Monday the Rabbi Took Off (5 page)

Ben Gorfinkle came to see him. “I was talking to my brother-in-law. He’s editor of the Lynn Times-Herald’, you know. He thought maybe you’d be interested in writing some pieces for the paper.”

“But I’m no reporter.” said the rabbi.

“I know, but what he had in mind was background stuff, personal impressions, local color. That kind of thing. All he could pay would be regular space rates. I don’t know what it would come to – probably not much, and of course, he couldn’t promise to run them until he’d seen them – but the way I look at it. it would keep your name in front of the public.”

“I see.” said Rabbi Small. “Well, thank him for me, and thank you.”

“You’ll do it?” Ben asked eagerly. “I can’t tell until I’m there.”

“I really think you ought to try. Rabbi.” said Gorfinkle, barely masking his disappointment.

“I understand. Mr. Gorfinkle.”

Mr. Jacob Wasserman, the elderly founder of the temple, frail and with parchmentlike skin, came to see him. “You’re wise to go now, Rabbi, while you’re young and can enjoy it. All my life I’ve promised myself I’d go, and always something came up. so I couldn’t. And now, when I’m under the doctor’s care you could say every minute, it’s too late.”

The rabbi led him to a chair and eased him into it. “They’ve got doctors there too. Mr. Wasserman.”

“I’m sure, but to go on a trip like this, it takes more than just wanting. The heart got to spring up at the idea, and with me, the way I am now. a little walk or maybe a ride in the car for an hour when my son drives me. or Becker comes, is already enough. But it makes me happy that you’re going.”

The rabbi smiled. “All right. I’ll try to enjoy it for both of us.”

“Good, you’ll be my ambassador there. Tell me. Rabbi, this man who’s coming to take your place, this Rabbi Deutch. you know him?”

“I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard about him. He has a very good reputation. From what I hear, the congregation is lucky to get him.”

The old man nodded. “Maybe someone not so good would have been better.”

“How do you mean. Mr. Wasserman?”

“Well, there are parties, cliques. I don’t have to tell you.”

“Yes, I know,” said the rabbi softly.

“And you’ll be gone how long?”

“Oh, three months anyway. Maybe more.”

The old man put a blue-veined hand on the rabbi’s forearm. “But you’re coming back?”

The rabbi smiled. “Who can tell what will happen tomorrow, let alone in three months?”

“But right now you’re planning to come back?”

His relationship with the old man was such that he could neither fence with him nor fib to him. “I don’t know.” he said. “I just don’t know.”

“Ah.” said Wasserman. “that’s what I was afraid of.”

Hugh Lanigan. Barnard’s Crossing chief of police, came to see him. “Gladys had a little gift for the missus that she asked me to drop off.” He deposited a gift-wrapped package on the table.

“I’m sure Miriam will be very pleased.”

“And look.” he said, “if you’re worried about the house being closed up all the time. I’ve given orders to have the man on the beat and the cruising car check the place regular.”

“Why. thanks. Chief. I was meaning to drop down to the station to leave a key and tell them when we were going.”

“I suppose you got to take this trip sometime.”

“Got to?” The rabbi looked surprised. “I mean, it’s like a priest going to Rome.”

“Oh, I see.” said the rabbi. “Something like that, only more so. Actually it’s a religious injunction with us, and for all Jews, not just for rabbis.”

Lanigan still was trying to understand. “Like a Moslem going to Mecca?”

“NO-o, not really. It doesn’t confer any special grace, any special religious points.” He considered how to answer. “I feel it like a kind of pull, like what I imagine draws a homing pigeon back to where it came from.”

“I see.” said the police chief. “Then I guess not every one of you has it. or a lot more of you would go.”

“A lot of homing pigeons don’t get back either, I suppose.” He tried again. “You see, our religion is not just a system of belief or of ritual practices that anyone can assume. It’s a way of life, but more than that, it’s inter-twined somehow with the people themselves, with the Jews as a nation. And the two, the religion and the people, are somehow tied in with the place. Israel, and more particularly Jerusalem. Our interest in the place is not accidentally historical. I mean, it is not significant merely because we happened to come from there, but rather because it is the particular place assigned to us by God.”

