by Howard Fast
Now, fifty-two years old, he sat in the railway coach next to his wife and facing his daughter and his grandchild, his face calm and impassive, his heart broken, his soul filled with agony. He had done what he had to do; he knew that. Physically, they would survive; he had lived simply and saved his money, and in Los Angeles he would find work of some sort; but he was leaving behind him a structure he as much as anyone else had created and a man he loved and honored more than any other man he had ever known. Through all that had happened, he would neither say nor hear said a word against Dan. Not from his wife or his daughter or anyone else.
May Ling knew some of what went on in her father’s mind. She had made her own decision to leave San Francisco; it was her father’s decision that he would go with her, and that meant that at least she would have her father and mother to take care of her son while she was at work.
The three days after Dan had come to the house were the three most awful days she had ever lived through. She had known with absolute certainty that her ultimatum was meaningless, that to marry her was no part of his life and had never been a part of his life; she knew him that well; but she also knew that there had been moments between them as precious and as wonderful as ever existed between a man and a woman, and for that reason, whenever the phone rang during those three days, whenever the doorbell sounded, her heart stopped and there was a crazy moment of hope and belief. On the second day, a messenger brought a letter from him:
MY DEAR, BELOVED MAY LING:
I am writing to beg you to change your mind. There is nothing more that I can say that I haven’t said. Even if you won’t change your mind and remain in San Francisco, this is not the end of us. Just don’t believe that. This money is to help out. Please take it. I love you.
DAN
Enclosed with the letter was a check for ten thousand dollars. She mailed the check back to him with a very brief note:
DANNY:
I don’t want to close any doors. I will write from Los Angeles. Only think about what I said. I have enough money from the sale of the house. Thank you.
MAY LING
Now it was done, as she had known it would be, and she called upon all her reserves of inner strength to blot out what had been. She knew that she had to counter her grief with anticipation. She was the pivot of these four people on the train, this quiet Chinese family that the others in the car kept glancing at so curiously. Her father was no longer a young man. He had saved a substantial sum of money, but it would not last forever. Nor did she know what kind of prejudice existed in Los Angeles. They would have to live frugally and carefully. She had her son to raise, and she was sufficiently Chinese to tell herself that he must do honor to all of them. When applying for a position at the library, she had pretended to know Japanese, but her knowledge was cursory at best. She could read Japanese fairly well, but she would have to master the spoken language to some degree before they discovered her deception.
And as for Dan? She closed her eyes, and there she was with him, the two of them sprawled on the deck of the boat, he with one hand on the rudder, the other hand touching her, the wind in the sails and the taste of salt spray on her lips.
“Mommy, don’t cry anymore,” Joseph said, touching her. “It will be all right.”
“I know it will.” She managed to smile. “Of course it will.” She pointed through the car window to the rocky, spectacular California coast. “Look there, how lovely it is.”
The thing was not to think of Dan–not at all.
For the tenth time since the beginning of the journey he had embarked on, Rabbi Samuel Blum regretted the fact that he had allowed Bernie Cohen to be his driver. Rabbi Blum was eighty; Bernie Cohen was nineteen; and while the distance from San Francisco to the Napa Valley was little more than thirty miles, the journey for Rabbi Blum appeared to extend itself indefinitely. Part of this lay in the profession of Bernie Cohen; he was a self-styled “pioneer,” which meant that with nine other young men, he was preparing to go to Palestine and become a part of the tiny community that a handful of Jews had founded there. In the course of this preparation, he and his fellow pioneers were learning how to use the necessary machines, and having very little money, they put things together with what they could find or scavenge. When Rabbi Blum ventured to ask what kind of a car they were riding in, Bernie Cohen replied that most of it was once a Chevrolet. The rest of it had been drawn from a number of places.
Bernie Cohen was a large-muscled, good-natured young man who had been within earshot when Rabbi Blum let drop that he had to go to a place in the Napa Valley. “I will take you there,” Bernie Cohen declared. “It will give me an opportunity to observe the irrigation systems.”
