I arrived late for the afternoon prayers on Shivah Asar be-Tammuz. On the Seventeenth Day of the month of Tammuz, a fast day, one laments the breaching of Jerusalem's walls by Roman Legions in the final days of the Second Temple. Shivah Asar be-Tammuz is not your average fast day by any means. It kicks off the whole mourning season which runs for a full three weeks culminating in Tisha b'Av, the day the Temple itself was destroyed. This period is known, in fact, as the “Three Weeks,” “Drei Vochen,” or “Shalosh Shavuoth,” all of which literally mean three weeks. During this period one observes customs and laws of mourning (with the exception of the intervening Sabbaths when all mourning is forbidden). One does not eat meat, drink wine, have one's hair cut, go swimming, listen to music, wear new clothes, or get married. And on the fast of Tisha b'Av one does not wear leather shoes, sit on chairs, or even study holy subjects. In other words, starting with Shivah Asar be-Tammuz you can really mourn your head off. It's not exactly a picnic, definitely not my best season and I come from a family which loves to mourn. And not just at the chapel or grave—ripping clothes, tears, stools, Kaddish, the works. Sorrow, bitterness, anguish, indulgence, sweetness—real mourning. And not just for seven days—for years. And why not? How many sensual things in life are there? But when my family mourns, we are mourning for someone—a father, a sister, an uncle. We shriek Rachel, Morris, Menachem the son of Lazar. It's all very intimate, personal. When Shivah Asar be-Tammuz comes and you mourn your head off, who is it for? The whole world! A pretty tall order. Who even knows the name of the world? Earth? Universe? Did you ever try and mourn for the whole world the week Hank Aaron hit his 700th home run? It is a confusing experience. And if the Temple had not been destroyed, what would Einstein have been, a camel driver in Beersheba? The Budapest String Quartet, olive pickers in the Galilee? It's true. Yes, and if the Temple had not been destroyed, we would not have been around for Hitler and his ovens. That's true, too. All the years of blood. If only the Jews had been good. If only we hadn't hated without cause. If only we hadn't transgressed His Sabbath—our Sabbath. If only we had minded our own business like the Italians and Greeks and all the other short, swarthy races of antiquity. What can you do? Mourn—from Shivah Asar be-Tammuz through Tisha b'Av, and who can be so certain Sandy Koufax is so happy anyway? But the man did pitch four no-hitters, so is it any wonder that I was late for minchah, the afternoon prayer?

Of course, I had been present for the morning prayers. At their conclusion the minyan attempted to find a time for minchah. Eight o'clock? Too soon! You can't eat till nine o'clock!! Eight-fifteen? Too late! At nine o'clock you can eat already! Eight-ten? Eight-ten? Good!

No, they couldn't start minchah late enough for me. My goal is always to avoid the business of the day. I was annoyed that we would have to wait so long between the afternoon and evening prayers. Waiting for a fast day to end is the deadliest, dullest waiting of all and not simply because one is hungry. That's the least of it. You want the day to end and to get back to your normal, confused life. Of course I eat when it's over. I overeat, but not because of need, rather it's the principle of the thing. Why not eat when you spent a day not eating! It places the day in perspective; you were famished. What an ordeal that was! No, it is not the eating. It is those final moments when the day is technically over, when the darkness begins to descend, the bright, harsh light relaxes and the true, luminous inner nature of the day emerges. The barest moment before the screen door slams against the frame when the agitated smidgen enters, unintimidated, unhurried, unavoidable and one is faced with the reality no architect ever envisioned: a fly is in the house. And it is His house. You are trapped. So it is between minchah and ma'ariv. When you are standing in the comfortable little wood-and book-lined room staring at the impending darkness or checking the liturgical calendar to see when it is time to pray or even wondering why your shoes get scuffed the way they do, the day rises up from the worn wood floor, comes over the heavy wooden benches and taps you on the shoulder whispering, “The night is for hiding, do you think you can hide from the day? Here I am, all twelve sun-filled hours of me.” And what can you do? You turn around to face the day, all of it. So when the minchah prayer was finished (it went quickly since I had missed the first part) and Mr. Isaacson sat next to me at the little table in the back, I welcomed him. A few pleasant words with a charming man, a righteous man, and the day would be over. Who wanted to look Shivah Asar be-Tammuz in the eye?

He turned to me and said, “Some things come to mind, you mention Russian.”

