The news of Chona’s hospitalization and the circumstances surrounding it couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Ahavat Achim congregation of Pottstown. The tiny temple, built atop Chicken Hill by Chona’s father fifteen years before, had been upended by the arrival of several new Hungarian members—and one four-legged one—a giant bullfrog. The enormous creature was discovered by one of the new wives in the mikvah, or women’s bathing pool. Her husband, a successful Budapest hatmaker named Junow Farnok, recently arrived from Buffalo, New York—who insisted he be referred to by his adopted American name, Mr. Hudson—was outraged. He offered to toss $145 at the shul toward the construction of a brand-new mikvah, along with the demand that the new one be double the size and constructed of the finest marble from Carrara, Italy.
This was an unusual request for the tiny shul, whose coffers contained all of $59.14, not including nineteen pairs of brand-new John Keasler shoes and a pile of scrap iron, horseshoes, and rags, all of which were donated by a former congregant, a peddler who vamoosed the previous year with a Mennonite farmer’s wife from nearby Pennsburg. The two met while the peddler was traversing his normal route. They had done quite a bit of haggling and negotiating through the years over morning milk and freshly baked bread, and apparently one thing led to another. She was a big woman, nearly six feet tall and built like a truck, whereas he was so skinny he looked like a mop with hair. Neither spoke English—she spoke German and he spoke Yiddish. But love is the language of all mankind, and before departing, he left behind his entire life savings, $27, including his peddler’s cart and all its contents to his beloved temple, along with a letter to his best friend that said, in part, “Be careful in America. One good fuck can break you.” And off he went, last seen heading to Indiana.
It didn’t hurt the shul much, as its membership had exploded from seventeen families to forty-five by 1936, including the services of the still-nervous but ever-enthusiastic Rabbi Karl Feldman, a kind soul still affectionately called Fertzel behind his back by the congregants who preferred Yiddish—or Frabbi by the members who preferred English. Feldman was grateful to have a job. It was upon his slim shoulders that the question of what to do about the new mikvah fell, for while he was salivating at the prospect of a huge cash donation by the rich new Hungarian congregant, who favored crisp white shirts bearing a newly monogrammed family crest embroidered on their breast pockets, he’d neglected to mention to the gentleman that there was a question of where the water for the new mikvah was going to come from.
This came up at the monthly meeting of the chevry, the men’s group that decided important matters at the temple, which was attended by Rabbi Feldman; Irv Skrupskelis, the better half of the evil Lithuanian Skrupskelis twins; five members called meat slabs because they kept silent and voted however needed; the new donor, Mr. Hudson, who was clad in a fine leather coat, gloves, suspenders, bow tie, top hat, knee-high boots, and starched white shirt; and the usual minyan kidnapping victims, since there needed to be ten people for a minyan and they often only had eight. In this case, the victims were two fresh young immigrants from Austria, brothers Hirshel and Yigel Koffler, snatched off the street on the way home from work, having been recently employed as brakemen for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The exhausted Koffler brothers slumped into the meeting covered with soot and grime. They gulped down coffee and wolfed down giant portions of Hungarian coffee cake and promptly fell asleep when the usual small talk about card games and American baseball ensued in English, which neither spoke. Rabbi Feldman, who disliked card games and baseball, quickly pinwheeled the discussion to Yiddish, whereupon the discourse turned to the growing political turmoil in Germany, where president Paul Von Hindenburg had chosen a young Austrian named Adolf Hitler to serve as chancellor to keep the Nazi party “in check,” at which point both Koffler brothers woke up instantly and offered a round of cursing and swearing, after which the group settled down to the matter of the mikvah donation from Mr. Hudson.
Mr. Hudson was a man of detail, and he grilled Rabbi Feldman.
“Can we double the mikvah in size without a problem?” Mr. Hudson asked.
“Of course,” Rabbi Feldman said.
“You seemed hesitant about it when I asked before,” Mr. Hudson said.
“Oh no,” Feldman said. “We can handle it.”
“And what about the frog?”
“What about it? It’s gone, isn’t it?”
“There is the question of where the frog came from. How did it get in the mikvah?”
“Probably one of the boys dropped it in there,” Rabbi Feldman said.
