinath, Kaplain walked on. The tramp closed the door and folded his arms regally.

  “Fool,” he said in a cold tone, “do you bow to my wish to know?”

  The triumphant leer broke out against Kaplan’s will. “You think maybe you got me scared, you pig?” he blurted, now that the leer had involuntarily started him off wrong. “How much it scares me don’t amount to a row of beans! You and your things in pockets—phooey!”

  Salindrinath drew back. His regal, stubbled face slid into a gape of amazement.

  “Yeah, you and your things don’t bother me,” Kaplan pursued, his mocking grin broader than before. “You can all go to hell!”

  “Pig? Hell?” Salindrinath’s ugly black jaw stuck out viciously. “Do you condemn me to your miserable, unimaginative hell? Know then, swine of a materialist, that my dwellers in dark places are the height of torment to money-grubbers. They shall roost where they dismay you most! When you cringe and beg of me to share your pitiful science, crawl to my holy shack at the landing on the creek—”

  Kaplan stuffed the garments into the bandbox and thumbed his nose at the ragged figure striding savagely away from the store.

  “A fine case he’s got!” he gloated. “I’ll come crawling to him when Hitler kicks out the Germans and takes back the Jews. Not before. Do I annoy anybody? If I can work hard and make a living, that’s all I ask. He wants to buy a bandbox and open a store here? So let him. But why should I have to tell him how to run me out of business? What some people won’t do when they see a business that’s making a little money!” He shook his head sadly.

  Kaplan closed the bandbox door, turned the switch, and climbed down from the window platform. Just when he sat down at the sewing machine, Miss Robinson, the nice young kindergarten teacher, came in.

  “Hello, Mr. Kaplan,” she sang with a smile. “Isn’t it the loveliest day? Not too cold, though you can feel winter coming on, and it makes you want to take long brisk walks. Isn’t it grand having our little town all to ourselves again? But I suppose it’s better for you when the summer visitors are here—”

  “How much difference can it make?” He shrugged indifferently. “In the summer I work hard like a horse so I can take it easy in the winter and get strong to work like a horse in the summer. If I got enough to eat and pay my bills, that’s all I ask.”

  “I suppose that’s all anyone really wants,” she agreed eagerly. “Is my suit ready? I feel so chilly in these silk dresses—”

  “It’s been ready for two days. I made it quick so you wouldn’t go around catching colds. Like new it looks, Miss Robinson. For my nicest customers I can do a better job than anybody else.”

  He took down her suit and pinned it into a bag so she could carry it easily.

  “You certainly do,” she enthused. “I’ll pay you now. You probably can use the money, with all your summer trade gone.”

  “Whenever you want. People like you don’t stick poor tailors.”

  He took the five-dollar bill she handed him and fumbled in his pocket for change.

  “Mr. Kaplan!” she cried, staring anxiously at his goggling face. “Don’t you feel well?”

  “Ain’t I a dope?” he laughed unconvincingly. “Needles I put in my pocket, I get so flustered when pretty girls come in—”

  But he had whipped out his hand with such violence that the entire contents of his pocket spilled out on the floor. For some reason this seemed to please him. He stooped ponderously, picked up everything, and counted change into her hand.

  She smiled, quite flattered, and left.

  But the moment the door closed behind her, Kaplan’s weak grin soured. He hadn’t pushed his pocket lining back yet. Instead, he patted the outside of his clothes, as if he were frisking himself.

  “What have I got now?” he breathed incredulously, inching the fingers of his left hand into his jacket pocket.

  He touched something round, hairless and warm, that skittered from his fingertips and dug irritably against his thigh. And there it pulsed against his skin, beating like a disembodied heart—

  Thurston, the Seids’ chauffeur, came in and picked up everything the family had there. Kaplan didn’t mind, for it saved him a five-mile trip. But the chauffeur insisted on paying.

  Kaplan reached toward his pocket for change. Abruptly he stopped and let his hand dangle limply. As if telepathic, all the vermin in his pockets had lunged around wildly, to avoid his touch.

  “Couldn’t you pay later?” he begged. “Does it have to be right now?”

  “The madame instructed me to pay,” Thurston replied distantly.

  Kaplan sighed and looked down at his pocket wistfully, until he remembered that he had put his money on the pressing-machine table. And that, of course, took care of this particular problem.

  But Mrs. Ringer, Miss Tracy, young Fox, Mrs. Redstone, and Mr. Davis, who had got off early—all came for their work, and all wanted to pay.

  “What is this—a plot?” he muttered. “They must think I’m out of my head, keeping money on a table instead of in my pocket. Can I go on like this? And you, you things, you! Do you have to beat like that? Can’t you lay quiet and not bother me?”

