BEN
When Ben left the apartment after hearing of the visit of Detective Hanrahan, he went directly to a pay phone, called the number on the card Sylvia had given him, and asked for the detective. After a brief conversation, they agreed to meet the next day and drive together to Liberty to arrange for the retrieval of Morton’s body.
After he hung up the phone, Ben stood outside the phone booth almost paralyzed with indecision. Where should he go? His stomach clenched, and his heart hammered with the thought of going back to his apartment and listening to Golda. Her words reverberated in his head even now: “He’s not my son, not my son.” Ben did not think he could face her right now.
He could go to Rabbi Levy’s house. Perhaps that would calm him. He could ask for advice, but then he would have to tell the rabbi how his poor Morty had been forced to work for the hoodlums because of Ben’s own mistakes and actions . . . his stupidity in getting into debt with the wrong people, and then his inability to get himself out of debt without Morty involving himself with Rudy, who was a criminal. The shame of that washed over him. Ben felt directly responsible for Morty’s death.
The only place he could think of as a refuge was Cousin Surah’s apartment. He turned and trudged there through the twilight of the October evening. He walked up the familiar stairs in her apartment building, smelling the familiar smells, remembering how, when Golda first came to America, he had brought her and his newborn son from the boat to Cousin Surah’s house, and how she had helped him.
When he knocked on the door, Cousin Surah answered, greeting him warmly. The smells of supper cooking, soup and bread, enveloped him. He had been hungry when he went to his apartment, anticipating supper with Golda and Sylvia, but now the smell of food nauseated him. He could not put a morsel in his mouth. He could not help himself; as soon as he looked at her welcoming face, he began to cry.
“What is it, Ben?” she asked. She reached out and took him in her arms. Ben was crying so hard he could not speak. She walked with him to the parlor and sat him on the sofa. She brought him a glass of water. She sat beside him and held his hand while he tried to compose himself.
When he caught his breath, she repeated her question. “What is the matter, Ben?”
“It’s Morty. A detective came to the house when I was at work and told Golda and Sylvia that . . . that Morty . . . is dead.” He stuttered over the words, reluctant to allow them to be heard.
Cousin Surah gasped. “What happened?”
Ben did not know where to begin, but he thought he could only begin at the beginning, when he had needed money and made the mistake of going to the loan shark. The story spilled out. Ben stumbled in the telling; in fits and starts, he went from event to event. Morty borrowing from Rudy, promising to work for him. Rudy’s murder. The demand from Rudy’s boss that Morty go to Liberty to work for him. Morty’s fear that he couldn’t say no. How they had not heard from him for months until this detective came to tell them that Morty was dead.
Ben was silent then. It was not exactly true that they hadn’t heard from Morty. He had heard from him, just two months before. A brief letter had come to his store, saying only that Morty was leaving Liberty and going someplace no one could find him—not the gangs, not the law, no one. Ben had not known what to make of the letter. He hadn’t even told Golda about it. He didn’t mention it to Surah either. What difference did it make, if Morty was dead now?
Somehow, Ben felt this was the easier part of the story. He could hardly speak when he reported how Golda had told him she did not want to retrieve Morty’s body and insisted over and over that he was not her son. At the end he was sobbing again.
“She said that? He’s not her son?”
Ben nodded. “I’m going to Liberty with this detective . . . his name is Hanrahan . . . and I will get his body and bring it back for burial in a Jewish cemetery. And we will sit shiva.”
Cousin Surah patted his hand. “Do you need help with that? Retrieving the body. Finding a plot to bury him?” She was quiet for a minute. “Maybe Rabbi Levy could help. Just like with Esther.”
Ben nodded. It was not lost on him the similarity here. The mother about to be buried in a pauper’s grave. A Christian grave. And now her son had met the same fate. Ben took a cup of tea and a slice of bread, all he could swallow, and asked Cousin Surah if he could sleep at her house that night. He could not go home and see Golda now. Cousin Surah agreed, and Ben made plans to visit the rabbi first thing in the morning before he went to meet Detective Hanrahan. When it was time to go to bed, Ben lay on the sofa but could not close his eyes. Each time he did, he heard Golda’s voice hammering in his head: “Not my son, not my son.”
