The Rabbi (52 page)

“And below him?” Kahners asked.

Michael closed his eyes but didn't have to consult the books.

“Phil Cohen and Ralph Plotkin. They give seventy-five hundred each.”

“Exactly half of what Elkins gives,” Kahners said. “And who are the names under theirs?”

Michael wasn't sure.

“I'll tell you. A man named Joseph Schwartz. Five thousand dollars. One third of what Elkins gives. Now—” He paused and looked at them, Mr. Chips teaching his last class. “There's an important lesson to be learned here. Take a look at this.” He threw another UJA booklet on the table. “This is the list for six years ago. It shows that for that year, Harold Elkins gave ten thousand dollars instead of fifteen thousand.”

“Phil Cohen and Ralph Plotkin gave five thousand instead of seventy-five hundred.

“Joseph Schwartz gave thirty-five hundred instead of five thousand.” He searched their eyes. “Do you get the message?”

“Do you mean to tell us there's always a proportionate pattern that stems from the highest contributor?” Michael asked.

“Not always, of course,” Kahners said patiently. “There are always exceptions. And the pattern extends only so far down the line; it's very hard to predict about the nickel-and-dime contributors. But as a rule, this is how it works with the principal donors, the people who are really important to the success of a campaign. In every community we've handled, for a great many years, we've seen it work this way.

“Look,” he said. “Sam X gives less than usual to charity. So Fred Y says to himself, ‘If Sam, who has twice as much money as I have, can give less this year, then who am I to deny that business has been
ahf tsorris?
I usually give two thirds of what Sam pledges, I'll give half this year, too.'”

“What if Sam increases his pledges?” Sommers asked, clearly fascinated.

Kahners beamed. “Ah. The same principle applies. But how much more happily. Fred says to himself, ‘Who the hell does Sam think he is? I can't compete with him, he can buy or sell me; but I can stay in the same league as that phoney. I always give two thirds of what he gives, and that's what I'll give now.'”

“Then you believe that Harold Elkins' donation is the key to our entire campaign?” Michael said.

Kahners nodded.

“How much do you think he should be asked to contribute?”

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

Somebody at the far end of the table whistled.

“He's not even much of a
shulgoer
,” Sommers said.

“He's a member?” Kahners asked.

“Yes.”

Kahners nodded, satisfied.

“How do you interest a man like that?” Michael asked. “I mean, sufficiently to cause him to donate such a large sum?”

“You make him your General Chairman,” Kahners said.

 

40

Michael and Kahners called on Harold Elkins together. The door of the refurbished farmhouse in which the manufacturer lived was opened by Mrs. Elkins, a white-blonde woman in a pink silk housecoat.

“The Rabbi,” she said, shaking his hand. Her grasp was firm and cool.

He introduced Kahners.

“Hal is expecting you. He's out back, feeding the ducks. Why not go right out and see him there?”

She led the way around the house. She had a fine, free walk, entirely without self-consciousness, Michael thought. Beneath the swaying hem of the housecoat he saw now that her feet were bare. They were long and slender and white in the gathering darkness, with manicured toenails gleaming with dew, like little red shells.

She brought them to her husband and then left and returned to the house.

Elkins was an old man with gray hair and round shoulders over which he had draped a coat sweater despite the evening warmth. He was throwing corn to about fifty quacking ducks at the shore of a small pond.

He continued throwing the corn while they introduced themselves. The ducks were lovely birds, large with iridescent feathers and red beaks and feet.

“What are they?” Michael asked.

“Wood ducks,” Elkins said, still casting corn.

“They're gorgeous,” Kahners said.

“Mm-hmm.”

One half rose in a flurry of wings, but got only a few feet off the water.

“Are they wild?” Michael asked.

“As wild as anything.”

“Why don't they fly away?”

Elkins' eyes gleamed. “Pinioned 'em. Clipped their wings.”

“Does it hurt them?” Michael asked, in spite of himself.

Elkins snorted. “How did you feel, first time you got your wings clipped?” He grinned at their silence. “They got over it, too.”

He placed a kernel of corn between bloodless lips and bent over. A large duck with rainbow lights like jewels in her feathers paddled in and reached up regally and bit the corn from the old man's mouth.

“They're my darlings,” he said. “I love 'em. I love 'em in orange sauce.” He threw the last of the corn and then he crumpled the bag and dropped it. He rubbed his palms on his sweater. “You didn't come out here to admire my ducks.”

They explained their mission.

“Why do you want me to become your chairman?” he asked, peering at them from under white eyebrows that stuck out wildly in every direction.

“We want your money,” Kahners said clearly. “And your influence.”

Elkins grinned. “Come into the house,” he said.

Mrs. Elkins was lying on the couch reading a paperback with a naked corpse on the cover. She looked up and smiled at them and her eyes met Michael's and held them. He was aware of her husband and Kahners standing on either side of him but perversely he didn't look away. After what seemed like a long time but was actually a moment she smiled again and broke the contact as she resumed her reading. She had a good figure under the pink housecoat, but there were fine wrinkles in the
corners of her eyes and her pale hair looked like straw in the yellow light of the living-room lamp.

Elkins sat down at a Louis XIV desk and opened a large checkbook. “How much do you want?” he asked.

“Hundred thousand,” Kahners told him.

