The Rabbi Page 5

  The experience set the pattern for life in the Rivkind household with Zaydeh. Each day he spent as many hours as possible in the grocery. He prepared his own lunch, over Dorothy’s protests, on a small electric hotplate in the back room. When he came back to the apartment in the evening, the hawk’s eyes would catch them in tiny ritual transgressions, and the eagle’s cry, ancient and fierce, would destroy the peace of their home.

  He knew that he made them unhappy, and the knowledge made him sad. Michael realized this, because he was his grandfather’s only friend. For several weeks after he came to live with them, Michael lived in fear of the bearded old man. And then one night, when the others slept while Isaac could not, he came into his grandson’s room to make sure the boy was covered. Michael was awake. When Isaac saw this he sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the boy’s head with a hand made horny by years of carrying crates of canned goods and bushels of vegetables.

  “Did you talk with God tonight?” he whispered hoarsely. Michael hadn’t prayed, but sensing that it would please his grandfather he nodded shamelessly, and when Isaac kissed his fingers he could feel the old man’s lips smiling. With his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger Isaac pinched the young cheek.

  “Dos is gut,” he said. “Talk with Him often.”

  Before he crept back through the silent house to his own room he reached into the pocket of his faded flannel robe. Paper rustled and then the blunt fingers held the bit of ginger to young lips. Michael fell asleep in bliss.

  The bond between Michael and his zaydeh grew stronger during the early fall, when the days began to shorten and the autumn feast of Sukkos drew near. Each autumn during his four-year stay with the Rivkinds Zaydeh built in their postage-stamp back yard a sukkah, or ceremonial hut. The sukkah was a small house of wooden planks covered with boughs and sheaves. It was hard work for an old man to build it, especially since hayfields, corn shocks and trees were not plentiful in Brooklyn. Sometimes he had to go deep into Jersey for raw materials, and he badgered Abe for weeks until he was driven to the country in the family Chevrolet.

  “Why do you bother?” Dorothy asked him once when she brought a glass of tea to where he strained and perspired to raise the hut. “Why do you work so hard?”

  “To celebrate the harvest.”

  “What harvest, for God’s sake? We’re not farmers. You sell canned goods. Your son makes corsets for ladies with big behinds. Who has a harvest?”

  He looked pityingly at this female his son had made his daughter. “For thousands of years, since the Jews emerged from the Wilderness, in ghettos and in palaces they have observed Sukkos. You don’t have to raise cabbages to have a harvest.” His big hand grasped Michael behind the neck and pushed him toward his mother. “Here is your harvest.” She didn’t understand, and by then Zaydeh had been living with them long enough not to expect understanding from her.

  But if his mother wasn’t gladdened by the sukkah, Michael was thrilled. Zaydeh ate his meals within its thatch walls, and when the weather permitted he slept there, too, in a folding cot placed on the dirt floor. That first year Michael begged so hard that his parents gave in and let him sleep with his grandfather. It was Indian summer, a time of warm days and crisp nights, and they slept under a thick feather bed that had come with Zaydeh from Williamsburg. Years later, when Michael slept out of doors in the mountains for the first time, that night came back to him vividly. He remembered the sound of the wind rustling the dry corn stalks in the sukkah roof, the patchwork pattern made by the light of the harvest moon shining through the network of boughs and casting their shadows on the dirt floor. And, incongruously but somehow beautiful, the traffic noises, muted and fairylike, floating into their back yard from 13th Avenue, two blocks away.

  It was the only night they had like that, an unhappy old man and a wondering small boy huddling warmly together against the night air and pretending they were in another world. They tried to sleep outside once more that Sukkos but it rained. And every other year until his zaydeh went away, his mother decided it was too cold.

  It was inevitable that Isaac should leave. But when it happened, his grandson couldn’t quite understand. The final straw was a nine-year-old Italian named Joseph Morello. He was in the fifth grade at P.S. 168 with Ruthie, and she was in love with him. She came home from school one afternoon ecstatic with the news that Joey had asked her to his birthday party on the following Saturday. Unfortunately, she made the announcement to Michael at a moment when Zaydeh was at the kitchen table having a glass of tea and reading the Jewish Forward. He looked up and pushed his steel-rimmed spectacles to his forehead.

