Snow in August (9 page)

Then it was time for Communion, and the old ladies came up from the pews, and some young women too, and two older men, and
he held the paten and then imagined the rabbi’s face. Maybe he was still sleeping, he thought. After all, last week I served
the eight, not the seven, so maybe he’ll be waiting for me at ten to eight. But then maybe he’s sick. Or maybe he heard about
what Frankie McCarthy did to Mister G and he’s afraid to open the door. Michael brooded, while Father Heaney deposited the
host on various tongues. For a moment, Michael hoped that someone else had come along to switch on the lights, and then felt
a stab of jealousy. Nobody else should do that job. I did it last week, I should do it again today.

The Communion ended. Father Heaney rushed to the conclusion, muttering his blunt Latin phrases, while Michael returned his
automatic responses. But the boy’s mind wasn’t on the mass; he was too full of his own hard questions. Why did I keep walking?
Was it because I was afraid of being late for mass? Or because I was so cold? Of course not. I was afraid of going in there
to case the joint. Of being tempted to find the treasure and then being too weak to resist the temptation. But, hey: what
the hell would we do with a treasure anyway? Answer me that, Sonny. Would we take it to Stavenhagen’s Pawn Shop and sell it?
Bring it to some fence down on Garfield Place? If three kids showed up with diamonds and rubies, the
cops would know in two hours. It’s a goddamned joke. And another thing, Sonny: The synagogue is a house of God. And the Christians
came from the Jews. The same God! And those people wrote the Bible, man. It says so in the encyclopedia. Before Jesus, there
were the Jews. They invented the goddamned alphabet, Sonny! It would be like robbing a
church
, Sonny. He could hear Sonny laughing. Worse, he could see Sonny turning away from him, their friendship over.

But maybe there was another reason, he thought. A much simpler reason. Maybe I kept walking because the bearded man was a
Jew. Maybe it was as simple as that.

After mass, Michael hung his cassock in a closet, folded his surplice, grabbed his mackinaw, and hurried down the passage
connecting the altar boys’ room with the priests’ sacristy. He wanted to talk to Father Heaney. The eight o’clock mass had
already started, and he could hear Father Mulligan out on the altar, saying the mass in his more sedate, high-pitched voice.

Father Heaney had removed his own vestments and was sitting on a folding chair, his feet wide apart, deep in thought and smoking
a Camel. He didn’t look up when Michael entered the sacristy. The boy eased over and stood in front of him. Father Heaney
said nothing.

“Father Heaney?”

The priest looked up. “Yes?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, kid.”

“Did the Jews kill Jesus?”

The priest looked directly at him now, and Michael noticed that his hooded eyes were red and watery.

“Why are you asking me such a dumb question at this hour of the morning?” he said sharply.

“I, uh, well, some kids say, you know, down on Ellison Avenue, they say that the Jews killed Jesus, and—”

“They’re jerks.”

“The Jews?”

“No, the idiots you’re talking to down on Ellison Avenue.”

The priest looked up, pulled a final drag on his Camel, and turned on the water tap in the sink. He held the cigarette under
the water and then dropped the drowned butt down in the chute used for dead flowers. He cupped some water in his hands, splashed
it on his face, then turned off the tap and reached for a towel. He dried his face and rubbed his eyes. Every movement seemed
part of a ritual.

“The Romans killed Jesus,” Father Heaney said, with disgust in his voice. “They were the big shots in Jerusalem, not the Jews,
and they saw Jesus as a threat to their power. Like most politicians. Or better, like racket guys. So they bumped him off.
Just like racket guys do it. If your idiot friends on Ellison Avenue could read, they’d know that.”

Michael loved the way Father Heaney talked; if Humphrey Bogart were a priest he’d talk about Jesus being bumped off too.

“Besides, Jesus was himself a Jew,” Father Heaney said. And then sighed. “Although you’d never know that, the way the world
has turned out.”

He reached into a closet and grabbed his army overcoat, pulled it on, and walked to the door.

“Find someone else to hang out with, kid,” the priest said, and then was gone.