I had mentioned Russian because Mr. Isaacson is the man who makes the minyan. He's not the tenth man, but he is responsible for him and for seven, eight, and nine as well. In the summer it is hard to find a minyan and when it becomes apparent that no one is going to walk in the door, Mr. Isaacson takes his tefillin off and goes out to help numbers seven, eight, nine, and ten find us. He shanghais the unwary up and down Ninety-first Street. He cadges them on the corner of Broadway. He plunders other minyans. This last is like asking Othello to lend you his wife, but Mr. Isaacson is a hard man to say no to because what's in it for Mr. Isaacson? Is he paid for it? No, thank G-d, he has a good business. Does he have to say Kaddish? No, thank G-d, his family is fine. Does he have to run around like a meshugginer? No, he could pray anywhere. Who would want to start his day by saying no to Mr. Isaacson? Not numbers seven through ten. And so when I didn't attend regularly, I wanted Mr. Isaacson to know why. Why? My wife was taking a Russian course which started quite early and I had to get the baby dressed and over to her play group. And who gives the baby a lollipop on Shabbes? Mr. Isaacson. So I understood his mentioning my mentioning Russian.

He had a distant look in his eye. He was clearly moved by the long summer fast day—waiting for the sun to set.

_____________

“I was in the Fourth Russian Army; we hadn't eaten for days. They were shelling us something terrible and then on the fourth day they told us to move forward. So we began climbing this hill. It was a big hill and we were carrying everything. They had even given me a big, heavy ammunition box to carry, too. I struggled up the hill and they told us to dig in so I dug a trench and when I finished a sergeant or an officer would say, ‘You with such and such a group?’ And I would say, ‘No, I'm with the Fourth Russian Army,’ and they would say, ‘They're over there.’ And I would move over there and I would start digging again. I would dig in and they would ask, ‘You with such and such a group?’ and I would say, ‘No, I'm with the Fourth Russian Army,’ and they would say, ‘Oh, they're over there.’ And I would move over there and dig in again and the same thing would happen. ‘You with such and such a group?’ ‘No,’ ‘Go there.’ It wasn't like today; you didn't ask questions. You did what they told you.”

He shrugs his shoulders, nu, and holds his hands out palms up—what can you do? He lifts his eyes in a perplexed look. What can you do? And what could the sergeant or officer do? This man, Mr. Isaacson of the Fourth Russian Army, is digging. He is honeycombing half of Rumania.

“I went from here to here to here.” He points to various positions on our table, the Rumanian hilltop, in front of us.

“Finally I found where I was supposed to be. I was digging in, it must have been near dawn because I looked down and saw water. There was a stream at the bottom of the hill. I went right down there. I didn't walk. I ran right down and threw myself in. My head and arms and everything right into the stream.”

He pantomimes his immersion. He smiles: it is refreshing.

“It felt so good. We were so thirsty and tired. The others saw it, too, and they started coming down. Pretty soon the whole army was in the stream. Then they told us to get moving so everybody got up and we started marching along. I felt something under my foot, kind of unsteady, and looked down. We were walking over trenches. We were supposed to replace the garrison. We moved up and took their places and they started bombing us. It was terrible. For three days nobody moved and then in the morning they told us to attack. We went running out a little way and dug in. I started digging. They were shelling us awhile and stopped. I was so tired, I hadn't slept in several days. I guess I fell asleep. Just like that. And the next thing I knew, everybody was running over me. They had given the order to attack and I was asleep.”

Mr. Isaacson laughed at this. What kind of soldier is that? The Angel of Death yells “Forward!” and he is asleep.

“So I jumped up, too, and started running. It was terrible. We were attacking north and the Germans were to the east on our flank, so they opened up their machine guns and caught us in a crossfire. We had to turn the entire army to the east.”

On our table Mr. Isaacson has the entire Russian Fourth Army wheel ninety degrees to the right to face the darkening windows and the entrenched Germans.

“I saw that they had us in a crossfire and instead of going east, I got down and ran south to the other end of the battle. People were dropping and I was running low. I saw this ditch filled with dead bodies and I thought to myself, ‘Moishe, men ken geharget vern,’ so I jumped in and lay down. The whole thing kept going on. After a while a Yettaslav jumped in and said, ‘What are you doing?,’ and I said, ‘I don't know.’”

Mr. Isaacson shrugged his shoulders for both of us, the Yettaslav and me. What can you do? I asked who the man was.

“The Yettaslav was a big, strong fellow.”

Mr. Isaacson straightens up and thrusts out his chest and shoulders. “He was from Yettaslav, a town near Odessa where all the men are big and strong. He said, ‘Let's shoot at them,’ so I took my rifle and put a bullet in and shot, but the bullet wouldn't come out, so I tried pushing it through, but I could not do it. I put another bullet in and shot and pushed. Again nothing, but that must have done it. It didn't work. I didn't know what to do, so I picked it up and gave it a klap.”

