The Mourner

One day, Martin Gans found himself driving out to the Long Island funeral of Norbert Mandel, a total stranger. A habit of his was to take a quick check of the obit section in The New York Times each day, concentrating on the important deaths, then scanning the medium-famous ones and some of the also-rans. The listing that caught his eye on this particular day was that of Norbert Mandel, although Gans did not have the faintest idea why he should be interested in the passing of this obscure fellow. The item said that Mandel, of Syosset, Long Island, had died of a heart attack at the age of 73, leaving behind two sisters, Rose and Sylvia, also one son, a Brooklyn optometrist named Phillip. It said, additionally, that Mandel had served on an East Coast real-estate board and many years back had been in the Coast Guard. An ordinary life, God knows, with nothing flashy about it, at least on the surface. Gans read the item in a vacant, mindless way, but suddenly found his interest stirred, a fire breaking out with no apparent source. Was it the sheer innocuousness of the item? Of Mandel's life? He traveled on to other sections of the paper, sports and even maritime, but the Mandel story now began to prick at him in a way that he could not ignore; he turned back to the modest paragraph and read it again and again, until he knew it by heart and felt a sweeping compulsion to race out to Mandel's funeral, which was being held in a memorial chapel on the south shore of Long Island.

(continued on page 190)The Mourner(continued from page 177)

If this had happened at some idle point in his life, it might have made some sense. But Gans was busier than ever, in the middle of moving his ceramics plant to a new location on Lower Fifth Avenue, after 20 years of being in the same place. It was aggravating work; even after the move, it would take six months before Gans really settled in to the new quarters. Yet you could hardly call Mandel's funeral a diversion. A trip to Puerto Rico would have been that. Nor was Gans the type of fellow who particularly enjoyed funerals. His mother and father were still living. No one terribly close to him had died up to now, just some aunts and uncles and a couple of nice friends whose deaths annoyed rather than grieved him. Gans had probably contributed to one aunt's death, come to think of it. A woman in the hospital bed next to Aunt Edna had attacked a book the visiting Gans held under his arm. Gans struck back, defending the volume, and a debate began over poor Aunt Edna's head, as she fought a tattered intravenous battle for life.

The day of Mandel's funeral, Gans took a slow drive to the memorial chapel, allowing an extra half hour for possible traffic problems and in case he lost his way on the south shore, which had always been tricky going for him. On the way, he thought a little about Mandel. He pictured him in an overcoat, also with a beard, although a totally nonrakish one. Mandel struck him as being a tea drinker and someone who dressed carefully against the cold, owning a good stock of mufflers and galoshes. Gans did not particularly like Mandel's association with the East Coast real-estate board, but at the same time, he saw him as a small property owner, not really that much at home with the big boys and actually a decent fellow who was a good touch, particularly where Negroes were concerned, as long as they didn't overdo it. He liked the sound of Mandel's two sisters, Rose and Sylvia, envisioning them as buxom, good-natured, wonderful cooks, enjoying a good pinch on the ass, provided it remained on the hearty and nonerotic side. Phillip, the optometrist, struck Gans as being a momma's boy, into a bit of a ball-breaking marriage, but not too bad a fellow; the Army, Gans felt, had probably toughened him up a bit. There was a chance, of course, that Gans was completely wide of the mark, but these were his speculations as he breezed out to the chapel to get in on the funeral of Norbert Mandel, a fellow he didn't know from Adam.

The chapel was part of an emporium that lay just outside a shopping center and was used as well for bar mitzvahs and catered affairs of all kinds. A colored attendant in a chauffeur's uniform took his car, saying, ''No sweat, I'll see she don't get wet." Inside the carpeted chapel, a funeral-parlor employee asked him if he were there, perchance, for Benjamin Siegal. "No, Norbert Mandel," said Gans. The attendant said they had Mandel on the second floor. Before climbing the stairs, Gans stopped to relieve himself in the chapel john and realized he always did that before going in to watch funeral services. Did this have some significance, he wondered, a quick expulsion of guilt, a swift return to a pure state? Or was it just the long drives?

There was only a small turnout for Mandel. Those on hand had not even bothered to spread out and make the place seem a little busier. Mandel's friends and relatives were all gathered together in the first half-dozen rows, giving the chapel the look of an off-Broadway show that had opened to generally poor notices. Gans estimated that he was about 15 minutes early, but he had the feeling that few additional mourners were going to turn up and he was right about that. Somehow he had sensed that Mandel was not going to draw much of a crowd. Was that why he had come? To help the box office? Come to think of it, funeral attendance had been on his mind for some time. He had been particularly worried, for example, that his father, once the old man went under, would draw only a meager crowd. His father kept to himself, had only a sprinkling of friends. If Gans had to make up a list of mourners for his dad, he was sure he would not be able to go beyond a dozen the old man could count on to turn up, rain or shine. This was troubling to Gans; in addition, he wondered what there was a rabbi could actually say about his dad. That he was a nice man, kept his nose clean. First of all, he wasn't that nice. People see an old grandmother crossing a street and assume she's a saint. She might have been a triple ax murderer as a young girl in Poland and gotten away with it, thanks to lax Polish law enforcement. Who said old was automatically good and kind? Who said old and short meant gentle and well-meaning? Gans's own funeral was an entirely different story. He wasn't worried much about that one. At least not about the turnout. He had a million friends and they would be sure to pack the place. His mother, too, could be counted on to fill at least three quarters of any house; if you got a good rabbi, who knew something about her, who could really get her essence, there wouldn't be much of a problem in coming up with send-off anecdotes. She didn't belong to any organizations but she had handed out plenty of laughs in her time. It would be a tremendous shame if she were handled by some rabbi who didn't know the first thing about her. He had often thought of doing his mother's eulogy himself; but wouldn't that be like a playwright composing his own notices?

