The Stories of Bernard Malamud, page 31
After a distracted day’s work Albert taxied to the rabbi’s house and tried to rouse him, even hallooing at the blank windows facing the street; but either nobody was home or they were both hiding, the rabbi under the broken sofa, Rifkele trying to shove her bulk under a bathtub. Albert decided to wait them out. Soon the old boy would have to leave the house to step into the shul on Friday night. He would speak to him, warn him to come clean. But the sun set; dusk settled on the earth; and though the autumn stars and a sliver of moon gleamed in the sky, the house was dark, shades drawn; and no Rabbi Lifschitz emerged. Lights had gone on in the little shul, candles were lit. It occurred to Albert, with chagrin, that the rabbi might be already worshipping; he might all this time have been in the synagogue.
The teacher entered the long, brightly lit store. On yellow folding chairs scattered around the room sat a dozen men holding worn prayer books, praying. The Rabbi A. Marcus, a middle-aged man with a high voice and a short reddish beard, was dovening at the Ark, his back to the congregation.
As Albert entered and embarrassedly searched from face to face, the congregants stared at him. The old rabbi was not among them. Disappointed, the teacher withdrew.
A man sitting by the door touched his sleeve.
“Stay awhile and read with us.”
“Excuse me, I’d like to but I’m looking for a friend.”
“Look,” said the man, “maybe you’ll find him.”
Albert waited across the street under a chestnut tree losing its leaves. He waited patiently—till tomorrow if he had to.
Shortly after nine the lights went out in the synagogue and the last of the worshippers left for home. The red-bearded rabbi then emerged with his key in his hand to lock the store door.
“Excuse me, rabbi,” said Albert, approaching. “Are you acquainted with Rabbi Jonas Lifschitz, who lives upstairs with his daughter Rifkele—if she is his daughter?”
“He used to come here,” said the rabbi with a small smile, “but since he retired he prefers a big synagogue on Mosholu Parkway, a palace.”
“Will he be home soon, do you think?”
“Maybe in an hour. It’s Shabbat, he must walk.”
“Do you—ah—happen to know anything about his work on silver crowns?”
“What kind of silver crowns?”
“To assist the sick, the dying?”
“No,” said the rabbi, locking the shul door, pocketing the key, and hurrying away.
The teacher, eating his heart, waited under the chestnut tree till past midnight, all the while urging himself to give up and go home, but unable to unstick the glue of his frustration and rage. Then shortly before 1 a.m. he saw some shadows moving and two people drifting up the shadow-encrusted street. One was the old rabbi, in a new caftan and snappy black Homburg, walking tiredly. Rifkele, in sexy yellow mini, exposing to above the big-bone knees her legs like poles, walked lightly behind him, stopping to strike her ears with her hands. A long white shawl, pulled short on the right shoulder, hung down to her left shoe.
“On my income their glad rags.”
Rifkele chanted a long “Boooo” and slapped both ears with her pudgy hands to keep from hearing it.
They toiled up the ill-lit narrow staircase, the teacher trailing them.
“I came to see my crown,” he told the pale, astonished rabbi, in the front room.
“The crown,” the rabbi said haughtily, “is already finished. Go home and wait, your father will soon get better.”
“I called the hospital before leaving my apartment, there’s been no improvement.”
“How can you expect so soon improvement if the doctors themselves don’t know what is the sickness? You must give the crown a little more time. God Himself has trouble to understand human sickness.”
“I came to see the thing I paid for.”
“I showed you already, you saw before you ordered.”
“That was an image of a facsimile, maybe, or something of the sort. I insist on seeing the real thing, for which I paid close to one thousand smackers.”
“Listen, Mr. Gans,” said the rabbi patiently, “there are some things we are allowed to see which He lets us see them. Sometimes I wish He didn’t let us. There are other things we are not allowed to see—Moses knew this—and one is God’s face, and another is the real crown that He makes and blesses it. A miracle is a miracle, this is God’s business.”
“Don’t you see it?”
“Not with my eyes.”
“I don’t believe a word of it, you faker, two-bit magician.”
“The crown is a real crown. If you think there is magic, it is on account those people that they insist to see it—we try to give them an idea. For those who believe, there is no magic.”