The bullet-stuffed rifle comes crashing down on our table.

“And it broke in two. It fell apart.”

We stare in astonishment and dread at the two pieces of the no-good Czarist rifle before us.

“I didn't know what to do. I looked over to the Yettaslav to see if he knew what happened, but he was right next to me shooting away. I was afraid if he saw, he might kill me. He might think I did it on purpose.”

“Did he know you were Jewish?”

“Yes, he knew.”

“How could he tell?”

“He was from my unit of the Fourth Russian Army. He knew me. ‘Jew, dirty Jew,’ he would yell and shoot me. So I leaned over the broken rifle and pretended I was shooting.”

Mr. Isaacson leans over the broken rifle, resting his extended rifle-cradling arm on the chumashim stacked on the table. The Yettaslav and I are to the left shooting away at the Germans and can't see what is really going on—nothing. Mr. Isaacson continues to hide from us. I can only hear his voice.

“I was like this a long time. The longest time. I didn't know what to do. I was afraid to look over and see what he was doing. The whole battle was going on and I was afraid to look over at the Yettaslav. Finally, I looked over a little.”

Mr. Isaacson twists only his head around for the briefest glance before returning to his hiding.

“I couldn't see anything, so I turned around again. And this time I looked.”

He looks.

“And you know what? I saw the Yettaslav just sitting there. He wasn't doing nothing. Just sitting there like this.”

Mr. Isaacson still using the table as the wall of the trench places one fist on top of the other and on top of the upper fist he places his chin so he sits there bent over and bemused, staring directly ahead like a stone monkey on some Asian temple frieze.

“So I sat up and said, ‘Hey, are you all right?’ And he didn't say anything so I reached over and touched him a little.”

I feel a small tugging on my elbow.

“His head turned a little, and his hat fell off. I saw a red spot on his forehead. He was dead. He had been shot right through the head. I thought, what do you do now, and I took his gun and gave him mine. And then our sergeant came running along and jumped into the ditch. And we lay there for a long time with the whole thing going on. Along about evening it got quieter and he said, ‘I wonder what's going on?’ I said, ‘I don't know.’ And he said, ‘Take a look.’ So I climbed up carefully and looked around. I couldn't see anything and I jumped back down. Then he got up to take a look—nothing. And after a while he said, ‘Take a look.’ So I got up—nothing. I got down. Then he got up again and nothing. So we were getting up and down and nothing happened but he was a little short fellow and I guess they couldn't see him because he told me to get up again and I got shot, back in my side. It felt like somebody hit me with a strong iron rod. I bent over like this and fell back into the trench. I heard the sergeant say, ‘Probalt, finished.’”

_____________

“Nu,” someone calls out, “ma'ariv.” The evening prayer. Shivah Asar be-Tammuz is over. What! Not yet! I'm in the middle of a story. Wait a minute! But someone begins leading the evening prayer. I turn back to Mr. Isaacson, but he grabs a siddur, and jumps up with fervor in his eyes. He draws closer to the pipe that runs from down below and up to heaven. I hear him implore.

“He is merciful, He shall forgive iniquity, and He shall not destroy. Often He turns away his anger and shall not stir up all His wrath. Lord, save us. The King shall answer us in the day we call.”

The leader calls, “Bless the Lord who is blessed.”

We answer, “Blessed be the Lord who is blessed forever and ever.”

And I bless the Lord who makes the evening. I glance up. Mr. Isaacson's eyes are closed as he blesses the Lord who turns the day away, Who evens the evening, Who turns His anger away and answers us in the day we call Him. Even then it is dark. Shivah Asar be-Tammuz is over, but the fast is not. Hungry supplicants rush through ma'ariv. For me the evening service after a fast is an anticlimax emotionally, but necessary intellectually. This service has always been a test of faith; one I rarely pass. I am purposefully, willfully patient. I thrust the day of affliction into the past in order to turn the day, bend it into experience, but the vanity of affliction rises hungrily from my stomach disintegrating concentration. Have I not done enough? Only Mr. Isaacson entreats, blesses with the fervor of the day. The day of affliction is over, but what about Mr. Isaacson? We have left him probalt—finished. I see him lying in a Rumanian ditch on a Russian battle-field bent and bleeding as the day turns into evening, a new day. Sorrows are never as discrete as the fasts that follow. How can they be, you can't fast forever. The service halts. No one intones the mourner's Kaddish. Everyone looks around. Are you a mourner? Are you a mourner? No familial mourners. A voice calls to the leader, “Zugt Kaddish.” A dispassionate Kaddish pours forth. The rhythm tumbles forth—the building-blocks of the universe rumbling against one another as their names are called. The roll call of cornerstones—granite of existence. So fleeting the call, so light the touch in this hurried, famished Kaddish, yet they remain granite and radiate their power when called.

