“Now tell me, ugly man, why are you so old and ugly? What were you talkin’ about when we came in, ugly man?” the tall one asked with a scornful fierceness. I could do without such crass and senseless cruelty, but the four punks didn’t look like people I could reason with.
The tall one began rubbing the old man’s nearly bald head and spoke louder so that everyone in the restaurant could hear: “Why won’t you say something’ nice to us when we talk to you, ugly man? You talk to yourself but not to us. That’s antisocial and real peculiar. You hear me, ugly man?”
The whistling stopped and all four punks started to clap their hands, at first slowly, but soon intensifying their clapping to hard smashes of flesh against flesh, as they chanted “ugly man, ugly man” over the old man. The punk with the orange-rimmed sunglasses began dancing behind the old man, clapping and dancing wildly. Maybe they were on drugs, I thought. I was terrified, uncertain what to do and wishing that I had never eaten here. I had had too many close calls in New York City already, and cursed the atmosphere I had been pursuing s studiously. I wanted to get out of the dreadful restaurant but knew that the four punks would turn on me if I moved. I couldn’t detect anyone else getting upset. The waiter continued to take orders and serve people as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on. There must have been nine or ten customers in the place and no one was doing anything but minding their own business. I turned my head cautiously to see what the old man next to me was doing.
“Ugly man, you wanna get laid with us? I got a hot lady at home waitin’ for me. She’s ugly like you. You’ll dig her,” the tall one said with smug salaciousness. All four of the punks began laughing and mockingly imitating the hip-swaying walk of a drunk streetwalker. The punk with the cast on his arm puckered his lips and blew kisses at the old man.
“In the midst of being taunted the old man repeated his earlier insult, this time louder: “Meshuggeners…meshuggeners.” I hoped that the punks didn’t know he was calling them crazy men.
“What do you know, ugly man’s talkin’ to us,” the tall one said as he scratched the back of his neck, appearing to be contemplating his next move. “So you hear us good, ugly man?”
“I heard you twenty-five years ago,” the old man said, a Yiddish accent evident and as thick as my maternal grandfather’s accent had been. I was stunned by the clarity and force of my Lost Rabbi’s words. Twenty-five years ago, I quickly calculated, was 1940, three years before I was born in Toronto.
“No way you heard me twenty-five years ago, ugly man,” the tall one said, “I ain’t even twenty yet.”
“I beg to contradict you, meshuggener, but I heard you twenty-five years ago. Saw all of you marching and killing like vicious animals…fouling the air of my village…” The old man had a look of both serenity and Talmudic wisdom on his wrinkled face. There was not a trace of fear in his eyes.
“You’re talkin’ peculiar again, ugly man.”
“I know you, believe me. You speak a different language now. All else is the same…identical.”
“I always speak good U.S. of A. English, not like too many people around here,” the tall one said and grabbed the Forward off the counter. He rolled the newspaper into a tight tube and started to fan himself.
“You should read it instead,” the old man said without raising his voice or showing anger. “You could learn something about the world from the Forward.”
“I know plenty about the world, ugly man. Why don’t you be friendly and tell us your real name like a nice little ugly man. Don’t be rude, ugly man,” the tall one said, his tone becoming more virulent.
“Shmuel Avrum Kablonshevsky,” the old man said, outwardly still calm, and removed the cellophane from his package of crackers. He placed the wrapper neatly in an ashtray and finally took his first sip of tea.
“Shmuel…Avrum…Kablonshevsky,” the four punks repeated loudly, each offering a different pronunciation, none of them able to say the names properly. I was a beautiful name, reminiscent of a long-ago way of life in Europe. I wanted to sing out the lovely, evocative name. I wanted to embrace the Lost Rabbi. The punks looked at each other with disbelief.
“You gotta be kiddin’. What kinda name is that for an ugly man?” the punk with the cast said, waving his injured arm as if it were a club. I cringed, squeezing my cup, not able to stand what the four punks were doing to the old man. Don’t you know he’s a Jew, I wanted to say, to shame the punks into leaving, but I realized that such a declaration would mean nothing to them.
“You’re dirt, ugly man,” the tall one said with an increased fury. “You do nothing’ and you’re shit. You’re shit, you hear me, ugly man? What the fuck you good for, ugly man? You’re not even a man any—”
I jerked my head up and turned sharply to face the four young tormentors. I blurted out “Stop it…stop it…stop it” without thinking, feeling only hatred for those four bastards. “Isn’t anyone going to help this man? What’s wrong with you people?” I cried out in desperation. Faces turned away from me. There wasn’t dread or terror in the faces, only a resentment that their protective curtains were being tampered with.
“Well, what have we here?” the tallest punk said, as he bent over and looked directly into my face. His skin was blemished and his breath warm. I wanted to be brave, to stare him down, but he frightened me.
“What are you, a fuckin’ troublemaker?” he said as he started to tap the Forward against my shoulder. “You wanna help ugly man? You wanna do your good deed for the day?”
I stared silently at my interrogator. His face seemed to go into my lungs and nostrils, choking me. He tapped the newspaper more rapidly against my shoulder. Why had I spoken? If I stayed in my room and observed, I was usually fine.
[...] Rabbi – Rachel Barenblat, entitled Instead of Sons (Vayechi) and a short story – The Lost Rabbi - all the way from Canada (Prince Edward Island to be exact) from the prolific pen of J. J. [...]