Read Online For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories by Nathan Englander - Free Book Online Page A

their postures, they spread out across the hard floor.
    “Hup,” cried the Rebbe, and the routine commenced.Shraga cartwheeled and flipped. The widow Raizel jumped once and then stood off to the side with her double-jointed arms turned inside out. Mendel, glorious Mendel, actually executed a springing Half-Hanlon and, with Shmuel Berel’s assistance (his only real task), ended in a Soaring Angel. Feitel, off his mark, missed his wife as she came toward him in a leap. Zahava landed on her ankle, which let out a crisp, clear crack. She did not whimper, quickly standing up. Though it was obvious even from the balcony that her foot was not on right. There was, after a gasp from the audience, silence. Then from above, from off to the left, a voice was heard. Mendel knew from which box it came. He knew it was the most polished, the most straight and tall, a maker of magic, to be sure. Of course, this is conjecture, for how could he see?
    “Look,” said the voice. “They are as clumsy as Jews.” There was a pause and then singular and boisterous laughter. The laughter echoed and was picked up by the audience, who laughed back with lesser glee—not wanting to overstep their bounds. Mendel looked back to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe shrugged. Young Shraga, a natural survivor, took a hop-step as if to continue. Zahava moved toward the widow Raizel and rested a hand on her shoulder.
    “More,” called the voice. “The farce can’t have already come to its end. More!” it said. Another voice, that of a woman, came from the same place and barely carried to the stage.
    “Yes, keep on,” it said. “More of the Jewish ballet.” The fatuous laugh that followed, as with the other, was picked up by the audience and the cavernous echo so that it seemed even the wooden cherubim laughed from above.
    The Rebbe took a deep breath and began to tap with his foot.
    Mendel waved him off and stepped forward, moving downstage, the spotlight harsh and unforgiving against his skin. He reached out past the footlights into the dark, his hands cracked and bloodless, gnarled and intrusive.
    Mendel turned his palms upward, benighted.
    But there were no snipers, as there are for hands that reach out of the ghettos; no dogs, as for hands that reach out from the cracks in boxcar floors; no angels waiting, as they always do, for hands that reach out from chimneys into ash-clouded skies.

Reunion

T he house has an odd smell to it, an odor. The rabbi’s got thirteen kids and that’s the smell. The constant cycling of daily needs. Someone always eating or shitting, putting on socks or taking them off. But it’s not white like on the ward. Not sterile and faked. It’s real life over there with the smells that go with it.
    Marty is saying this himself, explaining it to another patient in the dayroom as he grinds out a cigarette and picks a bit of tobacco from his tongue.
    Marty feels at home on the ward. Both his children had been born there when it was maternity, before they changed it all around and put in the steel doors. You can’t wipe away that kind of feeling, though, the joy of births and new lives, of daughters and sons. Maybe that’s why they keep the mentals there now, to give the place a metaphysical boost—let them recuperate on a ward with hope-soaked, life-affirming walls.
    He treats the place as if it were a country club, dressing in expensive, casual slacks and loafers, pressed shirts and V-neck sweaters that give off more of a feeling of money than would jackets and ties. He plays the part as well. Acts as if, as long as he can’t get back to his golf game, he might as well make the best of it, smiling at the other patients, shaking hands, quipping and winking, and laughing through his nose whenever the chance arises.
    The staff favors Marty and encourages the new friendship he’s made.
    A John Doe is picked up off the street of a neighboring suburb in the midst of a violent rage; he is rolled onto the ward strapped to a gurney,