It is over. We are standing. I turn to Mr. Isaacson.

“We can't leave you there, lying there like that,” I joke in fear. Fear of what? Fear of death? Fear of the day? Fear of the story? Do not give Satan an opening.

Mr. Isaacson does not hear the joke, does not feel the fear, but his eyes are open and he desires to tell the story. People turn to say goodnight. “On the way home,” he explains, “I'll walk with you.”

The men who are studying the daf yomi, the page of the day, drift toward the room with the long table and the large books. A page a day and in seven years you are finished, done.

A student of the entire Babylonian Talmud. What could be easier? What could be faster? Ah, but there is the Jerusalem Talmud! No matter, never mind. One thing at a time. And when you have completed it, what do you have? You have one. You have earned the privilege to start two. Begin again. What could be simpler?

Mr. Steimatzky approaches and asks me if I have been fasting. “You have? Good. Here!” He thrusts a strange, artificially green bag toward me.

“Take.”

I peer inside the long, distended bag to see nectarines gathered in the bottom like refugees. If I hadn't fasted, they wouldn't be mine. Mr. Steimatzky is not in the catering business. I gaze at them, their green splotches all the paler and purer in the chemical green dye of the bag.

“Nu, take.” Mr. Steimatzky has a presence, a bearing. He did not flee two countries, two worlds, learn three languages only to hand out pale nectarines in poisonous bags. He is, in fact, a diamond dealer who enfolds his natural gems in conservative custom-made shirts, soft and natural, nothing like this garish sack with its bastardized New World hybrids from Key Foods. I stand there. I am keeping a man waiting with his arm extended as if he were a beggar. A man who shuffled through the express line, eight items or less, with its clanging cash register and garish, chipped fingernails prancing madly about its keys to register the value of his own garish sack—all in a custom-made shirt—just so his fellow congregants who fasted (when you flee two worlds you only bother about the very righteous) can rejoice a little sooner. I stare at the awful color of the bag. Who cares what color the bag is? “Though your sins be as scarlet!” It is a matter of respect. Of generosity. Of brotherhood! His arm is extended. Shall I refuse his kindness and take from him his good deed instead? Shall we both return empty when we both can draw back together filled and fulfilled; he with his mitzvah and I with my nectarine?

“No thank you,” I say. “I'd better wait until I get home.”

He draws back his gift, offended.

“No, I'd better wait for some juice, that's easier,” I remark.

What am I saying? I, who used to break the twenty-five hour Yom Kippur fast at Glaser's Drug Store on two vanilla shakes (and in those days they gave you the whole, cold shiny canister with its two-plus glasses lying thick and frigid inside) and an ice-cream cone kicker.

“I bought them for you,” he entreats.

“No,” I say touching my stomach apprehensively. “I'd better not. Thanks anyway.”

“Awright,” he turns away hurt.

_____________

I feel embarrassed, foolish, and I owe him an apology, at least an explanation. But how can I explain that the day isn't over, that it is twilight and Mr. Isaacson is lying broken in a corpse-strewn Rumanian ditch, when outside the very windows of the synagogue Mr. Steimatzky sees darkness and inside he sees Mr. Isaacson saying goodnight to Mr. Sobel? How can I break the fast when the day has not turned? How can I do a good deed with nectarines when the greatest of all mitzvahs, the saving of a life, lies before me? And anyway, they aren't washed. G-d knows what is on them.

Mr. Isaacson and I are together again.

“We can't leave you like that.”

We are the last in the room. I am standing prepared to stay and listen.

“No,” Mr. Isaacson motions toward the door. “Come, I'll walk you home.” He takes my arm. We are in the narrow hallway moving toward the door.

“No, please, let me walk you home.”

“No, you're hungry. I'll walk you home.”

“Please, Mr. Isaacson, it's not right.”

“Why?”

Why? Because he lives nearby, down the block in the other direction. Because Broadway is unpleasant and unsafe. Because I should escort you and not you, me. Because. . . .

“Kuvid, respect!” I cry, hoping to understand the meaning of the words, in a high croaky voice sounding and feeling like a bilingual frog, and having no more understanding than the Egyptians of the plague of those croaking reptiles. If I can't whisper the word intelligently, why do I think I can understand by yelling it?

