The Entertainer and the Dybbuk Read Free Page B

Bulgarian.”
    â€œI’m not Bulgarian,” replied the butcher defensively.
    â€œI’m not Jewish,” Freddie said.
    Almost at once, it stung him that he’d bothered to clear himself. That must have been the lonely Nebraska child moving his lips. What had he known about anything? He’d changed adopted parents and religions almost as swiftly as streetcars.
    While he had sat on church benches, hehad seen that the denominations barely tolerated one another, but almost all of them despised the Jews. He’d never actually laid eyes on a Jew, but he had kept on the lookout for men with Old Testament beards who were trying to conceal their tails and who wore black hats to hide their horns. He had supposed that even their kids his own age smelled powerfully of brimstone, like boxes of smoldering kitchen matches. He had been relieved to learn that he was merely an orphan, and not a Jew.
    Where were all the taxis? He was standing on the curb ready to whistle one down.
    Freddie suddenly thought of Bill Billy, his first dummy. He’d carved the head out of achunk of sugar pine. He had dressed the puppet in bib overalls cut down to size. The nose, painted with red freckles, was a dowel eleven inches long. Like Pinocchio, every time Bill Billy stretched the truth, his nose grew longer.
    The puppet had been The Great Freddie’s ticket out of the wheat fields of Nebraska. Bill Billy had caught a killer piece of shrapnel during the war. Freddie had buried him in Germany.
    A taxi pulled up at last. Freddie leaned forward and told the driver to find him a Jew.
    â€œAny particular Jew?” asked the driver.
    â€œThere’s more than one?”
    â€œA few are coming back.”
    â€œI’m looking for a rabbi.”
    The taxi driver hesitated and then nodded. “I’ve seen some work going on in a synagogue in the old port quarter. There may be a rabbi.”
    When the taxi pulled up at a small, thick-walled building with most of its windows broken out, Freddie took it to have been abandoned during the war. A burst of heavy hammering came echoing from inside.
    Freddie saw a wide-shouldered man on a ladder paneling one of the walls. He wore a small, embroidered skullcap, a yarmulke, that seemed to cling to his head by faith alone. He had a young, wispy beard that reminded Freddie of Spanish moss swaying in thebreeze. With the man’s sleeves rolled up, Freddie could see a string of blue numbers tattooed along his wrist.
    Freddie had seen tattoos like that before. The numbers revealed a past of horrors in the German death camps, where the Nazis had branded each Jew with a number that couldn’t be washed off. The rabbi had somehow escaped the gas ovens.
    â€œWas this a synagogue?” Freddie asked, peering at the shambles of a building.
    â€œIt still is. But not ready for business yet.”
    â€œI need to find a rabbi,” said Freddie.
    â€œI’m a rabbi. Wait a moment while I hit my thumb again.” He finished driving in the nail and climbed down from the ladder.“Rabbi Moise Bindle,” he said, extending his fist of a hand and a smile.
    After a shake, Freddie said, “My name is Freddie. Fred T. Birch. I’m an American.”
    â€œI noticed.”
    â€œI have been possessed by a dybbuk.”
    â€œCongratulations,” remarked the rabbi, who seemed at ease in the English language. Later, he explained that he’d grown up in Brooklyn.
    â€œI want the dybbuk yanked out,” Freddie declared. “Exorcised.”
    â€œWho wouldn’t? But I have never talked to a dybbuk, face-to-face. They don’t hang around street corners, you know. They’re rare.”
    â€œNot rare enough. This one is a smart-mouthed pest.”
    Like the priest earlier, the rabbi patiently folded his arms. “ Nu . Introduce us.”
    Freddie felt his muscles ease. Now he was getting somewhere. “Dybbuk!” he commanded. “Avrom Amos, meet