The Sunset Gang (13 page)

Finally, one day, he read in the paper that the Egyptian
Ambassador to the United States was vacationing at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. To Bernie, Palm Beach, about a half-hour drive away, was the absolute last
bastion of the rich goyim Jew-haters.

"A few years ago, if a Jew set foot in the place they
would have fed him to the fishes."

"There are plenty of Jews in Palm Beach now."

"Big deal. They always go where they're not
wanted."

He called his group together. It was three in the afternoon
and some of the men were still wearing bathing suits and smelling of suntan
oil.

"Tomorrow we're going to picket the Breakers."

"The Breakers?"

"The Egyptian Ambassador is staying there," he
said. "We're going to make signs. We're going to call the television
stations and the newspapers and we're going to picket the Breakers."

"A real rumble."

"We're going to wake up people to the danger,"
Bernie said. He could see that the men were interested. "We're going to
let this country know what we're watching--that we haven't rolled over like
dead dogs."

"Do we need a permit?" one of the men, Morris
Greenberg, asked.

"I'll take care of everything," Bernie said.

The men met later that evening and bought materials for
makeshift picket signs. They used Magic Markers to draw the signs. "Down
with Arafat," "Never Again," "Jews Fight Back,"
"No More Gas Chambers," the signs read, although they were, even to
Bernie, disappointingly crude. They'll get the message, he thought.

In the morning, he called the Palm Beach Police Department.

"I'm Bernie Bromberg, ex-NYPD."

"Yeah, ole buddy," a Southern voice at the other
end said. Bernie felt a lump form in his throat. He knew in advance what
response he would get.

"We need a permit for a demonstration."

"A what?"

"A demonstration."

"In Palm Beach?"

"In front of the Breakers."

"You're kidding?"

"We're a Jewish group and we want to picket the
Breakers."

"Picket?" The voice paused. "You a crank or
something?" Then the man paused again and he could hear mumbling in the
background. "Hey, ole buddy," the man said pleasantly, "what's
your number over there?"

Bernie knew the ruse and hung up. Screw you, he thought
we'll picket without a permit. So they'll book us. Maybe put us in the pokey
for a few hours. Big deal. Think of all the publicity we'll get.

About an hour before the scheduled rendezvous he called the
newspapers and television stations. Most of the people were polite, although he
could tell they were laughing.

"You say you're from Sunset Village?"

"Yes."

"And you're going to picket the Breakers?"

He had to repeat it many times, as if they just couldn't
quite understand.

Mildred had heard him on the phone and said to him when he
got off, "Bernie, this is crazy."

"We got to have action."

"This is action? A few broken-down Jews holding a
bunch of stupid signs?"

"You don't understand."

"Bernie, don't go."

He gathered up the signs and dragged them to a waiting car.

"Please, Bernie, don't go." Mildred started to
cry and scream. "Please, Bernie...."

He could still hear her as the car moved toward the main
road. Only four of the ten men had shown up. The others had either developed
sudden ailments or their wives had raised enough hell to keep them home.

Morris Greenberg drove his 1971 Chevy down Okeechobee Boulevard, while the others in the car stared silently ahead of them. I have no
second thoughts, Bernie Bromberg assured himself, although Mildred's tears and
screams had profoundly upset him. But, for the first time in his life, he felt
the sense of mission, the focusing of his energy. With the exception of that
single incident in the alley, he had been passive, willingly passive, and even
then he had lost his courage at the last moment. Never again, he told himself,
feeling the button pinned to the pocket of his flowered shirt. After they
crossed the bridge, the car headed for the Breakers, drawing close to the
graceful dominant spires through the long neatly kept driveway.

A group of policemen had already arrived and Bernie could
see the television crew and newspaper people arguing with the cops.

"Bernie, you really think this is wise?" Morris
said.

"It's the only way."

He shrugged and Bernie and the others reached for the signs
from the back windowledge of the car and opened the door. But before they got
out the police descended on them, followed by a television crew with hand-held
cameras, and newspaper people. They surged around the car. People stared from
inside the big lobby and the putting green in front of the hotel.

"Let 'em out, Gus," a television cameraman said.
"Let's get some footage."

"Bear it," a policeman said.

Another policeman with reddish hair and a freckled face
poked his head in the car window.

"Who is Mr. Bromberg?"

"Me," Bernie said. "I'm ex-NYPD."

I know. Your wife called. She's hysterical. I think you
should all go home."

"We have a mission, officer," Bernie said. He
looked at the frightened faces of the men who had come with him. His courage,
which had momentarily floundered, had surged again. "We owe it to the
Jewish people."