Michael was excited. Father Heaney had confirmed it: the encyclopedia was right. Jesus was a Jew. And if that was true, then
everything else in the blue book must be true. About Jews. About other subjects. He glanced through the open
door to the altar and saw parishioners assembling for Communion. He went out by the sacristy door into the sanctuary, passing
the old ladies with their bowed heads, breathing the air thick with the smell of incense and burning candles. He reached the
front door without looking back and then stepped into the street and gulped the clean, cold air of January.

The Romans killed Jesus!

As he moved down the icy hill, he remembered pictures of the Romans doing the deed. Men with iron helmets jabbing spears into
the side of the crucified Jesus. And other Romans gambling for his robe. In his mind, they resembled Frankie McCarthy. A bunch
of nasty pricks.

When he reached the synagogue, Michael went directly to the side door and knocked hard. He waited a moment, and then the rabbi
opened the door. When he saw Michael, his face brightened and he smiled. He was dressed in the same frayed tweed overcoat,
the black hat clamped on his head, the horn-rimmed eyeglasses dangling on a string from his neck. Behind him, the vestibule
was dark.

“Did you find someone?” Michael said. “You know, to turn on the lights?”

The rabbi smiled. “No,” he said. “A
Shabbos goy
I didn’t find.”

“A what?”

“A
Shabbos goy
. Today is
Shabbos
. In English, the Sabbath.” He opened the door wider. “Come in. Please to come in.
Koom arayn, bitte
…”

Without being asked, Michael reached to his right and flipped the switch. The ceiling light came on. The rabbi’s blue eyes
twinkled, and he closed the door on the snows of Kelly Street. “Thanks you,” he said. Then he started up the three
steps on the far side of the vestibule, gesturing for Michael to follow.

“Come in, please,” he said. “Here, is very cold.”

For a moment, the old fear rose in the boy. Maybe now the rabbi will spring the trap. Maybe that’s why he’s smiling. What
could be beyond this second door? Why should I trust him? Maybe Father Heaney is wrong, maybe the lies are all true, maybe…
Michael hesitated for a moment, fighting down the impulse to back away and run home. And heard Sonny, urging him to be a spy.

“A
Shabbos goy
I need in here also,” the rabbi said. “To make tea I need a stove and…”

His voice trailed off as he opened the door. Michael took a breath and followed him into a boxy, low-ceilinged room that smelled
of pickles. Newspapers lay open on a table in the center of the room, with a red pencil beside them and a thick book that
looked like a dictionary. There was a sink against the wall to Michael’s left. Beside it was a gas stove with a chipped oven
door. The rabbi gestured at it, making a twisting gesture with his right hand, until Michael turned on a gas jet under a pot
of water.

“Is cold,” the rabbi said. “So is better we have now a glass tea. You like tea? Good hot tea on cold day.”

“Okay.”

“Gut.”
The word sounded like
goot
.

“Rabbi?”

“Yes?”

“What was that word you said before?” Michael said. “Sobbis?”

The rabbi pondered this, then brightened. “
Shabbos!
The Sabbath, you say. Friday night it starts, and goes all day Saturday. God’s day. The day of rest.”

“And the other word?”

“
Goy
? Is a word… it means a person not a Jew. Like you. Shabbos goy is a person not a Jew who comes on Shabbos to turn on lights
or stove or broiler, like that. We can’t do it.”

“How come?”

The rabbi shrugged. “That’s the rules. A Jew like me, he can’t work on Shabbos. Is the rule. Some Jews, nine days a week they
work. Me, I’m a Jew that I go by the rules. Turning on a light, work. Turning on a stove, work. A letter, writing it is work.
And money you can’t put a hand on. That’s the rules. To honor God.”

Michael thought: This is the dumbest goddamned rule I ever heard of.

“So how come I can do it?” he said.

“You are a goy,” the rabbi said. “A goy, is okay for him to do this. Not a Jew.”

“But it’s the same God, right? I mean, I read in a book that Christians came from the Jews. They worship the same God. So
if it’s the same God, why does he have one law for Jews and another law for the goys?”

“
Goyim
. More than one, goyim.”

“Why a different rule for… goyim?”

“Good question.”

“But what is the answer?”

The rabbi turned away, to see if the water was boiling.

“This I don’t know,” the rabbi said. “Some questions, we got no answers.”

