Earth and High Heaven (31 page)

The violence died away again and he said, “It isn't just a question of conventions; it's five thousand years which have made you and her hopelessly different. You don't know how different you are yet.”

“I've had a pretty good chance to find out, since I left home sixteen years ago!”

“Find out,” he repeated. “You haven't even begun to find out. Getting yourself kicked out of a hotel is the worst thing that's ever happened to you! You've had a pretty easy time of it, don't fool yourself. It would probably be better for you if you hadn't. You don't yet know how Jewish you are, otherwise you wouldn't be talking about marrying a Gentile; you'd realize that no matter how much you have in common, it doesn't make up for that one fundamental difference between you. Nothing can make up for that. What counts in the long run isn't whether or not you and your wife like the same books or like to do the same things — it's whether or not, down underneath, you're the same kind of person. Whether you have the same attitude toward things, the same outlook on life — the same background, and heredity, and the same traditions.”

He paused again and then finished it. He said, “And if there's one thing that's dead certain, it is that no Jew and no Gentile that ever lived have the same outlook on life.”

That was all his father had had to say.

Our Father, Our King, remember thy mercy and suppress thine anger, and remove pestilence, sword and famine, destruction, captivity, iniquity and plague, all evil occurrences, and every disease, every stumbling block and contention, every kind of punishment, every evil decree and all causeless enmity, from us and from all the children of thy covenant
....

In this year Five Thousand, Seven Hundred and Three, in this year of causeless enmity, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Forty-Two, remember thy mercy.

One voice merged with another; it seemed to him that for weeks he had had nothing to say for himself, even to Marc Reiser. He had only listened:

To Erica saying, “Most people just travel along their particular groove till they get to the end of it and die.” And his father, “You aren't going to do her any good by marrying her.” And Erica again, “They just climb out for a while, take a good look around, get scared, and climb down again.”

That was what he had done. First of all, before he had gone away to college, he had been unaware of a groove, he didn't know he was in one. Or maybe the groove was wider in those days, so wide that it didn't matter. Anyhow, for the next four years he had been aware of it, but had succeeded pretty well in ignoring it, up to the day before graduation when it had abruptly narrowed down to a point where it was no use even trying to ignore it. He had just put up with it and had more or less come to accept it as a permanent condition of life when he had heard that voice for the fist time. From just behind him she was saying, “Hello, I'm Erica, one of the invisible Drakes.”

Invisible was right, as it had turned out.

So then he had climbed out and stayed there on top for three months, taking a good look around.

You can't do it, it doesn't work. You're a Jew, and you ought to know that. But the people who play safe don't change anything, they just sit tight and wait for someone else to change it. And that's not what you and I are for, just to play safe and wait.

To wait — the whole history of our race is the history of a people whose faith has never run out, whose faith has never wavered, and who are never done with waiting.

He who maketh peace in his high places, may he make peace for us and for all Israel, and say ye, Amen
....

Peace for us and for all Israel — it was nothing but words, words patiently repeated year after year, century after century, for a thousand, two thousand years and all the way back to Jeremiah crying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.

He remembered that on Sunday night, or rather early Monday morning, his mother had come into his room. He was lying in bed, still awake, watching the shadows of the elm leaves on his ceiling. There was a street lamp below the tree by his window, and ever since he could remember those shadows had been there overhead for him to look at when he was awake at night — the faint outlines of bare branches in winter, slowly thickening and spreading out as spring drew into summer, until the whole ceiling was covered with an intricate pattern which was seldom still and usually in continuous flickering motion.

He saw the door opening and the widening strip of light on the carpet which finally stopped at the large bluish spot in the corner where the afternoon plane on the Moscow-Zagreb line had crashed somewhere in Transylvania.

“Marc, are you awake?”

“Yes, Mother. Come in and sit down.”

“I'll sit here,” she said, motioning toward the chair by the dresser. She was wearing a wrapper of some kind of printed material, and her hair was hanging over her shoulders in two thick braids. She did not turn on the light, but closed the door and sat down in the chair, with the dresser behind her. The moon was full, shining in an oblique line across his carpet. He could see her quite clearly.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“Yes, I thought you would,” he said, for downstairs she had let his father do almost all the talking. She had obviously agreed with him, but he had sensed a faint inner reservation which was still unaccounted for.

She looked at the old battered desk across the room, then at the map above it, which showed the world as it had been in 1922, and finally at the bookcase in the corner, and remarked, “It's hard for me to realize that you're grown up when I come in here, or that David is either. Mothers are so silly — Good heavens, David's almost forty!”

A moment later she added, “And you're going overseas.” After another pause, looking down at her hands lying loosely on her lap, she said, “I'm proud of you, Marc — not because you're going overseas, though that's part of it, but mostly just because you're a fine person. So is David. I've been lucky, both my sons have turned out to be fine people. I'm glad about your Captaincy too, darling.”

“That doesn't mean anything, Mum. It's just a formality. Lieutenants of my age aren't allowed to go overseas any more.”

“I know, but still ...”

He took a cigarette from the table beside his bed and she said, “You smoke to much.”

“I know.”

“So does David. That pipe of his reminds me of those awful things you used to keep in bottles!”

“That reminds me,” said Marc with sudden interest, “what became of my mud puppy? I've always meant to ask you.”

“I buried it.”

“Oh, that explains it then,” he said, adding without thinking, “Eric was sure it wouldn't burn.”

She stared at him, her expression changing completely, and suddenly she said, her voice trembling, “Marc, I want you to be happy! I don't care about anything else.”

“I know you don't, Mother.”

“I wish I could see that girl of yours. You're thirty-three, and you've never really been in love with anyone else. I'm sure she must be fine too, because you wouldn't be in love with her if she wasn't. And though everything your father said tonight was true, there's no getting around it, still I kept thinking all the time he was talking that she should have been there to speak for herself.”