“My wife said it came from beneath,” Hudson said. “A drainpipe underneath.”
Here Rabbi Feldman glanced at Irv Skrupskelis and blanched. “We’ll look into that,” he said.
“She also mentioned something about the water,” Mr. Hudson said. “One of the women said something.”
“The water?”
“Yes. Something about there not being enough of it, or some question as to where it comes from. Where does the water come from?”
“Where does all water come from?” Feldman said, chuckling nervously. His eyes rolled up toward the ceiling in a happy way, but Mr. Hudson was not amused.
“Well, what about it?” Hudson asked.
“What about what?”
“The water? Where does it come from?”
“Well, this side of town has had problems getting enough running water,” Feldman said. “But the city just built a reservoir on the hill above us a year ago. We had to make adjustments in the past.”
“What kind of adjustments?”
Feldman shrugged. “Nothing major. It’s an occasional problem,” he said, “getting water to the mikvah from time to time. There’s simply not a lot of water around here.”
Mr. Hudson, a thin man with glasses, fingered his waxed handlebar mustache and frowned. “This isn’t Nevada. How can you have a mikvah with not enough water?”
“We have water, but not quite enough.”
“How is that?”
“At times . . . occasionally, we have a water supply problem,” Rabbi Feldman said.
This was news even to Irv Skrupskelis, who was an original congregant and was there when the original mikvah was built. “Karl, how can we not have enough water? Either we have enough water or we don’t.”
“We do have enough . . . except when we don’t,” Rabbi Feldman said.
“Is the tap broke?”
“No.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? We get water from the town, right?” Irv asked.
Rabbi Feldman shook his head. “Actually,” he said, “there’s been a hiccup in that way.”
Irv’s face reddened. “There’re fourteen churches in this town and you’re telling me our shul is the only house of worship that doesn’t get water from the town? You call that a hiccup?”
Feldman sighed. “When the shul was built, the town wouldn’t run water up to Chicken Hill. The water came from the public water faucet and was hauled up here in barrels.”
“Don’t we have a well?”
“No,” Feldman said. “There’s a farm near the top of the Hill, the Plitzka farm, that had a well. We offered to pay the Plitzkas for use of their well water, but they refused. So the previous administration”—he didn’t mention Chona’s father by name, but he didn’t need to. Everybody knew the temple only had one rabbi before Feldman—”made an arrangement.”
“That’s news to me,” Irv said.
“It worked fine for years,” Feldman said. “Except now there’s a problem with the arrangement. Why? Because the er . . . previous administrator, er . . . the one who made the arrangement, he died four years ago.”
“You mean Yakov, Chona’s father, didn’t make a contract?”
“Nothing.”
“Where’s the water coming from?”
“Well . . . ,” and here Feldman blanched. “It’s, um, not really clear. I have some ideas, though,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Irv said. “We’ll fix it. We’ll go to the city and make arrangements to tap into city water. They’re running pipes in this direction now, aren’t they? That’s what the new reservoir at the top of the Hill is for.”
“It’s not that simple,” Rabbi Feldman said.
“Why not?”
“We’re still tied up in the first arrangement.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Feldman sighed. “You recall, Irv,” he said, “that the original builder of our temple, er . . . absconded with the funds, and our founder was forced to make arrangements with another man, a local builder, who did a wonderful job. Unfortunately, the builder who took off with our money did not test the water table below the shul to see if water ran there. So when the shul was built, there was no water nearby.”
“And?”
“Since the town did not supply water to that area, our water problems worsened during long dry spells. We made several offers to old Mr. Plitzka to buy his well water, but he refused us, and one year during a long dry spell, a certain fine young member of our shul—may she be blessed with a miracle for she is now ill—called the police on him, which only made matters worse. She ended up hauling water in barrels from the public spigot for a while, or so I was told.”
This caused a pained smile from the usually grim Irv, for he and his brother adored Chona. “Have you gone to see Chona in the hospital yet?” he asked Feldman.
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“I . . . she’s only been there four days. She’s down in Reading.”
“I know where she is.”
“Well, my car—”
And here Mr. Hudson broke in. “Can we deal with one matter at a time? What happened with the water?”
