The Rabbi (24 page)

“You can claim it when you're twenty-one.” He marched up the stairs and into the temple. The telephone was ringing. When he answered it a woman asked to speak to the rabbi and he gave her Rabbi Flagerman's home number.

There was a package of paper cups in the bottom drawer of his desk. Pouring a stiff shot, about three fingers, from the girl's bottle, he swallowed the drink in a gulp, then he stood with his shoulders slumped and his eyes closed.

It was warm water.

Two nights later, Toby Goodman telephoned and apologized. He accepted her apology but refused her offer to drive for him the next day. A few minutes later the telephone rang again.

“Rabbi?” The voice was strangely hoarse.

When Michael gave Rabbi Flagerman's number, a panting like the sound of a tired dog came from the phone.

He began to smile. “Whom do you think you're kidding, Toby?” he said.

“I'm going to kill myself.”

The voice was male.

“Where are you?” Michael asked.

The address was garbled. Michael made him repeat it. He knew the street, it was only a couple of blocks away.

“Don't do anything. I'll be right there.
Please
.” He ran outside and stood on the marble stairs, praying while he tried to hail passing taxis. When he found one that was empty he sat on the edge of the seat and tried to think of something, anything, to say to a man who was afraid to live. But his mind was a blank when the cab pulled up in front of a stucco bungalow. He handed the driver a bill and without waiting for change ran across a parched and sandy lawn, up three steps and through a screened porch.

The sign over the bell said Harry Lefcowitz. The door was open and the screen door was unlocked.

“Mr. Lefcowitz?” he called softly. There was no answer.

He pushed the door open and went inside. The living room smelled of sourness. Opened bottles and half-filled glasses of beer were on the window sills. Bananas rotted in a glass bowl on the table. The ashtrays were filled with cigar stubs. An Army shirt hung over the back of a chair. There were sergeant's chevrons on the sleeves.

“Mr. Lefcowitz?” There was a small sound behind one of the doors leading off the living room. He pushed it open.

A short, slight man in khaki pants and a tee shirt sat on the bed. His feet were bare. He had a thin mustache that was almost lost in the stubble of his unshaven face. His eyes were red and sad. In his hand was a small black pistol.

“You're a cop,” he said.

“No. I'm not. I'm a rabbi. You called me, remember?”

“You're not Flagerman.” There was a loud
click
as the pistol's safety was released.

Inwardly Michael groaned, realizing that he had confirmed his knowledge of his rabbinical ineptness. He had not called the police. He had not even left a note at the temple to inform anyone of his whereabouts.

“I'm Rabbi Flagerman's assistant. I want to help.” The pistol came up slowly until it was pointed straight at his face. The round opening at the end was obscene. The man played a game with the safety, clicking it off and on. “Get your ass out of here,” he said.

Michael sat down on the unmade bed, trembling only slightly.

Outside it was dark.

“What would it solve, Mr. Lefcowitz?”

The man looked at him narrowly. “You think I won't kill you, hero? Why, it should bother me, after what I've seen? I'll kill you and then I'll kill myself.” He looked at Michael's face and laughed. “You don't know what I know. It won't make any difference. The world will still go on.”

Michael leaned toward him. His outstretched hand was a gesture of compassion, but the man saw it as a threat. He jammed the muzzle of the pistol into Michael's cheek. It was bruising and painful.

“You know where I got this gun? I took it off a dead German. His head was half shot off. It can do the same to you.” Michael said nothing. In a few minutes the man took the gun out of his cheek. With his fingertips Michael could feel the little
the muzzle had indented in his flesh. They sat and looked at one another. Michael's watch ticked loudly.

The man began to laugh. “That was a lot of crap, what I just said. I seen plenty of dead Germans, and I spit on some, but I never took anything from their bodies. I bought the gun for three cartons of Lucky Strikes. I wanted to have something to give the kid, something he could keep.” Lefcowitz scratched his foot with his free hand. His feet were long and bony, with crisp black hairs on the knuckles of his big toes.

Michael looked into his eyes. “A lot of this little act is a lot of crap, Mr. Lefcowitz. Why should you want to hurt me? I simply want to be your friend. And it would be even worse to do harm to yourself.” He tried a smile. “I think it's a joke of some sort. I think the gun isn't even loaded.”

The man raised the pistol and, in the same split second that the report sounded monstrously loud in the small room, his hand jumped slightly and a small black hole appeared in the white ceiling over their heads.

“There were seven,” Lefcowitz said. “Now there are six. More than enough. So don't think, Sonny. Sit there and keep your mouth shut.”

Neither spoke for a long time. It was a quiet night. Michael could hear an occasional automobile horn and the slow, steady sound of the surf on the nearby beach. Someone must have heard the shot, he assured himself. They are bound to come soon.

“Do you ever get lonesome?” Lefcowitz asked suddenly.

“All the time.”

“Sometimes I get so lonesome I could bawl.”

“We're all that way sometimes, Mr. Lefcowitz.”

“Yeah? Then why not?” He looked at the pistol and shook it. “When you come right down to it, why not?” He grinned mirthlessly. “Now's your chance to talk about God, or guts.”

