She's Leaving Home (51 page)

Helen felt she had the inner strength to resist such influences, as had Brenda. Meg would relish challenging them, and would find other models. But Colette had a greater burden, for bred in her, from the poorest sort of home, and a broken home at that, was the desire not merely
not
to succeed,
not
to stand out, but something far more devastating: the desire to fail.

‘We all want to conform to those around us,’ Helen murmured to herself. ‘It’s instinctive camouflage – nobody likes to stand out. But in that block of flats and hundreds like it, in the disgusting lifts which don’t work and the landings which are never swept, in blocked toilets and stained hallways, the silent voices expect disaster as the norm. Poor Colette. If she doesn’t fight it – if she doesn’t stand up and scream her head off – then those voices will overwhelm her. And we will see her no more.’

Michael would call it ‘dropping out’. But Helen, thinking of that dreadful tenement whose odour clung evilly to her clothes, preferred a different metaphor. ‘Falling off the edge’ would be a better description entirely.

She grieved for her friend. But as the bus passed her house she squared her shoulders. She had decided to stay on two more stops. Another interview, as tricky as that with Colette, as significant as those for Oxbridge, loomed. It could be put off no longer.

Cautiously Helen opened the main door to the synagogue. With classes in train she had expected to find Reverend Siegel in his office, but his wife said he was pottering about inside.

It felt odd to stand where she was not normally permitted to be. The chamber was bigger than it appeared from the gallery yet more ordinary, as if its magic disappeared without the devotees, the opened Ark, the glitter and lights and prayers.

‘Ah! Helen. Come in, come in. You wanted to see me?’

Hesitantly she entered. The door closed on its spring hinge behind her, nearly trapping her fingers.

‘Good, good.’ The Minister had been counting prayer books, but straightened happily at the interruption. ‘Sit, sit.’ He motioned to a pew.

‘That’s my Uncle Simon’s seat,’ Helen indicated. ‘D’you think he’d mind?’

‘Of course not. Don’t be so foolish. Sit. Have you come to discuss
Chanukah
? I want a big show this year. Lots of children. D’you think it’d impress if we dress the babies themselves as candles? They are the lights of the future and –’

‘I can’t help you with
Chanukah.
In fact I won’t be able to help you much more.’

The two sat side by side on the front row, fifty yards from the Holy of Holies, shut and curtained. Something in her tone made the Minister turn and gaze at her.

‘You are busy, Helen. Exams coming up. Such burdens they put on you – and a girl, too.’

Helen bridled. She had had no idea how to commence the conversation stored in her mind, but this would serve. ‘I think girls should be educated. Don’t you?’

‘Oh, I do, I do,’ the Reverend agreed energetically. ‘The sages declare that an educated woman is an educated family. That was how they justified women learning in societies which frowned on the practice.’

‘I’d like to learn for myself, not only for my utility to my future offspring.’ Helen was startled at how bitter, unintentionally, the remark sounded. I want to earn my own living,’ she added hastily. ‘That’s how I’d prefer to be useful.’

‘No plans to marry a rich man, then?’ Siegel teased, then realised that Helen was upset. ‘Come, then, tell me. What’s the matter?’

The girl shook her head wearily. ‘I don’t know. Or rather I do. I feel lost – like a piece of jetsam, cast off from a ship as it passes. Not sinking, not drowning, exactly. Not likely to. But without direction.’

Siegel looked at her shrewdly. ‘You surprise me. You always seem to know exactly what you’re doing, Helen, plus what you intend to do next. Isn’t that the case? Didn’t I hear you have a place at university for next year? The community will be very proud of you if you get in, and with reason.’ He touched her arm.

‘My parents aren’t keen. They keep arguing that it’s so tough out there.’

‘Why, so it is. But you’re perfectly capable, like thousands of others. And you know it. That’s not what’s eating you, Helen.’

She glanced at him sidelong. ‘You will be angry with me.’

‘For heaven’s sake! What are you about to say to me?’

‘I don’t know.’ She could not raise her eyes to him, this sweet-natured wise man, her teacher. Her first teacher: as an infant she had herself been one of the
Purim
and
Chanukah
babies. Miss Plumb and those on her side – secular teachers, from a different, newer, dominant culture – had increasingly taken over, especially once Helen had turned eleven. There had come a moment about then, or soon after, when her honest questioning had begun and she had become reluctant to accept what she was told without further inquiry. The struggle in her soul came in part from that conflict, but more so from the contrast in moral values held out to her. Yet if she owed anyone outside her family for her early acquisition of a moral sense, she owed Reverend Siegel.

Best to blurt it out. The two of them could take it from there. Otherwise she ran the risk of sounding as confused and dense as Colette, the worst situation possible.

