The Rabbi of Lud

twelve

IT FELL TO ME to do the honors.

All these years in the business and — touch wood — there’d never been anything personal before. No one — thank God — had died on me. (Well, there was my little stillborn boy, but he didn’t even have a name, and we didn’t have the koyach to bury him.) What I’m saying is that, well, for me, kayn aynhoreh, it had all been in the rabbi mode. Not that any man’s death doesn’t diminish me too. Sure it does. It does. If a clod be washed away by the sea, isn’t Jersey the less? This is a given. Still, there’s loss and there’s loss, there’s death and there’s death.

They came the same bright, crisp afternoon of the day she was shot, Fanny Tupperman and Miriam Perloff, and assured me they spoke for the surviving Chaverot, for Sylvia Simon and Elaine Iglauer, for Rose Pickler and Naomi Shore, even, they said, for Shelley.

“My,” I told them, “such a vote of confidence, but surely, wouldn’t it be better if her own rabbi performed the service?”

“You were her rabbi,” Fanny Tupperman said.

“What’s Judaism coming to?” I deplored. “No one belongs to a temple nowadays? I was her rabbi? I was? I rabbi the dead. I minister the fallen away, the caught out and caught short in New Jersey.”

“That’s Joan all right,” Fanny Tupperman said.

“I don’t know,” I said, “if I’m up to it. A grotesque, off-season hunting accident. Listen, I’m still in shock.”

I was. I was a draikopf, and couldn’t keep it straight who knew what and when they knew it. I was her rabbi, singing Fanny Tupperman had enigmatically piped. Plus there was the truly false light into which I would be plunging my wife, and daughter, too, for that matter, who would probably take a day off from school and martyrdom to hear the family’s other religious, her dad, recite his holy bygones-be-bygones above Joan Cohen’s gamy remains. A tall order for a guy who for most of his professional life had tried to maintain a low profile. Plus the fact of my own real, adulterous, grief. Which was unresolved and would make, along with the visions I continued to access in my head of Joan Cohen’s doelike leaps to errant, risky freedom, all that tragic dodge and cut-and-run (because surely she would have picked up his scent even before he — the killer poacher, man-eating, deer-stalker hunter — would have picked up the visual equivalent of hers — that quick tweed movement in the field, that flash of leather boot or hoof), any words of mine of no avail, of never any glimmer of avail. (Who would still think “doomed” the moment I remembered the moment she proposed to Elaine Iglauer that they go walking in the woods. And still ask God-God! — “What would a woman like this be doing out on a day like that anyway? Tell me, what could You have been thinking of?” Or scold, scold her memory. “Running such risks! Practically inviting every trigger-happy, redneck, rifle-bearing yahoo in this neck of the woods to take a potshot at you! You were asking for it. You almost deserve to have been killed!”)

I tried to tell them I was the wrong man for the job and marshaled all the fool-for-a-client arguments I could think of. They looked at me closely. “It’s just that I knew her,” I told them lamely. “I couldn’t be objective.”

“Those other times,” Fanny Tupperman said, “those were objective funerals?”

Shelley asked me to do it. “If not for me, then for Joan Cohen. She’d have wanted it that way.”

“Boy,” I said, “every Tom, Dick and Harry knows what dead people have in their heads, what they’ve got up their sleeves and would get off their chests. Why do they draw up wills? What do we need lawyers?”

“Jerry,” Shull confided, “I’m picking up the expenses on this one. The deluxe mahogany. Down stuffing in the satin lining. I’m going all out.”

“What, you are?”

“My pleasure,” he said.

“Your pleasure? That’s very kind, Sam.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. My pleasure. I dated her.”

“I see,” I said.

“Twenty grand I must have spent on that woman. At least twenty grand. I was the one who put her into all those suedes and Harris tweeds she wore. The tiny pinstripes. I dressed her for success. What the hell? What’s a few thousand more? Still, well, you know, if we had to bring in another rabbi …”

That she’d never married. That she left no survivors. That was the angle I meant to punch up. Working her childlessness, working her spinsterhood, working the theme we were all her survivors.

Her singing. I’d bring in her singing. Her musical Judaism. And sketch her, powerfully clapping, bounding round the campfire, draw her generous kibbutz heart. A cheerful, reliable, companionable sort, her soul in the backpack with the provisions. This echt Sabra, some maiden Jewess, say, who might have been there with Moses on the long voyage out from Egypt to the Promised Land. Some slim, dark au pair of the wilderness who kept an eye on the kids and helped with the tents. Though this, of course, was not how I really saw her. (Oh, how I really saw her! Never mind how I really saw her!) Though you know? In a way I did.

