by Howard Fast
“I don’t care.”
He poured it into a silver Kiddish beaker and she drank it down.
“Thank you. This morning at ten o’clock,” she said flatly, still dabbing at her eyes, “I decided to kill myself. I am not a suicidal type. I have never considered suicide before, but this morning at ten o’clock, I decided that this was the open door, and I took a bottle of aspirin and poured about twenty into a glass of water and let them dissolve. That’s how stupid I am in the art of suicide. But then I remembered stories I had heard about children who had gobbled down half a bottle and survived very nicely, so I flushed it all down the toilet, and then I said to myself, Marty’s been of no damned use to me, but maybe a rabbi is different and possibly he knows things a Congregational minister doesn’t, and you have a kind face, and Jesus God, I need a little kindness.”
“We’ll talk. Kindness is in short supply, but not that short. Let’s get rid of the suicide thing first.”
“I’m over it. Not because it’s a mortal sin — is it with you? I mean a mortal sin?”
“No, not in the same sense. But it hurts too many people — not only the person who dies.”
“And who would it hurt if I died?”
“I don’t know the people in your life, but it would hurt Martin and Millie — and it would hurt me.”
“You hardly know me.”
He smiled and nodded.
“Would you call me Sarah, please?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes. It’s a fine old Jewish name. It’s my daughter’s name.”
“It goes a long way back in my family — Jewish, yes, I never thought of it that way.” Her face lit up with a smile, and, as on the night before, the smile transformed her face completely.
“Why the aspirin and the suicide?” David asked.
“You come to the end of the rope. Or you’re the little boy who picks up a baby pony every day. But the pony gets bigger, until a point comes when he can’t. That’s my point. All the doors are closed, every damned rotten one of them.”
“Your husband’s an alcoholic and to live with him is apparently very painful and difficult. Why don’t you divorce him?”
“I can’t.”
“Why? You’re not Catholic. Is he?”
“It has nothing to do with religion, Rabbi. Have you known many alcoholics?”
“Some, yes.”
“I hear it’s not much of a Jewish affliction. Maybe it’s only our curse. It’s terrible. A man turns into something else; you can’t reach him or touch him or reason with him or plead with him, and all restraint goes and all decency goes and all shame goes, and this witless, brainless monster is your husband. And then he’s sober, and you say to him, I have had it. Enough is enough. I’m leaving. And then he gets down on his knees and grovels at your feet like a whimpering child and kisses your hands and pleads and pleads, and the man is gone and you have a half-idiot child — and even that doesn’t touch it, I mean what happens to me, and why I can’t divorce him.”
“How long have you been married?”
“When he went overseas. That was eight years ago.” She shook her head. “I’m not telling you the truth. I’m trying to, but it’s complicated and I keep thinking while I’m talking that you have some magic power to help me and release me — “ Her voice trailed away, and David waited, intrigued as he watched her battle with herself, give way to her emotions, and then press them back inside her.
“Do you have any idea what I looked like as a child, as an adolescent?” she asked surprisingly.
David shook his head. This was another tack. He had thought before that possibly she was on the threshold of a breakdown, but now he began to see a desperate if disjointed pattern.
“I was too ugly to look at. I am almost five feet nine inches, and I was that height when I was fourteen, long skinny arms and legs like a scarecrow, no breasts, red elbows, red knees, freckles all over my face and arms and legs, and a face like a gargoyle. I still see myself that way. I’ll see myself that way until the day I die. Do you know how boys reacted? They laughed. I was a joke, a hideous clown of a young girl. I met Harvey in college. He was the best-looking boy in his house, and he fell in love with me and he married me, and that’s why I can’t divorce him.” The last words came through sobs that wracked her whole body.
David watched her with amazement. She was directing this awful cry of agony at him, and he was unable to respond. What could he do for her? She was out of another world, another culture, something as alien to him as, for example, coming into his mind for some reason, the culture of the Sherpas of Nepal. Had he ever known an alcoholic like her husband? In the service they went off on leave and became sodden drunk to pretend, to forget, to try happiness, and he had done that once himself, turning his mind to mush and his limbs to rubber; but that was not alcoholism. Why had she stepped out of her world into his world? She was sitting and weeping quietly now. She wore no make-up, no lip rouge, and David decided that, in a certain way, she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, and he said to her, “But surely you know how beautiful you are?”
She stared at him through her tears.
“I mean, a mirror and common sense would prove that beyond question. A photograph.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” she said woefully.
“I’m afraid not.”
She rose to go, but David leaped to his feet and pressed her shoulder gently. “Don’t go, please.”
“Why not? I imposed myself on you. Have you Kleenex or something?” He found a package in his desk and handed it to her. She was in control of herself now, wiping her eyes and saying, “In a way what I did was insulting. I said, You Jews are different. You’re not really like other people. You have magic powers.”
David smiled wanly. “Even a very few magic powers would have been so useful. Let me be frank with you. Probably the only way I can help you is by listening, if you need someone to listen. But I think you’re a fascinating woman, and if you can make yourself free tonight, I’d like to take you to dinner and listen.”
“And advise just a little?”
“If it will help.”
