Inside, Outside, page 35
No, the clash was on what happened under the canopy. By Jewish custom, old as the Jerusalem hills, a bride walks around her beloved seven times. One can see in old Yiddish films how elaborately this was once done, with a procession of women holding lighted candles, accompanying the girl in her seven circuits. Aunt Faiga was digging in her hooves, saying this made no sense to her. When pressed for the logic behind the custom, Zaideh had explained, “Who doesn’t walk around her groom seven times?”
Anyhow, said Faiga, there was no room in Zaideh’s little parlor, which would be jammed with guests, for her to go circling Boris. Zaideh said there was plenty of room. Mama had suggested inviting fewer guests, so as to leave room. Papa’s idea was that guests could step outside at circling time, to make room. I had jested that Boris could turn himself around seven times where he stood, which would give Faiga seven exposures to his perimeter, if that was the idea. Zaideh had commented on my proposal that it was all he could expect from a shaygets raised in Wicked America. And there the matter was deadlocked.
My sister Lee stood there in her sheepskin coat, a look of amused scorn on her face, as Zaideh and Aunt Faiga argued. “Zaideh, I went to three weddings in Palestine,” she put in, “and the bride never walked around the groom. Not once.”
“There you are!” exclaimed Aunt Faiga. “Even in the Holy Land they don’t walk around.”
“The Holy Land!” said Zaideh with scorn. “What kind of Jews live in the Holy Land?”
This may sound odd, but the fact is that the Zionist pioneers were held in low repute, by Jews of the old school, as irreligious rebels.
“Hell will freeze over,” Lee said to Faiga, “before I walk around any man. Don’t you do it.”
“Over my dead body I’ll do it,” Faiga assured her. Faiga was fond of English idioms, but did not yet hit them right on every time.
“Don’t talk Turkish,” exclaimed Zaideh. It was his word for English. “What are you two saying?”
All during Faiga’s truculent talk she had been glancing longingly around at this gorgeous room. Now she suddenly reversed her field. “Would you really have the wedding here?” she asked Mom. “Maybe Boris would agree. Not,” she added forcefully, “that I’ll walk around him. Let hell be frozen first!”
Mom and Pop assured her that they would be delighted. As excited talk sprang up about staging the wedding in our flat, Lee beckoned to me. She led me into the pretty bedchamber that was hers, all pink and flouncy and mirrored, and threw her sheepskin on the big bed covered in quilted pink satin.
“You’ve grown a foot!” she exclaimed, hugging me and giving me a quick kiss. “And you’re an absolute stringbean, and your voice is so deep!”
“High time,” I said to Lee.
“But Davey, what in God’s name is the matter with Papa?”
“Papa? Nothing. He’s fine.”
“He looks awful. Terrible! He’s aged twenty years. When I first saw him, I was frightened.”
To me, Pop looked the same as always. I said so. Lee pulled cigarettes from the sheepskin and lit one with a nervous scratch of a wax match; the first of a billion cigarettes, or so it seems, I’ve since seen her smoke.
“So, you’re hooked, too,” I said.
She shrugged. “Ever tasted arak?”
“What’s arak?”
“This.” From the bottle she had brought off the boat, she poured big slugs of a clear liquid into two bathroom glasses. We drank, I choked, and she laughed. “Now, Davey, why on earth are we living in a place like this? With all this expensive furniture? And what about that Cadillac? Have they gone crazy? Is Papa making that kind of money?”
“It’s all for you,” I said, “so that you’ll meet a nice fellow.”
She reddened, drank off her arak, and plopped down on her bed. “Can you keep a secret? I’ve met a nice fellow.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. Her flushed face was both troubled and radiant. “I’m going to be married, Davey. So Mom’s wasted a lot of time and money. The only thing is, he’s married now. He has to get a divorce, and he’s going to.”
And there it was, straight from Lee. Uncle Velvet had told the truth. I was floored. I was barely past telling ghost stories at parties, and my infatuation with Dorsi Sabin was just igniting. Such passion was over my head.
“Lee, do I have to know about this?”
“I’ve got to tell someone. Anyway, you’re responsible.” She laughed joyously. “He’s Moshe Lev, the one whose address in Jerusalem you gave me. He teaches history at Hebrew University, and he can fly an airplane, and I’ve gone up with him, oh, several times.” She poured herself more arak.
