Someday the Rabbi Will Leave

by Harry Kemelman

  “Well, that’s the trouble. We haven’t been able to decide on any one man. Feinberg’s announcement took us by surprise. We’re not organized behind one man. We’ve got too many possibles.”

  “How about yourself? Are you interested?”

  “Oh no. It takes too much time, for one thing. It really calls for an older man, and preferably one who doesn’t have to make his living from the community the way I do.”

  “Why is that? I should think the advertising would be useful.”

  Halperin shook his head. “It’s essentially a political position, which means that while half the membership might be strong for you, the other half is apt to be against you. I can’t afford that.”

  “I used to be involved with Temple Zedek in Boston. My grandfather was one of the founders,” said Magnuson, seemingly apropos of nothing at all.

  “I was hoping you might get interested. I’m sure your backing of our man, whoever we pick—”

  “I’m not much good at staying in the background,” said Magnuson. “When I get involved with an organization, I want to run it.”

  “Does that mean—?” Halperin had an inspiration. “Look here, would you be willing to run?”

  “Well now, that’s pretty sudden. I’d have to think about it.”

  “Well, would you think about it?” asked Halperin earnestly.

  “I don’t know. Of course, if I thought I had a chance of winning—”

  “It’s an election, so there can’t be any guarantees, but—”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t expect a guarantee, but I wouldn’t want to look silly. I’m new to the organization and unknown—”

  “Unknown? Cummon, Mr. Magnuson. Who’s better known around here? Who hasn’t heard of Magnuson and Beck, the biggest department store in Boston?”

  “In New England.” Magnuson corrected him. “We’re not connected with it anymore, however. We sold out back in twenty-nine, although they still use our name.”

  “Well, that’s what I mean. The name is known.”

  “But I have no organization—”

  “You say the word, and I’ll get an organization.”

  Magnuson smiled. “You’re very persuasive. I’ll tell you what, make a few inquiries around, drop a few hints, and report back to me. Then we’ll decide.”

  As they drove home, Belle Halperin was ecstatic, her color even higher than usual. “They’ve got a Chagall and a Seurat, and in the bedroom they have a real Renoir. Imagine, in a bedroom.” Then abruptly, “Was it law business he wanted to see you about?”

  Her husband chuckled. “No. He wants to be president of the temple.”

  “President? But—but he’s never been an officer or anything. Can he?”

  “Why not? There’s no regulation against it. Any member can run. And he’s a member.”

  “And he wants you-to run his campaign?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Can he make it? Has he got a chance? I mean nobody knows him or anything.”

  “No-o, but on the other hand everybody knows the name, and everybody loves a millionaire.”

  “Is he going to pay you for your work?”

  “There was nothing said about it.”

  “Then what will you get out of it?”

  “Oh well, I figure when you hang around people with the kind of money Howard Magnuson has, some of it rubs off.”

  7

  Laura Magnuson at twenty-five was nice-looking, even handsome if not pretty. Her mouth was a shade too wide, her nose a little too long for contemporary taste, judging by models on magazine covers. Her eyes were alert and penetrating, and her chin showed determination and resolve. Her brown shoulder-length hair was parted in the middle and brushed back behind her ears in a style that required the least amount of fussing.

  She had graduated from Bryn Mawr magna cum laude in political science and gone on to the London School of Economics for three years, only to return without a degree. As she explained to her father who adored her and to her mother who understood her, “I had the feeling that if I got a doctorate, then sooner or later, I’d find myself teaching. And I don’t want that.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked her father.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Something in government, maybe.”

  She had been home a couple of months now, doing nothing, at least from the point of view of her parents. She had visited New York several times, to buy clothes, to go to the theater, to visit friends and former classmates. The Magnusons had given a couple of parties for her in Barnard’s Crossing so that she could meet new people, sons and daughters of their own acquaintances who came down from Boston. During the day, if the weather was good, she would get into her car and drive about the countryside, up to Rockport to wander about the picture galleries, or to Gloucester to lunch on the wharf and watch the seagulls. Evenings she was apt to go into Boston or Cambridge, where there might be a lecture or a meeting she thought might be of interest.

  This night she decided to drive downtown with the vague idea that she might go to a movie, or perhaps just wander about the streets in order to renew her acquaintance with the old town. As she passed the Unitarian church, she noticed a sign announcing, “Candidates’ Night, A Chance to Meet the Candidates.”

  She drove another block to find a parking place and then walked back. The meeting was being held in the vestry, which seated a couple of hundred people. But the room was less than half full when Laura arrived, a few minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin.

  In the wide aisle that encircled the room, small folding tables had been set up, each displaying the campaign material of a particular candidate. Beside them sat campaign workers offering plastic buttons, auto bumper stickers, and the like to those interested. On the platform a row of fifteen chairs had been set up for the candidates. The chairman of the evening was one of the selectmen of the town, Herbert Bottomley, a tall, gaunt, stoop-shouldered man with unruly, grizzled hair and bushy eyebrows. In his loose-hanging suit and steel-rimmed spectacles, he looked like a retired schoolteacher presiding at a Golden Age Club meeting, but he was actually a successful contractor in his fifties and was very popular in the town.