“As long as you take me to a place called Higate. It used to be a winery.”
“I am even more interested in wineries.”
They were halfway there when young Cohen, intrigued by the soft drone of sound from the old man, asked him what he was saying.
“I am not saying. I am praying. It may surprise you since I am eighty years old, but I have a peculiar desire to live.”
“Oh, we’ll make it all right, rabbi. This is a good car when it runs. Anyway, what can happen with a rabbi in the car?”
“That’s what I wonder.”
The rabbi was amiably surprised when they reached Higate untroubled by calamity, and he briskly descended from what he would always think of as an infernal machine. It was his first visit to the Levy place or to the Napa Valley, and he was impressed by the beauty of the scene, the green hills, the old stone buildings, the cattle grazing in the upland meadows–and also impressed by the lovely redheaded woman who came out of the house to greet him. He remembered Clair from the last time he had seen her at the Levy home in Sausalito, but that had been years ago. Life worked wonders. This tall, long-limbed lady, a child in her arms and two little boys hanging onto her apron, her face red and freckled by the sun, was a delicious surprise, and the old man beamed with pleasure as he regarded her. The older he got, the more it seemed to him that each new generation vindicated his life and his belief.
“How marvelous!” he exclaimed. “I turn my back, and you have three children.”
“You turned slowly, rabbi. It’s been years. Oh, it’s so good to see you. But what brings you here?”
“This one,” he replied, indicating Bernie Cohen, “in his infernal machine that he calls a car. He’s a nice boy. His name is Bernie Cohen.”
“Can I look around, Mrs. Levy?” he asked eagerly.
“Wherever you wish. You may run into my husband. Just introduce yourself and tell him that Rabbi Blum is here. And, rabbi,” she said to the old man, “come out of the sun. It’s cool inside.”
“First I must be introduced to what God has given you. This one?”
“My oldest. He’s five. His name is Adam.” Adam clutched his mother’s leg and buried his red hair and his freckled face in her apron. “This is Joshua–three.” Joshua stared at the old man with unabashed curiosity and demanded, “What’s on his eyes?”
“Glasses. I’m not as young as you.”
“And this is Sally,” Clair said. “She’s new. Well, not so new. A year old. She can walk if she tries. But what brings you here, rabbi? Of course I’m delighted.”
“A small business proposition for your husband.”
Clair led the way inside to the kitchen, where she put Sally down in a playpen. The kitchen was cool and comfortable, and Rabbi Blum seated himself gratefully at the kitchen table. Clair poured him a glass of lemonade.
“It’s good. Our own lemons. It’ll cool you, rabbi.”
“If it’s not too much trouble, I’d prefer hot tea.”
“In this weather?”
“Absolutely. You know, this is a fine place you have here.”
“It’s been a struggle, rabbi. We do everything ourselves. Jake made these cabinets, and the table too. We both found we can do anything–or almost anything. We have four acres in table grapes, and we sell them
. We have forty-one steers and six milk cows, and we’ve made a cash crop out of plums. And a garden. Last year we broke even for the first time, and this year we expect to make some money. We have to. At this point, we don’t have a dime.”
“And Jacob’s father?”
“Oh, we’re friendly, and they come up here and we go down there with the kids, but Jake won’t take a penny from him.”
“That’s a shame. You’re denying Mark a very deep pleasure. He’s a good man. Why should you hurt him?”
“Jake is Jake. And I think I like him the way he is. Here is your tea, rabbi. Do you want sugar?”
“Three lumps.”
The rabbi was thoughtfully stirring his tea when Jake entered and greeted him warmly. “I left your agricultural expert outside complaining that I don’t make full use of my irrigation facilities. What is that kid?”
“He’s going to Palestine to build a Jewish homeland. He’s practicing now.”
“Good. Anyway, it’s wonderful to see you, rabbi. It’s been years. But what brings you here?”
“I could come as a shepherd looking for a lost sheep.”
“I don’t think Jews look very hard for lost sheep,” Clair said.
“Possibly. I come on business, Jake.”
“Business?”
