Three Balconies (3 page)

“I don't know about the chanting,” said Bobby.

“It's important,” said Timmy, with a nervous glance at his
mother-in-law. “Just play it a few times. And bear with me on this. It'll be a piece of cake.”

In the hotel room that night, Bobby was increasingly upset by the chanting requirement. He had, quite frankly, seen the trip as something of a pleasurable vacation – and he was in no mood to embark upon what amounted to a program of study, however brief.

“Where am I supposed to get a player?” he asked Kate, flipping the cassette up and down as if preparing to throw it at someone.

“I'll call down to room service,” said Kate. “I'm sure they have one.”

“Don't bother,” said Bobby. “I'll read – but I'm not chanting. First of all, I'm jet-lagged. Second of all, it's a performance, no matter how you slice it. I don't like to do things half-assed. . . . It would take a week to get it right. He should have told me about this before we got here.

“And besides,” he said, tossing the cassette aside. “I notice he didn't pay for the hotel room either.”

 

The ceremony was held in a light and airy synagogue that did not differ much in design from a church Bobby had admired while attending the christening of Kate's nephew in upstate New York. A basket, overbrimming with yarmulkes, had been set aside for visitors in the reception area. Bobby chose one that was snow white, and also a taleth, although the selection was much more limited.

Kate watched him solemnly drape the prayer shawl around his shoulders, as if he were warming himself in a forest.

“Are you supposed to do that?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Bobby, taking her hand and leading her into the synagogue proper.

As the Congregationalists filed into the house of worship, the Rabbi, a neatly-dressed woman with a short no-nonsense hairdo, set the tone for the ceremony by chanting a wordless melody. Her voice was high and clear and quite lovely, calling up visions of a
warriors' campfire on the eve of battle in ancient Judea. Still, the guests seemed to ignore her as they greeted one another, exchanging reports of recent vacations, primarily in Palm Springs. Bobby thought this was rude of them and said as much to the neatly dressed man who sat beside him. He seemed frail, as if recovering from an illness.

“Where I come from they show respect,” said Bobby.

“It's just till they settle down,” the man assured Bobby. “And where are you from?”

“New York.”

“Really? I was from there, too.”

True to the man's word, when the Rabbi began to speak, the congregation fell silent.

She welcomed the group to the special occasion, expressing gratitude to those who had traveled great distances to attend young Samuel's bar mitzvah. In the front row, Timmy, also wearing a yarmulke and beautifully embroidered taleth, had been bent over, as if in advance prayer. At the mention of “visitors from afar,” he turned and gave Bobby a thumbs up.

The ceremony began. Bobby soon learned, with some mild disappointment, that he was not the only honoree. At least a dozen friends and relatives of the Glassmans – most in the medical profession – had also been asked to read Torah selections. Bobby was next to last on the list and had to wait with discomfort as each of the honorees chanted their Torah passages flawlessly. He consoled himself by deciding they were experienced Congregationalists. Or they had put in long hours of preparation.

When Bobby's turn came, he mounted the platform and saw his selection spread out before him in large print. But unlike the version that had been given to him by Timmy, these Hebrew letters had no vowel markings, making it impossible for him to read the words correctly. Not only did he fail to chant, but as he stumbled through the selection, he mispronounced at least a dozen words in the brief passage, each blunder drawing a sharp look from the Rabbi.

His ears were hot as he took a seat beside Kate.

“You were terrific,” she said, squeezing his arm supportively.

“The hell I was.”

The ceremony continued, a high point being the recitation of a long Torah passage by the bar mitzvah boy, whose delivery was youthfully impeccable. Samuel was a cheerful-looking redhead, who appeared to have picked up the best features of his parents – Timmy's nose, his mother's great eyes – and then added a puckish third dimension of his own. Timmy and Rebecca looked on with pride as their son delivered a speech in English about the importance of protecting the environment on behalf of generations to come – and not just his own.

The Rabbi then gathered Samuel, his parents, and the Glassmans around her, thanking Timmy and Rebecca for providing their son with a wonderful Jewish upbringing. As the Rabbi blessed the little group, Timmy looked at Mrs. Glassman, as if for approval; his mother-in-law's response was to crane her head in another direction. Once again, Bobby felt he could read her thoughts: “He can convert all he wants. And I don't care if he‘s a doctor or a lawyer or even a dentist. I'm not buying the package.”

