Samson-Aaron Feder had never been known to her as anything but The Uncle. She had other uncles, but he and he alone was The Uncle. When she and Seth had been tiny children, Samson-Aaron had been the family babysitter. He was invited to dinner, gorged himself, and paid for his meal by staying with the children while the parents went out. Usually it was on Friday night. One of her earliest memories was cuddling in Samson-Aaron’s lap in the tiny warm kitchen by the soft sad glow of dying Sabbath candles, drowsing while he crooned Jewish lullabies to her. As he crooned Samson-Aaron would gnaw on a chicken leg or wing from the icebox, and nip at the brown bottle of fiery liquid with the strong smell. Even now the smell of rye whiskey could suddenly set her thinking of the Friday nights of her childhood.
She had loved the Uncle then. She was ten or perhaps eleven when she realized that he was considered by her parents, and by all the family, a fool, a failure, and a ridiculous glutton. Before that she had thought his love of food and drink was a charming trait, a source of great lively fun. At the seders, the big family gatherings on Passover eve, it was the annual joke that whatever was left on anybody’s plate or in anybody’s glass was passed on to Samson-Aaron. Marjorie was fascinated by his gargantuan appetite. Sometimes she would purposely heap her plate and then eat only a little of it just to watch the Uncle gobble up the rest. Perspiration dripping from his forehead, his eyes gleaming, he would shout, “No dishes to vash! Samson-Aaron is here!”—and the plates would go rattling down to his place among the children at the foot of the table. His vitality seemed inexhaustible. When he had eaten and drunk enough for seven men he would lead the singing of the rollicking syncopated hymns, waving his arms and adding wild trills to the happy chorus.
For Marjorie, Samson-Aaron had always been the soul, the visible symbol, of that group of vague people called The Family, whom she had seen often in her childhood, though lately only once or twice a year. They had peculiar Yiddish names—Aunt Shosha, Aunt Dvosha, Uncle Shmulka, Uncle Avromka. One ran a candy store, another was a tailor, another worked in a laundry; the occupations of the rest were equally humble. Her father, by common recognition, was the aristocrat among them, the one who had achieved success in America. He always sat with Marjorie and her mother at the head of the table when the family gathered nowadays; and Samson-Aaron always sat at the foot, among the new crop of children, who loved him and played with him just as Marjorie and her cousins had. There had been some slight question about the Uncle’s status when his one son, an English instructor at a small upstate college, had published a novel. In the first impact of the event it had appeared that Samson-Aaron might move as much as halfway up the board. But the novel, a highly grim involved work which Marjorie could not finish, had fallen dead, despite the praise in the tattered clippings which the Uncle carried in his wallet; and Samson-Aaron had stayed at the foot of the table.
“How’s Geoffrey, Uncle?” Marjorie said as Samson-Aaron cut himself more cake without being asked.
“Ven do I ever see Geoffrey? Vunce in three years? I suppose he’s fine. Geoffrey… That name in my mouth still tastes funny. Vy did he have to change it? Milton isn’t an American name?”
“Geoffrey is better for a writer of books,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.
“For a college teacher Milton is good enough,” said Samson-Aaron. “Better he should never have written that book. Do you know how much he made from it, after he vorked two years? Four hundred forty dollars. I said to him, ‘Milton, I’m an old nobody, but is it proper to write a story vit a boy and a girl getting into bed ven they’re not married? Is it nice?’ He says to me, ‘Pa, that’s true life.’ I said, ‘Milton, all I know is decent people vunt like it.’—So I’m an old nobody, he starts talking about something else, and sucks on his pipe. So he makes four hundred forty dollars for two years’ hard vork. True life. Geoffrey Quill. A cholera.”
“That’s no way to talk about your boy,” said Mr. Morgenstern. “He accomplished something. He’s a writer. A book is a book.”
“That’s right, we’re proud of him. The whole family is,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.
“An accomplishment? Vot? A mishmash, a person can’t make head or tail out of it. Tolstoy I can understand. I told Milton, ‘Read Tolstoy!’ He says, ‘Pop, Tolstoy wrote horizontal, I write vertical.’ Did you ever hear of such a thing? I said to him, ‘You should only live to write horizontal like Tolstoy.’ He makes a face and sucks his pipe. Accomplishment. You know vot I call accomplishment? A home, a good Jewish wife, children—”
“Let’s see your wallet. I bet you’ve still got all the clippings,” said Mr. Morgenstern.
