THE BEDROOM AND BATHROOM WERE LIKE A HONEYMOON SUITE at the Marriott Inn. Yussel was in the Jacuzzi when Reverend Bismark of Moffat phoned. “My adult education class? Mutual understanding?” Yussel yelled when Shoshanna repeated the Reverend Bismark’s request. “Let Bismark teach his kids not to beat up my Schmulke.”
Shoshanna had her hand over the mouthpiece. “Schmulke started it. You know that. Kids get mad. They use their fists. You can’t blame them.”
“Chaim started it by cheating half the people in Moffat.”
“Yussy,” she hissed, “he wants to know how many you can send?”
“My scalp diseases? Like Castro I should empty my asylums and send Bismark my crazies? Natalie? Grisha?”
“He’ll send his bus over.”
“Paper cups, coffee only. Nothing to eat. Not in his church. In his home. And he’s not to mention Yoshke’s name once. If he does, we get up and leave.”
“He wants to know who Yoshke is.” Shoshanna giggled.
“I should teach him who Yoshke is? Yoshke, Yoisel, the guy on the cross, tell him.”
Very carefully, Shoshanna said, “Your gentleman on your cross.” She was afraid of saying Jesus.
Yussel was sending seven plus the four kibbutzniks who couldn’t understand a word of English. Babe took Grisha’s suit to the cleaner’s in Alamosa, ironed a white shirt. Shoshanna and Babe stood on each side of the door of the Assembly of God bus, checking fingernails and shoes. The Blondische wore her hiking boots but that was okay around Moffat. The four kibbutzniks wore terrorist camouflage gear. Babe wore all beige and no jewelry, not even her pearls. Grisha looked like he had been laid out. His suit two sizes too big, his skin two sizes too small. Natalie had to be sent back to change into a skirt. Shoshanna wanted to go only if Yussel would go. Yussel wouldn’t. The bus was to pick up Mendl and Steinberg in case Bismark said anything Yussel’s people shouldn’t hear, couldn’t respond to. Yussel stayed home. When Shoshanna went to the bathroom, he called Lillywhite, said very fast, “Not this Sunday and next Sunday I have to teach,” hung up.
Later Yussel drove to the Arizona to meet the returning bus. His people were hoarse from singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” talked only about forgiving their enemies, loving their neighbors, turning the other cheek. Yussel smoked, pushed his hat back off his head, listened, nodded. When they were finished, he said very softly, “Let me tell you something. If Schmulke had turned the other cheek, he’d have two black eyes.”
There was a long embarrassed silence. Finally Yussel said into it: “Five thousand years Jews have learned something goyim don’t know. You don’t forgive your enemies. You forgive your friends.”
Again a long silence. Ernie broke it. “Maybe it’s time you started teaching us, Rabbi?”
There was another long silence. This time Yussel was embarrassed, finally said, “You’re right.”
When it was Yussel’s turn to teach the Reverend Bismark’s adult education class, Shoshanna again had to make the arrangements over the phone with Yussel yelling in the background. “What’s the matter with you, Yussel? It’s a wonderful challenge.”
“Let Chaim’s Steinberg do it. Let Chaim do it.”
“Chaim can’t put two words together.”
“No covered dishes, no cameras. This isn’t the Indian reservation. And you’ll serve the cheap instant coffee, not my Zabar’s French Roast. And tell them I don’t shake hands with women.”
Shoshanna made a sweet kugel from leftover challah, canned fruit salad, lots of eggs. She made the French Roast coffee, defrosted rugelach her mother mailed from Toronto. Yussel wore a black sweater over a white shirt, thought he looked a little like a college professor, brushed his eyebrows out from his forehead so he could examine everyone from underneath them.