Her good-sport mode, I mean, and elegant outdoor ways. Which got her killed for her trouble, slaughtered for her style. And led her out into the very fields and locales where models posed for their pictures, out into the unfenced surreal, that deer-stalked, fox-hunted, cony-catchered bluegrass where you could almost have anticipated the sniper would be.

And that’s not how I really saw her either.

One time — this was two years ago — Shelley came to me, very excited.

“We’ve got a gig-e-le.”

“I’m sorry?”

“A gig-e-le, a booking. It’s a show biz-e-le term.”

“Who does?”

“We do, the girls. The Chaverot.”

“Oh,” I said, “that’s nice.”

“It is,” she said. “Jack Perloff finally popped the question. Miriam doesn’t have to be a divorcee anymore.”

“Well, that is good news,” I said. Jack Perloff had an automobile dealership in the Oranges. He and Miriam had been seeing each other for years. There was a question about his intentions. Until Shelley’s announcement it was understood that, officially, they were only “going steady.”

“They’re getting married in Philadelphia. His parents live there. Miriam wants the Chaverot to entertain. Of course, we couldn’t think of charging anything. It’s a professional courtesy.”

“Of course you can’t charge them,” I said. “It will be your wedding present.”

“Oh, no,” Shelley said, “we have to get them a gift. Anyway, we’re all invited. The Chaverot spouses too. We could go down on Friday. The wedding’s Saturday night and we can drive back Sunday. The ceremony’s in this wonderful new hotel, which is supposed to be very nice. They have a weekend special. Miriam says the groom’s people will make all the arrangements. Can we, Jerry, can we?”

Why not? Every once in a while every now and then you have to make a weekend of it. I say this in my rabbi mode.

So we drove — the Chaverot colleagues, the Chaverot husbands — the eighty or so miles down to Philly in three of our big cars and checked into the hotel. The Barry Bernstein bar mitzvah was posted on a black hotel reader board in the lobby, Lou and Gloria Kaplan’s Silver Wedding Anniversary was. An announcement for the Mindy Weintraub Sweet Sixteen party was up on an easel. (Shelley was right, I thought, it was a wonderful hotel. Understand me, when I say that every once in a while every now and then you have to make a weekend of it, I don’t mean you must get away. The opposite, rather. You have to go back. You must ground yourself in the familiar, settle back in the thick, sweet old gravity of things.)

There were a dozen of us, five men and seven women. Miriam and the lucky man had gone down before us and would be staying with the Perloffs. Fanny Tupperman (divorced, she was Fanny Lewis then) shared a room with Joan Cohen, who was also single. (I’d never met Joan’s husband, and until that weekend hadn’t realized she hadn’t any.)

We’d hardly unpacked when there was a knock on the door. It was Jack Perloff, big in the doorway, rubbing his hands, kibitzing, bullying welcome. “How is it,” he asked, stepping inside, “is it all right? Is it going to be big enough? Oh, yes, it’s a nice size. Jesus, you could sleep three in the front and five in the back in here,” the car dealer remarked amiably. “What about closet space? Got enough? What’s this, a walk-in? Oh, yeah, terrific. Swell threads. Gorgeous gown, Shelley. Am I marrying the wrong chick, or what? Hey, how about these soaps? That’s some classy odor. Very delicate. You don’t have to use ’em, you know. Take them home if you want. With the shampoo and the shower cap. Souvenirs. Call the desk, say the maid didn’t leave you any. Have them send up some more. Wait a minute. Something’s amiss here. Where’s your rose? There’s supposed to be a long-stemmed rose in this room.”

“That’s all right.”

“The hell it’s all right! It’s part of the deal. Listen, you don’t have to do a thing. When I’m in the lobby, I’ll speak to the concierge. There won’t be any trouble. Oh, wait a minute. You got the fruit. Some get the fruit, some get the flower. Would you rather have the flower or would you rather have the fruit? I know the Iglauers got a rose. Maybe you could trade. There’s your TV. Look, they’ve got a movie channel. If you’re still up at three, they show an X-rated film. If you slipped the kid a fin, I bet they’d probably run it for you now. Sure, all they do is throw it up on their VCR and just plug you in. You’re too shy, I’ll say something on your behalf myself. Rabbi, and give him the finif, too, for that matter.”

“Thanks,” I said, “that won’t be necessary.”