  “On shabbos? On shabbos this boy has a party? What’s the matter with his people?”

  “Oh, Zaydey,” Ruthie said.

  “What’s his father’s name, this Joey?”

  “His name is Morello.”

  “Morello? An Italiana?” He moved his glasses back to his nose and shook the Forward. “You don’t go.”

  Ruthie’s anguished wail split the air, bringing her mother hurrying in from her bedroom, bandanna around her head and drymop in hand. She listened as her daughter sobbed and then she put the mop on the floor. “Go to your room, Ruth,” she said.

  When the girl had gone Dorothy looked at her father-in-law, who was looking at the Jewish Forward. “She is going to the birthday party,” she said.

  “Not on shabbos.”

  “You want to stay home on shabbos, you stay home, or go to shul with the other old men. She is a little girl who has been invited to a birthday party. She is going to sit around a table with other little girls and boys and have some cake and ice cream. There is no sin in that.”

  He turned his eagle’s eyes on her. “With shkotzim? Christians?”

  “With boys and girls.”

  “The first step,” Isaac Rivkind said. “The first step, and you push her into it. And when she is just a little older and has breasts, and an Italiana comes one day and puts a cross on a cheap gold chain between them, what will you say then?” He folded the paper and stood up. “What will you say then, my fancy daughter-in-law?”

  “For God’s sake, it’s a birthday party for children, not a wedding,” Dorothy said. But he was already leaving the kitchen.

  “She does not go,” he said as he slammed the door.

  Dorothy stood in the middle of the kitchen, white-faced. Then she ran to the window and threw it open. Two stories below, Isaac was just walking through the front door to the sidewalk.

  “SHE’S GOING,” she screamed at him. “DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU OLD MAN? SHE IS GOING!” Then she banged the window shut and started to cry.

  That night Michael’s zaydeh stayed late in his store, keeping it open long after the usual closing time. When Michael’s father came home from the factory he and Dorothy talked for a long time in their bedroom. Ruth and Michael could hear them arguing. Finally their father came out, his round face twisted, like a child who wants to weep but can’t. He fixed a plate of cold cuts from the refrigerator and took it to Zaydeh. The children fell asleep before they returned.

  It was Ruthie who told her brother on the following day what their parents had been arguing about. “That stinkin’ old man isn’t going to be around here much longer,” she said.

  He felt a sudden tightness in his chest. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “He’s going away to a place where there are only old men and old ladies. Momma said so.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  He went to her and kicked her shins. She screamed, slapping his face and digging her nails into his arm. “Don’t you call me a liar, you little brat!” Although she had tears in her eyes she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. But she had hurt him and he knew that he would cry if he stayed, so he ran out of the house. He went downstairs and out the front door, around the corner and to Rivkind’s Grocery Store. Zaydeh was sitting in his rocker, not reading or doing anything. Michael climbed into his grandfather’s lap and put his face
in the beard. Every time Zaydeh’s heart beat, a tendril of beard tickled the boy’s ear.

  “Are you going away, Zaydey?”

  “No, no. It is foolishness.”

  His breath was strong with Canadian V.O. “If you ever go away, I’m going with you,” Michael said.

  Isaac held the small head into his beard with his hand and began to rock, and Michael knew that everything had to be all right. In the middle of the one about the customs inspector, fat Mrs. Jacobson came into the store. Michael’s zaydeh looked up at her.

  “Go away,” he said.

  Mrs. Jacobson smiled politely, as if at a joke she didn’t understand. She just stood there, waiting.

  “Go away,” his grandfather said again. “I don’t want to wait on you. You have a fat ass.”

  Mrs. Jacobson’s face seemed to break up in disbelief. “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “Are you crazy?”

  “Just go away. And don’t pinch the tomatoes with your thick fingers. I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time.”

  Half a dozen times during the afternoon he said similar things to customers and sent them hurrying angrily from his door.