Bismark sent thirteen, like a hostage exchange. Yussel took down the divider, let men and women sit together, greeted everyone at the door, pulled at his beard like a patriarch, examined them one by one from under his eyebrows. Three cheery ladies smelling of baby powder arranged themselves on the seats in the front row, smiled at him, took out needlepoint. Behind them the others took out notepads. Some he’d seen the night of the fire, also in the supermarket, in the bank, at the Rexall. They were, in a strange way, all neighbors. Part of him wanted to reach out, be neighborly, maybe enlighten and illuminate. The other part of him wanted to get even for what their kids had done to Schmulke, even though Schmulke deserved it. Rosebud, scrubbed and shiny in a three-piece western suit like his father’s, smelling expensive, shook hands with Yussel too energetically. The ladies poised in their needlepoint, smiled little contemptuous smiles at one another. Indians and Jews, two of a kind.
Yussel knew what the Reverend Bismark’s adult education class was thinking. They were thinking he killed Yoshke. They were thinking the Jew in front of them could be five thousand years old. They were thinking maybe that’s what Moses looked like. Maybe even what Yoshke looked like.
Bismark wore a navy blue suit. He was very tall and thin. He might have been the mechanic from the Texaco, but he was so clean Yussel couldn’t be sure.
He felt Lillywhite in the room before he saw her. He moved away from the crowd at the front, stood at the coffeepot. She came over. He growled, “What are you doing here?”
She smiled a surface smile. Her eyes were hot. “I’m looking for another door.”
“There aren’t any more doors, Lillywhite.”
“I’m waiting for an answer about the train.”
“I told you I had to think about it.”
She drew her forefinger back and forth over her lips, weighed something, said almost under her breath, “There’s a boy at my house. He says two words: Mama and fire. All day long, Mama and fire. I took his mother to your friend’s house after you kicked her out. Be on the train or I’ll start asking questions.”
The ashes of his father’s wife filled his mouth.
And then Shoshanna stood next to them holding a tray of cups and spoons. “Is this the famous Ms. Lillywhite?”
Yussel cleared his throat so he wouldn’t choke on the ashes. Buried like a dog in Chaim’s backyard, buried because Yussel threw her out. “Shoshanna, my wife. Lillywhite, our neighbor.”
Shoshanna put the tray down very carefully, said, without looking up at Yussel or Lillywhite, “The Rabbi’s told me a lot about you.”
“Nothing bad, I hope,” Lillywhite answered lightly.
“Oh, no. The Rabbi would never tell me anything bad.” Shoshanna smiled brightly at Lillywhite and Yussel. “Well, enjoy the lecture. He’s a wonderful storyteller.”
With a terrifying frosty little smile on her face, Shoshanna watched Lillywhite fold herself into a children’s desk chair in the back row, said to Yussel through her smile, “So maybe it wasn’t you who told me about her. Maybe it was someone else.”
His father stood at the grave, slapped him across the face. Chaim howled, buried his dogs.
“You have your speech, Yussel? You wrote it out?”
“They want to hear how the Jews killed Yoshke. That’s what they came for. For that I don’t need notes.”
“Yussel! You’re acting like Schmulke. Pull yourself together, Yussel. Act like a Fetner.”
“You want to act like a Fetner? Be my guest. Don’t tell me how to act.”
Natalie came, bright-cheeked, sat beside Rosebud, swiveled around to stare at Lillywhite. Lillywhite looked only at Yussel, who sat in the front of the room, facing the chairs. Yussel looked at the light bulb, thought to Lillywhite, You want to know what makes us tick? You dare to come into my shul, talk to my wife, sit on seats my children sit on? But Lillywhite continued to sit in his shul, in the same room as his wife, in the same chair his children sat in, sat there, looked at him, rubbed her forefinger across her lips, said from behind it, he knew, You better be on that train.
