Rabbi Meltzer was sitting at his desk watching, but not with particular interest, the fact that Mr. Belkin, the jeweller, and Mr. Hirsch, the druggist, were trying to outbid one another, but the incremental rise at each bid was not large enough to catch the attention of everybody.
“Benny,” the rabbi called, giving me a warm unshaven Saturday morning smile. “Gut shabbas. What brings you out on a Saturday? Have I ever seen you on a Saturday? I don’t think so.” He cleared a place beside him and I sat down. We both watched Mr. Hecht’s large eyes as magnified by his thick glasses. He looked for an advance on fifty dollars from Mr. Belkin. Mr. Hirsch went up a dollar. “It won’t hit sixty,” the rabbi said. “Belkin’s courage always fails him around fifty-five or six. What can I do for you, Benny? I expected to hear from you.”
“Is it all right to talk?” I asked. “Here, I mean?”
“Why not? I can’t get away, Benny. If you want to talk this morning, this is where I am.” I’d been more concerned with the correctness of talking sordid business in shul than simply having the rabbi to myself, but I let that pass. Rabbi Meltzer waved his hand and mimed something to the right-hand side of the congregation, and shortly we were joined by Mr. Tepperman.
“Good-morning, Benny. Is your father here?”
“Morning, Saul. No, he’s home and in bed where he is most Saturday mornings.” The sun coming into the synagogue glinted for a moment on one of Saul’s gold teeth. There was silence all around us. Hirsch had won the auction, and the rabbi was now needed. He got up and the service continued. Mr. Tepperman let me look at his prayer book as various members of the congregation were called up to the bema to read a small portion. It all seemed to be building up to something, and then it hit me: I recognized David and Lou Gorbach beaming up there. Then the rabbi called out in his familiar sing-song for Lou Gorbach’s boy to come up to the bema. A nervous thirteen-year-old in long pants went up the step and took his position, like he was over-rehearsed. He read the blessings in a strained voice that carried up to the balcony where his mother was sitting. “Vilosechi h’oretz eschem …” The musical decoration was simple and repetitive. I remember that the musical clues were written on the text, curlicues like accents above the words which indicated the next sequence of notes. The boy’s voice cracked a few times, just enough to bring tears to the eyes of most of the women in the balcony, and when he finally came to the end he became the centre of a hail of tiny paper bags with candy in them. Nothing changes in Grantham. I remember scrambling with the younger kids to collect as many of the bags as I could when I was little. Then I remembered that as I stood there on the bema in my first pair of long pants after reading my mafter, suddenly I was a man, too old to scramble for candy. I knew then that there was such a thing as dignity and I didn’t think I liked it.
The Gorbach boy didn’t pick up any candy either. It was a coming-of-age ceremony, and as such things go around the world, relatively painless. The only hazard in my day was getting my cheek pinched by the old rabbi when I got something right.
“My dear rabbi, beloved grandparents, relatives and friends …” The little so-and-so was now giving my speech. He got a few things different and changed some of the details because he’d read a different part from the Torah, but the thrust was the same and so were the lessons to be learned from the text. I felt violated by a thirteen-year-old. I picked up a small bag of candy that had landed at my feet and began feeling better right away.
“Nathan Geller has had a call from his missing brother,” I said to Saul Tepperman. “At least he says so.” I added that to show that I didn’t believe it was necessarily true. “He says that Larry’s in Florida. Daytona Beach.”
“And you believe he’s anywhere but Daytona Beach is that right, Benny?”
“It doesn’t make sense that he would tell me where his brother is hiding.” Saul Tepperman licked his lips and ran his finger over his moustache as though he was confirming that he still existed. “Look, Saul, he could be downstairs for all I know. I’ve talked to everybody in sight. It’s like running a stick against a picket fence. One piece makes the same noise as the last. This thing with Nathan, well, I don’t know. I’ll go see him.”
“You mean you’ll stay with the case?”
“I said I’d took around for a few days. That was last Wednesday. I don’t know, Saul. To find out where Larry’s gone will take a bigger organization that I can offer.”
“Look, if you could stay with it until next week.” He turned his head making a helpless gesture.
“In the meantime I’m not making a living, Saul. I’ve got a licence that has to be renewed and I don’t have the five hundred dollars it takes. If I don’t get renewed, I’ll be just another interested amateur.” I said this, then remembered Bagot’s five bills in my wallet. The way I was thinking, it wasn’t the same as real money. I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax with my debts until I’d put the money in an envelope addressed to Glenn Bagot.
“We’re meeting on Thursday,” Saul Tepperman said. I didn’t see how it followed.
“Eh?”
“The committee. I’ll tell them what you’ve done and at the very least they’ll pay you for the time you’ve already spent.” I wondered what he imagined was the most that the committee might do for my sagging affairs, but I let it pass.
“Saul, who in town, apart from his legal friends and his family, was closest to Larry Geller?”
“Apart from them …” he stroked his moustache between his thumb and the knuckle of his first finger, the one I used to call Peter Pointer. (The others were Tom Thumb, Toby Tall, Reuben Ring and Baby Finger.) “Apart from them I don’t think there was anybody. Close, you know what I mean. A family man, that’s what he was.”
“Or appeared to be,” I added, and once I’d said it, the more I liked the idea. The rabbi had now rejoined us, having quietened a dispute at the back over a procedural wrangle. On these occasions he can shut everybody up with the single word, “Sha!” spoken in a loud stage whisper. I asked him the same question I’d just posed to Saul and got the same answer with this addition: “Why not ask Nathan some further questions. If I had to guess which of his brothers Larry was closest to, I’d say it was Nathan not Sid. Sid was more like a father to the two of them. Talk to Nathan. God forbid we shouldn’t get to the bottom of this thing.” I said “Amen” and left the synagogue as quickly as I could, congratulating the Gorbachs at the door and dodging their invitation to join them downstairs in the vestry rooms for a small kiddush.
Once back behind the wheel of the car, I felt like myself again. There was something about religion that made me nervous. It was too closely connected with childish nightmares to leave me feeling wholly grown up and driving my own car. After an hour in the shul I felt an urge to turn over a new leaf and become a better person. It was the bacon in my stomach giving me heartburn and not God’s interference in my life that made me stop the car and buy some antacid tablets. That took care of my metaphysical speculations for about ten minutes.