“Rifkele,” the rabbi said hurriedly, “bring to Papa my book of letters.”
She left the room, after a while, a little in fright, her eyes evasive; and returned in ten minutes, after flushing the toilet, in a shapeless long flannel nightgown, carrying a large yellowed notebook whose loose pages were thickly interleaved with old correspondence.
“Testimonials,” said the rabbi.
Turning several loose pages, with trembling hand he extracted a letter and read it aloud, his voice husky with emotion.
“‘Dear Rabbi Lifschitz: Since the miraculous recovery of my mother, Mrs. Max Cohen, from her recent illness, my impulse is to cover your bare feet with kisses. Your crown worked wonders and I am recommending it to all my friends. Yours truly and sincerely, (Mrs.) Esther Polatnik.’
“This is a college teacher.”
He read another. “‘Dear Rabbi Lifschitz, Your $986 crown totally and completely cured my father of cancer of the pancreas, with serious complications of the lungs, after nothing else had worked. Never before have I believed in miraculous occurrences, but from now on I will have less doubts. My thanks to you and God. Most sincerely, Daniel Schwartz.’
“A lawyer,” said the rabbi.
He offered the book to Albert. “Look yourself, Mr. Gans, hundreds of letters.”
Albert wouldn’t touch it.
“There’s only one thing I want to look at, Rabbi Lifschitz, and it’s not a book of useless testimonials. I want to see my father’s silver crown.”
“This is impossible. I already explained to you why I can’t do this. God’s word is God’s law.”
“So if it’s the law you’re citing, either I see the crown in the next five minutes, or the first thing tomorrow morning I’m reporting you and your activities to the Bronx County District Attorney.”
“Boooo-ooo,” sang Rifkele, banging her ears.
“Shut up!” Albert said.
“Have respect,” cried the rabbi. “Grubber yung!”
“I will swear out a complaint and the D.A. will shut you down, the whole freaking plant, if you don’t at once return the $986 you swindled me out of.”
The rabbi wavered in his tracks. “Is this the way to talk to a rabbi of God?”
“A thief is a thief.”
Rifkele blubbered, squealed.
“Sha,” the rabbi thickly whispered to Albert, clasping and unclasping his gray hands. “You’ll frighten the neighbors. Listen to me, Mr. Gans, you saw with your eyes what it looks like the real crown. I give you my word that nobody of my whole clientele ever saw this before. I showed you for your father’s sake so you would tell me to make the crown which will save him. Don’t spoil now the miracle.”
“Miracle,” Albert bellowed, “it’s a freaking fake magic, with an idiot girl for a come-on and hypnotic mirrors. I was mesmerized, suckered by you.”
“Be kind,” begged the rabbi, tottering as he wandered amid empty chairs. “Be merciful to an old man. Think of my poor child. Think of your father who loves you.”
“He hates me, the son of a bitch, I hope he croaks.”
In an explosion of silence the girl slobbered in fright.
“Aha,” cried the wild-eyed rabbi, pointing a finger at God in heaven. “Murderer,” he cried, aghast.
Moaning, father and daughter rushed into each other’s arms, as Albert, wearing a massive, spike-laden headache, rushed down the booming stairs.
An hour later the elder Cans shut his eyes and expired.
Talking Horse
Q. Am I a man in a horse or a horse that talks like a man? Suppose they took an X-ray, what would they see?—a man’s luminous skeleton prostrate inside a horse, or just a horse with a complicated voice box? If the first, then Jonah had it better in the whale—more room all around; also he knew who he was and how he had got there. About myself I have to make guesses. Anyway, after three days and nights the big fish stopped at Nineveh and Jonah took his valise and got off. But not Abramowitz, still on board, or at hand, after years; he’s no prophet. On the contrary, he works in a sideshow full of freaks—though recently advanced, on Goldberg’s insistence, to the center ring inside the big tent in an act with his deaf-mute master —Coldberg himself, may the Almighty forgive him. All I know is I’ve been here for years and still don’t understand the nature of my fate; in short if I’m Abramowitz, a horse; or a horse including Abramowitz. Why is anybody’s guess. Understanding goes so far and no further, especially if Goldberg blocks the way. It might be because of something I said, or thought, or did, or didn’t do in my life. It’s easy to make mistakes and easy not to know who made them. I have my theories, glimmers, guesses, but can’t prove a thing.