“You’re not offended? I didn’t offend you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Hey, just because old Cupid stings my toches with his arrows I think all blood is boiling. I shouldn’t be that way. I’m too romantic.”

“Perfectly understandable.”

“Yeah?”

“Certainly.”

“Miriam and I are delighted you came. Rabbi and Shelley,” he said gravely, “and only hope that this weekend will be as memorable for you as I know it’s going to be for us.”

“I’m sure it will be.”

“Thank you,” Jack Perloff said. “Coming from a rabbi, I’m going to regard that as a blessing.”

“That’s how I intended it.”

“Thank you, Rabbi.”

“Jerry, Jack.”

“Jerry,” he corrected. “Hey, I almost forgot,” he said, and opened a door next to the desk. “It’s our hospitality suite,” he said. “It’s for the wedding party, but I want everyone to feel free. Mi casa, su casa,” he said, and just then we heard his intended in the hall.

“Knock, knock,” Miriam said in the open door.

“Hi there, sweetheart.”

“Just a minute,” she said, and moved a foot or so back out into the corridor. “On the count of three,” Miriam called down the hallway. “One!” Jack stepped up to a door at the side of the television set, and turned the little whoosis in its round, recessed fitting. “Two!” she proclaimed. “Three!” she sang out. Jack opened the connecting door and, on their side of the wall, the Picklers did the same. Rose Pickler stood at the threshold between our two rooms. “Hi, stranger,” Rose, grinning, greeted Jack, “how you doin’?”

“Come here, Miriam,” Jack Perloff said, “will you just look at this, will you?”

Shelley and Jack and Miriam and I crowded around the connecting doors. Through some repeated suite, double, double, suite arrangement peculiar to the hotel, we could see down the entire length of rooms. I looked past Rose and Will Pickler in their room, and Al and Naomi Shore in theirs, beyond the Iglauers where Elaine held her rose, and beyond Ted and Sylvia Simon to where, at the distant end of the queer railroad-flat configuration, Fanny was handing Joan Cohen a piece of complimentary fruit.

And that’s how I saw her.

And later, after dinner, in Perloff s hospitality suite, where we had gathered to shmooz and tell jokes, to play cards and listen — and some of us dance — to the music on the FM, and watch the lights of downtown Philadelphia, and pick from the bowls of nuts, and nosh from the platters of food Perloff had had sent up (not so much without appetite or edge as somehow ahead of it), and drink from the bar he had stocked, lying about, secure, lulled by the movements of the ladies, by the sweet, soft music of their commentary like a kind of vocalizing, brought back to some ancient, lovely treehouse condition, that’s how I saw her, too. Then, later, after Perloff had left with Miriam, and some of the others, tired out, had mumbled vague good-nights and gone back to their rooms (actually too tired to leave the hospitality suite, too tired or too reluctant, and choosing the shortcut, returning through the inner corridor, through our rooms, through the Picklers’ and Shores’ and Iglauers’ and Simons’), and then a few more did, and then the rest, until, deep in the dark Shabbes, neither of us speaking and the volume turned low, only Joan Cohen and I were left to watch the X-rated movie when it came on at three.

Because I saw her all sorts of ways. (I couldn’t stop seeing her. Should I try to put that in?) How she danced at the wedding. With me, with the others. Sensing some distant availability in her, something game and something ready. Up for a frelach, leading a hora. Maybe there was nothing more to it than her bachelor-girl pluck, the simple, ordinary honor of the privately led life. And I could bring in how gorgeous she looked in a lobby. Jesus, she did! Never mind the fancy Philadelphia hotel where the Perloffs tied the knot. In the Rutherford Best Western even. How she shined there! They could just imagine what she must have looked like, how she must have been, set off against all that Philadelphia Bulgari and Pucci, the high glitz of all those upscale outlet stores! I’m a rabbi, a teacher. I leave nothing to the imagination. If they were to get a last good glimpse of her during that brief, last patch of time before I consigned her to earth forever, then I would have to lead her to them up through the murk of seance and memory. Presented like a girl on the arm of a pop. Handed off like a deb, handed off like a bride.

I’d certainly have to tell them about the lobby. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I would have to tell them about the lobby, occupied by that vast guest population, guests not just of the spiffy Philadelphia hotel but by the guests of those guests, invitees to all the showers, weddings, parties and anniversaries, all the affairs and mitzvahs, floating their generous mood like a kind of collective weather, and packing their gifts like handguns.

People checking in, people checking out. (And didn’t I wish I could stay there forever? Held inside the gold parameters of the handled, splendid atmospherics of the place? Didn’t I just?)

