by Noah Gordon
He watched her lips cover the rim of the glass and sip in the dark brew. “You’ll make a beautiful old lady,” he said.
On Wednesday they ate early and visited the Museum of Modern Art, looking and talking and walking until their spirits flagged. He bought her a small framed print to help the curtains fight the drabness of her room, three bottles done in orange, blue, and burnt umber by an artist neither of them knew, and they went to her apartment and hung it on the wall. Her feet hurt and he ran hot water into the bathtub while she removed her shoes and stockings in the other room and then gathered her skirt above her knees and stepped into the tub and sat on the edge. She waggled her toes in the hot water, making sounds of such pleasure that he took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants legs and sat next to her while she laughed, having to hold on to the edge of the tub to keep from falling in. Their toes began making underwater signals at one another, and his left foot went out to meet her right foot, and her right foot ventured out halfway, and their feet played together like children and then like lovers. He kissed her hard, and his right pants leg unrolled and slid down his shin into the water. She laughed some more when he became annoyed and hopped out to wipe his feet. When she came out, they had coffee together at the table while his tweed cuffs itched damply against his ankle.
“If you weren’t a rabbi,” she said slowly, “you would have made a serious pass at me long before this, wouldn’t you.”
“I am a rabbi.”
“Of course. But I would just like to know. Wouldn’t you? Even though the Jewish-Christian thing were there, if we had met before you were ordained?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I knew that.”
“Shall we stop seeing one another?” he said regretfully. “I’ve had a marvelous time with you.”
“Of course not,” she said. “It’s been wonderful. There’s no use denying the presence of physical attraction. But while this . . . chemical reaction . . . is a mutual compliment—that is, if you feel that way about me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, while this says something nice about our tastes in the opposite sexes, it doesn’t mean that there has to be a physical affair, or anything like that. There’s no reason why we can’t rise above the physical thing and continue a friendship I’m beginning to value tremendously.”
“I feel the same way. Exactly,” he said eagerly, and they put down their coffee cups and shook hands. They talked for a long time after that, about many things. The cuffs of his trousers dried and she leaned forward to listen to him with her arms flat on the table, and as he talked he traced with a friendly fingertip the lovely line of her forearm, his finger sliding over the outside of her arm where there were short hairs so golden as to be almost transparent, passing the narrow bony wrist, then tracing the promontories of her fingers, down and around and in and out, and in and out, and in and out, and in and around the thumb and then up along the soft warm inner part of her arm while her face warmed with pleasure and she talked to him and listened, laughing often at the things that he said.
On Thursday he took her to Maury Silverstein’s party. The station wagon had been left at a Manhattan garage for a tuneup and he picked it up before he called for her. They were early so he drove uptown first, toward Morningside Heights, but when he came to the block in which the Shaarai Shomayim Synagogue was located he parked the car and pointed out the shul to Leslie and told her all about Max.
“He sounds wonderful,” she said, and then was silent. “You’re a little afraid of him, did you know that?” she asked finally.
“No,” he said. “You’re wrong.” He felt annoyed.
“Have you seen him during the past ten days?”
“No.”
“That’s because of me, isn’t it? Because you know he would disapprove of your seeing me?”
“Disapprove? He’d have apoplexy. But he lives in his world and I live in mine.” He started the car again.
Maury’s apartment was small and it was a large party when they got there. They pushed through a forest of drinkers and glass-holders, in search of the host. Michael recognized nobody with the exception of a dark, molelike little man who was a famous saloon-and-television comic; surrounded by a group of laughing people, he was telling jokes as fast as they tried to stick him with off-beat subjects.
“Here he is,” Maury bellowed, waving, and they pushed their way to where he was standing with another man. “You son of a gun,” Maury said, gripping Michael’s arm with the hand that didn’t have a drink in it. Maury was heavier and slightly pouchy under the eyes, but the stomach was smooth and hard-looking. Michael could imagine him going directly to the gym when he left the office every evening; or perhaps one of the closets of this apartment was full of Indian clubs and a set of barbells like the ones Abe Kind had used for so many years.
Michael introduced Leslie and Maury introduced his boss, Benson Wood, a smiling man with a large face and the heaviest horn-rimmed glasses Michael had ever seen. Wood ignored Michael, smiling drunkenly at Leslie and not letting go of her hand after he had shaken it. “Any friend of M. S.,” he told her, pronouncing each syllable very distinctly.
“There’s somebody here you’ve got to meet, one of my talents,” Maury said to Michael, taking his arm and leading him back to the group around the man with the head like a mole. “Here he is, George,” he told the comedian. “The fellow I told you about the other day. The rabbi?”
The comic closed his eyes. “Rabbi. Rabbi. Did you hear the one about the rabbi and the priest—”
“Yes,” Michael said.
“—who were buddies and the priest says to the rabbi, Listen you really ought to try ham, it’s delicious, and the rabbi says to the priest, Listen, you really ought to try girls, they’re better than ham . . . ?”
“I did. Yes,” Michael said again, while the group laughed.
