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dropped in a comment from the cowboy actor Gary Cooper. “Yup. Yup. Yup.” He abandoned Freddie for hours a day, mumbling to himself as hebrushed up on his Hebrew. And he needed to go over the prayers he remembered from the past. Baruch atah Adonai… He would have to read out of the Torah scroll, something from the first five books of the Bible. But memory wasn’t enough. He’d need last-minute schooling. Some polishing.
    On his dates with Polly, Freddie was glad to find himself free of the dybbuk. The two Americans were walking along the Champs Elysée when she said, “Darling boy, why didn’t you tell me you were Jewish?”
    He stopped short. “Where did you get that idea?”
    â€œI do declare, everyone knows it. Youwon’t work on the Sabbath. And that Jewish dybbuk you use in your act. Of course it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
    â€œI’m not ashamed. I’m not Jewish.”
    â€œYou don’t have to hide it from me,” she assured him.
    â€œI’m not hiding anything.”
    â€œOn the level?”
    â€œI promise you.”
    â€œHow disappointing!” Polly exclaimed. “Can you imagine me dragging a Jewish husband home to Alabama? Wow!” She crossed her eyes. “Some of our redneck neighbors would haul out the tar and feathers.”
    â€œI’m one-eighth Cheyenne. Won’t that do?”
    On the following afternoon, the dybbuk asked Freddie to accompany him to the cheder, a Hebrew school he’d located near the Eiffel Tower.
    â€œI’ll wait out here,” Freddie said firmly.
    â€œThat won’t work,” said the dybbuk. “Just let me do the talking.”
    â€œI’ll be a fish out of water,” Freddie protested.
    â€œPretend you’re a pickled herring.”
    The Hebrew teacher, the melamed, was an Algerian Jew with eyes as dark as fire pits. The Great Freddie was quickly registered as Avrom Amos Poliakov. A small school chair at a small desk became his. “Sit, and pay attention,” said the melamed.
    â€œI have lost my yarmulke,” Freddie heard himself say. What was that? My what? The teacher dug out a small black skullcap. Freddie slapped it on his head and cursed the dybbuk under his breath. The lesson began with a prayer.
    â€œBaruch atah Adonai…”
    Inwardly, Freddie crossed his arms and tried to tune out.
    â€œReb Poliakov,” said the teacher as they finished the hour. “I notice you don’t move your mouth when you repeat after me.”
    â€œI never move my lips. I’m a ventriloquist.”
    After three weeks of listening to the dybbuk’s struggle with the Torah, Freddiediscovered that a phrase or two was stuck inside his head.
    â€œBaruch atah Adonai…Shema Yisrael…”
    Finally, just before they were to go on for the 9:30 show, Freddie muttered to the dybbuk, “What’s playing inside my head like a phonograph record? What am I saying?”
    â€œDon’t lose any sleep. It’s not your bar mitzvah.”
    â€œI could be cursing my best friend.”
    â€œI’m your best friend.”
    They approached the wings of the stage and waited for the curtains to part. “So what do the words mean?”
    â€œYou’re asking God to listen to you,” the dybbuk said. “It starts every prayer. So, as theTorah says, ‘ Shema Yisrael , let us break a leg.’”
    Freddie laughed. He’d never heard the show-business prayer delivered with ancient Hebrew thrown in. That should guarantee a nifty performance.

CHAPTER 12
    S ummer was settling in. An early dusk, pumpkin tinted, lit the Paris streets like the flare of a match. The sidewalk tables were filling up. Freddie, in a rush along a narrow side street, passed a neighborhood café. A ragged boy in a coat with bulging pockets stood at the window looking in. Freddie barely spared him a glance.
    â€œStop,” said the