“I can manage,” she said. “Harvey is at the club, and by now quite drunk. I was supposed to meet him for dinner, but I can get out of that. On the other hand, Rabbi Hartman, what about yourself? Your wife is away, and if you’re seen dining with me —”
“It will start talk. Suppose we go where we won’t be seen. You know the Inn at Ridgefield?”
“Eight o’clock?”
David nodded. She shook hands with him and left. He didn’t offer to see her to her car, and he realized that in the normal course of things he would have. But this was not the normal course of things. Whatever his feelings of compassion for Sarah Comstock’s suffering, the dinner date was the result of his being attracted to another woman. Well, there it is, he said to himself. No use lying about it. I don’t want to let her out of my life.
But if he didn’t lie to himself, he had to lie to Lucy. My God, he thought, I’m walking on the edge of a cliff. What in hell am I up to?
He telephoned Lucy. “What are you going to do tonight?” she asked him.
“I have to get out of this place, at least for a few hours.”
“Then come down here.”
“I can’t. Lucy, I can’t face your family. Maybe I’ll drive in to New York.” He was covering his tracks, setting up blinds and emergency exits.
“You know how I miss you — with all this crowd,” Lucy said. “If I hadn’t found you, David, I would have absolutely remained unmarried. I can’t tell you how reinforcing all this is, even if it gets to be a little bit of a bore. You know, we’re near Asbury Park, but it’s nice. They have this huge Victorian house, and the food doesn’t stop flowing. Compared with this cornucopia, our life on the Ridge is positively ascetic. Sarah has the sniffles —”
It took him aback. One Sarah had replaced another in his mind, and for a brief moment, he heard Lucy talking about Sarah Comstock.
But it was his own, small, lovely Sarah who had that uncomfortable curse of babyhood, the sniffles. He put down the phone and shook his head. “What in hell am I doing?” he asked aloud. He looked up the Comstock number in the telephone book. He would make some excuse about tonight — no, he would tell her the truth, flat out. He was a rabbi, he was married, he loved his wife as much as most men love their wives after five years of marriage, and he had two children.
He let the telephone ring ten times. There was no answer.
“I knew it was you,” she said, facing him at the table that evening, “and that’s why I didn’t answer it. I knew what you were going to say — that you were a rabbi and married, with children, and that you loved your wife, and that we should forget this.”
“How did you know all that?”
Sarah shrugged. “Sometimes you see a person and you feel that you know him, and on the other hand, you can be married for years and know nothing.”
“That’s rather romantic, isn’t it?”
“I feel romantic tonight.” She was smiling at him with pleasure. “Here I am at this sinful assignation with a Jewish rabbi —”
He couldn’t resist her delight. “As most are.”
“Yes, of course. I’m not drunk. I don’t drink, which won’t surprise you — David? May I call you David? It’s a lovely name. As much as I was depressed and suicidal this morning — you’re thinking manic-depressive, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m listening to you and trying to decide what color your eyes are.”
“Of course you’re not. You’re being sweet and kind and wishing to God you were not here.”
“That’s half true,” David admitted.
“And the other half?”
“I’m very happy that I’m here. I’ve been bored, depressed, and constantly angry with myself. Tonight, all I suffer from is guilt.”
“Why? You’re doing nothing wrong, and you’re helping me just by being here with me more than anything you could say or counsel. I’ve been so lonely. And afraid.”
There was a long moment of silence before David asked her what she was afraid of.
“Death. I don’t want to die. It’s all too beautiful, and I haven’t even tasted it, only licked it around the edges. Do you know how good-looking you are, David? Tall, skinny, with those blue eyes like cold water. We are the handsomest couple here, even if there is an ugly little bony girl sitting inside me. I haven’t felt this way for years. I actually feel beautiful. I don’t want to die.”
“You won’t die. Not for many long years.”
“I try to get Marty to talk about heaven. I don’t believe in it. It’s too utterly ridiculous. Heaven, hell, how can you believe? But Marty won’t discuss it. Pray, he tells me. What kind of a heaven do you people teach?”
“None.”
“Just close your eyes and go to sleep. Is that it?”
David nodded. “We do it each night.”
“That wouldn’t be too terrible, would it? But then I remember Swinburne’s lines ‘Only the sleep eternal, in an eternal night,’ and just the thought of that frightens me so my heart stops beating. I hate Swinburne, a sentimental fraud, oh, I do detest him and all his sloppy, phony hedonism. But there is a God. There must be a God. You know the story about Ingersoll, David, Ingersoll the notorious atheist, and he visited a friend who had a marvelous contraption, a miniature solar system made of crystal and fine wire, and after Ingersoll finished admiring it, he turned to his friend and asked who made it. His friend answered that no one made it, it just happened. But you do believe in God, David. You must?”
“I do, but it’s not always easy. You know, Ingersoll was an agnostic, not an atheist. He hungered for belief.”
“You’re like Marty Carter. You don’t want to talk about God or the hereafter. It puts you off. But if I were a Jew, I don’t think I’d have much truck with a God who sat back and watched the murder of six million of my brothers and sisters. No! I don’t want to get into a discussion about that. I want to order dinner. This is a nice place, David. I think the only restaurants in New England should be inns, and if they run out of inns, they should build careful replicas.”