What do you want from me, Lillywhite? My left ball or my right one? I didn’t kill Jesus. I didn’t kill your father. You didn’t kill your father. Things happen. Take your tzuros and leave me alone. His speech to Lillywhite completed, Yussel gave a short formal welcome, told Reverend Bismark’s class that it must have been intended their children were fighting because God wanted them all to get together and try to understand each other as long as they had to live in the same town, which induced nods and benign smiles. Then Yussel told them a little history of the Jews, paused now and then as he’d rehearsed, stared at them from under his eyebrows, gazed at the ceiling as if for inspiration, sprang his side curls boing boing against his ears, saw the Flower Child with Chaim, saw her hiding in the attic, heard her screaming, saw Chaim running around trying to go back into the house. All personnel accounted for? Mendl running around, counting. Mendl hadn’t known either. All personnel accounted for. They were fascinated by the side curls. He pulled them out to their full twelve inches, right side, then left side, rolled them up in little anchovies, tucked them back in. Except for the three cheery ladies whose heads were bent over their needlepoint, the adult education class took diligent notes. When Yussel asked for questions, Bismark stood, cleared his throat, pulled at his collar, took a little notebook out of his pocket. Yussel watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “We made up these questions, Reverend, before we came.” He looked around, got approving nods. Yussel thought he might have seen him at the fire. He might have been one of the firemen. Chaim would go to jail for murder, for hiding the woman, for not telling anyone she was there.
“Question one.” He was nervous and sincere. “We understand you all don’t believe in the Messiah. Is that true?”
“Believe in him? My great-great-great-grandfather saw him.”
“Saw Him?” It was Lillywhite. “What do you mean saw Him?”
“Yeah, saw him. I see you. He saw him.”
Lillywhite pursed her lips, looked down, away. Shoshanna stood by the coffeepot, scowling. Knowing Yussel wouldn’t stop her in public, Natalie was elbowing Rosebud. Bismark stood. “Your folks tell you what He looked like?”
Yussel shrugged. “What should an old Jew look like? A white beard? In a bad mood? A big nose? Overcharging? He said to my great-great-great-grandfather he wasn’t coming because his generation wasn’t ready for him.”
Some chuckled, some sat silently offended. Yussel wanted blood. He wished Shoshanna would leave, which was maybe why she was staying. “You have some more questions on your list there?”
“Question two.” The Reverend Bismark’s voice was shaky, his Adam’s apple was now a yo-yo. “Why did God make evil?”
He saw their heads bent over their notes, pencils ready for his truths. He wanted to enlighten and illuminate. He forgot Lillywhite. He forgot Shoshanna. He forgot Dina. He forgot Schmulke. He was in Yeshiva again, soaring like an eagle, the answers rolling out, his father’s words, his father’s father’s words, commentaries, commandments, stories, meanings. “Let me tell you about evil. Once the Jews prayed to God to get rid of the evil inclination. So God answered their prayers and got rid of evil. The next morning when the Jews went down to the marketplace, they couldn’t find a single egg.” Everyone laughed. Yussel was elated. “So they went back and begged God to bring the evil inclination back, they’d learn to live with it. That’s the difference between Christianity and Judaism.”
The Reverend stood again, smoothed his hair, calmer, as if he’d won something. “Have the Jews learned to live with the Holocaust?” Bismark was the mechanic after all.
Yussel stood, snapped out one side curl, then the other. “Well, it goes like this. You heard we were the chosen. Let me tell you what we were chosen for—in case some of you thought it was for something terrific. A Jew is someone whose disobedience or obedience of the Torah’s commandments determines the history of the world.” Lilly-white raised her hand. He ignored her. To his routine of looking up at the ceiling for inspiration, examining them from under bushy eyebrows, and springing his side curls, he added a patriarchal stroking of the beard. “So if we disobey our commandments, the whole world is in trouble. If you were to think about what it really means to be chosen, you’d know it wasn’t so terrific. A Jew is responsible for everything that happens. Therefore, to answer your question, we’re responsible for whatever happens to us. And to you. Maybe even the Holocaust. My father says we live in a universe where everything’s intended.” Lillywhite’s head jerked up. Their eyes met. “No act, no event happens unless God wants it to happen. My father says everything is intended.” It was the closest he had come to telling her he loved her. Someone else noticed, turned around to see who he was speaking to. Yussel forced himself to look away from her.
