Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

^{HARLAN ELLISON} I’m Looking for Kadak

YOU’LL PARDON ME but my name is Evsise and I’m standing here in the middle of sand, talking to a butterfly, and if I sound like I’m talking to myself, again you’ll pardon but what can I tell you? A grown person standing talking to a butterfly. In sand.

So nu? What else can you expect? There are times you got to make adjustments, you got to let be a little. Just to get along. I’m not all that happy about this, if you want the specific truth. I’ve learned, God knows I’ve learned. I’m a Jew, and if there is a thing Jews have learned in over six thousand years, it’s that you got to compromise if you want to make it to seven thousand. So, let be. I’ll talk to this butterfly, hey you butterfly, and I’ll pray for the best.

You don’t understand. You got that look.

Listen: I read once in a book that they found a tribe of Jewish Indians, somewhere deep in the heart of South America. That was on the Earth. The Earth, shtumie! It’s been in all the papers.

So. Jewish Indians. What a thing! And everyone wondered and yelled and made such a mishegoss that they had to send historians and sociologists and anthropologists and all manner of very learned types to establish if this was a true thing or maybe somebody was just lying.

And what they found was that maybe what had happened was that some galus from Spain, fleeing the Inquisition, got on board with Cortez and came to The New World, kayn-ahora, and when no one was looking, he ran away. So then he got farblondjet and wound up in some little place full of very suggestible native types, and being something of a tummeler he started teaching them about being Jewish—just to keep busy, you know what I mean? because Jews have never been missionaries, none of that “converting” crap; other, I shouldn’t name names, religions need to keep going, unlike Judaism which does very cute thank you on its own—and by the time all the smart-alecks found the tribe, they were keeping kosher, and having brises when the sons were born, and observing the High Holy Days, and not doing any fishing on the Shabbes, and it was a very nice thing altogether.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are Jews here on Zsouchmuhn. Zoochhhhhh-moooohn. With a chhhhh, not a kuh. You got a no-accent like a Litvak.

It shouldn’t even surprise that I’m a Jew and I’m blue and I have eleven arms thereby defying the Law of Bilateral Symmetry and I am squat and round and move very close to the ground by a series of caterpillar feet set around the rim of ball joints and sockets on either side of my tuchis which obeys the Law of Bilateral Symmetry and when I’ve wound the feet tight I have to jump off the ground so they can unwind and then I move forward again which makes my movement very peculiar I’m told by tourists without very much class.

In the Universal Ephemeris I am referred to as a native of Theta 996:VI, Cluster Messier 3 in Canes Venatici. The VI is Zsouchmuhn. A baedeker from some publisher in the Crab came here a few turns ago and wrote a travel pamphlet on Zsouchmuhn; he kept calling me a Zsouchmoid; he should grow in the ground, headfirst like a turnip. I am a Jew.

I don’t know what a turnip is.

Now I’m raving. What it’ll do to you, talking to a butterfly. I have a mission, and it’s making me crazy, giving me shpilkess, you could die from a mission like this. I’m looking for Kadak.

Hey you butterfly! A blink, a flutter, a movement it wouldn’t hurt, you should make an indication you can hear me, I shouldn’t stand like a schlemiel telling you all this.

Nothing. You wouldn’t give me a break.

Listen: if it wasn’t for that oysvorf that bum, Snodle, I wouldn’t be here. I would be with my family and my lust-nest concubines on Theta 996:III, what the Ephemeris calls Bromios, what we Jews call Kasrilevka. There is historical precedent for our naming Bromios another name, Kasrilevka. You’ll read Sholom Aleichem, you’ll understand. A planet for schlimazels. I don’t want to discuss it. That’s where they’re moving us. Everyone went. A few crazy ones stayed, there are always a few. But mostly, everyone went: who would want to stay? They’re moving Zsouchmuhn. God knows where. Every time you look around they’re dragging a place off and putting it somewhere else. I don’t want to go into that. Terrible people, they got no hearts in them.

So we were sitting in the yeshiva, the last ten of us, a proper minyan, getting ready to sit shivah for the whole planet, for the last days we would be here, when that oysvorf Snodle had a seizure and up and died. Oh, a look: a question, maybe? Why were we sitting shivah in the rabbinical college when everybody else was running like a thief to get off the planet before those gonifs from the Relocation Center came with their skyhooks, a glitch if ever I saw one, shady, disreputable, to give a yank and drag a place out of orbit and give a shove and jam in big meshiginah magnets to float around where a nice, cute world was, just to keep the Cluster running smooth, when they pull out a world everything shouldn’t go bump together… ? Why, you ask me. So, I’ll tell you why.

Because, Mr. I-Won’t-Talk-Or-Even-Flap-My-Wings Butterfly, shivah is the holiest of the holies. Because the Talmud says when you mourn the dead you get ten Jewish men who come to the home of the deceased, not eight or seven or four, but ten men, and you sit and you pray, and you hold services, and you light the yorzeit candles, and you recite the kaddish which as every intelligent life-form in the Cluster except maybe a nut butterfly knows is the prayer for the dead, in honor and praise of God and the deceased.

And why do we want to sit shivah for a world that was such a good home for us for so many turns? Because, and it strikes me foolishness to expect a farchachdah butterfly to grasp what I’m trying to say here, because God has been good to us here, and we’ve got property (which now is gone) and we’ve got families (which now are gone) and we’ve got our health (which, if I continue talking to you, I’ll be losing shortly) and God’s name can be hallowed by word of mouth only in the presence of others—the community of worshippers—the congregation—the minyan of ten, and that’s why.

You know, even for a butterfly, you don’t look Jewish.

So nu, now you understand a little maybe? Zsouchmuhn was the goldeneh medina for us, the golden country; it was good here, we were happy here, now we have to move to Kasrilevka, a world for schlimazels. Not even a Red Sea to be parted, it isn’t slavery, it’s just a world that’s not enough, you know what I mean? So we wanted to pay last respects. It’s not so crazy. And everyone went, and only the ten of us left to sit the seven turns till we went away and Zsouchmuhn was goniffed out of the sky to go God-knows-where. It would have been fine, except for that Snodle, that crazy. Who seized up and died on us.