  Bottomley banged on the lectern with his gavel and called out, “All right, let’s settle down and come to order. I’m going to have the candidates come in now and have them sit in these chairs behind me so’s you can get a good look at them.” He walked over and opened the door and announced ceremoniously, “Ladies and gentlemen, the candidates.” They trooped in, some diffident, some strutting to reflect confidence, some smiling, some thoughtful, each concerned with showing the attitude that would be most likely to create a good impression and thereby garner votes. They had evidently been lined up in the adjacent room, so they walked onstage in single file, the first taking the chair on the extreme right, the rest taking the successive seats to the left.

  When they were all seated, Chairman Bottomley said, “I’m sorry that we don’t have any of the candidates for statewide office—governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general—but we have their representatives who will speak for them. Now, we want to keep this part of the meeting short, so that we can spend the greater part of the evening in getting to know the candidates informally. So I’m going to ask the speakers to limit their talks to about four minutes. Let’s see, fifteen times four is sixty minutes, just an hour. That seems to me about right.” He turned to face the speakers. “Now, I’m not going to hold a stopwatch on you and cut you off in the middle of a sentence. But I’ll just get up and stand beside you, and you’ll take that as a signal to finish up. Okay? Okay, then we’ll start off with the statewide offices first. Ladies and gentlemen, the first speaker is—” he consulted a paper—“Charles Kimborough. Mr. Kimborough.”

  Kimborough was a middle-aged man, smiling and self-assured, perhaps because he was truly at ease. The governor, a Democrat, whom he was representing had little to gain or lose with this audience, which was overwhelmingly Republican. �
�I am here to convey to you the greetings of His Excellency and to convey his regrets that he was unable to be with you tonight because of a previous engagement. I am here tonight to urge you to support him in his candidacy for the high office which he now holds and in which he has demonstrated his ability and his concern …” and so on for his full four minutes of speaking time. When Bottomley appeared at his side, he seemed startled but with good grace said, “I could go on for the rest of the evening listing His Excellency’s accomplishments during his four years of office, but with Herb at my elbow I had better close by expressing my thanks for your kind attention and courtesy and hospitality. Thank you.”

  The next half dozen were like the first, stand-ins for candidates for Republican and Democratic statewide offices, but all took their full time, expatiating on their principals’ achievements. It was dull to the point of tedium, and several in the audience left. Laura Magnuson was tempted to follow them, but John Scofield, sitting there on the platform, had piqued her curiosity and interest. He was young and good-looking, to be sure, but even more, he had had the courage—or the foolhardiness—to challenge the incumbent, Josiah Bradley. The others had entered the race only after Bradley announced that he would not seek reelection. She wondered if he would make a point of it during his speech.

  Bottomley came forward and raised his arms and waggled his hands at the audience to get their attention. “All right, folks,” he said, “now that we’ve finished with the statewide offices, we can get on with the part of the program that you people are particularly interested in, the candidates for the local offices of senator and representative to the General Court. Fortunately, none of them had pressing engagements elsewhere (snickers and laughter) and they’re all here in person. First we’ll hear from the candidates for state senator. We have three of them and they all list themselves as Republican. I don’t know why the Democratic candidates didn’t show up. (laughter) We’ll proceed in alphabetical order. Let’s see—” a glance at his list—“that means we’ll start with Thomas Baggio, who is a city councillor of Revere, then Albert Cash, who is the representative to the General Court from this district, and end up with John Scofield of Barnard’s Crossing. Mr. Baggio.”

  Baggio was short, thick-set, swarthy, with bluish jowls, thick black hair, and a small Hitler moustache. He came forward, oozing confidence. “As city councillor of Revere, I instituted … I proposed … I caused …” He finished with “and what I did for my native city of Revere, I can do for all the cities and towns of the senatorial district. I will bring to the job the same devotion to duty, the same concentration I have shown as a city councillor.”

  He sat down to a scattering of polite applause. It occurred to Laura that he had made a mistake spending his entire time recounting his record as city councillor, if only because it involved the repetition of first-person locutions—this was always the problem in citing one’s record.

  Albert Cash was an older man in his late fifties. He was smooth and fluent, the words flowed easily out of his strangely impassive face, as though they were being played by a tape recorder. The gist of his speech was that he had devoted his life to service in the community, and he listed all the political jobs he had had, including the commissions and committees he had served on. And now, having served three terms as a representative to the General Court, it was only fair, he said, that he should be promoted to the Senate.

  He, too, received polite applause, although someone in the audience called out, “How about the Harbor Bill?” Pretending not to hear, Cash returned to his seat, while several people in the audience turned around to glare at the heckler. Laura made a mental note to inquire about the Harbor Bill and Cash’s part in it, if only because she detected a hint of embarrassment in the overcasual way he surveyed the ceiling at the back of the hall when he sat down.

  “Talk to the people who are there,” Mulcahey had advised. “I mean, don’t bother about those who don’t show up. Know what I mean?”

  “Sure.” Scofield had replied.