We sat near one of the hotel’s bars and breathed the lovely alcoholic spice lofted out over the lobby, and watched the richish, sporty, middle-aged Jews importantly lounging, guys in crew necks, guys in gold, guys with a bypass under their sport shirts and a hint of Sunday brunch on their breath, Wasps in a Jewey register. Except that I felt almost like some pale, poor relation beside them, thinking, Oy, the savvy Sabbath motley of our crowd.

I could repeat our conversation for them, explain the conditions — I mean the context — in which it took place — Shelley gone back to the room after the late breakfast we took with the rest of the wedding party — our last collective act before it broke up and we went back to New Jersey — to see if she’d left anything behind, to try to move her bowels.

“Well,” I said, “it was a lovely wedding.”

“Yes, it was fun. Everyone enjoyed themselves.”

“I’m glad we decided to make a weekend of it.”

“Yes, it was nice.”

“I like this hotel. I’m glad we stayed here.”

“It’s lucky Jack’s parents live in town and knew about it.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “It’s an advantage when you’re not familiar with a city if someone you know is.”

“Philadelphia’s so close. It can’t be ninety miles.”

“Sure,” I said, “but New York is closer. New York’s where we go when we go out to dinner.”

Joan Cohen chuckled.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “The way those rooms were connected.”

“I know,” I said.

“That was cute.”

“Look, that girl brought those people drinks from the bar. How about a drink, would you care for a drink? They serve you right in the lobby.”

“After last night? No, I don’t think so. But you go ahead if you like.”

“Who, me? No. Drinking’s not one of my vices.”

“It’s not one of mine either really. Though I guess you wouldn’t be able to tell that from last night. I was pretty pissed. Oh,” she said, “excuse me.”

“I say ‘piss,’ ” I objected. “I say ‘piss.’ I say ‘shit.’ ”

“You do?”

“Hey,” I told her, blushing, looking down, “I watch the X-rated movie channel.” And try to explain to them the sense I had of her hand above my head, feeling some hypnotic, unheard tonsorial snick-snick in my hair, some tingled attraction, the energy of her fingers, of her rings perhaps, doing tentative passes. I don’t know, a gravity, an electric pleasure, some gentle force field of flesh. “Well, that one time anyway,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “me too.”

“You think people do that stuff?”

“I suppose some people do,” Joan Cohen said. “I suppose some people do everything.”

“Others don’t do anything at all,” I said. “I guess most of us go our whole lives without ever getting a blow job,” I said.

“Or giving one,” Joan Cohen said.

I could put this into my eulogy, how Joan Cohen and I talked about blow jobs, how it came up naturally. In the course of the conversation.

“Did you see all those things he shoved up her behind?”

“Yes, I did,” she said.

“That was probably trick photography,” I pronounced in the rabbi mode. “Don’t you think?”

“I should certainly hope so.”

“It sure wasn’t responsible sex.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Not when there’s AIDS.”

“Certainly not,” Joan Cohen said.

“I think I will have a drink,” I said, and signaled the girl where she stood in the bar’s broad, open entranceway. “There’s something about the sharp smell of a highball in these places.”

“So what is?” she asked me.

“What is what?”

“If drinking’s not one of your vices.”

Her curiosity. I could put in about her curiosity. How we discussed sin, vice, good and evil in the lobby of that Philadelphia hotel while we waited for Shelley to come down with the floral arrangement she’d taken from our table the night before. Just a rabbi talking shop with an interested, dead, lone congregant untimely taken, prematurely plucked out of season.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Doesn’t one of the commentators tell us that the last thing a man knows is himself?”

“I love it when you talk religious,” she said. “But really,” she said, “if you had to guess.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I don’t.”

“No, of course,” she said. “You don’t have to, but tell me,” she teased, “what? That you haven’t any will power? That you don’t exercise regularly? That you can’t stick to a diet?”

“Do I look out of shape? You think I’m too fat?”

“No,” she said, “they’re examples. I’m poking around.”

“I really don’t know,” I said. “Maybe that I try to lie low.”

“Oh,” she said, “what a good one.”

And pick this moment to bring in something of the stunning mystery of death. This was just two years ago. Two lousy years! The day before yesterday, for God’s sake! And I’m rounding it off. What would that be in terms of seasons? Two or three wardrobes? Six or seven shopping sprees? How much hose, how many leather accessories? What naps and wools, what hides and knits and fine finished fabrics? All that chic, organic cloth, all those hues like altitude tinted on maps, pale as sea level, amber as mountain range. Her blood-sport wraps and fashionables, her swift kinetic tweeds.

