Voices of the dead

Twenty minutes later he was across the street from the building his father owned at Sendlinger Strasse 43. The bottom floor had been rented to a pharmacist who appeared to still be in business. Harry and his parents lived in the top two floors. He crossed the street and tried the door. It was locked. He remembered his father kept a spare key on the stone ledge over the rear entrance. Was it still there? Even so, if someone were living in the house they would have changed the locks, wouldn’t they?

Harry walked around the block behind the building. Stood in front of the door. He jumped up and felt the key and knocked it off the ledge, heard it hit the cobblestone entranceway. He picked it up, slid it in the lock and opened the door.

6

Detroit, Michigan. 1971.

Harry glanced at the row of black Cadillacs parked on the street, a group of friends and relatives around him at Sara’s casket, waiting for it to be lowered into the ground next to her mother. Rabbi Rosenbaum delivering the Mourner’s Kaddish.

“May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified.”

“Amen” from the mourners.

“May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days, and in the lifetimes of the entire family of Israel, swiftly and soon. Now say: Amen. May His great name be blessed forever and ever. Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, upraised, and lauded be the Name of the Holy One.”

And now everyone said, “Blessed is He.”

Harry felt like he had slipped out of his body, watching himself in a black suit, white shirt, black tie and black yarmulke, hands clasped together, holding them over his groin, solemn expression, mind flashing snapshots of Sara like frames in a slide show.

An hour later Harry was sitting in his crowded living room, Aunt Netta, an Orthodox Jew, holding his face in her hands.

“Harry, did you shave? You are not supposed to shave or get a haircut. Harry, don’t you know this?”

“It’s okay,” Harry said.

“It’s not okay. You should be sitting in a low chair.”

“I don’t have a low chair,” Harry said.

She glanced at his shoes, black ankle-high Bally boots with a zipper on the side. “And no leather. You should know better, Harry. It’s rabbinically mandated.”

Telling him what a mourner should do during shiva. Netta was short and wide like his mother, about five two. She pinned a piece of ribbon, a keriah, on his shirt pocket.

After the Nazis murdered his parents, Harry doubted the existence of God, and stopped practicing the rituals and traditions of the faith.

“Harry, I arranged a minyan for tonight’s service,” Netta said. Which meant ten men from Temple would arrive about 7:00 p.m. to recite Kaddish.

Most of Harry’s family had emigrated from Germany in the late thirties. His father’s side of the family was tall, thin and good-looking. His mother’s side was short and stocky. The men had round faces and thinning hair and wore glasses, black horn rims with lenses so thick you got dizzy if you looked through them.

Harry’s uncle and former business partner, his dad’s younger brother, sat next to him and grinned. Sam was seventy-one and always had a gleam in his eye.

“A Polish terrorist was sent to blow up a car,” Sam said. “He burned his mouth on the exhaust pipe.”

Harry grinned.

“Two Jews, Saul and Sheldon, were walking past a church. They saw a sign that said: Become Catholic. We pay $100. Sheldon says, “I’m going to do it.” “No,” says Saul. “Yes, I am,” says Sheldon. “You can’t. Your family, your friends, they’re all Jewish. You go to shul for the High Holidays.” “I’m doing it,” says Sheldon walking into the church. Saul paces back and forth until Sheldon walks out with a big smile on his face. “No,” says Saul. “You didn’t.” “Yes, I did,” says Sheldon. “I’m baptized. I’ve become Catholic.” Saul says, “Tell me, did you get the hundred dollars?” Sheldon looks at him and says, “Why is it always the money with you people?” Sam laughed, patted Harry’s cheek. “So how you doing?”

“Holding up,” Harry said.

“What choice do you have?”

“I miss her,” Harry said, feeling a heavy sadness like he might break down, took a deep breath and it calmed him.

Sam put his arm around Harry’s shoulder. “We all do. That kid was something special.”

Harry saw Phyllis and Jerry, dressed up, standing in the foyer. “Excuse me, will you?” he said to Sam, got up and went over to them. They’d never been in his house and looked nervous. “Thanks for coming,” Harry said.

“Harry, why didn’t you tell me?” Phyllis said. “I’m so sorry.” She hugged him and handed him a glass canning jar. “I made this for you. Salsa, extra spicy, the way you like it.”

He took it and put it on a table and helped Phyllis off with her coat. “Come in, have something to eat.”

Jerry shook his hand. “Harry, I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“I can’t stay long,” Phyllis said, out of her comfort zone, ready to leave right then if she could’ve.