More Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

^{MEL GILDEN} A Lamed Wufnik

A FEW HOURS AFTER Mottle Hamana had a heart attack, he died on a bed of rags in his hovel in Estonia, a country that lately had fallen into the hands of the Russians. No one was in attendance but God. The death of a dog would have caused more comment than the death of Mottle Hamana. He was forgotten almost before he was buried.

At the moment Mottle Hamana died, Sol Gosnik, asleep in his bed in Los Angeles, California, waved his arms at phantom invaders caused by too late a dinner, and mumbling curses and threats, he turned over and crushed his face into his pillow.

When he awoke the next morning, the smell of strong tea already filled the apartment. His eyes blinked open and he saw his wife, Sylvia, standing at the door to their bedroom. “Nu, Sol, you going to sleep all day like the Czar?”

“I’ll be up in a minute. Look how my foot moves with enthusiasm underneath the covers.”

“Hurray for your foot. Your oatmeal will get cold.” Sylvia—dependable, hard-working, ample, Sylvia—turned and walked back down the short hallway to the square box of a kitchen where she rattled pots, pans, and dishes on purpose to keep her husband from falling back asleep.

Sol Gosnik threw back the covers and felt the cold seep into his legs. It would stay there all day long, until he pulled the covers back over himself that night. The doctor said it was bad circulation and a man his age should take it easy.

Sol had told him, “So, Mr. Doctor, you’re a pretty smart man. You tell me how I’m going to feed my own mouth and the mouth of my Sylvia if I don’t work. God is going to make it rain nickels, maybe?”

“Surely there must be a pension plan of sorts where you work.”

“Of course. What would Mortimer’s Distinctive Fashions be without a pension plan? But I don’t get it for another two years.”

“You’re only sixty-three. That’s right. I’d forgotten.”

“Mr. Mortimer don’t forget.”

The doctor had given Sol some pills. They were samples given to the doctor by the drug distributor and so Sol got them for nothing. Sol took one every morning for months; as far as he was concerned, the pills were worth what they cost him.

Sol got out of bed and put on his clothes. He listened to the boards creak as he crossed the wooden floor to the bathroom and felt for the string in the dark. He pulled it, and the room suddenly assaulted him with harsh white light reflected from every glass and tile surface. The mirror above the sink showed him for what he was: a moderately old human being just waking up and caught with his hand raised to turn on the light.

He looked at himself, revealed thus, and saw a man with the gray grit of a day’s worth of beard on his thin face, a man who looked much older than sixty-three. He smiled bleakly, telling himself it was all right. Someday he would be as old as he looked. He washed and shaved, and walked along the gray hallway to the kitchen. Sylvia was sitting at the Formica-topped table reading the Forward from the day before.

“So, what’s new?”

“New,” Sylvia said, “is what’s new. The Arabs—they should only have a pyramid fall over on them—are at it again. Sit down. Eat. The bus won t wait.”

“There’ll be another bus.”

“Look who’s suddenly Mr. Leisure World.” She dished up the oatmeal and gave it to him. He poured a little milk on it.

Sylvia said, “Did you take your pill?”

“For all the good it does me.”

Sol ate a little oatmeal. It was warm and sweet and made him feel better. It was almost as if his icy legs belonged to someone else. He said, “Sylvia, how old do I look?”

“A day older than you did yesterday.”

“No. I mean, do I look sixty-three?”

“You’ve been looking in the mirror again.”

“It’s either that or cut myself when I shave.”

“Sol, Sol, Sol.” She put her hand on his. “Stop looking and figuring and just live.”

“You call this living?”

“Who are you feeling sorry for? Yourself? I’m all right.”

“You should’ve had better.”

“You want I should be the Queen of Sheba?”

“I don’t know.” He put the spoon down.

“Finish.”

“I don’t want any more.”

“A real wufnik.”

“Sylvia, please.”

“And even if you are a wufnik, you can share the problems of the world with thirty-five other men.”

“Is my lunch ready?”

“In forty years has it ever not been ready?”

Sol admitted that there was no time when the lunch had failed to appear in its brown bag as promised. He kissed Sylvia—a peck on the cheek—and walked downstairs to the street.

The sun was just above the horizon, and Fairfax Avenue looked new. He walked by a bakery and smelled the warm velvety aroma of fresh bagels. Like the bakery, other small shops selling kosher meat and fish, and prayer books, and candy, and corsets were all closed until more respectable hours. Even the big delicatessen, Cantor’s—which never closed—had only a smattering of people in it. The pale sunlight of dawn rounded off corners, smoothed over cracks, and brought out colors. If Sol Gosnik’s legs hadn’t been hurting him, he could have been content. For when did a rich man who gets up in the middle of the afternoon ever get to enjoy the cool quiet sensations of Fairfax Avenue in the morning?

