The International Writers Magazine: Life Stories

---

In the Grand Tradition of Grand Traditions • Charles E Accetta In a neatly trimmed fenced-in Southern California backyard, where the blades of grass and the odd patch of dandelion leaves chlorophylled themselves to a uniformly green hue and where the flowers and shrubs obeyed the geometric house rule of the ninetieth degree, an older gentlemanly type person stood facing the back of the property with his arms raised to the sky.

"This is something we have always done," he said, in an accent that straddled the border between Brooklyn Hasid and Back Bay provincial, "to the exclusion of all other things. This is how we have always done it, without exception or modification. There is no need to ask why because the why of it has been forever lost to time. Just do it and be done with it. And then do it again. This is the prime instruction behind all of our traditions. The basic mindset required is that of unquestioning certitude, for if we attempt to apply logic and reason, if we attempt to traverse the morass of swamp-boggled free will, then we are all no better than the Reformed Jews."

The old gentleman lowered his arms and looked down in front of him. A young boy looked up and they continued a conversation.
"What does that mean, Grandpa? What's a Reformed Jew?"
"A Reformed Jew," the old man lectured, "is someone who wants to be a Jew, but doesn't want to be Jewish; as opposed to Conservative Jews, who want to be Jewish just as long as it doesn't conflict with their tennis lessons."
The whoosh of a sliding door connecting the patio to the back of the house caused the little boy to peek around his grandfather's bony bent Bermuda-shorted legs and wave to his grandmother, who was just sliding the door closed behind her. The old man ignored the woman's entrance onto the scene and continued with his instruction to the boy.
"Pay attention, you," he warned, "because I won't always be around to help you cope. Understand?"
The little boy returned his gaze back to his grandfather. "Where are you going, Grandpa?"
"What kind of crazy question is that, boy?" He was leaning further in, close to the boy's face. "Look at me. I'm an alter cocker, a geezer. I could go like that," he snapped his fingers, "at any time." Before he could continue, he was interrupted by a forceful two finger tap on his right shoulder. He unfolded himself to full height and turned to face the boy's grandmother, who was a foot shorter but whose unhappy presence co-opted the air rights for all of the area within his limited vision. The combination of disdain and anger that papered her face was the historical signal for him to fight or submit; in either case, to submit in the end.
"What is wrong with you, George?" she hissed in a sharp cadence, trying not to be specific within her grandson's earshot. "How can you talk to a little boy, your own grandson, like that?"
"It's who I am, woman. An old Jew... Disappointed...Resigned to the fickleness of a very busy God. Why can't I share such a vision with the boy?"
"George," she stated, shifting to a more explanatory tone, "we're Lutherans. You're just playing an old Russian Jew in a play. Stop bringing your work home and upsetting the household." She softened her voice further to speak with the boy. "Billy, come with Grandma. Your grandfather is 'in character'. Let's leave him alone for a bit."

Grandma strode up to the patio with Billy entwined in an allemande vise as his grandfather announced to the empty space in the backyard, "Bringing our work home is a tradition. Our fathers did it, even when it was only by them tracking coal dust or cow blood into the house. For their fathers, home was work. It... is... what... we... have ALWAYS DONE."
The little boy, in a slide-step gait, reversed his view to regard his abandoned grandfather from a receding perspective. George glanced back at him from a sideways stance and did a little sashay step and bow to close out his latest performance. From George's stage right, a single pair of hands began to clap slowly in appreciation.
"Morey," shouted the little boy, excitedly.
"Morey," announced the old gentleman, ecstatically.
"Morey," muttered the grandmother dejectedly, now facing defeat from superior numbers.

Billy struggled and slipped free of his grandmother's grappling hold, rushing to the open space amidst the run of four foot high fence where Morey's wrinkled head hovered opposite, his flabby chin hanging barely inches over its upper cross-section. As each planting season came, ever since George and Morey had discovered one another, the grandmother had quietly invested the ground with individual species along that fence line side, the kind of varietals that discourage close contact by way of sticker, thorn or flowing depth. There was only one contiguous section left, midway up the length of the backyard, a stretch of thirty inches that Grandma had earmarked for the future installation of a stand of Sticky Laurel. This is where George and Billy now stood, one towering above and one bobbing below the fence top.

"Hello, young William and hello not so young George," said Morey, in the Delancy Street sing-song English developed in his youth. "I heard a commotion and came running out to find you, George, teaching William how not to be a shmendrick. It's such a warming thing, this," and he reached over to lightly pat the boy's head with his fingertips. "And hello to you, Clara," he called out to the patio. "You are looking especially zaftig today."
Clara waved back in response to her neighbor, barely; as a punt returner with the game on the line might reluctantly, in view of circumstances, call for a fair catch.
"Thank you, Morey," she replied in monotone, not ever sure what Morey meant by that term, but assuming that it was yet another one of his references to her breasts. Over the years, he had been alternately greeting her as "The Milk Maiden" and "All of the Girls"; as in "So, Clara, how are all of the girls today? All perky and bouncy and such?" Clara considered him a rude person in general and a disturbing influence on her husband. She did what she could to discourage the friendship. For instance, Clara had been the one to inform Morey that George's uncle was once a Storm Trooper in Hitler's army.
"He was a soldier," Morey shrugged, as a way of minimizing the importance of such information. "There's nothing says he was killing Jews."
"But, he was on the same payroll," countered Clara, trying to dig the point deeper, trying to find the nerve. It didn't work. Morey simply turned to George and asked, "So how many Jews have you slaughtered this week?"
"Not counting you?" George replied with the question, a technique he had learned from his rabbi Morey.

