The Rabbi (10 page)

“
Borchu!
” hissed one of the old men by his side.

A quavering voice that couldn't have been his picked up the chant.

“
Borchu es adonoi hamvoroch. Borchu
—”

“
Bor
UCH
.” The old men all grunted or growled the correction at the same time, the brusque chorus of their voices slapping him across the face like a wet towel. He looked up dazedly and saw that his father's eyes were desperate. He began the second sentence again.

“
Bor
UCH
adonoi hamvoroch Tolom voed. Boruch ahtoh adonoi, elohainu melech hoalom
.” Huskily he finished the
brocha
and began the
haftorah
. For five minutes he quavered on, the thin piping of his voice sounding hollowly in a silence which he knew was caused by the congregation's conviction that any second now he was going to get hopelessly lost in the complexities of the Hebrew passage or in the ancient tune. But like a wounded matador whose training and discipline refuses to let him squirm into merciful oblivion beneath the horns of the bull, he refused to die. His voice steadied. His knees ceased their trembling. He sang on and on, and the congregation sat back
in their seats, half-disappointed in the knowledge that he was not going to create a fiasco for their diversion.

Soon he had even forgotten the ring of bearded critics who surrounded him, and the large audience of friends and blood relations. Caught up in the melody and in the tone poem of the wildly beautiful Hebrew, he swayed to and fro in rhythm to his own chanting. By the time the passage was finished he was enjoying himself immensely, and it was with regret that he drew out the last note as long as he dared.

He looked up. His father's face looked as though the First Lady had just told him personally that he was official bra-maker to the White House. Abe started toward his son, but before he could reach him Michael was enclosed in a forest of hands, all reaching to grip his wet palm, while a chorus of voices wished him
mazel tov
.

He walked with his father up the central aisle toward the back of the synagogue, where his mother waited at the foot of the balcony stairs. As they walked they shook hands with a dozen people, and he accepted envelopes containing money from men whose names he didn't know. His mother kissed him tearfully and he hugged her fat shoulders.

“Look who's here, Michael,” she said, pointing. He looked up to see his grandfather making his way down the aisle of the synagogue toward them. Isaac had slept at the nearby apartment of one of Abe's pressers, in order to be able to walk to the synagogue and thus avoid violating the Sabbath law prohibiting riding.

It wasn't until years later that it occurred to Michael how shrewdly his grandfather had waged his war against Dorothy or how victorious he had been. His strategy had required patience and the passing of time. But having utilized these, without once having raised his voice, he had vanquished his daughter-in-law and turned her household into the observant place he wanted it to be.

Michael had been his agent, of course.

The overthrowing of Stash Kwiatkowski had provided him an impetus that for months made him eager to walk to Hebrew school and back each day. By the time this pleasure had worn thin and he no longer felt like Jack the Giant Killer, he had been caught up in the rhythm of a learning process. Reb Yossle followed
Reb Chaim and Reb Doved followed Reb Yossle, and then for two ecstatic years he bathed each afternoon in the warmth emitted by the electric blue eyes of Miss Sophie Feldman, pretending to soak up knowledge and trembling every time she spoke his name. Miss Feldman had honey-colored hair and a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of a deliciously retroussé nose, and during each class she sat with her ankles crossed, the toe of her right foot turning, turning in a lazy circle which he watched with a fascination that somehow allowed him to recite when he was called upon.

By the time she had become Mrs. Hyman Horowitz, and had waddled pregnantly from the classroom for the last time, he had little leisure to waste in such luxuries as jealousy, because he was in his thirteenth year and the
bar mitzvah
loomed before him. He spent each afternoon in the special
bar mitzvah
class of Reb Moishe, the school principal, studying his
haftorah
. Every couple of Sundays he took the subway to Brooklyn and sang the
haftorah
for his grandfather, sitting in Isaac's room next to him on the bed, both of them wearing skullcaps and
tallises
, tracing the words in the book with a perspiring finger as he chanted them slowly and with far too much self-importance.

His grandfather would sit with his eyes closed, not unlike Reb Chaim, and when Michael made a mistake he would spring to life and sing the correct word in an old weak voice. After Michael had recited Isaac would ask subtle questions about life at home, and what he heard must have filled him with satisfaction. Michael's exposure to the environment of the Sons of Jacob Synagogue had turned the tables on the spirit of reform that had permeated the Kind household.

Dorothy Kind was not suited to be a revolutionary. When Michael began to question the presence in their home of meats and seafood which his rebs at the Hebrew school told him were forbidden to good Jews, his mother seized upon the excuse to ban them from the house. Challenged by her father-in-law, she had fought wildly for her right to be a free thinker. Questioned innocently by her son, she conformed with meekness and a quickened conscience. The
shabbos
lights came to be kindled in the apartment each Friday evening once more, and milk was milk and meat was meat, the two were not to be mingled.

Now, when his grandfather had made his slow way to them
through the crowded synagogue, Dorothy amazed him by kissing him with affection. “Wasn't Michael wonderful?” she demanded.

“A good
haftorah
” he conceded gruffly. He kissed Michael on the head. The service was over and the congregation began to pour toward them. They accepted the congratulations until the last person had shaken their hands and departed for the vestry, where tables were laden with chopped liver, pickled herring, kichles, and bottles of bootleg Scotch and rye.

Before they joined the guests his grandfather removed the boy-sized prayer shawl from around Michael's neck. Isaac took the
tallis
from around his own shoulders and wrapped the silken folds around his grandson. Michael was familiar with this
tallis
. It was not the one Isaac wore every day. This prayer shawl he had bought soon after coming to America, and he wore it only on the high holidays and other special occasions. It was carefully cleaned each year and wrapped and stored away after each wearing. The silk was slightly yellowed but well preserved, and the blue stitching was still strong and bright.

