The Book of Stone. Jonathan Papernick
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with cement—some invisible force had been crouching on his chest all night long, whispering in his ear, whispering something in a strange language he could not understand. He wanted to go back inside and close his eyes, but he was even more afraid of sleep than he was of facing the real-life nightmare of his father’s funeral.
A long black limousine idled in front of the apartment. The neighborhood homeboys, who had been throwing dice on the pavement and laughing when Stone arrived yesterday, now gathered around the limo, faces pressed to the tinted windows in curiosity. Stone could not imagine ever laughing again. For some reason, he had an overwhelming urge to shout something terrible at them, something sharp and biting, like a broken bottle to the face, something he would later regret. He just wanted to be alone with his anguish, and the shouting and hollering before him made him feel as if he were losing his sense of reason.
“Take your pick,” Pinky said, tossing Stone a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag. There must have been a dozen new pairs of brand-name glasses, still in their original packaging. He fished out a pair of dark Ray-Bans and slipped them on.
“Lookin’ good,” Pinky said.
“What’s with this?” Stone asked.
“I figured we should ride in style. You really want to gypsy cab it to your old man’s funeral? Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered.” Then Pinky turned to the homeboys and said, “Nothing to see here. You think Biggie’s back from the dead? Well, he ain’t.”
They drove in silence out to Queens, that inimitable borough of escape, of airports and cemeteries, as Stone imagined the unimaginable, the fact that he would be burying his father so soon, before he himself had accomplished anything in this life. Stone had no job, no advanced degree, no skills. Nothing. He would be alone, no wife, no girlfriend, no children, no mother, no aunts, no uncles, no friends to share his burden. Just Pinky.
How could his father die so young? There were ex–Nazi executioners still living into their eighties, unrepentant killers on death row eligible for Social Security, and his father, a fit sixty-three, was gone. His father had been a force of nature, molded out of pure brass. Even pale and faded, his father struck Stone as awesome, frightening. Even when the cancer had ruined his voice, withered his body, his will was radiant. It was clear the Judge didn’t believe he was going to die, lying in bed with his half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose, reading to the end, a book propped on a pillow before him. Then yesterday morning, not long after sunrise, with the swiftness of a sudden summer storm, they both realized he was going to die.
The limousine passed a ragged handful of protesters by the cemetery gate, waving handmade signs announcing: ABU DIS & RAS AL-AMUD = PALESTINE! and ARAB BLOOD FROM ZIONIST STONE. Stone had become so used to his father’s divisive cult of personality that the clownish activists barely registered in his mind. The ride out had numbed him with a sort of vestigial comfort, the light humming of the road soothing his nerves, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. But he was awake now, as Pinky rolled down the window, flipped them the bird, and called out something crude.
Stone recalled the time his father brought him to Montefiore Cemetery as a boy to pay respects to his hero Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Of course this stern-faced man with the cruel expression and round rimless glasses, whose framed picture his father kept on his desk, meant nothing to Matthew. He remembered the brutal black granite slab platform set in the center of a limestone plaza. His father handed Matthew a small stone and asked him to place it on the grave, and, rather than doing as his father asked, he said, “Why?”
“Jabotinsky was the creator of the first Jewish army since the time of the Romans—” his father began.
“I know,” Matthew said. “But why the stone?”
“It indicates someone has visited, and a stone, unlike flowers, lasts for eternity.”
Eternity is forever and death is for eternity.
Stone was shocked to see how many people had come to pay their respects to his father. There were hundreds upon hundreds of men gathered, some dressed in the customary black of the ultra-Orthodox, bearded and black-hatted, others wearing knitted skullcaps, typical of militant Zionists, many of whom spent time studying or living on the West Bank.
“Quite a shit-show,” Pinky said, lighting a cigarette. “You sure this isn’t the great American beard-growing contest?”
“Put it out,” Stone said. “It’s disrespectful.”
Overcome by swirling vertigo, he leaned against the side of the limousine for balance. Who were all these people? He knew his father had achieved a lot in his life. He had accomplished good deeds but also suffered his share of controversy. Somehow, when Stone had imagined the funeral as he tossed beneath the thin sheet on Pinky’s bare extra mattress he was certain had fallen off the back of a truck, he’d seen only himself, alone with his father, saying good-bye. He had imagined a poignant moment after his father had been lowered into the ground in which he would close the book and move on with his life.
“There you are, Matthew. I was worried you were going to be late.” It was Ehrenkranz, the funeral director. “You might want to clip this on to your garment to show you are grieving. Near the heart, if it feels right to you.” He handed Stone a small black ribbon, torn at the corner, which Stone slipped into his pocket. Ehrenkranz led Stone by the elbow through the throngs of mourners toward the graveside. “This is a very nice turnout,” Ehrenkranz said. “You should have seen the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s funeral. Thousands of mourners. Absolute chaos. Trust me, you don’t want that.”
Stone did not recognize one single soul, not one familiar face, as strangers reached out and blessed him and wished he be comforted among the mourners of Zion.
When they arrived at the grave, Ehrenkranz asked Stone if he was all right.
“All right is entirely relative,” Stone said. “Especially here.”
Ehrenkranz gave an avuncular laugh and patted Stone on the shoulder. “Here comes the shomer.”
A watery-eyed old man stepped forward with a solemn expression on his worn face. “Your father was a great man and warrior, a friend of Israel and of Jews everywhere. The Chofetz Chaim says, ‘The sign of a great man is the closer you get, the greater he seems.’”
These past months, Stone had been as close to his father as he had ever been, physically—tending to him like the good son he would never be, taking him to his appointments, making sure his medication was right—but still he barely knew him. His father had treated him with scorn, as if he were some sort of servant not worthy of conversation. He knew people believed his father to be great, but to him, the Judge was just distant, cruel, and unforgiving.
The old man fished into his jacket pocket and produced a small, battered prayer book. He handed it to Stone. “It is tehillim,” the man said, “as a keepsake.”
“The book of Psalms,” Ehrenkranz said. “It is the duty of the shomer, or watcher, who stays with the body so it is not alone, to recite psalms to comfort the departed. It is a wonderful tradition to know a body is never left alone like a piece of lost luggage at a bus station.”
Stone thanked the old man for the book and approached the grave.
He looked down into the empty hole in the ground. The soil was damp and black like coffee grounds, minuscule roots protruding from the earth here and there, life springing up in the midst of death. So, this is where it all ends; in the dark, in a box, underground. The thought terrified Stone, and he gasped for breath to compensate for the certainty that he, too, would one day arrive at this point. Would his father approve of his neighbors? Would it matter that Mr. So-and-So’s son had married a shiksa, or that Mr. Such-and-Such with the extravagant tombstone had been a social climber in life with no substance to speak of? It didn’t matter now, but at the same time, it did. It was a pleasant spot, however, open to plenty of sunlight, with tall shade trees standing nearby.
Someone behind him clapped a hand down onto his head. For a moment, Stone was afraid he was going to fall into the grave, but he held his