Free The Place Will Comfort You by Naama Goldstein Page A

complaints,” he said, becoming serious. “In nine years they retire me with pension. My work respects me.”
    â€œAnd likewise I, Meshulam,” Mr. Durchschlag said, welling indeed with a poignant charity towards the man. “But, Meshulam. I speak not of the job assigned to you by our esteemed vice principal,Mrs. Adeena Plyer, but of your duty as a member of the sacred congregation of the Holy One, blessed be He. Your duty as a Jew, a Jew and a man.”
    Meshulam Banai stared at Mr. Durchschlag. Mr. Durchschlag stared back and nodded.
    â€œModesty of dress and modesty of voice, by these measures a woman protects a man. That is her job. Her very fortification keeps a man advised of his, let’s call it, potentiality. It is a partnership. Now, ask yourself: If one partner shirks her duty, who is to blame when the whole business falls apart?”
    Meshulam wrapped an arm around the barrel and hugged it to his hip. “Rabbi,” he said, tightening his grip on the long-handled dustpan. “With all due respect, Rabbi, these are young religious girls.”
    â€œReligious. Religious?” Mr. Durchschlag underscored each repetition of the word with a wallop of the garbage barrel rim. “Religious?” His next question in store had been did Meshulam have a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a niece, a granddaughter? They would have named their female kin and reached a convergence in their viewpoints regarding strong words in crucial times. Meshulam would have helped him comb the dunes and recover the girl.
    But now he saw that the tortuosity of argumentation required to lead this character towards the first glimmers of insight would require such an expenditure of time as would altogether preclude the finding of the girl intact.
    â€œMeshulam, if you think I am ordained, Meshulam, if you think I am ordained to the rabbinate simply because of my clothing, just because of the hair sprouting from my face am I a rabbi, then you are liable to be the tail to any bearded head and you are more a pagan than a Jew. You are a primitive.” Mr. Durchschlag stopped hitting the rim of Meshulam’s barrel and rubbed his smarting palm on his pants. “You will not, Meshulam,” he said, “you will not, however, interfere with my educational methods. You will not so muchas touch the door which stands between you and my girls whom I am testing on their honor. Go wipe women’s toilets.”
    Shoving open the lobby doors, Mr. Durchschlag shouted to the janitor that he was going out to recite the afternoon prayers in the open air. His thin soles banged over the concrete pavement of the enclosed front yard. The heavy gate was chained for safety, so he scaled it, catching his pants cuff on one of the pointed posts as he came down the other side, barely escaping injury. He clung to the gate as he slid down it. For a moment after his feet had touched the asphalt he remained in this embrace. Then he let go and ran. He had taken only a few bounds outside when the black pavement dove under the gray sands and disappeared.
    It would be easier to walk on the road but he could not risk being seen. The sands sucked at his footsteps and slowed him as he climbed over the first dune. Standing in the cleft between it and the next he could see nothing but ungenerous soil, pebbled, briery. When he looked down he saw that even he blended in. His black trousers had paled, his white shirt darkened. He resumed his climbing, scaling the next rise. He would tell his wife they had sent him on a field day. She would wash his clothes tonight, press them, starch his collar, and drape the garments, restored, over his chair for the next morning. He would like an egg sandwich for tomorrow’s lunch. He must mention that before she had fixed yellow cheese and margarine again.
    His thighs ached from the battle with the sands. On the fourth or fifth peak he stopped again to look around. The sky was whitened with the glare of