“You believe that, Rabbi?”

The rabbi smiled. “I have to believe it. It’s so large a part of our religious beliefs that if I doubted it, I’d have to doubt the rest. And if the rest were in doubt, our whole history would have been pointless.”

Chief Lanigan nodded. “I guess that makes sense.” He offered his hand. “I hope you find what you’re looking for there.” At the door, he stopped. “Say. how are you getting to the airport?”

“Why, I expect we’ll take a cab.”

“A cab? Why that will cost you ten bucks or more. Look. I’ll come down and drive you to the airport.”

Telling Miriam about it afterward, he said. “It’s curious that of all the people who came to see me. it should be the one Gentile who offered to take us to the airport.”

“He’s a dear, good friend.” Miriam agreed, “but the others probably thought you had already made the necessary arrangements.”

“But he was the one who thought to ask.”

As she hung his coat in the hall closet, his eyes flicked around the room for some sign of another occupant – a pipe in an ashtray, a pair of slippers beside the easy chair. After all these years. Dan Stedman told himself he was not jealous of his former wife, only curious. If she wanted to take a lover, it was no business of his. Certainly he had not been celibate since their divorce. He told himself that she meant nothing to him now, and yet although he had been in town for several days, as a kind of insurance he had held off coming to see her in response to her letter until today, his last day in the States. But as he had mounted the stairs to her apartment, he could not help feeling a quickening of interest, an excitement at the thought he was going to see her.

She joined him in the living room. She was still attractive, he noticed objectively. Tall and slender with her bobbed hair brushed back around her ears and her fresh complexion, she did not look her – he made a mental calculation – forty-five years. As she rounded a table to sit opposite him. he decided she was one of the few women who could wear slacks successfully. She got up again immediately to go to the sideboard.

“Drink?” she asked. “A little gin.”

“On the rocks, I believe?”

“That’s right.”

She regarded him covertly as she poured. He was still distinguished-looking, she thought, but he looked neglected. His trousers bagged at the knee – she would have seen to it that they were pressed – and his shirt cuffs looked frayed – she would have noticed and insisted he change to another shirt before going out.

“I called you and called you. I must have tried a dozen times. And then I decided to write.”

“I was at Betty’s in Connecticut for a few days. I just got back last night.” he fibbed.

“And how is she? I should write to her.”

“She’s fine.”

“And Hugo?”

“All right. I guess. He’s retired from his congregation now. you know.”

“Oh, yes51 remember you saying he was thinking about it the last time I saw you. Is he enjoying retirement?” She handed him his drink and then sat down in a straight-backed chair opposite him.

He grinned. “Not particularly. There was so much he was planning to do once he was retired and had the time. But you know how those things work. When he was busy at the temple, he had an excuse, and now that he isn’t, he doesn’t know how to begin all the projects he stored up all those years. It’s even harder on Betty. He’s underfoot.”

“Poor Hugo.”

“But he’s getting another job5 so it won’t be bad. He’s substituting for a rabbi in Massachusetts who’s going to Israel for a few months. There’s even a chance that he might be asked to stay on.”

“Oh, that’s good.” She looked at him over her drink. “And how have you been?”

“All right,” he said. “You know I left the network?”

“I heard. Trouble with Ryan again?”

“Not really.” He got up and began pacing the room. “I was just fed up. What kind of life is it for a man, running around, sometimes halfway across the world, to broadcast news that his listeners have already read in their newspapers?”

“But you also made news,” she pointed out. “You interviewed important people, high government officials.”

“Sure,” he said shortly, “and they never said anything that wasn’t already well-known official government policy.” He sat down again. “I’ve got a line on a job with educational TV. The same sort of thing, but there’s a lot more freedom to comment and to give background information. And in the meantime, I’m doing a book for Dashiel and Stone.”

“Wonderful. Did you get a good advance?”

It was typical of her, he thought, to ask about the financial arrangements before the subject. “Just barely enough to cover expenses.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a book on public opinion.” he went on. “what the man in the street really thinks.”

