by Philip Roth
“Simply,” Eli said sharply. “You can’t have a boarding school in a residential area.” He would not allow Tzuref to cloud the issue with issues. “We thought it better to tell you before any action is undertaken.”
“But a house in a residential area?”
“Yes. That’s what residential means.” The DP’s English was perhaps not as good as it seemed at first. Tzuref spoke slowly, but till then Eli had mistaken it for craft—or even wisdom. “Residence means home,” he added.
“So this is my residence.”
“But the children?”
“It is their residence.”
“Seventeen children?”
“Eighteen,” Tzuref said.
“But you teach them here.”
“The Talmud. That’s illegal?”
“That makes it school.”
Tzuref hung the scales again, tipping slowly the balance.
“Look, Mr. Tzuref, in America we call such a place a boarding school.”
“Where they teach the Talmud?”
“Where they teach period. You are the headmaster, they are the students.”
Tzuref placed his scales on the desk. “Mr. Peck,” he said, “I don’t believe it…” but he did not seem to be referring to anything Eli had said.
“Mr. Tzuref, that is the law. I came to ask what you intend to do.”
“What I must do?”
“I hope they are the same.”
“They are.” Tzuref brought his stomach into the desk. “We stay.” He smiled. “We are tired. The headmaster is tired. The students are tired.”
Eli rose and lifted his briefcase. It felt so heavy packed with the grievances, vengeances, and schemes of his clients. There were days when he carried it like a feather—in Tzuref’s office it weighed a ton.
“Goodbye, Mr. Tzuref.”
“Sholom,” Tzuref said.
Eli opened the door to the office and walked carefully down the dark tomb of a corridor to the door. He stepped out on the porch and, leaning against a pillar, looked down across the lawn to the children at play. Their voices whooped and rose and dropped as they chased each other round the old house. The dusk made the children’s game look like a tribal dance. Eli straightened up, started off the porch, and suddenly the dance was ended. A long piercing scream trailed after. It was the first time in his life anyone had ran at the sight of him. Keeping his eyes on the lights of Woodenton, he headed down the path.
And then, seated on a bench beneath a tree, Eli saw him. At first it seemed only a deep hollow of blackness—then the figure emerged. Eli recognized him from the description. There he was, wearing the hat, that hat which was the very cause of Eli’s mission, the source of Woodenton’s upset. The town’s lights flashed their message once again: “Get the one with the hat. What a nerve, what a nerve…”
Eli started towards the man. Perhaps he was less stubborn than Tzuref, more reasonable. After all, it was the law. But when he was close enough to call out, he didn’t. He was stopped by the sight of the black coat that fell down below the man’s knees, and the hands which held each other in his lap. By the round-topped, wide-brimmed Talmudic hat, pushed onto the back of his head. And by the beard, which hid his neck and was so soft and thin it fluttered away and back again with each heavy breath he took. He was asleep, his sidelocks curled loose on his cheeks. His face was no older than Eli’s.
Eli hurried towards the lights.
The note on the kitchen table unsettled him. Scribblings on bits of paper had made history this past week. This one, however, was unsigned. “Sweetie,” it said, “I went to sleep. I had a sort of Oedipal experience with the baby today. Call Ted Heller.”
She had left him a cold soggy dinner in the refrigerator. He hated cold soggy dinners, but would take one gladly in place of Miriam’s presence. He was ruffled, and she never helped that, not with her infernal analytic powers. He loved her when life was proceeding smoothly—and that was when she loved him. But sometimes Eli found being a lawyer surrounded him like quicks and—he couldn’t get his breath. Too often he wished he were pleading for the other side; though if he were on the other side, then he’d wish he were on the side he was. The trouble was that sometimes the law didn’t seem to be the answer, law didn’t seem to have anything to do with what was aggravating everybody. And that, of course, made him feel foolish and unnecessary … Though that was not the situation here—the townsmen had a case. But not exactly, and if Miriam were awake to see Eli’s upset, she would set about explaining his distress to him, understanding him, forgiving him, so as to get things back to Normal, for Normal was where they loved one another. The difficulty with Miriam’s efforts was they only upset him more; not only did they explain little to him about himself or his predicament, but they convinced him of her weakness. Neither Eli nor Miriam, it turned out, was terribly strong. Twice before he’d faced this fact, and on both occasions had found solace in what his neighbors forgivingly referred to as “a nervous breakdown.”