  Finally, during the story of how he had bought his first grocery, Michael’s father came into the store. He stood and looked at the two of them, and they looked at him. Michael’s father was only medium-tall but he had a well-proportioned body that he kept hard and taut at the YMHA. In his bedroom he kept a set of weights and sometimes Michael sat and watched his biceps roll and swell as he performed curl after curl with a 25-pound dumb-bell in each hand. His thick black hair was cropped short and kept carefully combed and his skin was deeply tanned, in the summer from the sun and in the winter from the lamp at the Y. Men liked him well enough, but he was very successful with the women buyers of the foundations business. He was a handsome man with blue eyes that seemed always to be full of laughing light.

  Now his eyes were serious. “It’s time for dinner. Let’s go home,” he said.

  But Michael and his grandfather just sat there.

  “Papa, did you have your lunch?” his father asked.

  His zaydeh frowned. “Of course I had my lunch. What do you think, I’m an infant? I could be taking care of myself like a lord in Williamsburg if you and your fine wife hadn’t stuck in your noses. So you took me away from there, and now you want me to go to a museum.”

  His father sat down on an orange crate. “Papa, I went to the Sons of David Home today. It’s a wonderful place. A real Yiddisheh place.”

  “I wouldn’t consider it.”

  “Papa, please.”

  “Listen, my Abe, I’ll stay away from your fine wife. She can serve trafe every Monday and Tuesday, I still won’t say a word.”

  “Mr. Melnick is there.”

  “Reuven Melnick from Williamsburg?”

  “Yes. He sends you his regards. He says he loves it there. The food is like in the Catskills, he says. And everybody speaks Yiddish, and they’ve got a shul right in the building, with a rabbi who comes in, and a cantor every shabbos.”

  His zaydeh lifted Michael off his knee and stood him on the floor. “Abe, you want me to leave your house? You want me to leave?” He spoke in Yiddish in a low voice, so that Michael and his father could hardly hear him.

  His father’s voice wasn’t loud, either. “Papa, you know I don’t want it. But Dorothy wants us to be alone. She’s my wife, Papa—” He looked away.

  His zaydeh laughed. “All right,” he said almost gaily.

  He took a cardboard Wheaties carton and into it he packed his volumes of the commentaries, his pipes, six cans of Prince Albert, some writing tablets, and a package of pencils. He went to the lima-bean barrel and burrowed in it until he brought out the bottle of V.O. and added it to the things in the box. Then he walked out of Rivkind’s Grocery Store without a backward glance.

  The next morning Michael and his father went with him to the Sons of David Home for Aged and Orphans. In the Chevrolet his father kept up an animated stream of chatter. “You’ll love your room, Papa,” he said. “It’s right next to Mr. Melnick’s.”

  “You’re a fool, Abe,” his zaydeh said. “Reuven Melnick is an old yenteh who gabs, gabs, gabs. You will have to get the room changed.”

  His father cleared his throat nervously. “All right, Papa,” he said.

  “What about the store?” Zaydeh asked stonily.

  “Don’t worry about the store. I’ll sell it and deposit the money in your account. You’ve been working long enough. You deserve a rest.”

  The Sons of David Home was a long yellow-brick building on Eleventh Avenue. There were some chairs outside on the sidewalk, and when they drove up three old men and two old women were sitting in the sun, not reading or talking, but just sitting there. One of the old ladies smiled at his zaydeh when they got out of the car. She wore a cinnamon-colored sheitel, a wig that fit her badly; her face was very wrinkled.

  “Shalom,” she said, as they went inside, but they didn’t answer her. In the admitting office a man named Mr. Rabinowitz held his zaydeh’s fingers in both hands. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said. “You’re going to have a wonderful time here.”

  His grandfather smiled strangely, shifting the Wheaties box in his arms. Mr. Rabinowitz peeked inside.

  “Oh, but we can’t have this,” he said, reaching in and pulling out the whiskey. “It’s against the rules, unless you have a doctor’s prescription.” The smile on his zayde’s face grew wider.

  Mr. Rabinowitz showed them around the Home. He took them to the chapel, where a lot of candles burned in glasses for the dead, and to the hospital, where half a dozen old people were in bed, and to the therapy room, where a few old people played checkers or knitted or sat reading the Jewish paper. Mr. Rabinowitz talked a lot. His voice was husky, and he kept clearing his throat.