While Sol was waiting for his bus, a moving van went up the street. His bus came at last and he got on. Fairfax bus to Wilshire. Wilshire bus downtown.

It was almost nine o’clock by the time he got to Mortimer’s Distinctive Fashions, a two-story stucco building, now a faded green, which stood between a hot dog stand and a pay-by-the-hour parking lot. Downstairs were the offices and the shipping department. Upstairs were the cutting rooms and the long lines of sewing machines. This was where Sol Gosnik labored all day. He was a first-class tailor. In the old country he was going to be a rabbi, but he discovered that in Depression America being a tailor paid better. And after all, he had to live, no?

Sol went in through the double glass doors and said “hello” to Marian the receptionist, a pretty black girl Mr. Mortimer had hired to keep peace with some of the social-action groups that roamed the city looking for racial injustice.

Marian said, “Oh, Sol, Mr. Mortimer wants to see you.”

“About what?”

“He didn’t say.”

Sol nodded and walked down the hallway and knocked on Mr. Mortimer’s door.

“Come in.”

Sol went in and stood with his hat in hand with his lunch. Mr. Mortimer’s secretary smiled at him. It was a strange kind of smile, sorry and commiserating, full of some meaning Sol couldn’t understand just yet. Sol, standing there in his jacket and muffler, suddenly felt warm. He unbuttoned his jacket and let the muffler hang loose.

“Good morning, Sol, come in. Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Mortimer. It gives me heartburn.”

Coffee, he’s offering me, Sol thought. This is some kind of big deal.

“Sit down, Sol.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Sol, you’ve been with me a long time, haven’t you?”

“About ten years.”

“And in all that time, we’ve gotten along very well. I treat my employees like people. You’ve always recognized this and done right by me too.”

“I do my best.”

“I know you do, Sol, and that’s why this is so difficult.”

“You have a problem?”

Mr. Mortimer took a long drag on his coffee, put it down and looked past Sol at his secretary. He looked at Sol again and said, “You know business hasn’t been very good lately.”

“The whole country’s a mess. I heard it on the news.”

“That’s right, Sol. That’s right.” He drank some more coffee. “We’ve all got to tighten our belts.” He waited.

Sol said, “Is there a point here somewhere that I’m missing, Mr. Mortimer?”

“I’m going to have to lay off a few people.”

Sol waited for Mr. Mortimer to say more.

“I’m not firing you, Sol. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation. But I just can’t afford to keep you on.”

“For this I got up at 5:30 in the morning?”

“I wanted to tell you in person.”

“So. You’re a big humanitarian. You tell me in person you’re kicking me out into the street.”

“You’ll be paid to the end of the week.”

“And my pension?”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

“Ten years is forgotten so fast?”

“I’m sorry.”

“If I could afford it, Mr. Mortimer, I’d make you a bet I’m sorrier than you are.”

Mr. Mortimer came around his desk and solemnly shook hands with Sol, only the second time they’d done so. The first time was when Mr. Mortimer had hired him ten years before. The secretary smiled at Sol. He waved without energy and left. He went down the hall to the payroll office.

While Sol waited for Annie the clerk to make out the check, he thought about what his wife had said that morning about being a wufnik. It was an old joke between them. It meant nothing, Sol told himself. Out loud he said, “A real wufnik.”

“What’s that?” Annie said.

Sol repeated himself.

“What’s a wufnik?”

“A lamed wufnik,” Sol said. “He’s a man—one of only thirty-six—who justifies the existence of everybody on this planet.”

“You mean like a lawyer?”

“No. Nothing like a lawyer. He’s a righteous man who makes it worthwhile for God to let mankind go on. One of thirty-six excuses. They’re always righteous, always ignorant of their stature in the scheme of things, and always poor.” He shook his head. “Sol Gosnik, the lamed wufnik.”

“That’s tough,” Annie said, “getting fired like this.”

Sol raised a finger in the air. “Not fired. Laid off.” He shrugged. “You’re just as hungry either way.”

“Here’s your check.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll find another job.”

“Who’s going to hire a man my age?”

On his way out, Sol shook his fist at Mr. Mortimer’s door, hurled a curse that moths should eat his distinctive fashions off their hangers, and left.

There was excitement when he got home. A moving van was in front of the building, and men were running every-which-way unloading. The furniture, though plain, was heavy and of good quality. A dark Semitic man watched the progress from one side.

“Good morning, Gosnik,” the man said as Sol went by.

“Good morning.” Sol hustled past. How had the man known his name? Did he know him? He turned to study the man as furniture went by, and he found the odd dark man looking at him. Sol nodded and hurried upstairs.