So where would we get a tenth man for the minyan?

There were only nine Jews on the whole planet.

Then Snodle said, “There’s always Kadak.”

“Shut up, you’re dead,” Reb Jeshaia said, but it didn’t do any good. Snodle kept suggesting Kadak.

You should understand, one of the drawbacks of my species, which maybe a butterfly wouldn’t know, is that when we die, and pass on, there’s still talking. Nuhdzhing. Oh. You want to know how that can be. How a dead Jew can talk, through the veil, from the other side. What am I, a science authority, I should know how that works? I wouldn’t lie on you: I don’t know. Always it’s been the same. One of us seizes up and dies, and the body squats there and doesn’t decay the way the tourists’ do when they get shikker in a blind pig bar in downtown Houmitz and stagger out in the gutter and get knocked over by a tumbrel on the way to the casinos.

But the voice starts up. Nuhdzhing!

It probably has something to do with the soul, but I wouldn’t put a bet on that; all I can say is thank God we don’t worship ancestors here on Zsouchmuhn, because we’d have such a sky full of nuhdzhing old farts telling us how to run our lives, it wouldn’t be worth it to keep on this side of the veil. Bless the name of Abraham, after a while they shut up and go off somewhere.

Probably to nuhdz each other, they should rest in peace already and stop talking.

But Snodle wasn’t going away. He died, and now he was demanding we not only sit shivah out of courtesy for having lived here so prosperously, but we should also, you shouldn’t take it as an imposition, sit shivah for him! An oysvorf, that Snodle.

“There’s always Kadak,” he said. His voice came from a nowhere spot in the air about a foot above his body, which was dumped upside-down on a table in the yeshiva.

“Snodle, if you don’t mind,” said Shmuel with the one good antenna, “would you kindly shut your face and let us handle this?” Then seeing, I suppose for the first time, that Snodle was upside-down, he added, but softly he shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, “I always said he talked through his tuchis.”

“I’ll turn him over,” said Chaim with the defective unwind in his hop.

“Let be,” said Shmuel. “I like this end better than the other.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” said Yitzchak. “The gonifs come in a little while to take away the planet, we can’t stay, we can’t go, and I have lust-nest concubines lubricating and lactating on Bromios this very minute.”

“Kasrilevka,” said Avram.

“Kasrilevka,” Yitzchak agreed, his prop-arm, the one in the back, curling an ungrammatical apology.

“A planet of ten million Snodles,” said Yankel.

“There’s always Kadak,” said Snodle.

“Who is this Kadak the oysvorf’s babbling about?” asked Meyer Kahaha. The rest of us rolled our eyes at the remark. Ninety-six tsuris-filled eyes rolled. Meyer Kahaha was always the town schlemiel; if there was a bigger oysvorf than Snodle, it was Meyer Kahaha.

Yankel stuck the tip of his pointing arm in Meyer Kahaha’s ninth eye, the one with the cataract. “Quiet!”

We sat and stared at each other. Finally, Moishe said, “He’s right. It’s another tragedy we can mourn on Tisha Ba’b (if they have enough turns on Kasrilevka for Tisha Ba’b to fall in the right month), but the oysvorf and the schlemiel are right. Our only hope is Kadak, lightning shouldn’t strike me for saying it.”

“Someone will have to go find him,” said Avram.

“Not me,” said Yankel. “A mission for a fool.”

Then Reb Jeshaia, who was the wisest of all the blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn, even before the great exodus, one or two of them it wouldn’t have hurt if they’d stayed behind to give a little help so we shouldn’t find out too late we were in this miserable state of things because Snodle seized up and died, Reb Jeshaia nodded that it was a mission for a fool and he said, “We’ll send Evsise.”

“Thanks a lot for that,” I said.

He looked at me with the six eyes on the front, and he said, “Evsise. Should we send Shmuel with one good antenna? Should we send Chaim with a defective hop? Should we send Yitzchak who is so crippled with lust he gets cramps? Maybe we should send Yankel who is older than even Snodle and would die from the journey then we’d have to find two Jews? Moishe? Moishe argues with everyone. Some cooperation he’d get.”

“What about Avram?” I asked. Avram looked away.

“You want I should talk about Avram’s problem here in front of an open Talmud, here in front of the dead, right here in front of God and everyone?” Reb Jeshaia looked stern.

“Forget it. I’m sorry I mentioned,” I said.

“Maybe I should go myself, the Rabbi should go? Or maybe you’d prefer we sent Meyer Kahaha?”

“You made your point,” I said. “I’ll go. I’m far from a happy person about this, you should know it before I go. But I’ll do it. You’ll never see me again, I’ll die out there looking for that Kadak, but I’ll go.”

I started for the burrow exit of the yeshiva. I passed Yitzchak, who looked sheepish. “Cramps,” I muttered. “It should only wither up and fall off like a dead leaf.”

Then I rolled, hopped and unwound my way up the tunnel to the street, and went looking for Kadak.

The last time I saw Kadak was seventeen turns ago. He was squatting in the synagogue during Purim, and suddenly he rolled into the aisle, tore off his yarmulkah, his tallis and his t’fillin, all at once with his top three arms on each side, threw them into the aisle, yelled he had had it with Judaism, and was converting to the Church of the Apostates.

That was the last any of us saw of him. Good riddance to bad rubbish, you ask me. Kadak, to begin with, was never my favorite person, if you want the truth. He snuffled.

Oh, that isn’t such an averah, I can see you think I’m making a big something out of a big nothing. Listen, Mr. Terrific-I-Flap-My-Wings-And-You-Should-Notice-Me, I’m a person who says what’s on his mind, I don’t make no moofky-foofky with anyone. You want someone who beats around the bushes you should talk to that Avram. Me, I’ll tell you I couldn’t stand that Kadak’s snuffling, all the time snuffling. You sit in the shoul and right in the middle of the Shema, right in the direct absolute center of “Hear O Israel, the Lord, Our God, the Lord is One,” comes a snuffle that sounds like a double-snouted peggalomer in a mud-wallow.

He had a snuffle made you want to go take a bath.

