by Howard Fast
“Yes, when I was much younger.”
“Babbitt. Well, you can see the condition my mind is in. Where was I?”
“Something Truman said about being a judge?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.” Interman shook his head, closed his eyes for a long moment, and then wiped them with his handkerchief.
“I’d like a drink, Rabbi, if you don’t mind,” he said almost plaintively.
“Of course.”
“Just a little Scotch or bourbon straight, if you have it. No ice or anything.”
David brought him the Scotch, and he drained it down in a single gulp. “Yes, he said that it was pretty good being a judge, and then when I didn’t know what to make of it, except to agree with him, he says, ‘a Jew judge, that’s something’ — can you imagine, from the President of the United States?”
“I find it hard to imagine or believe,” David said.
“I’m not lying. Would I lie to you?”
“Of course not.”
“I’m on edge, Rabbi. In my mind, I see myself standing up right then and there in the Oval Office and saying to that little bastard, ‘This is the United States of America and I’m a judge in the Federal Circuit Court, and I am Jewish, and I came out of the streets of New York, fought my way out with wit, with intelligence, and I was trained at Harvard College and Harvard Law School — not picked out of a haberdashery by a political boss called Prendergast, and you sit there and sneer at me because I’m Jewish.’”
Then Interman was silent, and after a minute or so, David said to him, “But you didn’t say that?”
“No.”
“What did you say, if I may ask?”
“I said, ‘Yes, Mr. President, it’s an honor.’”
“Just that?”
“That’s all. He became very sweet and persuasive, and lectured me gently about doing my duty to the country that gave me sustenance. He came over to me, and he patted me on my shoulder, as if I were a kid who had been fresh to his daddy. Yet I kept thinking that I was my own man, and that I would be damned if I sentenced the atom spies to death.”
“Then you decided not to pass the death sentence?”
“I don’t know. I thought I knew, but I don’t, and now I feel that I must do it.”
“What?”
“The death sentence. Yet if I sentence the atom spies to death, I will become a leper among my own people, a pariah. God help me, what shall I do?”
They sat for a little while in silence, and then David asked him, “Is it being a pariah among your own people that tortures you — or pronouncing the death sentence on two people who, whatever their sins, perhaps do not deserve to die?”
“I don’t follow you,” Interman told him. “Would you repeat that?”
“You raise the problem of what will overtake you if you pass the death sentence, if you sentence the two atom spies to death. As you say, they’re both Jewish, and they will be the first to be executed for espionage in our time. Then it’s almost impossible to separate the sentence from the fact that they are Jews. I’m only an observer of this whole incident, but there are many people who doubt that the government has proved its case —”
“Rabbi, this is damned communist propaganda!” Interman cried.
“Yes — perhaps. I don’t want to argue that part of it, their guilt or innocence. I don’t know enough to do so. But I do know that a good part of the circus that revolves around them is anti-Semitism, and certainly if we were dealing with a clean-cut, well-bred white Protestant couple, there would be no question of the death sentence. And there is no doubt, I am afraid, that if you sentence them to death, your action will not be praised or even condoned by most Jews. The question I put to you is simply this: Are you agonizing over the matter because you will be despised by many Jews or because you feel the spies do not deserve to die?”
“Forgive me,” Interman said with annoyance, “but what in hell are you talking about? I sat on this trial. Those two bastards are guilty as hell, and the fact that they are Jewish doubles the immensity of their crime.”
“Why?”
“Because every Jew is tarred by the guilt.”
“Every one? Even the six million who died in the Holocaust?”
“You know damned well what I mean.”
“And if you weren’t Jewish, would you pass the death sentence?”
“In a minute.”
David shook his head. “Tell me, Judge Interman,” he said, “why did you come to me? To have me praise you? Or to assure you that Jews will not condemn you for sentencing two Jews to death?”
“There’s no question about whether or not they will die. If I don’t sentence them, another judge will. It’s easy enough for you to sit there like some damned stone Buddha. But I have to make the decision and I have to live with it.”
“We all live with our particular agony.”
“And that’s your advice, as a rabbi?” He rose and stalked to the door, where he paused and said, “I shouldn’t have come here. I told Osner I shouldn’t have come here.” He then took two steps back to David. “You are one righteous bastard, aren’t you, Rabbi?” Then his pugnacity collapsed and he stared at David, his eyes wet. “For God’s sake, help me, Rabbi.”
“I don’t know how to help you,” David said slowly. “I don’t know what to tell you. How can I help you when I must speak out of my own belief? In my belief, no man has the right to say who should live and who should die. We have a President who dislikes Jews — not too unusual in our society — but would he undertake any action against you? It wouldn’t be easy. You could expose him. He would deny it, but it would still put him in a difficult position, and once you had pronounced something less than the death sentence, no one could change it. But those are just random thoughts. You must do what your own conscience dictates.”
