Read Online Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman - Free Book Online

know how to keep a fast. We know how to keep clean. We know how to keep good habits. Of course we make good boxers. Have you never seen Barney Ross, Shmuel? I taught him for his bar mitzvah. These days he gets into the ring with the talaith on his shoulders and the tvillan on his arms. He unwinds them slowly and kisses them and puts them in a velvet bag which he gives to his trainer, and everyone in the crowd stays silent as if they were at shul. It is a beautiful thing to behold. Whereas I hear he doesn’t even have the Star on his trunks, our Mr Roach?’
    ‘We’ll fix that, Rabbi,’ said Kölmel.
    ‘I love to see Jews fight,’ said Pearl. ‘It is not our scripture that says to turn the other cheek. We are all Darwinians now, aren’t we, gentlemen? And survival of the fittest means you have to learn how to throw a punch.’
    ‘Oh, leave Darwin out of it,’ said Siedelman. ‘I’ve found that if a gentile talks a lot about Darwin, it’s a pretty good sign he hates Jews.’
    ‘Darwin was a Jew himself, you know,’ said Berg.
    ‘He was not,’ said Siedelman.
    Berg laughed. ‘No, he was not. But read your Talmud. Every seven years, Hashem used to change all the animals into other animals. You know that, Seth? You know that, once, boys and girls were one, and now are two?’ Sinner had never heard of this but he found it interesting. Everyone else had barely started on their food, but he’d already cleared his plate and was now twirling his knife back and forth around his thumb. ‘And it says in the Zohar that apes are the descendants of sinful men. We got there first, you see, as usual.’
    ‘Moses was most certainly a Darwinian,’ concurred Pearl. ‘What did he want for his tribe but that they should come out on top? That their offspring should own the world?’
    ‘The Christians, they panic,’ said Berg. ‘They find fossils that are older than ten thousand years, and they have topretend they don’t exist. But Jews find them, and they know it is proof that there were other worlds before our own. The Torah can get along with science.’
    ‘You know, Rabbi, before Darwin the Christians had the Argument from Design,’ said Pearl. ‘They said, “Look at the beautiful butterflies in that meadow! That can only be the Lord’s work.” And the Hebrew just said, “What the hell is a meadow?”’ Most of the men guffawed. Frink laughed nervously, knowing he was out of his depth. ‘We have always lived in cities, ever since we lived in the desert,’ Pearl continued. ‘Everything we ever see, a man made. We never had time for the Argument from Design. We don’t need it for our faith. We don’t care that it’s on the trash heap now.’
    ‘And the man that made those cities will soon be you, Balfour,’ said Siedelman.
    ‘I’m not sure about that, Rabbi.’
    ‘I hear you are doing very well, Mr Pearl,’ said Kölmel.
    ‘I often tell Balfour about Nicholas Hawksmoor,’ said Berg. ‘He built churches in London. You must know Christ Church in Spitalfields?’
    ‘See it every day,’ said Frink, glad for the chance to contribute. ‘Lovely old thing.’
    ‘Yes, although I hear sadly a little neglected now,’ said Berg. ‘Now, they say Hawksmoor worshipped the devil. They say if you draw lines between his churches on a map you get a pentagram, or some such. To Balfour I say, you must be New York’s Hawksmoor. You must build your expressways and your parks so that they invoke kabbalah – perhaps the sephirot, the Tree of Life – and nobody but the Jews will know. Would that not be a wonderful thing?’
    ‘I have enough trouble getting anything done as it is, Rabbi.’
    ‘What exactly is your job, son?’ said Frink.
    ‘I work at the New York City Planning Commission, sir.’
    ‘Balfour is going to clean up the Lower East Side,’ said Siedelman.
    ‘That’s my ambition, at least,’ said Pearl.
    ‘Clean it up?’ said Frink.
    ‘Well, I hope that before long we can get rid of slums and