I read selected passages. I read “O woman of valor who can find?” from Proverbs. I read the twenty-third psalm. I did other selected passages while Shull’s and Tober’s people set up additional chairs for the latecomers. I did “I lift up mine eyes unto the hills” and “Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; praise Him with the psaltery and harp.”
Then, scanning the faces of the mourners — Shelley glared; Connie, seated beside Hershorn, was openly snarling — I waited until the last seat was taken, and began.
“Joan Cohen never married,” I said. “Raised in the values of the traditional Jewish family, she never chose to indulge herself as a ‘single parent,’ and so remained childless. Save for her beloved parents, of course — and it’s typical of Joan how, as a good daughter, she was ever conscious of her mother’s and father’s worries for her (incidentally, one of my fondest memories of Joan is how once, in Philadelphia, she confided in me as her rabbi and spoke of exactly this subject — their concern that she meet Mr. Right, settle down, and make a good Jewish home) — she may be said to have left no survivors.
“Yet there are so many here. How crowded it is! Additional chairs have been set up to accommodate the overflow. And still people stand at the back of the chapel and along its walls. So many, so very many, heedless of ordinance, in defiance of the safety codes, willing to put themselves at risk! Why? In order to pay Joan our last respects? A childless, single woman who never married and left as survivors only her grieving mother and heartbroken father? So many? So much respect?”
Shull was weeping. (What this must do to his pleasure, I thought absently. How it must play hell with it. How many thousands it will cost him just to break even again.)
“As you know, Joan was a talented musician. Her group was called ‘Chaverot,’ Hebrew for ‘fellowship,’ and what a jolly good fellowship it was! I see her fellows in the fellowship here. I see other musicians, bandsmen whose privilege it may once have been to accompany Joan.
“But can you all be musicians? And who are we talking about here anyway? A Beverly Sills? A Barbra Streisand? An Eydie Gorme?
“Of course not.
“We’re talking about someone barely and scantly professional, who made, in the psalmist’s inspired words, her ‘joyful noise unto the Lord,’ and who praised Him not ‘with the sound of the trumpet,’ nor ‘with the psaltery and harp,’ nor ‘with the timbrel.’ Well, maybe with the timbrel, that’s like a tambourine. But not ‘stringed instruments and organs.’ Nor ‘upon the loud cymbals,’ either. So, with the possible exception of the timbrel, what was Joan’s instrument? Her person that she went to so much trouble to keep kempt and was always such a pleasure to look upon, if only to watch the fall fashions that she preferred and never seemed to tire of wearing, as if autumn were her season of choice, like a winter snow scene, say, kept in a crystal? Was it her style, then, that was her instrument? Her elegant outdoor ways? Which led her into the very fields and unfenced vastnesses where the deer stalker and fox hunter and cony catcher wait for their prey?
“Or was it some cheerful, heady exuberance we caught from her when she raised up her voice in song? That powerful clapping I can almost hear now? Was it some sense we had of her bounding ’round a campfire, leading the singing from the bottom of her generous kibbutz heart? Because she had the energy of a counselor in summer camp and could have been this echt Sabra, a maiden worthy of having been there in the days of Moses, pitching in, helping out, this slim, dark au pair of the wilderness.
“But so many?”
I’ve never been particularly proud of what I do. I do it well, I think, and give fair measure. But, as I say, I’m this professional comforter, like one of those who tried to talk Job out of his grievances and, as on occasions like this, often too much in the rabbi mode. Practically speaking, I’m an unmoved mover. Today, though, even I was a little moved. (What the hell, I knew her, Horatio.)
Most of them were weeping now. Tober’s son, dapper behind opaque glasses, wept blind tears. (Sure, I thought, she taught him to dress.) Anyway, most of them were weeping. It was no time to let up.
“So many?” I demanded. “A woman without children? An unmarried woman who, except for her parents, leaves no survivors? No sisters or brothers? Not an uncle, not an aunt? A distant cousin even? With no mishpocheh to speak of save the general, at-large, human family we all of us are?
“ ‘Ah, then, Rabbi,’ you say, ‘then we’re her survivors.’
“Well, yes, but so many? Lud’s not such an easy place to reach if you’ve never been here before and don’t know the way. What’s today, Tuesday? An ordinary day of business. But think, think. Rosh Hashanah wasn’t a week ago even. Yom Kippur’s four days off. Two days you closed the store. Four more and you lose another day. Is business so good then? So many? Why? You know, tell me why.
“ ‘Well, but Rabbi,’ you say, ‘she was in her prime.’ ”
All of them were crying. I swear it. All of them were. (Not old stony-face Connie. Not my wife, not Shelley, even if she was one of the Chaverot! Oh, no, not Connie and Shelley, who seemed, in their bubble of smugness, distanced as Hershorn. But the rest of them, yes.)
“Of course she was. And it’s a terrible thing when you’re cut down in your prime. Well, it is. It happens, but it’s terrible.
“Think,” I coaxed, “what is it we say when we hear of the death of someone we did not ourselves know? What do we ask? After we question the circumstances? What do we say? ‘How old was this person?’ And, if we’re told sixty-eight, sixty-nine, anything within shooting distance of the biblical threescore-and-ten, we say, ‘Well, at least they lived a full life.’ Shaving a year or so here, there, up, down, plus or minus, but still in the ballpark. And it’s true. Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, is within the parameters. Low-normal perhaps, but God is kept honest. This is the acceptable numerology of death.
“Joan Cohen, cut down in her prime, did not live a full life.
“Or was it the manner of her death, then? That she was shot? Not in the course of things, not, I mean, violently. Not in a rape or holdup, not in a serial killing or to keep her from testifying, but in a straight path on an ordinary day in a green pasture beside still waters in a valley of the shadow of death — taken out out of season in a grotesque hunting accident.
“But tell me, what death, shaved point here, there, up, down, plus or minus, isn’t grotesque? Is there a doctor in the house? Tell me, Doctor, what death isn’t? You tell me.
“Still, so many?
“Or doesn’t it matter how she died? Isn’t it rather when she died? Isn’t that what it comes down to? When all is said and done?”
There wasn’t as much crying as before. Here and there a few were still inconsolable. Joan’s parents, of course. Fanny Tupperman, Elaine Iglauer. (And Shull was still sobbing at a pretty good clip.) But most of them were quiet now, interested. Behind their sharp looks and open glowers, Shelley was, Connie.
“Because what’s today, Tuesday? Because Rosh Hashanah wasn’t a week ago even, and Yom Kippur’s four days off.
“Because she wasn’t inscribed in the Book of Life, and that scares us. It sure scares me.