From above he heard a woman shouting, giving directions to the movers. “No, not there, you fool! Over in the corner. Be careful, klutz, that’s an antique!” An unpleasant sort of woman. Sol had never heard her before. She was probably the wife of the man downstairs.

Sol followed the procession of chairs, beds, bureaus, and tables up the stairs until he came to his apartment. The furniture was going into the empty apartment next door. “Meshugana!” the woman cried at one of the moving men.

Sol let himself in. Shouts and pounding came from the next apartment through the common wall in the kitchen. “Sylvia?” Sol called.

Sol looked through the whole place, through the whole four rooms, and she wasn’t there. She had probably gone shopping. Sol put his uneaten lunch in the refrigerator, fixed himself a glass of tea, and sat down at the kitchen table to wait for her to come back.

When Sylvia got home, Sol was in their bedroom sitting on the edge of the bed. “You’re home early,” she said.

“I’m home permanently.”

“Permanently?”

“Mr. Mortimer laid me off.”

“He lets go a man like you? What kind of a crazy is he?”

“He says he can’t afford me.”

Sylvia took off her heavy black coat. Sol was glad she had it, and also glad he’d paid cash for it. If there had been payments to make, he wouldn’t be able to make them now.

“So, it’s a blessing. We can sleep a little later in the morning.”

“And how are we going to eat?”

“We’ll think of something. Wait.” She went to the closet to hang up her coat. “I have an idea already.”

Sol waited for the idea.

Sylvia dragged something out from behind the clothes in the closet. “Look what I got here.”

“My old sewing machine.”

“Congratulations.”

“Nu?”

“Nu. What nu? You don’t see it?”

“I don’t see what?”

“You can go into business for yourself.”

Sol thought it over for a moment. He was in no mood for consolation or bright ideas. He wanted to enjoy his torment in peace. He said, “Sylvia, my darling dummy, to go into business I need three things. For one, I need a tailor. For two, I need a sewing machine. Those I got.”

“You got. Nu shane?”

“I need also customers.”

“Customers will come.”

“How? By magic?”

“Put an ad in the paper.”

“With what?”

“We got a little money saved.”

“Which we got to eat on.”

Sylvia threw up her hands and strode into the kitchen. “All right,” she said above the racket coming from the next apartment, “you’re determined to sit there like a martyr, go ahead. I got groceries to put away—”

A few minutes later Sol followed her. He sat down at the kitchen table. “What’s going on next door? A moving-in or the end of the world?”

“When they’re settled they’ll be quiet.”

“Could be.”

Sylvia put a package of frozen lima beans into the freezer. “Klutzkashe!” the lady next door yelled. “A real circus,” Sylvia said.

Sol waited a moment. He said, “I’ve been thinking about me and the lamed wufniks.”

“Good, Mr. Gosnik. Think. So far it’s free.”

“You’re going to be Jack Benny, I’ll be quiet.”

“I’m just kidding. Go ahead. Talk.”

“I’ve been thinking maybe I am one.”

Sylvia put a hand to his forehead. “A temperature you haven’t got.”

“You think it’s not possible?”

“Listen, Soly, there are a lot of poor men in the world. There are even a lot of righteous poor men. But there are only thirty-six lamed wufniks. What are your chances?”

“Not good, it sounds like.”

“And even if I really believed there are such things—which, by the way, I don’t—I hope you would have the good grace not to. If you believe and you’re right, according to the rules, you die.”

“Maybe it’s not such a bad deal.”

“You going to leave me all alone? Who am I going to holler on?”

“I’m just talking, Sylvia. Nothing but talk.”

With Sylvia’s help, Sol figured out what he would say in his newspaper ad. He wrote it in English and would put it in The Reporter, the local throwaway paper. “If they read The Forward,” Sylvia had said, “they don’t have any money.”

Sol walked downstairs. Despite all efforts to the contrary, he felt better than he had when he came home. He carried the ad in his pocket like a key to a new life. He whistled a melody from the Old Country he hadn’t even thought about in years.

Out on the sidewalk, the dark man was talking to the movers. Without glancing at them, Sol walked down the street to Fairfax Avenue, where he would place the ad in the Reporter office.

He heard running behind him. “Gosnik, Gosnik!” a voice called. Sol turned and the dark man came up beside him. He said, “Mind if I walk with you?”

“It’s a free country,” Sol said.

They walked for a while without saying anything. The neighborhood was quiet because it was a weekday and the kids were in school. The man made Sol nervous, he couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was because the man made little smiles every so often for no apparent reason, as if he were remembering a small private joke.

At last Sol said, “It’s a nice neighborhood, no?”

“If you can afford to live here.”

Now that was a strange reaction. Did Sol look so poverty-stricken already? Had his clothing become threadbare just since he was fired? He said, “It’s cheap enough.”

“If you have a job.”