"That's none of my business, Mr. Bromberg," the
officer said politely, deliberately blocking the vantage point of the
television cameras. "But you cannot picket here without a permit. It's
against the law. If you persist, you will be arrested."

"So I'll be arrested. Big deal," Bernie Bromberg
said. "So you'll get credit for a lousy collar of one old Jew." He
looked smugly around at the men with him.

"We'd better go, Bernie," Morris said.

"Not me," Bernie insisted.

"Come on, Bernie. This is ridiculous," another of
his companions said.

"What do you mean ridiculous?" He turned to the
men, and addressed the one that had not spoken. "You too, Harry?"
Harry nodded.

"I'm too old to be arrested, Bernie."

He could feel his rage exploding in his chest. "You
lousy yellow bastards."

He picked up a sign and clicking open the door, he pushed
it with his foot, managing to catch the policeman off guard for a moment as he
struggled out of the car, the crude sign held in front of him as a weapon. The
policeman recovered quickly, but not until Bernie had cleared the car and
pulled himself up to his full height. He was quickly relieved of the sign and
hustled back into the car. He fell back against the seat, feeling his energy
drained and his heart palpitating, which frightened him.

"Just get the hell out of here," the policeman
said. The driver nodded, gunning the motor. Bernie closed his eyes as the car
moved smoothly out of the driveway followed by a police car, which escorted
them back over the bridge.

Bernie was silent until they reached the signposts of Sunset Village. His heart had slowed down and his courage had returned.

"That's the way it's always going to be," he
said.

"Bernie," the one called Harry said, "it's a
stupid idea. We're too old for this."

Bernie knew it was true, although inside himself, in the
marrow of his bones, in the cells of his tissue, he knew that he was right in
persisting.

"Let the next generation worry about it," someone
said as the car slowed down to go over the bumps.

"There won't be any next generation," Bernie
mumbled. "Just wait." They'll see I'm right, he thought--he had not a
single doubt.

They called her "the Angel of Mercy," and there
was no mistaking the sarcasm. They observed her on her daily rounds, a
bent-over snip of a woman, with piano legs that made one wonder how she was
able to get around in the first place, matted gray hair over which she wore a
yellow bandana, and a faded old-fashioned black dress, a little shiny with use.
She wore sensible but quite ugly laced shoes, a necklace, obviously a piece of
Yemenite jewelry that someone might have brought her from Israel, and she
always carried her pocketbook, a heavy brown thing, by the handle so that it
hung down to her knees.

Even her closest neighbor on the ground-floor row of
condominiums had never been inside of her place, seeing it only from the
outside, as the woman opened or closed her door. She had caught sight of a
rather overstuffed but threadbare couch and an upholstered chair with stiff
doilies pinned to its backrest and arms. While she never really got close
enough, the neighbor had the impression, just the impression, that the place
smelled a trifle unclean, musty and old. But this could have been the impression
that the woman herself gave. It was hard to tell how she might have looked as a
girl, or even a middle-aged woman, since old age had shaped and gnarled her so
completely. The Florida sun had tanned her deeply lined face like muddy-colored
brier, and only the fact that she smeared a deep-red lipstick too generously on
her cracked lips and put two circles of rouge on her cheeks provided evidence
of a still-lingering feminine vanity.

It was unfortunate that she gave such an impression, since
she hardly thought of herself as eccentric, and the sick and infirm that she
visited daily, sometimes five or six in a day, actually began to look forward
to her visits. They, too, had formed bad first impressions and were always
surprised when she first showed up, wondering, after seeing her ancient face,
whether she was the harbinger of death. This, in itself, was neither strange
nor morbid, since in a community like Sunset Village death was an ever-present
specter, actually a friend who seemed to be watching everyone from some balcony
in the heavens, observing all the aged Jews and trying to decide who goes next.

Maybe it was something genetic, something buried in the
Jewish psyche, the thing that gave the world so many Jewish comedians, but, at
least here in Sunset Village, death was treated somewhat as a joke, a kind of
embarrassment, like a cuckolded husband in a French farce. That was probably
why a sick person, lying supine in his bed gasping for air, could actually
smile when he saw this little bent-over woman appear and draw out of her huge
pocketbook a cellophane-wrapped bag of candies tied with a tiny red ribbon.

"Well, it's all over now," a patient would say
when she had gone, "the Angel of Mercy has arrived." But when she
came again and the patient had still survived, she was treated with somewhat
more respect and might be offered tea and cakes, which she rarely refused.

"You feel better, Mr. Brodsky?" she would ask,
parting her overred lips in an odd grin.

"I feel wonderful, Mrs. Klugerman. I'm already in the
undertaker's cash-flow projections." Mr. Brodsky had been an accountant
and the Angel of Mercy assumed that this might be a joke and smiled more
broadly.