When Abramowitz stands in his stall, his hooves nervously booming on the battered wooden boards as he chews in his bag of hard yellow oats, sometimes he has thoughts, far-off remembrances they seem to be, of young horses racing, playing, nipping at each other’s flanks in green fields; and other disquieting images that might be memories; so who’s to say what’s really the truth?
I’ve tried asking Goldberg, but save yourself the trouble. He goes black-and-blue in the face at questions, really uptight. I can understand—he’s a deaf-mute from way back; he doesn’t like interference with his thoughts or plans, or the way he lives, and no surprises except those he invents. In other words questions disturb him. Ask him a question and he’s off his track. He talks to me only when he feels like it, which isn’t so often—his little patience wears thin. Lately his mood is awful, he reaches too often for his bamboo cane—whoosh across the rump! There’s usually plenty of oats and straw and water, and once in a while even a joke to relax me when I’m tensed up, but otherwise it’s one threat or another, followed by a flash of pain if I don’t get something or other right, or something I say hits him on his nerves. It’s not only that cane that slashes like a whip; his threats have the same effect—like a zing-zong of lightning through the flesh; in fact the blow hurts less than the threat—the blow’s momentary, the threat you worry about. But the true pain, at least to me, is when you don’t know what you have to know.
Which doesn’t mean we don’t communicate to each other. Goldberg taps out Morse code messages on my head with his big knuckle—crack crack crack; I feel the vibrations run through my bones to the tip of my tail—when he orders me what to do next or he threatens how many lashes for the last offense. His first message, I remember, was NO QUESTIONS. UNDERSTOOD? I shook my head yes and a little bell jingled on a strap under the forelock. That was the first I knew it was there.
TALK, he rapped on my head after he told me about the act. “You’re a talking horse.”
“Yes, master.” What else can you say?
My voice surprised me when it came out high through the tunnel of a horse’s neck. I can’t exactly remember the occasion —go remember beginnings. My memory I have to fight to get an early remembrance out of. Don’t ask me why unless I happened to fall and hurt my head, or was otherwise stunted. Goldberg is my deaf-mute owner; he reads my lips. Once when he was drunk and looking for company he tapped me that I used to carry goods on my back to fairs and markets in the old days before we joined the circus.
I used to think I was born here.
“On a rainy, snowy, crappy night,” Goldberg Morse-coded me on my bony skull.
“What happened then?”
He stopped talking altogether. I should know better but don’t.
I try to remember what night we’re talking about and certain hazy thoughts flicker in my mind, which could be some sort of story I dream up when I have nothing to do but chew oats. It’s easier than remembering. The one that comes to me most is about two men, or horses, or men on horses, though which was me I can’t say. Anyway two strangers meet, somebody asks the other a question, and the next thing they’re locked in battle, either hacking at one another’s head with swords, or braying wildly as they tear flesh with their teeth; or both at the same time. If riders, or horses, one is thin and poetic, the other a fat stranger wearing a huge black crown. They meet in a stone pit on a rainy, snowy, crappy night, one wearing his cracked metal crown that weighs a ton on his head and makes his movements slow though nonetheless accurate, and the other on his head wears a ragged colored cap. All night they wrestle by weird light in the slippery stone pit.
Q. “What’s to be done?”
A. “None of those accursed bloody questions.”
The next morning one of us wakes with a terrible pain which feels like a wound in the neck but also a headache. He remembers a blow he can’t swear to and a strange dialogue where the answers come first and the questions follow:
I descended a ladder.
How did you get here?
The up and the down.
Which is which?
Abramowitz, in his dream story, suspects Goldberg had walloped him over the head and stuffed him into a horse because he needed a talking one for his act and there was no such thing.
I wish I knew for sure.
DON’T DARE ASK.
That’s his nature; he’s a lout though not without a little consideration when he’s depressed and tippling his bottle. That’s when he taps me out a teasing anecdote or two. He has no visible friends. Family neither of us talks about. When he laughs he cries.
