04-Monday the Rabbi Took Off by Harry Kemelman

Author:Harry Kemelman [Kemelman, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780795307393
Google: qw2od-8PFw4C
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2009-11-20T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

The day started for Miriam much as usual, except that her morning sickness was a little more acute, and as a result, the common sounds of the morning which she thought she had got used to were more than normally irritating: the noise of cars and trucks shifting with a great grinding of gears – their house was on a slight hill – the ozzereth across the way thwacking at rugs spread over the railing of the porch with a large bamboo carpet beater – seemingly the only way of cleaning rugs in Israel – the ozzereth in the apartment above sloshing buckets of water on the stone floor and then sweeping it with a squeegee where it gurgled down the drain – presumably the only way to clean a floor – while her mistress was already preparing the noonday meal, the main meal of the day, by chopping something in a wooden bowl, where every stroke of the chopper was transmitted through the bowl to the table to the floor and thence to the ceiling above Miriam’s head – seemingly the only way to prepare a meal.

And because this was one of the mornings when her husband had decided to go to the synagogue for the morning prayers rather than recite them at home, he was not there to complain to, and worse, was not there to help ready Jonathan for school.

And Jonathan had been cranky. Normally, he went to school with Shaouli. a child in the upstairs apartment and his bosom friend; but Shaouli had a cold and a little fever, and his mother had announced the night before that he would be staying home today. So Jonathan wanted his mother to walk to school with him. She had refused since it was only a block away and involved no street crossings, and he had finally set off alone but not without complaining, and it was a further aggravation.

And it took time, precious additional minutes she needed to make a bus to get her to the Hadassah Hospital in time to keep her appointment at the Obstetrics Clinic.

Then Gittel called from Tel Aviv.

Gittel called frequently, usually for some specific purpose – to say she had received a letter from Miriam’s mother, to give her a recipe she had tried and found good, to say she would be in Jerusalem for an hour or two in connection with her work and to make elaborate arrangements for a meeting for a few minutes. But today she called merely for a nice long conversation with her niece before starting work. And Miriam, watching the minutes flit by, had in desperation explained that she had an appointment at the hospital and would have to hang up. She mentioned the hospital on the assumption that her aunt would not have accepted any other kind of appointment as sufficiently urgent to justify cutting short their conversation.

But immediately Gittel was alarmed and demanded to know what was wrong. “Who’s treating you. Miriam? It may be someone I know.

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