“Yes?” The man closed his eyes and touched his fingers to his forehead. “Yes. Yes. . . . Did you hear the one about this fella takes this Southern loose lady to the drive-in movie and he asks for her favors, and by the time she could drawl Yes the picture was over and they had to move the car?”
“No,” he said.
The man closed his eyes. “No. No,” he mused. Michael turned and went back to Leslie, who was glaring at Wood.
“Would you like to leave?” Michael asked.
“Let’s have a drink first.” They moved away and left Wood standing there.
The bottles were on a table next to the wall. Two girls were already there and Michael waited patiently while they made their drinks. They were tall girls, a redhead and a blonde, with exceptional figures and pert faces that carried too much makeup. Models or television actresses, he thought.
“He was a different man after he had the hernia fixed,” one of them was saying.
“I should hope so,” the redhead replied. “I couldn’t stand taking dictation from him when he called the pool and the witch sent me. I don’t know how you stood it all those months. Between his disposition and his breath I almost died.”
A woman behind them screamed suddenly and they turned to see Wood spouting vomit, while people scrambled in the crowded room to create a clearing, spilling drinks as they fled. Maury emerged from nowhere. “It’s okay, B. W.,” he said. He grabbed his boss’ body, his hand supporting the drunken man’s forehead as Wood heaved. Maury looked as though he were accustomed to performing the service, Michael thought. The girl who had shrieked was holding her dress away from her bosom, making short sounds of disgust and outrage.
Michael took Leslie’s hand and led her away.
Later, back at her apartment, they had their drink. “Ugh,” she said, shaking her head.
“It was a mess. Poor old Maury Silverstein.”
“That loud boor. And that ugly little man with the jokes. I’ll shut off my television set next time he’s on.”
“You’re forgetting the star.”
“Indeed I am not. That horrible pi
gsty with the changed name.”
His glass had been raised to his lips but he did not drink. Instead, he placed it on the table. “Changed name? Wood?” He stared at her. “You mean you think his name was once something like Rivkind?”
She was silent.
He stood up and reached for his coat. “He was a goy, sweetheart. A loud, sloppy, lecherous goy. A drunken Christian vomit-wallower. One of yours.”
She sat there unbelieving as the door slammed behind him.
On Saturday evening Michael stayed home and played casino with his father. Abe was a good card player. He knew at all times how many spades were out and whether the good two and the ten of diamonds were still in the pack. In defeat he was the kind of opponent who slapped the cards on the table in frustration, but when playing against his son he seldom was forced to lose his composure.
“I got cards and spades. Count points,” he said, puffing his cigar. The telephone rang.
“All I have is two aces,” Michael said. “You get nine more points.”
“A shmeer.”
“Michael,” his mother called. “It’s Western Union.”
He hurried to the telephone. His parents stood in the kitchen and waited as he said “Hello?”
“Rabbi Kind? I have a telegram for you. The message is ‘I am ashamed. Thank you for everything. If you can comma forgive me.’ Signed Leslie. Do you want me to repeat that?”
“No, thank you, I got it,” he said, and hung up.
His parents followed him back to the card table. “Nu?” his father said.
“It was nothing important.”
“So what’s so unimportant that it requires a telegram?”
“One of my boys in Arkansas is going to be bar mitzvah. His family is a little nervous. They were just reminding me of some details.”
“Can’t they even let you alone on your vacation?” His father sat down at the table and shuffled the cards. “I don’t think casino is your game. How about a little gin?”
At eleven o’clock his parents went to sleep and he went to his room and tried to read, first the Bible and then Mickey Spillane and finally his old Aristotle, but nothing worked and he noticed that the binding of the Aristotle was cracked and torn. He put on his coat and let himself out of the apartment and downstairs he unlocked the door of the station wagon and got in and drove, taking the Queensboro Bridge instead of the tunnel because he wanted to see the lights on the East River. He fought traffic in Manhattan and then, like a good omen, there was a parking space directly in front of her apartment house.
In the brown hallway he stood for a moment, uncertain, and then he knocked on the door and heard the whisper of her feet.
“Who is it?”
“Michael.”
“Oh, God. I can’t see you.”
“Why not?” he said angrily.
“I look a mess.”
He laughed. “Let me in.”
The lock clicked free. When he was inside the room he saw that she was in faded green pajamas and a brown flannel robe so old that the edges of the sleeves were threadbare. Her feet were bare and her face was scrubbed free of makeup. Her eyes were slightly reddened, as if she had been crying. He put his arms around her and she leaned her head against him.
“Were you crying because of me?” he asked.
“Not really. I have a stomach ache.”
“Can I get you something? Should you see a doctor?”
“No. It happens to me every time there’s a new moon.” Her words were muffled by his shoulder.
“Oh.”
“Give me your coat,” she said, but as she took it her features melted and she dropped the coat and began to cry with such intensity that he became frightened.
She lay down on the couch and turned her face to the wall. “Go away,” she said. “Please.”
But he picked up his coat and threw it over the top of a chair and then he stood and watched her. She had drawn up her knees and she was jiggling back and forth with insistent rhythm, as if trying to rock the pain to sleep.