“Does he have kids?”
Her face fell. “Three.” She drank in a swift swooping motion, emptying the glass. “But the kids like me. That won’t be a problem.”
Mom appeared in the door of the room. “So, what are you two hiding for? Come out, Lee, and meet Rabbi Geiger, from the temple. And since when do you smoke?”
“What, a rabbi? Christ, I don’t want to meet a rabbi.”
“Don’t be like that. He’s come to welcome you. Take five minutes to be nice to him. And get rid of that cigarette! He’s very smart and handsome, and he’s a bachelor.” Mom left, raising her voice. “She’ll be right with you, Rabbi.”
“Gawd,” Lee said. “What’s Rabbi Geiger like?”
“Holy Joe Geiger?” I said. “He’s indescribable. Go on out and meet him. Just tighten your chastity belt.”
***
So out sails Lee to greet the rabbi, brandishing the bottle of arak, her hair wild as a witch’s, her eyes flashing antagonism. She looked mighty pretty.
“Rabbi Geiger, this is my daughter, Leonore,” said Mama, her genteel smile at the rabbi modulating into a horrible frown at Lee and her bottle.
“Hi, Rabbi,” said Lee. “D’you like arak?”
“Love it,” said Rabbi Geiger. “Lived on it for a year.”
This stopped Lee cold. She stared at Geiger. He stood there bareheaded, holding a black derby, in a black overcoat with a velvet collar, into which a white silk scarf was tucked; a plump-cheeked man of thirty or so, with thick slick black hair, a neat mustache, and a look at once ministerial and faintly raffish; let’s say, as though Errol Flynn had been cast as a priest, and was trying hard but not quite getting into the part.
“Really?” said Lee. “On arak?”
“Well, not a whole year, and I didn’t exactly live on it.” Rabbi Geiger smiled, spreading the mustache and showing a lot of Errol Flynn teeth. “I got my M.A. in Bible archaeology. I worked on the digs around Megiddo, and I did drink a heck of a lot of arak.”
“So you’ve been to Palestine?” Lee’s tone warmed.
“Yes, and you’ve just come from there, I understand, Leonore. I stopped by for a moment to say”—he switched to Hebrew—“Brukhim ha’ba’im (Welcome, newcomer).”
“Take off your coat,” said Mom. “Stay a while.”
“I have to conduct a funeral,” said Rabbi Geiger, “otherwise I’d be delighted.”
“Anyone we know?” Pop asked, looking somber.
“Oh, no. I didn’t know the gentleman, either. The family is from out of town. The gentleman dropped dead last night at a performance of George White’s Scandals. The funeral parlor has engaged me to perform the sad duty.”
“Well, have some arak before you go,” said Lee with grudging cordiality, pouring the stuff into glasses on a sideboard.
“Not too much,” said Holy Joe.
Zaideh and Aunt Faiga, who had been off somewhere in the apartment, at this moment returned to the living room. When Geiger saw Zaideh his hand slipped into a pocket and whipped to his head, depositing there a small black yarmulka. The reader remembers my whipping off the yarmulka when the President caught me studying the Talmud. It was exactly the same motion, in reverse.
“And this must be your father,” said Geiger to Mom.
Mama introduced them.
Zaideh gave Holy Joe a sharp quizzical glance as they shook hands. “O dos iss der rebb-eye?” he said to my father. (“This is the rabbi?”)
He sounded friendly enough. But again, if you knew Zaideh, you heard the overtones. Neither Zaideh, nor anyone else of the old school, called a rabbi a “rabbi.” Zaideh was a Rov, with a guttural capital R—R-r-rov; in direct address, Rav. When Zaideh said, “rebb-eye,” he was talking about a strange and scarcely believable form of life. There was no animosity in it, just incredulity. Contemplating the smooth-cheeked mustached young man in the black Chesterfield and white scarf, holding a black derby and wearing a small black yarmulka, Zaideh might have been having his first glimpse of a platypus.
Holy Joe endured the scrutiny with aplomb, and said to Zaideh in tolerable Yiddish, “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Rav Levitan. I’ve just dropped by, to greet your granddaughter with the traditional, ‘Welcome, newcomer.’”
Zaideh opened wide eyes, smiled, and said to my parents with surprise, “Er ret gor vi a mentsch.” Rough translation, “Why, he talks absolutely like a man.”