“Respect, kuvid !” I cry again uselessly and doomed. But, after all, the nectarine man gave me three chances with his green bag, shall I deal more harshly with myself than Steimatzky did? What kind of respect is that? Yes, I feel like a fool screaming at Mr. Isaacson. I had hoped that when I intoned kuvid-respect it would be as a shofar blast up above and Gabriel would take not one, but two unwashed nectarines (in the World To Come nothing can hurt you), place them in a green Key Food fruit and vegetable bag, check them to make sure they're good ones (69¢-a-pound, not the ones in the window), staple the bag closed, and write with a heavenly fat grease pencil, “World To Come—Heavenly Reward—Pays Double.” Instead, Mr. Isaacson is intimidated by my outburst and says, “All right.” Now what's going to happen up there? A voice can come down at any moment and Gabriel hollers, “Shmuck, you yell at Isaacson who doesn't need it and you don't take a nectarine from Steimatzky who doesn't need it either. Shmuck, you don't know how to give and you don't know how to take.” It's true Mr. Steimatzky's custom-made shirts have quite a bit of cloth in them. What can you do? Go home and eat yourself sick?

Mr. Isaacson and I descend the stone steps onto the sidewalk. We turn left toward his building. Respect!

Ninety-first Street glows pink under the high crime street lights. Cars are bumper to bumper alongside the curbs. Heavy brownstone staircases crowd down onto the quiet sidewalk. The buildings, small (a bay window, a fancy balustrade), the garbage cans few, the trees scraggly. And all is soft and close in the pellucid pink of the sodium arc. You could touch it and it wouldn't be rough. It is unreal and very intimate. Mr. Isaacson takes my arm. Behind us we hear a stammering of farewell. We turn to acknowledge Mr. Sobel's third goodnight. “A gute nacht.” And Mr. Sobel plunges off down the street in a stuttering motion, for every step taken, three starts.

We return to our direction, but Mr. Isaacson pauses. The mood has been broken. Mr. Sobel has limped into the night trailing shreds of Rumania, fibers of time, moans of agony. We stand exposed on Ninety-first Street. Mr. Isaacson the righteous and I.

“Let me walk you home.”

“No, you live right here.”

“You must be hungry.”

I must be hungry. And not you? Could it be Mr. Isaacson didn't fast? The righteous? But in years he is an old man. I look at my old friend. It has been over fifty years since he turned the Little Father's weaponry into bullet-choked kindling. Why should I be disappointed that he didn't fast? Will it affect the purity of his message? Must righteousness exclude common sense? Over seventy! Until a hundred and twenty! I take his arm to guide him.

“Let me show you a little kuvid,” I implore.

It is the night of three's. Three offerings. Three goodbys. Three weeks. Three “kuvids.” And in the street, my kuvid, my call for respect is heard and does not sound strange. And why should it? What are the upright founts channeled above us bathing the scene in a sea of pink but respect? Pellucid preventive pink: respect for the power of evil. Kuvid for the ganef. The wall has been breached; the sea enters. Arm in arm we negotiate the floodlit street. We make our way to the refuge of shadow near the corner. One tree on the block is capable of shelter. We are under it. The pinkish rays do not bounce; refuse to diffuse. Incapable of dusk, unable to dawn, how dull is their reflection. Like their inspirers, the evildoers, they leave nothing after them; powerful, but shortsighted, they wither against the simple green leaves of our shelter. And we stand in darkness. Unable to see each other, steadfastly we gaze together upon the sea of carnage. We are returned.

_____________

“The bugs. It must have been the bugs around my face that woke me. I was alone, lying there in the dark on my back. I knew I was injured, but I didn't know where. I checked my hands—I brought them together. No, they were all right. I felt my legs; no, it wasn't them. I felt my face; it was all right. Then I felt my stomach. It was okay, but as my arm came down from my stomach, it felt something soft and sticky on the side. I knew where I was hurt. In the side toward the back. I took my hands away. I didn't know what would be. I lay there. After a while I thought to myself, ‘There's no tachlis in this,’ so I tried to get up. It hurt but I managed. I took my coat and cigarettes and a kit like kids have now and started climbing out.”

“How did you know where to go?”

“I didn't, but there was a well nearby and I heard a bunch of Rumanian soldiers singing, so I thought I would go there and they could help me. I got my things together and I took a few steps. I was uneasy.”

Mr. Isaacson balanced himself delicately using the darkness for support.

“But I saw I could make it, so I kept going. And when I got near, crossing a field—boom! Shells started coming in and I was knocked flat and I went out again.”

In the darkness Mr. Isaacson must be shrugging his shoulders, what can you do?

