“It happens,” Solomon corrected, “that Bialystok is in Poland, whereas Belopol’ye is in Russia, and is a small village.”
“Belopol’ye, it also happens, is a big city.”
“We’ll ask the rov when he comes back from Livingston Manor.”
“We’ll ask him,” Cohen said.
“Anyway, my Uncle Aaron had been in a very large card game on Friday evening, continuing even until after the candles were lighted for the shabbes, and it was all over the village that the game was going on, but neither my uncle nor any of his friends would stop the game because very high stakes were involved. Melinsky, are you familiar with cardplaying?”
“A little,” Mullaney said.
“The stakes can get very high,” Solomon said.
“I know.”
“So this game my uncle is in, with its very high stakes, is continuing on and on into the night-midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock...”
“All right, already,” Horowitz said.
“... four o’clock,” Solomon continued, “five o’clock, still the game is going on, six o’clock...”
“Make it morning, please dear God,” Goldman said.
“... seven o’clock, and finally the game breaks up. So guess who’s the big winner?”
“Your Uncle Aaron,” Cohen said.
“Correct! And guess what he decides to do?”
“He decides to go to temple to thank the Lord for his good fortune.”
“Correct!” Solomon said. “The sun had been up for perhaps an hour and a half by then, it was a beautiful spring day, it was April in fact, oh the sun was shining brightly and the cocks were crowing and all the animals of the field were making sounds in the early morning, the village very quiet...”
“A big city!” Cohen complained.
“... and my uncle walking along the dusty road to the little temple, where are gathered for services several dozen old religious Jews like ourselves.”
“This part I heard already,” one of the men at the table said, and abruptly banged down his shot glass and walked toward the stairway.
“Mandel, wait!” Solomon called after him, but the man shook his head, and then made a shooing gesture with his palm flat and out toward Solomon, and quietly trudged up the steps. Solomon turned to Mullaney. His blue eyes behind their magnifying lenses were glowing with the pride of narration, the honest effort of building a story to a climax. Mullaney could hardly wait to hear what happened next. Solomon smoothed his trim white mustache under his nose, put a withered finger alongside his cheek and said, “The sun is shining bright, remember, when my uncle goes into the temple. He puts on a yarmoulke and a tallis — he is not carrying his own tallis-zeckl because this is the shabbes, and he is not permitted to carry anything, though his pockets are full of money that he won from the game...”
“Tsah!” Goldman said, and would have spit had he not been in the temple.
“Certainly,” Solomon said, “I told you he was an evil man, I didn’t tell you this from the beginning?”
“Still, to carry money on the shabbes,” Goldman said, and pulled a grimace, and touched the handkerchief knotted around his throat as if in affirmation. Mullaney suddenly realized that it was knotted there because he was not permitted to carry anything in his pockets today.
“Anyway, my uncle goes to put on the tallis,” Solomon said, “he is already saying the words, ‘Bless the Lord, Oh my Soul! Lord my God, thou art very great,’ and so on, when all of a sudden there comes a thing of lightning through the open window of the temple, it could blind you, and immediately afterwards there comes a boom of thunder like you never heard, and it starts raining. My uncle looks up and the lightning is still hanging there in the temple, it isn’t moving, it’s hanging just inside the window where it first came in, as if it’s waiting there until it finds who it came in for, farshtein? And who did it come in for? Well, my friends, in the next minute that lightning starts to move around the room, straight for my Uncle Aaron who’s gambling and fooling with women, who’s carrying money in his pockets on the shabbes, it chases him around that temple with the other Jews running to get out of his way, and finally it chases him right out the temple door into the street! And there, in plain sight of all the people of the village, in plain sight so that everyone can see in the eyes of God, bang! that lightning hits him right on the head and kills him, and all the money he won in the card game falls out of his pockets on the street! This is a true story, so help me God, may I be struck down like my Uncle Aaron.”
“I don’t believe it,” Cohen said.
“It’s true,” Solomon said, nodding.
“I don’t believe it neither,” Horowitz said.
“I believe it,” Mullaney said fervently.
“You do?” Solomon asked, surprised.
“Yes. The exact same thing happened to my friend Feinstein.”
“The exact same thing?” Solomon asked, astonished.
“Yes. Well no, not the exact same thing. Actually, it happened in Las Vegas, outside the Sands, while Eddie Fisher was singing inside. But yes, Feinstein had been gambling all night, and he did get chased into the street, and he was struck by lightning. Though later, of course, there was speculation about what had really killed him, it being said a blackjack dealer had shot him with a .45 automatic. I, personally, have always believed he was struck by lightning, though witnesses claim Feinstein had been praying aloud for aces all night long, which could have caused the dealer to go berserk, I suppose, especially if he had no sense of humor or was not as pious a man as Feinstein.”
“Isadore Feinstein from Washington Heights?”
“No, Abraham Feinstein from the Grand Concourse.”
“I don’t think I know him,” Solomon said, and suddenly turned toward the stairwell.
The surprise was mutual and immediate, preceded only by the creaking of a stair tread, the single harbinger that caused Solomon to turn. The stairwell was behind the rear wall of the synagogue, and K and Purcell came around that wall cautiously, revolvers drawn, rather like bad imitations of television detectives raiding a numbers bank. Mullaney saw them at exactly the same time that they saw him, and all three men let out squeaks of surprise and almost leapt into the air, Mullaney in fear that he would be shot in the next instant, K and Purcell in delight at having found their quarry at last.
“There he is!” Purcell shouted — needlessly, Mullaney thought, since it was plain to see that there he was, and even plainer to see that there was no way out of this underground room save for the staircase which eras now so effectively blocked.
Goldman, taking one look at the pistols in their hands, shouted, “Pogrom!” and all the other old men, cued by Goldman, remembering stories of atrocities in Russian and Polish villages, perhaps even remembering scenes from their own childhoods, began running around the room shouting, “Pogrom, pogrom!” coming between Mullaney and his two pursuers, who still stood near the stairwell uncertainly, the pistols ready in their hands, but not wanting to shoot a bunch of old men who were racing around the room holding their hands to their heads and their ears and shouting, “Pogrom, pogrom!” for the whole neighborhood to hear. Mullaney, who didn’t want anyone to get shot either, least of all himself, picked up one of the folding chairs and threw it at Purcell, missing, he had never been very good at hitting people with folding chairs. The old men stopped running in that moment, perhaps because they realized Mullaney was the intended victim and not themselves, a realization that provided immunity and therefore power, perhaps because they remembered all at once that it did no good to run, it was more important to stand and fight even if the victim was only a stranger who had enabled you to pray publicly on the sabbath. Solomon seized the lighted candelabra from the altar, and with a bloodcurdling shriek worthy of an Irgun warrior, rushed K and struck him on the arm, sending the gun skittering across the floor, and also sending candles flying in every direction — oh my God, Mullaney thought, we’re going to have a fire here.