  “We have an old friend who’s waiting for you,” Mr. Rabinowitz told Zaydeh as they came to one room. Inside was a short, white-haired man who threw his arms around Isaac’s neck. “It’s wonderful to see you!” he said.

  “Hello, Reuven,” his grandfather said.

  “You have a nice room here, Mr. Melnick,” his father said. The room was very small. There was a bed, a table and a lamp, and a dresser. On the wall was a Morrison & Schiff Jewish calendar. On the dresser was a Bible, a pack of cards, and a bottle of brandy. Reuven Melnick noticed Isaac’s eyebrows go up when he saw the liquor.

  “I have a prescription. From my son Sol the doctor,” he said.

  “A wonderful boy, your Solly. I want him to examine me. You and I are going to be next-door neighbors,” Michael’s grandfather said.

  Abe Rivkind opened his mouth, remembering that Isaac had ordered him to have the room changed, but then he looked at the brandy bottle and he closed his mouth again. They went next door and unpacked Zaydeh’s suitcase and put the things from the Wheaties box on the dresser. Then they stood together for a few minutes in the corridor outside. The floor was covered with shiny brown linoleum. Everywhere you looked there were old people, but Michael was surprised to see three boys about his own age running and playing tag in and out of two rooms. A woman in a white uniform came by and told them to cut it out, but they just laughed at her and lip-farted. He tugged at his father’s sleeve.

  “What are they doing here?” he whispered.

  “They live here,” Abe said. “They’re orphans.”

  Michael remembered that he had told his zaydeh that if Isaac was going away he would go with him and he became very frightened. He took his father’s hand and held it tightly.

  “Well, Papa, we’d better go now,” his father said.

  His grandfather smiled the same smile. “You’ll come to see me, Abe?”

  “Papa, you’ll see so much of us you’ll tell us not to bother you so much.”

  His grandfather reached into his pocket and pulled out the wrinkled paper sack full of candied ginger. Isaac took out one piece and put it in his mouth, then he took M
ichael’s hand and closed it around the neck of the paper bag. “Go home, mine kind,” he said. Michael and his father walked quickly away, leaving him standing alone on the shiny brown linoleum.

  On the way home his father didn’t speak. As soon as they were in the Chevrolet Michael lost his fright and he missed his zaydeh. He felt sad because he hadn’t placed his arms around the old man and kissed him good-by. He opened the paper bag and began to eat the ginger. Even though he knew that the next day his tush would burn he ate it all, piece by piece. He finished the whole bag, partly because of Zaydeh and partly because he had the feeling he wasn’t going to get much ginger from then on.

  5

  At Joey Morello’s party his sister Ruthie got into a fight with an Italian girl and came home scratched up and crying. Michael felt glad and angry, all at the same time. He was glad that she got what was coming to her, and angry that his grandfather had had to go away because of a birthday party she didn’t even enjoy.

  Within a week his father had sold the grocery to a young German immigrant who installed lighting and a line of non-kosher meats. The lights turned the store from a mysterious cave into a drab and shabby food outlet, and Michael never went there unless ordered to do so. Not only the store was affected by Zaydeh’s departure, however. In the Rivkind home the change was even more pronounced. Dorothy went around humming and pinching her children’s cheeks. Glorying guiltily in her new freedom, she no longer separated milk dishes from the meat ones. She stopped lighting candles at dusk on Friday and instead scheduled a weekly canasta game for that evening.

  Abe Rivkind apparently approved of the new atmosphere. His separation from his father’s accusing gaze allowed him to do several things he had been thinking about for some time. His corset business was flourishing (“Knock wood, girdles are expanding rapidly and bras are holding up”), and he had reached a point in his business life where it was advantageous to take a customer to a fine Manhattan restaurant for lunch if you were trying to nail down an order. He enjoyed the experience, and sometimes when he came home in the evening he would tell his wife and children of the strange and wonderful things he had eaten. He became enamored of lobster, and his descriptions of the flavor of the sweet pink flesh dipped in melted butter exceeded their imaginations.