26/3/99

The Eternal Jewish Question

Haven't you always wondered?

    It was one of those days for Dick J. Delaney. The Israeli supersleuth (his motto -- "We Don't Know From Nothing" -- was a mistake, because while it is true that two negatives make a positive, it's the opposite if you're Jewish) was bored. Waiting for the phone to ring, he drummed his fingers on his desk for a while, but had to stop when his fingertips wore down.
    When the phone still didn't ring, he passed the time counting the hairs on his knuckles (the middle finger won, hands down).
    When the phone still didn't ring, he got out the phone book and rewrote it, numerally rather than alphabetically, from 200-0000 to 999-9999. (Makes more sense, no?)
    Finally, he had a brilliant idea. He called the phone company to ask why no one was calling, all the more mysterious in that he was listed in the phone book (under "Ayin Prati," which lost something in the translation). He couldn't get an answer, and through the powers of deductive reasoning guessed that the phone was disconnected. (Had been for three years.)
    And so he resumed drumming his fingers on his desk. After several more months he got bored again, and he thought of becoming religious, but dropped the idea because having to wear a shtreimel all the time was rather limiting when he'd have to don a disguise.
    Winter came.
    Delaney yawned.
    Winter went.
    And then the phone rang.
    Sorry, it was the door.
    "Mailman!"
    This was a surprise. He never even got bills, because everyone just gave up.
    "Coming!" Delaney yelled excitedly, and leapt up -- well, he tried to leap up, but his elbow was stuck to a puddle of spilled orange juice which, after several weeks, got gluier than glue.
    It was a wedding invitation.
    It was a mistake.
    "I always cry at weddings," he once admitted candidly to no one in particular, "because I'm never invited." But this time, he was. It hardly mattered that he didn't know either the groom, Momo, or the bride, Mimi, or that her fat uncle Bililius was supposed to get the invitation that somehow arrived at his door (and don't think Bililius would ever forgive them); the important thing was, Delaney was going out.
    Nattily attired in his pinstripe herringbone doublebreasted Nehru jacket, he stealthily followed the trail of lamppost signs ("To Momo-Mimi Wedding -->") which led him unerringly to the wrong wedding. It didn't matter. 
    "Mazel tov!" he said happily to the people at his table.
    The old lady next to him cupped an ear. "What?!"
    "I said --"
    "I can't hear you!"
    It was a wedding, so there was music. It was an Israeli wedding, so the music was too loud. Unbelievably too loud.
    Delaney tried again, but the wall of noise drove his good wishes right back into his mouth.
    And then it happened.
    "I'd like to know," the lady screamed mightily, "why they always have to play the music so loud."
    It was his first case in years.

"DON'T MOVE, dollface," he mouthed through a mouthful of pickled duck tongue, "if my name's not Delaney, I won't get to the bottom of this in no time."
    He sprung into action. He lowered his wide-brimmed hat over his eyes, tapped his trusty, rusty old Derringer deep into the folds of his jacket, and set off to crack the mystery.
    The trail was hot. Real hot. It led him right to the queue of people zeroing in on the food. Delaney grabbed a plate and coolly assumed his cover: Cohen, arch-guest.
    Fearless, he sidled up to a man who looked like he surely must know something. He had a moustache, which looked fake but wasn't, and a toupe, which didn't look fake but was. Delaney surreptitiously spooned a few fried figs onto his plate and struck up a deceptively innocent-sounding conversation. "The music sure is loud, isn't it?" he said.
    "Can't hear you!" the man shouted back.
    Aha, Delaney thought.
    He began to suspect something when four consecutive people gave him the same answer. It was, he realized, a conspiracy of silence.
    He fell in with a crowd gathered around the tray of candied radishes. It was time, he decided, for a more direct approach. He needed some answers and he needed them now, because the old dollface wasn't going to last long, and if was going to get paid for the job...
    "Why do they always have to play the music so loud?" he asked a weathered old geezer who was obviously a waiter, because he was waiting for something to do. But having worked at the wedding hall lo these many years, the waiter was by now stone-deaf. He smiled graciously at Delaney and, assuming what this guest wanted, he forked over a portion of iced calf's-foot jelly in fish-egg sauce. 
    Wolfing down the food, Delaney sized up the info he already had. One: two Israelis fall in love; Two: that leads to the inevitable; Three: they have a wedding; Four: an Israeli wedding; and finally, Five: they hire the caterer with the weirdest menu, accidentally invite people they don't even know and scour the country for the band with the loudest bigspeakers.
    That much he now knew.
    But why?
    Doesn't it always happen that just when everyone has become accustomed to the phenomenal tumult of the band, and people are nose-to-nose screaming at each other in what has come to seem like normal conversation, the music suddenly stops so the musicians can go eat, and for a hair-raising moment you've got hundreds of well-dressed people hollering their lungs out before they realize with extreme embarrassment that they could actually be whispering?
    Which is what happened.
    Delaney was nibbling on a mock-chocolate kosher proto-squid-ink petitfours, screeching at someone he could not have known was the groom.

    "WHY DO THEY ALWAYS  -- have to play the music so loud?" he asked.
    "Dunno. Ask the musicians."
    Of course.
    Juan Eichelberger was the band's Decibel Manager, a wizardly artiste with the volume control. He was more sought-after for Israeli weddings than a chief rabbi. You didn't propose marriage until first you booked Juan. Juan, Delaney realized, had the answer, just as Delaney, Juan realized, had the question.
    Juan shrugged. "It simple, man. We no get money for to be quiet, comprendez?"
    "Yes, but --"
    "OK, man, I explain. It ancient Jewish tradition. Back to Inca times. Before then, there is a wedding, people come, they talk, like, bad talk, you know? Gossip. They trash the bride, they say she need more makeup. They say the father, he no can afford this blowout wedding. They say the groom, he not gonna know what to do with the bride, and maybe he lucky because she so ugly. So the groom, he mad, the bride, she very mad, the caterer, he especially mad because everybody talk nobody eat. The wedding hall, it mad because nobody want to go home, everybody want to stay late and trash talk everybody. So you see, man, the Jewish people they start to play loud music, not for more noise -- but for less. This wedding, you no hear nobody say nothing bad about nobody, no?"
    Juan Eichelberger excused himself. Conversation among the guests had started up again, and he had to go screech the tweeters. "Nyah!" everyone howled in agony, and covered their ears, abandoning their gab and cursing out the band instead.
    Delaney found his client at the urn, pouring herself a gefilter coffee.
    "We meet again, dollface."
    What she said next made his blood freeze.
    "So. What side of the family are you on?"
    Delaney was sunk. He knew it. He would kill before he would give himself up. Slowly, he slipped his hand under the folds of his jacket. He was desperate. For the first time in his life, he perspired when it wasn't even warm. He had to stall her. His fingers felt the bulge of his Derringer. No, that was his cigarettes. Casually, he pulled out a Time, deliberately, he lit it, slowly, he drew in the smoke, playing for time.
    Now!
    "I --" he began to say.
    But the music started up again.