274
MARK MIRSKY
have been thrust down in a stomach? There are even two of them,
a big stomach and a little one. Just drop a trouble down into the
soft, damp stomach lining. Coat it with a glass of milk. Soothe
it
with a little Alka-Seltzer. And let it slumber. Half the time when
it wakes up, the need for it is gone and you can dispose of any–
thing left, at your ease.
It's so nice and dark down there. A trouble can curl up and
sleep forever.
So, Rabbi Lux wished that this trouble would join a few others
in his tummy and take a long nap. Maybe it would never wake up.
What could he do about it? Nothing! He couldn't even talk with
anyone about it. Rabbi Lux was a discreet man. He didn't talk about
the troubles he heard. Now an indiscreet one like myself doesn't have
this
difficulty. I have plenty of safety valves.
If
I hear of a trouble
and it is too big for me to forget, I don't swallow it. I run to tell
someone else about it. Not just one person either. I run to ten,
fifty.... The bigger the trouble, the more friends I share it out to.
The more who hear about it, the more that are worrying about it.
That's my philosophy, it saves me a lot of worry.
Rabbi Lux couldn't do this. How would it look the most
respectable Rabbi in the community running around telling every–
one's secrets to everyone else. Not that it doesn't happen. Rabbis
are storytellers. The Talmud, bursting gossip, names and all. But
Rabbi Lux wouldn't say anything. He couldn't even tell his wife. And
this was an additional worry.
Because she didn't like this.
Yehoodiss knew that Rabbi Lux was keeping things from her.
She knew they were none of her business. But she didn't like the
idea of not knowing what was going on in the Rabbi's mind. Espe–
cially when she saw that these things disturbed him. That they made
him come home late. That they distracted his attention from her.
Yehoodiss wanted to know what was going on. The Rabbi wouldn't
tell.
It aggravated her. Yehoodiss loved secrets. They were like
sweetmeats to her. She was already a central intelligence agency in
Dorchester. What she wouldn't have given for a little firsthand
from the Rabbi. She sat every night with a banquet of information
and couldn't get a scrap.
Yes, Yehoodiss hungered. Not just for information. She hun-