Rabbi Levy was happy to see Ben that morning, but not when he heard the story that Ben told him. This was a terrible outcome. The rabbi tried to comfort Ben and told him that when he brought the body back, he would help him bury his son near Esther’s grave. Ben could barely speak. He thanked the rabbi, got up, and went to meet the detective.
Detective Hanrahan drove Ben to Liberty, and while Ben listened in perfect silence, he recited how they had discovered Morty’s body almost two months after he had been murdered. It had been found in the bushes near Kiamesha Lake by a man walking his dog in the vicinity. He had gone to investigate an unusual odor and come upon the body. It had been impossible to identify because of the time it had been out in the sun, ravaged by insects and animals. Even his fingerprints were undecipherable, however the clothing and the contents of his pockets had helped with the identification. They were set to bury the body in a pauper’s grave in the Christian cemetery, but Detective Hanrahan believed that he and Ben were in time to stop that from happening.
He was wrong. The body was already buried, and Ben had to get a judge to approve the exhumation. In the two days it took to arrange for the body to be exhumed, Ben walked around Liberty, trying to find out as much about Morty’s life there as he could. He visited Mrs. Stein, the landlady, who had put his remaining possessions in the valise still in his room and was glad to return the items to Ben. She told him how much she liked Morty. “A very polite young man,” she said.
Ben talked to the man in the candy store, who told him he thought Morty had gotten on a bus to go somewhere because he had seen him entering the bus terminal with a rucksack, and although Morty had told him he would be in later for cigarettes, he never came. “He told me a cock-and-bull story about leaving the rucksack for a friend . . . why would he do that? He could have left it with his landlady. I didn’t believe him. I thought he’d hightailed it on the first bus he could get.”
Ben met Albie, who told him about the guys who had taken Morty out of the sandwich shop that day in August. “But they let him go. I saw him walk past the window after a few minutes.”
All of this made Ben question whether Morty really was dead, and he shared the information with Detective Hanrahan; he even told him about the note he had received stating that Morty was leaving Liberty and going into hiding.
“He must have been murdered right after he mailed that letter,” Hanrahan said. “Because remember, we found his body.”
Ben nodded. But he couldn’t put his doubts to rest, and he mentioned them to the reporter from the Daily News who came to interview him about Morty’s death. “I am not entirely sure that is my son, because the candy store owner told me he saw him go into the bus depot days before he was supposed to be murdered.” He saw the reporter taking notes.
Still, the police had identified the body as Morty’s. What else could Ben do but take the coffin with the remains they said were Morty’s and go back to Brooklyn to bury him?
The article was published in the Daily News on the day Ben arrived back in Brooklyn after an absence of three days. It read:
Date: October 20, 1940
FATHER MOURNS SON, YET HOPES HE LIVES
FEINSTEIN, BURYING BODY IDENTIFIED AS SON, IS NOT SURE THE BODY OF MAN IS HIS SON
Benjamin Feinstein, mechanic, is about to begin a seven-day period of Orthodox Jewish mourning for his son, Morton Feinstein, although he is not certain his son is dead. He collected the body, said to be the son, when the police told him they had identified the body as Morton Feinstein. But when he arrived in Liberty, he found his son had already been buried in a Christian cemetery. The coffin was removed and transferred to Brooklyn, where it is to be buried tomorrow in a Jewish cemetary. The coffin has not been opened. Feinstein hopes his son is still alive.
Morty Feinstein left Brooklyn Polytechnic College, where he was studying to be an engineer, six months ago, to take up racketeering and gambling in Liberty. Benjamin Feinstein has not seen him since June.
When Ben returned to Brooklyn, he put sheets over the mirrors in the bathroom and living room and even covered the ones in the bedrooms with a blue towel in preparation for shiva, which would take place after the funeral.