Chapter 35
STRAYING FROM THE RIGHTEOUS PATH
It was October, it was Friday evening, and we were back in San Francisco again. Were we here for Yom Kippur? No, we were not. That had been last Sunday.
When we walked into the house, Sophie wasn’t there to meet us.
Nor was anyone else. They were all in the living room instead.
No Barbara and David and baby Samuel tonight—I felt some brief but heartfelt gratitude for that, for I hadn’t quite been able to overcome my envy of Samuel’s health and baby laughter, or for the care his mother took of him, the pride in his father’s eyes.
Not tonight, though. It was only Sophie, her parents, and another man and woman of about their age.
The man was Rabbi Goldstein, and the woman his wife.
I had a bad feeling.
“Good Shabbos,” the rabbi said, shaking Joe’s hand and then mine.
Sophie was blinking rapidly at me. I looked at her in confusion, and she nodded vigorously and began blinking again, then said, “Does anybody want another drink?”
Joe said, “I’d like a beer, please. Surprisingly hot out there for October, at least in the South Bay.”
I said, “A martini for me, please.” A moment of rebellion, because Mrs. Stark had continued to stare reprovingly at me over every pre-dinner drink I’d accepted.
Finally, I’d asked Barbara, who’d said, “Mother’s convinced that most goyim are drunkards, for one thing.
And she thinks drinking isn’t ladylike, other than a small glass of wine on Shabbos. ”
This had puzzled me greatly, for my parents had always served wine with dinner at their parties.
My mother had been in charge of the menu, although in truth, Frau Heffinger had done most of the planning, and my father had been in charge of the wine, with the help of Herr Wolmer, the butler, who seemed to have been born with an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject.
A different varietal was served with each course, for one could hardly drink the same wine with sole as with venison.
There’d been cocktails before dinner as well, and all of it partaken of by both men and women.
Yet I’d never heard of any drunkenness, other than among certain of my father’s relations.
Not that I knew any of this firsthand, for I’d been too young to attend these dinners, but there was always the perching.
Sophie said, “Come with me while I get Joe’s beer, Marguerite?”
I looked at Joe. He looked at me. I said, “Of course,” and followed Sophie into the kitchen. As soon as the door swung shut behind us, I said, “What is it?”
“Look out, that’s all,” she said, in such a dark tone that I laughed. “No, seriously,” she said. “You’re driving Joe from the righteous path.”
I was the one blinking now. “I am?”
“Well, obviously. You didn’t come to temple for Yom Kippur!”
She wasn’t getting Joe’s beer, so I did, focusing on pouring it into the glass in the way he liked. “No,” I said, “we didn’t. And Joe explained.”
“That was just an excuse,” she said.
“Ah. Well, thank you.” I picked up the beer and took it out to the living room for Joe, with Sophie trailing after.
I said, “I would very much like that martini. May I trouble you?” And looked at Mr. Stark, for the bar cart stood beside him.
This was a most elegant item of brass and glass, with large wheels like the best type of pram, the kind in which the nannies had wheeled their well-born charges around the paths of the Semperoper before the world had gone mad.
The lower shelf of this cart was filled with bottles, while the one above held the martini pitcher, various types of glasses, soda, and an ice bucket.
Joe had given the thing to Mr. Stark as a gift for Father’s Day.
Mr. Stark had been pleased; Mrs. Stark less so.
But as they were using the cart tonight with the rabbi present, Mr. Stark would seem to have prevailed.
Rabbi Goldstein said, as soon as I was seated with my drink, “So, Joe. How progresses the education?”
“Very well, Rabbi,” Joe said. “Looks like I’ll be able to finish both degrees in this academic year, although it’s been quite a push.”
“You’ve been in a hurry,” the rabbi said, not quite neutrally.
“Yes,” Joe said, calm as always. “I wouldn’t say that the Army was a waste of time—I wouldn’t say that at all—but there’s no denying that I’m a few years behind here.
Fortunately, Marguerite has made great strides in her own career.
I’ll have all I can do to catch up with her.
” Putting his head in the lion’s mouth, yes, but you see how wonderfully!
“Ah, Marguerite,” the rabbi said. “Yes. You’re pursuing a real-estate career, I believe.”
