For a moment, Charlie Senator glared at the Falcons, as if he were thinking the same things, then went back to work, putting his weight on his good leg as he bent into the paint with his rags. Lighting cigarettes, jingling change in their pockets, the Falcons watched the Christians cleaning the swastikas from the synagogue and then went bopping away to the park.
Finally, it was done. The walls were lighter where the swastikas had been painted. But the light patches had irregular shapes and didn’t indicate what had been put there on an Easter morning. Rabbi Hirsch walked back and forth alone, mounted the steps leading to the sealed front door of the upstairs sanctuary, examining the walls, then came back to the men. He was still shaking his head, his mouth a bitter slash. The men had finished cleaning their hands and pulling on their jackets and neckties. Most were sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes and wolfing down the buns from the bakery. They looked awkward now, saying little, staring at the wall or the sidewalk or the sky. In the war, Michael thought, they must have soldiered with Jews. But they certainly didn’t know many rabbis. The synagogue was as strange a place to them as it was to Michael on that first morning of ice and snow. He saw Rabbi Hirsch flex his fingers as if to shake hands, but his hands were covered with paint.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” the rabbi said hoarsely.
“Here, Rabbi, use this stuff to get the paint off your hands,” said Mr. Gallagher, dipping a rag into the solvent. “It smells awful, but it does the job.”
“Thank you, and thank you, Father Heaney,” the rabbi said, cleaning his hands. “And Michael…”
His body shook in a dry, choked way, but he would not weep.
“I wish to the synagogue, you all could come,” the rabbi said. “To have a big seder together.… But food we don’t have here, just tea, and matzoh, and—”
“It’s all right, Rabbi,” Father Heaney said. “Some other time.”
The rabbi bowed in a stiff, dignified way. Michael looked at his eyes and saw that he did not believe there would be another time. They would all go back to their world and he would stay in his.
“I’ll see you, Rabbi,” Mr. Gallagher said, and grabbed the pail, emptying the solvents into the gutter, nodding to the others to retrieve the mops. “Let’s move out,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
Charlie Senator glanced at his watch and then at Father Heaney.
“Well,” he said, “I better go do my Easter duty.”
“You just did,” Father Heaney said, popping a Camel from his pack.
22
That afternoon, after hanging up his suit and taking a bath to wash away the odor of the solvents, Michael handed his mother the five dollars. He explained about Mrs. Griffin but didn’t tell her the details of his dreams.
“Och, Michael, you should keep it,” she said, holding each corner of the bill with thumb and forefinger. “It was your dream.”
“No, let’s save it for a phonograph.” He told her about the composers Rabbi Hirsch had mentioned, finding their names written into his notebook. Smetana, Dvořák, Mahler. “We can hear all the music they don’t play on the radio.”
“Fair enough,” she said, and put the bill in her purse.
Then they sat down to an early dinner. Kate Devlin did not mention what had happened at the synagogue, so he knew she must have taken the trolley car to the eight o’clock mass at Sacred Heart. If she had walked, she’d have seen the swastikas. But Michael did not want to spoil the meal by relating the events of the morning. The meal was the reason she’d risen so early to go to mass and had then rushed home to scrub potatoes and peel carrots, and prepare the small pot roast for the amazing oven of the new gas stove. That, and one other thing: although she had paid for a new suit for Michael, she did not buy an Easter outfit for herself. “I think I’ll skip the fashion show at the eleven o’clock mass, thank you very much,” she’d said before leaving. Now the kitchen was filled with the aroma of the roast, and before they sat down she toasted the hametz that Rabbi Hirsch had sent to them for Passover.
“Well, happy Easter, son,” she said, “and to all the others who don’t have food.”
She said grace then, with Michael adding an “amen,” and they began to eat. The meat was pink and savory and he cut off small pieces and tried to chew them slowly. He still ate much faster than his mother did. He slathered butter on the opened potatoes and the crunchy toasted hametz. He piled more carrots on his plate. She cautioned him about using too much salt. He sipped cold water. Then he told her what a seder was and how Jesus and the disciples were actually at a seder when they had the Last Supper and how next year Rabbi Hirsch wanted them to come to a seder at the synagogue and was going to invite Jackie Robinson too. Kate Devlin thought that was a wonderful idea and said she would cook and they could carry the food up to Kelly Street.
But when dinner was almost over, he told her what had happened that morning. Kate Devlin was furious about the swastikas and thrilled at what Father Heaney and the men had done.
“At least they’re not all a bunch of bigots,” she said. “There’s still a lot of decent people around here, no matter what you might think.”
They talked about how the police had to find the people with the red paint and how it was probably the Falcons, since Frankie McCarthy had come by with his boys to see the results. They usually ate breakfast when other people ate lunch.
“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes,” she said, “to figure that one out.”
But as this was Easter Sunday, and she wanted to make it special for the boy, she didn’t dwell on the story. It was one more terrible event in a sinful world. After dinner, they walked together to the Grandview, where she was working that night. This was a big deal for Michaeclass="underline" because there was no school on Easter Monday, he could sit through the entire double feature, along with cartoons, the newsreel, and the coming attractions, while Kate worked in the box office. And he would go home with her when the pictures were over. She took him through the lobby to a side door, bought him a box of Good and Plenty candies, and then went to the box office.
The first movie was a western with Joel McCrea, and although he missed the beginning, he felt as if he’d already seen it ten times at the Venus, with different actors. The other movie was 13 Rue Madeleine, with James Cagney, all about four OSS spies who infiltrated France to destroy a secret German rocket base before D day. The address in the title was Gestapo headquarters, and one of the OSS agents was secretly a German spy. Michael disappeared into the movie, training with Cagney, operating secret radios in barns and basements, moving bravely down dark European streets in a holy mission against the Nazis. When it was over, he felt uneasy. The swastikas were obviously symbols of evil, the Nazis were clearly the bad guys. How could anybody copy the Nazis by putting swastikas on a synagogue? Probably the Falcons. But maybe someone else. Maybe people right here in the RKO Grandview.
His feeling of unease worsened when the newsreel came on after the coming attractions, just before the Joel McCrea picture was to play again for the last time that night and he could see what he had missed. Part of the newsreel was about Jackie Robinson signing with the Dodgers. It showed Branch Rickey shaking hands with the smiling black player, and film of Robinson in Havana, slashing a ball to left field and dashing to first in a pigeon-toed way, his hat falling off as he rounded the base. Some people cheered. But about half the audience booed. In Brooklyn! They were booing a Dodger!