“All right, all right. Tomorrow’s another day. Let’s talk about right now.”
Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, since obviously he was being offered an escape from the crisis, Steve went to fetch his things. The rest of them, dispirited, stood looking at each other. Theo spoke first.
“Yes, best to get him out of our sight. I don’t know what’s come over him. It’s one thing to have opinions, and he’s always had strong ones, but this—this scornful expression on his face—”
“He’s just scared, Theo. It doesn’t seem like him, I know, but he’s just scared,” Iris repeated.
“Bullshit.” Then to Anna, “Excuse me, Mama, that’s not my usual language.”
“It’s all right, I’ve heard the word once or twice before.” Anna took charge. “I’m going to get him back here in proper shape tomorrow morning if I have to talk to him all night. Now you both go get something to eat and try to think positively.”
Anna was true to her word. At seven o’clock on Saturday morning she telephoned.
“Joseph is driving him over now and will stay to see that he’s properly dressed. No offense meant, but I think it best that neither of you talk to him. Don’t upset the applecart. It’s very tippy.”
“Thank God, and thank you,” Iris cried. “However did you do it?”
“Don’t ask questions. I haven’t time now. Just one thing more. He’ll do his part at the temple, but he won’t go to the party. We’re to say he’s not feeling well and he’ll stay in his room.”
“Well,” Iris told Theo when she hung up, “it’s half a loaf, and that’s a lot better than no loaf.”
“It feels more like crumbs. Stale crumbs. At this point I don’t even feel like going, if you want to know.”
And so, all in their best new clothes, the family set forth. Laura’s bright hair was brushed out roundly in a childish imitation of the President’s fashionable wife. Laura will be a clotheshorse, Iris thought fondly as she tied the blue silk sash, and marveled that her children could be all that different from one another. She ought to have four different personalities herself to deal with them.
At the temple Steve performed well. His flawless memory made the ritual prayers go without a second’s hesitation, and his little speech about charity flowed with his customary eloquence. In her front-row seat with her children beside her, Iris was aware of the picture they made. She wore a pale green, flowered silk suit that Anna had argued her into buying at Léa’s: “You owe it to the occasion to look perfect, and one can’t fail at Léa’s,” Anna had said. Jimmy looked like a man, and Philip was round-eyed with awe as his grandfather handed the scroll of the Law to his father, and his father handed it to Steve. Indeed, this was an awesome moment, this giving from generation to generation, and Iris should have been thrilled, moved, proud—anything but what she was, tense as she caught the anxious glance above Steve’s head between Joseph and Theo. Her palms were wet, her back was rigid, and she was terrified of some disaster. When none happened, she went weak with relief, thinking: Who would guess? Here we are, such a good-looking family—yes, we are; prosperous, successful and happy, we seem—
It was over. They stood in the lobby to receive congratulations. People came up to praise Steve, to commiserate with him for being sick on his big day, and to marvel that he had done so wonderfully in spite of it. The party at home was a beautiful success, thanks to fine weather, expert caterers, and the efforts of Joseph and Anna, who went about greeting everybody and being enthusiastic, so that any lack of liveliness in Theo or Iris would not be noticed.
When the guests had departed, the tables been removed, and the house settled down for the night, Iris and Theo took off their shoes and stared at the library wall. This long-anticipated day, this miserable day, was past, and nothing remained but a house full of flowers, a freezer full of leftovers, and a deep bewilderment.
Theo stretched, and with pounding temples laid his head back on his chair. Goodness only knows what my mother-in-law did last night, he thought, what magic she and the old man wrought, but whatever it was, the victory was temporary, and fundamentally it changed nothing.
Steve. Who was he? Theo frowned so hard that his eyeballs ached from the pressure. I’ve always thought of him, of Jimmy too, he said to himself, as my all-American boys. Bigger, with heavier bones than the boys I remember from when I was growing up, and with an air, something easy and sure of themselves, something just verging on what my mother would have called impertinence. These boys were so different that their European ancestors would be astonished to see them. He had to smile at the thought. Was there some mysterious change, a sea change, when you crossed the ocean?
The little smile died back again toward the frown. Lately, even before this current crisis, Steve had begun not to fit so exactly into the picture that Theo had drawn. Things he said were sometimes astonishingly adult, and often very wise. There might be more than a little truth in the saying that at thirteen the boy becomes the man.… And that’s good; one wants to see one’s children prepare to step out into the world. Of course. Still, if one could only see ahead a little, see where they plan to step?
And, as if he were ticking them off on his fingers, he counted his children. Laura, the darling beauty, was probably being spoiled, but she was sweet, and a little spoiling wouldn’t hurt her. Philip, the baby, was still hardly out of his mother’s lap. Jimmy was fairly predictable; Theo could see clearly enough the straight conventional path that he would walk. But Steve, with the volatile, quicksilver mind, what of him? It was plain to see, judging by yesterday’s words alone, that his would be no conventional way. God only knew what heights and peaks it might reach! So earnest, he was! The earnestness was his mother’s.…
Opening his eyes a crack, Theo saw from beneath his lashes that Iris, reclining with her feet on the ottoman, was also pretending to be asleep. Her face was pure, innocent, gentle, and refined. A lovely woman! But so painfully insecure! Often he wondered what it was about her childhood that could have made her so.
