Someday the Rabbi Will Leave by Harry Kemelman Page A

Here it’s just the win that pays off.”
    She was annoyed with him, and even more annoyed with herself. Had she misjudged him, completely misread his character? She began to think that perhaps she ought to withdraw since there was nothing there for her.
    â€œI may have to be away for a while,” she essayed. “Do you have someone who could take my place here?
    â€œFor how long a while?”
    â€œOh, a week or maybe two, maybe even longer.”
    â€œThen that’s all right. I could just keep it closed and come in in the afternoon to take care of the mail.”
    The man was impossible! And yet—he had all the credentials. He was tall and good-looking. He was likable and friendly. He had a name which was associated with the town. He had the right degrees from the right schools. There must be some way she could reach him, instill desire and ambition and get him moving. What was wrong with him?

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    From the beginning, Howard Magnuson manifested his efficiency by starting board meetings promptly at nine and bringing them to adjournment around eleven instead of at noon. Those members who hoped to take an early lunch so they could spend the afternoon on the golf course welcomed the change, but those who brought their children to the religious school for the Sunday classes and had to wait until noon, when the last class ended, in order to drive them home, were apt to find themselves at a loose end for an hour.
    The rabbi did not attend the meetings and saw little or nothing of the new president. For a month or more they did not exchange a word. The president did not come to the Friday evening services, and certainly not to the daily minyan. And he did not have an office in the synagogue where Rabbi Small might have dropped in on him, if only as a matter of courtesy. Several times the rabbi had thought of calling Magnuson in the evening, suggesting that he would like to come over to talk with him but, as he explained to Miriam, “It’s up to him to call me. If I call him , he’s apt to think I’m being pushy.”
    â€œBut he’s been in office over a month now—”
    â€œSo what? He’s probably pretty busy, and nothing has come up that immediately concerns me.”
    He heard about Magnuson from various board members, and it was evident that he was popular, largely because he was friendly and affable whereas they expected that he might be distant and cool. They were never unaware however of the economic and social gulfs between them, but this awareness manifested itself not in reticence on their part, but rather in a kind of filial respect they accorded Magnuson, which had the effect of eliciting from him an almost paternal concern for them.
    Harry Berg, who owned a small chain of three grocery stores, reported: “I was telling Bud Green about the trouble I was having getting money from the bank here in town. Howard overheard me and said, ‘Why don’t you try the main bank in Boston? It could be it’s a little too much for the branch to handle. I know the head of the Loan Committee. If you like I can give him a ring.’ So I said, ‘Sure.’ And do you know, when I came in to see the guy, he treated me like I was his rich uncle from Australia.”
    Dr. Laurence Cohn, a dermatologist who liked to take a flyer in the stock market now and then, told of mentioning a stock that someone had put him onto as sure to double in value in a couple of months. “I was saying how there was a takeover situation, see? Howard makes a kind of face and says he doubted it. So I ask him if he knows anything and he says, flat out, that there won’t be any takeover. So I didn’t buy and the stock is down twenty points.”
    Al Rollins was sure Howard Magnuson had helped his daughter get into the college of her choice “with a partial scholarship, yet” by dropping a word in the right quarter.
    The only negative view came from Chester Kaplan,