“But you did all that on television,” she said.

“No.” he said, warming to the discussion. “There they knew they were being interviewed. But for the book I’m going to be using a lapel mike and a pocket tape recorder. Suppose I’m in a restaurant and a couple of people at the next table sound interesting. I just switch on the recorder and tape their conversation to play over and analyze at my leisure.”

“I’m sure it will make an interesting book.” she said politely.

He finished his drink and put the glass down on the end table beside his chair.

“Refill?” she asked.

“No. I guess not.” He leaned back for the first time and looked about him. relaxed. “No need to ask you how you are. You’re looking beautiful as ever.”

She gave him a quick glance to see if there was anything more intended than the polite gallantry in the remark. “I’m working pretty hard.” she said.

“Well, I must say it agrees with you. Laura.” He nodded at the wall. “That painting is new. isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. It’s a Josiah Redmond. He’s doing a cover for us. I don’t own it – yet. It’s on loan. I want to live with it for a while first to see if I want to buy it.”

He knew of Redmond by reputation. He was a chaser, and his work came high. He wanted to ask her jokingly if she was pursuing the same policy with the painter as with the painting, but he held back; he knew it would come out harsh and bitter. Besides, she could well afford to buy the painting in the usual way. As a senior editor at Co-ed, she must be making a good salary. So he merely nodded, and focused on the picture while he waited for her to tell him why she had written that she must see him.

“I must see you,” the letter had said. “It is of the utmost importance that we discuss Roy’s future. I am extremely worried… ” for a couple of pages, every sentence containing at least one italicized word. Her speech was a little that way: too, and when they first went together, he had found it strangely attractive, giving a kind of breathless excitement to her discourse. Later he had found it a little trying.

“I got a letter from Roy.” she began.

“Oh, he writes you, does he?” And this time the bitterness slipped out. “I haven’t heard from him since he went to Israel.”

“Perhaps if you wrote him–”

“I wrote him twice. Am I supposed to continue in the hope that he’ll break down and answer?”

“Well.” she said, “he’s unhappy.11

“That’s nothing new. He was unhappy at college. His whole generation is unhappy.”

“He wants to come home.” she went on. “So why doesn’t he?”

“And lose a. year in his studies? If he comes home now, he won’t get any credit for the courses he’s taking at the university.”

“That doesn’t bother these kids nowadays.” Stedman said. “They switch from one major to another and from one college to another the way I change my shoes. And when they finish, they’re not prepared to do anything, or willing to. What’s he unhappy about?” he asked. “Something specific like a girl, or something general like the state of the world?”

Laura nervously lit a cigarette. “I don’t see how you can be so flippant about it all when it’s your son who’s involved.”

“My son!” he exploded. “I fathered him. I suppose, but I don’t know that I had anything to do with him afterward.”

“Daniel Stedman, you know I consulted with you on every step of his career, every school he went to, every –”

“All right, all right.” he said. “Let’s not get started on that again. What do you want me to do?”

“Well,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette, “I think you could write him a strong letter, ordering him to stay until he finishes the year or you will cut his allowance.”

“I see, I have to play the heavy.”

“Discipline is a father’s duty.” she said primly.

“And this will make him happy?”

“At least it might keep him from doing something foolish.”

“I’ll do better than that,” he said, getting up from the chair. “I’ll go and see him.”

“But you can’t just pick yourself up and go halfway across the world.” Then she saw that he was smiling. “Oh, you were planning to go to Israel?”

He nodded. “That’s where I’m doing the book. It’s a book on Israeli opinion.”

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve got a flight to Zurich by Swissair.”

“Not El Al? They say it’s safer, that they’re more careful.”

“It’s also a lot more crowded. And it’s a long trip, and I like to break it up. This gives me a stopover in Zurich.” he said, trying to keep his voice casual.

“Zurich?” She shot him a quick glance. “You’re not involved in anything, are you?”

“Involved?” He laughed. “How do you mean involved?”

“I still worry about you. Dan.” she said simply.

He shrugged his shoulders in a little gesture of annoyance. “Nothing to it. I go right on to Israel from there.”