Irv cut a hot glance at Hudson, then nodded at Feldman, who looked blitzed. “Tell us what’s going on with the water now, Karl.”
“As I explained,” Feldman said, “after Chona upset old Mr. Plitzka, she hauled water for the mikvah by hand. That made for some difficulties.”
“So let’s just arrange to have our water piped from the city now,” Mr. Hudson said.
“That’s the problem,” Feldman said. He explained that the eldest Plitzka son never forgot the insult to his father’s memory, as Chona wrote a detailed letter of complaint to the Pottstown Mercury about old man Plitzka, the police, and the city’s water department. The son saved Chona’s letter to the editor for years and waved it about in his campaign for city council, chirping about Pottstown’s Jews “taking over.” He had gotten elected on that premise three times.
“Every time we ask, the city says they don’t have the money to run a water line toward our part of Chicken Hill. They say they’re getting to it. Or it’s coming soon. Or the reservoir has problems. It’s one delay after another.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Hudson snorted. “We can get a lawyer and force them to pipe us water. They run pipes around here all the time.”
Rabbi Feldman looked doubtful. “Old Plitzka was popular.”
“What was his first name?” Irv asked.
“Gustowskis.”
“The head of the city council?”
“No,” Feldman said. “That’s his son. Gus Plitzka is a junior.”
Irv rolled his eyes. “I remember the father. A mean old ferd (horse) with three front teeth. His face looked like he had a hobby of stepping on rakes. He used to sell trefah sausage and buckwheat at the old farmer’s market. We’re losing our water because of him?”
“Not him. His son. The city council president. Gus Plitzka is a junior, I said.”
“How long ago did Chona write that letter again?” Irv asked.
“Years ago. She was a kid. Before she married Moshe.”
“Just so we’re clear, how is this tied to the bullfrog in the mikvah?” Mr. Hudson asked.
Irv turned to Hudson and said, “Can we table the bullfrog for a minute?” Then back to Feldman: “The mikvah’s working fine. Either that or my wife’s been drowning in spit for these past six months. We have water now and then. So where’s it coming from?”
Rabbi Feldman sighed. “The shul didn’t want to raise a fuss, so my understanding is that we just tapped into the well that brings water to the public water spigot near the Clover Dairy. We actually don’t pay the city for the small bit of water that we use.”
“Well, let’s pay them now,” Mr. Hudson said. “We can fix that right away. We’ll make an arrangement.”
Feldman sighed. “That arrangement is going to be difficult to roll out.”
“Money moves the world,” Mr. Hudson said.
“Not this world,” Feldman said. He cleared his throat. “Um . . . since the original arrangement happened before I came, permission to tap into the water spigot’s well was never gotten. It was just done.”
“Who did it?” Mr. Hudson asked.
Feldman glanced at him nervously. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I am not.”
“Well, I understand that the previous rabbi paid a man to get a crew, dig down, put a Y connection on the well’s pipe, and cover it back up. The connection is buried four feet down, just across the road from the dairy building at Hayes and Franklin. That’s where we get our water.”
“Well, we’re obviously not getting enough of it,” Mr. Hudson said.
“This town is growing, Mr. Hudson. The dairy, which draws from the same well, has increased capacity. And the water table is dropping. So the well occasionally runs dry. That’s why it sometimes takes a long time to fill the mikvah. That’s why they built the new reservoir.”
“Is that why the bullfrog turned up?” Mr. Hudson said.
Irv was the milder of the Skrupskelis twins but not that mild. He turned to Hudson and barked, “Could you stop working your mouth about the frog for a minute till we figure this out?”
Mr. Hudson’s face reddened. “This would’ve never happened in Buffalo!”
“I’m sure they all walk around holding hands up there,” Irv said. He turned to Feldman. “Karl, we’ll approach the Clover Dairy. We’ll get them to let us go into the well and take the Y off, and attach our own water pipe to the same line that services their diary, the line from the city’s main to us. We’ll get a lawyer and get it done.”
Feldman cleared his throat. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why the hell not?”
“The dairy was sold a month ago. Guess who the new owner is.”
“Plitzka?”
Feldman nodded.
Irv thought a moment. “This town is run by thieves. Between him and Doc Roberts . . .” He shook his head. “Is it true about Doc going in Chona’s store? What the Negroes are saying?”
