“Well, to go to a funeral is traditionally considered a blessing, a mitzvah.”
“Mitzvah nothing! I wanted to make damn sure he got buried…”
The maid put her head in the door. “Your father is awake now, Mr. Goralsky.”
As they started up the staircase, Goralsky said, “Not a word about the cemetery business, Rabbi. I don’t want my father upset.”
“Of course not.”
The old man was out of bed and sitting in a chair when his son and the rabbi entered. He extended a thin, blue-veined hand in greeting.
“See, Rabbi, I fasted and now I’m getting better.”
The rabbi smiled at him. “I’m happy to see you looking so well, Mr. Goralsky.”
“So well, I’m not yet.” He glared at his son. “Benjamin, are you going to let the rabbi stand? Get him a chair.”
“Oh, really you don’t have to trouble.” But Ben had already left the room. He came back carrying a chair, and set it down for the rabbi. He himself sat on the edge of the bed.
“I missed Kol Nidre,” the old man went on, “for the first time in my life. Not once, since I was maybe five years old, did I stay away from the Kol Nidre service. My Ben tells me you gave a fine sermon.”
The rabbi glanced covertly at Ben, who pursed his lips in a mute plea not to give him away. The rabbi grinned. “You know how it is, Mr. Goralsky, for Yom Kippur one tries a little harder. Next year, you’ll be able to judge for yourself.”
“Who knows if there’ll be a next year. I’m an old man and I’ve worked hard all my life.”
“Well, that’s what gives you your vitality. Hard work-”
“He’s been saying that for as long as I can remember,” said Ben.
The old man looked at his son reproachfully. “Benjamin, you interrupted the rabbi.”
“I was only going to say that hard work never hurt anyone, Mr. Goralsky. But you mustn’t worry about what will happen a year from now. You must concentrate on getting well.”
“That’s true. One never knows whose turn will come next. Once, a few years ago, I had a sore on my face like a wart. I read the Jewish papers, Rabbi, and they have there every day a column from a doctor. Once it said that a sore like this could become, God forbid, a cancer. So I went to the hospital. The young doctor who examined me thought maybe I was worried the sore would spoil my looks. Maybe he thought I was an actor and wanted to look pretty. He asked me how old I was. Then I was maybe seventy-five. So when I told him, he laughed. He said if you were younger maybe we’d operate, like with a man my age it was a waste of time. So he gave me a salve, I should put it on and come back the next week. The next week when I come back, is already a different doctor. So I asked where’s the doctor from last week, and they told me he had been killed in an automobile accident.”
“Serves him right,” said Ben.
“Idiot! You think I was complaining he was making fun of me? He was a fine young man, a doctor. What I mean is you can’t tell who God will pick first. I understand the Hirsh boy died, right on the night of Kol Nidre. He was a good boy, too, and educated.”
“He was a drunkard,” said Ben.
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “Used to be, Rabbi, a drunkard was a terrible thing. But only a couple days ago I was reading in the Jewish paper, in this same column from the doctor, how a drunkard he’s like a sick person-it’s not his fault.”
“He took his own life, Papa.”
The old man nodded sadly. “That’s a terrible thing. He must have suffered a lot. Maybe he couldn’t stand it to be a drunkard. He was an educated boy. So maybe for him to be a drunkard was like for another person to have a cancer.”
“You knew him well?” asked the rabbi.
“Isaac Hirsh? Sure, I knew him when he was born. I knew his father and mother. She was a fine woman, but the husband, the father, he was a nothing.” He canted his head on one side in reflection. “It’s hard to know what to do, what’s right. Here was Hirsh who never did an honest day’s work in his life. Even while his wife was alive, he used to be interested in the ladies. They used to say that a decent woman didn’t want to go into his shop for a fitting. He made with the hands-you know what I mean. And when she died, he could hardly wait to get married again. Yet his son was an educated boy who went through college on scholarship and even became a doctor, a Ph.D. doctor. And I, what I worked hard all my life and I observed all the regulations, not one of my four children went to college.”
“Well-”
“And yet, Rabbi, on the other side, all my children, they’re in good health, they’re well off, and they’re all good to me. And Isaac Hirsh didn’t even come to his father’s funeral, and now he too is dead. So you can’t tell.”
“Then you feel differently now about Hirsh’s burial,” suggested the rabbi.
The old man’s mouth set in a hard line. “No, Rabbi,” he said. “A rule is a rule.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
No formal announcement was made by the district attorney; only a short notice appeared in the inside pages of the Lynn Examiner stating that the district attorney’s office was looking into the circumstances surrounding the death September 18 of Isaac Hirsh of 4 Bradford Lane, Barnard’s Crossing, and that a petition might be filed for an order to exhume the body.
Marvin Brown caught the item as he glanced through the paper during his morning coffee break and called Mortimer Schwarz immediately.
“I’ll bet the rabbi had something to do with that, Mort. It’s a trick-it’s one of the rabbi’s little tricks, I tell you.” He sounded excited.
“But how could the rabbi get to the district attorney? And what does he gain by it?”
“He’s thick as thieves with Chief Lanigan and Lanigan goes to the D.A. As for what he stands to gain-why, he stops us from going ahead.”
“You mean with the road? What’s that got to do with the D.A.’s investigation?”
“Well, wouldn’t it look kind of funny if we start building a road to set off the very grave they’re interested in? The paper said they were going to exhume the body. Wouldn’t that look nice while they’re digging up the body for us to be laying out the road? You don’t think there’d be questions?”
“I still don’t see anything for us to get excited about, Marve. Obviously there’s no connection between our work and theirs. And frankly, I can’t imagine the rabbi going to all that trouble, especially where it doesn’t change things the least bit. You know what I think? This guy Beam, the investigator for the insurance company, he must have got the ball rolling on this. After all, he represents a big insurance company that has a lot at stake. My guess is that they’d have a lot more influence with the district attorney than the rabbi would.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, Mort, I’m not going ahead with the road business until after the district attorney is out of there.”
“Personally, I don’t see it. But if you feel that way, okay, so we’ll wait a week.”
“But what about the Board meeting Sunday? It’s not safe to go ahead with the rabbi’s resignation while this business with Hirsh is still hanging fire.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a point there, Marve. You sure you don’t want to go ahead with our plans-”
“No.”
“All right, I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll call off the Board meeting.”
“Isn’t that kind of high-handed?”
“I don’t think so. As president I can call a special meeting, can’t I?”
“Sure, but-”
“So why can’t I call off a meeting? Matter of fact, I could just call up our friends and tell them not to show. Then we wouldn’t have a quorum.”