"Why should you make them rich?" she would say.
Such a remark would provide the patient with a key to the Angel of Mercy's
character and would, despite his first impression, find himself cheered.

Sometimes a healthy spouse or child or other relative would
be annoyed at the woman's constant visits.

"She's a ghoul. I understand she spends her entire day
visiting the sick."

"So what's wrong with that?" the patient would
say.

"Ghoulish, that's all."

"She annoys you?"

"It's weird."

"If you're flat on your back it's not so weird."

In a place like Sunset Village, with most of the population
well over sixty and growing older, the sickbed activity was, if the term could
be applied in connection with Yetta Klugerman, frenetic. There she would go,
ploddingly along, utilizing the little open-air trailer bus to get around,
visiting her wards. She never left the premises of Sunset Village. This meant
that she could choose from three types of patients: the not-very-sick, the
post-operative, and the terminal.

The odd thing about her visits was, from the patients'
point of view, that she revealed very little about herself and her history.
This was odd in Sunset Village, since everyone at that stage in life had a
history. She was friendly, humorous, gentle, even loving, but when she left
there was never any completed picture about her--as though she were an
apparition.

A bedded yenta with little to do but sponge up gossip from
her visitors could summon up a good head of outrage during a visit by Yetta
Klugerman.

"You lived in New York?" the yenta would say.

"Yes."

"Brooklyn?"

"No."

"The Bronx?"

"You're looking so much better, Mrs. Rabinowitz. The
hip is healing?"

"I get occasionally a gnawing pain, but the doctor
said it is to be expected." There would be a pause as the patient surveyed
Yetta Klugerman's kindly face.

"In Manhattan?"

"Actually, we lived all over," Yetta would say
and smile benignly.

They would sit for a few moments, contemplating each other,
the overrouged lips poised in a half-smile.

"Your husband died?"

"I'm sure you'll be up and around in a few days, Mrs.
Rabinowitz. You'll see how easy it is to use the walker."

"I'll be a walking wounded, like an old lady, ready
for the home."

"You'd be surprised how many people have had your
problem. They use the walker for a few weeks, then all of a sudden, they're
recovered. Believe me, it's not so bad. You should see some of the cases I've
visited."

The yenta would be torn between trying to discover more
intimate details about Mrs. Klugerman and learning about her visitations. In
the end, the stories of the other sick people won out. Nothing seemed more
compelling to a bedridden patient than the ailments and mental attitude of
people in the same boat.

"Mr. Schwartz lost a leg from diabetes," Mrs.
Klugerman would say.

"Oh my God."

"His attitude is getting better. They'll give him an
artificial leg and a cane and he'll be able to get around. Look, it's better
than Mrs. Silverman."

"She has cancer?" The patient's face would
tighten, revealing the impending fear of the answer.

Mrs. Klugerman would nod her head. "She has a very
marvelous attitude. She said she had a full life, a lot of children and
grandchildren and her husband is alive to take care of her."

"She has pain?"

"They give her something for it. Really, it's not so
bad."

"You must see a lot of people who are dying, Mrs.
Klugerman."

"One way or another we're all going to go in the same
direction."

"Better tomorrow than today."

"You'll be dancing, Mrs. Rabinowitz. You'll see. I
give you less than a month."

"You think I can do a cha-cha-cha with a pin in my
hip?"

"You should see them."

"Next week I'll go on the dance floor with my
walker."

Because the people who became sick were older, both the
recovery period or the lingering with some terminal disease was longer and Mrs.
Klugerman sometimes would stretch her visits over many months. She became
something of a legend. Most of the time, she learned about a sick person from
the patients she visited. Other times, people would simply call her to provide
her with the information and request a visit. It was one of the inevitable
consequences of living in Sunset Village that if you were sick, sooner or later
you would get a visit from Mrs. Klugerman.

It became somewhat of a local joke around the card tables,
or the pool. Someone would complain of an ache or a pain.

"Better watch out. You'll soon be ready for the Angel
of Mercy."

"Who?"

"Mrs. Klugerman."

"God forbid."

But if Mrs. Klugerman knew about these jokes, she said
nothing. The initial visit always created somewhat of a stir. First, there was
a shock of seeing the little bent woman at the door clutching her huge
pocketbook and drawing out a little cellophane bag of candies. A son or a
daughter or a sister or brother, usually someone who had flown down to act as
nurse, would scurry back to the sickbed.

"You know a Mrs. Klugerman?"

"Yetta Klugerman?"

"I didn't ask her first name."

"A little old lady with piano legs?"

"The same."

"She has candy?"

"That's her."

"She's the Angel of Mercy."

"The what?"

