Sitting on a blue velvet chair
back to the wall
the last of the three old Lehman brothers
waits
greets
thanks
the door closes
then reopens: another comes in.
When little Robert
asked him
about his long beard
he told him
this is what they once did
over there in a place called Rimpar
and this is what they also did for Uncle Henry, in Alabama.
Robert then
drew
on a sheet of paper
lots of people with beards down to their feet
—even women—
—even the dog—
and showing it to everyone he said:
“This is Rimpar, in Alabama.”
Robert likes drawing.
And if they ask him
what he’ll do when he grows up
he replies:
“Painter!”
At which his mother, Carrie,
promptly smiles
well knowing
that in her husband’s diary
this wasn’t exactly the plan
and corrects him:
“Bobbie! You mean to say banker painter.”
For the moment
however
Bobbie Lehman has no interest
in his professional future:
he looks around him
at his father and all the others
who have been doing strange rites
for three days.
For the Lehman family
has decided it will follow all the rules:
Shiva and sheloshim
as they did over there in Europe,
all the rules
as if we were Bavarian Jews.
Not to go out for a week.
Not to prepare food:
to ask neighbors for it, receive it and no more.
They’ve torn a garment, as prescribed
they ripped it to pieces as soon as they came back
from the burial
at the old cemetery.
And they’ve also recited the Qaddish
every day
morning and evening
the whole family
children in the front row
ever since mourning began.
Now
in a whisper
with tired eyes
sitting on a blue velvet chair
back to the wall
the last of the three Lehman brothers
waits
greets
thanks
the door closes
then reopens: another.
They have closed the body in a dark coffin
with no handles
with no decoration
with nothing
just like Henry’s
half a century ago.
The offices at 119 Liberty Street
with their windows as high as the chandeliers
stay shut today.
Today like yesterday and the day before.
The Lehman Brothers offices
at 119 Liberty Street
have been there nearly fifty years
and have never stayed shut for so long:
Even on Wall Street
at the Stock Exchange
the flags are down, at half-mast.
“Funny”—old Lehman thinks—
for
he and his brother
hadn’t set foot in there for a long time;
now that all they talk about in there
is shares and bonds and stock markets.
Sitting on a blue velvet chair
back to the wall
the last of the three old Lehman brothers
now
waits
greets
thanks
the door closes
then reopens: another.
The crowds
—all the Jews in Manhattan—
have been queuing now for hours
at the front door of the house:
they saw the news in the New York Times
which put it on page one.
“Funny”—old Lehman thinks—
for
he and his brother
didn’t read a single page of the newspaper
since all they write about now
is shares and bonds and stock markets.
Crowds silent.
They go in two at a time
into the large house on 54th Street,
where the blinds today are left down:
the street
will not be brightened
by the light of the enormous chandeliers
that run
—to Carrie Lehman’s delight—
not on gas but electrical current.
Crowds silent.
They go in two at a time.
There’s also Solomon Paprinski
the tightrope walker of Wall Street
who in twenty years
has never fallen
from his wire.
All as the Law prescribes
all as it was in Rimpar, among those Bavarians,
even if
now
there is only one
who actually remembers how it was.