A wanderer and a vagabond, that’s what he was. A person with no place, no family, no one waiting for him to come home
On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, Lulu brought Bugi to the Ben Shem family. Their hosts were of the nearly extinct breed of machnisei orchim who invited anyone in need without checking their references or the last time they’d showered. Around the table, in addition to the family, sat a motley assortment of about ten guests.
“I don’t know if I like eating at real families,” Bugi whispered between the dates and the pomegranate.
“Why? It’s so nice, it makes me feel right at home,” Lulu whispered back. He crushed a few pomegranate seeds between his teeth, and then admitted, “You’re right. At the soup kitchen we’re all charity cases, all equal, but here… suddenly it hits you what a Yom Tov table is really supposed to look like.”
“Yeah. Suddenly I see what I don’t have… and never will,” Bugi said sadly. The last few days had been such a letdown. How could he have been so stupid as to think the landlady of that sweet little apartment on Rechov HaNeviim wouldn’t recognize him? Poor Yanky… he’d tried so hard to help him with the haircut and everything, and in the end it all flopped miserably.
That evening after the haircut, Bugi had knocked on Yanky’s door, all scrubbed and spruced up in his new clothes, acting as if he were coming around for the first time to look at the apartment. He’d looked like any normal, mainstream dati guy — Mordechai from the falafel shop had said so, too.
But for Yanky’s wife, all it took was one quick glance, and she could hardly keep from grimacing involuntarily in disgust. Bugi knew right away that she’d recognized him as the same grubby fellow who’d come around the week before. And what chance did a former beggar have against a housekeeper so meticulous that her husband couldn’t throw a towel into the laundry without her realizing something was up?
She’d refused to show him the apartment. Very politely, and with pretty good excuses, but she’d refused. She didn’t say, “I know who you are — just last week you were here, looking like a beggar from the street,” or anything like it, but it was clear that she knew, and she knew that he knew it. And Yanky, standing there looking very uncomfortable, knew it too.
With the Kleiners’ door closed behind him, Bugi had gone back out to the street, humiliated. From there he’d gone to see about the apartment on Rechov Yechezkel, which was also on his short list, but it turned out it was already taken. It was getting chilly as he walked slowly on, wondering whether to compromise on another place, bigger but very shabby, for 2,800 a month.
On Malchei Yisrael, he bought some bourekas, found a bench, and sat nibbling at them, making them last, staring into the darkness. A wanderer and a vagabond, that’s what he was. A person with no place, no family, no one waiting for him to come home.