Aunt Faiga said brightly to Mom, “Let’s ask Rabbi Geiger about walking around Boris seven times.”
“Great idea,” put in my sister Lee. “Rabbi, my aunt here is getting married soon. What about that business of the bride walking around the groom seven times? Is that really the law?”
With a side glance at Zaideh, Holy Joe said, “Well, it’s a question that can be discussed on several levels. Basically—”
But Zaideh had caught Lee’s swift rotary gesture with her finger, and his mind was not slow. “So? What does the rebb-eye say?” he asked Faiga. “Doesn’t even he say you should walk around? Of course he does. What else can he say? He talks like a man.”
Faiga had some trouble with “several levels,” and she rather fudged Rabbi Geiger’s answer. In her Yiddish paraphrase, Holy Joe said it wasn’t actually necessary to walk around, it depended which floor you lived on. Something confusing like that. Zaideh turned a clouded-up glance at Rabbi Geiger, who hastily said in Yiddish that Faiga had misunderstood, that a young rabbi never gave a ruling in the presence of an elder, and that was all he had meant to say. He hadn’t mentioned floors.
“Nu, nu,” said my grandfather. Zaideh’s doubled “nu” could mean a thousand things. In this instance it expressed skepticism, distaste, and a strong desire to drop the subject.
“Well,” Rabbi Geiger said, “I must get along to my sad duty.”
“You haven’t drunk your arak,” said Lee, offering it to him.
“Ah, yes. Well, it’s a cold day.” He accepted the glass and pronounced a flawless blessing in Hebrew.
“Amen,” said Zaideh and Pop.
Rabbi Geiger tossed down the arak, slid off his yarmulka, and put on his derby. Smiling graciously at Zaideh, and indicating Pop with a nod, he said, “Your son-in-law is a very fine Jew.”
With a smile quite as gracious, Zaideh replied, “How can he be a very fine Jew, when he goes to your temple?”
“Touché,” said Lee, grinning at Geiger. “What do you say to that?”
Unperturbed, Holy Joe said to her as he buttoned up his coat, “That too can be discussed on several levels.”
“What did the young man just say?” Zaideh asked Faiga.
“He says different people live on different floors,” said Faiga.
“Again? Is he crazy?” said Zaideh.
“I didn’t say quite that,” said Holy Joe in Yiddish, with great good humor. “And let me repeat, Rav Levitan, it’s a joy to have the Goodkind family in our midst, and to meet a R-r-rov of such great learning.”
“Nu, nu,” said Zaideh.
Geiger shook hands with Lee. “I hope I’ll see you at services,” he said ministerially, yet with a tinge of Errol Flynn in the tone. The door closed. Silence. We all looked at each other.
“He’s cute,” said my sister Lee. “Maybe I’ll try the temple, at that.”
48
Peter Quat at Home
“My father is full of shit,” said Peter Quat.
That jarred me, a nice Jewish Bronx lad not all that long out of the yeshiva. Trying to adopt Quat’s downtown irreverence, I said with a debonair laugh, “I take it the old boy doesn’t like your story.”
“He never likes anything I write. Not since I got out of college, he doesn’t.” Peter slumped on the window seat, lighting a cigarette with jerky gestures. “Say, ever been to April House?”
“Not yet.”
“Dick Himber’s in the Orchid Grill. Not a bad place to take a girl.”
We were lounging in his bedroom in a tower of the San Remo, looking south at skyscrapers silhouetted in purple by a fading sunset. Atop the tallest hotel on Central Park South, red neon letters stood two stories high:
APRIL
HOUSE
A strong wind whined at the window, forcing a trickle of icy air into the smoky overheated room. While Peter leafed through my Varsity Show script, I was reading his latest effort to crack The New Yorker.
Peter was low. He and Mark Herz had spent the summer vainly trying to concoct a farce. Peter had scornfully told me that in three weeks they would come up with a funnier hit than any of the rubbish on Broadway. Not so, alas. Herz had gone to work with an uncle in the fur trade, to save up money for graduate work in physics. Peter was hanging around at home, writing short stories.
A paunchy bald man of stern presence appeared in the doorway. “Peter, have you thought over our conversation?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Good. This, I take it, is young David Goodkind. Welcome.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Dr. Quat certainly looked Jewish—big curving nose, large clever brown eyes—but his speech and his manner were dignified, forbidding, and altogether “downtown.” He tilted his heavy head for a somber stare at Peter, said, “I trust you’ve come to a sensible decision, son,” and walked off down the hallway.