The rabbi gestured again and Michael turned on the water tap for him, thinking: This is why his hands were dirty last week;
he couldn’t turn on the water. The boy tried to imagine a priest, even Father Heaney, admitting that to some questions there
were no answers. Impossible. While the rabbi washed his
hands, Michael glanced at the newspaper, which had certain words circled in red. Words were also circled in the dictionary.
He looked around and saw two more doors. One was thick, with brass handles and an elongated keyhole. The other was smaller,
cracked open an inch. And he thought: Maybe the big door opens into the treasure room.

Against the opposite wall, there was a small unmade bed, and a packed bookcase. Wedged into the top shelf was a framed browning
photograph of a woman. With an oval face. Hair tied back. Liquid dark eyes. Michael drifted toward the books, glancing again
at the woman’s face but trying not to be too interested. He ran his fingertips over the spines of the books and remembered
some movie where a detective pushed at a bookcase and it suddenly swiveled, opening into a secret room.

“You like my treasures?” the rabbi said, and Michael’s heart slipped.

“What?”

“My books,” the rabbi said, his own hand touching the books on the second shelf, below the photograph of the dark-haired woman.
“Is all I have, but treasure, yes?”

Michael’s heart steadied as he peered more closely at the books. Their titles were in languages he did not know or letters
that he did not recognize.

“You like books?” the rabbi asked.

“Yes,” Michael said. “I love books. But—are these books written in Jewish?”

The rabbi pointed at the leather bindings of the thickest books.

“Not Jewish,
Hebrew
, these here,” he said. And then he touched some smaller books, with worn paper bindings. “These are Yiddish.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Hebrew is, eh, the, eh…” His eyes drifted to the dictionary. “Language of Yisrael.”

The word came out
lan-goo-age
, the last syllable rhyming with
rage
. Michael pronounced it correctly for the rabbi, who nodded, his bushy black eyebrows rising in appreciation.

“Eh, language.” He said it correctly. “Good, I need your help. Please tell me when I make mistake. Language, language. Good.
Anyway, Hebrew is language of Torah and Talmud—”

“
The
language,” Michael said, remembering the endless drills in grammar class. “The
the
? It’s called an article,” Michael explained. “A definite article, they call it.
The
language,
the
table,
the
stove.”

The rabbi smiled. “The tea!”

He went to the stove and lifted the boiling water and poured it into a pot.

“We soon have
the
tea!”

“What are those other books?” Michael said. “You started to say—”

“Yiddish,” the rabbi said. “The language of the people. The ordinary people. Not the rabbis. The ordinary people.”

“What are the books about?”

The rabbi stood before the bookcase.

“They are about the everything,” he said, lifting a volume. “Religion. The history of the Jews.” He hefted a volume. “But
also Balzac. You know Balzac?”

“No.”

“Very good, Balzac. A very smart Franceman. You should read the Balzac. He knows everything. And this, this is Henrich Heine.
Very good poetry. And here, Tolstoy, very great.”

Michael squatted down, took a dusty book off a bottom shelf, and opened it.

“Is this Hebrew or Yiddish?”

The rabbi perched the glasses on his nose.

“Yiddish.”

“What’s it say?”

“Is a very funny story. Very sad too. Good Soldier Schweik. A Czech soldier, he knows the war is crazy. I am sure all are
in the English books too.”

The rabbi turned away and found two glasses on a shelf above the sink. He poured the tea. Then he folded the newspapers and
moved them aside and set the glasses on the table and gestured for the boy to sit down. Michael had never had tea in a glass
before. The rabbi then placed a sugar bowl and a spoon between them. Suddenly he reached forward awkwardly, offering his hand.
Michael shook it.

“I am Rabbi Hirsch,” he said. “Judah Hirsch.”

“Michael Devlin,” the boy said.

“You are kind boy,” the rabbi said, rhyming
kind
with
kin
. Michael repeated the word, rhyming it with
rind
. Then the boy lifted the tea and sipped. The glass was hot in his hand.

“This is great,” he said, putting the glass down to let it cool.

“Is hard to get the good tea in America,” the rabbi said. “Maybe the water?”

So he
was
from Europe, where the water was different. Michael remembered the blue books and said: “Are you from Poland?”

“No. From Prague. You know where is Prague?”