Stanley Elkin - Searches & Seizures

“He was fond of you.”

“No. I was fond of him, but he always bad-mouthed me to the New York people. He despised me. May he rest.”

“Stick with me, please, Joe. Don’t go home early. Get me over the hurdles tonight when his friends show up. Some of them will be people from the South Side and I won’t know them anymore. The rest I won’t ever have seen. It’s going to be rough.”

But there were no hurdles. It was not rough, not at least in the sense he’d anticipated. If he felt no grief, then neither did anyone else. They came to the chapel — not a big crowd, but respectable — stood shyly at the coffin for a few moments and then went back to the outer rooms. He recognized many of them, men and women his parents had played cards with when he was a child, and was surprised at his ability to recall their names. When they offered their condolences he offered their names. “Thanks, Rose. Thank you, Jerry. It was good of you to come, Maxine. I was very sorry to hear about Arnold.” Their first names odd in his mouth and vaguely forbidden (he’d known them as a child), granting him — Ph.D. manqué, ex-lecturer from the ex-lecture circuit, a man with a large scrapbook almost filled, a man with clippings — a sense of graciousness, a snug sensation of being their host.

The new people, friends his father had made at the condominium, moved with a sort of nervous bustle, more distraught then the others because they had known him less long and more recently. They were the ones who told him that they’d seen him only last Tuesday or Thursday and that he’d seemed fine, tiptop, that he’d done five laps of the pool and hadn’t been a bit winded, that they were supposed to play bridge together next week, that they had had a date to go to a restaurant, that he was talking about a trip to Europe, that he was thinking about getting a part-time job. But even these neighbors could register only surprise at sudden, generalized death, their anecdotes about his last days and last plans unremarkable, borrowing their importance from the irony built into all death. He realized that no one was very unhappy, and indeed it developed that several of them — from both camps — had come merely to explain that they would not be able to attend the funeral. His earlier sense of being their host deserted him, and he began to feel that had he been more impressive as a survivor he would somehow have focused their grief. His use of their names was lost on them, and even this, his single resource, was unavailable to him with the new people. He explained a little of this to Joe Cane, thanking him for coming and telling him he could leave now if he wanted. “Don’t think I want to steal my father’s show,” he said, “but it’s getting trivial. Nobody’s upset, just glum.”

Then the big shots came and the chapel cheered up. These were the officials from the condominium: the sales manager, Joe Colper; Shirley Fanon, the corporation’s lawyer; Sid Harris, the president himself. They had come together, three wide men in beautiful business suits and sharp shoes. They wore blocky paper yarmulkes which stood high on their heads and somehow gave them the appearance of cantors. They moved vigorous as a backfield in some subtle choreographed way that made it impossible to tell which was the leader. They came down the center aisle and took up positions at the coffin: Colper at the head, Fanon at the foot and Harris in the middle. They looked down on his father like fairies at cribside, and for a moment Marshall thought they would sing. No one approached them, though their celebrity had sparked something in the room, even among his father’s old friends. Even Preminger was excited. One of the neighbors told him who they were, but by then he knew; he’d heard his comforters’ murmurs, picked up their pleased, congratulatory whispers. “Wasn’t that nice?” one said, and his friend had answered, “Gentlemen.” It was a word others used too, the presence of the three bringing it out almost reflexively. Preminger wasn’t sold yet — he resented this queer gratitude, ubiquitous as pollen — but then they were upon him and he understood.

“Sid Harris,” Sid Harris said, and shoved a hard hand at him. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Preminger said, returning the pressure as best he could.

Harris frowned disapprovingly. “Not under these circumstances,” he said and dropped Preminger’s hand. “My associates,” he said, naming them.

“Sorry for your trouble,” Colper said.

“Condolences,” said Shirley Fanon and winked.

“Ditto, ditto. We’re all shook,” Harris said. “These things happen. What can I say? Terrible shock, et cetera, et cetera. Look, Marshall — it’s Marshall, right? — I’m not small-timing Pop’s death. He was a gentleman. Mike’s dead, I’m alive, you got me? Life goes on. You know what my rabbi says? ‘Fuck death. Live as if it don’t exist because it does.’”

“That’s some rabbi,” Preminger said.

“You’d love him. The Miracle Rabbi of the Chicago Condominiums. Sleeps in a little sukkah behind the swimming pool with the inner tubes, water toys and chlorine. Got himself a nice little setup in the filtration butke with the towels and the first-aid kit. What the fuck am I talking about? Fanon, you know?” Shirley Fanon shrugged. “Joe Colper?”

“What’s that, Boss?”

“What’s on my mind?”

“I just got here, Boss,” Colper said.

“Must be my grief. Hangs on like a summer cold.” He shook his head. “Got to pull myself together. Fanon, help me up off the floor. Colper, take one arm. Marshall, kid, grab another.” He sat down at the front of the chief mourners’ bench and patted it, inviting Preminger to join him. When he held back, the other two moved in, hustling him toward Harris.

“Hey,” he protested, “what is this? This is a memorial chapel. Will you have some respect?” Even to him it sounded as if he were offering them refreshment.

“Fellows, the game’s up,” Harris said. “He knows who we are.”

“The Jewish Mafia,” Shirley Fanon said.

“The Kosher Nostra,” said Joe Colper.

Preminger looked around desperately. They weren’t bothering to keep their voices down. His father’s old friends and the people from the condominium were taking it all in. Incredibly, they seemed to approve. He appealed to one man who earlier had claimed to have been very close to his father. The man shrugged. “The owners are clowns,” he said.

“Lehrman’s got our number,” Harris said. “Listen to Lehrman.”

“They’re tummlers. ”

“A barrel of monkeys?” Harris asked.

“Sure,” Lehrman said, “you ought to be on the stage.”

“ We’re better off, ” Harris, Fanon and Colper all said together.

“Come on,” Preminger said, “what right have you got to behave like this? You don’t know me. You think this shit is charming? That nerve and craziness makes you lovable? What an incredible slant you three have on yourselves. I haven’t been in my father’s life for years, but that’s him dead up there. He grew long hair and bought new clothes and I didn’t know about it. We told each other old stuff on the long distance and sent each other shirts on our birthdays. He changed his furniture and went Swedish modern and I sat like a schmuck in a rooming house and lived like a recessive gene, but—”

“That’s right,” Harris said cheerfully, “let it all out. Cry.”

“Go to hell,” Preminger said.

“But?” Shirley Fanon reminded him.

“But it’s a death. I’m not going to stand by while you turn it into the cheap heroics of personality.” He stared at Harris. “Are you married?” he asked.

“Who ain’t married?”