“No. There's a simpler reason. That”—Michael touched the gun with his fingertips, moving it slightly so that it no longer pointed at him—“is final, irreversible. There would be no chance to decide that you had been wrong. And although there is a lot of ugliness in the world, there are times when it's wonderful to be alive. Just getting a drink of water when you're very thirsty, or seeing something beautiful, anything at all that's beautiful. The good times make up for the bad times.”

For a moment Lefcowitz looked less certain. But he moved the pistol so that it once more was aimed at Michael. “I don't get thirsty very often,” he said.

He was silent for a long time and Michael didn't try to make him talk. Once two boys ran by the house, hooting and shouting, and the man's face worked curiously.

“Are you a fisherman?”

“Not a very active one,” Michael said.

“I was just thinking that I've had good times, like you said, while I was fishing. With the water and sun and all.”

“Yes.”

“That's why I came here in the first place. I was a kid, working in a shoe store in Erie, P-A. I drove down to Hialeah
with a bunch of guys and won forty-eight hundred dollars. The money was nice, but what did I know from money, I had no responsibilities in those days. It was the fishing. I caught sea trout all day long. Those guys thought I was nuts when I wouldn't go back with them. I got a job tending bar in a joint on the Beach. I had fishing and sun and broads in bathing suits, and I knew I was in paradise.”

“You were a bartender when you were drafted?”

“Had my own place. There was this guy who worked with me. Nick Mangano. He had a few tips put away, and with what I had we took over a clam bar with a liquor license on that fishing wharf they call Murphy's Pier. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“We saved our dough and a few years later we spread out, a larger joint with some booths and a piano player. It worked out very nice. I was married by then and I took the day shift. All day long I got fishermen, mostly old men. There are a lot of old people here. They make a very good brand of customer, a couple of quiet jolts every day and never any trouble. And at night Nick would be here with another guy we hired, to take care of the swinging crowd.”

“It sounds like a good business.”

“You married?”

“No.”

Lefcowitz was silent for a moment. “I married a
shickseh
,” he said. “An Irish girl.”

“Are you still in the Army?”

“Yeah, I got rest and rehabilitation coming, and then a discharge.” His mouth worked slightly. “See, when I was drafted I gave Nick power of attorney. He's got a funny heart, it kept him out. So for four years he's been running the joint alone, keeping open twenty-four hours a day.”

He began to droop. His voice became furry around the edges. “See, I expected to walk into that joint and get at least a little coming-home party from my pal Nick. It's funny, in Naples I even treated the wop babes with respect. I figured Nick would like that when I tell him. So the whole place is closed, boarded up. Everything's cleaned out of the bank.” He looked at Michael and grinned, his eyes full and his lips trembling. “But that's the
funny
part.

“Right here he was living, all the time I was overseas. Right here in this house.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mister, I've been
told
. And told. At a time like this, you'd be surprised at how many talkative friends you have. They come out of the cracks.”

“Where are they now?”

“The boy's missing. She's missing. He's missing. The money's missing. No forwarding address. Everything clean as a picked bone.”

Michael fought for words that might help but he could think of nothing.

“See, I knew she was a bimbo when I married her. I figured, so who's an angel, I've lived too, maybe we can make it brand-new together. So we didn't, that's life, about her I don't care. But the kid was named Samuel.
Shmuel
, after my father,
alev hasholom
. They're both Catholics. That's one kid who will never be
bar mitzvah
.”

He groaned, and it was like the breaking of a dam. “My God, I'm never going to see that kid again.” He threw himself forward, his head striking Michael's shoulder and almost knocking him off the bed. Michael held him tightly and rocked, saying nothing. After a long while he reached down and with great gentleness removed the gun from the slack fingers. He had never held a gun before. It was surprisingly heavy. Over the man's head he read the raised printing on the barrel:
SAUER U. SOHN, SUHL, CAL
7.65. He set it down on the bed beside them. He continued to rock. With his right hand he held the man's head to his shoulder, stroking the matted hair. “Cry,” he said. “Cry, Mr. Lefcowitz.”

When the Military Police let him off at the temple it was still dark. He found that he had left without locking the door or shutting the lights and he was glad he had come back instead of going straight to his roominghouse; Rabbi Flagerman might have been annoyed. In his office the air conditioner was still going at full speed. The night air was chill and the temperature in the room was uncomfortably low. He switched the air conditioner off.

He fell asleep at his desk, his head in his arms.

When the telephone jolted him awake the clock on his desk said eight-fifty-five. His bones ached and his mouth was dry. Outside, the sun was hot and yellow. Already the humidity was uncomfortable. He switched on the air conditioning before he lifted the telephone.

It was a woman. “May I speak to the rabbi?” she asked.

He stifled a yawn and sat up straighter.

“Which one?” he said.

 

20

Not quite a year after he had come to Miami, Michael flew to New York to help Rabbi Joshua Greenberg of Sons of Jacob Synagogue officiate at the marriage ceremony of Mimi Steinmetz and a certified public accountant who had just been made a junior partner in her father's firm. As the marriage was made and the couple kissed he felt a flash of regret and desire, not for the girl but for a wife, someone to love. He danced the
kezatski
with the bride and then drank too much champagne.