For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories by Nathan Englander Read Free Book Online Page B

as their debut would prove. It was an absurd undertaking. But then again, Mendel thought, no more unbelievable than the reality from which they’d escaped, no more unfathomable than the magicof disappearing Jews. If the good people of Chelm could believe that water was sour cream, if the peasant who woke up that first morning in Mendel’s bed and put on Mendel’s slippers and padded over to the window could believe, upon throwing back the shutters, that the view he saw had always been his own, then why not pass as acrobats and tumble across the earth until they found a place where they were welcome?
    “What am I to bring back?” Mendel said.
    “The secrets,” answered the Rebbe, an edge in his voice, no time left for hedging or making things clear. “There are secrets behind everything that God creates.”
    “And a needle and thread,” said Raizel the widow. “And a pair of scissors. And anything, too.”
    “Anything?” Mendel said.
    “Yes, anything,” Raizel said. “Bits of paper or string. Anything that a needle can prick or thread can hold.”
    Mendel raised his eyebrows at the request. The widow talked as if he were heading off to Cross-eyed Bilha’s general store.
    “They will have,” she said. “They are entertainers—forever losing buttons and splitting seams.” She clucked her tongue at Mendel, who still had his eyebrows raised. “These costumes, as is, will surely never do.”
    It was the horn gleaming on the table next to the slumped form of its player that first caught Mendel’s attention. He rushed over and sat down next to her. He stared out the window at the forest rushing by. He tried to make out secluded worlds cloaked by the trees. Little Yocheved’s farm must be out there somewhere, a lone homestead hidden like Eden in the woods. It would be on the other side of a broad and rushing river where the dogs would lose scent of a Jewish trail.
    Mendel knocked on the table to rouse the musician and looked up to find gazes focused upon him from around the bar. The observers did not appear unfriendly, only curious, travel weary, interested—Mendel assumed—in a new face who already knew a woman so well.
    “You?” she said, lifting her head and smiling. “My knight in bedclothes has returned.” The others went back to their drinks as she scanned the room in half consciousness. “Barman,” she called. “A drink for my knight.” She rested her head on the crook of her arm and slid the horn over so she could see Mendel with an uninterrupted view. “You were in my dream,” she said. “You and Günter. I mustn’t tell such stories anymore, they haunt me so.”
    “I’ve torn my costume.” Mendel said, “the only one I have. And in a most embarrassing place.”
    Shielded by the table, she walked her fingers up Mendel’s leg.
    “I can’t imagine where,” she said, attempting a flutter of alcohol-deadened lids.
    “Thread,” Mendel said, “and a needle. You wouldn’t happen to have—”
    “Of course,” she said. She tried to push herself up. “In my compartment, come along. I’ll sew you up there.”
    “No,” he said. “You go, I’ll stay here—and if you could, if you wouldn’t mind making an introduction, I’m in desperate need of advice.”
    “After I sew you,” she said. She curled her lip into a pout, accentuating an odd mark left by years of playing. “It’s only two cars away.”
    “You go,” Mendel said. “And then well talk. And maybe later tonight I’ll come by and you can reinforce the seams.” Mendel winked.
    The horn player purred and went off, stumbling against the rhythm of the train so that she actually appeared balanced.Mendel spied the open horn case under the table. Rummaging through it, he found a flowered cotton rag, damp with saliva. Looking about, nonchalant, he tucked it into his sleeve.
    “It’s called a Full Twisting Voltas,” Mendel said, trying to approximate the move as he had understood it. Aware that, as much as had been