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Landsman uncaps the bottle of vodka and takes a long stiff pull. It burns like a compound of solvent and lye. Several inches remain in the bottle when he is through, but Landsman himself is filled top to bottom with nothing but the burn of remorse. All the old parallels it once pleased him to draw between the guitarist and himself are turned against him. After a brief but vigorous debate, Landsman decides not to throw the bottle in the trash, where it will be of no use to anyone. He transfers it to the snug hip pocket of his own decline. He drags the musician out of the stall and carefully dries his right hand. Last he takes the piss he came in here to take. The music of Landsman’s urine against porcelain and water lures the musician into opening his eyes.
“I’m fine,” he tells Landsman from the floor.
“Sure you are, sweetness,” Landsman says.
“Just don’t call my wife.”
“I won’t,” Landsman assures him, but the yid is already out again. Landsman drags the musician out into the back hallway and leaves him on the floor with a phone book under his head for a pillow. Then he goes back to the table and Berko Shemets and takes a well behaved sip from his glass of bubbles and syrup.
“Mmm,” he says. “Coke.”
“So,” says Berko. “This favor of yours.”
“Yeah,” Landsman says. His resurgent confidence in himself and his intentions, the sense of well-being, is clearly an illusion produced by a snort of lousy vodka. He rationalizes this with the thought that from the point of view of, say, God, all human confidence is an illusion and every intention a joke. “Kind of a big one.”
Berko knows where Landsman is heading. But Landsman isn’t quite ready to go there yet.
“You and Ester-Malke,” Landsman says. “You guys applied for residency.”
“Is that your big question?”
“No, this is just the buildup.”
“We applied for green cards. Everybody in the District has applied for a residency card, unless they’re going to Canada or Argentina or wherever. Jesus, Meyer, didn’t you?”
“I know I meant to,” Landsman says. “Maybe I did. I can’t remember.”
This is too shocking for Berko to process, and not what Landsman has led them here to say.
“I did, all right?” Landsman says. “I remember now. Sure. Filled out my I-999 and everything.”
Berko nods as if he believes Landsman’s lie.
“So,” Landsman says. “You guys are pla
“Assuming we can get documented.”
“Any reason to think you won’t?”
“Just the numbers. They’re saying it’s going to be under forty percent.” Berko shakes his head, which is pretty much the national gesture at the moment when it comes to the question of where the other Sitka Jews are going to go, or what they are going to do, after Reversion. Actually, no guarantees have been made at all-the 40 percent figure is just another rumor at the end of time-and there are some wild-eyed radicals claiming that the actual number of Jews who will be permitted to remain as legal residents of the newly enlarged state of Alaska when Reversion is finally enforced will be closer to 10 or even 5 percent. These are the same people going around calling for armed resistance, secession, a declaration of independence, and so forth. Landsman has paid very little attention to the controversies and rumors, to the most important question in his local universe.
“The old man?” Landsman says. “Doesn’t he have any juice left?”
For forty years — as De
But those activities were a front, as Bre
So every year, it turned out, Uncle Hertz diverted up to half his operating budget to corrupt the people who had authorized it. He bought senators, baited congressional honeypots, and above all romanced rich American Jews whose influence he saw as critical to his plan. Three times Permanent Status bills came up and died, twice in committee, once in a bitter and close battle on the floor. A year after that floor fight, the current president of America ran and won on a platform that showcased the long-overdue enforcement of Reversion, pledging to restore “Alaska for Alaskans, wild and clean.” And De
“The old man?” Berko says. “Down there on his vest-pocket Indian reservation? With his goat? And a freezer full of moose meat? Yeah, he’s a fucking gray eminence in the corridors of power. But anyway, it’s looking all right.”
“Is it?”
“Ester-Malke and I both already got three-year work permits.”
“That’s a good sign.”
“So they say.”
“Naturally, you wouldn’t want to do anything to endanger your status.”
“No.”
“Disobey orders. Piss somebody off. Neglect your express duty.”
“Never.”
“That’s settled, then.” Landsman reaches into the pocket of his blazer and takes out the chess set. “Did I ever tell you about the note my father left when he killed himself?”
“I heard it was a poem.”
“Call it doggerel,” Landsman says. “Six lines of Yiddish verse addressed to an u
“Oho.”
“No, no. Nothing racy. It was, what, it was an expression of regret for his inadequacy. Chagrin at his failure. An avowal of devotion and respect. A touching statement of gratitude for the comfort she had given him, and above all, for the measure of forgetfulness that her company had brought to him over the long, bitter course of the years.”
“You have it memorized.”
“I did. But I noticed something about it that bothered me. So then I made myself forget it.”
“What did you notice?”
Landsman ignores the question as Mrs. Kalushiner arrives with the eggs, six of them, peeled and arranged on a dish with six round indentations, each the size of an egg’s fat bottom. Salt. Pepper. A jar of mustard.
“Maybe if they took the leash off him,” Berko says, pointing to Hershel with his thumb, “he would go out for a sandwich or something.”
“He likes the leash,” Mrs. Kalushiner says. “Without it, he doesn’t sleep.” She leaves them again.
“That bothers me,” Berko says, watching Hershel.
“I know what you mean.”
Berko salts an egg and bites it. His teeth leave castellations in the boiled white. “So this poem, then,” he says. “The verse.”
“So, naturally,” Landsman says, “everyone assumed the addressee of my father’s verse to be my mother. Starting with my mother.”
“She fit the description.”
“So it was generally agreed. That is why I never told anybody what I had deduced. In my first official case as a junior shammes.”
“Which was?”
“Which was that if you put together the first letters of each of the six lines of the poem, they spelled out a name. Caissa.”