He smiled. He reached under the checkbook and pulled out a Temple Emeth membership list. “I looked this over before you came. Three hundred and sixty-three members. Among them some men I know. Men like Ralph Plotkin and Joe Schwartz and Phil Cohen and Hyman Pollock. Men who can afford to give a little money to support a good cause.” He wrote out a check and tore it out of the book. “It's for fifty thousand dollars,” he said, handing it to Michael. “If you were trying to raise a million, I'd have made it a hundred thousand. But for four hundred thousand, let everybody do his share.”

They thanked him. Michael put the check in his wallet.

“I want a plaque in the main lobby,” Elkins said. “‘In beloved memory of Martha Elkins, born August 6, 1888, died July 2, 1943.' My first wife,” he said. On the couch Mrs. Elkins turned a page of her book.

They shook hands and said good night.

Outside, as they got into the car, they heard a door slam. “Rabbi Kind! Rabbi Kind!” Mrs. Elkins called. They waited while she hurried to them, holding the hem of the pink housecoat high to keep from tripping as she half-ran.

“He said,” she reported breathlessly, “that he wants to see the exact layout of the plaque before it's cast.”

Michael promised that it would be done and she turned and went back into the house.

He started the car, and beside him Kahners gave a little low laugh, like a man who had just rolled a point in a crap game. “That's the way it's done, Rabbi.”

“You got only half the amount you wanted,” Michael said. “Won't this cut major contributions in half all the way down the line?”

“I told you we would
ask
for a hundred grand,” Kahners said. “I was hoping we could get forty.”

Michael sat silent and unaccountably depressed, feeling the presence of the fifty thousand dollars in his wallet.

“I've been rabbi here for two and one-half years,” he said
finally. “Tonight was the third time I set eyes on Harold Elkins. He has been inside the temple twice during that length of time. At
bar mitzvahs
, it seems to me. Or perhaps at weddings.” He drove in silence for a little while. “The people who use the temple,” he said. “The ones who come to services and send their children to Hebrew school. I'll feel a lot better about receiving money from them.”

Kahners smiled at him but said nothing.

Next morning the telephone rang in his study at the temple and a woman's voice, hesitant and faint and slightly husky, asked for the rabbi.

“This is Jean. Jean Elkins,” she added, revealing that she had recognized his voice.

“Oh, Mrs. Elkins,” Michael said, aware that Kahners had looked up at the sound of her name and was smiling. “What can I do for you?”

“The question is what I can do for you,” she said. “I'd like to help with the fund-raising drive.”

“Oh,” he said.

“I can type and I can file and I can use an adding machine. Harold thinks it's a good idea,” she said after a tiny pause. “He's got to do some traveling and he thinks this will keep me out of mischief.”

“Why don't you come down here whenever you feel like it,” Michael said. As he replaced the receiver he observed that Kahners' face still wore the same smile, which disturbed him for reasons he had trouble defining.

 

41

A Buick dealer named David Bloomberg donated four acres for consideration as the temple site, in memory of his parents, and when Michael visited the place with the committee they saw at once that it was ideal, a completely wooded tract on the crest of a high hill on the outskirts of town and less than half
a mile from the campus. The view to the east was of broad meadow cut by a wandering stream, falling to young timber.

“Di Napoli can build his temple on a height and facing the sun, like Solomon,” Sommers said, while Michael simply nodded, his silence showing his pleasure more than words.

Acquisition of the site gave Kahners another talking point, and he scheduled a series of fund-raising parties. The first was a Sunday breakfast for men, which Michael was unable to attend because of a funeral.

The second was a champagne party at Felix Sommers' home. When the Kinds arrived, the living room was crowded with people standing and drinking champagne. Michael liberated two glasses from a passing tray as they plunged into the vocal hubbub. He and Leslie found themselves in conversation with a young Ph.D. biologist and an overweight doctor who specialized in allergy.

“They've got a fellow in Cambridge,” the biologist was saying, “who is working in cryogenics, trying to find a way to quick-freeze human beings. You know, give them a blast of cold and keep them in a state of suspended animation.”

“What on earth for?” Michael asked, testing the champagne. It was warm and rather flat.

“Think of the incurable diseases,” the biologist said. “You can't cure something? Zappo, you freeze the poor shnook and keep him that way until there's been a breakthrough. Then you wake him up and cure him.”

“That's all we need, that and the population explosion,” the allergist said. “Where would they keep all the sleeping stiffs?”

The biologist shrugged. “Cold-storage. Warehouses. Refrigerated boarding houses, the natural answer to the nursing homes shortage.”

Leslie made a face and swallowed warm champagne. “Think of a power failure. With all the boarders waking up right and left and hammering on the radiators for less heat.”

Like a sound effect, someone started to hit a spoon against a glass pitcher for silence, startling her, and the three men laughed.

“Here comes the pitch,” said the biologist.

“The commercial,” the doctor said. “I already heard it, Rabbi. I made my pledge at the Sunday breakfast. I'm just here tonight as a shill.”

Michael didn't understand, but the crowd was moving into the next room, where long tables had been set up. There were place cards to prevent random seating, and they found their places next to a couple they liked—Sandy Berman, an assistant professor of English at the university, and his wife June. Felix offered a short welcome and then introduced Kahners (“a financial expert who graciously is helping us with the campaign”), who spoke about the importance of their contributions and called for verbal pledges. The first man on his feet was the allergist. He pledged three thousand dollars. He was followed by three other men, none of whom pledged less than twelve hundred dollars.