A terrible snuffle, if you’ll listen to me for a minute. He was the kind, that Kadak, he wouldn’t care when he’d snuffle. When you were sleeping, eating, shtupping, making a ka-ka, he didn’t care… would come a blast, a snort, a rotten snuffle could make you want to get rid of your last three or four meals. And forget talking to him: how can you talk to a person who punctuates with a snuffle?

So when he went off to convert to the Apostates, sure there was a scandal… there weren’t that many Jews on Zsouchmuhn… any thing was a scandal… but to be absolutely frank with you, I’ll speak my mind no matter what, we were very relieved. To be free of that snuffle was already a naches, like getting one free. Or seven for five.

So now I had to go all over there and back, looking for that terrible snuffle. It was an ugliness I could live without, you should pardon my frankness.

But I went through downtown Houmitz and went over to the Holy Cathedral of the Church of the Apostates. The city was in a very bad way. When everyone had gone to Kasrilevka, they took everything that wasn’t bolted down. They also took everything that was bolted down. They also took the bolts. Not to mention a lot of the soil it was all bolted down into. Big holes, everywhere. Zsouchmuhn was not, at this point in time I’m telling you about, such a cute little world anymore. It looked like an old man with a krenk. Like a pisher with acne. Very unpleasant, it wasn’t a trip I care to talk about.

But there was a little left of that crazy farchachdah Cathedral still standing. Why shouldn’t they let it stand: how much does it cost to make a new one? String. The dummies, they make a holy place from string and spit and bits of dried crap off the streets and their bodies, I don’t even want to think about what a sacrilege.

I rolled inside. The smell, you could die from the smell. On Zsouchmuhn here, we got a groundworm, this filthy little segmented thing everyone calls a pincercrusher. Lumbricus rubellus Venaticus my Uncle Beppo, the lunatic zoologist, calls it. It isn’t at all peculiar why I remember a foreign name like that—Latin is what it is, I’m a bissel scholar, too, you know, not such a dummy as you might think, and it’s no wonder Reb Jeshaia sent me on this it-could-kill-a-lesser-Jew mission to find Kadak. I remember because once I had one of them bite me in the tuchis when I went swimming, and you learn these things, believe you me, you learn them. This rotten little worm it’s got pinching things in the front and on the sides, and it lies in wait for a juicy tuchis and when you’re just ready to relax in a swim, or maybe to take a nap on a picnic, chomp!, it goes right for the tuchis. And it hangs on with those triple-damned the entire species should go straight to Gehenna pinch-things, and it makes me sick to remember, but it sucks the blood right out of you, right through your tuchis. And you couldn’t get one off, medical science as hootsy-tootsy as it is, you could varf from the size of a doctor’s bill, even the hootsy-tootsies can’t get one off you. The only thing that does it, is you get a musician and he bangs together a pair of cymbals, and it falls off. All bloated up with your blood, leaving a bunch of little pinch-marks on your tuchis you’re ashamed to let your lust-mates see it. And don’t ask why the doctors don’t carry cymbals with them for such occasions. You wouldn’t believe the union problems here on Zsouchmuhn, which includes musicians and doctors both, so you’d better be near a band and not a hospital when a pincercrusher bites you in the tuchis, otherwise forget it. And when the terrible thing falls off, it goes pop! and it bursts, and all the awful crap it had in it makes a stink you shouldn’t even think about it, the eyes, all twelve of them could roll up in your head, with the smell of all that feh! and blood and crap.

Inside the Cathedral of the Church of the Apostates, the smell. Like a million popped pincercrushers. I almost went over on my face from that smell.

It took three hands to hold all of my nose, a little whiff shouldn’t slip through.

I started reeling around, hitting the strings they called walls. Fortunately, I rolled around near the entrance, and I stretched my nose a couple of feet outside, and I took a very deep breath, and snapped my nose back, and held it, and looked around.

There were still half a dozen of them who hadn’t run off to Kasrilevka, all down on their stomachs, their feet winding up and unwinding, very fast, their faces down in the mud and crap in front of the altar, doing what I suppose they call praying. To that idol of theirs, Seymour, or Simon, or Shtumie, whatever they call it. I should know the name of a heathen idol, you bet your life never, better I should know the Latin name of a miserable worm that stinks first, let me tell you.

So there they were, and let me assure you it pained me in several more than a couple of ways to have to go over to them, but… I’m looking for Kadak.

“Hey,” I said to one of them. A terrific look at his tuchis I got. Such a perfect tuchis, if ever there was one, for a pincercrusher to come and chomp!

Nothing. “Hey!” I yelled it a second time. No attention. Crazy with their faces down in the crap. “Listen, hey!” I yelled at the top of my voice, which isn’t such a soft niceness when I’m suffocating holding my nose with three hands and I want to get out of that place already.

So I gave him a zetz in the tuchis. I wound up every foot on the left side, and I let it unwind right where a pincercrusher would have brunch.

Then the dummy looked up.

A sight you could become very ill with. A nose covered with crap from the floor, a bunch of eyes filled with blue jelly, a mouth from out of which could only come heathen hosannahs to a dummy idol called Shaygets or something.

“You kicked me,” he said.

“All by yourself you figured that out, eh?”

He looked at me with six, and blinked, and started to fall over on his punim again, and I started to wind up I’d give him such a zetz I’d kick him into a better life.

“We don’t accept violence,” he said.

“That’s a terrific saying,” I told him. “Meanwhile, I don’t accept an unobstructed view up your tuchis. So if you want I should go away and stop kicking you, so you can go root around in the dreck some more, what you’d better do is come up here a minute and talk to me.”

He kept looking. I wound up tighter. You could hear my sockets creaking. I’m not such a young one anymore. He got up.

“What do you want? I’m worshipping to Seymool.”

Seymool. That’s a name for a God. I wouldn’t even hire something called a Seymool.

“You’ll worship later. That buhbie isn’t going anywhere.”

“But Zsouchmuhn is.”

“Very correct. Which is the same reason I got to talk to you now. Time is a thing I got very little of, if you catch my meaning here.”

“Well, what is it you want, precisely?”

