The Complete Stories (75 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Complete Stories
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“Anyway, what about those two prices?” Albert asked, annoyed by the interruption. Every time Rifkele appeared his doubts of the enterprise rose before him like warriors with spears.
“We got two kinds crowns,” said the rabbi. “One is for 401 and the other is 986.”
“Dollars, you mean, for God’s sake?—that’s fantastic.”
“The crown is pure silver. The client pays in silver dollars. So the silver dollars we melt—more for the large-size crown, less for the medium.”
“What about the small?”
“There is no small. What good is a small crown?”
“I wouldn’t know, but the assumption seems to be the bigger the better. Tell me, please, what can a 986 crown do that a 401 can’t? Does the patient get better faster with the larger one? It hastens the reaction?”
The rabbi, five fingers hidden in his limp beard, assented.
“Are there any other costs?”
“Costs?”
“Over and above the quoted prices?”
“The price is the price, there is no extra. The price is for the silver and for the work and for the blessings.”
“Now would you kindly tell me, assuming I decide to get involved in this deal, where I am supposed to lay my hands on 401 silver dollars? Or if I should opt for the 986 job, where can I get a pile of cartwheels of that amount? I don’t suppose that any bank in the whole Bronx would keep that many silver dollars on hand nowadays. The Bronx is no longer the Wild West, Rabbi Lifschitz. But what’s more to the point, isn’t it true the mint isn’t making silver dollars all silver anymore?”
“So if they are not making we will get wholesale. If you will leave with me the cash, I will order the silver from a wholesaler, and we will save you the trouble to go to the bank. It will be the same amount of silver, only in small bars, I will weigh them on a scale in front of your eyes.”
“One other question. Would you take my personal check in payment? I could give it to you right away once I’ve made my final decision.”
“I wish I could, Mr. Gans,” said the rabbi, his veined hand still nervously exploring his beard, “but it’s better cash when the patient is so sick, so I can start to work right away. A check sometimes comes
back, or gets lost in the bank, and this interferes with the crown.”
Albert did not ask how, suspecting that a bounced check, or a lost one, wasn’t the problem. No doubt some customers for crowns had stopped their checks on afterthought.
As the teacher reflected concerning his next move—should he, shouldn’t he?—weighing a rational thought against a sentimental, the old rabbi sat in his chair, reading quickly in his small mystic book, his lips hastening along silently.
Albert at last got up.
“I’ll decide the question once and for all tonight. If I go ahead and commit myself on the crown I’ll bring you the cash after work tomorrow.”
“Go in good health,” said the rabbi. Removing his glasses he wiped both eyes with his handkerchief.
Wet or dry? thought the teacher.
As he let himself out of the downstairs door, more inclined than not toward trying the crown, he felt relieved, almost euphoric.
But by the next morning, after a difficult night, Albert’s mood had about-faced. He fought gloom, irritation, felt flashes of hot and cold anger. It’s throwing money away, pure and simple. I’m dealing with a clever confidence man, that’s plain to me, but for some reason I am not resisting strongly. Maybe my subconscious is telling me to go along with a blowing wind and have the crown made. After that we’ll see what happens—whether it rains, snows, or spring comes. Not much will happen, I suppose, but whatever does, my conscience will be in the clear.
But when he visited Rabbi Lifschitz that afternoon in the same roomful of empty chairs, though the teacher carried the required cash in his wallet, he was still uncomfortable about parting with it.
“Where do the crowns go after they are used and the patient recovers his health?” he cleverly asked the rabbi.
“I’m glad you asked me this question,” said the rabbi alertly, his thick lid drooping. “They are melted, and the silver we give to the poor. A mitzvah for one makes a mitzvah for another.”
“To the poor you say?”
“There are plenty poor people, Mr. Gans. Sometimes they need a crown for a sick wife or a sick child. Where will they get the silver?”
“I see what you mean—recycled, sort of, but can’t a crown be reused as it is? I mean, do you permit a period of time to go by before you melt them down? Suppose a dying man who recovers gets seriously ill again at a future date?”
“For a new sickness you will need a new crown. Tomorrow the
world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.”
“Look, Rabbi Lifschitz,” Albert said impatiently, “I’ll tell you frankly that I am inching toward ordering the crown, but it would make my decision a whole lot easier all around if you would let me have a quick look at one of them—it wouldn’t have to be for more than five seconds—at a crown-in-progress for some other client.”
“What will you see in five seconds?”
“Enough—whether the object is believable, worth the fuss and not inconsequential investment.”
“Mr. Gans,” replied the rabbi, “this is not a showcase business. You are not buying from me a new Chevrolet automobile. Your father lays now dying in the hospital. Do you love him? Do you wish me to make a crown that will cure him?”
The teacher’s anger flared. “Don’t be stupid, rabbi, I’ve answered that. Please don’t sidetrack the real issue. You’re working on my guilt so I’ll suspend my perfectly reasonable doubts of the whole freaking enterprise. I won’t fall for that.”
They glared at each other. The rabbi’s beard quivered. Albert ground his teeth.
Rifkele, in a nearby room, moaned.
The rabbi, breathing emotionally, after a moment relented.
“I will show you the crown,” he sighed.
“Accept my apologies for losing my temper.”
The rabbi accepted. “Now tell me please what kind of sickness your father has got.”
“Ah,” said Albert, “nobody is certain for sure. One day he got into bed, turned to the wall, and said, ‘I’m sick.’ They suspected leukemia at first but the lab tests didn’t confirm it.”