“I’ll come directly to the point. The point is sacramental wine.”
“What?”
“Precisely. I have a suspicion that Clair is as indifferent a Christian as you are Jewish. So I will instruct you. Wine plays a very large part in both religions. Among the Jews, we use wine every Shabbat–you know what that is? The Sabbath–for a prayer called the Kiddush. On Passover, wine is a part of the Seder. On other occasions, wine is necessary from a religious point of view. So we must have wine.”
“But what about Prohibition?” Clair asked.
“Ah!” He reached into his pocket and took out a worn scrap of paper.
“You see, I come prepared. A rabbi is an assortment of things, also a lawyer and a judge. Ask your father about that. I haven’t time to go into it now.” He began to feel through his pockets. “My other glasses.”
“I’ll read it for you,” Clair said.
“Good. It’s an extract from the Volstead Act, Section Six. Read.”
Taking the piece of paper, Clair read: “Nothing in this title shall be held to apply to the manufacture, sale, transportation, possession or distribution of wine for sacramental purposes, or like religious rites . . . The head of any conference or diocese or other ecclesiastical jurisdiction may designate any rabbi, minister, or priest to supervise the manufacture of wine to be used for the purposes and rites in this section mentioned . . .”
Clair looked up at him in bewilderment, and Jake said, “Wait a minute, rabbi, you’re not coming to ask us to make wine?”
“Why not? Now both of you listen to me for a moment. We have an association of twelve synagogues. Each year we buy eight hundred gallons of sacramental wine. It’s made in the East, and they have been charging us seven dollars a gallon. Now they’ve raised their price to nine dollars. We don’t make profit on the wine, we give it out for the Passover at cost, but even cost is a burden for poor people. So since I am a rabbi in retirement, they appointed me to see what can be done, and since you have the only Jewish winery in the area, I come to you. You will make the wine, and we will pay you seven dollars a gallon.” As an afterthought, he added, “And occasionally, I will supervise.”
Jake shook his head. “Rabbi, I’m sorry, but you’ve come for nothing. There aren’t any wineries, Jewish or otherwise. They’re all busted and closed down. The only one who makes any wine around here is a Basque named Fortas who lives down the road and who makes a few hundred gallons of bootleg stuff, a kind of zinfandel. We buy a gallon from him occasionally, but believe me his days are numbered too. The Feds go up and down these valleys like hound-dogs. As for us making wine, we just don’t know how. We never made a gallon of the stuff, and we wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Seven times eight hundred is fifty-six hundred dollars,” the rabbi said calmly. “Clair has been telling me what kind of a struggle you had. I admire that. You are young and strong and you can work twelve hours a day. What about tomorrow? What about your children?”
“It’s impossible,” Jake said. “Wine-making is an art, a profession.”
“So my mother was an artist, God rest her soul, because she made her own wine. Good wine too. How did you learn to grow plums and raise cattle?”
“It’s different.”
“Ah! You know the Bible? Three thousand years ago, we raised cattle and we grew plums and we made wine. We used to be called the people of the vine. And now a boy with your education tells me he doesn’t know how. Jacob, I speak for only twelve small Orthodox synagogues. What about the Reform Jews? The capacity of the rich is always larger than the capacity of the poor–”
“It’s just not feasible.”
“Now you hold on, Jake,” Clair said. “I want you to listen to what the rabbi is saying and stop telling him it’s impossible. We broke our backs over this place when everyone said it was impossible. The only days of rest I’ve had in the past seven years were when I was too pregnant to move, and we still dream about owning a washing machine and a radio. If the car runs another thirty days, it’ll be a miracle. If Fortas can make wine, we can make wine. We got all the equipment out there in the big house, just sitting. Now, rabbi, what about this. I’m not Jewish.”
“I suspected as much.” Rabbi Blum smiled.
“Well, doesn’t that matter?”
