For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories

Praise for Nathan Englander’s
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

“Pitch-perfect.… [Englander’s] wit has glimpses of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow; its subtlety recalls James Joyce’s
Dubliners
.”

—
Newsweek

“Provokes an array of reactions, from shocked tears to guilty belly laughs.… Nathan Englander has constructed a deeply affecting treatise on the caprices of fate and the inevitability of laughter.”

—
The Wall Street Journal

“One of the classiest, most assured, impressive literary debuts I’ve come across in ten years of reviewing books.… The many voices … [Englander] has given life to in this collection earn this gifted writer a distinct and distinguished niche of his own.”

—Susan Miron,
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Extraordinary, insightful writing. Englander is a fresh, awe-inspiring voice.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“In [Englander’s] sharply etched stories, his characters burst their bounds of culture, history and identity.”

—
USA Today

“Impressive.… A fresh and promising collection, Nathan Englander’s rocket is launched.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

“This debut collection reflects a mastery of the short story form.… [These stories are] as faceted and polished as gemstones.”

—
San Diego Union Tribune

“These stories have the sly wit and impenetrable wisdom of an elder of the tribe.… All the stories seem simple and profound at once. They offer multiple meanings, each tempting in its own witty way. Englander has been compared to Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the comparison is just.”

—
The Boston Globe

“A talent so stunning it makes you want to lift the printed page and kiss it.… [Englander’s] clear-edged voice rips along smoothly, sometimes slyly funny, sometimes heartbreakingly sad, always sophisticated and wise.”

—
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“A stunner.”

—
Boston Book Review

“Brilliant.… Englander recalls … the best of John Cheever”

—
Salon

“Daring in both its shape and honesty. Nathan Englander has the stately, rhythmic pacing of the true storyteller, as well as an overarching courage in the face of unbearable truths.”

—
Portland Oregonian

“A debut collection of nine stories that explore the condition of being Jewish with an often hallucinatory, epigrammatic eloquence that is … reminiscent of the fiction of Isaac Singer, Saul Bellow, and especially Bernard Malamud.… A truly remarkable debut.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred)

“Quirky, intelligent stories … pure delight.”

—
The Plain Dealer

“It is not just the clarity and virtuosity of Englander’s stories that makes them outstanding. It is Englander’s voice, which comes to us bold, unwavering, and with a whiff of prophecy.… These stories boldly re-imagine what fiction is capable of doing.”

—
Boston Phoenix

“This book is perhaps the best debut collection of short fiction that I’ve read in the last five or ten years.”

—Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio

“[A] stellar first collection … graceful and remarkably self-assured.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred)

“Heart-wrenching, humorous tales … starkly elegant.”

—
Entertainment Weekly

“Unique wisdom … worthy of Gogol or Isaac Bashevis Singer.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“Stunning … a knife-edge examination of the friction between Jewish tradition and modern reality.”

—
The Hartford Courant

“Wryly funny and deeply poignant.”

—
St. Petersburg Times

“Englander charges [his stories] with fresh nuance—the questions with which James Joyce and Flannery O’Connor pried at Catholic doctrine he now aims at Orthodox Judaism.”

—
The Village Voice

Nathan Englander
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

Nathan Englander grew up in New York and lives in Jerusalem. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recent recipient of the Pushcart Prize. His stories have appeared in
Story
magazine and
The New Yorker
.

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION. APRIL 2000

Copyright © 1999 by Nathan Englander

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf. a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1999.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Some of the stories in this collection were originally published as follows: “The Tumblers” in
American Short Fiction
(Fall 1998. no. 31): “The Gilgul of Park Avenue” in
Atlantic
(March 1999): “The Last One Way” in
The New Yorker
(January 18, 1999); “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges,” “Reb Kringle,” and “The Twenty-seventh Man” in
Story
(Spring 1996, Winter 1997, and Winter 1998).

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Englander, Nathan.
For the relief of unbearable urges / Nathan Englander. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Jews—Social life and customs—Fiction. 2. Jews—Persecutions—Fiction.
3. Orthodox Judaism—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3555.N424F67  1999
813′.54—de21  98-41727

eISBN: 978-0-307-56951-6

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

For Merle N. Englander

There are many people whose friendship and support have been essential to the creation of this book. The author gratefully acknowledges their contribution and would also like to thank Glen Weldon, Deborah Brodie, and Lois Rosenthal of
Story
magazine. Thank you to Jordan Pavlin for her sensitive and insightful comments. And to Nicole Aragi, agent and cherished friend.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

The Twenty-seventh Man

The Tumblers

Reunion

The Wig

The Gilgul of Park Avenue

Reb Kringle

The Last One Way

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

In This Way We Are Wise

The Twenty-seventh Man

T
he orders were given from Stalin’s country house at Kuntsevo. He relayed them to the agent in charge with no greater emotion than for the killing of kulaks or clergy or the outspoken wives of very dear friends. The accused were to be apprehended the same day, arrive at the prison gates at the same moment, and—with a gasp and simultaneous final breath—be sent off to their damnation in a single rattling burst of gunfire.

It was not an issue of hatred, only one of allegiance. For Stalin knew there could be loyalty to only one nation. What he did not know so well were the authors’ names on his list. When presented to him the next morning he signed the warrant anyway, though there were now twenty-seven, and yesterday there had been twenty-six.

No matter, except maybe to the twenty-seventh.

The orders left little room for variation, and none for tardiness. They were to be carried out in secrecy and—the only point that was reiterated—simultaneously. But how were the agents to get the men from Moscow and Gorky, Smolensk and Penza, Shuya and Podolsk, to the prison near the village of X at the very same time?

The agent in charge felt his strength was in leadership and gave up the role of strategist to the inside of his hat. He cut the list into strips and sprinkled them into the freshly blocked
crown, mixing carefully so as not to disturb its shape. Most of these writers were in Moscow. The handful who were in their native villages, taking the waters somewhere, or locked in a cabin trying to finish that seminal work would surely receive a stiff cuffing when a pair of agents, aggravated by the trek, stepped through the door.

After the lottery, those agents who had drawn a name warranting a long journey accepted the good-natured insults and mockery of friends. Most would have it easy, nothing more to worry about than hurrying some old rebel to a car, or getting their shirts wrinkled in a heel-dragging, hair-pulling rural scene that could be as messy as necessary in front of a pack of superstitious peasants.

Then there were those who had it hard. Such as the two agents assigned to Vasily Korinsky, who, seeing no way out, was prepared to exit his bedroom quietly but whose wife, Paulina, struck the shorter of the two officers with an Oriental-style brass vase. There was a scuffle, Paulina was subdued, the short officer taken out unconscious, and a precious hour lost on their estimated time.