Of death more mysterious than life. Because death is harder, I’d tell them, or what are we grieving for here? (Though life’s pretty mysterious too. Come on, two people chatting each other up in a hotel lobby, and one’s got the hots, and chances are the other has too? All this while the one’s wife of twenty years is upstairs, possibly humming a tune or sniffing stolen flowers?) Bringing in God. The mystic extrasensories and supernaturals. Because ain’t it just at this point that the heart did its tap dance while the head figured all the possibilities like a good gambler counting cards? And the body, don’t forget. What’s all this terrible new energy, these sweet swoopswoons and tickles, these pit-of-the-stomach accelerations and acrobatics like a belly lifted in an elevator? Come on, two people side by side in a hotel lobby. Sharing a couch but not even touching. Heart rates up. Palms moistening. (I mean, it was all I could do to hold on to my highball!) What, this isn’t mysterious? This isn’t a sort of mind-reading, this isn’t some kind of out-of-the-body travel, or bending nails without touching them? This ain’t God loose in the lobby? Tell it to the Marines.

“So what about you?” I asked. “How is it a girl like you never got married?”

“You sound like my parents.”

“How is it?”

“Maybe I’m just waiting for the right man to come along.”

And stick in here about her character, her qualities and virtues. Her righteous probity and defense against temptation as if she were protected by fire retardant, or Scotch-Gard, say. Her loyalty, for example. What she said next. “Not you,” she flashed. “Shelley’s my friend. She’s only your wife.”

I could tell them I underestimated her, and go on, pushing the landmarks and saliencies, the highlights and points of interest, putting her together, too like a police-artist’s sketch.

“Did you misunderstand me? Oh, you misunderstood me,” I objected. “No, I’m just curious. A nice Jewish girl. Intelligent, attractive. It just seems to me that someone like you would have no difficulty meeting fellows. Perhaps at your temple. In your job where you work. I’m told that sometimes, if you take your wash to the laundromat …”

“Oh, I meet plenty of men,” she said. “That’s not the problem. Last night.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Last night. After the ceremony. After the dinner. During the dancing.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It was so stuffy. I was all overheated.”

“Yes?”

“I needed some air.”

“Some air. Yes?”

“So I came down here.”

“Down here.”

“Well, I was on my way out.”

“Outside you mean.”

“Yes, out. Outside for fresh air.”

“I see.”

“I was crossing the lobby and got as far as that bar, and suddenly there was this Japanese man. He was quite good-looking. And, well, he hit on me.”

“He hit on you?”

“Well, it was no big deal. He asked if I wanted to have a drink with him.”

“You’d gone into the bar?”

“No,” she said, “I was crossing the lobby, I was going out for some air. He saw me crossing the lobby. He was in town on business, I guess. He was alone. I mean, he wasn’t with anyone. Colleagues or customers, a woman, a friend.”

“He just asked if you wanted to have a drink with him.”

“That’s right.”

“Just like that.”

“Yes.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“Well, I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“I said, ‘How come the sport coats you guys wear always have all those lines and bars and look like blowups of a computer chip?’ ”

“Goodness,” I said, “that was a little rude. It was sort of a racial slur, wasn’t it? What did he say then?”

“He was hurt, but I made it up to him,” she said. “I bought him a drink. Then, afterward, I took him up to the room.”

“Oh?” I said. “Yes?”

“I didn’t go outside after all.”

“So you never did get your fresh air.”

“We opened the windows.”

I would tell them … And just then remembered. Her parents. She’d mentioned her parents. They would be there. That’s it, I decided. And destroyed my notes. Just ripped them up. Just threw them away. All my notes. Toward my eulogy for Joan Cohen.

And decided to play it straight.

The place was packed. Joan Cohen’s bewildered parents sat in the front by themselves, rent strips of grosgrain pinned to their clothing like black campaign ribbons. The Chaverot were there, their Chaverot husbands and children. Musicians I recognized from bands that had played at their affairs. People I’d never seen in my life.

I read selected passages. I read “O woman of valor who can find?” from Proverbs. I read the twenty-third psalm. I did other selected passages while Shull’s and Tober’s people set up additional chairs for the latecomers. I did “I lift up mine eyes unto the hills” and “Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; praise Him with the psaltery and harp.”

Then, scanning the faces of the mourners — Shelley glared; Connie, seated beside Hershorn, was openly snarling — I waited until the last seat was taken, and began.

