CYRILLE FLEISCHMAN
Jazz
It
was in 1954. Maybe 1955. Maybe even 1956. And he, a Hebrew teacher
and trumpet player, had a mistress.
What's so terrible? said the kindly disposed. A Hebrew teacher can't
play the trumpet?
Yes! said the ill-disposed, but a mistress? For a Hebrew teacher, is that
right?
The students' parents, the administration, the congregation of the syn–
agogue and the president spent their time wondering.
Izzyk Gilleski's view of life was simple. Sunday evenings, through his
beard, he played trumpet with a New Orleans style group. Sunday morn–
ings he taught classes on the Talmud, with modern Hebrew thrown in, at
the little school next to the synagogue. But there was the problem of the
mistress.
Still, mistress was a big word. His wife had used it first at the butcher's.
She had said ruefully: "My husband doesn't only play the trumpet, I
think he has a mistress."
The butcher's wife had no illusions. "Madame Gilleskie,
they all
have
mistresses! You shouldn't let your husband play music at night, any time
men go out at night, they have a mistress."
"I said it just like that. I don't know for sure. But I wonder."
"Don't wonder any more: start crying right now!
My
husband doesn't
play any instrument, but he had a mistress
too
last winter. Every Monday
evening he went card-playing wi th his friends ."
"And how did you get
him
over it?"
"Hit him. It's the only way. At his age, you don't really think I'd take
hinl to a psychiatrist? I beat him up good and hard, and since then he
doesn't have any mistress and he doesn't play any poker. Just rummy on
Sundays, wi th me there to watch."
"I am not going to beat up the father of my children! Never mind. I'll
put up with the mistress and I'll kill him."
"Even so, beat him up a little first! Men aren't as bad as they seem.
Don't commit a crime of passion just over a mistress..."
It went on for several months. The only thing people talked about any–
more was Suzanne Gilleskie's tragedy and that danmable trumpet. Then
July came around. The month the president always went to Juan-Ies-Pins.
