Authors: Stanley Elkin
I had rented an automobile and drove in the three-car cortege (the hearse, my rental car, a bright yellow Alyeskan truck) out to the cemetery. The two survivors had decided not to come, but the man with the flowers in his beard was outside the funeral parlor when I came out, and he rode with me in the rental car.
“They seem a little faded, Khokem,” I said. I think it was the first time I ever referred to his beard to his face.
“Yeah, well,” he said, stroking it lightly, “you know. October. The last leaf, same old story.”
“It’s good to see you.”
“Next time it should be a better occasion.”
“Well, of course,” I said, shamed and chastened as I always am whenever anyone pulls this line on me. “It’s awful about Philip. Just awful.”
“Terrible.”
“I felt I had to come,” I said.
“Of course.”
“Though we were hardly friends and, to be perfectly frank, sometimes I thought he was a bit of a jerk, we went through a lot together.”
“Certainly,” he said. “I understand.”
“That plane crash. All the time we spent living in that airplane. Remember that nest that we hacked out of pine trees?”
“I do.”
“We lived out of survival tins and broke hardtack together. We shared dried jerky.”
“I had some myself.”
“That’s right,” I said, “you did.”
“Sure.”
“We learned each other’s weights and measures. I bit my nails, he spit out the window. He tutored me in the intricate Alaskan economy. My God,” I said, “we were besieged by bears!”
“I remember that.”
“I
shouldn’t
come to his funeral? I
shouldn’t
come? He was like a brother to me.”
“To me too,” he said.
“I know,” I said, “I know, Tzadik,” and wiped my nose with my handkerchief. “ ‘Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . . . Any man’s death diminishes me, I am involved in mankind.’ ”
“No, no,” said Flowerface, “you miss my meaning. He
was
my brother.”
“Phil was your brother?”
“We were identical twins. Here,” he said, “look,” and removing an old black-and-white photograph from his wallet, he pushed the snapshot toward me. In the photo a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old youth, who bore a substantial but, considering the face I’d seen in the open casket, fallen-away resemblance to the Phil he had become, stood next to someone who might have been his mirror image. Both boys were beardless and, near their left temples, where, back in the plane in March, their heads had been covered by parka hoods, each had a tiny birthmark like a corporal’s chevrons. I saw the tzadik’s where he tapped at his temple. “Hmn,” he said, “hah? Hmn?”
“He was your brother? Phil?”
The falling away had occurred on both their parts, as if Phil had come to resemble a distant, younger cousin who would always look youthful, while old Posypuss, tricked out in his now fading flowers, was an actor, well cast but unrelated, carefully prepared by Hollywood makeup artists, to look like a relative, an uncle, say, even a grandfather, of the kids in the photograph.
“We were Tinnehs,” he said. “It’s the way with Tinnehs.”
“Beg pardon, Khokem?”
“Tinnehs. Tinneh Indians? I told you. In the plane? How the Tinnehs are tribeless, clanless. How they—we—break away from each other. Generation after generation. Highest divorce rate in Alaska. Alaska? The world. How the children are placed in orphan asylums when the parents run off? That picture was taken in the orphanage. Don’t you remember? Why don’t you listen? You think I talk for my health? Identical twins, I told you how even identical twins drift apart.”
He
had
mentioned identical twins. Phrases came back to me. They would, he’d said, “dissipate affinity, annihilate connection.” They moved, “down some chain of relation from sibling to friend, friend to neighbor, neighbor to acquaintance, and acquaintance to stranger.” And remembered his saying how once the Tinnehs outnumbered all the other tribes put together but were now “rare in the Alaskan population as Frenchmen.”
Now I recalled how interested I’d been, and the moment when the sun came up and he couldn’t finish his story because we had to take off.
We were back in Fairbanks, parked in front of the hotel where he was staying. I had to drop off my rental car at the airport before my flight, I told him.
“Well,” he said, “it was good seeing you.”
“Next time,” I said carefully, “on a better occasion.”
“Yeah,” he said, and put his hand out to open the door. For the first time I noticed the mourner’s band on the right sleeve of his coat.
“Listen,” I said, and touched him on the shoulder, “I’m sorry about Phil. I can’t tell you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “But you know something?”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, sloughing off my condolence, “we like drifted apart.”
Then he opened the door and got out. I started to turn the key in the ignition, but the man with the flowers in his beard was rapping on the window for my attention. I leaned across to roll the window down on his side and he pushed his big head into the car.