To conclude the ceremony, a processional, led by Timmy and Samuel, each holding a Torah, walked solemnly through the synagogue, a number of Congregationalists leaning out of the aisle to touch their prayer shawls to the sacred scrolls, then to kiss the fringes. Bobby remembered seeing the ritual as a boy; he had always wanted to try it, which he did.

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” said Kate, as they left the house of worship and walked into blinding sunlight.

“I agree,” said Bobby. “And I wish Timmy luck with those in-laws.”

 

Bobby and Kate stayed on that night for a celebratory buffet dinner and dance at Timmy's country club. Several hundred people were on hand for the affair. To spice up the proceedings, a master of ceremonies and disc jockey had been hired. He alternated recordings
of hip-hop selections favored by Samuel and his friends with standards for the older group. Also mixed in were tunes from Broadway shows with Jewish themes such as “Milk and Honey” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” Though Kate was more of a Stones person, she and Bobby danced dreamily to several Sinatra ballads. Bobby's legs were in good shape for the spirited Horah that followed, enabling him to execute the tricky cross-kicks with ease and precision. When “four strong men” were called for to hoist first Timmy, then Samuel and finally Rebecca aloft in chairs – and to dance them about – Bobby was the first to volunteer.

Throughout much of the festivities, Bobby had little contact with his friend. He watched Timmy circulate among the guests, smoking a cigar, accepting gift envelopes, which he deposited in his breast pocket with a little pat for each one, as if to say, “Never fear, I'll take good care of this.” Bobby made a mental note to send his own gift check to Samuel – as soon as he got home – another expense he'd forgotten about. It was only late in the evening that Timmy, his bowtie loosened at the collar, made his way to the buffet table where Bobby had returned for a second helping.

“Got enough food?” asked Timmy.

“Plenty,” said Bobby, scooping up a spoonful of noodle pudding, an old favorite. “It's a great party.”

“I'm glad you're enjoying it. But frankly, I was a little disappointed that you didn't chant your selection.”

“I'm sorry about that, Timmy. There wasn't time to get it right. I thought I'd just say the words.”

“You didn't do such a hot job at that either.”

“I don't know if you're aware of it,” said Bobby, putting aside his plate and trying to suppress his annoyance, “but on the version they gave me, there weren't any vowels.”

“Then answer me this: How come everybody else chanted without vowels?”

“I can't speak for them. The bottom line is, I wasn‘t in the mood.”

“Your mood's got nothing to do with it,” said Timmy, pointing a finger at Bobby. “It wouldn't have killed you to chant. I spent a fortune on this affair, and you brought down the whole occasion.”

“Now you're exaggerating.”

“Bullshit,” said Timmy. “The Rabbi was pissed and Becky wasn't too happy about it either. I don't even want to discuss my in-laws. Added to which I saw that move you made when the kid and I carried out the Torahs.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Touching the tsitsis to one of them, to make up for not chanting.”

“That's not why I did it.”

“The hell it wasn't.”

“Now look . . .”

“No,
you
look.”

And suddenly, to the background strains of “If I were a Rich Man,” they were at each other and went tumbling head over heels in a furious Judaic pinwheel of gefilte fish, kasha varnischkes, chopped liver canapés and derma with gravy.

Bobby pressed his thumbs on the convert's throat, debating whether to choke him or take out his eyes.

“We did kill Christ, you Jew bastard,” he cried out, “and you better get used to it.”

ALEXANDER KAHN, a failed novelist, and at best a marginal producer of off-Broadway plays, decided at age forty-five to go back to his beginnings and try to get the knot of his life untangled. Trained as a journalist, he got a job as a reporter for a small Long Island daily and for several months wrote competent stories about local politics. When his marriage broke up, he had held on, perhaps idiotically, to his ten-room house in the suburbs. To be close to his job, he moved back into it. He had lived alone in an empty apartment. Why not an empty house?