Gans felt a little conspicuous, sitting in the back by himself, and didn't relax until three middle-aged ladies came in and took seats a row in front of him. He had them figured for cousins from out of town who had taken a train in from Philadelphia. They did not seem deeply pained by the loss of Mandel and might have been preparing to see a Wednesday matinee on Broadway. Their combined mood seemed to range from aloof to bitter, and Gans guessed they were on the outs with the family, probably over some long-standing quarrel involving the disposition of family jewelry and china. Gans had little difficulty picking out Rose and Sylvia. Norbert's sisters, who were seated in the front row, wearing black veils and black fur coats. They wept and blew their noses and seemed deeply troubled by Mandel's death, which had come out of the blue. Phillip, the only son, was a complete surprise to Gans. Gans assumed he was the one who was wedged between Rose and Sylvia in the front row. He was certainly no momma's boy. He was every bit of six, three and you could see beneath his clothes that he was a bodybuilder. His jaw was tight, his features absolutely perfect, and you simply wouldn't want to mess with him. Let a woman get smart with this optometrist and she'd wind up with her head in the next county. What woman would want to get smart with him? Jump through a few hoops is what a girl would prefer doing for this customer.

The rabbi came out at a little trot, a slender fellow with brown disappearing hair and rimless glasses--ideal, Gans felt, for a career in crime investigation, since he was totally inconspicuous. Gans did not know much about rabbis, but when this fellow began to speak, he could see that his was the "new style": that is, totally unflamboyant, low-pressure, very modest, very Nixon Administration in his approach to the pulpit. As he spoke, one of the sisters, either Rose or Sylvia, cried in the background, the bursts of tears and pity coming at random, not really coinciding with any particularly poignant sections in the rabbi's address. "I regret to say that I did not know the departed one very well," he began. "However, those close to him assure me that this was, indeed, my great loss. The late Norbert Mandel, whom we are here to send to his well-earned rest this day, was, by all accounts, a decent, fair, kind, generous, charitable man who led a totally exemplary life." He went on to say that death, sorrowful as it must seem to those left behind in the valley of the living, was not a tragedy when one looked upon it as a life-filled baton being passed from one generation to another or, perhaps, as the satisfying final act of a lifetime drama, fully and (continued on page 276)The Mourner(continued from page 190) truly lived. "And who can say this was not the case with the beloved Norbert Mandel, from his early service to his country in the Coast Guard, right along to his unstinting labors on behalf of the East Coast real-estate board; a life in which the unselfish social gesture was always a natural reflex, rather than something that had to be painfully extracted from him."

"Hold it right there," said Gans, rising to his feet in the rear of the chapel.

"Shame," said one of the Philadelphia women.

"What's up?" asked the rabbi.

"You didn't even know this man," said Gans.

"I recall making that point quite early in my remarks," said the rabbi.

"How can you just toss him into the ground?" said Gans. "You haven't told anything about him. That was a man there. He cut himself a lot shaving. He had pains in his stomach. Why don't you try to tell them how he felt when he lost a job? The hollowness of it. Why don't you go into things like his feelings when someone said kike to him the first time? What about all the time he clocked worrying about cancer? And then didn't even die from it. How did he feel when he had the kid, the boy who's sitting over there? What about the curious mixture of feelings toward his sisters, the tenderness on one hand and, on the other hand, the feelings he couldn't exercise, because you're not allowed to in this society? How about some of that stuff, rabbi?"

"And they're just letting him talk," said one of the Philadelphia women.

"They're not throwing him out," said another. But Rose and Sylvia kept sobbing bitterly, so awash in sorrow the sisters appeared not to have even realized that Gans had taken over from the rabbi. Gans was concerned about only one person, the well-built son, Phillip; but, to his surprise, the handsome optometrist only buried his head in his hands, as though he were a ballplayer being scolded at half time by an angry coach. The rabbi was silent, concerned, as though the new style was determined to be moderate and conciliatory, no matter what went on in the chapel. It's a big religion, the rabbi seemed to be saying by his thoughtful silence, with plenty of room for the excessive.