  Mulcahey fixed him with a baleful eye. “No, you don’t. You’re just saying that. Listen, the Essex District takes in Lynn and Revere as well as Barnard’s Crossing. Right? Well, who’s going to be at this Candidates’ Night? Just Crossers. That’s all. Maybe there’ll be one or two from Lynn or Revere, but not likely, and one or two don’t count anyway. So make up your mind that you’re talking just to the Barnard’s Crossing people. Get it? When you get around to appearing in Lynn, you’ll talk just to Lynners. Same with Revere. Point is, don’t try to talk to anybody who ain’t there.”

  “Yeah, but they hear about it, don’t they?”

  “Sure, if you’re President of the United States and you talk in Alabama, we hear about it here in Massachusetts, but if you’re running for state senator, don’t kid yourself, you’re not going to be quoted. If there’s a reporter present from the Lynn Express, you’ll be lucky if you’re even listed as having been one of the speakers. Who’s your opposition? Al Cash of Lynn and Tommy Baggio of Revere. All right. Cash has been representative from Lynn to the General Court for a couple of terms. He’ll talk about his record and say he deserves promotion to the Senate. That audience won’t give a damn about his record. Same with Tommy Baggio who’s been a city councillor. He’ll talk about his record, but it was all in Revere, so why should that impress the good folks of Barnard’s Crossing?”

  “Yeah, but what am I going to talk about? I don’t have a record.”

  “So go with what you have.”

  “But I don’t have anything.”

  “Sure you do. You’re a local boy and you’re nice-looking and friendly. So you show them that you’re nice and friendly. People don’t listen; they look. That’s why TV beats radio. You just stand there and let them see you and say anything that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Laura could see that Scofield was nervous and felt a twinge of pity for him. He favored the audience with an embarrassed boyish grin and then a nervous chuckle. “I am John Scofield, twenty-eight. I am a practicing attorney with offices in Salem. I am unmarried,” he began. “I was born right here in Barnard’s Crossing and have lived here all my life. And my family has been living here ever since Colonial times. I went to the Gaithskille School and to Barnard’s Crossing High. Then I went to Harvard and Harvard Law School. Maybe they were a little easier to get into a few years back. I love this town and the people in it.” He went on to talk about places in the town—the Landing, Fremont Hill, Children’s Island—and the special associations they had for him. Behind him, he heard the little shuffle and scrape that suggested that Bottomley was getting to his feet and would come to stand beside him. His mind cast about for some way of ending his little speech, and then as he felt the presence of the chairman beside him, it came to him. “The point is,” he said, “that I like it the way it is and I don’t want to change it, not any of it.”

  It seemed to Laura that the applause for Scofield was a little louder and a little less perfunctory than it had been for the other candidates, but then, of course, he was the only candidate from Barnard’s Crossing.

  Speeches of the candidates running for representative followed. Laura Magnuson had no interest in any of them, but she remained because she wanted to speak to Scofield, to see what he looked like close up. Finally, the chairman came forward and announced, “Well, there you are, folks. You’ve heard them and it took just over an hour, which is not bad. I guess some of them will be standing around for a while and you can talk to them informal-like, or argue with them if you’ve a mind to.”

  Laura wandered over to the campaign material, assuming that was where he would go upon leaving the platform, only to discover that there was none for Scofield. So she headed for the door, reaching it just as he approached.

  “That was a very effective speech you gave,” she said.

  Surprised, he stopped and looked at her with interest. “It was?”

  She nodded solemnly. “Very. Is that going to be the theme of your campaign
?”

  He wondered what he had said that could possibly be the theme for a campaign. “Er—what, I mean what part of—?”

  She sensed that he had no idea of what she had in mind, and no thought of its political effect. “You said you were against change.”

  “Well, you know, I was just, you know, kind of expressing my feelings—”

  “The point is,” she went on, “that most of the people here tonight are middle-aged or older. And that’s true of voters in general. Young people want changes, but older people are worried about change. They’re afraid of it. So when you said you didn’t want any change, most of them approved. Politicians are always telling people that they are going to change things. Well, the older people have heard these promises all their lives, and they don’t believe them. So a campaign against change might actually work.”

  “You seem to know a lot about politics. You a reporter or something?”

  “No, just interested.”

  “Look, could we go someplace and have a drink and maybe talk about it?”

  “All right. Where to? The coffee shop on West Street is nearest.”

  “Yeah, but it’s awfully crowded this time of night,” he said. “How about going over to Salem? I’m parked just around the corner.”

  As they walked, he shot sidelong glances at her, uncertain whether she was a pickup or was seriously interested in politics.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  She was a little startled when she saw the car, a bright, shocking pink.

  “Is this your car?” she asked. “I figured you for the conservative type. It looks like an ice-cream wagon.”

  He chuckled. “That’s because it is—or was—an ice-cream wagon—sort of. The guy I bought it from had four trucks on the road, the same color, peddling ice cream through the neighborhoods, and he used to ride around in this keeping an eye on them. Then he went broke, and I was able to buy it up cheap because of the paint job. I’m planning to have it repainted. I have to anyway. She’s starting to peel there on the fender. I just haven’t got around to it yet.” He didn’t bother to explain that he’d had the car for almost a year.