“You're the first person who's thought that. I don't know whether even I have, really ...”

He stopped and she said, letting out her breath in a long sigh, “Of course she doesn't know what it's like.” In a different tone she added after a pause, “And you don't really, either.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No.”

She was still sitting in the same position but her hands were clasped tightly together now, and her whole body had stiffened. She said, “You don't know what happens to people when they live together year after year. They get angry sometimes, and they say things that they couldn't have imagined themselves saying before they were married, and that they wouldn't dream of saying to anyone else. That's what I'm afraid of, and I simply couldn't bear to have it happen to you.”

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, after waiting for her to go on.

She had begun to rock in a slight back and forth movement. He never forgot the way she looked or the tone of her voice as she said despairingly, “I'm afraid that sometime when she was very angry, she would round on you and blame you for being a Jew.”

Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us, and he said unto them, I am an Hebrew
.

The afternoon service for Yom Kippur was almost over. The scene in his bedroom faded from his mind and he glanced at the congregation ahead of him; then beside him, his mother touched his arm and turned her head slightly, gesturing toward the back of the hall. His brother David had come after all and was standing by the door, a short, almost stocky figure in baggy grey flannels and an old leather windbreaker. He had very thick black hair, a black mustache, a rather pronounced nose which must have been a throwback to some fairly remote ancestor, for none of the recent Reisers or Mendals, Maria Reiser's family, were particularly Semitic in appearance; black eyes which gave you the feeling that he never missed anything, and a manner which was so offhand that it was frequently mistaken for rudeness. He was almost seven years older than Marc; his mind had been conditioned by twenty years of scientific training and his range of interests lay almost entirely outside himself. He had few personal problems; he lived a hard life as a bush doctor attached to a nickel mine some distance north, and he lived it to the best of his ability, indifferent to his own comfort and absorbed in his work. He was passionately fond of poetry and occasionally wrote good verse himself.

As he caught Marc's eye he waved casually with one hand but stayed where he was, leaning against the back wall by the door.

They had come to the final Kaddish in the Afternoon Service.

May the prayers and supplications of the whole house of Israel be accepted in the presence of their Father who is in heaven; and say ye, Amen
.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life for us and for all Israel, and say ye, Amen
.

May he who maketh peace in his high places, make peace for us and for all Israel, and say ye, Amen
.

The tired congregation stirred a little, but there was still another service before the Day of Atonement would end.

Marc turned to his mother and asked, “Do you mind if I go? Dave seems to have something on his mind.”

“No, go along, I'll see you back at the house.”

Outside in the street David said to Marc, “Let's go for a walk before dinner. I want to talk to you.”

“And you, Brutus,” said Marc wearily.

“Sorry. If you're hungry, I'll buy you a sandwich and a cup of coffee first, though. That Greek joint is just up the street.”

“All right,” said Marc indifferently. He was wondering just how his mother and father had managed to tell David about Erica, when his brother had only arrived late the night before, had gone to bed when he himself had gone, and had come downstairs for breakfast at approximately the same moment. It could only have been while he, Marc, had been taking a bath later on in the morning. His parents had certainly made the most of that bath, for it was obvious that David knew all about it.

Whatever it was he had to say on the subject, however, he said nothing while they were in the Greek restaurant or when they were walking through the town toward the road which led back through the strip of rough farm country to the bush, and eventually into the Algoma Hills. When they had passed the last rundown cottage on the outskirts of town, he was still talking about Father LaFleur, the new priest in his district, who was a great improvement on the old one, younger, more adaptable, and far less fatalistic in his attitude toward the wretched living conditions in his parish. He was already talking about co-operatives, and on top of all of his other qualifications, he could even play a good game of chess.

“We usually manage to get together for a game every week or so,” David remarked, his black eyes following a flock of crows which flew up from a haystack near the road, high into the blue autumn air and off toward the town behind them. “You have no idea what a difference a good priest can make to the local doctor. I had a devil of a time with the other one; he was as hard as nails, he'd put off calling me till the last moment, and sometimes I used to wonder if he didn't actually prefer to have his parishioners enter the Kingdom of Heaven right away, rather than have their entry Postponed by a Jewish doctor butting in and interfering with the Will of God. He was very strong on the Will of God.”

“Does the new priest object to your being Jewish?”

“Well, he put out a few feelers when he first came, on the off chance of converting me, but I told him that my attitude toward religion in general, Judaism, Catholicism, or any other, was chiefly scientific, and after that he gave up. On the spiritual side, we have a strictly live and let live attitude toward each other. Got a cigarette?”

They stopped in the middle of the road, and shielding a match with his hands, David lit Marc's cigarette and his own, blew out the match and said, “I've got a couple of things to tell you.”

“You and everybody else,” said Marc, starting to walk up the road again. Straight ahead of them were the Algoma Hills, strung out like sentinels guarding the deep mining country beyond; below the hills was the bush, heavily splashed with colour, and somewhere in there off to the left was a certain maple tree overhanging some falls, a long narrow shaft of water pouring down past the maple into an almost circular pond edged with evergreens, poplars, white birch trees, and sumac. The effect at this time of year was always extraordinary, a kind of annual miracle, for the maple turned to pure scarlet, the water of the pool to cobalt blue, and the trees were a tangled mass of colour ranging from deep bluish green through rust and orange to a clear, translucent yellow. He wished violently, so violently he felt almost sick, that Erica was with him, that it was early morning and they were starting back toward the hills with the whole day ahead of them, and instead of that, it was late afternoon, the hills had a darkening, purplish cast, and he was with David, about to listen to still another voice saying the same things all over again, and about to answer a lot of silly questions, with Erica five hundred miles away.