Eli ate his dinner with his briefcase beside him. Halfway through, he gave in to himself, removed Tzuref’s notes, and put them on the table, beside Miriam’s. From time to time he flipped through the notes, which had been carried into town by the one in the black hat. The first note, the incendiary:
To whom it may concern:
Please give this gentleman the following: Boys shoes with rubber heels and soles.
5 prs size 6c
3 prs size 5c
3 prs size 5b
2 prs size 4a
3 prs size 4c
1 pr size 7b
1 pr size 7c
Total 18 prs. boys shoes. This gentleman has a check already signed. Please fill in correct amount.
L. TZUREF
Director, Yeshivah of
Woodenton, N.Y.
(5/8/48)
“Eli, a regular greenhorn,” Ted Heller had said. “He didn’t say a word. Just handed me the note and stood there, like in the Bronx the old guys who used to come around selling Hebrew trinkets.”
“A Yeshivah!” Artie Berg had said. “Eli, in Woodenton, a Yeshivah! If I want to live in Brownsville, Eli, I’ll live in Brownsville.”
“Eli,” Harry Shaw speaking now, “the old Puddington place. Old man Puddington’ll roll over in his grave. Eli, when I left the city, Eli, I didn’t plan the city should come to me.”
Note number two:
Dear Grocer:
Please give this gentleman ten pounds of sugar. Charge it to our account, Yeshivah of Woodenton, NY—which we will now open with you and expect a bill each month. The gentleman will be in to see you once or twice a week.
L. TZUREF, Director
(5/10/48)
P.S. Do you carry kosher meat?
“He walked right by my window, the greenie,” Ted had said, “and he nodded, Eli. He’s my friend now.”
“Eli,” Artie Berg had said, “he handed the damn thing to a clerk at Stop N’ Shop—and in that hat yet!”
“Eli,” Harry Shaw again, “it’s not funny. Someday, Eli, it’s going to be a hundred little kids with little yamalkahs chanting their Hebrew lessons on Coach House Road, and then it’s not going to strike you funny.”
“Eli, what goes on up there—my kids hear strange sounds.”
“Eli, this is a modem community.”
“Eli, we pay taxes.”
“Eli.”
“Eli!”
“Eli!”
At first it was only another townsman crying in his ear; but when he turned he saw Miriam, standing in the doorway, behind her belly.
“Eli, sweetheart, how was it?”
“He said no.”
“Did you see the other one?” she asked.
“Sleeping, under a tree.”
“Did you let him know how people feel?”
“He was sleeping.”
“Why didn’t you wake him up? Eli, this isn’t an everyday thing.”
“He was tired!”
“Don’t shout, p
lease,” Miriam said.
“‘Don’t shout. I’m pregnant. The baby is heavy.’” Eli found he was getting angry at nothing she’d said yet; it was what she was going to say.
“He’s a very heavy baby the doctor says,” Miriam told him.
“Then sit down and make my dinner.” Now he found himself angry about her not being present at the dinner which he’d just been relieved that she wasn’t present at It was as though he had a raw nerve for a tail, that he kept stepping on. At last Miriam herself stepped on it.
“Eli, you’re upset. I understand.”
“You don’t understand.”
She left the room. From the stairs she called, “I do, sweetheart.”
It was a trap! He would grow angry knowing she would be “understanding.” She would in turn grow more understanding seeing his anger. He would in turn grow angrier … The phone rang.
“Hello,” Eli said.
“Eli, Ted. So?”
“So nothing.”