Up close, straight on, the beard seemed lopsided, lifeless. I caught the pinched, stale scent of mold. “Ain’t no murracles,” old Posypuss said, “I dud wished dey would was, but dey ain’t.”
As Petch had predicted, McBride let me play out my contract. As a matter of fact, he wouldn’t let me resign and
made
me play it out. I guess he thought I was pretty well seasoned by the time of those Rosh Hashanah services and didn’t figure even Alyeska could afford another greenhorn rabbi until the fiscal year ran out on the one they already had.
He never mentioned the Torahs. McBride, like the Eskimos, was a gentleman too.
Which isn’t to say I could ever stop thinking of Flowerface out there in the dark. Out on that iceberg, in that proper, heroic blackness he rubbed against like braille, yogi-ing his bloodstream and rearranging his metabolics and contemplating not the ways of God or even Man, but figuring red tape, the long odds of Corporate Life, how the Feds would probably require affirmative action, Prots and Mackerel—snappers and even Jews demanding rabbis, Torahs, the works, and what all this could mean to him at Alaskan prices, till he saw what it felt like to move at a glacier’s pace, a few fast feet a day with the wind in his face.
W
HERE,” I asked, “could we go?”
“Shh,” Shelley said afterward as we lay in each other’s arms in the dark. “Shh.”
“You told Connie we’d leave Lud. And do what? Where? How?”
“Shh. Shah. Ay le lu lu.”
“Where, Shelley? What would I do?”
“Later-le.”
“Later-le’s too late. Right-e-le now.”
“Leave-e-le now?”
“Talk-e-le now, ask-e-le questions afterward.”
Because it’s one thing to calm your kid down with easy promises, but I’m not talking about eat your greens, sweetheart, we’ll go get 31 flavors. Connie’s no fool. She had real problems, even—I say it—legitimate gripes. Not all that death prattle, of course, ghosts in the drinking water, phantoms in her pants. Not even my failure with God in the Stanley Bloom affair, nothing metaphysical. She had flawed birthrights, I think. A misser-out on the gemütlich circumstance, the curled and comfy lap-robe life. I don’t know, maybe it would have been better for her if she’d had an aversion to the four food groups, better if we could have done business, traded and bribed her, appetite for appetite, taken her to the mall more, kept her up past her bedtime, made nests for her in the back of the car and driven her home in the dark. Maybe we should have turned the radio low and shifted from texture to texture for her on the highways, playing the percussives and hypnotics of different road surfaces like some long, cozy organ, the dash’s soft glow and the averted headlamps of oncoming cars like light skimming along the walls and ceilings of dark bedrooms. But still her stinted birthright. She was an only child. She had no grandparents, no cousins, no uncles, no aunts. Was this mild orphan of relation. (“I’m the last of your line,” she told us once. “When I marry there’ll be no more Goldkorns,” she’d said, and burst into tears. “Please don’t cry,” Shelley said, “I’m the same as you are.” “Me too,” I said, “the fall of the House of Usherkorn.”) But another thing altogether to offer to change their life.
Which is what I’d been trying to impress upon Shelley.
“What?” I asked. “Where?”
“Anywhere,” she said drowsily.
“Anywhere. Shell?”
“Mnn?”
“What?”
“Anything-e-ling-e-ding-e-ling-e,” she murmured and then, I swear it, actually yawned in that pidgin Yiddish or whatever the hell else it was she thought she was speaking.
“Shelley, wake up, we’ve got to talk.” I shook my wife.
“What,” she said, “what is it?”
“A couple of days ago you told Connie we’d leave Lud and she believed you. Jesus, Shell, I believed you. All right, the kid hasn’t made a fuss, she hasn’t even brought it up again, but I see her watching me. Yesterday I told her I hadn’t had time to type up my resume yet but that I was working on it. Working on it. It would take me ten minutes! Two minutes to write and eight to find the envelope to stick it in, address, and drink the glass of water to get rid of the bad taste in my mouth from sealing it and licking the stamp. Only I’ll tell you, Shelley,” I said, “I’m fresh the hell out of ideas.”
“Poor Jerry.”
“Shelley, you don’t know.”
“Poor Jerry. So much on his head.”
“I mean really,” I said, “what experience have I had?”
“Thinking about Talmud all day. Talmud Talmud Talmud.”
“A man my age. It’s worse than being fired. Really,” I said, “it is. It really is.”
“Tch tch. Should I say something to Connie? I’ll say something to Connie. You want me to say something?”
