The Complete Stories (74 page)
Read The Complete Stories Online
Authors: Bernard Malamud
G
ans, the father, lay dying in a hospital bed. Different doctors said different things, held different theories. There was talk of an exploratory operation but they thought it might kill him. One doctor said cancer.
ans, the father, lay dying in a hospital bed. Different doctors said different things, held different theories. There was talk of an exploratory operation but they thought it might kill him. One doctor said cancer.
“Of the heart,” the old man said bitterly.
“It wouldn’t be impossible.”
The young Gans, Albert, a high school biology teacher, in the afternoons walked the streets in sorrow. What can anybody do about cancer? His soles wore thin with walking. He was easily irritated; angered by the war, atom bomb, pollution, death, obviously the strain of worrying about his father’s illness. To be able to do nothing for him made him frantic. He had done nothing for him all his life.
A female colleague, an English teacher he had slept with once, a girl who was visibly aging, advised, “If the doctors don’t know, Albert, try a faith healer. Different people know different things; nobody knows everything. You can’t tell about the human body.”
Albert laughed mirthlessly but listened. If specialists disagree, who do you agree with? If you’ve tried everything, what else can you try?
One afternoon after a long walk alone, as he was about to descend the subway stairs somewhere in the Bronx, still burdened by his worries, uneasy that nothing had changed, he was accosted by a fat girl with bare meaty arms who thrust a soiled card at him that he tried to avoid. She was a stupefying sight, retarded at the very
least. Fifteen, he’d say, though she looks thirty and probably has the mentality of age ten. Her skin glowed, face wet, fleshy, a small mouth open and would be forever; eyes set wide apart on the broad unfocused face, either watery green or brown, or one of each—he wasn’t sure. She seemed not to mind his appraisal, gurgled faintly. Her thick hair was braided in two ropelike strands; she wore bulging cloth slippers bursting at seams and soles; a faded red skirt down to massive ankles, and a heavy brown sweater vest buttoned over blown breasts, though the weather was still hot September.
least. Fifteen, he’d say, though she looks thirty and probably has the mentality of age ten. Her skin glowed, face wet, fleshy, a small mouth open and would be forever; eyes set wide apart on the broad unfocused face, either watery green or brown, or one of each—he wasn’t sure. She seemed not to mind his appraisal, gurgled faintly. Her thick hair was braided in two ropelike strands; she wore bulging cloth slippers bursting at seams and soles; a faded red skirt down to massive ankles, and a heavy brown sweater vest buttoned over blown breasts, though the weather was still hot September.
The teacher’s impulse was to pass by her outthrust plump baby hand. Instead he took the card from her. Simple curiosity—once you had learned to read you read anything? Charitable impulse?
Albert recognized Yiddish and Hebrew but read in English: “Heal The Sick. Save The Dying. Make A Silver Crown.”
“What kind of silver crown would that be?”
She uttered impossible noises. Depressed, he looked away. When his eyes turned to hers she ran off.
He studied the card. “Make A Silver Crown.” It gave a rabbi’s name and address no less: Jonas Lifschitz, close by in the neighborhood. The silver crown mystified him. He had no idea what it had to do with saving the dying but felt he ought to know. Although at first repelled by the thought, he made up his mind to visit the rabbi and felt, in a way, relieved.
The teacher hastened along the street a few blocks until he came to the address on the card, a battered synagogue in a store, Congregation Theodor Herzl, painted in large uneven white letters on the plate-glass window. The rabbi’s name, in smaller, gold letters, was A. Marcus. In the doorway to the left of the store the number of the house was repeated in tin numerals, and on a card under the vacant nameplate under the mezuzah appeared in pencil, “Rabbi J. Lifschitz. Retired. Consultations. Ring The Bell.” The bell, when he decided to chance it, did not work—seemed dead to the touch—so Albert, his heartbeat erratic, turned the knob. The door gave easily enough and he hesitantly walked up a dark flight of narrow wooden stairs. Ascending, assailed by doubts, peering up through the gloom, he thought of turning back but at the first-floor landing compelled himself to knock loudly on the door.
“Anybody home here?”
He rapped harder, annoyed with himself for being there, engaging in the act of entrance—who would have predicted it an hour ago? The door opened a crack and that broad, badly formed face appeared.