“Joan Cohen never married,” I said. “Raised in the values of the traditional Jewish family, she never chose to indulge herself as a ‘single parent,’ and so remained childless. Save for her beloved parents, of course — and it’s typical of Joan how, as a good daughter, she was ever conscious of her mother’s and father’s worries for her (incidentally, one of my fondest memories of Joan is how once, in Philadelphia, she confided in me as her rabbi and spoke of exactly this subject — their concern that she meet Mr. Right, settle down, and make a good Jewish home) — she may be said to have left no survivors.

“Yet there are so many here. How crowded it is! Additional chairs have been set up to accommodate the overflow. And still people stand at the back of the chapel and along its walls. So many, so very many, heedless of ordinance, in defiance of the safety codes, willing to put themselves at risk! Why? In order to pay Joan our last respects? A childless, single woman who never married and left as survivors only her grieving mother and heartbroken father? So many? So much respect?”

Shull was weeping. (What this must do to his pleasure, I thought absently. How it must play hell with it. How many thousands it will cost him just to break even again.)

“As you know, Joan was a talented musician. Her group was called ‘Chaverot,’ Hebrew for ‘fellowship,’ and what a jolly good fellowship it was! I see her fellows in the fellowship here. I see other musicians, bandsmen whose privilege it may once have been to accompany Joan.

“But can you all be musicians? And who are we talking about here anyway? A Beverly Sills? A Barbra Streisand? An Eydie Gorme?

“Of course not.

“We’re talking about someone barely and scantly professional, who made, in the psalmist’s inspired words, her ‘joyful noise unto the Lord,’ and who praised Him not ‘with the sound of the trumpet,’ nor ‘with the psaltery and harp,’ nor ‘with the timbrel.’ Well, maybe with the timbrel, that’s like a tambourine. But not ‘stringed instruments and organs.’ Nor ‘upon the loud cymbals,’ either. So, with the possible exception of the timbrel, what was Joan’s instrument? Her person that she went to so much trouble to keep kempt and was always such a pleasure to look upon, if only to watch the fall fashions that she preferred and never seemed to tire of wearing, as if autumn were her season of choice, like a winter snow scene, say, kept in a crystal? Was it her style, then, that was her instrument? Her elegant outdoor ways? Which led her into the very fields and unfenced vastnesses where the deer stalker and fox hunter and cony catcher wait for their prey?

“Or was it some cheerful, heady exuberance we caught from her when she raised up her voice in song? That powerful clapping I can almost hear now? Was it some sense we had of her bounding ’round a campfire, leading the singing from the bottom of her generous kibbutz heart? Because she had the energy of a counselor in summer camp and could have been this echt Sabra, a maiden worthy of having been there in the days of Moses, pitching in, helping out, this slim, dark au pair of the wilderness.

“But so many?”

I’ve never been particularly proud of what I do. I do it well, I think, and give fair measure. But, as I say, I’m this professional comforter, like one of those who tried to talk Job out of his grievances and, as on occasions like this, often too much in the rabbi mode. Practically speaking, I’m an unmoved mover. Today, though, even I was a little moved. (What the hell, I knew her, Horatio.)

Most of them were weeping now. Tober’s son, dapper behind opaque glasses, wept blind tears. (Sure, I thought, she taught him to dress.) Anyway, most of them were weeping. It was no time to let up.

“So many?” I demanded. “A woman without children? An unmarried woman who, except for her parents, leaves no survivors? No sisters or brothers? Not an uncle, not an aunt? A distant cousin even? With no mishpocheh to speak of save the general, at-large, human family we all of us are?

“ ‘Ah, then, Rabbi,’ you say, ‘then we’re her survivors.’

“Well, yes, but so many? Lud’s not such an easy place to reach if you’ve never been here before and don’t know the way. What’s today, Tuesday? An ordinary day of business. But think, think. Rosh Hashanah wasn’t a week ago even. Yom Kippur’s four days off. Two days you closed the store. Four more and you lose another day. Is business so good then? So many? Why? You know, tell me why.

“ ‘Well, but Rabbi,’ you say, ‘she was in her prime.’ ”

All of them were crying. I swear it. All of them were. (Not old stony-face Connie. Not my wife, not Shelley, even if she was one of the Chaverot! Oh, no, not Connie and Shelley, who seemed, in their bubble of smugness, distanced as Hershorn. But the rest of them, yes.)

“Of course she was. And it’s a terrible thing when you’re cut down in your prime. Well, it is. It happens, but it’s terrible.