Up until now, it had been a kind of exercise for Gans, but the heat of his own words began to excite him. "Can you really say you're doing justice to this man?" he asked. "Or are you insulting him? Do you know how he felt? Do you know anything about his disappointments? How he wanted to be taller? To you, he's Norbert Mandel, who led an exemplary life. What about the women he longed for and couldn't get? How he spent half his life sunk in grief over things like that. And the other half picking his nose and worrying about getting caught at it. Do you know the way he felt about yellow-haired girls and how he went deaf, dumb and blind when one he liked came near him? Shouldn't some of that be brought out? He wanted blondes right into his seventies; but did he ever get a taste of them? Not on your life. It was Mediterranean types all the way. Shouldn't you take a minute of your time to get into how he felt about his son, the pride when the kid filled out around the shoulders and became tougher than Norbie would ever be, and the jealousy, too, that made him so ashamed and guilty? Do you have any idea what he went through, playing the kid a game, beating him, and then wanting to cut off his arm for it? Then letting the kid win a game and that was no good, either. You act as though you've scratched the surface. Don't make me laugh, will you please. You know about his vomiting when he drank too much? On the highway. How do you think that felt? What about a little something else you're leaving out? Those last moments when he knew something was up and he had to look death right in the face. What was that for him, a picnic? I'll tell you, rabbi, you ought to pull him right out of the coffin and take a look at him and find out a little bit about who you're talking about."

"There was a time," said Phillip, the sole surviving son, as though he had received a cue, "when he left the family for a month or so. He was around, but he wasn't with us. He got very gray and solemn and didn't eat. We found out it was because an insurance doctor told him he had a terrible heart and couldn't have life insurance. He called him an 'uninsurable.' That was something, having an uninsurable for a dad. It was a mistake--his heart was healthy at the time--but it was the longest month of my life. The other time that comes to mind is when he shut someone up on the el when we were going out to Coney Island. Shut him up like you never saw anyone shut up. Guy twice his size."

"Very touching," said the rabbi. "Now may I ask how you knew the deceased?"

"I used to see him around," said Gans.

"Fine," said the rabbi. "Well, I don't see why we can't have this once in a while. And all be a little richer for it. If the family doesn't object. Do you have anything else?"

"Nothing I can think of," said Gans. "Unless some of the other members of the family would like to sound off a bit."

"He had a heart of solid gold," said one of the sisters.

"He was some man," said the other.

"Sounds like he was quite a fellow," said the rabbi.

• • •

Gans had no plan to do so originally but decided now to go out to the burial grounds, using his own car instead of accepting the offered ride in one of the rented limousines. After Mandel had been put into the ground, Gans accepted an offer from one of the sisters, whom he now knew to be Rose, to come back and eat with the family in a Queens delicatessen. Gans' own mother had always been contemptuous of that particular ritual, mocking families who were able to wolf down delicatessen sandwiches half an hour after a supposedly beloved uncle or cousin had been tossed into the earth. "They're very grief-stricken," she would say, "you can tell by their appetites." Gans, as a result, had developed a slight prejudice against the custom, although the logical part of him said why not eat if you're hungry and not eat if you're not. There seemed to be a larger crowd at the delicatessen than had been at the funeral. And it wasn't delicatessen food they were eating, either; it was Rose's cooking. Evidently, the family had merely taken over the restaurant for the afternoon, but Rose had brought in her own food. Gans had some difficulty meeting young Phillip's eyes and Phillip seemed equally ill at ease with him. Gans could not get over how wrong he had been about the boy. He had had an entirely different feeling about what a Brooklyn optometrist should look like. This fellow was central casting for the dark-haired hero in Hollywood Westerns. Even the right gait, slow and sensual; Gans wondered if he had ever thought seriously about a career in show business. Gans ate a hearty meal, and there was something in his attack on the food that seemed to indicate he had earned it. He sat at the same table as Phillip, who ate dreamily, speculatively, and seemed, gradually, to get comfortable with the mysterious visitor who had taken over the funeral service.

"You know," said Phillip, "a lot of people never realized this, but he was one hell of an athlete. He had two trophies for handball, and if you know the Brooklyn playground league, you know they don't fool around. And a guy once offered him a tryout with the Boston Bees." The boy paused then, as if he expected a nostalgic anecdote in return from Gans.

Instead, Gans took a deep breath, tilted his chair back slightly and said, "I have to come clean, I never met the man in my life."

"What do you mean?" said Phillip, hunching his big shoulders a bit, although he seemed more puzzled than annoyed. "I don't understand."

Gans hesitated a moment, looking around at the sisters, Rose and Sylvia, at the cousins from Philly, who seemed much more convivial, now that they were eating, at the rabbi, who had come over for a little snack, and at the other mourners. He complimented himself on how easily he had fitted into the group, and it occurred to him that most families, give or take a cousin or two, are remarkably similar, the various members more or less interchangeable.

"I don't know," he said, finally, to the blindingly handsome optometrist, sole surviving offspring of the freshly buried Norbert Mandel. "I read about your dad in the paper and I had the feeling they were just going to throw him into the ground, and that would be the end of him. Bam, kaput, just like he never lived. So I showed up.

"Now that I think of it," he said, reaching for a slice of Rose's Mohn cake and anticipating the crunch of poppy seeds in his mouth, "I guess I just didn't think enough of a fuss was being made."