"It's a local joke."

In the end they let her come in, since it was well known
that she would be persistent in her efforts. Some had tried to bar her way, but
her tenacity usually won out. Besides, there was a suspicion, particularly in
the minds of those who had been sick, that somehow she had had something to do
with their recovery. Naturally the people who had died might have had a different
story.

"Laugh all you want," a former patient might tell
a skeptic. "She was there maybe four five times a week. More than my
so-called friends." At this point the patient, male or female, might glare
at his or her companion, who might melt with guilt. "And I'm here to tell
about it."

"You might have been here just the same."

"That's the one thing I can't be sure about."

So Yetta Klugerman became welcome wherever there was a sick
person. It was well known, too, that she never went to funerals, which gave
some added encouragement to those patients sufficiently uncertain about their
prospects. Max Shinsky was a case in point.

He returned from the Poinsettia Beach Memorial Hospital, after his third heart attack, convinced that his faulty ticker could hardly withstand
even the slightest activity. He would lie in his bed in the bedroom of his
condominium depressed and frightened that each move would be his last. Mrs.
Shinsky was a woman of great courage and energy whose loquaciousness was a
legend in itself. Compulsively, every day, when she was not attending to Max,
she would sit next to the telephone and call a long list of friends to whom she
would outline the minutest details of Max's illness. There seemed to be an
element of salesmanship about these calls, as if she was trying to sell her
friends on the proposition that her troubles far exceeded those of anyone else.

"You think you got troubles, Sadie," she would
say when the innocent at the other end of the phone tried to make a cause for
her own misfortunes.

"I've got troubles," Mrs. Shinsky said.
"What you got is aches and pains. I've got tsooris."

When Mrs. Klugerman arrived on the scene with her little
cellophane candy bags, her presence was an added confirmation of Mrs. Shinsky's
monumental misfortunes.

"I've got Mrs. Klugerman visiting my Max--daily,"
she told her friends on the phone.

"That's trouble," her friends would agree.
"On a daily basis? That's trouble."

Mrs. Klugerman would arrive first thing in the morning, a
sign in itself, since it had come to be assumed that the first visitation of
the day was reserved for the patient who was least likely to make it to
sundown, a fact that did not improve Max Shinsky's spirits.

"You had a good night, Mr. Shinsky?" Mrs.
Klugerman would say, her overrouged mouth ludicrous in the bright morning
sunlight that came streaming into the room.

"Lousy," Max would say, his hands crossed and
clasped over his stomach.

"That's to be expected, Mr. Shinsky," Mrs.
Klugerman would reply. "It gets worse before it gets better."

"From your mouth to God's ears."

"I know what I'm talking about."

When she had left, Max would shift in his bed and Mrs.
Shinsky would bring him a cup of tea.

"She has to come so early?" he would ask.

"Look, I could tell her not to come," Mrs. Shinsky
would reply.

"Do I have to be the first one? When she walks in the
room, I begin to hear the angels singing."

"For you it wouldn't be angels, Max," Mrs.
Shinsky would say, trying to cheer him up.

He would look up at the ceiling and raise his hand.
"You gave me her for fifty years. You were so good to me."

"You're making a big deal about Mrs. Klugerman,"
Mrs. Shinsky would say, straightening the bed. "At least she visits."

One day, Mrs. Klugerman did not arrive first thing in the
morning. Max looked at the clock which showed it was past eleven and the sun
was high in the sky and threw different shadows in the room. Despite himself,
he felt the beginnings of his own anxiety.

"How come Mrs. Klugerman didn't come?" he finally
said, when the clock read noon.

"I can't understand it."

"You think she's sick herself?"

"Mrs. Klugerman? How can the Angel of Mercy be
sick?"

"I'm worried about her."

"Worry about yourself."

Finally, just after noon, Mrs. Klugerman arrived. She moved
slowly into the bedroom and sat down by the bed. Max Shinsky felt relieved.

"I'm surprised you didn't come earlier," he said,
searching her wrinkled face, the features composed under the smudged and
hopeless make-up.

"First I went to Mr. Haber, then Mrs. Klopman, then
Mr. Katz. They all just came home from the hospital."

He was tempted to ask about their condition, but a sense of
fear tightened his throat.

"You look better," Mrs. Klugerman said suddenly.

"Then I wish I felt like I looked."

"He's a real kvetch," Mrs. Shinsky volunteered.

"When people tell me I look better, it's time to
worry," he said.

She stood for a while watching him, smiling thinly,
benignly. He had never paid much attention to her before, except as an odd
joke, something to be endured. Now she appeared differently, a puzzle. Why did
she do this? he wondered. Was she a little bit touched in the head--as everyone
seemed to imply?