Oy, a Talmudic scholar, no less. Precisely. “Well, Mr. Precisely, I’ll tell you what it is precisely I want. You know where it is I can find a no-good snuffler called Kadak?”

He stared at me with six, then blinked rapidly, in sequence—two and four, three and five, one and six—then went back in reverse order. “You have a nauseating sense of humor. May Seymool forgive you.”

Then he fell back on his face, his legs up winding and unwinding, his nose deep in dreck. “I say Kadak, he says Seymool. I’ll give you a Seymool!”

I started to wind up for a kick would put that momzer in the next time-zone, when a voice stopped me. From over the side of that stinking Cathedral—and you can bet I was turning yellow from not breathing—a woman said, “Come outside. I’ll tell you about your friend Kadak.”

I turned to look, and there was this shikseh, all dolled up in such a pile of colored shmatehs and baubles and bangles and crap from the floor, I thought to myself, Gevalt! this turn I should never have crawled out of the burrow.

So anyhow I followed her outside, thank God, and let my nose extend to its full length and breathed such a deep one my cheek-sacs puffed up like I had a pair of bialies stuffed in. So now this bummerkeh, this floozie, this painted hussy says to me, “What do you want with Kadak?”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “I’ll get upwind from you, meaning no offense, lady, but you smell like your Church.” I rolled around her and got a little away, and when it was possible to breathe like a person, I said, “What I want is to go join my lust-mates on Kas—, on Bromios, but what I got to do, is I got to find Kadak. We need him for a very sacred religious service, you’ll excuse me for saying this, dear lady, but you being Gentile, you wouldn’t understand what it is.”

She batted four eyelids and flapped phony eyelashes on three of them. Oy, a nafkeh, a lady of easy virtue, a courtesan of the byways, a bummerkeh. “Would you contribute to a worthy charity to find this Kadak?”

I knew it. I knew somewhere on that damned looking for Kadak it would cost me a little something out of pocket. She was looking directly at my pouch. “You’ll take a couple of coins, is that right?”

“It isn’t exactly what I was thinking of,” she said, still looking at my pouch, and I suddenly realized with what I’ll tell you honestly was a chill, that she was cross-eyed in four of her front six. She was staring at my pupik. What? I’m trying to tell you, butterfly, that she wasn’t staring at my pouch which was hanging to the left side of my stomach. She was staring with that cockeye four at my cute little pupik. What? You’ll forgive me, Mr. Silent Butterfly With the Very Dumb Expression, I should know that butterflies don’t have pupiks? A navel. A belly-button. Now you understand what it is a pupik? What? Maybe I should get gross and explain to a butterfly that shtups flowers, that we have sex through our pupiks. The female puts her long middle finger of the bottom arm on the right side, straight into the pupik and goes moofky-foofky, and that’s how we shtup. You needed that, is that right? You needed to know how we do it. A filth you are, butterfly; a very dirty mind.

But not as dirty as that nafkeh, that saucy baggage, that whore of Babylon. “Listen,” I said, “meaning no offense, lady, but I’m not that kind of a person. I’m saving myself for my lust-mates. I’m sure you’ll understand. Besides, meaning no offense, I don’t shtup with strangers. It wouldn’t be such a good thing for you, either, believe me. Everybody says Evsise is a rotten shtup. I got very little feeling in my pupik, you wouldn’t like it, not even a little. Why don’t I give you a few nice coins, you could use them on Kasri—on Bromios. You could maybe set yourself up in business there, a pretty lady such as yourself.” God shouldn’t strike me down with a bolt of lightning in the tuchis for telling this filthy-mind cockeye heathen nafkeh what a cutie she is.

“You want to find this Kadak?” she asked, staring straight at two things at the same time.

“Please, lady,” I said. My nose started running.

“Don’t cry,” she said. “Seymool is my God, I trust in Seymool.”

“What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

“We are the last of the Faithful of the Church. We plan to stay on Zsouchmuhn when they Relocate it. Seymool has decreed it. I have no hope of living through it. I understand cataclysms are commonplace when they pull a planet out of orbit.”

“So run,” I said. “What kind of dummies are you?”

“We are the Faithful.”

It gave me pause. Even Gentiles, even nut cases like these worshippers of Shmoe-ool, whoever, even they got to believe. It was nice. In a very dumb way.

“So what has all that got to do in even the slightest way with me, lady?”

“I’m horny.”

“Well, why not go in your Cathedral there and shtup one of your playmates?”

“They’re worshipping.”

“To that statue that looks like a big bug picking its nose, with the dreck and crap and mud all over it?”

“Don’t speak disrespectfully of Seymool.”

“I’ll cut out my tongue.”

“That isn’t necessary, just stick out your navel.”

“Lady, you got a dirty mouth.”

“You want to know where Kadak is?”

I won’t tell what nasty indignities came next. It makes me very ashamed to even think about it. She had a dirty fingernail.

So I’ll tell you only that when she was done ravaging my pupik and left me lying there against a mud-wall of a building, the pink schmootz running down my stomach, I knew that Kadak had been as lousy an Apostate as he had been a Jew. One afternoon, just like in the synagogue years before, he ran amuck and started biting the statue of that bug-God they got. Before they could pry him off, he had bitten off the kneecap of Shmoogle. So they threw him out of the Church. This nafkeh knew what had happened to him, because he had used her services, you could brechh from such a thought, and he still owed her some coins. So she’d followed him around, trying to get him to pay, and she’d seen he’d bounced from religion to religion until they accepted him as a Slave of the Rock.

So I got up and went to a fountain and washed myself the best way I could, and said a couple of quick prayers that I wouldn’t get knocked up from that dirty finger, and I went looking for the Slaves of the Rock, still looking for that damned Kadak. I walked with an uneven roll, hop, unwind. You would, too, if you’d been ravished, butterfly.

Just a second you’d think on it, how would you feel if a flower grabbed you by the tuchis and stuck a pistil and stamen in your pupik? What? Oh, terrific. Butterflies don’t have pupiks.

Talking to you, standing here in sand, is not necessarily the most sensational thing I’ve ever done, you want to know.

