Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (32 page)

“Mr. Kaplan is out of town on business, as I understand it,” said the rabbi.

“He is? But today is Wednesday.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” the rabbi asked.

“Wednesdays, Chet Kaplan has his At Homes.”

“He still keeps that up? Then I suppose he’ll get home in time for it. Do you still attend. Mr. Tizzik?”

“Now and then, the wife and I go to the movies more now that it’s only a dollar for senior citizens. Besides, those At Homes, they’re not like they used to be.”

“Oh?”

“It’s only what you’d expect,” said Tizzik. “At the beginning, there’s always a lot of enthusiasm, and then it tends to die down, and this Rabbi Mezzik who had a lot to do with it, he doesn’t come down anymore. Got himself a pulpit in upstate New York, I understand, and maybe that last retreat that Chester organized didn’t help matters.”

“Is that so? What happened?” The rabbi was interested.

“Didn’t you hear?” Tizzik was incredulous. “I wasn’t there, of course, but I got it from Bob Wiseman, a complete washout. Rabbi. It was the Fourth of July weekend and I guess it was the first time they’d been up there during the summer, according to Wiseman, who’d been to most of the others, what was nice about the place was that it was so quiet and peaceful. Of course, the other retreats had been held in the fall, after Labor Day, well, it seems that in the summer the place is a madhouse, especially on weekends, there are houses all around this little lake and each and every one of them, according to Wiseman, must have a speedboat or an outboard, they were drumming up and down that lake all day long so you couldn’t hear yourself think, and at night, it was worse with the radios and the phonographs going full blast with this rock-and-roll music, that’s why the Catholic church gave it up as a kids’ camp. Some of the guys came home the next day.”

“That’s very interesting,” said the rabbi, they had arrived at Tizzik’s car and the rabbi was about to turn away when he thought of something. “Oh, if you can manage it, Mr. Tizzik, you might try to come to the morning service this Sunday, Arnold Aptaker will lead the prayers again and you can see if he’s improved, there will be a light collation afterward, tendered by the Kaplans and the Aptakers in honor of their new grandson.”

“The usual cake and kichel and herring, I suppose.”

“I suppose so.”

“And whiskey in paper cups?”

The rabbi smiled. “Maybe in glasses.”

“Well, maybe I’ll try to make it. What else is there to do Sunday mornings? On TV it’s all church services.”

About the Author

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1908, Harry Kemelman was the creator of perhaps one of the most famous religious sleuths: Rabbi David Small. His writing career began with short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine featuring New England college professor Nicky Welt, the first of which, “The Nine Mile Walk,” is considered to be a classic (the Welt stories were later grouped into a collection with the same title). The Rabbi Small series began in 1964, with Friday the Rabbi Slept Late. It went on to become a bestseller, and won Kemelman an Edgar for “Best First Novel” in 1965. Kemelman died in 1996.

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