“Fuck,” muttered Peter, flinging aside my script. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Peter’s conversation may create a problem here, at that. He gets into the action more and more, and I may have to write off the family trade, and just take this magnum opus straight to Grove Press. But let’s grope along for a while and see. Maybe later I can change it all to “Shoot,” and “Gee whinnakers,” though that isn’t much like Peter Quat.
Why the expletives? Peter irritably explained that a patient of Dr. Quat was the celebrated joke czar of radio, Harry Goldhandler. The doctor had spoken to Goldhandler about his son who had written Columbia Varsity Shows, and Goldhandler had offered to interview Peter for a job on his staff. Peter told his father that “radio garbage” didn’t interest him, and Dr. Quat’s reply was that Peter would not be allowed to idle at home when he could earn his own bread. He had given Peter twenty-four hours to think it over.
“Can you imagine me writing that crap?” exclaimed Peter. “I asked my father to wait and see if ‘Mama Dunt Vanna’ will sell. He says it hasn’t a chance.” Peter narrowed his eyes at me. “You don’t like it, either, do you? Tell the truth.”
“Peter, I grew up in the Bronx. To me the story doesn’t ring true.”
“It is true, word for word. Only it happened in Passaic. A guy in my Hebrew school there told it to me. He listened at his parents’ bedroom door and heard it all.”
The story was about a Jewish wife fending off her husband by pleading her period. Old Peter was right in there from the start with his unsparing candor. Peter quoted in the jeering clip-cock singsong of Dreyer, “‘Mama, dollink, you said de same tink last Toisday night.’ Davey, those were the exact words the guy heard his old man say! I once had to live with people like that in Passaic for a year. Don’t tell me it doesn’t ring true.”
I now learned more about Peter Quat’s background than I had in the two years I had known him. I guess he was proving, in his quick nervous gush of words, that his story was authentic. His mother had worked as a legal secretary, had fallen in love with her boss, and had divorced Dr. Quat; a protracted and messy episode, during which the nine-year-old Peter had been parked for a year in Passaic with an aunt, married to a man in the garment business. The mother had married the lawyer, and custody of Peter for some reason had fallen to his father, who had then remarried. Suppressed dreadful anger underlay all this. Peter bit out his words, twisted his mouth, and rolled his eyes as he talked. The Passaic relatives had forced him to go to a temple and a Hebrew school, though the Quats had been wholly irreligious. Peter had bought a crucifix and worn it to his Hebrew class, getting himself kicked out of the school for good. That incident, of course, is the famous opening chapter of Deflowering Sarah.
“Kikes,” Peter summed up his Passaic relatives, as a buzzer cut short his bitter rambling. “Just plain kikes.” He jumped up, tightened his tie, and put on his jacket. “Come on, Dave.”
***
“Do you know,” Dr. Quat said to me, breaking an excruciating long and heavy silence at the dinner table, “that Peter’s mother is the grandniece of a very famous, ah, Yiddish writer?”
He said “Yiddish” with quote marks around it, as though it were an obscure tongue that I might have heard of, though I could be excused if I hadn’t.
I shook my head. Seldom had I been so frozen and intimidated. I might be living on West End Avenue, but I was regarding the Quat household with Bronx eyes, and I couldn’t handle it.
To begin with, there was this painting, glaring at me from the dining-room wall behind Peter’s stepmother; a huge oil of an old gent in a Dutch cap, his mouth snarled half-open, showing a few stumpy teeth in red gums. The rheumy wrinkled eyes bored at me, as though incensed at the very sight of a Bronx clip cock in the San Remo. (Peter Quat was circumcised, but in a different downtown style.) There was the stepmother herself, a slim lady with the straightest spine I had ever seen, and a smile that went on and off unnervingly, like a traffic blinker. There was her daughter, a thin small girl with Dr. Quat’s nose and her mother’s ramrod back. There was Dr. Quat at the head of the table, imposing as the emperor Hadrian, eating in majestic silence. There was Peter next to me, staring down at his plate, radiating scary hostility. There was the cook-maid, a blonde gray-uniformed woman, passing the food with a terrified look. An actual white servant!
