The Outsider

by Howard Fast

  “Well, we had a rather basic difference of opinion, and he had to have some explanation for his pinch hitter.”

  “Of course you did. If the damned fool had a brain in his head, he never would have invited you. Now Fergerson, that’s another matter. That old whoremaster would sell his own mother at bargain rates if it meant a few dollars in his pocket. Head of the Ethics Committee! He not only has a wife and three kids and goes steady with a gal who works for the Commerce Department, but he visits a massage parlor every week.”

  “How on earth would you know that?” David wondered.

  “Because I have the same masseuse, and she doesn’t limit herself to massage. Anyway, Fergerson talks too much, and one day he’s going to talk himself into a neat scandal. I can’t say that I mind. The idiot’s a Democrat. Shall we sit together?”

  David realized that Jack Osner had forgotten he had parted from David in anger five years before. Evidently, he lived a very full life, in which each day crowded out the past. Just as well.

  “Of course,” David agreed.

  Settled in the plane and awaiting the takeoff, Osner explained, “In case you’ve been wondering why the new chief of the Security Council uses the shuttle —”

  “It never crossed my mind.”

  “You’re an innocent, David. You always were. Yes, I have an army plane on call, but Dick wants a low profile on that kind of thing until after the election. It’s going to be a landslide, and then all stops are out, but meanwhile, some nosy reporter gets his hands on what it costs to push a Seven-twenty-seven up to La Guardia and back every week, not to mention a few other places, and it makes waves. Don’t make waves when you don’t have to. Now I went out of my way to go to Gerson’s temple and listen to you, David. That ought to give me a few points on your scorecard.”

  David realized that Osner was trying to curry favor with him, to find approval.

  “How is Shelly?” David asked.

  “She’s just fine. We’re divorced, you know. Perfectly amicable — one of those mutual-agreement things without rancor. The kids are grown, so that’s out of the way. I hear you and Lucy have taken the same path.”

  “Yes. Some years now.”

  “But you remain at Leighton Ridge.”

  “Yes.”

  “David, tell you what. I’m not sure how old that boy of yours is, but any day now they have to be grabbing him to ship him off to Vietnam. You don’t want him in that butcher shop. A kid goes over there, his chances of not coming back in a body bag are mighty slim. Now I can work your boy a second louey commission and keep him stateside for the rest of the war. Just say the word.”

  “Jack, Jack,” David said, “my boy went to prison as a conscientious objector five years ago. He served his time.”

  For a long moment, Osner stared at David blankly, as if David had introduced some obscure joke that was beyond his comprehension. Then he shook his head. “Too many things on my mind, too many. I did hear somewhere that he was in prison up in Danbury, but you forget.”

  “Of course.”

  “I was trying to reach out a hand to you, David. Why the hell can’t you let me reach out a hand to you?”

  They were airborne now and well on their way to New York. “I never turned away from you, Jack.”

  Silence again for a time while David looked out the window at the landscape below. He had the impression that was his so often when he was in an airplane, of a world far below, inhabited by very tiny creatures. Somewhere in the writings of Lao-tzu, David had read that a man’s life falls into two sections, the first fifty years to be concerned with man and the second fifty years to be given to a relationship with the tao, a fabric of mind that knit the universe together. The notion had grown on him and led him into a great deal of reading in Chinese philosophy, and it had also led him to a curious feeling about the insignificance of the creatures on this tiny planet on the edge of a star cluster that was only one of thousands and thousands of star clusters. At times, this thought grasped his heart with icy fingers and at other times it gave him a sense of the glory and majesty of what men so easily called God; this was particularly vivid in an airplane, where either mood could take hold of him.

  “Jack,” he said, “sitting here with you is as close to the seats of the mighty as I’ll ever be, and I want to ask you a question that has troubled me enormously.”

  “Go ahead, David.”

