A Horse’s Head by Evan Hunter

Author:Evan Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Published: 1967-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

9. Solomon

He heard footsteps clattering on the sidewalk outside as the synagogue door whispered shut behind him.

“This way!” K’s voice shouted.

“Where is he?” Purcell shouted. “Where did he go?”

“This way! This way!”

He leaned against the closed door with his eyes shut, breathing hard, listening as the footsteps faded, echoing on the street, “Where did he go?” Purcell shouted again.

Mullaney opened his eyes.

The bearded man was studying him closely.

“The goyim?” he asked, and because he sensed that goyim meant enemy, and since K and Purcell were most certainly that, Mullaney nodded, and sucked in a deep breath. Both men were silent, listening. The voices outside were indistinct now, distant. K shouted something, but the words were unintelligible. They kept listening. At last, the street outside was silent. The bearded man smiled, his grin cracking into his black beard, as white as the handkerchief knotted around his neck. He beckoned to Mullaney, and Mullaney followed him down the long flight of steps just inside the entrance door.

He had been in a synagogue only once before in his life, and that had been for Feinstein’s funeral services, a very classy synagogue befitting his station in life. The underground temple in which he found himself now was small and dim, with two high windows at street level, and another two opening on what appeared to be the brick wall of the tenement next door. Three dozen or more folding wooden chairs faced what he assumed to be the altar, a carved wooden stand upon which rested a candelabra holding six lighted candles. Behind the altar was what Mullaney first thought was a picture, and then realized was another small window, stained glass, set very high up on the wall, also at street level. He could not tell what the window depicted; it seemed to be only an interesting design of blues and greens behind which were darker blues and blacks pierced by a yellow pane of glass that descended vertically from the top of the window. To the right of the window, and almost on the same level, a candle — or at least a flame — flickered in a small metal cage that hung from the ceiling on a brass chain. A pair of red velvet curtains were on the wall below and behind the hanging cage, and a rack on the adjoining wall was draped with what appeared to be fringed silk scarves.

“I’m Goldman,” the man with the beard said abruptly and handed a black skullcap to Mullaney, who held it on his open hands and looked up into Goldman’s face.

“And your name?” Goldman said.

“Mullaney,” he said.

“Come, Melinsky, you’ll meet the others.”

“Mullaney,” he corrected.

“Come, take a tallis, we’ve been waiting here all morning. To get a minyen in this neighborhood, you have to have a big shining temple. Come, Melinsky, come.”

“Mr. Goldman...”

“This is Melinsky,” Goldman said to the other men in the room. “Solomon, get him a Siddur, let’s begin here.”

The other men — there seemed to be six or seven, or perhaps more — were rather old, some of them bearded, some of them bald, most of them wrinkled.

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