They wrote, underlined. Yussel soared. Maybe he was illuminating, enlightening. Maybe. In the rear a woman closed her notebook, dropped it into a shopping bag at her feet, took out a red-and-white checkerboard sweater, started knitting, moved her lips to count stitches. Suddenly Yussel realized how many thousands of other fools had tried to teach them, tried to explain, begged them for pity, pleaded for a child’s life. How few Jews had ever succeeded in changing their minds, in winning a little pity, a little mercy, a place to live, a little land, a little sympathy, a shred of understanding. How many stand-up-comic saints had stood before them, hoping for a spark, a breakthrough behind the cataracts of distaste, begging for their lives. They nod, say Je-ew in two syllables, and murder you in your bed. Go home, ladies. Play duplicate bridge, make tomato aspic, hang curtains in your garage windows. “How many of you here think the Jews killed Jesus? Raise your hands.”
Faces froze.
“So.” Yussel glanced at Shoshanna. Her little mouth was opened in a silent scream like the jackrabbit on the electric fence. But he couldn’t stop himself. “And how many of you here think the Romans killed Jesus?”
Hands shot into the air. Everyone was relieved. You want to see power, Lillywhite? I’ll show you power. Watch. Shoshanna was now watching Lillywhite as if no one else were in the room. Lillywhite watched Yussel with the same intensity. You think, Yussel thought, a wife catches you kissing someone, looking at her body, whispering into a telephone. No. A wife catches a husband in love—she sees the deep pain on the other woman’s face. It seemed, at that moment, less important a secret than that of Chaim and the Flower Child.
“Well, you’re wrong. The Jews killed Jesus. You want to hear how?” Needles and pencils hung in midair.
“You ever meet a Jewish kid who’s a wise guy? Like maybe my son? Well, two thousand years ago a very famous Rabbi in Jerusalem had a disciple who was a wise guy who always gave his teacher a hard time. He was a brilliant kid, no question. The Rabbi’s sister was the queen and he said something to her she didn’t like so she threw him out of the country and of course his disciple, this kid, Jesus …” Yussel heard some gasps. “… we call him Yoshke … went with his teacher. They went into Egypt and this kid for years gave his teacher a hard time. A million times his teacher tried to get rid of him, but he didn’t because Jesus had all this potential.”
“I never heard such a thing,” the Reverend Bismark protested.
“Don’t forget, we were there. You were in a cave in Europe chewing on your neighbor’s cheekbone.” Oh, Lillywhite, did you pick the wrong rabbi. And you too, Shoshanna. And you too, Totte. You got the wrong horse.
“So finally after many years the queen dies and the Rabbi starts out to return to Jerusalem. He and Jesus stop at an inn and the Rabbi says to Jesus. ‘Look, isn’t the wife of the innkeeper beautiful?’ And Jesus answers, ‘No, she has crooked eyes.’ Well, that’s the last straw. The Rabbi says, ‘Leave me. You are no longer my pupil. I am talking about her soul. All you see is the outside of her, that her eyes are crooked. I do not want you for a pupil any longer.’” Yussel watched his audience cringe. Shoshanna hadn’t taken her eyes off Lilly-white, maybe didn’t hear, maybe would have stopped him if she’d been listening.
“So he kicked Jesus out. Now he couldn’t be a rabbi. Maybe the Rabbi couldn’t take a joke. Maybe Jesus wasn’t joking. Who knows. Anyway he kicked him out. Well, your Jesus, he was furious. It was like being kicked out of medical school because you argued with your professor. And he’s going to show them. So on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day of the year for us, he goes to the temple in Jerusalem and he takes with him a pin. On Yom Kippur in those days, the holiest moment was when the high priest went into the Holy of Holies and spoke the secret Name of God. All the people heard the Name and they became like angels. At sundown they passed out of the temple between two gold lions that roared and the people forgot the secret Name and were again ordinary people. But when Jesus heard the Name, he scratched it on his knee so when he went out between the lions he still had the name. So Yoshke, even though they wouldn’t let him be a rabbi, was still like an angel. And he flew around the courtyard over everyone’s head so everyone could tell he still had the Name. Then he went out and healed people and did wonders with the Name that only the high priests were supposed to do. It was like the Rosenbergs stealing the atom bomb secrets and handing them out in the supermarket. So the ruling body went after him. They gave him forty days to prove he hadn’t used the Name of the Lord in vain, but of course he couldn’t prove it, nor did he want to prove it, so they stoned him to death. That, folks, is how the Jews killed Jesus. Instead of crossing yourself, you should be hitting yourself on the head.” Yussel banged on his head with his knuckles.
