Collected Stories

“What are you doing about Tina?”

Again, he said nothing.

But knowing Isaac, seeing how agitated he was, she predicted that he would go down to New York City for advice. She told this later to Dr. Braun, and he saw no reason to doubt it. Clever wives can foretell. A fortunate husband will be forgiven his predictability.

Isaac had a rabbi in Williamsburg. He was Orthodox enough for that. And he did not fly. He took a compartment on the Twentieth Century when it left Albany just before daybreak. With just enough light through the dripping gray to see the river. But not the west shore. A tanker covered by smoke and cloud divided the bituminous water. Presently the mountains emerged.

They wanted to take the old crack train out of service. The carpets were filthy, the toilets stank. Slovenly waiters in the dining car. Isaac took toast and coffee, rejecting the odors of ham and bacon by expelling breath. Eating with his hat on. Racially distinct, as Dr. Braun well knew. A blood group characteristically eastern Mediterranean. The very fingerprints belonging to a distinctive family of patterns. The nose, the eyes long and full, the skin dark, slashed near the mouth by a Russian doctor in the old days. And looking out as they rushed past Rhinecliff, Isaac saw, with the familiarity of hundreds of journeys, the grand water, the thick trees—illuminated space. In the compartment, in captive leisure, shut up with the foul upholstery, the rattling door. The old arsenal, Bannerman’s Island, the playful castle, yellow-green willows around it, and the water sparkling, as green as he remembered it in 1910—one of the forty million foreigners coming to America. The steel rails, as they were then, the twisting currents and the mountain round at the top, the wall of rock curving steeply into the expanding river.

From Grand Central, carrying a briefcase with all he needed in it, Isaac took the subway to his appointment. He waited in the anteroom, where the rabbi’s bearded followers went in and out in long coats. Dressed in business clothes, Isaac, however, seemed no less archaic than the rest. A bare floor. Wooden seats, white stippled walls. But the windows were smeared, as though the outside did not matter. Of these people, many were survivors of the German Holocaust. The rabbi himself had been through it as a boy. After the war, he had lived in Holland and Belgium and studied sciences in France. At Montpellier. Biochemistry. But he had been called—summoned—to these spiritual duties in New York; Isaac was not certain how this had happened. And now he wore the full beard. In his office, sitting at a little table with a green blotting pad, and a pen and note paper. The conversation was in the jargon—in Yiddish.

“Rabbi, my name is Isaac Braun.”

“From Albany. Yes, I remember.”

“I am the eldest of four—my sister, the youngest, the muzinka, is dying.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“Of cancer of the liver, and with a lot of pain.”

“Then she is. Yes, she is dying.” From the very white, full face, the rabbi’s beard grew straight and thick in rich bristles. He was a strong, youthful man, his stout body buttoned tightly, straining in the shiny black cloth.

“A certain thing happened soon after the war. An opportunity to buy a valuable piece of land for building. I invited my brothers and my sister to invest with me, Rabbi. But on the day…”

The rabbi listened, his white face lifted toward a corner of the ceiling, but fully attentive, his hands pressed to the ribs, above the waist.

“I understand. You tried to reach them that day. And you felt abandoned.” They deserted me, Rabbi, yes.”

But that was also your good luck. They turned their faces from you, and this made you rich. You didn’t have to share.”

Isaac admitted this but added, “If it hadn’t been one deal, it would have been another.”

“You were destined to be rich?” I was sure to be. And there were so many opportunities.” Your sister, poor thing, is very harsh. She is wrong. She has no ground for complaint against you.”

“I am glad to hear that,” said Isaac. “Glad,” however, was only a word, for he was suffering.

“She is not a poor woman, your sister?”

“No, she inherited property. And her husband does pretty well. Though I suppose the long sickness costs.”

“Yes, a wasting disease. But the living can only will to live. I am speaking of Jews. They wanted to annihilate us. To give our consent would have been to turn from God. But about your problem: Have you thought of your brother Aaron? He advised the others not to take the risk.”

“I know.”

“It was to his interest that she should be angry with you, and not with him.”

“I realize that.”

“He is guilty. He is sinning against you. Your other brother is a good man.”

“Mutt? Yes, I know. He is decent. He barely survived the war. He was shot in the head.”

“But is he still himself?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Sometimes it takes something like that. A bullet through the head.” The rabbi paused and turned his round face, the black quill beard bent on the folds of shiny cloth. And then, as Isaac told him how he went to Tina before the High Holidays, he looked impatient, moving his head forward, but his eyes turning sideward. “Yes. Yes.” He was certain that Isaac had done the right things. “Yes. You have the money. She grudged you. Unreasonable. But that’s how it seems to her. You are a man. She is only a woman. You are a rich man.”

“But, Rabbi,” said Isaac, “now she is on her deathbed, and I have asked to see her.”

“Yes? Well?”

“She wants money for it.”

“Ah? Does she? Money?”

“Twenty thousand dollars. So that I can be let into the room.”

The burly rabbi was motionless, white fingers on the armrests of the wooden chair. “She knows she is dying, I suppose?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Yes. Our Jews love deathbed jokes. I know many. Well. America has not changed everything, has it? People assume that God has a sense of humor. Such jokes made by the dying in anguish show a strong and brave soul, but skeptical. What sort of woman is your sister?”

“Stout. Large.”

“I see. A fat woman. A chunk of flesh with two eyes, as they used to say. Staring at the lucky ones. Like an animal in a cage, perhaps. Separated. By sensual greed and despair. A fat child like that—people sometimes behave as though they were alone when such a child is present. So those little monster souls have a strange fate. They see people as people are when no one is looking. A gloomy vision of mankind.”

Isaac respected the rabbi. Revered him, thought Dr. Braun. But perhaps he was not old-fashioned enough for him, notwithstanding the hat and beard and gabardine. He had the old tones, the manner, the burly poise, the universal calm judgment of the Jewish moral genius. Enough to satisfy anyone. But there was also something foreign about him. That is, contemporary. Now and then there was a sign of the science student, the biochemist from the south of France, from Montpellier. He would probably have spoken English with a French accent, whereas Cousin Isaac spoke like anyone else from upstate. In Yiddish they had the same dialect—White Russian. The Minsk region. The Pripet Marshes, thought Dr. Braun. And then returned to the fish hawk on the brown and chalky sycamore beside the Mohawk. Yes. Perhaps. Among these recent birds, finches, thrushes, there was Cousin Isaac with more scale than feather in his wings. A more antique type. The ruddy brown eye, the tough muscles of the jaw working under the skin. Even the scar was precious to Dr. Braun. He knew the man. Or rather, he had the longing of having known. For these people were dead. A useless love.

“You can afford the money?” the rabbi asked. And when Isaac hesitated, he said, “I don’t ask you for the figure of your fortune. It is not my concern. But could you give her the twenty thousand?”

And Isaac, looking greatly tried, said, “If I had to.”

“It wouldn’t make a great difference in your fortune?”

“No.”

“In that case, why shouldn’t you pay?”