One day, he was surprised to learn that his managing editor, a prison reform man, had gotten him a chance to cover a small correctional unit in the South, one that was proud of its facilities and its record on rehabilitation. Kahn had never been inside a prison and had always wondered about them. How long could he last in one? Would he be able to stand up to the homosexual advances? Could he exist on prison food? Would he soon begin to bang his head on the walls? What if he didn't like his cellmate? (When he asked himself that question, he used the word ‘roommate'.) He was excited about the assignment, although he was a little nervous about it as well. Though he had traveled widely in Europe, he had never been to the South and thought of it as a hostile place where people would look at him through narrowed eyes. In the Air Force, a Southerner had once said he was soft in the crotch. Kahn, a powerful man, although misleadingly frail in appearance, had started for the fellow, then veered off. The words had barely been audible. Perhaps he had heard them wrong. Still,
he was confident that in the South, one way or another, he would get his head broken.

After a three-hour flight, Kahn rented a car to take him to the prison. As he stepped off the plane, he could have sworn he smelled barbecue sauce. But as he drove the seventy miles to the prison, there didn't seem to be much South in evidence. Perhaps an occasional indication of it – a Fox Run, a Buzzard Emporium – but for the most part, with its myriad service stations and fast food spots, it reminded him of the discarded outer peelings of any large city in the North. He stopped once to eat local red snapper in a luncheonette. Leaning across the counter to reach for extra French fries, he saw shotguns stacked near the soup bowls. As he ate his fish, a fellow in the next booth, for no apparent reason, began to kick hard at his table legs, as if to chop them down. Maybe this was Southern stuff, he thought.

Kahn had never been to a prison and wasn't quite sure how you got at one. Did you just walk up to it and knock on the door? From the outside, the prison seemed drab and generalized, an electronics firm that kept missing out on lush defense contracts. He found the Warden's office easily enough. Just outside was an exhibition entitled: “A So-Called ‘Harmless' Utensil.” A rack of malevolent-looking weapons, worse than knives, had been arrayed in a glass cabinet; each had been fashioned out of a toothbrush. A Chicano guard approached and said: “They make some beautiful stuff, don't they.” His eyes were moist and wondrous, as if he was looking at a famous statue. Kahn had never spoken to a Chicano before and was surprised – shamefully – to find him in a guard's uniform, not on the inside. The guard took him to see the Warden, a stocky man who wore a neat wedding band and had a fat and friendly neck of the kind that got pinched by granddaughters. The guard took a seat in the Warden's office, as if he, too, were going to be in on the proceedings, but the Warden made a disapproving face and the guard slipped into the corridor.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Kahn?” asked the Warden.

Kahn reminded him that he was the one who'd been summoned to the prison. The Warden scratched his head and said, “Oh yes, I forgot.” Kahn enjoyed the man's absent-mindedness, although it seemed an unusual quality for a Warden. Did he forget where he put prisoners, too? The Warden said he had come up through the ranks, starting his career as a ‘picket'. Kahn enjoyed hearing the word, his first taste of prison slang. The Warden said he lived on the prison grounds with a houseboy who was an ax murderer but behaved gently so long as he was inside the prison.

“Outside, though, Wheeler can't cope.”

Kahn did not like the idea of anyone having a houseboy in this day and age, but he let it pass, reminding himself that he didn't come down there for a debate.

The Warden had a new intercom and ordered two coffees; he seemed more interested in trying out the equipment than in the beverage. A secretary brought in two hot cups of it; her face was gray and concerned, as if she was in a constant state of emergency. There was a racket behind a door in the Warden's office. The official opened it brusquely, his first show of impatience. Kahn caught a glimpse of men in Stetsons who looked like board members and others who might have been prisoners, all boiling up together in an adjoining room. The Warden looked in, muttered something and slammed the door, taking care not to let Kahn look inside at what may have been all his prison troubles, in the one room. As the Warden sat down, Kahn noticed that it was hard to get a clean look at him; one side of his face seemed to be glassed-off, a prison in itself. Kahn concluded that he had an injury, from an old rebellion. He noticed, too, that the Warden wasn't quite so stocky after all; the effect came from a bullet-proof vest.