Feldman pursed his lips. “I don’t know many of the Negroes.”
“Did you talk to Moshe?”
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for?”
Hudson broke in. “What are you talking about?”
Feldman turned to him. “There was an incident . . . one of our congregants, the daughter of our founder, she’s very ill. She’s been sickly for years. The doc here in town went to see her. There’s some question about his behavior.”
Mr. Hudson rolled his eyes. “How did we go from a bullfrog in the mikvah to this?”
Irv turned to Mr. Hudson again, and this time the beast known as the Skrupskelis was loose. “Listen pisher (squirt), if you mention that bullfrog one more time, I’ll hang a zets (punch) on your head.”
“Get a hold of yourself,” Hudson snapped. “My wife uses that mikvah!”
“Well, the alt mekhasheyfe (old witch) can scrub her dimples at home!”
“Take it easy, Irv,” Rabbi Feldman said.
“Take it easy? Chona’s in the hospital and you haven’t even gone to see her. Have you thought about how she got there? I’m hearing a lot about it.”
“She’s always been sick.”
“Not that sick. You should ask.”
“Ask who?”
“Anybody. The police maybe. How’s that?”
“What is there to ask?”
Mr. Hudson grew irritated. “You two work that out. Meantime, I’ll go to the town myself and pay them to run a new pipe.”
“Bring a printing press with you to punch out twenties and fifties,” Irv said. “Plitzka and Doc run everything around here. The police. The water department. They all go back years. You think goyes like that will let a bunch of Jews dig up around Plitzka’s business? They’ll fine us first, then charge us through the nose—if they let us dig at all.” That brought silence to the room. Even the Austrians, who did not understand much of the English being spoken, seemed cowed.
Mr. Hudson stood up and paced back and forth, his hands behind his back. “This is a serious legal problem,” he said. “We are stealing water from a town run by a goy who hates Jews. We could be prosecuted.”
“We didn’t attach that pipe to the city’s well,” Feldman said. “The person who arranged it passed away. Not a soul from our shul was involved. Of that I’m sure. Chona’s late father told me that himself.”
“Who did it?”
Feldman’s face reddened and here he looked at Irv. “There’s a local Negro involved.”
Mr. Hudson stopped pacing. “A nigger?” he asked.
The Koffler brothers were now awake. “What’s a nigger?” one of them asked in Yiddish.
“A Negro,” Feldman said in English. “We say Negro here.”
“Which one?” Irv Skrupskelis asked.
“I don’t know him,” Feldman said. “But he . . . uh . . . Chona’s husband works with a lot of Negroes. He might know him.”
“Do you know his name?” Irv asked.
“Chona’s husband? Of course.”
“Not Moshe, Karl. I mean the colored who dug up the ground and did the connection to the city’s well,” Irv said tersely. “Who is he?”
“A local fellow. He’s dead now. He did a lot of odd jobs years ago. He was a builder of sorts. Talented, as you can see by our shul. His name was Shad, I believe. Shad Davis. He has a son. He’s a scrap collector, does odd jobs and such for the colored on the Hill. I believe they call him Fatty,” Rabbi Feldman said.
Here again the two Austrian brothers looked at each other. Hirshel said in English, “Fatty?”
“Your first English word,” Yigel muttered dourly. “It’s about time. What’s it mean?”
“We need to move this shul off the Hill,” Mr. Hudson announced. “The days of doing bad deals with trefah and niggers and swimming with bullfrogs is over. It’s nineteen thirty-six. Come into the modern age, gentlemen.” He turned to Feldman. “I will leave it to you to unravel this.” To Irv, he said, “I will pretend that you did not insult me.” He moved toward the door and then stopped. “The congregant in the hospital? Is she dying?”
Here the poor rabbi blanched, for Irv Skrupskelis’s face grew dark with rage. “I will find out,” Feldman said.
Mr. Hudson nodded and left.
Irv turned to Feldman. “You brought us here to listen to this schmuck complain?”
“I should have thrown him a welcome dinner instead?” Feldman said.
“Throw it so I can plant it in his face,” Irv said. He stared at the door where Hudson had exited. “Moron. Him and his fucking frog.”