“Who is Tzuref? He’s an American guy?”
“No. A DP. German.”
“And the kids?”
“DP’s too. He teaches them.”
“What? What subjects?” Ted asked.
“I don’t know.”
“And the guy with the hat, you saw the guy with the hat?”
“Yes. He was sleeping.”
“Eli, he sleeps with the hat?”
“He sleeps with the hat.”
“Goddam fanatics,” Ted said. “This is the twentieth century, Eli. Now it’s the guy with the hat. Pretty soon all the little Yeshivah boys’ll be spilling down into town.”
“Next thing they’ll be after our daughters.”
“Michele and Debbie wouldn’t look at them.”
“Then,” Eli mumbled, “you’ve got nothing to worry about, Teddie,” and he hung up.
In a moment the phone rang. “Eli? We got cut off. We’ve got nothing to worry about? You worked it out?”
“I have to see him again tomorrow. We can work something out.”
“That’s fine, Eli. I’ll call Artie and Harry.”
Eli hung up.
“I thought you said nothing worked out.” It was Miriam. “I did.”
“Then why did you tell Ted something worked out?”
“It did.”
“Eli, maybe you should get a little more therapy.”
“That’s enough of that, Miriam.”
“You can’t function as a lawyer by being neurotic. That’s no answer.”
“You’re ingenious, Miriam.”
She turned, frowning, and took her heavy baby to bed.
The phone rang.
“Eli, Artie. Ted called. You worked it out? No trouble?”
“Yes.”
“When are they going?”
“Leave it to me, will you, Artie? I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”
In bed Eli kissed his wife’s belly and laid his head upon it to think. He laid it lightly, for she was that day entering the second week of her ninth month. Still, when she slept, it was a good place to rest, to rise and fall with her breathing and figure things out. “If that guy would take off that crazy hat. I know it, what eats them. If he’d take off that crazy hat everything would be all right.”
“What?” Miriam said.
“I’m talking to the baby.”
Miriam pushed herself up in bed. “Eli, please, baby, shouldn’t you maybe stop in to see Dr. Eckman, just for a little conversation?”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh, sweetie!” she said, and put her head back on the pillow.
“You know what your mother brought to this marriage—a sling chair and a goddam New School enthusiasm for Sigmund Freud.”
Miriam feigned sleep, he could tell by the breathing.
“I’m telling the kid the truth, aren’t I, Miriam? A sling chair, three months to go on a New Yorker subscription, and An Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Isn’t that right?”
“Eli, must you be aggressive?”
“That’s all you worry about, is your insides. You stand in front of the mirror all day and look at yourself being pregnant.”
“Pregnant mothers have a relationship with the fetus that fathers can’t understand.”
“Relationship my ass. What is my liver doing now? What is my small intestine doing now? Is my island of Langerhans on the blink?”
“Don’t be jealous of a little fetus, Eli.”
“I’m jealous of your island of Lagerhans!”
“Eli, I can’t argue with you when I know it’s not me you’re really angry with. Don’t you see, sweetie, you’re angry with yourself.”
“You and Eckman.”
“Maybe he could help, Eli.”
“Maybe he could help you. You’re practically lovers as it is.”
“You’re being hostile again,” Miriam said.
“What do you care—it’s only me I’m being hostile towards.”
“Eli, we’re going to have a beautiful baby, and I’m going to have a perfectly simple delivery, and you’re going to make a fine father, and there’s absolutely no reason to be obsessed with whatever is on your mind. AH we have to worry about—” she smiled at him “—is a name.”
Eli got out of bed and slid into his slippers. “We’ll name the kid Eckman if it’s a boy and Eckman if it’s a girl.”
“Eckman Peck sounds terrible.”
“He’ll have to live with it,” Eli said, and he went down to his study where the latch on his briefcase glinted in the moonlight that came through the window.
