Read Online About the B'nai Bagels by E.L. Konigsburg - Free Book Online

after a bad night. I stood in front of him waiting for him to feel my presence, the way they always do in books. He concentrates very hard, my brother. He didn’t seem to feel my presence, so I cracked my knuckles. That worked. He lowered the paper; he needed a shave.
    “You rang?” he asked.
    “Rabbi said that you could help me with my
haftorah
.”
    “Memorize. You have to memorize most of it so that it just looks as if you’re reading it.” He began to lift his paper again.
    “I’m not worried about the words. It’s the singing. I can’t sing.”
    “No one in our family can.”
    “But when I sing, it’s annoying. It’s like the drip of a faucet or the sound of a single fly trapped in the rear window of the car. Annoying. You can’t wait for it to stop. How did you get by, Spence?”
    “Dad gave me some advice. I’ll see if you can use the same advice. First, I have to hear you sing. Sing something.”
    “Here? Now? In front of you?”
    “Here. Now. In front of me.”
    “What shall I sing?”
    “I don’t care. Sing anything. Sing Deep Purple.”
    “What’s Deep Purple? I don’t know Deep Purple.”
    “So sing ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’”
    “Naw. You’ll have to stand up.”
    “No, I won’t. You just have to stand up in public. C’mon now sing.
Oh, say, can you…
”
    “It’s disrespectful not to stand up if someone is singing our national anthem.”
    “It is not. You just have to have a respectful
attitude
. That’s all you show by standing up. A respectful attitude.”
    “You sure don’t look respectable with your beard on your face and your feet on the table.”
    “I can feel respect
ful
. And I do, unshaven and unshod as I am.”
    “I thought horses get shod,” I answered.
    “Also people,” Mother called in from the kitchen. You can hear anything everywhere in that house. “Shod is the past tense of shoe.”
    “Just checking,” I called back.
    Spencer’s head whipped from me to the kitchen door and back again. “Checking on who—whom?”
    “Your Aunt Thelma,” Mother called in from the kitchen.
    “What’s Aunt Thelma got to do with all this?” Spencer asked Mother through the wall.
    “So, Moshe, come help set the table, or we’ll be latewith eating. Your Aunt Thelma comes again!
Da-rum, da-rum, da-rum, dum, dum. Heigh ho! Thelma!
”
    I burst into song, “
Oh, say, can you see…
”
    Mother walked in from the kitchen, and Spencer jumped to his feet, threw one hand over his chest, clutched the paper with the other, and stood in front of me. Mother’s eyebrows curled into question marks as she looked at Spencer. Then she moved to attention right there by the kitchen door and crossed her heart with the hand holding the wooden spoon.
    “
What so proudly we hailed…
” I continued in my tiptoe alto.
    They both stood there until I had finished the whole first stanza. Then Spencer said, “O.K., boy, ready for the good word?”
    “I’m ready already. I’ve been ready,” I told Spencer.
    “I have only one word of advice to give you.”
    “Give already.”
    “That word is
fortissimo
.”
    “Thanks a lot. What’s
fortissimo
? Italian for shod?”
    “No, it’s Italian for
loud
. When in doubt, shout. That’s what I’m telling you.”
    “I should shout? Everyone will hear for sure how bad I am.”
    “But, my dear brother, if you sing loud and clear, it will be easier on the audience. You’re making it doubly hard on them. Hard to listen to and hard to hear. Now, let’s have another stanza of ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ FORTISSIMO.” And he held up his arms as if he were holding a baton, and he closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to both see and hear and not because he was being a good listener.

    “I only know the first stanza.”
    He opened his eyes only long enough to clamp his hand over them. That’s what Spencer did when he wanted you to know that he was being patient. “O.K. Let’s hear that again. Once more. With