“After a while, I came to again and I didn't hear any more singing. They must have left if they didn't get killed. I knew I wasn't getting anywhere in the middle of the field, so I got up again and tried walking. Same thing, I felt unsteady but I went very slowly. After a while I got to the well, but there was no one there. I took a drink. I felt a little better. I was leaning against the well and I thought I could use a smoke, so I reached for a cigarette.”

“But you didn't have any.”

“No, I had my cigarettes. I left my gun. What did I need that for? I didn't feel like shooting anyone and they were lousy guns. But I took my cigarettes. So I lit it and inhaled. . . .”

I hear Mr. Isaacson inhaling and relishing the sweet smoke after crawling around for half the night like a wounded beast.

“And. . . .”

Although it is very dark, my eyes have been adjusting and I can see Mr. Isaacson. He is standing next to me, his chest uplifted inhaling the cigarette—his act of life, returning to normal. A well in a deserted field, a cigarette in the hot, summer night.

“And. . . .”

_____________

Mr. Isaacson's hands rise to his shoulders and as he exhales they choreograph in quick wavy descent consciousness sinking away, below the surface. Mr. Isaacson's head has bobbed and sunk onto his chest, his lungs empty even of smoke. We leave him there, but my Mr. Isaacson, the one I know, slips out from behind the collapsed one and tells me, “I was weak and I wasn't used to it.”

He laughs. Some cigarette ad! He laughs and stops speaking. We stand there silently. The Surgeon General should have spoken to Mr. Isaacson, he could have told him. And yet, I know his daughter. I don't really know his daughter, but I have seen her. A beautiful woman, a model. Mr. Isaacson once told me with pride that she was in one of the most popular cigarette ads. You saw her everywhere. You couldn't avoid her. Was it Marlboro? Kent? What difference does it make? But there she was gaily smiling on this seesaw from the back of slick magazines, down from tall buildings, inside subway cars. Young, beautiful, refreshed, and alive! Amazing! After what a cigarette did to her father! Did she even know? Could this be what Mr. Isaacson is musing about? His daughter on that smoky seesaw and the cigarette that almost killed him? No, ridiculous! Mr. Isaacson can't be thinking of that. The righteous don't tie knots, they untie them.

“I lay there I don't know how long. I was lying there and they came around and found me.”

“How did they know you were alive?”

“I guess I was moving a little or something. I had some dreams.”

“Do you remember them?”

“Like it was today. Like it was now,” he answers fervently.

“What were they?”

“I dreamt I was lying there worried and frightened. I didn't know what to think. It was like the world disappeared. And then my grandfather appeared, a big, handsome man with a beard. A religious man; a saintly man. I remember him very well. A good person. He was standing in front of me.”

And he is standing there in front of me, too. Mr. Isaacson is straight and tall with his right arm raised and his curved but open hand rocks forward and back ever so slightly in benediction, strength, and forbearance. And Mr. Isaacson's face has become firm. Capable of joy and comfort, but now it is set firmly. We must wait for another day, it is saying. And to wait for another day we must live through this night. Benediction, strength, and forbearance. Yes we will.

“And he said to me, ‘Moishe, it will be all right, don't worry.’ And I knew I would be all right. I opened my eyes and I saw a figure where he had been standing. It was very dark, but I could see it had an arm extended and in the hand it held a gun. It said, ‘Neyemetz or Rooski?’ German or Russian? Since it said Neyemetz or Rooski I thought I'd better say Rooski, so I said, ‘Rooski.’—‘Rooski?’—‘Da! Rooski.—’ and he put the gun down and they came forward to help me.”

“Who were they, soldiers?”

“No, they weren't soldiers. They worked for the army. For two weeks the battle was going on and the bodies were just lying there. When the battle ended, the army hired men to go around and collect the bodies and the equipment that still might be good. They were looking for the dead, but found me instead.

“They came over to me and saw that I was wounded, but by then I couldn't walk, so they took my overcoat. They gave us great, heavy overcoats, very strong, so they took that and I was lying on it like a stretcher. I couldn't keep conscious. I was going in and out and we were moving slowly. It wasn't easy for them.”