After he had taken Judge Interman to the synagogue to meet Jack Osner, David returned home and put down in his diary an account of the conversation as accurately as he could remember it, and then he wrote, “More and more, I wonder about my own function as a rabbi. I know a number of my fellow rabbis who regard their work as a profession. Martin Carter accepts the fact that he has a calling, whatever that is. I must talk to him about that. As for Judge Interman, why have I so little compassion for him? I can see it his way, his fight as a Jew to get into Harvard Law School, the dues he paid politically to get his first appointment, I think as assistant federal prosecutor, according to Osner, and then clawing his way up the ladder. The naked truth of the matter is that I dislike and distrust all judges.”
Back home the following day, Lucy and two noisy children set the world to rights. Lucy put on a pale green organdy dress that reached to her ankles and paraded it in front of David. “Gift from the mother of the bride. They sit around nights thinking of ways to spend money. I was a lady-in-waiting. Thank God you didn’t come. Flower girls, bridesmaids, groomsmen, or whatever they’re called, and ladies-in-waiting, the same as at Buckingham Palace. They had forty-two different varieties of canapés plus a fountain that poured four different flavors of punch. Do you know, it was fun. You weren’t there, so I didn’t have to be thinking all the time about what you were thinking. It was obscene, absolutely obscene; it created new levels of vulgarity, but it was fun. Did you ever see anything as hideous as this dress?”
“It’s not too bad,” David said, unable to deny that she looked very young and beautiful. “You are lovely, truly lovely.”
“Oh, no, no, no. This color is hideous. Do you know, David, one of my dreadful cousins whom I had never met before came on to me. Would you believe it? An oversized football-player type who decided I was the best-looking woman there. It didn’t take any time at all to shoot him down, but I think it was flattering, don’t you?”
He was trying to decide whether he should tell her about the dinner at the Inn at Ridgefield.
“David, where are you?”
“I was thinking about Judge Interman.” Second lie.
&nbs
p; “And you didn’t hear a word I said. A big oversized cousin type pawing at me and trying to get me into bed —”
“Your cousin?”
“Well, I finally reached you. Yes, a first cousin, but this is the first time I met him. From Salt Lake City. How would you like to be a rabbi in Salt Lake City, where all the Jews are Gentiles? There was a whole contingent from there, eight of them, with their stupid jokes. Why are families so awful, David? Why isn’t there anyone in a family like you? Anyway, it made me think about adultery. Not for me. What’s that one Yiddish phrase you know? Yes — it past nisht. Not fitting at all. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize Interman’s name —”
David decided he would not mention the Inn at Ridgefield.
“— but then it struck me like a flash. He’s the judge who sat in the trial of the atom spies. What did he want?”
“Solace.”
“He wants you to take the curse off so that he can sentence them to death?”
Amazed, David asked, “What makes you say that?”
She put her arms around him and said, “My dear, innocent husband, in this stinking world, when you choose the most deplorable answer to any question, it’s most likely to be right.”
“That’s pretty cynical.”
“I’m cynical. Let’s go to bed and make love.”
The following day, David drove over to Mike Benton’s house. A quarter cord of wood had been delivered and dumped in the front yard. Mitzie, in jeans and sweater, was carrying it inside.
“Hello, Rabbi,” she said. “It’s going to be a long, cold winter.”
David picked up an armload of wood and followed her into the house. Neat and clean, without Benton’s deliberate slovenliness, the house was even less attractive; and Mitzie, noticing his glance, said, “It makes me cringe, Rabbi. Well, he’ll be out in six months, and then we’ll head for California. I wish sometimes we hadn’t taken almost three years of appeals. The end result would have been the same, and he’d be out by now. I never thought I would miss him so, and I never thought I could love a man so much.”
“I have a letter from Mike,” David said. “You know he can’t write directly to you. It’s rather terse, but when he settles down, I’m sure his letters will be longer and deeper. Let me bring in the rest of the wood while you read it.”
“Oh, no. I can’t impose on you.”
“Please. I need the exercise.”
Later, having finished with the wood, and trying to start a fire, he looked up from where he was stuffing papers under the grate. Mitzie was crying.
“He’s all right,” David said. “That’s the main thing.”
“It’s crazy.”
“Yes. A lot of things are.”
“He faced death over and over for his country. Have they forgotten that already, Rabbi? And then they put him in prison. He wasn’t a communist. He went to their meetings because his friends went, but suppose he were a communist? Does he have to go to prison for not being an informer?”
“He’ll hack it,” David said. “Then it’s over and done with. I understand you’re working.”
“I got a job selling stockings in a store in Danbury. It’s all right. It’s a job, and it’s better than waiting tables. And Mike left enough money for the rent and other things.”
“Would you come for supper some evening?” David asked her.
“I’d love to. It’s the first invitation I’ve had since Mike went to jail.”
At home that evening, Lucy, distracted, nodded and mumbled something about knowing Mitzie and liking her. Lucy was bathing little Sarah while David dried his son. At age four, Aaron gave promise of long limbs and red hair. Both children were articulate, and they were talking a blue streak under Lucy and David’s words. Lucy was asking David whether he thought she looked Jewish.
