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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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The
Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon |
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Rating: |
**** |
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(Highly Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Imagination Michael Chabon’s fine writing skills shine again in his latest novel,
The
Yiddish Policemen’s Union. With playful imagination, Chabon
creates an engaging story in which Jewish refugees have failed to create the
State of Israel, and are settled into a temporary homeland in the In the
street the wind shakes rain from the flaps of its overcoat. Landsman tucks
himself into the hotel doorway. Two men, one with a cello case strapped to
his back, the other cradling a violin or viola, struggle against the weather
toward the door of Pearl of Manila across the street. The symphony hall is
ten blocks and a world away from this end of Instead,
he lights a papiros. After a decade of abstinence,
Landsman took up smoking again not quite three years ago. His then-wife was
pregnant at the time. It was a much-discussed and in some quarters a
long-desired pregnancy—her first—but not a planned one. As with many
pregnancies that are discussed too long there was a history of ambivalence in
the prospective father. At seventeen weeks and a day—the day Landsman bought
his first package of Broadways in ten years—they got a bad result. Some but
not all of the cells that made up the fetus, code-named Django,
had an extra chromosome on the twentieth pair. A mosaicism,
it was called. It might cause grave abnormalities. It might have no effect at
all. In the available literature, a faithful person could find encouragement,
and a faithless one ample reason to despond. Landsman’s view of
things—ambivalent, despondent, and with no faith in anything—prevailed. A
doctor with half a dozen laminaria dilators broke
the seal on the life of Django Landsman. Three
months later, Landsman and his cigarettes moved out of the house on An old
man, pushing himself like a rickety handcart, weaves a course toward the door
of the hotel. A short man, under five feet, dragging
a large valise. Landsman observes the long white coat, worn open over a white
suit with a waistcoat, and the wide-brimmed white hat pulled down over his
ears. A white beard and sidelocks, wispy and thick
at the same time. The valise an ancient chimera of stained brocade and
scratched hide. The whole right side of the man’s body sags five degrees
lower than the left, where the suitcase, which must contain the old boy’s
entire collection of lead ingots, weighs it down. The man stops and raises a
finger, as if he has a question to pose of Landsman. The wind toys with the
man’s whiskers and with the brim of his hat. From his beard, armpits, breath, and skin, the wind plucks a rich smell of stale
tobacco and wet flannel and the sweat of a man who lives in the street.
Landsman notes the color of the man’s antiquated boots, yellowish ivory, like
his beard, with sharp toes and buttons running up the sides. Landsman
recalls that he used to see this nut a lot, back when he was arresting Tenenboym for petty theft and possession. The yid was no younger then and is no older now. People used
to call him Elijah, because he turned up in all kinds of unlikely spots, with
his pushke box and his indefinable air of having
something important to say. “Darling,”
he says to Landsman now. “This is the Hotel Zamenhof,
no?” His
Yiddish sounds a bit exotic to Landsman, flavored with Dutch maybe. He is
bent and frail, but his face, apart from crow’s-feet around the blue eyes,
looks youthful and unlined. The eyes themselves hold a match flame of
eagerness that puzzles Landsman. The prospect of a night at the Zamenhof does not often give rise to such anticipation. “That’s right.” Landsman
offers Elijah the Prophet a Broadway, and the little
man takes two and tucks one into the reliquary of his breast pocket. “Hot and
cold water. Licensed shammes right on the
premises.” “Are you the manager,
sweetness?” Landsman can’t help smiling
at that. He steps aside, gesturing toward the door. “The manager’s inside,”
he says. But the little man just
stands there getting rained on, his beard fluttering like a flag of truce. He
gazes up at the faceless face of the Zamenhof, gray
in the murky streetlight. A narrow pile of dirty white brick and slit
windows, three or four blocks off the tawdriest stretch of “The Zamenhof,”
the old man says, echoing the intermittent letters on the neon sign. “Not the
Zamenhof. The Zamenhof.” Now the latke, a rookie
named Netsky, comes jogging up, holding on to his
round, flat, wide-brimmed patrolman’s hat. “Detective,” the latke
says, out of breath, and then gives the old man a squint and a nod. “Evening,
Grandpa. Right, uh, Detective, sorry, Ijust got the
call, I was hung up for a minute there.” Netsky has
coffee on his breath and powdered sugar on the right cuff of his blue coat.
“Where’s the dead yid?” “In two-oh-eight,” Landsman
says, opening the door for the Iatke, then turning back to the old man. “Coming in, Grandpa?” “No,” Elijah says, with a
hint of mild emotion that Landsman can’t quite read. It might be regret, or
relief, or the grim satisfaction of a man with a taste for disappointment.
The flicker trapped in the old man’s eyes has given way to a film of tears.
“I was only curious. Thank you, Officer Landsman.” “It’s Detective now,”
Landsman says, startled that the old man has retrieved his name. “You remember me, Grandpa?” “I remember
everything, darling.” Elijah reaches into a hip pocket of his bleach yellow
coat and takes out his pushke, a wooden casket,
about the size of a box meant for index cards, painted black. On the front of
the box, Hebrew words are painted: L’ERETZ YISROEL. Cut into the top of the
box is a narrow slit for coins or a folded dollar bill. “A small donation?”
Elijah says. The Landsman gets out his
wallet and pokes a folded twenty into Elijah’s pushke.
“Lots of luck,” he says. The little man hoists
his heavy valise and starts to shuffle away. Landsman reaches out and pulls
at Elijah’s sleeve, a question formulating in his heart, a child’s question
about the old wish of his people for a home. Elijah turns with a look of
practiced wariness. Maybe Landsman is some kind of troublemaker. Landsman
feels the question ebb away like the nicotine in his bloodstream. Chabon wastes no words, and reveals great
skill in presenting dialogue, setting, and mood in this imaginary world, at
all times displaying great storytelling talent. The
Yiddish Policemen’s Union provides great entertainment from a fine
writer. Steve Hopkins,
July 25, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the August 2007
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Yiddish Policemen's Union.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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