He loved her. He would go, as they said, “to the ends of the earth for her.” He couldn’t say he had adored her when he married her, but perhaps that was just as well. Such madness didn’t last. In his case it never had. This steady trust was better. Except that Iris—he winced at the thought—Iris obviously adored him, and that troubled him. It was such a heavy responsibility to measure up to, when he saw what was in her eyes and in her heart.
Iris spoke. “He has no use for tradition, he says.”
This reminder of their situation angered Theo all over again, driving out all the compassion of the previous moments, and he burst forth.
“They want to throw us on the dust heap. Rebellion, that’s all it means. These kids … their dissonant music, everything … it’s all protest these days. Against what, I ask? Don’t know how lucky they are. What people go through! His own half-brother murdered in Austria—”
He saw Iris flinch. It was quite visible, that faint tightening of the cheek muscles. She was still not used, probably never would be used, to the fact that he had had and lost another family. Now he was sorry he had reminded her of it again. He hadn’t meant to.
“Was he calling for attention, do you think? What can he lack?” Iris asked.
“Don’t be so psychological. You heard what your father said. A clout on the behind is what he lacked. The whole thing was disgraceful.”
“You can’t mean that, Theo. Papa didn’t mean it either. He’s too kind and too intelligent for that. He was just upset. Oh, God, it was awful! I’m worn out.”
“So am I. I think I could sleep for a week. On the other hand, I’m afraid I’ll be awake all night.”
“Poor Theo. But you wouldn’t really have cared,” she said wistfully, “if he’d had no Bar Mitzvah at all. You always say that organized religion doesn’t mean much to you. You only go to services to please me, which I appreciate. You said that the first night I met you, I remember.”
“You’re mis
sing the whole point. It was a question of responsibility today, of not humiliating the family, of honoring the family, especially your parents. It was a question of character.”
“I wonder what Mama could have said to persuade him. She did have a chance to whisper to me for a second. She said we should leave him alone. Don’t nag him, she said. He has strong principles. He’ll grow up fine.”
“Principles! We’ll see.”
And Theo, looking again through that long tunnel into the future, was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness.
“We’ll see,” he repeated. “We’ve got a job, Iris. We’ve got our work cut out for us, and it’s not going to be easy, I’m thinking.” What he was thinking was: The boy will need wise guidance, and a lot of patience. What crazy influence can have overcome him just now? Does he just want to show his independence? And he took Iris’s hand as if to mitigate the sternness of his caution. “Come. It’s been a long, long day. Come to bed.”
It took some time for the atmosphere to lighten. By tacit agreement little more was said about the Bar Mitzvah in that house. No photographs of it were displayed. It was almost as though it had never happened.
Steve knew that everyone must have talked about what had happened between him and his grandmother that night. He guessed that she would have told them that something she had read to him had influenced him. In the upstairs den, long after his grandfather had given up and gone to bed, she had pulled a book from a shelf and brought it to Steve.
“See? Your grandfather showed me this a long time ago. I think it’s quite beautiful. But see what you think. It’s an essay that Tolstoy wrote in 1891, called ‘What Is a Jew?’ ” And in her soft voice, still with its minute trace of an accent from somewhere in middle Europe, she had read, “ ‘He is the source and the well from which all other nations have drawn their religions and beliefs. The Jew is the discoverer of freedom. The Jew is the symbol of civic and religious tolerance.’ ”
Her pink, perfect nail had drawn a line between the words as if to emphasize them. He could imagine what she would have said to his parents: “You have to understand the boy. He has a social conscience. I do believe that those words are what finally touched him.”
Yes, they had been splendid words out of a great mind, but these words were not really what had moved him. His grandmother and he had talked until very late, past one o’clock in the morning, and he had seen how weary she was growing. In the daytime, with her bright hair, her bright dresses, and her quick steps, she did not look like some of the grandmothers he met in other boys’ houses; but in the lamplight deep shadows had hollowed her eyes, so that for the first time he had been shocked into an awareness of old age.
All of a sudden her alert replies and arguments had subsided, as if the strength for them had gone out of her, and she had turned to him, saying, “All right, I’ve said what I can say, Steve. Now you must do what you think best.”
And as she had turned to leave the room, her face had shown more than all the words that she and the others had spoken to him during the last hours how much the morning’s ceremony really meant to her. His heart had filled with a sudden amazing compassion, and he had known what he must do.
So grateful, she had been! She had kissed him and blessed him, and he had felt large with generosity.
In the spring night, under the white sky, the house was dark and still. Steve got out of bed to raise the window higher. The locust tree, at eye level, swam in a silvery fog. Beyond it, toward the rear of the yard, he could sense the dark, wet gleam of tree trunks. Water dripped from the eaves. And he stood quite still, inhaling the cool night air. As it filled his chest, a new feeling of elation ran through him, and he spoke aloud.
“I will do great things in the world. I’m not sure what, but I know I will.”
4
When he had hung up the telephone, Paul turned to Ilse.