Under their heavy burden—a wounded man on a Russian greatcoat without handles or rods, the rough wool tearing at tired hands fighting to maintain a grip—we pause. They came seeking death but found life and it's enough to kill them. See what happens when you don't follow orders. Hired to collect the dead, they freelanced a little and slipped a live one in on the Czar. Little Father, we heard you say dead, but look at him with your Holy Russian eyes, he's as good as dead, isn't he? Merciful Patriarch, and if he lives, you won't have other wars to swallow him alive, like a frog, a beetle? And the Czar of all the Russias, irate, all his hemophilia genes dancing a kazatzke in Slavic disgust, squeals, “Fools, if you wanted to take something broken, take the Holy Russian rifle Isaacson broke, and if you want to give me a present, why give me a suffering Jew? Of those I have plenty.” And the human garbage collectors quake in fear, but a voice comes clapping down like a shofar from the heavens above. “These will eat nectarines in the World To Come with the righteous!” Justice! It is Gabriel. He has spoken! The nectarines are redeemed. Mr. Isaacson is saved. The day has turned. It is time to say amen.

_____________

“And so you were saved,” I return in a response of faith, G-d is a faithful King.

Mr. Isaacson does not answer.

“They took you to the field hospital?”

My wife must be worried by now.

“It must have been something to know it was over.”

“I woke up in the forest,” Mr. Isaacson is saying. “The light was coming through the trees; it must have been dawn. They had stripped me bare. They even took my boots. I didn't have a thing. No coat, no cigarettes, nothing. They did a good job all right. They took everything.”

Everything? I draw further under the tree to avoid falling nectarines. Their crash will bury Ninety-first Street, beating the high crime lights into the ground like mangled hangers writhing in darkness among fluorescent shards on a closet floor. Everything.

“Ganovim!” Thieves! I spit accusingly at those two who have stripped Mr. Isaacson. But Mr. Isaacson doesn't share my bitterness.

“Weren't they ganovim?” I ask intensely.

“No, I don't know. I guess they thought I was dead, so they left me,” he says understandingly.

I feel confused and foolish. If they thought he was dead, they shouldn't have let him go. They were sent to collect the dead. That was their job! With all the Hitlers in the world, I get mad at two foolish, doddering old drunks (they must have been drunks! Weren't they goyim?). Two old drunks who tried to save a man's life and when they found that impossible, they rescued his valuables. Dust to dust was not decreed on valuables, just flesh. Yes, just flesh, but I feel something else. I feel anger. Yes, anger. Why shouldn't I feel foolish, I am angry at Mr. Isaacson. I want to ask him, Mr. Isaacson, how can you be so naive? All right, they were exhausted, they could carry you no farther, their hands raw and bloody from the unequal tug-of-war with your coat, all that may be true . . . Mr. Isaacson, hate them! Hate them as I hate them; it will do your heart a world of good. Oh, torn confusion, a world of good? I feel my heart constricting, mean and small within me. Of course, one should have a big heart. A big heart to live. A big heart like Mr. Isaacson's. And maybe, that is why he is here now. The day has turned, but what about the Three Weeks? The day has entrapped me, but what about the night? The Three Weeks have nights, and I feel the dark, invisible cords circling about me. I who would run home to supper am held by the night to a dawn. Mr. Isaacson's dawn. I cannot struggle against the unseen cords of night. I am resigned, but I am not righteous. A part of me wants to race down the street. I raise only my eyes to glance down the still street. I can see Mr. Isaacson on the prowl for our minyan. Mr. Isaacson collecting bodies all up and down Ninety-first Street, and I know what they feel when they encounter the holy collector, enmeshed in his net of righteousness. I know their torn hearts. Part screams, “Isaacson, drop dead!” But part fervently petitions, “Oh Lord, make me like Mr. Isaacson.” Part pumps like mad for the subway on Broadway, but part beats with fervor, “Where are my brethren? Let us pray together, ‘May-His-Great-Name-Be-Praised-For-Ever-And-Ever.’” And so a minyan is made as an IRT express slides out of the station with one fewer passenger than it would have carried. But even at that the subway car is jammed; people mashed together like the bullets in the rifle that wouldn't shoot. So where should he be? The refugee? Number ten, the minyan. I turn toward Mr. Isaacson but over his shoulder I glimpse my phantom local disappearing down Ninety-first Street. Part of me hungers for that frantic train and not for heaven where the angels remark on weekdays that the righteous can drive you crazy.

Yes, they can drive you crazy. The righteous do whatever they want with you. They control you. Who knows where his story is going? Where his tale is leading us? But his story has become my story, so I take his hand and ask, “What happened?” What happened to you? What happened to us? To all of us? And I am fearful, for I am not sure we will make it.

And we stand together under the nocturnal shade tree to discover our fate. He talks and I listen. He was discovered and carried through the deserter-filled forest on an empty gun carriage to a dressing station in an orchard where his wound was cleaned. I hear of the journey to the field hospital by wagon, too painful—by ambulance (“a real automobile”), too painful—and a roadside conference that elects to carry him all the way by stretcher. And so he arrives at the hospital in the hands of men, but fears to place his fate in their hands again after a young Jewish soldier dies under the knife. An ugly nurse begs him to consent, but he refuses. For days the world has been conspiring to destroy him, but never with his consent!