The Slaves of the Rock were all gathered in a valley just outside the city limits of Houmitz. The Governors wouldn’t let them inside the city. Who can blame them. If you think those Apostates were pukers, you should only see the Rocks. Such cuties. It is to varf!

Big rocks they turned themselves into. With tongues like string, six or seven feet long, all rolled up inside. And when a krendl or a znigh or a buck-fly goes whizzing past, slurp! out comes that ugly tongue like a shot and snags it and wraps around and comes whipping back and smashes the bug all over the rock, and then the rock gets soft and spongy like a piece rotten fruit and absorbs all the dreck and crap and awfulness squished there. Oh, such terrifics, those Rocks. Just the kind of thing I would expect a Kadak to be when he couldn’t stand being himself no more. Thank you oh so very greatly, Reb Jeshaia for this looking mission.

So I found the head Rock and I stood there in that valley, all surrounded by Rocks going slurp! and squish! and sucking up bug food. This was not the best part of my life I’m telling you about.

“How do you do?”

I figured it was the most polite way to talk to a rock.

“How did you know I was the chief Slave?” the Rock said.

“You had the longest tongue.”

Slurp! A znigh on the wing, cruising by humming a tune, minding its own business, got it right in the punim, a tongue like a wet noodle, splat right in the punim, and a quick overhead twist and squish! all over the Rock. It splattered on me, gooey and altogether puke-making. Definitely not the kind of individual to have a terrific dinner out with. The guderim was all over me.

“Excuse the mess,” said the chief Slave. He really sounded sorry.

“Think nothing,” I said. “That was a very cute little overhand twist you gave it there at the last minute.”

He seemed flattered. “You noticed that, did you?”

“How could I help? Such a class move.”

“You know, you’re the first one who’s ever noticed that. There have been lots of studies made, by all kinds of foreigners, from other worlds, other galaxies, even, but never once did one of them notice that move. What did you say your name was?”

The bug ooze was dripping down my stomach. “My name is Evsise, and I’m looking for a person who used to be a person named Kadak. I was given to understand that he’d become a Rock a few years ago. I have a great need to find this Kadak rock, he should drop dead already such a rotten time he’s been making for me.”

“Listen,” said the chief Slave (as the remains of the znigh oozed down through the spongy surface), “I like you. Have you ever thought of converting?”

“Forget it.”

“No, really, I’m serious. To Worship the Rock is such an enriching experience, it really isn’t smart to dismiss it without giving it a try. What do you say?”

I figured I had to be a little smartsy then, just a little. “Say, I wish I could. You got no idea what a nice proposition that is you’re making to me. And in a quick second I’d take you up on it, but I got this one bissel tot of a problem.”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

A psychiatrist rock, yet. I really needed this.

“I’m afraid from bugs,” I said.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “I see your point. Bugs are a very big part of our religion.”

“I can see that.”

“Ah, well. I’m sorry for you. But let’s see if I can help you. What did you say his name was?”

“Kadak.”

“Oh yeah, I remember now. What a creep.”

“That’s him.”

“Let me see now,” said the Rock. “If I recall correctly, we threw him out of the order for being a disruptive influence, oh, it must have been fifteen years ago. He used to make the ugliest noises I’ve ever heard out of a Rock.”

“Snuffling.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Snuffling is what he did. A terrible snort noise, all wet and cloggy, it could make you sick to be near it.”

“Yes, that was it.”

“So what happened to him, I’m afraid to ask.”

“He reconstituted his atoms and became just like you again.”

“Not like me, please.”

“Well, I mean the same species.”

“And he went off?”

“Yes. He said he was going to try the Fleshists.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“I’m sorry.”

I sat down. Settled my tuchis right down between my rims, drew up my legs, and dropped my head into a half dozen of my hands. I was very glum.

“Would you like to sit on me?” the Rock asked.

It was a nice offer. “Thanks,” I said politely, looking at the last slimy ooze of the znigh on the Rock, “but I’m too miserable to be comfortable.”

“What do you need him for?” he asked.

So I explained the best I could—this was, after all, to a rock, a piece of stone, even if it could talk—about the minyan of ten. The chief Slave asked me why ten.

So I said, “On the Earth, a long time ago… you know about the Earth, right? Right. Well, on the Earth, a long time ago, God was going to give a terrific zetz to a place called Sodom. What it was, this Sodom, was a whole city full of Fleshists. Not a nice place.”

“I can’t conceive of an entire city of Fleshists,” the rock Rock said. “That’s rather an ugly thought.”

“That’s the way God looked at it.”

We were both quiet for a while, thinking about that.

“So, anyhow,” I said, “Abraham, blessed be his name, who was this very holy Jew even if he wasn’t blue, you shouldn’t hold that against him—”

“—I won’t.”

“—uh. Yes. Right. Well, Abraham pleaded with God to save Sodom.”

“Why did he do that… a city full of Fleshists. Yechh.”

“How do I know? He was holy, that’s all. So God must have thought that was a little meshugge… a little crazy… also, you know God is no dummy… and he told Abraham he’d spare Sodom if Abraham could find fifty righteous men living there—”

“Just men? What about women?”

“There isn’t scripture on that one.”

“Sounds like your God is a sexist.”

“At least, you’ll pardon my frankness now, but at least he isn’t a thing that lies in a valley for birds to make ka-ka on.”

“That’s rather rude of you.”

“I’m terribly sorry, but it isn’t nice to call the one true God a rotten name.”

“I was only asking.”

“Well, it isn’t too classy for a rock to ask them kinds questions. Now do you want to hear this or don’t you?”

“Yes, sure. But—”

“But what!?”

“Why did this God haggle with this Abraham? Why didn’t he just tell him he was going to do it, and then do it?”

I was getting pretty upset, you know what I mean? “It was because Abraham was a mensch, a real terrific person, that’s why, okay?”

The rock didn’t answer. I guess he was sulking. So okay, let him sulk. “Then Abraham said, okay, what if I can only find forty righteous men? And God said, okay, let be forty. So Abraham said what if only thirty, and God said, nu, let be thirty already, and then Abraham said what if only twenty, and God started yelling all right stop nuhdzhing me, let be twenty…”

“Let me guess,” the rock said, “Abraham said ten, and your God got really mad and said ten was it, and no further, and that’s how you came up with ten men for the congregation.”