The Uncle looked at him with a slow sheepish smile. “Excuse me, he’s my son, my only child, I love him. But don’t talk to me about accomplishment.”
“All the same,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, “we’re expecting him at the bar-mitzva.”
Marjorie now perceived what Uncle Samson-Aaron was doing in the El Dorado. She said to her mother, “Haven’t you invited Geoffrey yet?”
“I don’t want to send him a printed invitation that he can drop in the wastebasket. I want him to come. The Uncle can make sure he comes.”
“Vot can I do?” said Samson-Aaron, washing down a huge bite of cake with a slosh of tea. “Get out a court order on my own son he should come to Seth’s bar-mitzva? Vot does he care vot I say? If I threaten to come up to Albany and show myself to his friends, maybe that vould scare him enough to come.”
“He’s not that bad,” said Mr. Morgenstern. “Why do you say such things? He sends you money every month like clockwork, and what does he make, after all?”
“He’s a good boy, he has a good heart, I have notting against him,” said Samson-Aaron. He mopped his pink brow with a large blue handkerchief, regarding the remaining cake longingly (there wasn’t much), and leaned back on the sofa with a wheeze. “I don’t know, nowadays I have no appetite.”
“If nothing else will work on him,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, “you might mention who it was who put him through college and kept his father off relief.”
Samson-Aaron’s cherubic mouth pulled downward into bitter lines. He looked appealingly at Mrs. Morgenstern and nodded slowly and sadly. Then he turned to Marjorie with his old sweet foolish grin. There was a black gap of two teeth missing, the girl noticed with a qualm. “A fine uncle you’ve got, ha, Modgerie? Not only couldn’t support his son, couldn’t even support himself. Samson-Aaron the gobbage pail. No dishes to vash.”
“Oh, Uncle—” Marjorie said helplessly.
“It’s true. And I came to America to become a millionaire. Say, listen, if everybody vas a millionaire, vare vould they get night vatchmen? Notting vould be safe at night.” He stood. “It reminds me I’ve got to go to vork.—But a nickel, Modgerie, a nickel I alvays had, to buy you a Hershey bar ven I came to this house. No Hershey bar, no Samson-Aaron. Right?”
Marjorie threw her arms around the fat old man and kissed his damp shiny cheek. He smelled faintly of the chocolate cake. “Right, Uncle. Where’s my Hershey tonight?”
“A Hershey? Vot you vant now is a husband, darling, and that the Uncle can’t bring in the pocket.” He patted her shoulder and turned to Mrs. Morgenstern. “Vun vay or another, Geoffrey vill come to the bar-mitzva. Satisfied?”
“Is it a promise?”
“It’s a promise. From Samson-Aaron a promise.”
“I’m satisfied,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, regarding him critically. “Tell me this, do you have a suit to wear for the bar-mitzva?”
The Uncle glanced down wryly at himself. “You think I’ll come to the Riverside Plaza like a night vatchman? I still have the suit, the good suit you bought me for Milton’s graduation. Ven do I vear it except for bar-mitzvas and veddings?”
“Good,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “Make sure it’s cleaned and pressed. And get a haircut, and your mustache trimmed, and—you know—”
“I know.” He ambled to the door and turned around. His paunch was enormous. He grinned at Marjorie. ?
??Next time I vear the good suit—your vedding. Yes? Modgerie’s vedding.”
“Marjorie has no intentions of getting married just yet—”
“Make it snappy, darling. Samson-Aaron is getting old. I vant you should have a little girl, I can bring her a Hershey bar. A nickel in the pocket I have nowadays. Thanks to my son—Geoffrey Quill, the vertical writer.”
When he had gone Marjorie said, “Where does he work, this time of night?”
“Work!” said her father, shrugging his shoulders. “A jobber who owes me some money has a warehouse, and Samson-Aaron sleeps there at night with a time clock in his lap. That’s his work—this week. He goes from one place to another.”
Mrs. Morgenstern, gathering up the tea things, said, “He’ll bring Geoffrey, that’s the main thing. He doesn’t make promises, but when he does, they’re promises.”