That night a Russian Orthodox priest appears in the ward and bed by bed draws near with his huge uplifted cross. Mr. Isaacson, exhausted, lifts the fringes on the corners of his garment and the priest halts. The others, he blesses with his cross, but Mr. Isaacson, he kisses.

“I got through the night all right, but the next day was bad. I couldn't keep it from hurting. No matter how I lay, no matter how I turned, it hurt. They wanted to operate, but I wouldn't let them. And how that nurse cared for me and comforted me. What a good person! But she was ugly! Ugly as sin. She cried over me and begged me to let them operate. Oh, she was good to me, What a good person. Finally, it hurt so bad, I figured it didn't make much difference, so I told her they could operate.

“The doctors had finished, so she ran to find one. I thought that was the end, but it wasn't. They opened up the wound and found a piece of shrapnel stuck between two ribs. They just took a pliers and pulled it out. It was simpler than anybody had guessed. As soon as they pulled it out, I began feeling better.”

“I bet the nurse was happy, too.”

“She was thrilled. How she cried over me! What a good person—ugly as sin.”

Mr. Isaacson smiles, enjoying the paradox. And what did she think of Mr. Isaacson? Could she see into his heart where he called her a good person? Could she for once see her inner beauty mirrored in his eyes instead of the ugly-as-sin glances that well men unceasingly cast? Or was she herself the righteous and in her eyes Mr. Isaacson learned?

“Without her you might have been lost,” I venture in appreciation of her good deed.

“Yes, and not just then,” he answers.

“Another time?”

“It must have been the next day or the day after. The Germans started shelling the hospital. The bombs were falling right into the building. I thought I was going to get killed. I begged her to save me. She ran and got an officer's jacket and put it on me. And when they came running in to evacuate the officers, she shouted at them, ‘He's an officer!’ ‘Officer?’ they ask. ‘Yes,’ I answer, ‘officer!’ They look at my jacket—an officer's—and carry me right out of there as fast as they can. She saved me.”

“What was her name?”

“I don't know. We just called her Nurse.”

“Did you ever see her again?”

“No, a few days later they moved me farther back and I never saw her again.”

“Was she Jewish?” I ask.

“I don't know,” he answers. “I don't think so. I think she was Russian.”

She is what she is—and that is righteous. And I am curious about the righteous. The righteous are not just nice; they are essential. Thirty-Six Righteous sustain the world. If it weren't for them the world couldn't keep going. It would stop right in the middle of no place—like a yo-yo with no more energy-feeding string to tumble down. Kaput—finished! And since they are righteous they are anonymous, otherwise they would never get any sleep. Anonymous, but when I come across one of them, I am curious to find out who they are. What is her name? Who is she? The righteous, it turns out, are who they are. I confess I wouldn't mind her being Jewish, but whoever she is she does her good deeds anonymously, the yo-yo spins, the world turns, and we go from year to year lurching like a blind man at noon. For at noon, the righteous can help the sightless find the path. At night we are lost. The righteous aren't cats; even they can't see in the dark. But she is not entirely anonymous. We know what she looks like. She is ugly as sin. The nectarines are served in the World To Come in an ugly green bag. Ugly as sin and never sings. Ugly? No, unscarred by beauty.

“And so you were saved,” I conclude.

“Yes,” he answers, “thank G-d.”

And for this evening we are finished. How can we go beyond the righteous? We stand a while, quiet and reflective. Mr. Isaacson breaks the silence.

“Regards to the family.”

“Thank you, regards to Mrs. Isaacson.”

“Good night.”

_____________

I watch Mr. Isaacson cross the street and turn to retrace my steps down Ninety-first Street past the shtibl staircase crowding onto the silent sidewalk. It is warm and humid. As I cross Broadway I hear a faint rumbling that might be mistaken for a distant sound from the heavens above, if beneath, the subway, hot and empty, weren't pursuing its predetermined course.

I turn onto my street and see a squat, heavy-limbed figure moving deliberately through the pink light showering down upon him. The page has been learned for the day. Why hurry? A page a day.

I am by his side.

“Are you still fasting?”

“Yes.”

“They were for you.”

“Yes, thank you. The Three Weeks, a very difficult period,” I explain.

“Yeah, but we'll make it.”

“Yes,” I answer. And I open the door for the nectarine man because we'll make it, and not to—would be . . . ugly as sin.