“You’ve heard it,” I said.

The rock was silent again.

Finally, he said, “Listen, I like your idea of religion. I’m not altogether happy being a Slave of the Rock, even if I am the chief Rock. How about if I converted and came back with you, and made the tenth for the minyan?”

I thought about that for a while. “Well,” I said slowly, “the Talmud does say, ‘Nine free men and a slave may be reckoned together for a quorum,’ but against that is quoted that Rabbi Eliezer went into a Synagogue and didn’t find ten there, so he freed his slave and with him completed the number, but if there had only been seven and he had freed two slaves, it wouldn’t have been kosher. But with one freed slave and the Rabbi it made ten. So, clearly, as all agree, eight freemen and two slaves would not answer the purpose. But, if you just put yourself in my place for a moment, you’re not, even remotely speaking, my slave. You’re the Slave of the Rock. And besides, it takes a long time to convert. Can you speak Hebrew? Even a little?”

“What’s Hebrew?”

“Forget it. How about keeping kosher?”

“What are they? I’ll keep them if it’s part of the program. After all, when you’ve been a Rock, eating bugs all your life, keeping some kind of pet doesn’t sound too difficult.”

It was hopeless. For a minute there I gave it a maybe, you know what I mean. But the more I thought about it, even if I could summon up the chutzpah to go back to Reb Jeshaia with a rock, not with a Kadak, it wouldn’t work. This Rock was a nice enough fellow, you know what I mean, but even as I sat there pondering, he shot out that ick tongue of his, and snared a buck-fly and whipped it in that move he thought was such a sensational thing, and splatted it all over the place, and started eating it. And clearly, very clearly, Genesis 9:4 forbade animal blood to all the seed of Noah, so how could I bring a Rock back and say, here, I freed this Slave of the Rock, and he’ll be the tenth man, and then right in the middle of Adonai, out would come that crummy tongue and eat a bug off the wall. Forget it.

“Listen,” I said, as gentle as I could, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, “it’s a strictly great offer you’ve made, and under other circumstances I’d take you up on that, you know what I’m saying? But right now I’m really pressed for time and it would take too long for you to learn Hebrew, so let’s let it sit for a while. I’ll get back to you.”

He wasn’t happy about that, I could tell. But he was a real mensch. He told me he understood, and he wished me good luck with the Fleshists, and he let me run away fast. I could see his point, though, and I was very sorry about his not being a possible. I mean, how would you like it to sit all day baking in the sun, with birds making pish in your face, and the best you got to look forward to is a juicy bug.

And if I’d known what I had coming, what tsuris, I’d have gladly only, happily yet, you can believe it, taken that Rock back with me, bug dreck and all. Believe me, there are worse things than a rock that eats bugs.

I’ll make a long story short. I followed the trail of that putz Kadak from the pit of the Fleshists (where I lost the use of my pupik, all my coin, the sight of one eye in the back, the second arm on the left side, and my yarmulkah), to the embarkation dock at the spaceport where the sect called the Denigrators were getting on board ships for that Bromios (where I got beat up so bad I crawled away), to the lava beds where the True Believers of Suffering were doing their last rites before leaving (where I suffered first degree miserable and such a pain you wouldn’t accept over half my poor body), to the Tabernacle of the Mouth (where some big deal prophet that was all teeth bit off the tip of one antenna, God knows why, maybe out of pique at being left behind), to the Caucus Race of the Malforms (where I fit right in, as crapped up and bloody as I was), to the Lair of the Blessed Profundity of the Unspeakable Trihll (which I could not, even if I had several mouths, pronounce… but they punched and kicked me anyhow, really sensational people), to the Archdruid of Nothingness, always following that miserable creep Kadak from religion to religion—and let me tell you, no one had a good word for that schmuck, not even the worst of those heathens—and it was there, kayn-ahora, that the Archdruid told me the last he’d seen of Kadak was ten years earlier, when he had changed him into a butterfly, and sent him out into the desert to hopefully drop dead in the heat.

Which is why, finally, I’m standing here talking to you, dumb creep butterfly. So now I’ve told it all, and you see what a puke condition I’m in, don’t for a minute think that Avram or those others will respect me for what I did, they’ll only nuhdz me about how long it took, and that’s why you got to come back with me.

Not a word. Not a sound through all this. Not a flap or a flitter or a how are you Evsise. Nothing.

Look. I’m not going to tummel with you, Mr. I-Can’t-Make-Up-My-Mind-What-Kind-of-Religion-I-Want-To-Be butterfly.

You think I stood here all this time, sinking in up to my rims in sand, just to tell you a cute story? I know you’re Kadak! And how do I know?

Go ahead, snuffle like that again and ask me how I know!

Come on. You’ll come either by yourself or I’ll drag you by your wings, you know for a butterfly you’re not even a nice-looking butterfly? You’re an ugly, is what you are. And as for being a Jew, only that by birth, such a disgrace to the entire blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn.

As you can see, I’m getting angry. You’ve gotten me raped, crapped on, burned, maimed, crippled, blinded, insulted, run around, exposed to heathens, robbed, sunburned, covered with bug shmootz, altogether miserable and unhappy, and I’ll tell you, very frankly, you’ll come with me, Mr. Kadak, or I’ll choke you dead right here in this farblondjet desert!

Now what do you say?

I thought that’s what you’d say.

“Here he is.”

Yankel didn’t believe it. Chaim laughed. Shmuel started to cry, his nose running green. Snodle coughed. And Reb Jeshaia hung his head. “I should have sent Avram,” he said.

Avram looked away. Like a dead leaf it should fall off.

“Here he is, is what I said, and here he is, is what it is,” I said. “This is your Kadak, may he rot in his cocoon.”

Then I told them the whole story.

At least they had the grace to be amazed.

“This is what makes the minyan?” Moishe said. “This?”

“Make him change back, and that’s him,” I said. “I wash my hands of it.” I went over in a corner of the shoul and settled down. It was their problem now.