Clara retreated back into the house through the sliding door and left the boys to themselves at the fence. George wanted some time alone with Morey; he wanted to work on his accent and inflection, as well as on the timing of his lines. Morey was the Library of Yiddish Congress when it came to all of that. As a bonus, he had been a writer for the top television comics of the Fifties; nothing was more Jewish than the Golden Age of Television.
"First, Berle fired me, and then Sid Caesar fired me. Ernie Kovacs would have fired me after that, except that his death prevented it. I've been fired by the best. So, what could you want to know that I don't already?"

It had been Morey who had recommended George for the role in the summer stock production of "Sleepless in Belgorod", a two act play about an old man looking back on his days of flight from the pogroms. For George, having not landed any serious acting parts in a decade, this was a plum role. There were three separate soliloquies for him during the first act alone, each ending with the same phrase - "at least I didn't die". At first, the director had been reluctant to even let him read for the part, but some initial coaching from Morey helped to remove his cosmopolitan Germanic stiltedness and bring out the haimish in him which won him the job. Now, three days before the opening of the show, George wanted to hone in on his character. For this, he needed Morey's complete attention.

"Morey," asked little Billy, "who were you named after? Grandpa says I was named after William the Conqueror." Billy tripped over the last two syllables, but kept his feet, to the amusement of both men.
"Well," Morey said, carefully considering the question, "this is something of an interesting surprise for you two, because I was named after the original Jewish homeland. But, I didn't like being called 'Israel' and I liked 'Izzy' even less. So, I took my mother's maiden name, Morenberg, and made it into my nickname."
"Wow," the little boy looked up at both men, "you mean you can just make up a name like that? Wow."
George saw his chance. "Hey, Billy, go tell Grandma that Morey's been hiding his real identity all this time." He winked at Morey. "That should keep you both occupied for a while."
"Okay, Grandpa," said Billy, charging up to the patio and yelling toward the house, "Hey Grandma, I just heard something. Open up."

George eyeballed Billy to make sure he made it inside and then faced Morey. "I'm worried about maintaining the persona, Morey. No matter how hard I try, I keep feeling myself going Gentile. I need a way to play a good Jew and hold it through two acts."
Morey looked back at his friend and said nothing, considering the problem. Then he spoke.
"George, I am religiously observant for a man of my time and experiences. I have studied the Torah and I have asked the questions and accepted the answers that my people handed down to me. With the traditions of the mitzvot, our meeting and the friendship brought to me was a gift from God, a mitzvah. I must acknowledge that gift in turn. That is why I used what little influence I had to get you the chance at the part in this play. It was a little thing, a small kindness to match the effort required. This is a just a speck of what it takes to be a 'good Jew'. I don't know that I'm so good a one anyway, compared to the people who taught me, but I'm the only Jew you've got, so let's make this work. Now, I'm going to give you my secret to feeling like a good Jew."
Morey switched his head, first left, then right, to emphasize the gravity and import of what he was about to say. He then grasped the top of the fence with his hands and pulled his face closer to George's, with his eyes locked in contact with those of his friend, before he continued.
"The secret is to try to do everything you can to help others and don't expect any of it to work out, because it won't, and expect everyone to hate you for it, because they will." Morey finished with an exaggerated nod of the head to punctuate the last few words with a physical exclamation.

George regarded Morey with a pale blank pose, but inside he was reeling in a panicked freefall. The accent and the smattering of Yiddish phrases and the feelings of defiance against a series of xenophobic societies would not be enough to feint Jewishness, not according to what he just heard. He would need to somehow live a life that reflected the traditions and that presented the disappointing aftermath as a lesson that reinforced those traditions further. His brain was starting to buzz into overload when Clara's sharp bark burst the bubbles and settled his mind down and back into the fenced-in backyard on that sunny afternoon.

"Gentleman," she snarled, again with the poor young boy firmly in hand. She looked first at George, then at Morey, condemning both with her eyes. "There is something you both need to hear, and then explain to me." She could barely shield her anger; her free hand balled into a fist at her side and shaking like a paint can mixer. She looked down to Billy. "Go ahead and tell them what your new name is."
"My name is Izzy. Izzy the Conqueror," he said, once more tripping over the last two syllables and retaining the charm that protects little boys from the judgments endured by much older men. George looked at Morey and smiled.
"I think I understand now," George said to him.
"How could you not?" Morey replied.

© Charles E. Accetta October 2008
iceman13056@netscape.net

This is Charles' first published fiction piece

More Stories

Home

© Hackwriters 1999-2008 all rights reserved - all comments are the writers' own responsibility - no liability accepted by hackwriters.com or affiliates.