It must frustrate Goldberg that all he can say aloud is four-letter words like geee, gooo, gaaa, gaaw; and the circus manager who doubles as ringmaster, in for a snifter, looks embarrassed at the floor. At those who don’t know the Morse code Goldberg grimaces, glares, and grinds his teeth. He has his mysteries. He keeps a mildewed three-prong spear hanging on the wall over a stuffed pony’s head. Sometimes he goes down the cellar with an old candle and comes up with a new one lit though we have electric lights. Although he doesn’t complain about his life, he worries and cracks his knuckles. He doesn’t seem interested in women but sees to it that Abramowitz gets his chance at a mare in heat, if available. Abramowitz engages to satisfy his physical nature, a fact is a fact, otherwise it’s no big deal; the mare has no interest in a talking courtship. Furthermore, Goldberg applauds when Abramowitz mounts her, which is humiliating.
And when they’re in their winter quarters the owner once a week or so dresses up and goes out on the town. When he puts on his broadcloth suit, diamond stickpin, and yellow gloves, he preens before the full-length mirror. He pretends to fence, jabs the bamboo cane at the figure in the glass, twirls it around one finger. Where he goes when he goes he never informs Abramowitz. But when he returns he’s usually melancholic, sometimes anguished, didn’t have much of a good time; and in this mood may mete out a few loving lashes with that bastard cane. Or worse—make threats. Nothing serious but who needs it? Usually he prefers to stay home and watch television. He is fascinated by astronomy, and when they have those programs on the educational channel he’s there night after night, staring at pictures of stars, quasars, infinite space. He also likes to read the Daily News, which he tears up when he’s done. Sometimes he reads this book he hides on a shelf in the closet under some old hats. If the book doesn’t make him laugh outright it makes him cry. When he gets excited over something he’s reading in his fat book, his eyes roll, his mouth gets wet, and he tries to talk through his thick tongue, though all Abramowitz hears is geee, gooo, gaaa, gaaw. Always these words, whatever they mean, and sometimes gool goon geek gonk, in various combinations, usually gool with gonk, which Abramowitz thinks means Goldberg. And in such states he has been known to kick Abramowitz in the belly with his heavy boot. Ooof.
When he laughs he sounds like a horse, or maybe it’s the way I hear him with these ears. And though he laughs once in a while, it doesn’t make my life easier, because of my condition. I mean I think, Here I am in this horse. This is my theory though I have my doubts. Otherwise, Goldberg is a small stocky figure with a thick neck, heavy black brows, each like a small mustache, and big feet that swell in his shapeless boots. He washes his feet in the kitchen sink and hangs up his yellowed socks to dry on the whitewashed walls of my stall. Phoo.
He likes to do card tricks.
In winter they live in the South in a small, messy, one-floor house with a horse’s stall attached that Goldberg can approach, down a few steps, from the kitchen of the house. To get Abramowitz into the stall he is led up a plank from the outside and the door shuts on his rear end. To keep him from wandering all over the house there’s a slatted gate to just under his head. Furthermore, the stall is next to the toilet and the broken water closet runs all night. It’s a boring life with a deaf-mute except when Goldberg changes the act a little. Abramowitz enjoys it when they rehearse a new routine, although Goldberg hardly ever alters the lines, only the order of answer and question. That’s better than nothing. Sometimes when Abramowitz gets tired of talking to himself, asking unanswered questions, he complains, shouts, calls the owner dirty names. He snorts, brays, whinnies shrilly. In his frustration he rears, rocks, gallops in his stall; but what good is a gallop if there’s no place to go and Goldberg can’t, or won’t, hear complaints, pleas, protest?
Q. “Answer me this: If it’s a sentence I’m serving, how long?”
A.
Once in a while Goldberg seems to sense somebody else’s needs and is momentarily considerate of Abramowitz—combs and curries him, even rubs his bushy head against the horse’s. He also shows interest in his diet and whether his bowel movements are regular and sufficient; but if Abramowitz gets sentimentally careless when the owner is close by and forms a question he can see on his lips, Goldberg punches him on the nose. Or threatens to. It doesn’t hurt any the less.