  “I got the story from Martin Carter, who got it from a very highly placed churchman, whose name I can’t reveal. It was nineteen forty-nine, and Truman was President. We had the atom bomb and, supposedly, the Russians did not, and the Pentagon planned an atomic raid on the Soviet Union, calculated to wipe out five major cities, Moscow and Leningrad among them, as well as the Soviet navy’s home base. This atom bomb was calculated to have the same effect it had in Japan — to reduce the Soviet government to instant submission. The story was that Truman gave his consent to this, the raid was planned in every detail, and then France, England, and Germany persuaded Truman to call it off.”

  Osner nodded. “I’ve heard the rumor for years.”

  “But you were very close to the Joint Chiefs.”

  “Not then, David, not then. The story’s been around Washington for years. Who knows whether it’s true or not, but would it have been such a bad idea?”

  “You’re asking me?” David said in astonishment. “Seriously?”

  “Why not? Look at it from my point of view for once, David, I mean from a global-political point of view. The one deterrent to peace in the world is the Soviet Union. Destroy their power, and you have a world ruled by the United States and its allies. No more war, no power strong enough to face up to us, and we and only we have the bomb. Sure, a lot of Russians would die, but isn’t peace worth the price?”

  “You’ve seen pictures of Hiroshima?”

  “Sure I have. And do you know how many of Our boys were saved by the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima?”

  David leaned back, his eyes closed.

  “David, I’m sorry. You asked the question. I’ve had to face the same thing in Vietnam. I’ve ordered bombings where whole villages were wiped out and cities turned into ruins. Well, that was my job. That was in defense of my country, of our way of life.”

  After a while, David said, “We are all mad. We are a race gone mad.”

  “Sure, but it’s a complex world we live in. You have to be as crazy as the next fellow to survive — or as smart. Goddamnit, David, you never gave this country a chance, a man of your talent burying himself up there in Leighton Ridge, a little backwater hole in Connecticut. Even a pompous fool like Ernest Gerson pulls down fifty thousand a year. David, it’s the name of the game — work hard, get a few bucks, enjoy them — one time around, that’s all we get. If God wanted it different, he would have made it different. When I offered you that job with the Pentagon, you would have been on ice, but that would have put you into the mainstream, and that’s something you couldn’t tolerate. It’s easier to blame me and look at me as the scum of the earth.”

  “Jack, I don’t look at you as the scum of the earth.”

  The plane was landing, and David was thankful that it had been a short flight. Osner offered him a ride into New York in the “company” car, the company being the federal government; but David said no, he’d be going directly to Connecticut. They shook hands. “For God’s sake, don’t be a stranger,” Osner said. “My office is at the State Department. I’ll leave word that you’re to have entrée whenever you show. We’ll have lunch or something. Hell, you’re a single man, David. We can have some pleasant company, fine, intelligent women, not sluts. Now stay well.”

  Della was at the airport, waiting for him. “Was that Jack Osner?” she asked him.

  “We met on the plane.”

  “Yich. We won’t talk about him. Come this way. I’m in the lot. Tell me about it. Were you a howling success, and did all the women ogle you? You know, I never heard you speak outside the synagogue.”


  “Did you know that Nazis loved children? Not Jewish or Russian children, but their own. They loved dogs. Dogs and children.”

  “What on earth are you talking about? Sometimes you come off talking in non sequiturs or sounding like a dumbbell, and nobody ever thinks of a rabbi as a dumbbell. Except me. What was your talk about?”

  “Ethics. But I didn’t talk.”

  “You’d better explain.”

  David explained, and then Della said, “Do you know what I would have done? I would have agreed to whatever that horse’s ass of a rabbi asked, and then I would have gotten up on the platform and said my piece. What could they do to you? Would that dunce Gerson come out and wave his arms and tell people not to listen to you?”

  “No. But you put me in a role I’m not suited for.”

  “I suppose so.” Della was threading the car carefully through the traffic outside the airport. “Anyway,” she said, “you don’t lie. That’s an awful weakness. I lie all the time. I couldn’t possibly get through life without a gift for deft lying.”