For hours they went at him. They tried everything. They threatened him, they begged him, they implored him, they intimidated him, they cajoled him, they shmacheled him, they insulted him, they slugged him, they chased his tuchis all over the shoul….

Sure. Of course. Wouldn’t you know. That rotten Kadak wouldn’t change back. At last, he found a thing he wanted to be. A dumb creep butterfly.

With a snuffle. Still with a rotten snuffle. Did you ever know how much worse a butterfly snuffles than a person?

You could plotz from it.

And finally, when they couldn’t get him to change back—and if you want to know the truth, I don’t think he could change back after that weirdnik buhbie Archdruid changed him—they held him down and Reb Jeshaia made the rabbinical decision that his presence was enough, in this great emergency. So Meyer Kahaha sat on him, and we started to sit shivah, finally, for Zsouchmuhn and for Snodle.

And then Reb Jeshaia got a terrible look on his face and he said, “Oh my God!”

“What!? What what!?” I yelled. “What now, what?”

Very softly, Reb Jeshaia asked me, “Evsise, how long ago did the Archdruid say he changed Kadak into this thing?”

“Ten years ago,” I said, “but what—”

And I stopped. And I sat down again. And knew we had lost, and we would still be there when the gonifs came to rip the planet out of orbit, and we would die, along with the crazies in the Apostate Cathedral and the nafkeh, and the Rock and the Archdruid and everyone else who was too nuts to get safely away the way they were supposed to.

“What’s the matter?” asked Meyer Kahaha, the oysvorf “What’s wrong? Why does it matter he’s been a butterfly for ten years?”

“Only ten years,” said Shmuel.

“Not thirteen, schmuck, only ten,” said Yankel, sticking his pointing arm in Meyer Kahaha’s ninth eye.

We looked at Meyer Kahaha till the light dawned, even for him. “Oh my God,” he said, and rolled over on his side. The butterfly, that miserable Kadak, fluttered up and flew around the shoul. No one paid any attention to him. It had all been in vain.

Scripture says, very clearly there should be no mistake, that all ten of the participants of a minyan have to be over thirteen years old. At thirteen, for a Jew, a boy becomes a man. “Today I am a man,” it’s an old gag. Ha ha. Very funny. It’s the reason for the bar mitzvah. Thirteen. Not ten.

Kadak wasn’t old enough.

Still dead, still lying on his face, Snodle began weeping.

Reb Jeshaia and the other seven, the last blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn, now doomed to die without ever again gumming their lust-nest concubines, they all slumped into seats and waited for destruction.

I felt worse than them. I hurt in more places.

Then I looked up, and began to smile. I smiled so wide and so loud, everyone turned to look at me.

“He’s gone crazy,” said Chaim.

“It’s better that way,” said Shmuel. “He won’t feel the pain.”

“Poor Evsise,” said Yitzchak.

“Dummies!” I shouted, leaping up and rolling and hopping and unwinding like a tummeler. “Dummies! Dummies! Even you, Reb Jeshaia, you’re a dummy, we’re all dummies!”

“Is that a way to talk to a Rabbi?” said Reb Jeshaia.

“Sure it is,” I yowled, reeling and rocking, “sure it is, sure it is, sure it is, sure it is…”

Meyer Kahaha came and sat on me.

“Get off me, you schlemiel! I know how to save us, it’s been here all the time, we never needed that creep snuffle butterfly Kadak!”

So he got off me, and I looked at them with great pleasure because I was about to demonstrate that I was a folks-mensch of the first water, and I said, “Under a ruling in Tractate Berakhot, nine Jews and the holy ark of the law containing the Torah may, together, hey nu, nu, do you get what I’m saying, may together be considered for congregational worship!”

And Reb Jeshaia kissed me.

“Evsise, Evsise, how did you remember such a thing? You’re not a Talmudic scholar, how did you remember such a wonderful thing?” Reb Jeshaia hugged and kissed and babbled in my face at me.

“I didn’t,” I said, “Kadak did.”

And they all looked up, as I’d looked up, and there was that not-such-an-altogether-worthless-after-all Kadak, sitting up on top of the Holy Ark, the Aronha-Kodesh, the sacred cabinet holding the sacred scrolls of the Lord. Sitting up there, a butterfly, always to remain a butterfly, sitting and beating his wings frantically, trying to let someone know what he knew, something even a Rabbi had forgotten.

And when he came down to perch on Reb Jeshaia’s shoulder, we all sat down and rested for a minute, and then Reb Jeshaia said, “Now we will sit shivah. Nine men, the Holy Ark and one butterfly make a minyan.”

And for the last time on Zsouchmuhn, which means look for me, we said the holy words, this last time for the home we had had, the home we would leave. And all through the prayers, there sat Kadak, flapping his dumb wings.

And you want to know a thing? Even that was a mechaieh, which means a terrific pleasure.

Adonai—The sacred title of God. Pronounced ah-doe-NOY.

averah—Loosely, an unethical or undesirable act.

bar mitzvah—The ceremony, as in many cultures, of the beginning of puberty; held in a temple, it is the ceremony in which a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy reaches the status and assumes the duties of a “man.”

bialy(ies)—A flat breakfast roll, shaped like a round wading pool, sometimes sprinkled with onion.

bissel—A little bit.

brechh—A sound you make when varfing.

bris(es)—The circumcision ceremony.

buhbie—Usually an affectionate term of endearment, although occasionally it is used sardonically.

bummerkeh—A female bum, a loose lady. A nafkeh.

chutzpah—Gall, brazen nerve, audacity, presumption-plus-arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to.

dreck—Shit, dung, garbage, trash, excrement, crap.

Evsise—A native of Theta 996:VI, Cluster Messier 3 in Canes Venatici. (See illustration.)

farblondjet—Lost (but really lost), mixed-up, wandering around with no idea where you are.

farchachdah—Dizzy, confused, dopey, punchy.

feh!—An exclamatory expression of disgust.

folks-mensh—This has many meanings. In the story it is intended to convey the meaning of a person who is interested in Jewish life, values, experience, and wants to carry on the tradition,

galus—An exile.