“You’re an extraordinary woman, Sarah. But I don’t understand this obsession with death and the hereafter.”
“Because it frightens me, every minute of every day.”
“Now?”
“No, not now, bless you.”
“Have you tried to find help for it?”
“I came to you.”
“I mean some sort of therapy?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want that. I want to order my dinner. I haven’t eaten all day, and I’m starved. I want you to pick out your favorite thing and then I’ll select mine, and we’ll talk about it.”
She was like a charming, wise thirteen-year-old. She was enormously pleased with herself, with David, and with the evening. Her strong, sharp-featured face softened, and the candlelight from the table candle set bits of magic light dancing in her amber-colored eyes.
“It’s so hard to be sweet and cute when you’re five feet nine inches,” she said, “but that’s how I feel tonight. What are sweetbreads? Do you know?”
“Only that they come from inside the cow.”
“Nobody knows. But I never had them, and tonight’s not a time to start. I think leg of lamb, roasted. My maternal grandmother was French, and she worshipped roast leg of lamb. I think it’s a national obsession of the French. Do you like it?”
“Very much. Why don’t we both have it?”
“No, no, no, dear David. You must have what you love best.”
“Hamburger?” very tentatively.
“Really? Thank heavens they don’t have it on the menu. Very well, lamb for both of us. Soup, salad, lamb — yes, staunch, plain New England food. Where do you come from, David? Where were you born?”
“In New York City.”
“I was born in Boston. My maiden name was Lowell, but not the grand Lowells. We’re not even distantly related, but I think that’s what got me into college; not denying it, I mean. You look puzzled. Don’t you know that wonderful sonnet, Boston, Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, where the Cabots speak only to the Lowells — or is it the Cabots? Well, something like it — and the Lowells speak only to God, and of course I know it isn’t a sonnet, which has fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, and is really a dumb way to write poetry. I was a great student. If you’re ugly as sin, what else is there? And that’s enough. Now you talk.”
“I’d much rather listen.”
“Oh, no. Then you’re doing therapy on me.”
“No, not at all. I’m charmed by you. I’m sitting here with a warm glow all over me, Sarah.”
“Because we know each other, Rabbi.”
“No,” David said firmly. “We’re not teen-agers, and we don’t know each other. Each of us is a mystery to the other one. I’ve been married for five years to a woman, and each of us — my wife and I — each of us is a stranger to the other. Do you know who your husband is, Sarah?”
“Sometimes, God help me.”
“Yet” — he reached over and took her hand — “at this moment, Sarah Comstock, and I’m trying to be direct and truthful, I feel that I would give my whole life up to be with you, but that’s not true or real, is it?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said sadly, her eyes moistening.
“We both understand our illusions and our fantasies, and they mingle. When I was in the service, kids would go out on a one-day pass and they would come back and say, Rabbi, I’m in love. It was love at first sight. Illusion. It never happened to me, not even with Lucy.”
“It would happen to me with movie stars, not with real people.” She turned her hand so that the palm pressed against David’s palm. “I came to you, dear David, at the moment of my most awful need, and you helped me more than you can imagine, and tonight you’re making me very happy. I think you are in love with me — like
the little boys in uniform. I am not going to cry. Enough of this. Please order our dinner.”
After dinner, they went into the bar, where a good wood fire burned, and David asked for two glasses of port. They sat and watched the flames and sipped the sweet wine.
“I want this evening never to end,” Sarah said.
“It must, dear lady. We step back into reality.” He leaned over and kissed her. Her mouth parted, as if her whole body was melting toward him.
“But we can stay a little longer. It’s only ten o’clock.”
“Of course.”
“We had a fireplace when I was a little girl. I can’t remember anything I loved more than lying in front of it and watching the flames. Did you have a fireplace, David?”
“No, just a plain old New York City apartment. The Hart-mans are an old and very wealthy family in New York, but like you and the Lowells, we were only distantly attached.”
“And why did you become a rabbi, David? Tell me.”
Had Lucy ever asked him that? David wondered. Or were there things that Lucy knew about him that needed no questions and no discussion? He stared at Sarah without answering.
“David?”
“It’s not easy to explain,” he finally said. “It had to do with justifying to myself that there was some compassion and some decency in the world. Or did it? That isn’t all of it either. I don’t know how to explain without sounding foolish and presumptuous. You want to help people. You want to find yourself in the universe. We have a legend of the Lamed Vou, the thirty-six righteous and compassionate men who must exist in every generation to justify the continuing existence of the human race.”
“And if they are destroyed?” she wondered.
“Then the life of man is over. You see, Sarah, the decision Martin made to become a minister and the decision I made to become a rabbi — these are early decisions in a man’s life. We were young enough to have dreams. My family was not a very religious one, and like so many of the German Jews who came here during the last century, my father and mother had almost forgotten that they were Jews. Many of the Hartmans were very rich and had married Gentiles — not that we were rich. I think it was Hitler and his Nazis that reminded so many of us. We remembered that we were Jews. I don’t know whether that answers your question or not.”