“That’s a new one. About this kid Mitzie. Can we have her to dinner next week?”
“Some women at the market decided that I was one of those miserable Jews who are spoiling the place.”
“What’s a miserable jew?” Aaron asked.
“Let’s get them down,” David said.
At the dinner table, Lucy said to him, “I miss the old house. I know it was falling apart, but it had some style. This so-called modern house they built for us is so ugly and stupid. It doesn’t belong here.”
“That’s not what creates anti-Semitism, Lucy. You know that. Before the war there was only a handful of Jewish families here in Leighton Ridge. Now there are a good many more.”
“It was just a stupid woman, but I never saw her before. It was like putting a knife into me. I had the children with me, and all I could think of was My darlings, my darlings, this was to be no part of your world.”
“It’s no use thinking that way, Lucy. All the dirt and filth and hate has to be a part of their world. We’ll try to shelter them and protect them, but they must live in the world.”
“It’s a great world. I must say, when that God of yours fiddles with the planets, he puts together some beauties — and there I go again. I’m sorry, David. About Mitzie — yes, of course. I’ll invite her to dinner. We’ll try to cheer her up.”
“It’s all right.”
She began to cry. He walked around the table behind her chair and put his arms around her.
But the question came up again at the next board meeting of the synagogue. Joe Hurtz brought up the issue of increasing anti-Semitism. He had a men’s haberdashery store in Dan-bury, and, as he put it, he had his ear to the ground.
“Still and all,” old Oscar Denton pointed out, “Danbury is not Leighton Ridge. Not only is it a good distance away, but there were a lot of Jews mixed up in the hat business in the old days and that might have left some nastiness.”
“I hear talk,” Joe Hurtz said. “It’s not only Danbury. It reaches over here.”
“It’s something Jews have lived with a long time,” David said. “Like the weather, we can talk about it, but we can’t do much to change it.”
“I agree with David,” Mel Klein said. “We got more important things. We got the Israel Bond drive on the agenda, and we still got the question of a crèche for the preschool kids. That’s going to cost a small bundle.”
“Don’t drop it so quickly,” Jack Osner said. “Anti-Semitism is not like a hurricane. It’s not an act of God. The two atom spies played their part — the two most notorious spies of our time, engaged in the most damaging piece of espionage, and both Jewish—”
“Come on,” Oscar Denton interrupted, “they did a little less than that. They passed on some drawings of the implosion mechanism, something I could build myself, given enough time. They were stupid and disloyal, but so was Ezra Pound, and no one talks of executing him.”
Ed Frome, the magazine writer, was intrigued and said to the old man, “Come on, Oscar, you’re a contractor. I mean you build houses. This thing —”
“They didn’t steal the secret of making the bomb,” Denton told them. “That’s no secret. What they passed on was a diagram of the mechanism that sets off the bomb. You don’t explode an atomic weapon the way you do a charge of dynamite. You have to turn your pellets of uranium into critical mass, and to do that you need what they call an implosion, pellets directed in instead of out. Sure I could make it. Oh, I’d have to hire some machinists for the fine work, but I could make it.”
“Goddamnit, Oscar,” Osner said, “you’re the last person I’d expect to deliver a defense of those two miserable traitors.”
“I’m not defending them,” Denton said quietly. “I’m explaining what they did.”
“Well, I don’t buy your explanation.”
“Let’s get down to business,” Mel Klein urged.
Osner persisted. “What I said goes. And it doesn’t help that a member of this congregation is serving time as a communist right now.”
“Oh, please, Jack,” David said. “You know better than that. You’re a lawyer. Mike Benton is in there because he wouldn’t name names, because
he wouldn’t be an informer.”
“Whatever, he’s a communist and he doesn’t belong in this congregation. I think it would be a positive gesture to expel him.”
“What!”
“I never thought you were a nice guy, Jack,” Ed Frome said, “but I also never took you for such a consummate son of a bitch.”
“You can’t talk to me like that!” Osner shouted.
“Stop it!” Denton snapped. “Grown men acting like kids. We’re a board of a synagogue, and we’re entitled to different opinions — Jack’s as well as yours, Ed. So let’s cool this whole thing and talk sense.”
“And did they talk sense?” Lucy wanted to know, after David told her about the squabble.
“Not very much. The question of the creche was tabled for a meeting of the entire board. Oscar Denton, you know, the old man who was the biggest contractor in New Haven, well, he’s pretty liberal and open-minded. But on this he just froze up. I think the word itself annoyed him. It’s the word Christians use for their models of the Nativity scene — the stable, the Christ Child, and Mary.”
“Good heavens, he’s not Orthodox.”
“People aren’t consistent, Lucy, and Oscar is the wealthiest man in the congregation. You know, the Episcopal church has a creche and so has Martin Carter’s church, and Oscar feels we’re aping them. It’s expensive, not only for the initial establishment, but we need two teachers who have been trained in prekindergarten work. Yet more and more, we’re getting young people in the congregation, and when the mother and father both work, it’s a problem.”
