Chapter 25 Honor’s Child
At sixteen, Vienna Winslow was of an age to wonder if the Latin motto of Pennacook Academy possibly applied to her and the whole Winslow family.
Finis Origine Pendet, The End Depends Upon the Beginning, accurately presaged what Vienna knew of the circumstances of Esther’s birth.
Esther’s childhood and her early adolescence foreshadowed Esther’s ending up in Israel, or so Vienna Winslow had told her dad—smart girl.
There was no second-guessing Esther Nacht, Jimmy knew, but he didn’t contradict his darling daughter. “Where Esther came from certainly led to where she ended up,” was the way Jimmy put it. This reminded him of the origins of his daughter’s name.
When Vienna was older, Jolanda stopped calling Jimmy “Sperm Man,” or she only occasionally whispered it in his ear. As for Jolanda’s tempting title, Two Unvisited Vaginas, it wasn’t meant for Vienna to hear.
“Or for fucking mainstream publishing in the eighties,” Mieke said.
Real life wasn’t plotted like a novel, Jimmy and his grandfather knew.
Yet, with or without the lisp, what Mr. Sleary says in Dickens’s Hard Times emerged as a guiding principle in James Winslow’s and Mieke Koster’s writing.
“Do the withe thing and the kind thing, too, and make the betht of uth; not the wortht!” (It was Mieke who chose to accent Sleary’s lisp.)
Having a child of his own, and loving her, gave James Winslow some illuminating insights into his own childhood and early adolescence.
He’d grown up with the story that his grandmother had chosen his aunts’ names; he was aware that Faith, Hope, and Prudence were virtue names.
He’d known from the start that his mom had an expectation name, and that his grandfather had named her.
“Honor is a name like Chastity—an expectation isn’t necessarily a virtue,” was the way Constance put it.
To the townspeople of Pennacook, especially the ladies of the town, Honor nonetheless sounded like a hard name to live up to.
In retrospect, Jimmy thought, the expectation part of his mother’s name wasn’t something she had struggled to live up to.
It was her expectations for others that could be a burden—not least what she’d expected of Esther, and of Jimmy.
Constance Winslow had heard her husband say (more times than she could count) that religion was the bane of civilization.
Those Winslow sisters grew up saying this to one another—later, to Jimmy.
The Winslow girls and Jimmy were liberal Democrats.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and the Christian Right, a.k.a.
the Moral Majority, were in favor of school prayer and opposed to abortion—evidence that religion was the bane of civilization.
In 1981, what would become the AIDS epidemic was detected when doctors noticed Kaposi’s sarcoma and pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in homosexual men.
This was early in the Reagan presidency.
In his anti-abortion zeal, Reagan devoted his time to lamenting the plight of the unborn—more than he cared about the death of gay men, or the women who’d died in those days when abortion was illegal and unsafe.
It was no coincidence that Jimmy’s European Jewish publishers were nonobservant Jews; they had their own reasons for believing that religion was the bane of civilization.
It was a sore point with them that Haredi men were exempted from mandatory military service.
This began with the birth of the State of Israel, the 1948 War of Independence.
“A deal was made with the Haredim, if their full-time occupation was Torah study,” Matthias said.
“The Haredim were permitted to study their religion in yeshiva instead of serving in the miliary—torato umanuto, ‘his Torah is his occupation,’ as they put it,” Gabrielle told Jimmy.
Matthias complained about high birthrates in the Haredi community—the “ultra-Orthodox Jews,” he called them.
“They don’t believe in interfaith marriages, they have a dozen children—hence their population grows exponentially,” Matthias said.
What he called “the Torah world” had nearly disappeared during the Holocaust. Matthias said that Orthodox Judaism was growing now—in no danger of disappearing.
In 1977, under Begin’s Likud government, the Knesset had removed the cap on the number of exemptions under torato umanuto.
Among the Haredim, the Orthodox Jews, Jimmy had trouble sorting out the non-Zionists from the anti-Zionists.
“The non-Zionists don’t object to the State of Israel—they just don’t take it that seriously, or pay much attention to it,” Gabrielle told Jimmy.
“Whereas the anti-Zionists oppose the existence of any Jewish State—that is, before the coming of the Messiah,” Matthias said, rolling his eyes.
“Now there’s a title, you two—Before the Coming of the Fucking Messiah,” Jolanda exhorted Mieke and Jimmy.
Jimmy had a feeling he would hear more from Jolanda before he left for Israel.