“Not as long as you follow my instructions. What I tell you now is only for you to think about. I’ll write you a long letter, spelling it all out. Now, we require that the barrels and the presses be cleaned in a certain way. If they have lain fallow for seven years, they can be considered usable. The wine is to be made for the Passover. If it is used before the Passover, it becomes humotz, or not usable for the Passover. But once it is used initially for the Passover, it can then be used through the rest of the year, when it becomes humotz and humotz is allowable.”
“It’s too late to start vines,” Jake said.
“Jake, we’ll buy the grapes. Heaven knows, there are enough grapes for sale in this valley. Rabbi, what kind of wine is it?”
“Traditionally, Clair, a sweet wine is used, and whatever wine you make, it should be heavy and sweet. In the olden times, the wine came from Malaga in Spain, which was once, a long, long time ago, a Jewish city. The real Malaga is a kind of muscatel, very rich and luscious and full-bodied. What we have been buying is made in New York City from Concord grapes. It is called Malaga, but it resembles Malaga like I resemble you.”
“And you trust us to have eight hundred gallons of wine that you can use ready for you by Passover?” Jake asked him.
“Much worse than what we buy from New York it couldn’t be,” the rabbi said. Bernie Cohen entered the kitchen at that moment, and the rabbi said to him, “Out in the car, Bernie, there’s a bottle of wine. Bring it in here. I’ll leave it with you,” he said to Jake. “It’s a sample of what they call Malaga in New York. There’s no hurry. You have seven months, and that’s time enough. Meanwhile, they’ll draw up some contracts and send them to you. Have you enough money to start?”
“We’ll find the money,” Clair said firmly.
*
Speakeasies, blind pigs, blind tigers, private clubs–the fact that there were at least a hundred places in San Francisco where liquor was sold made it no easier for Dan Lavette to get drunk. His enormous body resisted alcohol, and going about the matter with cold, sober, and depressed determination did not help. On the day that May Ling left the city, he walked out of his office at half-past four, walked into a place on Battery Street called Madam X’s, and put down three shots of what was euphemistically called rye whiskey. The taste disgusted him, and he went to another place called Harry’s. Harry’s had imitation Tiffany chandeliers and a thirty-foot bar of pol
ished oak. There were four bartenders, and by six o’clock the customers were elbow to elbow.
Harry’s attested to the fact that the rye whiskey it served was Golden Wedding, bottled in bond. Dan ordered a double shot and put it down with a beer chaser. The beer was needled. The bartender poured him another double shot, and Dan drank it and then stared at the beer.
“The beer,” he said to the bartender, “is needled piss. The whiskey is bootleg swill, and you, my friend, are a motherfucking fraud.”
The men on either side of Dan looked at him and then backed away. The bartender put out both hands, palms down. “Just take it easy, mister. We don’t advertise. This is a private club. You don’t like what we serve, go elsewhere.”
Another bartender waved a hand, and two heavyset men moved toward Dan.
“I go where I please,” Dan said slowly.
“You’re drunk, mister. Better leave.”
“When I decide to, buster.”
The two heavyset men closed in on him. Each grasped one of his arms. Dan stepped away from the bar and swung the two men together. The move was sudden and unexpected and their heads met with a loud crack. The bartender vaulted the bar and came down on Dan, who staggered and then flung the bartender over his head and across the room. The two heavyset men came at him now, shaking their heads and growling. Dan grabbed his beer mug and crashed it down on the head of one of them. His knees buckled and he went down. The other man was sending hard, driving blows at Dan’s stomach. Dan hit him in the face, and the man went down, his nose spurting blood. Now two more bartenders were over the bar, each hanging on to one of Dan’s arms, while the first bartender, his fist clenching a pair of brass knuckles, let go at Dan’s face and stomach. The blow to his face opened a cheek and dazed him, and the two bartenders dragged him across the room. The third bartender opened the street door, and they dragged Dan out into the street. As the third bartender came at him with the brass knuckles again, Dan kicked him in the testicles. The man went down, groaning and clutching his groin, and Dan flung off the other two. A crowd gathered, and as Dan stood there at bay, blood streaming from his face, his clothes torn, one man down at his feet, the two others circling him warily, the police appeared.