Gentile—The goyim. Non-Jews.

gevalt!—A cry of fear, astonishment, amazement.

glitch—A shady, not kosher or reputable affair.

goldeneh medina—Literally, “golden country”; originally, it meant America to Jews fleeing the European pogroms; a land of freedom, justice, and rare opportunity. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

gonif(s)—A thief, a crook; sometimes said with affection

goniffed—to mean a clever person; a dishonest businessman; the act of stealing, as in swiping Zsouchmuhn out of its orbit,

guderim—My mother used to say, “That kid is eating out my guderim from aggravation,” which leads me to believe the word means, literally, heart, guts, liver-and-lights, stomach, everything in the middle of your body. Pronounced: guh-DARE-im.

Kaddish—A prayer glorifying God’s name. The most solemn and one of the most ancient of all Jewish prayers; the mourner’s prayer.

kayn-ahora—The phrase uttered to show that one’s praises are genuine and not contaminated by envy.

kike—A word you won’t find in this story.

kosher—As a Hebrew-Yiddish word it means only one thing: fit to eat, because ritually clean according to the dietary laws. As American slang it means authentic, the real McCoy, trustworthy, reliable, on the up-and-up, legal.

krenk—An illness. Also used to mean “nothing” in a sentence like, “He asked me for a loan of fifty bucks; a krenk I’ll give him!”

mechaieh—Pleasure, great enjoyment, a real joy. Pronounced: m’-KHY-eh, if you roll the kh like a Scotsman.

mensch—Someone of consequence, someone to emulate and admire; a terrific human being; I always pictured a mensch as someone who knew exactly how much to tip.

meshiginah, meshugge, mishegoss—Crazy, nuts, wildly extravagant, absurd. There are spellings for male and female, but I’ve written it the way it sounded when my mother called me it. Meshugge is to be a meshiginah and mishegoss is the crazy stuff a meshiginah is doing.

minyan—Quorum. The ten male Jews required for a religious service. Solitary prayer is laudable, but a minyan possesses special merit, for God’s Presence is said to dwell among them.

momzer—A bastard, an untrustworthy person; a stubborn, difficult person; a detestable, impudent person.

naches—Proud pleasure, special joy, pride-plus-pleasure.

nafkeh—Also nafka. A prostitute.

nu(?)(!)—A remarkably versatile interjection, interrogation, expletive; like, “So?”

nuhdz, nuhdzhing—To bore, to pester, to nag, to be bugged to eat your asparagus, to wake up and take her home, etc.

oysvorf—A scoundrel, a bum, an outcast, an ingrate.

pisher—A young, inexperienced person, a “young squirt,” an inconsequential person, a “nobody.”

plotz—To split, to burst, to explode; to be outraged; to be aggravated beyond bearing.

punim—Face.

pupik—Navel. Belly-button.

putz—Literally, vulgar slang for “penis” but in usage a term of contempt for an ass, a jerk, a fool, a simpleton or yokel. It is much stronger than schmuck and shouldn’t be used unless you know some crippling Oriental martial art-form.

Reb—Rabbi.

schlemiel—A foolish person, a simpleton; a consistently unlucky or unfortunate person; a clumsy, gauche, butterfingered person; a social misfit; this term is more pitying than schlimazel and more affectionate by far than schmuck.

schlimazel—Same as above, but different in tone. A schlimazel believes in luck, but never has any. The terms are often interchangeable, by people who don’t perceive the subtle differences.

schmuck—Literally, a penis, but in common usage, a dope, a jerk, a boob; or, a son of a bitch.

Shabbes—The Sabbath.

Shema—The first word of the most common of Hebrew prayers: “Shema Yisrael,” Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One!

shikker—A drunk or, as an adjective, drunkenness.

shikseh—A non-Jewish woman, especially a young one.

shivah—The seven solemn days of mourning for the dead.

shmachel—To flatter, to fawn, to butter up, usually to outfox someone to get them to do what you want.

shmatehs—A rag, literally. But in common usage to mean a cheap, shoddy, junky dress.

shmootz—Dirt.

shoul—Synagogue.

shpilkess—As my mother used it, to mean aggravation, an unsettlement of self, jumping stomach. But I’ve been advised it really means “ants in the pants.”

Shtumie—Another word like schlemiel, but more offhand, less significant; the word you use to bat away a gnat.

shtup—To have sexual intercourse.

shtupping—See shtup.

tallis—Prayer shawl, used by males at prayer at religious services.

Talmud—A massive and monumental compendium of sixty-three books: the learned debates, dialogues, conclusions, commentaries, etc., of the scholars who, for over a thousand years, interpreted the Torah, the first five books in the Bible, also known as the Five Books of Moses. The Talmud is not the Bible, it is not the Old Testament. It is not meant to be read, but to be studied.

t’fillin—Phylacteries worn during morning prayers by Orthodox males past the age of bar mitzvah.

Tisha B’ab—“The blackest day in the Jewish calendar.” Usually falls during August, climaxing nine days of mourning during which meat is not eaten and marriages are not performed. Commemorates both the First (586 B.C.) and Second (A.D. 70) destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. A deadly day of sorrow.

tsuris—Troubles.

tuchis—The backside, the buttocks, your ass.

tummel—Noise, commotion, noisy disorder.

tummeler—One who creates a lot of noise but accomplishes little; a fun-maker, a live wire, a clown, the “life of the party.” You know when Jerry Lewis does a talk show and he starts eating the draperies and screaming and running so much you change the channel? He’s tummeling.

varf—To puke. Brechh.

yarmulkah—The skullcap worn by observing Jewish males.

yeshiva—A rabbinical college or seminary.

yorzeit—The anniversary of someone’s death, on which candles are lit and an annual prayer is said.

zetz—A strong blow or punch.

Zsouchmoid—A native of Theta 996:VI, Cluster Messier 3 in Canes Venatici, like Evsise. (See illustration.)

(NOTE: The author wishes to give credit where due. The Yiddish words are mine, they come out of my childhood and my heritage, but the definitions were compiled with the aid of Leo Rosten’s marvelous and utterly indispensable sourcebook, The Joys of Yiddish, published by McGraw-Hill, which I urge you to rush out and buy, simply as good reading.)