PARTISAN REVIEW
273
Rabbi Lux, who was leaning over the desk, suddenly sees the
clock on the opposite wall. Six-thirty! He's half an hour late for
supper. Yehoodiss
will
have a fit! He rises quickly from his seat.
"Excuse me, Mrs. Blatz. I got to go! Take heart. Who knows?
Maybe we'll hear from Harvey?"
Fatal last words.
As
Rabbi Lux rushes from the study, Mrs.
Blatz calls hoarsely, "It shouldn't take
thirty
years!"
As Rabbi Lux walked hurriedly home along Blue Hill Avenue,
he reviewed his conversation with Mrs. Blatz. Something did not
sit well. He had started off badly to begin with. That knife of
Abraham's, it had stuck in her heart. And what followed was too
glib. A cover-up. He hadn't even convinced himself. He sensed he
had said the wrong thing. What does the Talmud say?
"If
a prayer
is fluent in my mouth, I know that it is accepted, and
if
not, I
know that it is rejected."
Rabbi Lux recalled this passage and knew that his advice to
Mrs. Blatz had not been fluent in his mouth. He discerned that he
hadn't really comforted the woman. He had just quieted her. Rabbi
Lux became uneasy in his stomach. He sensed trouble.
Yehoodiss was standing in the hallway when he got home. At
the top of the stairs she stood with an alarm clock in her hands.
She let it go off in his face, "Ding ding ding ding! Dang dang dang!
Dong! Dong . . . !
She looked angrily into his face and then blanched. He was
deadly pale, as white as whitefish. Yehoodiss threw the alarm clock
over the bannister and rushing down the stairs, grabbed his arm.
"What's the matter?" she cried, frightened.
"An
Alka-Seltzer," said Rabbi Lux, faintly. "I'll
be
all right.
I'm a little late. I couldn't help it."
"Never mind, never mind," said Yehoodiss, supporting her
husband through the door of their apartment and into the kitchen.
She pushed him into a chair by the table. "Sit down, relax. Better
late than never!" she said, standing over him, feeling his cool, moist
forehead. "We'll fix an Alka-Seltzer. You'll be better."
So Rabbi Lux had an Alka-Seltzer. It took two or three before
he was comfortable. Before his wife, who sat opposite him, across
the table, gave up staring at his face for signs of a serious illness.
If
only a stomachache had been the end. How many woes