“Think,” I coaxed, “what is it we say when we hear of the death of someone we did not ourselves know? What do we ask? After we question the circumstances? What do we say? ‘How old was this person?’ And, if we’re told sixty-eight, sixty-nine, anything within shooting distance of the biblical threescore-and-ten, we say, ‘Well, at least they lived a full life.’ Shaving a year or so here, there, up, down, plus or minus, but still in the ballpark. And it’s true. Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, is within the parameters. Low-normal perhaps, but God is kept honest. This is the acceptable numerology of death.

“Joan Cohen, cut down in her prime, did not live a full life.

“Or was it the manner of her death, then? That she was shot? Not in the course of things, not, I mean, violently. Not in a rape or holdup, not in a serial killing or to keep her from testifying, but in a straight path on an ordinary day in a green pasture beside still waters in a valley of the shadow of death — taken out out of season in a grotesque hunting accident.

“But tell me, what death, shaved point here, there, up, down, plus or minus, isn’t grotesque? Is there a doctor in the house? Tell me, Doctor, what death isn’t? You tell me.

“Still, so many?

“Or doesn’t it matter how she died? Isn’t it rather when she died? Isn’t that what it comes down to? When all is said and done?”

There wasn’t as much crying as before. Here and there a few were still inconsolable. Joan’s parents, of course. Fanny Tupperman, Elaine Iglauer. (And Shull was still sobbing at a pretty good clip.) But most of them were quiet now, interested. Behind their sharp looks and open glowers, Shelley was, Connie.

“Because what’s today, Tuesday? Because Rosh Hashanah wasn’t a week ago even, and Yom Kippur’s four days off.

“Because she wasn’t inscribed in the Book of Life, and that scares us. It sure scares me.

“Because Rosh Hashanah was Thursday. Because Sunday’s the Day of Atonement. Because she had ten days. All the ten days of Teshuvah. Because she had ten days of repentance before it was sealed. The Book of Life she prayed and petitioned a loving and forgiving God to inscribe her in. Who wouldn’t do it. Who heard what He heard and still wouldn’t do it. Who must have heard her. Who heard her, all right. You recall what yesterday was like, the crisp weather, Monday’s fine, clean, clear, open air. You could have heard her yourself.

“Here’s the picture:

“All Teshuvah she had, but this was the first good day, and even if the pastures weren’t all that green now — you know what the weather’s been like — still, the foliage was fine, and the still waters. And she must have been feeling pretty good — what was there to fear? it was a clear day; you could see forever — and may even have brought a bit of picnic to nosh — say an apple, a hunk of cheese, say, say a heel of bread — to restore her soul, to dull her appetite if she became peckish.

“So she put forth her argument, laid out her reasons, her bill of particulars, covering the ground like a Philadelphia lawyer, pulling out the stops, actually appealing to His sense, if He had one, of shame:

“ ‘But I’m not even married, O Lord our God. I want to settle down, I do. I want to settle down and make a good Jewish home. I’m still waiting for Mr. Right. Too many marriages end in divorce nowadays, O Baruch-Ataw-Adonoi. I want mine to work. And I’d make a swell mom. As I’ve tried to be a good daughter.

“ ‘And what about my parents? It would kill my pop, and that would kill my mom. They’re great people, they never hurt anybody. Why drag two innocent people into this? For what? What for, O Blessed-Art-Thou? What could possibly be in it for You? What would You be getting? A woman without children? An unmarried woman who, except for her parents, leaves no survivors? No sisters or brothers? Not an uncle, not an aunt? A distant cousin even? With no mishpocheh to speak of save the general, at-large, human family we all of us are? What do you need it?

“ ‘Oh, and I have a nice voice, Thou-Art-God, and know many songs, and this year resolve to learn more.

“ ‘Oh, oh, and I keep myself kempt, and am still in my prime, so how about it, Holy-Holy-Holy, inscribe me in the Book of Life for another year. How about it, what do You say, Lord-Is-My-Shepherd?’

“He said ‘BOOM!’ And ‘BOOM!’ And ‘BOOM!’ again, and Joan Cohen dropped where she stood like a load too heavy to bear any longer.

“We spoke of keeping God honest? Honest? Because don’t think this is like your car breaking down the minute the warranty runs out. This isn’t like that. This was yesterday she died. New Year’s was Thursday. Today’s Tuesday. The Book of Life isn’t sealed until Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is Sunday. So what did she have? Until Sunday. Counting from Rosh Hashanah, He’d already given her five days. He’d split the difference. She was midway. In a sort of time warp. The warranty hadn’t even started yet. She hadn’t even driven it off the lot!

