Харлан Эллисон - More Wandering Stars - An Anthology of Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

“The Last Days are at hand!” Nicky called. “The Last Days are coming , man. The Lord is coming to our town, and the wicked will be left behind , man. The Lord is coming.” Nicky shoved a leaflet into someone’s hand and the someone shoved it right back. Nicky shrugged. “Come to the Lordhouse tonight, brothers and sisters! Come and get your soul together. ” Someone paused, hesitated, took a leaflet. “Spare change? Spare change for the Lord’s work? Every penny does the Lord’s work…”

The morning passed, and it grew colder. About half of Nicky’s leaflets were gone, although many of them littered the sidewalk a few paces away, where people had discarded them once they thought that they were far enough from Nicky not to be noticed doing so. The sun had been swallowed by clouds, and once again it looked like it was going to snow, although once again it did not. Nicky’s coat was too small to button, but he turned his collar up, and put his hands in his pockets. The stream of tourists had pretty much run dry for the moment, and he was just thinking about getting some lunch, about going down to the hot dog stand on the comer where the black dudes stood jiving and handslapping, their giant radios blaring on their shoulders, he was just thinking about it when, at that very moment, as though conjured up by the thought, Saul Edelmann stepped out of the stand and walked briskly toward him.

“Shit in my hat,” Nicky muttered to himself. He’d collected more than enough to buy lunch, but, because of the cold, not that much more. And Father Delardi, the unfrocked priest—the unfairly unfrocked priest—who had founded their order and who ran it with both love and, yessir, an iron hand—Father Delardi didn’t like it when they came in off the streets at the end of the day with less than a certain amount of dough. Nicky had been hoping that he could con Saul into giving him a free hot dog, as he sometimes could, as Saul sometimes had , and now here was Saul himself, off on some dumb-shit errand, bopping down the street as fat and happy as a clam (although how happy were clams anyway? come to think about it), which meant that he, Nicky, was fucked.

“Nicky! My main man!” said Saul, who prided himself on an ability to speak jivey street patois that he definitely did not possess. He was a plump-cheeked man with modish-length gray-streaked hair, cheap black plastic-framed glasses, and a neatly trimmed mustache. Jews were supposed to have big noses, or so Nicky had always heard, but Saul’s nose was small and upturned, as if there were an Irishman in the woodpile somewhere.

“Hey, man,” Nicky mumbled listlessly. Bad enough that he wasn’t going to get his free hot dog—now he’d have to make friendly small talk with this dipshit in order to protect his investment in free hot dogs yet to come. Nicky sighed, and unlimbered his shit-eating grin. “Hey, man! How you been, Saul? What’s happenin’ , man?”

“What’s happening?” Saul said jovially, responding to Nicky as if he was really asking a question instead of emitting ritual noise. “Now how can I even begin to tell you what’s happening, Nicky?” He was radiant today, Saul was, full of bouncy energy, rocking back and forth as he talked, unable to stand still, smiling a smile that revealed teeth some Yiddish momma had sunk a lot of dough into over the years. “I’m glad you came by today, though. I wanted to be sure to say good-bye if I could.”

“Good-bye?”

Saul’s smile became broader and broader. “Yes, good-bye! This is it, boychick . I’m off! You won’t see me again after today.”

Nicky peered at him suspiciously. “You goin’ away?”

“You bet your ass I am, kid,” Saul said, and then laughed. “Today I turned my half of the business over to Carlos, signed all the papers, took care of everything nice and legal. And now I’m free and clear, free as a damn bird, kid.”

“You sold your half of the stand to Carlos? ”

“Not sold, boychick —gave. I gave it to him. Not one red cent did I take.”

Nicky gaped at him. “You gave your business away , man?”

Saul beamed. “Kid—I gave everything away. The car: I gave that to old Ben Miller who washes dishes at the Green Onion. I gave up the lease on my apartment, gave away my furniture, gave away my savings—if you’d’ve been here yesterday, Nicky, I would’ve given you something too.”

“Shit!” Nicky said harshly, “you go crazy, man, or what?” He choked back an outburst of bitter profanity. Missed out again! Screwed out of getting his yet again!

“I don’t need any of that stuff anymore, Nicky,” Saul said. He tapped the side of his nose, smiled. “Nicky—He’s come.”

“Who?”

“The Messiah. He’s come! He’s finally come! Today’s the day the Messiah comes, after all those thousands of years—think of it, Nicky!”

Nicky’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck you talkin’ about, man?”

“Don’t you ever read the paper, Nicky, or listen to the radio? The Messiah has come. His name is Murray Kupferberg, He was born in Pittsburgh—”

“ Pittsburgh?” Nicky gasped.

“—and He used to be a plumber there. But He is the Messiah. Most of the scholars and the rabbis deny Him, but He really is. The Messiah has really come, at last!”

Nicky gave that snorting bray of laughter, blowing out his rubbery lips, that was one reason—but only one reason—why he was sometimes called Nicky the Horse. “ Jesus is the Messiah, man,” he said scornfully.

Saul smiled good-naturedly, shrugged, spread his hands. “For you, maybe he is. For you people, the goyim , maybe he is. But we’ve been waiting for almost three thousand years—and at last He’s come.”

“Murray Kupferberg? From Pittsburgh? ”

“Murray Kupferberg,” Saul repeated firmly, calmly. “From Pittsburgh. He’s coming here, today. Jews are gathering here today from all over the country, from all over the world, and today —right here —He’s going to gather His people to Him—”

“You stupid fucking kike!” Nicky screamed, his anger breaking free at last. “You’re crazy in the head, man. You’ve been conned. Some fucking con man has taken you for everything , and you’re too fucking dumb to see it! All that stuff , man, all that good stuff gone —” He ran out of steam, at a loss for words. All that good stuff gone, and he hadn’t gotten any of it. After kissing up to this dipshit for all those years… “Oh, you dumb kike,” he whispered.

Saul seemed unoffended. “You’re wrong, Nicky—but I haven’t got time to argue with you. Good-bye.” He stuck out his hand, but Nicky refused to shake it. Saul shrugged, smiled again, and then walked briskly away, turning the corner onto Sixth Street.

Nicky sullenly watched him go, still shaking with rage. Screwed again! There went his free hot dogs, flying away into the blue on fucking gossamer wings. Carlos was a hard dude, a street-wise dude—Carlos wasn’t going to give him anything, Carlos wouldn’t stop to piss on Nicky’s head if Nicky’s hair was on fire. Nicky stared at the tattered and overlapping posters on the laundromat wall, and the faces of long-dead politicians stared back at him from among the notices for lost cats and the ads for Czech films and karate classes. Suddenly he was cold, and he shivered.

The rest of the day was a total loss. Nicky’s sullen mood threw his judgment and his timing off, and the tourists were thinning out again anyway. The free-form jazz of the communist coffeehouse band was getting on his nerves—the fucking xylophone player was chopping away as if he were making sukiyaki at Benihana of Tokyo’s—and the smell of sauerkraut would float over from the hot dog stand every now and then to torment him. And it kept getting colder and colder. Still, some obscure, self-punishing instinct kept him from moving on.