“Meg says Tim’s planning to be in Israel when we are. He’s going with a university group over Christmas. We’ll be at the end of our month when he arrives, but we’ll overlap by two days. I told her to have him meet us at the King David.”
“Ah, yes, the young man who’s curious about the part of him that’s Jewish? I remember.”
“A small part. Just enough to be—picturesque, should I say? Not enough to feel any of the ancient fears.”
Almost three years had gone by since he had last seen Timothy, and he looked forward to seeing him again. It had been interesting to watch him, for that matter to watch all of Meg’s children, grow up, to observe what a superb education was able to make of the extraordinary intelligence they had inherited, chiefly from their amoral father. Happily, they had been blessed, given that particular father, in having Meg for a mother, she with her plain, innate, old-fashioned goodness.
“Yes,” he said now, “it’ll be nice to show him a bit of the old-new country.”
“I can’t believe,” Ilse cried, “that we’re finally, actually, really going. If you knew how much I’ve wanted to go!”
He smiled at her. “I think I do know. I think I’ve heard you talk about it once or twice.”
“Come eat. I’ve chilled a bottle of champagne to celebrate.”
In the ell of her small living room she had set the table with bright blue pottery and a wicker basket of daisies. From the record player came the clear, pure notes of the overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute, and from the kitchenette came smells of coffee, of something sugary rich in the oven, and then of something else, compounded of rosemary and perhaps thyme. Roast lamb, he guessed, sniffing the fragrant air. Anyway, it would be something savory, for Ilse could cook.
“Can I help?” he called, knowing what the answer would be.
“Of course not. There’s barely room for me to turn around in here. Just sit and relax a minute. Goodness knows, you need to, anyway.”
And he had thought he had concealed his mood so well! Actually, it was more than a mood; it was, rather, a deep gloom, most unusual for him. But this, after all, had been a dreadful year, starting last November, when one had sat in disbelief before the television set, watching the horse with the reverse stirrups as it followed the flag-covered body of the murdered president across the bridge to Arlington. And that had been only the beginning. He stared down at the pattern in Ilse’s carpet. His antennae were sensing trouble for his beloved country, hard, hard times for the United States. Ominous rumblings rose out of an ancient kingdom in what had once been called French Indochina, to which we had been sending first money, then a trickle of young American men, and now a stream of them.
It was in connection with these events that he had had occasion to read Tim’s name in the newspapers when Tim had spoken at various rallies, on and off campus, against any involvement in Vietnam. Paul could agree with much of what he said, although some of it did tend to sound overly dramatic. But one understood that; it was youth’s fervor and youth’s impatience. For Paul anyone in his thirties was still a youth.
Now Paul’s antennae, reaching into Washington, were quivering again, for strange reports were being rumored there: that Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs disaster in Cuba, had confided that America must have a victory and Vietnam was the place to have it. This, in spite of warnings from the military that the victory might require three hundred thousand troops! This, in spite of the warning that Eisenhower had left behind against becoming involved in a war in Asia. There could be no greater tragedy, he had said. But no one was listening. Hard times ahead for the United States.
And then there were other, personal reasons for Paul’s mood. For so long after the stroke had Marian hovered at the brink that her death three months before could only have brought relief, and yet her final days had been so pitiable that they would have torn any heart with feeling in it. They had torn his heart, which had never been lifted to any joy at the thought or the sight or the touch of her. Yet after all their years together there were poignant memories. There had to be. Her punctilious consideration, her anxiety to do everything
expected of a wife according to the code that had been handed down through generations of well-bred, dutiful women—he remembered them all. In a death that was not yet quite death she had lain through those last days with her knees drawn up in fetal position, her flesh shriveled and gray; her hands were birds’ claws, and her eyes deep sunken in their blue-gray sockets. And as he had stood looking down at her in the bed, he had thought of her pride. She whose hair had been “done” three times a week! She who had come to the breakfast table at eight o’clock fully dressed for the day, whose immaculate, unwrinkled housecoats at home in the evening had always matched her slippers, whose modesty about her body—well, the less about her modesty, the better—had had to lie like that! He remembered so much. And he thought now, What baggage we carry about with us!
Yes, he needed to get away.
In Israel there was plenty for him to do. He’d been sending money to help resettlement of the latest refugees, an ingathering from exotic places like Persia. People thought Persians were all rich merchants from Teheran, bankers, or dealers in rare carpets, but the truth was that most were miserably poor, ignorant, and frightened. He wanted to see for himself what was happening to people like them, how the funds that he had raised were being spent and what else might be accomplished.
“Give me your plate,” Ilse said. In the center of the table she set a platter of lamb, asparagus, and roast potatoes. “You can open the bottle, while I serve.” She looked at him sharply. “You were very grave just now. May I know why? Or not?”
At the moment he didn’t want to reveal himself. “Not grave. Thoughtful. I was looking around the room. You really have some nice things here.”
“Thanks to you. Yes, I’ve grown quite fond of them all.”
From time to time he had bought things for the apartment. “I spend so much time here,” he had insisted over her protests. “Honestly, I’m only doing this for my own benefit.”