The retarded girl, squinting one bulbous eye, made noises like two eggs frying, and ducked back, slamming the door. The teacher, after momentary reflection, thrust it open in time to see her, bulky as she was, running along the long tight corridor, her body bumping the walls as she disappeared into a room at the rear.
The retarded girl, squinting one bulbous eye, made noises like two eggs frying, and ducked back, slamming the door. The teacher, after momentary reflection, thrust it open in time to see her, bulky as she was, running along the long tight corridor, her body bumping the walls as she disappeared into a room at the rear.
Albert entered cautiously, with a sense of embarrassment, if not danger, warning himself to depart at once; yet stayed to peek curiously into a front room off the hallway, darkened by lowered green shades through which threadlike rivulets of light streamed. The shades resembled faded maps of ancient lands. An old gray-bearded man with thickened left eyelid, wearing a yarmulke, sat heavily asleep, a book in his lap, on a sagging armchair. Someone in the room gave off a stale odor, unless it was the armchair. As Albert stared, the old man awoke in a hurry. The small thick book on his lap fell with a thump to the floor, but instead of picking it up, he shoved it with a kick of his heel under the chair.
“So where were we?” he inquired pleasantly, a bit breathless.
The teacher removed his hat, remembered whose house he was in, and put it back on his head.
He introduced himself. “I was looking for Rabbi J. Lifschitz. Your—ah—girl let me in.”
“Rabbi Lifschitz—this was my daughter Rifkele. She’s not perfect, though God, who made her in His image, is Himself perfection. What this means I don’t have to tell you.”
His heavy eyelid went down in a wink, apparently involuntarily.
“What does it mean?” Albert asked.
“In her way she is also perfect.”
“Anyway, she let me in and here I am.”
“So what did you decide?”
“About what?”
“What did you decide about what we were talking about—the silver crown?”
His eyes roved as he spoke; he rubbed a nervous thumb and forefinger. Crafty type, the teacher decided. Him I have to watch myself with.
“I came here to find out about this crown you advertised,” he said, “but actually we haven’t talked about it or anything else. When I entered here you were sound asleep.”
“At my age—” the rabbi explained with a little laugh.
“I don’t mean any criticism. All I’m saying is I am a stranger to you.”
“How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?”
Albert made no argument of it.
The rabbi raised the two shades and the last of daylight fell into the spacious high-ceilinged room, crowded with at least a dozen stiffback and folding chairs, plus a broken sofa. What kind of operation is he running here? Group consultations? He dispensed rabbinic therapy? The teacher felt renewed distaste for himself for having come. On the wall hung a single oval mirror, framed in gold-plated groupings of joined metal circles, large and small; but no pictures. Despite the empty chairs, or perhaps because of them, the room seemed barren.
The teacher observed that the rabbi’s trousers were a week from ragged. He was wearing an unpressed worn black suit-coat and a yellowed white shirt without a tie. His wet grayish-blue eyes were restless. Rabbi Lifschitz was a dark-faced man with brown eye pouches and smelled of old age. This was the odor. It was hard to say whether he resembled his daughter; Rifkele resembled her species.
“So sit,” said the old rabbi with a light sigh. “Not on the couch, sit on a chair.”
“Which in particular?”
“You have a first-class humor.” Smiling absently, he pointed to two kitchen chairs and seated himself in one.
He offered a thin cigarette.
“I’m off them,” the teacher explained.
“I also.” The old man put the pack away. “So who is sick?” he inquired.
Albert tightened at the question, as he recalled the card he had taken from the girl: “Heal The Sick, Save The Dying.”
“To come to the point, my father’s in the hospital with a serious ailment. In fact he’s dying.”
The rabbi, nodding gravely, dug into his pants pocket for a pair of glasses, wiped them with a large soiled handkerchief, and put them on, lifting the wire earpieces over each fleshy ear.
“So we will make then a crown for him?”
“That depends. The crown is what I came here to find out about.”
“What do you wish to find out?”
