“His face?”
Miriam walked over to the dresser and pulled out a photo. She lay it on the table next to Hillel. He studied it, then swiftly made a rough model of Aaron’s features.
“You see, it is like this. The light of your husband’s soul has been fractured into many pieces, and one of these pieces has been left behind in this world—this is his snore.”
He held up the tiny duplicate of Aaron. “If I can incite the snore to enter this vessel, then I will bury it and the last fragment of Aaron Solomon Gluckstein’s soul will be laid to rest. But first we will try more traditional methods.”
That evening Hillel checked every mezuzah nailed up over every doorway except
, naturally, the bathroom. The ornaments, each of which contained a small section of the Torah, seemed intact. Muttering a Hebrew incantation he then ran an amulet—a clay tablet covered in ancient symbols—in a line across the bedroom floor from the doorway to the bed.
Finally everything was in place. Hillel glanced at the clock: 9:45 p.m.
Miriam followed his gaze. “It will start any minute now.”
“I need you and your mother-in-law in the other room; a female body will be a distraction. But you can watch through the doors.”
Myra and Miriam squeezed into the small adjoining bathroom and waited. Sure enough, at the stroke of ten the snore began: an invisible breeze that ruffled the bedspread ever so slightly. But the kabbalist heard it immediately. Wearing a beaded prayer shawl over his shoulders and several amulets around his neck, he reached for his battered copy of the Zohar and turned to the appropriate passage. He began to chant in Hebrew, rocking backward and forward on his heels.
The snore continued to grow in volume, completely ignoring the kabbalist’s mumblings. Soon it was almost impossible for Hillel to hear himself without shouting. Finally he yelled, “Dybbuk, be gone!” Arrogantly, the snore continued its vibrational tirade without missing a beat.
Hillel stared at the empty bed in amazement. Never had he heard such a supernatural sound: it was bigger than the faint whisperings he’d once exorcised from a mortuary; it was louder than the human murmurings that had appeared mysteriously inside a dog; more resonant than the haunted Deepfreeze in Mr. Kimmel’s herring shop. The snore had a kind of bass beat that thudded against the eardrum and caused the chest to vibrate. For one surreal moment Hillel contemplated sampling the apparition for a rap artist he knew in the Bronx, but decided that would be too irreligious even for him. There was only one thing left before resorting to the clay doll and that was the shofar.
Reluctantly he pulled out the polished ram’s horn that he kept wrapped in a handkerchief of silk. The twisted horn had first belonged to his great-grandfather over a hundred years ago in Yemen. The words May this blow sound through Time like Light through Dust were etched into one side. The shofar was normally used in the temple to herald Rosh Hashanah, the new year, and Hillel had been careful about misusing the sacred instrument. But it was the ultimate weapon in exorcism.
He gently unwrapped the horn and lifted it to his mouth. The plaintive note echoed around, blending with the guttural rumblings of the supernatural nasal emission. The snore stopped politely for a second, then started up again even louder.
Exhausted, Hillel leaned against the bed. He would now have to use the most powerful magic he knew: the clay doll. He carried it ceremoniously over to the bed and placed the small facsimile, now doused in Aaron’s aftershave and wrapped in his tefillah, on the dead man’s pillow where it lolled irreverently.
Miriam, cowering at the bathroom door, couldn’t help but be fascinated by the kabbalist’s intensity. Myra, collapsed in resignation, sat on the closed toilet, her head in her hands.
“Three generations of rationalist socialists and it has come to this,” she said. “For what did I become frummeh?” Nevertheless, worried for her soul, she whispered a quick prayer.
Hillel joined the women in the bathroom. “Now we wait. Notice I have removed myself physically from the room; this will prevent the snore from entering my own body,” he confided in a scientific tone that was not the least reassuring to Myra.
And so it was that the kabbalist Hillel Ben Shloechem and Miriam and Myra Gluckstein found themselves squeezed into a tiny bathroom while the snore whirled around the bedroom like a demented djinn, finally hovering above the doll whose prominent clay nose and belly jutted out like a beacon.
Hillel held his breath, Miriam started praying, while Myra moaned in disbelief as the sound pulsated in volume then suddenly vanished. A second later, a thinner more nasally version of the snore emanated from within the clay figure. Immediately Hillel ran into the bedroom and grabbed the doll. Miriam followed.
“What are you going to do?”
“Bury it, bury it immediately!” he shouted, thrusting the clay mannequin into his rucksack, where the snore continued to purr like a bagged cat.
He ran out onto the landing, followed by the young widow, and down to the living room. There Hillel took out the clay doll and placed it on the coffee table, where it lay snoring loudly. Miriam, on Hillel’s instructions, filled a shoe box with lamb’s wool (kosher).
“Now say something to put Aaron’s soul to rest,” Hillel ordered, noticing for the first time that under the black wig and heavy clothes the widow was quite pretty.
Miriam whispered into the small clay button she assumed was the doll’s ear. “Aaron, I will make a moral decision for both of us, I promise.”
Unnoticed by either Miriam or the kabbalist, a group of neighbors—the whole Fleischmann brood plus the family from the other side of the house—peered in through the windows, their faces pressed eagerly against the glass as they struggled for a glimpse of the bereaved woman performing strange rituals with this so-called brother of hers, who was obviously not a blood relative and quite evidently a kabbalist.
At that point, the snore flew out of the doll and up the stairs, hovering for a few seconds on the landing. It whizzed passed Myra, who was coming out of the bedroom, almost knocking her down, then zoomed straight back into its usual space where it settled happily around the filing cabinet. Miriam and Hillel followed, using their ears.
“There is some evil happening here that even I cannot cure!” Hillel cried out as he watched the pages of the day calendar on top of the filing cabinet spin around in the breeze of the snore.
Grabbing his rucksack the kabbalist bolted, dreadlocks flying. After struggling with the locks on the front door he had to push through the crowd of curious onlookers that had filled the front yard.
“Kabbalist! What is the trouble?!” they shouted, jostling to reach him. “Is the old woman a sorceress?”