“You talked to the doctors?”
“In droves. Till I was blue in the face. A bunch of ignoramuses,” said the teacher hoarsely. “Anyway, nobody knows exactly what he has wrong with him. The theories include rare blood diseases, also a possible carcinoma of certain endocrine glands. You name it, I’ve heard it, with complications suggested, like Parkinson’s or Addison’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or something similar, alone or in combination with other sicknesses. It’s a mysterious case, all in all.”
“This means you will need a special crown,” said the rabbi.
The teacher bridled. “What do you mean special? What will it cost?”
“The cost will be the same,” the rabbi answered dryly, “but the design and the kind of blessings will be different. When you are dealing
with such a mystery you got to make another one but it must be bigger.”
“How would that work?”
“Like two winds that they meet in the sky. A white and a blue. The blue says, ’Not only I am blue but inside I am also purple and orange. ’ So the white goes away.”
“If you can work it up for the same price, that’s up to you.”
Rabbi Lifschitz then drew down the two green window shades and shut the door, darkening the room.
“Sit,” he said in the heavy dark, “I will show you the crown.”
“I’m sitting.”
“So sit where you are, but turn your head to the wall where is the mirror.”
“But why so dark?”
“You will see light.”
He heard the rabbi strike a match and it flared momentarily, casting shadows of candles and chairs amid the empty chairs in the room.
“Look now in the mirror.”
“I’m looking.”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Look with your eyes.”
A silver candelabrum, first with three, then five, then seven burning bony candlesticks, appeared like ghostly hands with flaming fingertips in the oval mirror. The heat of it hit Albert in the face and for a moment he was stunned.
But recalling the games of his childhood, he thought, Who’s kidding who? It’s one of those illusion things I remember from when I was a kid. In that case I’m getting the hell out of here. I can stand maybe mystery but not magic tricks or dealing with a rabbinical magician.
The candelabrum had vanished, although not its light, and he now saw the rabbi’s somber face in the glass, his gaze addressing him. Albert glanced quickly around to see if anyone was standing at his shoulder, but nobody was. Where the rabbi was hiding at the moment the teacher did not know; but in the lit glass appeared his old man’s lined and shrunken face, his sad eyes, compelling, inquisitive, weary, perhaps even frightened, as though they had seen more than they had cared to but were still looking.
What’s this, slides or home movies? Albert sought some source of projection but saw no ray of light from wall or ceiling, nor object or image that might be reflected by the mirror.
The rabbi’s eyes glowed like sun-filled clouds. A moon rose in the
blue sky. The teacher dared not move, afraid to discover he was unable to. He then beheld a shining crown on the rabbi’s head.
It had appeared at first like a braided mother-of-pearl turban, then had luminously become—like an intricate star in the night sky—a silver crown, constructed of bars, triangles, half-moons and crescents, spires, turrets, trees, points of spears; as though a wild storm had swept them up from the earth and flung them together in its vortex, twisted into a single glowing interlocked sculpture, a forest of disparate objects.
The sight in the ghostly mirror, a crown of rare beauty—very impressive, Albert thought—lasted no longer than five short seconds, then the reflecting glass by degrees turned dark and empty.
The shades were up. The single bulb in a frosted lily fixture on the ceiling shone harshly in the room. It was night.
The old rabbi sat, exhausted, on the broken sofa.
“So you saw it?”
“I saw something.”
“You believe what you saw—the crown?”
“I believe I saw. Anyway, I’ll take it.”
The rabbi gazed at him blankly.
“I mean I agree to have the crown made,” Albert said, having to clear his throat.
“Which size?”
“Which size was the one I saw?”
“Both sizes. This is the same design for both sizes, but there is more silver and also more blessings for the $986 size.”
“But didn’t you say that the design for my father’s crown, because of the special nature of his illness, would have a different style, plus some special blessings?”
The rabbi nodded. “This comes also in two sizes—the $401 and $986.”
The teacher hesitated a split second. “Make it the big one,” he said decisively.
He had his wallet in his hand and counted out fifteen new bills—nine one hundreds, four twenties, a five, and a single—adding to $986.
Putting on his glasses, the rabbi hastily counted the money, snapping with thumb and forefinger each crisp bill as though to be sure none had stuck together. He folded the stiff paper and thrust the wad into his pants pocket.
“Could I have a receipt?”
“I would like to give you a receipt,” said Rabbi Lifschitz earnestly, “but for the crowns there are no receipts. Some things are not a business.”
“If money is exchanged, why not?”
“God will not allow. My father did not give receipts and also my grandfather.”
“How can I prove I paid you if something goes wrong?”
“You have my word, nothing will go wrong.”
“Yes, but suppose something unforeseen did,” Albert insisted, “would you return the cash?”
“Here is your cash,” said the rabbi, handing the teacher the packet of folded bills.
“Never mind,” said Albert hastily. “Could you tell me when the crown will be ready?”
“Tomorrow night before Shabbos, the latest.”
“So soon?”
“Your father is dying.”
“That’s right, but the crown looks like a pretty intricate piece of work to put together out of all those odd pieces.”
“We will hurry.”
“I wouldn’t want you to rush the job in any way that would—let’s say—prejudice the potency of the crown or, for that matter, in any way impair the quality of it as I saw it in the mirror—or however I saw it.”
Down came the rabbi’s eyelid, quickly raised without a sign of self-consciousness. “Mr. Gans, all my crowns are first-class jobs. About this you got nothing to worry about.”

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