“I’ll be frank with you.” The teacher blew his nose and slowly wiped it. “My cast of mind is naturally empiric and objective—you might say non-mystical. I’m suspicious of faith healing, but I’ve come here, frankly, because I want to do anything possible to help my father
recover his former health. To put it otherwise, I don’t want anything to go untried.”
recover his former health. To put it otherwise, I don’t want anything to go untried.”
“You love your father?” the rabbi clucked, a glaze of sentiment veiling his eyes.
“What I feel is obvious. My real concern right now mainly is how does the crown work. Could you be explicit about the mechanism of it all? Who wears it, for instance? Does he? Do you? Or do I have to? In other words, how does it function? And if you wouldn’t mind saying, what’s the principle, or rationale, behind it? This is terra incognita for me, but I think I might be willing to take a chance if I could justify it to myself. Could I see a sample of the crown, for instance, if you have one on hand?”
The rabbi, with an absentminded start, seemed to interrupt himself about to pick his nose.
“What is the crown?” he asked, at first haughtily, then again, gently. “It’s a crown, nothing else. There are crowns in Mishna, Proverbs, Kabbalah; the holy scrolls of the Torah are often protected by crowns. But this one is different, this you will understand when it does the work. It’s a miracle. A sample doesn’t exist. The crown has to be made individual for your father. Then his health will be restored. There are two prices—”
“Kindly explain what’s supposed to cure the sickness,” Albert said. “Does it work like sympathetic magic? I’m not nay-saying, you understand. I just happen to be interested in all kinds of phenomena. Is the crown supposed to draw off the illness like some kind of poultice, or what?”
“The crown is not a medicine, it is the health of your father. We offer the crown to God and God returns to your father his health. But first we got to make it the way it must be made—this I will do with my assistant, a retired jeweler. He has helped me to make a thousand crowns. Believe me, he knows silver—the right amount to the ounce according to the size you wish. Then I will say the blessings. Without the right blessings, exact to each word, the crown don’t work. I don’t have to tell you why. When the crown is finished your father will get better. This I will guarantee you. Let me read you some words from the mystic book.”
“The Kabbalah?” the teacher asked respectfully.
“Like the Kabbalah.”
The rabbi rose, went to his armchair, got slowly down on his hands and knees and withdrew the book he had shoved under the misshapen chair, a thick small volume with faded purple covers, not
a word imprinted on it. The rabbi kissed the book and murmured a prayer.
a word imprinted on it. The rabbi kissed the book and murmured a prayer.
“I hid it for a minute,” he explained, “when you came in the room. It’s a terrible thing nowadays, goyim come in your house in the middle of the day and take away that which belongs to you, if not your life itself.”
“I told you right away that your daughter had let me in,” Albert said in embarrassment.
“Once you mentioned I knew.”
The teacher then asked, “Suppose I am a nonbeliever? Will the crown work if it’s ordered by a person who has his doubts?”
“Doubts we all got. We doubt God and God doubts us. This is natural on account of the nature of existence. Of this kind doubts I am not afraid so long as you love your father.”
“You’re putting it as sort of a paradox.”
“So what’s so bad about a paradox?”
“My father wasn’t the easiest man in the world to get along with, and neither am I for that matter, but he has been generous to me and I’d like to repay him in some way.”
“God respects a grateful son. If you love your father this will go in the crown and help him to recover his health. Do you understand Hebrew?”
“Unfortunately not.”
The rabbi flipped a few pages of his thick tome, peered at one closely, and read aloud in Hebrew, which he then translated into English. “‘The crown is the fruit of God’s grace. His grace is love of creation.’ These words I will read seven times over the silver crown. This is the most important blessing.”
“Fine. But what about those two prices you quoted me a minute ago?”
“This depends how quick you wish the cure.”
“I want the cure to be immediate, otherwise there’s no sense to the whole deal,” Albert said, controlling anger. “If you’re questioning my sincerity, I’ve already told you I’m considering this recourse even though it goes against the grain of some of my strongest convictions. I’ve gone out of my way to make my pros and cons absolutely clear.”
“Who says no?”
The teacher became aware of Rifkele standing at the door, eating a slice of bread with lumps of butter on it. She beheld him in mild stupefaction, as though seeing him for the first time.
“Shpeter, Rifkele,” the rabbi said patiently.
The girl shoved the bread into her mouth and ran ponderously down the passageway.
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