“Yes,” I said. “I passed the test for my license at the beginning of the summer, and have helped three couples purchase homes so far, and helped another to sell their home. Getting started is a slow business, for new clients come mostly from what’s called ‘word of mouth,’ but I assist my employer also, which provides a great opportunity to learn.
It’s fortunate also that Joe knows so many men who have been bettering themselves through the GI Bill, for these are the people who’ve asked for my help.
It’s a daunting prospect, buying one’s first house, and selling can be equally nerve-wracking.
It’s such a very large purchase, you know, with a great many contracts and papers to sign, and a great many years of debt, too.
It gives me great pleasure to be able to make the process a bit more comfortable. ”
“You were holding an open house, I think, last Sunday,” the rabbi said.
Joe answered this one. “Yes, she was. I came to get her after the thing ended, and we picked up a nail in a tire while we were driving around collecting her signs. There’s so much new construction down there, which means plenty of nails.
The whole place is exploding. Which, I’ll add, Marguerite foresaw. ”
“This was not altogether a terrible thing,” I said, “the flat tire, for now I know how to change it for myself, as I did the work under Joe’s instruction. I won’t always have him with me, and I wouldn’t wish to be stranded on the side of the road with no way to help myself.”
“Wow,” Sophie said. “I had no idea that having a man say, ‘You go ahead and change the tire, honey,’ was a good thing. People must have looked at the two of you pretty funny.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “However, the opinion of others is not my chief concern, or Joe’s. One must, after all, live one’s own life.”
“To the point of not allowing your husband to go to temple on the most important day of the year?” That was Mrs. Stark, who’d clearly forgotten her role in this dance, which was apparently to allow the rabbi to do the questioning while she sat back with tight lips.
Joe said, “Now, hold on just a minute, Mom. That isn’t even close to what happened.” He didn’t sound angry, but oh, was he firm! I’m afraid that I found this aspect of his personality rather exciting.
“Of course you say it’s not,” she said. “I was almost believing that this might work after all—haven’t we done our very best, Marguerite, to welcome and include you? And then this!”
I thought, Well, perhaps not precisely your very best. What I said, though, was, “You’ve been most kind, you and Mr. Stark both, and the rest of the family too.” I was trying for Joe’s calm, you see.
“We had that flat tire,” Joe said, “and we fixed it. But we couldn’t have made it all the way up here before sunset.
Marguerite did say something, though. What she said was, ‘Perhaps it will be acceptable to God for you to light the candles yourself this time.’ So that’s what we did, like I told you.
We ate sandwiches before sundown, and then we fasted.
And what do you imagine I was doing in the Army?
Do you think they give you time off for your religion’s holy day?
On Christmas 1944, we fought the SS, and I killed a man for the first time.
It wasn’t my holiday, but it was most of the other guys’, and they did the same thing.
On Passover in ’45, we fought the Wehrmacht, and I killed again.
And on Yom Kippur, two years in a row, I interpreted for my captain while he questioned war criminals and slave laborers and survivors of the camps.
I didn’t fast on most of those days, and I didn’t do much atoning, either.
I tried not to hate instead. It didn’t always work, but I had something that did work, at least after the war. ”
“And what was that?” the rabbi asked.
“I had Marguerite,” Joe said. “And music. When it got to be too much, we played together, because it turns out Marguerite is a beautiful pianist. Bach especially, and Pachelbel. Those Germans fed my soul when it was sickest. Bach, Pachelbel, and Marguerite. I survived physically because of her, and I probably survived mentally because of her, too.”
“But no,” I said in some distress. “It wasn’t me at all.
Your heart survived because you’re a good man, and a man who can truly say, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me.’ I was always very confused about this psalm when I was younger, for God so clearly did not protect the devout, or the good, or the innocent.
Quite the reverse, it seemed to me. But I’ve realized—” I broke off.
“But I must apologize. You don’t want to talk about my soul, Rabbi, but about Joe’s.
I’ll just say that Joe’s soul shines very brightly, or so it seems to me. ”
“I’d like to hear what you realized,” Rabbi Goldstein said. His wife had said nothing at all, merely looked at me with dark, liquid eyes. She wasn’t beautiful, precisely, but she had the eyes of a da Vinci Madonna. I’d keep that thought to myself.