While he was away, Jolanda and Mieke would be coming to New Hampshire.
They could stay in Jimmy’s room; Mieke would write there during the day.
The two Dutch women could spend more time with Vienna.
Jimmy also knew the Winslow sisters were looking forward to having Mieke and Jolanda to themselves while he was in Jerusalem.
“The house will be full of girls!” Vienna Winslow had happily cried.
“Nowadays, I’m the only boy who’s ever here,” Jimmy reminded them. He was forty. Vienna had not brought a boy home from school—not yet.
When Jimmy was packing for Jerusalem, his mom was more talkative than usual about Esther. Jimmy’s aunts were drawn into the conversation, which was more about Esther’s hiddenness than it was about anything new. Naturally, Vienna was interested in hearing more about Esther, too.
Jimmy’s mother began with a story about a rabbi—she’d talked to a rabbi about the biblical Esther, the queen who hides her Jewish identity. “God does not appear in the Esther of the Christian Old Testament or in the Esther of the Hebrew Bible—even God is hidden, Jimmy,” Honor said.
“The queen our Esther is named for—I know who you mean,” Jimmy assured his mom. (As if any Winslow didn’t know that.)
“In the holiday of Purim, when the Jews read the Scroll of Esther, they wear masks to hide their faces—more hiding, Jimmy,” Faith told him. She didn’t say if she’d talked to the same rabbi, or to a different one.
“Passover is the next big Jewish holiday after Purim. A symbolic piece of matzoh is hidden at the start of the Seder meal—you can’t finish the Seder until the matzoh is revealed. Passover is like a bridge from hiddenness to revelation, Jimmy,” Hope had added. (Jimmy knew, heaven knows!)
“It’s forty-nine days until Shavuot—the Jewish holiday that celebrates the revelation of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, Jimmy,” Prudence said.
“Sure as shit, our Esther isn’t a rabbi girl—the Torah isn’t her occupation!” Vienna cried, sounding more like Prudence than Prudence.
“Our Esther is Queen Esther—she’s that Esther, Vienna,” Honor said. “But just remember, Jimmy—a Nacht will always be a Nacht.”
James Winslow knew the Nacht warning was nothing a rabbi imparted to his mother. He should have known those Winslow sisters weren’t done with warning him. “Remember our Esther’s Charlotte Bronte business, Jimmy,” Faith was the first to say.
“Our Esther will show you her Jane Eyre tattoo,” Hope told him.
“Don’t forget our Esther’s no-bra business, Jimmy,” Prudence said.
“Don’t gross me out—a seventy-six-year-old woman with no bra won’t show her birth child all of that tattoo!” Vienna Winslow declared.
“You don’t know Esther, Vienna,” Honor said, unbuttoning the top two buttons of her shirt—using only her left hand, the way the one-armed Esther would have to do it.
When Honor unbuttoned a third button, you could see her collarbones and the topmost part of her bra.
“The I care for myself and The more solitary are above Esther’s breasts—let’s hope that’s all she shows you, Jimmy,” his mom said.
He knew the Charlotte Bronte quotation, for heaven’s sake.
Jimmy just hoped he would see Esther, tattoo or no tattoo; he didn’t know if she would choose to see him.
“If you see Esther, Jimmy, I’ll bet her shirt’s untucked,” Faith said. The last two lines of the Jane Eyre tattoo were below Esther’s belly button, Jimmy knew—both the more I will and the respect myself. Faith, Hope, and Prudence bet Esther would show him her belly—not the top of her breasts.
“Esther will show you something, Jimmy—if you see her,” Honor said. What would stay with Jimmy, all the way to Jerusalem, was the business about a Nacht will always be a Nacht.
But why was a trip—to somewhere he’d never been—making him so nostalgic?
James Winslow would wonder. Was this part of his being a fiction writer?
Of course, he’d imagined going to Jerusalem before—too many times.
Even the travel arrangements made Jimmy nostalgic.
He’d considered a connecting flight from Vienna to Tel Aviv.
It might be fun to spend a night or two in Vienna—or so Jimmy thought, before he mentioned this idea to Mieke and Jolanda.
“Jesus and the gang—don’t you remember, Jimmy?
” Jolanda asked him on the phone. “In Wien kann man keinen Spa? haben,” she told him.
(“In Vienna, you can’t have fun.”) Jimmy vaguely remembered the Viennese expression; it was something Irmgard would say, sarcastically.
Knowing Jolanda, she just might have meant he couldn’t have fun in Vienna without her and Mieke.