“Why on earth do you want Geoffrey so badly?” said the girl. “What difference does it make?”
“Because I want him at a certain table with some particularly fine people, that’s all.”
“The Goldstones,” said the father.
“Not only them,” said the mother, with a vexed glance at the girl.
“Mom! Mom, have you invited the Goldstones?”
“Why not? They’re friends of mine, aren’t they?”
“Sandy, too, no doubt?”
“Why should I leave out Sandy? Did you have a fight with him, or something?”
The girl said, “Oh, God,” and sank on the window seat with her forehead against the glass. “The Goldstones and the family—well, that fixes everything—”
Mrs. Morgenstern put the dishes down with a sharp clatter.
“The finest people will be at that table. The Goldstones, your father’s banker Bill Connelly and his wife, Geoffrey, yourself, and the Robisons from Philadelphia. What’s wrong—”
“The Robisons? The parents of Seth’s little girl friend at camp?”
“Yes, the Robisons. They like Seth, and they like your father and me, strange as that seems, even though they own twenty office buildings in Philadelphia. And if you’re ashamed of our family, Marjorie, I’m not. Next time we start talking about who’s a snob, remember that.”
Marjorie worried for days over the prospect of sitting through Seth’s bar-mitzva banquet with the Goldstones. She unburdened herself to Marsha. The fat girl was more amused than concerned. “Of course we start from different premises,” she said. “I don’t care a hang whether you captivate the Goldstones or not. I’m against the match. Maybe when I meet Sandy I’ll change my mind, but as of now—”
“Marsha, you know it’s not a question of a match, but—look, I do like Sandy and—the family stages such brawls, sometimes, that’s all—”
“Sugar bun, the Goldstones have a family too. Everybody does. Actually it’s one of the world’s mysteries why all relatives are such a gruesome lot of spooks. You’d think mathematically somebody would be related to the human section of the human race, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way. Probably it’s got something to do with Einstein’s theory—relativity, you know—”
Marjorie said, “Very funny.”
“I just can’t see that it’s a problem, dear—”
“God Almighty, don’t you think there’s something bald about hauling these virtual strangers—millionaires, as it happens—into the bosom of the family along with their handsome son—he is handsome, believe me—and plunking me down at a table with them for the evening in full view of all my aunts and uncles? I think it’s the next thing to announcing an engagement, that’s all, and I don’t think Sandy’s folks are going to be amused by such shotgun tactics—let alone Sandy—”
They talked some more, and then Marsha suggested that she invite George. That would baffle the family, she said, and neutralize any suspicion in the Goldstones; George would act so proprietary that Sandy would be lucky to dance twice with her all evening. Marjorie thought this over, and concluded that it was an inspiration. That night she sent him one of the engraved bar-mitzva invitations, adding on the back a prettily worded note begging him to come. She wrote, instead of phoning him, because at the moment matters stood rather awkwardly between her and George. Their last date had ended in a long wrangle in the front seat of Penelope. George had nagged and nagged at her to tell him what he had done wrong, how he had offended her, what she wanted him to do to make things as they had been in the old days. To these classic questions, of course, Marjorie had been unable to invent any good fresh answers.
A week went by; two weeks; three. No response from George. She wondered whether the letter could have gone astray in the mail, and two or three times she almost telephoned him. She was very glad she hadn’t when his answer at last arrived. It lay on the desk in her room, an ominously fat envelope, when she came home from rehearsal. She tore it open, and after glancing at the first paragraph she fell on the bed and feverishly skimmed through the letter, so shocking in George’s familiar neat script and green ink. He was not coming to the bar-mitzva, he said, and he did not expect to see Marjorie again. It was a dry letter, totally different in tone from anything George had ever said or written to her before. The gist of it was that he had found another girl; and Marjorie could not at all doubt that this was the truth. He spoke with detached clarity of the way she had drifted from him since her move to Manhattan. It was hopeless, he said, to see her any more, and now that he had met this girl—a Bronx girl, much closer to him in background and interests—he had no desire to.
In the last paragraph, which was a short and annoyingly good-humored farewell, half a line had been crossed over and thickly blotted out; it was almost the only mar on the four evenly written sheets. Marjorie stared at the long green blotch and held it up to the light, trying to make out the words, hoping that under the blotch lay a revealing little sentence that would show George’s true feelings, cancel the whole letter, and put him back in his place as her adoring suitor. But the blotch was impenetrable, and remained so.
