“No, no, you speak good. You could teach me. I know this.”
Michael felt suddenly trapped; the rabbi was asking him to do something a lot more complicated than turning on a light switch.
“Money, I don’t have, to pay you with it,” the rabbi said. “But Yiddish I could teach you. You give me English, I give you Yiddish.”
Michael glanced at the bookcase. The rabbi looked poor. This room was as poor as any room on Ellison Avenue; by comparison, Sacred Heart was a palace. If the rabbi had a secret treasure, he certainly wasn’t using it for himself. But he did have this other treasure, right here in front of him: these mysterious books with their strange alphabets. For a moment, Michael felt people rising from the books, bearded men and dark-haired women, a soldier who hated war, a Frenchman who knew everything, all of them speaking languages he had never heard. They rose from the bookcase like a mist.
He wanted to speak to them and for them to speak to him. And perhaps that could be done. In this deep and endless Yukon winter, there was nothing much to do in the afternoons, no ball games to play, no aimless journeys around the parish with his friends. He had time on his hands. Too much time.
“You really think you can teach me Yiddish?” he said.
“Sure thing,” the rabbi said, pleased with his use of the American phrase.
“Well, we could try,” Michael said.
The rabbi smiled broadly.
“Good! Very good!” He drained his tea, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Yiddish is very great language, but not hard. Not hard like the English is hard. You can learn.” He slapped Michael on the back. “How you say it? Is a deal!”
Michael finished his tea and looked around for a clock. There was no clock. There was no radio either. He glanced at the heavy door in the corner.
“Is the church out there?” Michael said, feeling like a spy.
“Yes,” Rabbi Hirsch said. “But not a church. We say—” He leafed through the dictionary, ran his finger down a page. “Sanctuary.” He pronounced it sank-TOO-uh-rye. Michael said sanctuary for him. The rabbi repeated it several times.
“Can I see the mass, or whatever you call it? I mean, it’s not secret or anything, is it?”
“Yes, yes, is not the secret. You come sometime.”
So it was not a door to a treasure house, with gold ducats spilling from chests, and rubies and emeralds gleaming in the dim light. It was just a church. All he had to do now was convince Sonny. He turned to go and then saw the picture of the woman again.
“Is her name Judith?”
“No.” The rabbi paused. “Leah. Her name is Leah.” He stared at the framed photograph for a long time. “My wife.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Yes,” said Rabbi Hirsch. “But she’s dead.”
“I’m sorry, Rabbi,” the boy said.
“Is hard for a boy to understand, death.”
“My father’s dead too,” Michael said. “He was killed in the war.”
The rabbi turned away from his wife’s photograph.
“Excuse,” he said. “I am a fool. I think I am the only person with someone dead.”
“It’s okay, Rabbi,” Michael said.
“No. Death, is not okay for someone so young. At least I, I…” He couldn’t find the words. “I am very sorry.”
“Forget it,” the boy said. “I’m sorry about your wife, you’re sorry about my father. So next week we start English lessons.”
“Yiddish lessons,” the rabbi said.
“Both,” Michael said.
“Yes, both.”
8
January was full of storms.
In the first week, Michael saw a truck arrive outside Mister G’s candy store, its narrow hard-rubber wheels lurching over the scabbed ice, and fresh snow. Mister G’s sons carried out cartons, a table, suitcases, clocks, a bed, and a couch and then climbed into the truck with all that had belonged to them and drove away. They did not look back, nor did Frankie McCarthy come around to say goodbye.
A few days later, Unbeatable Joe assembled some of the regulars from his bar and produced ladders and planks and a winch and started the process or raising his sign to its former glory. The men worked. They drank whiskey. They heaved and groaned and cursed. They drank more whiskey. Michael, Sonny, and Jimmy watched from a warm vestibule across the street, snickering and making remarks. Unbeatable Joe and another man climbed to the planks and examined the steel rigging that was to hold the sign. Unbeatable Joe gestured down at the other men. Then the sign was raised on high, like a declaration of triumph.
But the wind began to blow hard, as it always did on Collins Street, and the men cursed and pulled on their ropes and backed up and rushed forward, and then the giant sign flew up in the air and came down with a tremendous crash, bringing the ladders, the planks, and Unbeatable Joe with it. The boys laughed and left the warmth of the doorway to watch Unbeatable Joe hopping on one foot and holding the other. The rest of the men were cursing and drinking whiskey from a bottle to stay warm.
And then Unbeatable Joe limped out of the bar with a huge fire axe and began to chop at the sign in a maniacal rage, his eyes wide, his hair rising in spikes, his nostrils flaring, and when he was exhausted, he handed the axe to one of the other men and that man chopped at the sign and passed it to another, who gave it to another, and back to Unbeatable Joe, and now there was a crowd, all cheering, guys from the factory across the street, women with shopping bags, kids from over on Pearse Street, urging the men on, raising fists. A police car came along and stopped and the cops got out, but the men just kept battering and smashing and splintering the sign until there was only a pile of broken pieces left, and the crowd roared, even the cops.
“Get me a broom,” Unbeatable Joe said. “We gotta sweep up this fuckin’ sign.”
When Michael told Rabbi Hirsch about this a few days later, his blue eyes danced and he laughed from his belly.
“The goyim are crazy,” he said.
Michael didn’t tell Rabbi Hirsch that some of the goyim were crazy in a different way. On the day of the destruction of Unbeatable Joe’s sign, Michael sat in the hallway beside the roof door with Sonny and Jimmy. It was too cold now to play in the streets. And Michael had begun to understand what Jack London meant when he described cabin fever.
“So what’s the story?” Sonny said.
“What do you mean?”
“The synagogue. What’d you find out?” Michael sighed.
“There’s nothing to find out,” he said. “The rabbi’s poorer than we are, Sonny. He’s got no telephone, he’s got no radio, he lives in one small room like a goddamned pauper.”
“That could be a, whatta you call it, a disguise.”
“Come on, Sonny. If there was a treasure, he could just take it over New York, sell it, and go somewhere that’s warm. Florida or someplace. What’s he need to be in the synagogue all day in his overcoat for?”
“To fool us,” Jimmy said.
“You mean fool me,” Michael said. “He doesn’t even know you and Sonny are alive.”
“It’s the same difference,” Jimmy said. “All for one and one for all, right?”
“Right, but…”
Sonny leaned forward.
“Maybe he don’t know there’s a treasure there.”
Michael and Jimmy looked at him.
“Maybe… it was buried, or put in the fucking walls or something, and the last rabbi, he knew where it was, or had a map, or some secret code, and then that rabbi died before he could pass it on. Maybe that’s why he acts like it ain’t there.”
Michael stiffened. A week ago, he was thinking the same thing.
“But if that’s the case, what do we do?” he said. “Tear the building down?”