The Reverend Bismark was the first to shake himself, look around, stand, put his arms around two of his flock, lead them out. The others followed. Rosebud paused, caught Yussel’s eye, smiled, left. No one said good night. In moments the room was empty except for a lot of kugel, the gurgling coffeepot of Zabar’s French Roast. Shoshanna looked at him sideways, poured a cup of coffee, handed it to Yussel, unplugged the pot, said, “Whatever Chaim started, you finished. You’ve exposed us all. I’m taking the children home.” And walked out of the room.
After they could no longer hear Shoshanna’s footsteps, Lillywhite said softly, “What else does your father say?”
“My father says there’s an angel behind every blade of grass and each angel whispers to each blade, ‘Grow, darling, grow.’ I have never believed that. My father says …” Yussel couldn’t stop. Tears burned his cheeks. “My father says everything’s intended. My wife’s leaving. That’s intended. I’m in love with you. That’s intended. I kicked the Flower Child out and sent her to her death. How can such things be intended?”
From her child’s chair, Lillywhite said, “Your father’s dead. Why do you say ‘my father says’?”
“Because we talk. Because he tells me everything. I don’t listen. I can’t hear. He tried to tell me about the Flower Child of blessed memory. I didn’t listen.” They sat facing each other, Lillywhite and Yussel. “He told me to pay attention. I didn’t see what I should have seen. I stepped on the angels. I didn’t look.”
“You and your father talk to each other?” There was something ferocious in the way she asked the question. “And he’s dead.”
Yussel remembered Chaim howling, remembered him yelling that blood would be on his hands, remembered his father slapping him across the face. Lillywhite stood above him. “I want to talk to my father. I don’t want to tell anyone about people dying in fires. So be on the train.”
Once Yussel was selling single-life premiums to his cousin Asher. Asher’s kids were watching the Atlanta 500 on a six-foot TV screen. The cars and the drivers were larger than life. Yussel and Asher shouted fixed rates and variable rates over the scream of engines. Finally Asher’s wife came in and told the kids to turn the TV off. They turned the sound off. In the moment Yussel watched the silent race, a red car pulled into the pit, four mechanics surrounded it, one spilled gas on the fender, the fender ignited, the mechanic jumped back into the track and another car killed him. All without losing a beat. There could not have been a vengeance more precise, a heavenly intention more perfectly delivered. Yussel put the Flower Child in Chaim’s head. Chaim fell for her. Yussel threw her out, put her into Chaim’s house, didn’t sell him homeowner’s, couldn’t convince the firemen to put out the fire, ruled Chaim shouldn’t go inside. And now the woman his father said was intended was holding the evidence that Chaim murdered the Flower Child, certainly allowed her to die. It was the same chain of events. He had no way out. This he’d brought on himself not because he’d lusted for the Flower Child or fallen in love with Lilly-white, but because he’d ignored them. He’d made Yoshke’s error, just as Lillywhite said. He couldn’t see their souls for their tits. “Sunday,” he said to Lillywhite, “I’ll be on the train. Sunday.”
Yussel closed the door after her, rammed his hand through the wood, heard the popping of bones and cartilage, felt the pain sweep into his heart, saw the hole he’d made, knew he’d broken his bones, wanted them broken. He was broken. He looked up to the ceiling. “You win. You hear me, HaShem? You win.”