The blow stunned the girl for a week, and she went through agonies of jealousy and remorse, and fantasies of revenge, which amazed her with their violence. But she did nothing. There was really nothing to do. In a heroic last surprise George had stood up from the chopping block, seized the axe, and hit her with it; and that was that.
She braced herself to sit out the bar-mitzva with the terrifying Goldstones and with Sandy.
Chapter 9. THE BAR-MITZVA
It was strangely impressive, after all, when Seth stood before the Holy Ark draped in his new purple-and-white silk prayer shawl on Saturday morning, chanting his reading from the Book of Malachi.
The temple was full, and hushed. Perversely, perhaps with a touch of injured self-effacement, Marjorie sat far in the back. Her mother had tried to get her to sit on the front bench with the rest of the family, but Marjorie had said no, she would stay in the rear to welcome any late-coming friends or relatives.
Seth’s voice rang clear and manly over the massed rows of black skullcaps and white prayer shawls, sprinkled here and there with the frilly hats and rich furs of women. It was a Conservative temple, so the men and women sat together. For years in the Bronx Marjorie had railed at the orthodox practice of separating the sexes; in the twentieth century women weren’t second-class citizens, she said. This was one reason why the parents had joined a Conservative temple on moving to Manhattan. Another and more powerful reason was the desire to climb. The wealthiest Jews were Reform, but the Morgensterns were not ready for such a bold leap away from tradition, to praying with uncovered heads, smoking on the Sabbath, and eating pork. The Conservative temple was a pleasant compromise with its organ music, mixed sexes, shortened prayers, long English sermons, and young rabbi in a black robe like a minister’s. Mr. Morgenstern, indeed, was a little uncomfortable in the temple. Now and then he would grumble that if Abraham Lincoln could wear a beard, so could an American rabbi. When he had to recite memorial prayers for his father he always slipped into a small old
orthodox synagogue on a side street, feeling perhaps that this was the only form of worship that really counted either with God or with his father’s ghost. He quieted his conscience by paying the membership fee in both places.
His one reason for putting up with the temple was the hope of instilling some trace of religion in his daughter. But Marjorie had little use for any version of the faith. She regarded it as a body of superstitious foolishness perpetuated, and to some degree invented, by her mother for her harassment. The parents managed to drag her to the temple once in a while on Friday evenings when she had no date, but it was always under protest. She gave her father much pain, unintentionally, with her whispers about the rabbi, a very well-spoken young man with a cultured resonant voice, who talked of current magazines and best-selling novels as well as of the Bible; a style, the father would have thought, perfectly suited to his daughter, if not to him. Marjorie, however, was all satire and disdain.
But today, despite herself, the girl found awe creeping over her as her brother’s voice filled the vault of the temple, chanting words thousands of years old, in an eerie melody from a dim lost time. A cloud passed away overhead and morning sunlight came slanting through the dome windows, brilliantly lighting the huge mahogany Ark behind Seth with its arch of Hebrew words in gold over the tablets of the Law: Know before Whom you stand. Marjorie had thrilled the first time her father translated the motto for her; and that thrill came back now as the letters blazed up in the sunlight. Seth sang on, husky and calm, and it occurred to Marjorie that after all there might be a powerful propriety in the old way of separating the men and the women. This religion was a masculine thing, whatever it was, and Seth was coming into his own. The very Hebrew had a rugged male sound to it, all different from the bland English comments of the rabbi; it sounded like some of the rough crashing passages in Macbeth which she so loved.
She caught her breath as Seth stumbled over a word and stopped. The silence in the pause was heavy. He squinted at the book, and a murmur began to run through the temple. Seth glanced up, smiled at the bench where his parents sat, and placidly resumed his chanting. Marjorie unclenched her fists; the people around her chuckled and nodded at each other. She heard a woman say, “He’s a good boy.” She could have kissed him. Her little jealous pique was lost in a rush of love for her baby brother, the prattler with blond curls and huge eyes, fading in the tones of the chant as though he were being borne away by a ship. Time had taken him away long ago, of course, but only in this moment did she quite realize that it was so, and that it was for ever.