He removed the Tzuref notes and read through them all again. It unnerved him to think of all the flashy reasons his wife could come up with for his reading and rereading the notes. “Eli, why are you so preoccupied with Tzuref?” “Eli, stop getting involved. Why do you think you’re getting involved, Eli?” Sooner or later, everybody’s wife finds their weak spot. His goddam luck he had to be neurotic! Why couldn’t he have been born with a short leg.
He removed the cover from his typewriter, hating Miriam for the edge she had. All the time he wrote the letter, he could hear what she would be saying about his not being able to let the matter drop. Well, her trouble was that she wasn’t able to face the matter. But he could hear her answer already: clearly, he was guilty of “a reaction formation.” Still, all the fancy phrases didn’t fool Eli: all she wanted really was for Eli to send Tzuref and family on their way, so that the community’s temper would quiet, and the calm circumstances of their domestic happiness return. All she wanted were order and love in her private world. Was she so wrong? Let the world bat its brains out—in Woodenton there should be peace. He wrote the letter anyway:
Dear Mr. Tzuref:
Our meeting this evening seems to me inconclusive. I don’t think there’s any reason for us not to be able to come up with some sort of compromise that will satisfy the Jewish community of Woodenton and the Yeshivah and yourself. It seems to me that what most disturbs my neighbors are the visits to town by the gentleman in the black hat, suit, etc. Woodenton is a progressive suburban community whose members, both Jewish and Gentile, are anxious that their families live in comfort and beauty and serenity. This is, after all, the twentieth century, and we do not think it too much to ask that the members of our community dress in a manner appropriate to the time and place.
Woodenton, as you may not know, has long been the home of well-to-do Protestants. It is only since the war that Jews have been able to buy property here, and for Jews and Gentiles to live beside each other in amity. For this adjustment to be made, both Jews and Gentiles alike have had to give up some of their more extreme practices in order not to threaten or offend the other. Certainly such amity is to be desired. Perhaps if such conditions had existed in prewar Europe, the persecution of the Jewish people, of which you and those 18 children have been victims, could not have been carried out with such success—in fact might not have been carried out at all.
Therefore, Mr. Tzuref, w
ill you accept the following conditions? If you can, we will see fit not to carry out legal action against the Yeshivah for failure to comply with township Zoning ordinances No. 18 and No. 23. The conditions are simply:
1. The religious, educational, and social activities of the Yeshivah of Woodenton will be confined to the Yeshivah grounds.
2. Yeshivah personnel are welcomed in the streets and stores of Woodenton provided they are attired in clothing usually associated with American life in the 20th century.
If these conditions are met, we see no reason why the Yeshivah of Woodenton cannot live peacefully and satisfactorily with the Jews of Woodenton—as the Jews of Woodenton have come to live with the Gentiles of Woodenton. I would appreciate an immediate reply.
Sincerely,
ELI PECK, Attorney
Two days later Eli received his immediate reply:
Mr. Peck:
The suit the gentleman wears is all he’s got.
Sincerely,
LEO TZUREF, Headmaster
Once again, as Eli swung around the dark trees and onto the lawn, the children fled. He reached out with his briefcase as if to stop them, but they were gone so fast all he saw moving was a flock of skullcaps.
“Come, come…” a voice called from the porch. Tzuref appeared from behind a pillar. Did he live behind those pillars? Was he just watching the children at play? Either way, when Eli appeared, Tzuref was ready, with no forewarning.
“Hello,” Eli said.
“Sholom.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten them.”
“They’re scared, so they run.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Tzuref shrugged. The little movement seemed to Eli strong as an accusation. What he didn’t get at home, he got here.
Inside the house they took their seats. Though it was lighter than a few evenings before, a bulb or two would have helped. Eli had to hold his briefcase towards the window for the last gleamings. He removed Tzuref’s letter from a manila folder. Tzuref removed Eli’s letter from his pants pocket. Eli removed the carbon of his own letter from another manila folder. Tzuref removed Eli’s first letter from his back pocket. Eli removed the carbon from his briefcase. Tzuref raised his palms. “…It’s all I’ve got…”