“No,” I said, “the kid’s got real problems. You think I’d go along with any of this if I didn’t believe she had real problems?”
“She said ‘goddamn.’ She said ‘asshole’ to her papa.”
“They lay you off, at least they offer to retrain you. They teach you computer programming, give you a hundred dollars and a new suit.”
“Everything’s going to be fine. You worry too much.”
“Talmud Talmud Talmud.”
“I know,” Shelley said.
“So here’s what I’ve come up with.”
“What’s that?”
“We emigrate to Israel. They’d have to take us in. It’s the Law of the Return.”
“Emigrate? To Israel?”
“Sure,” I said. “It won’t be so bad. They set us up in a suitable kibbutz.”
“We emigrate to
Israel?”
“I thought you’d be pleased. You’d be an Israel-e-li.”
“But Jerry,” she said, “all we have to do is move to Fairlawn.”
“What?”
“Or Ridgewood.”
“What?”
“Or any of dozens of towns. We’ve got all northern Jersey to choose from.”
“Jesus,” I said, “northern Jersey!”
“Sure,” Shelley said, “I asked one of the girls in The Chaverot to be on the lookout, to tell me if she heard of a place. Elaine Iglauer?”
“Elaine Iglauer. The one who moves. Yes?”
“You should have heard the leads she came up with just off the top of her head.”
“Sure,” I said, “she knows her stuff.”
“She really does.”
“You’re telling me,” I said. “Seven houses in six different towns.”
“Oh, you’re behind. They’ve just closed on their eighth.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “That’s marvelous, that’s really wonderful.”
“Of course we’d have to buy,” she said. “We wouldn’t have the kind of deal we have here.”
“Utilities and taxes? No,” I said, “are you kidding? Who could expect to? Not me.”
“Joan Cohen said she’d shop around for a temple once Elaine’s found a place for us.”
“Joan Cohen,” I said. “The one who shops.”
A person’s so single-minded. When Shelley told Connie we’d leave Lud, I thought … But a person’s so single-minded. Our problems were solved. If it cost us a few bucks then it cost us a few bucks. Hey, you don’t get
all
the way through life on the arm. Who knew better than I? Wasn’t that what so many of my eulogies were about? Sacrifice? Being there for others? I had no problems with that. Anyway, hadn’t we been able to put a little something by? Weren’t we okay in that department? No mortgage payments, no rent, living scot-free years in a big white Colonial, 5 bdm, 31/2
bth, lg lvng rm w/fr pic, rmdld kchn, scrnd brzway, rbi’s stdy, grg, patio & swmng pl, convnt to grvs, crpts, tmbs & mslms? Of course it would take a hefty chunk out of the savings to replace something like that, but I could always take Klein and Charney up on their offer. In fact, I
would,
and decided to call them first thing in the morning. No, to call them that night and leave a message on their machine, to call Shull and Tober, too, and leave a message on theirs, that they could start drawing up the fancy new contracts with the no-cut clauses. (Of course a person has to sacrifice, but if he plays his cards right he might not even have to dip into capital.)
And hadn’t I, misunderstanding or no misunderstanding, and despite my relief—my relief came afterward, a solidly come-by, legitimately earned relief—already shown that
willingness
to sacrifice which ought, if it already wasn’t, to be all that God ever actually outright required of anyone—
vide
Abraham,
vide
Isaac—just that momentary glimpse of the revealed soul like a private part? Hadn’t I already fixed it in my head to go to the wall for my spooked daughter? Even unto such lengths that I was going to uproot everything I knew or was good at, as if everything I knew or was good at were some tainted husbandry, the rotten fruits of a bad season, and the wall was the wailing one. Next
month,
say, in Jerusalem? So never mind I was relieved. I knew what was in store for us if we emigrated. To humiliate myself and endanger my family. Jersey Jerry Goldkorn, the Klutz of the Kibbutz like a court jester, terrified of incoming on the northern border, terrified of incoming, period. Suspicious of ancient Arab ladies and gentlemen on the buses, suspicious of
everyone,
innocent-looking kids, the more innocent-looking the guiltier, as if an entire population had become suspects in a mystery, everyone, rabbis and shamuses and balebatish providers, a potentially turned Jew, trust and belief vitiated until all that there was left to believe in were the up-for-grab loyalties, some remarkable shifting double agency. (Besides, I was an American and not only had no use for terrorists but no business in politics. An American’s politics is his standard of living, and I say God bless him for that. Money and comfort. All else is vanity.)