“So honest? My God, my friends, He’s positively fussy!”

Shull had stopped weeping. Elaine Iglauer, Fanny Tupperman. Even the Cohens. In their absolute grief these five had been a beat or so behind the rest of the congregation all morning, vaguely aged and weighted, like actors unsure of their blocking, or as if they moved chest deep in water. As for the rest, they weren’t just interested now, they were fascinated and couldn’t wait to hear what I would say next. Except for Shelley, except for Connie. And me. Except for me. The Rabbi of Lud. I was weeping. I was. Not fascinated, not even interested. Only penitent, only asking for my atonement, and began to recite bits of prayer I remembered from the Yom Kippur service.

“We have trespassed,” I prayed, “we have been faithless … we have spoken basely … we have done violence … we have forged lies … we have counseled evil.

“For the sin which we have committed before Thee under compulsion, or of our own will.

“And for the sin which we have committed before Thee in hardening of the heart.

“For the sin which we have committed before Thee with utterance of the lips and the folly of the mouth.

“For all these, O God of Forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us remission.”

I’d forgotten a lot, but spoke the fragments I remembered as best I could. So, I thought, here I am, a rabbi myself now, and still pull — my sculpted, fashioned, modified Yom Kippur — the shortest haphtarah passage of the year. And went on with my tally.

I prayed to be pardoned for open sins and secret sins, for sinful meditations of the heart, for sins of evil inclination.

They stared at me.

And prayed to be forgiven for contentiousness and envy, for being stiff-necked, for tale-bearing, for vain oaths, for ensnaring my neighbor, for breach of trust, calling them off indiscriminately, guilty of some but not of others. Apologizing for slander sins and sins in business. (I remembered all I’d been told of Lud’s contraband dead.) And prayed to be let off for sins of scoffing, for wanton looks, for causeless hatred.

Some were irritated, stirring, grumbling. Charney and Klein were whispering together. Sal, God forbid something should happen in Lud and he not be in on it, moved closer to them. A few of the mourners looked around for their things.

“Hey,” I urged, “wait. We’re not finished,” and specially, suddenly, pled:

“For the sins we have committed against Thee by grandstanding,” I tried. “And the sins we have committed against Thee by seeking to lie low and maintain a low profile,” I told them, and had a vision of Rabbi Petch cowering behind the furniture jammed together in the southwest corner of his living room in Anchorage. And looked about, excited now, my sins as much in the public domain as if my fly were open. “And the sins we have committed against Thee by the hanky panky of the heart and flesh,” I rushed on, though even this didn’t cut into their murmuring. I wasn’t drunk, or crazy, or even much of a crank, but try telling them that.

“For the sins which we have committed against Thee by living in the wrong communities,” I said.

That wasn’t it. It wasn’t even more like it.

“In which we raised our children,” I amended.

“Our daughters,” I revised.

“My daughter,” I atoned, not quite grieving but getting warmer and aware of the immense, twisted tonnage of complex grief in the world at any given time, in any given place, some tight amalgam of woe and rue and complicity and fear. Grief like a land mass, like the seas, complicated as weather seen from high space or the veiled, tie-dye smudge of the alloy earth itself.

But why couldn’t I let them go? What was I up to, the offshore yeshiva bucher with the tiny haphtarah passage? What was I up to with my spilt-milk penitentials and public-domain regrets and all my deplored, gnashed-teeth, learned-my-lessons? With my sullied sympathy, giving out quarter like a drunken sailor? Pushing off my easy, condolent affections on them, laying on all my outstretched formulas of finessed sensibility and participatory grief, plea bargaining the world, fending God off with my sorrys and sorry-fors — sorry for Shelley, for Connie, the Cohens, for Shull and for Tober, for Charney, for Klein? What was I up to who had enough on my own plate, more than enough, all I could handle with just my own grievances, forget my swooping, all-embracing, crash-course sympathetics?

Several were standing now, edging toward the exits. I couldn’t let it bother me. There wasn’t anything I could do about it.

So, thinking of Connie, thinking of Shelley, and playing with Him for time, I prayed that we all be inscribed in the Book of Life for one more year.

I was calmer now, but just before I said the El Moley Rachamim for Joan Cohen, I recited some special blessings I’d learned in yeshiva. I offered the broches you say when you see a rainbow, when you eat ripe fruit, when you hear good news, when you laugh out loud, when you buy new clothes, when you kiss a woman, when you repair an appliance, when you touch a giant, when you smell sweet wood.