The Day the Rabbi Resigned by Harry Kemelman Read Free Book Online

questioning about what they had seen and what they had missed in the tour of the town was intended to justify a suggestion that they make another survey of the area. And the invitation for the following week, that clinched it, didn’t it?
    Well, why not? He was thirty-two and she was, what? Nineteen? Twenty? It was time he got married. True, she was not what he had pictured as the kind of girl he would marry. He had rather thought in terms of someone beautiful and voluptuous. And she was certainly not that. On the other hand, they had made it plain that since she was their only relative, she would eventually inherit what they had indicated was a very considerable estate. That was in the future, to be sure, but on the immediate question of tenure, surely there could be no doubt.
    In some departments the tenured members voted on who was to be granted tenure and thereby included in their number. In other departments, and the English Department was one, the chairman of the department decided. He would then notify the dean, who would pass on the recommendation to the Committee on Faculty of the Board of Trustees, whose chairman, Cyrus Merton, would notify the president, who made the final decision. Well, if he were an in-law of Merton’s would Arthur Sugrue, chairman of the English Department, dare to nominate someone else? With all that Merton had to say about salaries, allocation of funds, even courses of study and subjects to be taught?
    But the girl was plain. On the other hand, she exuded a kind of virginal purity that was—his mind fished for a word—challenging, even exciting, sexually exciting. The train pulled into the station. He made his way to the subway station to go home. He fished in his pocket for change for the turnstile, and found Marcia Skinner’s card. He considered for a moment, and then went to one of the public pay stations.
    When she answered, he said, “Marcia? Are you free? I’d like to finish the weekend.”
    â€œOh, it’s you. Where are you? You want to come over, is that it?”
    â€œYeah. I could be there in half an hour.”
    â€œAll right.”
    When she opened the door for him, she was wearing a long silk dressing gown. She glanced at the bag he was carrying. “You plan on moving in?” she asked.
    â€œJust for the night,” he said, and took her in his arms. His hands stroked her back as he held her close to him. Then he reached for the zipper tab at the back of her gown. “And I thought we’d make it an early night,” he said as he pulled it down.

7
    Tuesday, the rabbi made his usual trip to the Salem Hospital. He stopped at the front desk to get a list of the Jewish patients, and then repaired immediately to Morris Fisher’s room, so that if he were absent again, he could see the others and then double back to Fisher.
    Fisher was a man of seventy, short and fat, with a bald head surrounded by a fringe of grizzled white hair. He had suffered a small stroke from which he had largely recovered, but was being kept at the hospital for further observation. When the rabbi came to see him, he was out of bed, sitting in the one chair in the room, in his pajamas and bathrobe. For a few days his left side had been partially paralyzed, but he had now recovered motion and feeling in both his leg and his arm, and all that remained was a slight twisting of the left side of his mouth, which gave him a sardonic look.
    When the rabbi entered, Fisher greeted him with, “Hello, Rabbi, I bet you don’t recognize me.”
    Since he was one of those who rarely appeared in the temple except on the High Holy Days, the rabbi might very well have failed to recognize him, but obviously that was not what was intended by the remark. The implication was, rather, that his physical appearance had changed so radically by reason of his illness that intimates would fail to know him.
    But the rabbi rejected the gambit and asked innocently, “Lost