  “I don’t believe you,” David said.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. You know, my dear, the great dramas of life are usually played to small audiences. When Mel and I were young, we belonged to an amateur dramatic group in Litchfield. There were nights when our audience consisted of half a dozen people, and you know, we played well on those nights. But here is a case where for over an hour you sat next to the most evil presence on this planet.”

  “Oh, no — no, Della. You’re not talking about Jack Osner. I’ve known Jack for years. He’s a complex and perhaps a very sick man, with a great lust for power and a feeling of inferiority because he’s Jewish. But to call him the most evil presence on this planet — by the way, that’s a very colorful phrase.”

  “I didn’t read it anywhere, if that’s what you’re thinking. I made it up. But look at your friend Osner. The crazy, lunatic bombings he ordered in Vietnam killed thousands of men, women, children. He turned a beautiful land into a junkpile of death. He poured C.I.A. agents and millions of dollars into South America, overthrowing elected democratic governments — murdering thousands, establishing torture squads, turning countries over to the secret police.”

  “He didn’t do it all by himself, Della.”

  “But he did do it. It came out of his warped, crazy mind. I knew the man long before you did, David. He propositioned me at least a dozen times —”

  “What do you mean, he propositioned you?”

  “Oh, David, you are dear. He asked me to get away from Mel for a day, a night, or whatever, and go to bed with him. He pleaded with me to join him and Shelly in a three-way sex gambit. He almost raped me once, but I kneed him in the testicles and that decked him. David, there’s a filthy, stinking dirty world out there, and Jack Osner is one of the top dogs in charge.” She shook her head suddenly. “No, I’m not making myself out to be some sort of femme fatale. I’m a fat, middle-aged, Jewish housewife. I know that. It was long ago, David.”

  They were silent for a time after that while Della fed the car through the traffic and over the bridge into the Bronx. And then David said, “But where is the guilt, Della? I stopped believing in God, but I had to pray to God, because without prayer, I couldn’t exist. I had to pray to God to take this curse off my people. I began to read history, American history. Do you know that in all the history of this country, no Jew has risen to such heights of power as Jack Osner? But who puts him there? Who uses him? I can agree with you that all the precious wonders that our prophets preached have been cast aside by Jack. He is a man without conscience; without pity, without remorse, without guilt, without that sweet thing that a hundred generations of Jews put above everything else, and which in Yiddish is called rachmones, a kind of pity that goes beyond pity. But in that, he is like all the rest of them. Should he be specifically cursed because he’s Jewish, because he’s fat and graceless? Is he worse than Truman, who dropped two bombs and put a million innocents to death? Is he worse than Johnson? Than our current Mr. Nixon?”

  “But he’s Jewish,” Della said, almost in a sob.

  “Yes, and that was my prayer — for us not to be made a mockery of before the whole world. And do you know, that way my faith began to return — because if there’s a God, there are no Jews and no Gentiles, only people. As for Jack,” he said, “it’s no new thing. The German dukes and princes had their court Jews, one Jew raised to power while the others huddled in the ghettos, like animals in a pen.”

  “I sometimes think you could forgive anyone.”

  “That’s another religion, Della. I don’t judge and I don’t forgive. But how did we get into this discussion? I am so very glad to see you again.”

  “So? If that’s the case, why don’t you marry me?”

  “Seriously?” David wondered. “Or just in the way of making conversation?”

  “I really don’t know. I suppose this is at least the tenth time I’ve proposed to you, so I guess it’s just as serious as the other nine times.”

  “Where would we live?” David asked her.

  “What do you mean, where would we live?”

  “Well, I live in that shabby little house that the synagogue built for us twenty years ago, and you live in that marvelous old farmhouse that you and Mel made into a museum of sorts, and I couldn’t expect you to move in with me.”

  “Do you know how you’re talking?”

  “No.”