  But he could feel them burrowing restlessly or pulsing contentedly against his skin. Kaplan grew anxious. He couldn’t feel them from the outside. Inside, though, they certainly existed, moving around like mice, pulsing like naked, detached hearts.

  “It’s just this suit,” he said. “After all, how many suits can the dirty crook fill with these things?”

  He grabbed up an old pair of pants he kept around as a dry change in wet weather. Before putting it on, he tentatively explored a pocket.

  A warm ball,
furred like a headless, wingless, unutterably loathsome bat, crept affectionately into his palm and pulsed there, clearly enjoying the warmth of his hand. He gritted his teeth and tried to haul it out. It slipped frenziedly through his fingers.

  Though it was almost time to make his deliveries, Kaplan locked the store and shopped for a bus driver’s change machine. He couldn’t find one in the village, of course. Nor would it have taken care of bills, anyhow.

  Kaplan loaded the truck and began his rounds. Not everybody tried to pay. It only seemed like that. Eventually, he hoped, his customers might get used to seeing him with all his money clutched tightly in his hand. He knew they wouldn’t.

  And that only solved the money question, though it certainly would encourage robbers. Now if he could only find a place to keep his handkerchiefs, cigarettes, matches, keys, letters, toothpicks—

  Dazed and exhausted, Kaplan drove into the garage at home. He shut off the motor, removed the key, turned out the lights, and closed the doors. When he went to lock the small side door, he had to turn his pockets inside out with the hooked wire and pick the key out of everything that fell on the ground.

  Molly had staggered out of bed and was moving gingerly around the kitchen, careful not to jolt her head into aching again. Kaplan put all his money, keys, cigarettes, and matches on the end table in the living room. He kept his arms stiffly away from his body. He knew that the slightest touch would send the vermin scuttling around in his pockets—

  Washing his hands meticulously with sandsoap, he couldn’t bear the sight of his face in the mirror. One glance had been more than enough. He had seen a scared, white blur—Molly, he knew, was certain to note his expression and ask embarrassing questions.

  “I thought I looked bad,” she said when he flopped limply into his chair. “Boy, do you look terrible! What is it, Ira?”

  “What isn’t it?” he grumbled. “Everybody—”

  He broke off. He had suddenly realized how it would sound to complain that all his customers insisted on paying.

  Almost immediately after eating, he felt like going to bed. He had not slept the night before; the newspaper was boring; his favorite radio comedian sounded like an undertaker who had just heard a good one.

  “So soon?” Molly asked anxiously as he yawned with intellectual deliberation and stood up. “Ira, if you’re sick, why don’t you—”

  “Doctors!” he snarled. “What can they do for me?”

  But his false yawn had made her mouth gape, and that, of course, was catching. His next was considerably better, for it was real.

  “Can I help it if I’m tired?” he asked. “It wouldn’t hurt you to get some sleep either.”

  He stumbled off to bed.

  When Molly came in, she had to cover him. He tried not to fling off the blankets, and the effort was killing. Hundreds of pulsing vermin had instantly snuggled against him when he was covered. With blind, repulsive hunger for his warmth, they burrowed and beat against his skin, until he slid the blanket off and lay shivering in the cold.

  “Ira,” she whispered. “Do you want to catch pneumonia? Keep covered.”

  He pretended to be asleep. But Kaplan was not fated to sleep anymore, though he inched the blanket off again. The second he heard her breathing regularly, he sneaked into the bathroom and cut off the pocket of his pajama jacket.

  Back in bed again, he was much too cold to sleep. So he dressed silently and went downstairs. He picked up his keys from the end table and went out to the car.

  Riding through the deserted streets toward the creek, he felt dangerously near tears. His pride had never been so battered—nor had he ever before done what he was now about to do.

  “It’s like taking the bread out of my mouth and giving it to him,” Kaplan moaned, “but what else can I do? Already people think I’m crazy, walking around with everything in my hands like a regular school kid. If people don’t respect me, so my business goes bust anyhow. It’s the same thing if I lose my customers or they go to somebody else.”

  He stopped at the shack near the landing on the creek. After only a moment of hesitation, he knocked tentatively at the door.

  “Enter, tailor!” a deep, majestic voice called out.

  Kaplan didn’t wonder or care how the tramp had known he was there. He threw open the door and sneaked in miserably.

  “All right,” he said defeatedly to the ragged figure squatting on the floor. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, only get these things out of my pockets.”

  The tramp stared up at Kaplan, and his ugly, stubbled face looked far more unhappy than the tailor’s.

  “You come too late,” he moaned. “My quest for knowledge forced me to injure a living being. I am now”—his head drooped—“no longer a yogin. I have been stripped of my powers. You must live with the curse I placed upon you, for I cannot help you now. Please forgive me! That can lighten my punishment—”

  “Forgive you?” Kaplan wheezed. “First you try to drive me out of business. Then you stick me with these … these things that are almost as filthy as you are. And now you can’t help me. You can go to hell.”

