“I’m Solomon,” he said.
“How do you do?” Mullaney said. “Mr. Solomon...”
“Come, I’ll get you a Siddur,” Solomon said. “You’re from the neighborhood?”
“No. As a matter of fact...”
“You’ll forgive me, Melinsky,” Solomon said, “but you forgot to put on your yarmoulke,” and tapped the top of his head.
Mullaney hesitated a moment. Then, thinking a bare head might defile the temple, and not wishing to offend either Solomon or especially God, he quickly put the skullcap on and said, “Mr. Solomon, there’s something...”
“We’re Orthodox, you know,” Solomon said.
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. So you’d suppose, in this neighborhood especially, it would be easy to find ten men for a minyen, nu?”
“I suppose so,” Mullaney said.
“Especially on the shabbes.”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“But it’s very difficult. Believe me, you are performing a real mitsva.”
“Yes,” Mullaney said.
“You didn’t take a tallis. Take a tallis, hurry. Goldman gets impatient. We’ve been waiting here since seven o’clock this morning. These days, religion is a difficult business. Nobody cares, nobody comes, only the old men who are already dying. Look, we have to send somebody out on the street yet to find a Jew so we can pray. Ach,” he said and shook his head.
“I see,” Mullaney said, beginning to understand at last.
Solomon took one of the silk shawls from the rack and draped it over Mullaney’s shoulders. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “We all know you’re a stranger.” He smiled. “It’s no sin to pray with strangers.”
“I guess not,” Mullaney said.
“I’ll get you the Siddur,” Solomon said, moving toward a shelf of books on the left-hand side of the room. “Do you remember your Hebrew?”
“Well... well, no. No, I don’t. As a matter of fact, Mr. Solomon...”
“It’s in English also, you’ll be able to follow. Besides, it all comes back. You’ll be surprised how it all comes back.”
“I’ll be very surprised,” Mullaney said.
“Why? When was the last time you were inside a temple?”
“When Feinstein died.”
“Isadore Feinstein from Washington Heights?”
“No, Abraham Feinstein from the Grand Concourse.”
“Anyway, a person shouldn’t have to die for people to pray. It’s almost too late already by then.”
“I guess so,” Mullaney said.
“Come, we’re starting. Goldman is a good reader. He could have been a khazn.”
“Mr. Solomon,” Mullaney said, “I really feel I should tell you...” and suddenly heard footsteps on the street upstairs. He hesitated. The other old men had taken seats already and were watching Goldman, who had his back to them, a book open on the altar before him. The room was silent as they awaited the opening words of the service. Into the silence came not Goldman’s voice, but K’s from the sidewalk outside the open windows.
“Where’d the bastard go?” he shouted, and the words would have sounded obscene even if they hadn’t been.
“How about that store across the street?” Purcell answered. “You think he’s in there?”
“I don’t know. Let’s take a look.”
“Wait! What’s this door here?”
Mullaney held his breath.
“I think it’s a synagogue,” K said.
“Shhh.”
“I don’t hear anything,” K said.
“Don’t they pray in synagogues?”
In that moment (and Mullaney could have kissed him, beard and all) Goldman began reciting the opening words of the service. His voice rang out in clear and vibrant tones, the Hebrew filling the room in ancient meter, carrying across the heads of the old men sitting in their prayer shawls, rising to the high open windows at street level.
“It’s a synagogue,” K said, “I told you.”
“Let’s try that store,” Purcell said.
Mullaney let out his breath.
“Page eleven,” Solomon whispered beside him.
He listened to their retreating footsteps. Over the sound of the footsteps, fading, came Goldman’s resonant voice, and the answering chant of the old Jewish men. He found page eleven. Each right-hand page of the prayer book was printed in Hebrew, he saw, each left-hand page in English.
“Here,” Solomon said, and pointed to a line on the English page.
Mullaney realized at once that, despite the English translation, he would have difficulty following the service, the Hebrew words tumbling in ritual splendor from the front of the temple, the mumbled answers coming discordantly and out of phase from the congregation — he wondered suddenly where the rabbi was, wasn’t there supposed to be a rabbi around? Solomon, ever helpful, turned pages for Mullaney, pointed out new lines to him, and each time Mullaney nodded, and read the words in English and finally despaired of keeping up, and decided instead to conduct his own service because he hated to see a sabbath go to waste. He roamed through the prayer book at will, learning, for example, that the prayer shawl around his shoulders was called a tallith (though it most certainly had sounded like tallis when both Goldman and Solomon pronounced it). He was amazed by the numerical significance attached to the threads of the fringe, because apparently four threads were separated from the others and then twisted tightly seven times around the remaining seven threads, after which a double knot was tied. It was then twisted another eight times and fastened with a second double knot; eleven more times and yet another knot; and then another thirteen times and a final double knot. Seven plus eight, Mullaney learned, equaled fifteen, which was the numerical value of 
, a Hebrew symbol he could not translate. Eleven, on the other hand, equaled 
, and thirteen equaled 
,[1] meaning “The Lord is One.” Furthermore, Mullaney learned, the numerical value of the word 
was 600, which, together with the eight threads and five knots, made a total of 613, the exact number of the 248 positive and 365 negative precepts of the Torah. He did not know what the Torah was, but he was enormously impressed by the very logical mathematical precision of the religion. So engrossed was he in learning all about the tallith (he would have to tell Solomon how to pronounce it correctly) that he did not realize the congregation was standing, and only joined them after Solomon tugged at his sleeve. He had always been a sucker for God, Mullaney supposed as the Hebrew words rang around him, always a sucker for the Latin mumbo-jumbo of the Catholic church in which he’d been raised, the trappings of the priests, he had to admit Catholics knew a lot more about show biz than Jews, at least when it came to costume design; you couldn’t compare any of these talliths (was that how the word had got corrupted) with what Catholic priests and altar boys wore during mass. The church, on the other hand, had never come up with a triple parlay like 600, and 8, and 5, combining to form the exact number of precepts in the Torah, whatever that was. He could remember even now, and he missed the aroma here in church on the sabbath, the musky smell of incense, the priest swinging his thurible, and the words et cum spiritu tuo — the congregation was sitting now, he wished there were some incense here.
1
Возможно в этом слове есть ошибка. Первой буквой должна быть ד.
Perhaps this word has an error. The first letter must be ד.