  “Like what the kids call a male chauvinist pig.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, get mad at me or something. Look, the hell with where we’ll live. We’ll work it out. Do you want to get married to a fat, middle-aged, Jewish housewife?”

  “I don’t mind your being Jewish,” David said. “I don’t think you’re very fat. I suppose we could work it out.”

  “Sometimes, David, I suspect you of having a sense of humor. Are you saying you want to marry me?”

  “I think so.”

  “Oh, don’t kid around about this. It’s too goddamned important. I love you to death. There’s nothing else in the world I want out of life. Do you love me?”

  “Right from the beginning.”

  “You never showed it.”

  “My word, Della, I’m a rabbi. I was married, and you were married, myself to a wonderful woman and you to a wonderful man.”

  “Why am I looking a gift rabbi in the mouth or eyes or whatever? We’ve known each other a long time, David. There can’t be too many surprises.”

  “Thank you,” he said softly. They both understood that remark, and Friday evening, Sabbath eve a week later, standing before his congregation in his black robe, his father’s worn silk prayer shawl over his shoulders, David said to them:

  “I tried to calculate last night how many times I have stood here and preached a sermon. Even allowing for guest speakers, it must be close to a thousand times, and that thought is a little terrifying. All those sermons; all that awful righteousness. No matter how hard I try, it creeps in. On the other hand, there were some compensations, aside from the attention of you who have sat so patiently and listened to me again and again. They tell me I am cribbed from a good deal more than most rabbis. My sermons have been cheerfully stolen by Catholic priests, Lutheran ministers, Baptist ministers, Presbyterian ministers, Congregational ministers, and of course rabbis. Mostly either with permission or confession; once by the dean of a great cathedral, with permission. But I suppose the most interesting theft comes from Emil Hostra, who is a Mormon churchman in Salt Lake City. I brought his letter with me. He wrote, ‘My dear Rabbi Hartman: I read your sermon on anger in the August issue of Young Israel. I am writing to tell you that I shamelessly lifted it, so this is in the way of a confession. Since my city, Salt Lake City, is the only place in the world where a Jew can be a Gentile without apostatizing, my colleagues and I invite you here to taste the experience. I think you may find it highly overrated, but rest assured that we will ply you with food and love in payment for our thieve
ry.’ Well,” David said, after the ripple of laughter had died down, “I have not yet gone to Salt Lake City, and I am afraid I may have to live out my life without the experience of being a Gentile. But since I have known Martin Carter for a quarter of a century as a warm and enduring friend, I think I may assume that the experience is not too unfamiliar. On the other hand, the fact that a sermon in a synagogue fits so well into a Catholic or Mormon church gives me some hope for an ecumenical future.

  “Tonight, however, I have no sermon of my own, and like these good people, I’ll tell a story not of my making. It’s an old, old Jewish legend, and it deals with God, the Prophet Elijah, and a saintly rabbi. It would seem, according to this legend, that some of God’s missions on earth are done by the Prophet Elijah, who sits among the angels, and when he was sent on this particular mission, God suggested that he appear to this good rabbi and take him on the journey with him, as a reward.

  “So the prophet appeared to the rabbi and revealed himself, and when the rabbi had recovered from the shock of seeing God’s messenger before him, he agreed with delight to accompany the prophet on his journey. They set out on foot and they walked many miles. It was almost nightfall, and the rabbi was very tired, and he asked the Prophet Elijah where they would stay for the night.

  “The prophet pointed to a small hut in the distance, and he said to the rabbi, ‘We will stay there. A poor peasant and his wife live in that hut. They are older people, and very good. They have never harmed another person. They have never refused a request for charity, and they have never spoken a harsh word to each other. Therefore, God will reward them with our presence for the night.’

  “As the prophet had said, they were eagerly welcomed by the old couple, who were very poor, who had a single cow and a tiny garden plot to keep them alive. They washed the weary travelers’ feet and gave them their own small supper, going hungry themselves, and then gave the visitors their bed, the two old people sleeping on the floor in front of the hearth.