“Can’t you take something?” he asked. “Aspirin?”
“Codeine.”
The bottle was in the medicine chest and he made her swallow one of the tablets with some water and then he sat at the foot of the couch. In a short time the codeine took effect and she stopped jiggling. His hand touched her foot and it was cold. “You should wear slippers,” he said, taking a foot between his hands and kneading.
“That feels so good,” she said. “Your hands are warm. Better than a hot water bottle.” He continued to massage her feet.
“Put your hand on my stomach,” she said.
He moved up on the couch and slipped his hand into the robe.
“That’s nice,” she said sleepily.
Through the cloth of the pajama bottoms his hand felt the smoothness of the skin of her belly, trisected by two harness straps. The tip of his middle finger lightly recognized that the well of her umbilicus was astonishingly wide and deep. She shook her head.
“Tickles.”
“I’m sorry. Thy navel is like a round goblet, wherein no mingled wine is wanting.”
She smiled. “I don’t want to be your friend,” she murmured.
“I know.”
He sat looking at her long after she slept. Finally he removed his hand from her stomach and took the blanket from the closet and covered her, wrapping her feet well. Then he drove back to Queens and packed his bag.
At breakfast the next morning he told his parents that a congregation emergency had forced him to cut his vacation short. Abe cursed and offered him money. Dorothy complained and packed him a shoebox full of chicken sandwiches and a thermos of tea, wiping her eyes with her apron.
He pointed the station wagon southwest and drove steadily, eating the sandwiches when he got hungry but making no stops until four P.M. when he called Leslie from the telephone booth of a roadside diner.
“Where are you?” she asked when the chime of the last dropping coin had died away.
“Virginia. I think Staunton.”
“Are you running away?”
“I need time to think.”
“What is there to think about?”
“I love you,” he said roughly. “But I like what I am. I don’t know if I can throw it away. It’s very precious to me.”
“I love you, too,” she said. They were silent.
“Michael?”
“I’m here,” he said gently.
“Would marrying me mean definitely that you would have to throw it away?”
“I think it would. Yes, it will.”
“Don’t do anything yet, Michael. Just wait.”
He was silent again. “You don’t want to marry me?” he said finally.
“I do. God, if you knew how much. But I have some ideas and I have to think them out. Don’t ask me any questions and don’t do anything hasty just now. Simply wait and write to me every day and I’ll write to you. All right?”
“I love you,” he said. “I’ll call you on Tuesday. Seven o’clock.”
“I love you.”
On Monday morning Leslie clipped the Boston and the Philadelphia newspapers and then she went to the magazine’s library and withdrew six fat brown manila envelopes marked JUDAISM. She read the clippings in the envelopes during her lunch hour and that evening when she went home she took with her a bundle of selected clippings which she had wrapped in an elastic band and placed in her purse. On Tuesday morning she clipped the Chicago papers and then asked Phil Brennan, her boss, if she could have a couple of hours off to take care of some personal business. When he nodded she put on her hat and coat and took the elevator downstairs. In Times Square she waited under the billboard that blew real smoke rings, studying faces and trying to guess which ones were and which ones were not, until a Broadway bus came along and then she rode uptown until the bus came to the block in which was located the funny-looking little Jewish church; no, synagogue.
23
Max
Gross looked at the girl in her stylish clothing and with her sleek legs and bold American eyes and he felt a surge of annoyance. Only four times during his entire rabbinate at Shaarai Shomayim had goyim sought him out and asked him to transform them into Jews. Each time, he reflected, the request had been made as if he were someone who could wave his hands in the air and—pouf!—in a cloud of smoke change the facts of their births. He had never seen fit to undertake a conversion.
“What do you see among the Jews that makes you want to be one of us?” he asked coldly. “Don’t you realize that Jews are persecuted and alone in the universe? Don’t you know that as individuals we are despised by the gentile and that as a people we are cut asunder?”
Leslie stood and collected her gloves and purse. “I didn’t expect you to accept me,” she said. She reached for her coat.
“Why not?”
The old man’s eyes were bright and piercing, like her father’s. The thought of the Reverend John Rawlins triggered relief that this rabbi was sending her away. “Because I don’t think I could feel like a Jew. Not if I lived a million years,” she said. “It’s inconceivable to me that anyone could ever really want to harm me, to kill my future children, to lock me away from the world. I myself have had certain prejudices against the Jews; I must admit this. I feel unworthy to join a people who bear such a burden of mass hatred.”
“You feel unworthy?”
“Yes.”
Rabbi Gross stared. “Who told you to say that?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He stood up heavily and walked to the ark. Pulling aside the blue curtains and pushing open the sliding wooden door, he revealed two velvet-encased Torahs. “In these scrolls are the laws,” he said. “We do not seek recruits to Judaism; we discourage them. It is written in the Talmud that rabbis must say specific things when apostates from other religions seek us out. The Torah says the rabbi must warn the gentile about the Jew’s fate in this world. The Torah also is specific about another detail. If the gentile in effect answers ‘I know all this yet I feel unworthy to be a Jew’ he is to be accepted immediately for conversion.”