“Papa, your good
tallis
,” his mother protested.

“He'll take care of it,” his
zaydeh
told her. “Like a
shayneh Yid
.”

 

7

On a bright, cold Saturday morning in the winter of his thirteenth year he became a member of the working masses. He drove into Manhattan with his father, leaving the house before the rest of the family was out of bed. They breakfasted on orange juice, cream cheese, lox, and crusty rolls, dawdled pleasantly over thick mugs of coffee, and then left the cafeteria and crossed the street to the old loft building, the fourth floor of which contained Kind's Foundations.

The dreams Abe had enjoyed when he had changed the firm's name, and their own, had never materialized. Whatever constitutes the ingredient that transforms a healthy business into
a rich enterprise had eluded Abraham Kind. But while the business had not mushroomed it continued to supply them with a good living.

The plant consisted of sixteen machines bolted to an oily wooden floor and ringed by wooden tables bearing supplies of cloth, cups, stays, garters, and the other bits of materials that went into corsets, garter belts, girdles, and bras. Most of his father's employees were skilled workers who had been with him for many years. Michael knew many of them, but his father took him from machine to machine and introduced him gravely.

A white-haired cutter named Sam Katz removed the stumpy cigar from his mouth and patted his round belly.

“I'm the shop steward,” he said. “You want I should negotiate union business with you or with your father, Sonny?”

Abe grinned. “You g
onif
, stay away from this boy with your union propaganda. If I know you you'll put him on the negotiating committee.”

“It ain't a bad idea. Thanks, I think I will!”

His father's grin faded as they walked away together toward the front office. “He makes more money than I do,” he said.

There was a wall separating the front office from the machines. The reception room was carpeted, softly illuminated, and had been furnished well in the days when Abe had still had grandiose illusions about the future. By the time Michael started working there the furniture was shabby but still attractive. A glass cubicle in the corner contained two desks, one for his father and one for Carla Salva, the bookkeeper.

She was seated behind her ledgers, doing her nails. She flashed them a smile with her “Good morning.” She had incredibly white teeth and a mouth that nature had made thin-lipped and Max Factor had redesigned in red lushness. Next to her thin, flared nostrils was a large brown birthmark. She was a large-bosomed, slim-hipped Puerto Rican girl with creamy skin.

“Any mail?” Abe asked. She jabbed the freshly carmined nail of her forefinger, as sharp and red as a bloody stiletto, at a pile of papers on the far side of her desk. His father picked them up and carried them to his desk and began to separate the orders from the bills.

Michael stood there for a few minutes and then cleared his throat. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

Abe looked up. He had forgotten that the boy was there.
“Oh,” he said. He took him to a small closet and showed him where a battered Hoover vacuum cleaner squatted. “Clean the rugs.”

They needed cleaning badly. When the carpets had been vacuumed he watered the two large elephant-ear plants and then polished the metal ashtray stand. He was doing this at ten-thirty when the first customer came in. Abe moved out of the glass cubicle as soon as he saw him.

“Mr. Levinson!” he said. They shook hands warmly. “How are things in Boston?”

“Could be better.”

“Here, too. Here, too. But let's hope things will start to hum soon.”

“I've got a reorder for you.” He handed Abe an order blank.

“You didn't come in to New York just to reorder? I have some beautiful things to show you.”

“The price would have to be very good, Abe.”

“Mr. Levinson, you and I can worry about price later. All I ask you to do is sit with me and enjoy these new things.”

He looked toward the cubicle. “Carla. The new line,” his father said.

She nodded and smiled at Mr. Levinson. She went into the stock room and in a few minutes carried two boxes into the dressing room. When she came out she was wearing only a corset.

Michael's hands froze to the ashtray stand he was polishing. He had never seen so much of a woman's body before. The cups of the corset pushed Carla's breasts into two high balls of flesh that made his knees weak. She had a birthmark on the inside of her left thigh that matched the one on her face.

His father and Mr. Levinson didn't seem to know that she existed. Mr. Levinson looked at the corset and his father looked at Mr. Levinson.

“I don't think so,” the buyer said finally.

“You don't even want to know how cheap you can pick these up?”

“It would be an extravagance at any price. I've got too much in the store now.”

His father shrugged. “I won't argue.”

Carla returned to the dressing room and changed into a panty girdle and a black bra. The girdle was cut low enough so
that her navel winked at Michael secretly as she walked to and fro in front of the two men.

Mr. Levinson didn't seem any more interested in the panty girdle than he had in the corset, but he leaned back and closed his eyes. “How much?”

He winced when Abe told him. They argued heatedly for several minutes and then his father shrugged his shoulders and made a face as he agreed to Mr. Levinson's last offer.

“Now, how much for the corsets?”

His father grinned and the bargaining began again. When the deal was concluded both men looked satisfied. Three minutes later Mr. Levinson was gone and his father and Carla were back at their desks. He sat there polishing vigorously and sneaking peeks at Carla's bored face, his mind commanding the next customer to walk through the door.

He liked working with his father. When they closed up Kind Foundations at 5
P.M
. on Saturdays the two of them would go to a restaurant for dinner and then to a movie or perhaps to the Garden to watch a basketball game or the fights. Several times they went to the YMHA and worked out together and then sat in the steam room. His father could breathe steam indefinitely and emerge pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. Michael had to leave the room after five or ten minutes, his knees weak and the vitality drained from his body.