Read Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground for Free Online Page B

turning with a barely perceptible nod, he stage-managed the two assistants who had furtively followed him in. Identified by armbands as members of the synagogue burial society, they slouched toward the sickroom with an empty litter. Moments later they reappeared with a sheet-covered burden, Zippe’s habit of a gray serge shirtwaist folded neatly on top. Mr. Gruber held the door as they departed, closing it behind him with a regardful click. It was an operation that would have served as well for robbing a grave as for lawfully removing a body to prepare for interment.
    Now that most of the evidence of my bubbe’s occupancy had been spirited away, her absence from the chair next to the samovar made the room feel somehow askew. The emptiness surrounding her chair was almost palpable. Not that I actually missed my grandmother sitting there by the window; it’s just that it seemed easier to think of her being alive now that she wasn’t.
    The next thing I knew, the place was swarming with neighbors, their faces benign with solicitude. They had come bearing covered dishes of cholent and steaming compotes, trays of assorted nosherai. There were cold cuts and golden kugel, almond cookies in drifts of powdered sugar, milk bottles filled with bathtub shnaps. With every gift they contributed to a medley of aromas that turned our once malodorous apartment into a culinary nosegay. What I couldn’t figure, though, was how word of Zippe’s passing had gotten out so fast, unless the Pinch had a sixth sense about such things. Or was it that you only needed a sense of smell? In any case, the neighbors quickly made themselves at home, beginning to behave in a way that I wasn’t sure was altogether appropriate to the occasion. For all their protestations of sympathy and heartfelt condolence, our guests seemed more in a mood for celebrating than paying respects.
    In no time their faces had dropped the solicitous formality. The ladies were recommending beauticians, swapping tidbits about the indiscretions of film stars; they sniped at absentee members of their mah-jongg circle until said members arrived. Conceding that business was universally in the toilet, their husbands got down to cases. They told indecent stories about the exploits of Yudl the peddler, slapping backs with a hardiness that launched more than one macaroon. Our apartment—with its piebald carpet and tacky apple-blossom curtains, its tallow-encrusted candelabra on the sideboard, the faded print of a shepherd playing his harp at the foot of a king—had taken on a frankly festive atmosphere.
    At last my duly summoned father appeared at the door. He was met by Uncle Morris, holding old Isador upright with one arm, squeezing Mama’s hand with the other. When he managed (without letting go of the others) to draw Papa into the circle of his embrace, it was like a bid to become literally the family’s sole support.
    â€œSolly,” he sighed, his cigar shifting from one corner of his mouth to the other, “she was a woman in a million, an institution, our zelig mameh.” My father allowed himself a sorrowful nod on his brother’s shoulder, then cocked a brow as if trying to match the words against his memory. “It’s like it says in Talmud,” continued Uncle Morris, a philosopher no less, “life is dreck, but what can you do?”
    This was the cue for Grandpa Isador to try the full range of his anguish. Inviting martyrdom or admitting envy, who could say, he let loose a cry that stopped conversation for the space of a syllable or two. “It should have been me!” he groaned. The tears swelled to freshets, overflowing the troughs beneath his eyes, following well-sluiced courses down his hollow cheeks. Several representatives from the liars’ bench in front of Jake Plott’s barber shop, themselves done up in their most chapfallen gabardines, gathered round him to commiserate.
    Meanwhile, set adrift by