Saul Bellow - Collected Stories

“Rabbi, my name is Isaac Braun.”

“From Albany. Yes, I remember.”

“I am the eldest of four—my sister, the youngest, the muzinka, is dying.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“Of cancer of the liver, and with a lot of pain.”

“Then she is. Yes, she is dying.” From the very white, full face, the rabbi’s beard grew straight and thick in rich bristles. He was a strong, youthful man, his stout body buttoned tightly, straining in the shiny black cloth.

“A certain thing happened soon after the war. An opportunity to buy a valuable piece of land for building. I invited my brothers and my sister to invest with me, Rabbi. But on the day…”

The rabbi listened, his white face lifted toward a corner of the ceiling, but fully attentive, his hands pressed to the ribs, above the waist.

“I understand. You tried to reach them that day. And you felt abandoned.” They deserted me, Rabbi, yes.”

But that was also your good luck. They turned their faces from you, and this made you rich. You didn’t have to share.”

Isaac admitted this but added, “If it hadn’t been one deal, it would have been another.”

“You were destined to be rich?” I was sure to be. And there were so many opportunities.” Your sister, poor thing, is very harsh. She is wrong. She has no ground for complaint against you.”

“I am glad to hear that,” said Isaac. “Glad,” however, was only a word, for he was suffering.

“She is not a poor woman, your sister?”

“No, she inherited property. And her husband does pretty well. Though I suppose the long sickness costs.”

“Yes, a wasting disease. But the living can only will to live. I am speaking of Jews. They wanted to annihilate us. To give our consent would have been to turn from God. But about your problem: Have you thought of your brother Aaron? He advised the others not to take the risk.”

“I know.”

“It was to his interest that she should be angry with you, and not with him.”

“I realize that.”

“He is guilty. He is sinning against you. Your other brother is a good man.”

“Mutt? Yes, I know. He is decent. He barely survived the war. He was shot in the head.”

“But is he still himself?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Sometimes it takes something like that. A bullet through the head.” The rabbi paused and turned his round face, the black quill beard bent on the folds of shiny cloth. And then, as Isaac told him how he went to Tina before the High Holidays, he looked impatient, moving his head forward, but his eyes turning sideward. “Yes. Yes.” He was certain that Isaac had done the right things. “Yes. You have the money. She grudged you. Unreasonable. But that’s how it seems to her. You are a man. She is only a woman. You are a rich man.”

“But, Rabbi,” said Isaac, “now she is on her deathbed, and I have asked to see her.”

“Yes? Well?”

“She wants money for it.”

“Ah? Does she? Money?”

“Twenty thousand dollars. So that I can be let into the room.”

The burly rabbi was motionless, white fingers on the armrests of the wooden chair. “She knows she is dying, I suppose?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Yes. Our Jews love deathbed jokes. I know many. Well. America has not changed everything, has it? People assume that God has a sense of humor. Such jokes made by the dying in anguish show a strong and brave soul, but skeptical. What sort of woman is your sister?”

“Stout. Large.”

“I see. A fat woman. A chunk of flesh with two eyes, as they used to say. Staring at the lucky ones. Like an animal in a cage, perhaps. Separated. By sensual greed and despair. A fat child like that—people sometimes behave as though they were alone when such a child is present. So those little monster souls have a strange fate. They see people as people are when no one is looking. A gloomy vision of mankind.”

Isaac respected the rabbi. Revered him, thought Dr. Braun. But perhaps he was not old-fashioned enough for him, notwithstanding the hat and beard and gabardine. He had the old tones, the manner, the burly poise, the universal calm judgment of the Jewish moral genius. Enough to satisfy anyone. But there was also something foreign about him. That is, contemporary. Now and then there was a sign of the science student, the biochemist from the south of France, from Montpellier. He would probably have spoken English with a French accent, whereas Cousin Isaac spoke like anyone else from upstate. In Yiddish they had the same dialect—White Russian. The Minsk region. The Pripet Marshes, thought Dr. Braun. And then returned to the fish hawk on the brown and chalky sycamore beside the Mohawk. Yes. Perhaps. Among these recent birds, finches, thrushes, there was Cousin Isaac with more scale than feather in his wings. A more antique type. The ruddy brown eye, the tough muscles of the jaw working under the skin. Even the scar was precious to Dr. Braun. He knew the man. Or rather, he had the longing of having known. For these people were dead. A useless love.

“You can afford the money?” the rabbi asked. And when Isaac hesitated, he said, “I don’t ask you for the figure of your fortune. It is not my concern. But could you give her the twenty thousand?”

And Isaac, looking greatly tried, said, “If I had to.”

“It wouldn’t make a great difference in your fortune?”

“No.”

“In that case, why shouldn’t you pay?”

“You think I should?”

“It’s not for me to tell you to give away so much money. But you gave—you gambled—you trusted the man, the goy.”

“Ilkington? That was a business risk. But Tina? So you believe I should pay?”

“Give in. I would say, judging the sister by the brother, there is no other way.”

Then Isaac thanked him for his time and his opinion. He went out into the broad daylight of the street, which smelied of muck. The tedious mortar of tenements, settled out of line, the buildings swaybacked, with grime on grime, as if built of cast-off shoes, not brick. The contractor observing. The ferment of sugar and roasting coffee was strong, but the summer air moved quickly in the damp under the huge machine-trampled bridge. Looking about for the subway entrance, Isaac saw instead a yellow cab with a yellow light on the crest. He first told the driver, “Grand Central,” but changed his mind at the first corner and said, “Take me to the West Side Air Terminal.” There was no fast train to Albany before late afternoon. He could not wait on Forty-second Street. Not today. He must have known all along that he would have to pay the money. He had come to get strength by consulting the rabbi. Old laws and wisdom on his side. But Tina from the deathbed had made too strong a move. If he refused to come across, no one could blame him. But he would feel greatly damaged. How would he live with himself? Because he made these sums easily now. Buying and selling a few city lots. Had the price been fifty thousand dollars, Tina would have been saying that he would never see her again. But twenty thousand—the figure was a shrewd choice. And Orthodoxy had no remedy. It was entirely up to him.

Having decided to capitulate, he felt a kind of deadly recklessness. He had never been in the air before. But perhaps it was high time to fly. Everyone had lived enough. And anyway, as the cab crept through the summer lunchtime crowds on Twenty-third Street, there seemed plenty of humankind already.

On the airport bus, he opened his father’s copy of the Psalms. The black Hebrew letters only gaped at him like open mouths with tongues hanging down, pointing upward, flaming but dumb. He tried—forcing. It did no good. The tunnel, the swamps, the auto skeletons, machine entrails, dumps, gulls, sketchy Newark trembling in fiery summer, held his attention minutely. As though he were not Isaac Braun but a man who took pictures. Then in the plane running with concentrated fury to take off—the power to pull away from the magnetic earth, and more: When he saw the ground tilt backward, the machine rising from the runway, he said to himself in clear internal words, “ Shema Yisroel,” Hear, O Israel, God alone is God! On the right, New York leaned gigantically seaward, and the plane with a jolt of retracted wheels turned toward the river. The Hudson green within green, and rough with tide and wind. Isaac released the breath he had been holding, but sat belted tight. Above the marvelous bridges, over clouds, sailing in atmosphere, you know better than ever that you are no angel.