  He ran out so quickly that he didn’t observe the tramp’s sudden vanishing. Raving with rage, he raced home and left the car at the curb. He undressed swiftly, but when he approached the bed, he did so with the utmost caution.

  He climbed aboard gingerly, careful not to wake his wife, and slid under the covers. Instantly he flung them off.

  “Everything else ain’t bad enough,” he groaned. “No, like an animal I got to sleep uncovered!”

  As he had done the night before, he lay awake until the sky lightened. By that time he felt sure he had worked out a solution.

  “If I can do it with pajamas,” he breathed hopefully, “is there any reason it shouldn’t happen with regular clothes?”

  And getting up noiselessly, Kaplan gathered his things and carried them to the bathroom. He took a pair of scissors out of the medicine chest. This time, when he closed the mirror door, the glimpse of his face pleased him. He stopped to examine it. Triumph glinted from the warm, brown eyes, and his soft, gentle mouth was curved in a real smile.

  “You got him licked, Ira Kaplan!” he whispered. “You ain’t altogether a dope—”

  Working with the speed of skill, he ripped out all the pockets of his suit. To make absolutely certain, though, he also tore away the linings of his jacket and vest.

  Still wearing his pajamas in the kitchen, he squeezed orange juice, made coffee, and ate breakfast. For the first time in two days he actually felt hungry. He stuffed away half a dozen cream-cheese and smoked-salmon sandwiches on bagels and drank another cup of coffee.

  “Already I feel like another man,” he declared. “Now all I got to do is get dressed and go to work. Molly can carry the money and letters. Cigarettes and matches? Pooh, that’s easy! I’ll just keep a pack in the car, one in the store, another at home. Nothing to it!”

  He dressed slowly, enjoying the sensation for he knew that he no longer would feel the revolting creatures pulsing, crawling, moving around like mice against his skin—

  “Heh!” he cackled. “Is Ira Kaplan smart or ain’t he?”

  Standing on his bare feet, he tied his tie, then patted the places where his pockets used to be. He even dared to put a hand inside. And of course he felt nothing—absolutely nothing that might snuggle lovingly into his palm or scuttle hideously from his fingers.

  “Licked!” he gloated. “Is that tramp licked or ain’t he licked?”

  He put on his shoes swiftly, slipped into his jacket and topcoat, clapped his hat on his bald head. He strode to the door.

  “Molly!” he screamed.

  His feet shrank from warm, pulsing vermin that nestled cozily in the toe of each shoe. Under his hat, a clammily cold, pulsing thing crawled furiously, struggling to escape the warmth of his hairless scalp—and they squirmed around in his armpits and crotch …

  MEL GILDEN

  A Lamed Wufnik


  A Lamed Wufnik (or Vufnik) is a blessed man, one of the chosen thirty-six who make it worthwhile for God to let humankind go on. Lamed and Vuf are Hebrew letters; as Hebrew letters also have corresponding numerical values, Lamed and Vuf spell “Thirty-six.” Such numerical conversion is the basis for the occult art of Gematria. It was through the use of Gematria that ancient scholars hoped to determine precisely when the Messiah would arrive. They would pour over the Torah, searching for new meanings revealed through numerical relationships.

  Certain Jews still hold to the belief that a body of thirty-six chosen men exist, and have always existed. Legend has it that when the Messiah arrives, the Lamed Wufniks will simultaneously and independently recognize him. Thus will all Jews be certain that he is the true Messiah.

  To be a Wufnik is to be promised heaven.

  Unfortunately, Wufniks are always poor, especially Sol Gosnik of Los Angeles, California….

  *

  A FEW HOURS AFTER Mottle Hamana had a heart attack, he died on a bed of rags in his hovel in Estonia, a country that lately had fallen into the hands of the Russians. No one was in attendance but God. The death of a dog would have caused more comment than the death of Mottle Hamana. He was forgotten almost before he was buried.

  At the moment Mottle Hamana died, Sol Gosnik, asleep in his bed in Los Angeles, California, waved his arms at phantom invaders caused by too late a dinner, and mumbling curses and threats, he turned over and crushed his face into his pillow.

  When he awoke the next morning, the smell of strong tea already filled the apartment. His eyes blinked open and he saw his wife, Sylvia, standing at the door to their bedroom. “Nu, Sol, you going to sleep all day like the Czar?”

  “I’ll be up in a minute. Look how my foot moves with enthusiasm underneath the covers.”

  “Hurray for your foot. Your oatmeal will get cold.” Sylvia—dependable, hard-working, ample, Sylvia—turned and walked back down the short hallway to the square box of a kitchen where she rattled pots, pans, and dishes on purpose to keep her husband from falling back asleep.