“What’s all this about jobs?”

“I heard you upstairs in the kitchen.”

“Ah. And while we’re on the subject of who knows what, how did you know my name?”

“I heard it mentioned.”

“Where?”

“When I came to look at the apartment. The landlord pointed out that you would be my next-door neighbor.”

“Ah.” They walked. That explained a lot, Sol thought. Maybe the fellow wasn’t so sinister after all. They walked past the newsstand, nearly a block long, run by a man almost everybody called behind his back, “The Weasel.” Sol felt an urgency about getting to the newspaper office, and he did not stop and browse among the paperback books the way he usually did. Sol and the dark man turned a corner.

“So, you think you’re a wufnik, eh?” the man said.

Sol looked at him, his eyes wide with surprise. Then he remembered the thin kitchen wall. He said, “I don’t know how you could hear all that with so much moving-in noise.”

“What a mouth my Lili has. Vocal cords like a mule.”

“A strong woman is good to have. Like my Sylvia.”

“There’s good, and there’s good,” the man said.

“That’s true.”

They stopped for a red light. When the light turned green and they started walking again, the man said, “Why did you think you’re a wufnik?”

“Why not? It’s an honorable profession.”

“It doesn’t pay well.”

“Money isn’t everything.”

“You can’t eat honor.”

“And money won’t get me into heaven. So nu?”

The man laughed. Perhaps he thought, like Sol, it was pleasant to joust with a man who had a quick tongue.

The man said, “Suppose I could tell you I knew for sure you were a wufnik—one of the thirty-six blessed men.”

“I would say you were crazy. No one knows such things but God.”

“Word slips out.”

“You’re talking meshugaas.”

“So. It can’t hurt to talk.”

They came to the Reporter office, and Sol ran inside with a promise he would be right back. The dark man waited outside, staring at him through the plate glass window with the yellow plastic shade behind it. Sol did his business and came out. He said, “They say it’ll be in next week’s paper. They say an ad like that ought to bring in a lot of customers.”

“Don’t count on it. A wufnik must be poor.”

“So you still want to talk meshugaas.”

The man shrugged. “It will make an interesting discussion.”

“All right, so discuss.”

The man spoke with more intensity now. Evidently interesting discussions excited him. He said, “What if I told you you are a lamed wufnik?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Why?”

“Because, Mr. Interesting Discussion, if it is true and I believe it, I die. It is written that a man who is a lamed wufnik must never know it. Who would take care of my Sylvia then and keep her from being lonely? And if it’s not true, why should I believe and be a fool?”

“You’re too reasonable.”

“I have been accused of worse things. And by less mysterious acquaintances than you.”

“The rest of your life will not be pleasant.”

“You’re a regular tummeler, aren’t you?”

The man shrugged again. “I just don’t want you to expect too much.”

“Expecting is also for fools. I work. I hope. That’s enough.”

“You’ll die anyway.”

“So when I get to heaven, God will explain to me what’s going on here with your discussions.”

The man cocked his head to one side and thought for a moment. He said, “You’re a worthy man, Sol Gosnik. A good choice.”

“Thank you for your analysis, Mr. Cronkite.”

While they walked back to the apartment building, Sol thought about the crazy person next to him. Was be dangerous? With crazy people it was hard to tell. Sol only hoped he and his wife with the vocal cords would be quiet once they got settled.

They walked upstairs and parted at Sol’s door. Sol said, “By the way, mister, you have a name?”

“Yes. You can call me Sholstein.”

“A good name. Good day, Mr. Sholstein.”

“Good day, Mr. Gosnik.”

Sol told Sylvia about the discussion he’d had with Mr. Sholstein, the new next-door neighbor. Sylvia called the fellow a real joker, and she made Sol laugh about him while she helped set up the sewing machine.

There was no noise from the Sholstein apartment that next week. “You see,” Sylvia said, “I told you nothing was to worry about.” The week after that, when the ad was in The Reporter, they got only three calls for tailoring.

“Barely enough for rent,” Sol said. His legs were two icicles.

“It’ll get better.”

“What if not?”

“We’ll get along. I’ll get a job at Rexall.”

Sol didn’t answer.

Sylvia said, “You’re thinking again, Sol. That’s not good.”

“I’m thinking about how I got thirty-six chances out of billions of people to be poor through life and holy forever.”

“Not very good odds. Wait till the money starts pouring in.”

“I’m waiting.”

Sol turned his head suddenly as if he’d heard something. He said quietly, “You hear how empty it sounds next door? I haven’t seen Sholstein since that first day. Maybe he and his loud-mouthed wife are gone. Very strange the way they came and went like that.”

He looked at his wife with tears in his eyes. “Help me, Sylvia,” he said. “It is such a temptation to believe too much!”