I returned to the Eldridge Street shul the following Saturday too — but Jiri wasn’t there. The gabbai told me why.
“Dr. Krupka-Weisz called yesterday from Beth Israel.”
“The hospital? My goodness, what happened?”
“He didn’t tell me. But if you want to see him, he’s in Room 233.”
“Have you seen his wife?”
“Wife? I didn’t know Dr. Krupka-Weisz was married. Are you a personal friend?”
“I just became acquainted with him here a couple of weeks ago. Remember, you gave me an aliya?”
“Of course. Amschl ben Moshe.”
I marveled at his memory.
“That’s a gabbai’s job. To have memory.”
“Room 233? I’ll go see him soon. Probably tomorrow.”
“I will too,” the gabbai said.
That night I dreamt of Jiri, even though I usually dream only of abstract people or close family. I’m in a subway car, locale unknown, and I see him sitting opposite me. He gives me an OK sign. He opens a book by K and from it flies a dove. It flutters around the car until it spots a man holding a bouquet from which the dove pulls a tiny leaf. The dove brings the green leaf to me. Again Jiri gives me the OK sign. Then I notice Betty, stolid Betty, sitting there too, and she, even she, allows me a small smile.
It was a shock to see Jiri in bed. His head was uncovered and his round glasses were on the nightstand. He was pale but wasn’t attached to an IV. I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad sign. Some kind of monitor that looked like a stereo receiver intermittently flashed thin red lines on a small screen.
“Oh,” he said, a happy smile crinkling his wan features. “How did you know I was here?”
“Easy. I saw the gabbai in shul yesterday. How are you feeling?”
“So-so.” And he spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. “Maybe my good genes are getting tired.”
Above Jiri’s head a framed print hung on the wall. It was a happy Miro design full of swirling colors, starbursts of yellow and chartreuse and burnt orange, and, if you stared long enough, the seeming outline of a smiling face.
I almost didn’t notice Betty in the easy chair. Her dark blue sweater and slacks melted into the blue chair and only her swarthy face was seen.
“I’m so glad you came,” Jiri said. “I was thinking about you.”
“And I missed you in shul yesterday, and so did the old man you helped last time.”
“Ay, ay, bruderl, der mentch tracht un Gott lacht,” he quoted the Yiddish apothegm. “Man makes plans but God laughs; or, man proposes but God disposes.”
I liked that Yiddish word, bruderl. It meant, literally, “little brother,” but was used to signify “pal,” “buddy,” “good friend.”
To change the mood, I said enthusiastically, “Well, I’m going…”
Up piped Betty. “But you just came, mister. Stay another few minutes.”
“I didn’t finish. I wanted to say that I’m starting to work on plans for my trip to Prague.”
“Wonderful,” said Jiri. “Don’t forget Yossi at the Altneu. He’ll be a good shadchen, a good matchmaker, for you,” here he took a deep breath and sighed slowly, “to meet interesting people. When I go back home, I’ll give you more names and addresses. But Yossi is the key.”
In response, as a gesture of friendship, I was about to share with Jiri a fascinating bit of personal information that few people knew, but just then Betty began speaking that language she had used briefly in their apartment last week. This time Jiri responded.
The language was so unfamiliar I couldn’t even place it. Betty spoke more than Jiri. I picked up the shards of her words, tried to reconstruct them, but they fell apart like dry clods. It was like working with a jigsaw puzzle not only on the verso side but with the little rounded tentacles snipped off. What I was able to dredge up fit no language, no syntax, I knew. I had a hunch it wasn’t Czech. In fact, I was sure it wasn’t.
Then two phrases surfaced. Each was two words and the first was the same in both phrases. Again and again I heard Betty exclaim “tara pilus” and “tara glos.” Jiri repeated the phrases but preceded them with “nepa”—“nepa tara pilus,” “nepa tara glos.” After a while, among the jibble jabble, bibble babble, I gathered that the phrases meant “too young” and “too old,” and that “nepa” was a negative — with Jiri arguing “not too young” and “not too old.”
How did I penetrate those phrases? I’ll tell you how. Why did they use them? I’ll tell you why. The how is fact, the why speculation. I kept hearing the word “tara” before “pilus” and before “glos.” So I assumed it was a modifier. Then, once or twice, when Betty said “tara pilus,” she stretched her hand, palm down flat, and lowered it to the floor, as if indicating a child or young person; one other time, when she said “tara glos,” she ran her thumb and forefinger over her chin, as if stroking the hairs of an imaginary beard. It then dawned on me that “tara pilus” meant “too young” and “tara glos” too old. That’s the how.
The why is guesswork. Perhaps they wanted me to get the hint and when — and if — the time (whatever time it was) came, to act accordingly. Then again, even if I was right on those phrases, what did they have to do with me? If it had anything to do with me. And, anyway, what was I too young or too old for?
Then, suddenly — as if in mid-phrase — Betty said:
“So you were born in Prague, right, mister?”
I nodded, amazed that at last I was understanding their language. It took a moment for me to realize that she had spoken English. Betty and Jiri exchanged glances; then, without so much as a pause, or shift in gears, they resumed speaking.
Nevertheless, despite my frustration, their language fascinated me. I almost didn’t want them to stop. I felt I had landed in an undiscovered bourne, was hearing something no one had heard before. Did they speak in etymons or glyphs, metaphors or metonyms? I don’t know. I was hypnotized, paid scant attention to the hum of the hospital, Jiri’s shifting positions in bed, Betty’s rocking motion as she spoke, the coming and going of nurses, the stereo broadcasting its zigzag thin red lines. All I know is I didn’t understand a word. No, that’s not quite so. I could understand a word, about one in seventy. I understood but couldn’t grasp its meaning. The words came to me in spurts. As if a radio was on and every few seconds the volume knob was suddenly turned left and right, erratically, maliciously. It sounded like waves rushing, as if someone had clapped palms over my ears, then opened and shut them, oo-wah, oo-wah, oo-wah, the rush, the arrhythmic swoosh of words, then silence. Maybe they were using reverse phonemes, or perhaps articulating logographic symbols.
But there were moments — like in a fleeting daydream or in an exhaustion-induced, sleep-deprived hallucination, the sort of one-second waking dream that seems to last for minutes — when I thought I understood them, and I imagined myself in Prague (I knew they were speaking of Prague even though they didn’t mention Prague; how could they not be speaking of Prague?), in some exotic, surprising locale, discovering people and sites no one knew of, like perhaps a secret entrance to the Altneu synagogue attic or a magical shul no one knew about. Perhaps rescue a damsel in distress or become a hero of my own film. And my video camera is capturing every moment.
Imagine this contradiction. They spoke slowly. I heard quickly. Words and sentences compressed by locomotives huffing at both ends. Adding to the verbal traps were the glottal stops in Jiri’s remarks, the!clicks in Betty’s chatter. They spoke in sonorants and yeks, they alternated voiced and unvoiced aspirants. I wish I could have recorded them. I couldn’t tell if the arcane phrases, spoken in what I now presumed was High Double Dutch, were purposeful or spontaneous. Who knows, perhaps all of it was amphigoric speech.