‘Please, why are Jewish people so opposed to intermarriage? I could understand if we were reluctant, if we discouraged it. I could accept the prohibition if we insisted on conversion as the Catholics do, and that children be brought up correctly. But we act as if God has been insulted when a Jew marries a non-Jew. Yet of all the peoples of this earth, we know how dangerous and insane racial discrimination is. Why do we practise it?’

Siegel looked at her, and placed a finger under her chin in an effort to raise her face to his. But she resisted and kept her eyes lowered. She felt rather than saw his weight shift between one tubby thigh and another, hands clasped loosely in his lap.

She continued, ‘I could understand if we proselytised – if we went out for converts. There’s so much that’s superb in our religion – as in most religions, I suppose – but we have the benefit of thousands of years of ethics, poetry, history. Some of mankind’s finest philosophers and writers have the same blood in their veins as I do. But we make no attempt to persuade people to join us, and those that might, we deter. I don’t get it.’

Siegel sighed heavily. ‘You put your finger on it a moment ago,’ he said slowly. ‘Blood. It’s to do with blood – the imperative that like is mated with like. Other people, however worthy, are not of our race. We court danger when we match like with unlike. God told Noah to bring in the animals two by two, each with its mate. It is not for us to play God and mix them up.’

‘The science of genetics would say that a little judicious intermixing was very sensible,’ Helen answered severely. Miss Plumb had said that once in a discussion on Darwin. ‘Too close is incestuous. And too close a community can lead to imbecility and sterility. Of ideas, I mean,’ she added hastily.

‘Don’t start me on science – you know I can’t compete with you, my brilliant girl.’ Siegel glanced towards the Ark as if for inspiration. ‘Look: we have in this synagogue, in these prayer books, a precious inheritance. You know this – in fact you know more about it than most of my flock. Judaism has survived aeons of oppression. Hitler tried to wipe us out. Ferdinand and Isabella tried the same. The year Columbus discovered America the Jews were expelled from Spain: the flower of European civilisation was made to pack its bags and leave. And the Cossacks and Czar Alexander – they don’t bear description. What would you do, Helen – complete their hellish task for them?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Think about it. If we allow outsiders to be brought in we dilute the blood – and in so doing, inevitably, dilute the culture. That’s already going on, in the Liberal and Reform
schuls
. They’re so liberated, Helen, they’re hardly Jews any more. Their practices make them barely distinguishable from any other of the God-forsaken wishy-washy lost souls outside. And don’t forget, that’s what
kashrut
and the other taboos and
mitzvahs
are for: to keep us separate. Otherwise why bother? But dilute the blood, or do away with the rituals, and there’s nothing much left.’

‘Nothing? Not the insights of Maimonides, nor the politics of Marx, nor the music of Mendelssohn? The great men other people mention with reverence? Or the vision of a Theodor Herzl, say?’

Siegel’s eyes narrowed. ‘Herzl – you thinking of emigration to Israel, is that it? They don’t go in for observance much there, that’s true. A secular socialist state is what they set up. Well, the Diaspora’s main reason for existence is to give support to the new state – to return is what we’re charged to do. I’d be a bit surprised if it’d suit you, but if that’s in your mind, get your degree first and go later. You’ll be more value to them then.’

Helen allowed her gaze to follow the Minister’s towards the Ark, then around the synagogue, so familiar, so homely. ‘No, not Israel. That’s not the answer. I am British, and I feel it. If I left this country, it wouldn’t be for Tel Aviv, I’m afraid.’

She turned at last and faced him. A decision had been taken; she would not mention Michael. He had been a catalyst, but she would have come to this stage sooner or later by herself. ‘I feel I am being pushed out,’ she said. ‘I loathe racialism. I abhor discrimination of every kind. It’s not only intermarriage, it’s the way we treat everybody, in everything we do. Only one sort of person counts with us: ourselves. But I’d like everyone to have the same chances and be treated the same. And I am simply not prepared to practise discrimination in my own life, not in any way. I feel increasingly at odds and out of place in a society which promotes racial separation as a central tenet. In Christianity they don’t.’

Siegel’s mouth had fallen open. Now he closed it again with a snap. ‘If you’re arguing that Christian societies don’t practise racialism, you’re on another planet,’ he answered. ‘The Russian Orthodox are the worst, but they all do it. What about Alabama and Mississippi this summer? It’s ingrained in human nature, Helen, fear of what’s different. At least we recognise that fact.’

‘But Christianity outlaws it, on principle. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. This is the first commandment.’ Helen took a deep breath. Both knew she was quoting a forbidden part of the scriptures. She must change tack quickly. It would not do to promote a competitor while sitting in a synagogue. That had happened too often in past decades, as rabbis were tortured in back rooms and adherents died in the streets, in the name of God.

‘What I can’t swallow is that we promulgate it, on principle. If I planned to marry somebody not born a Jew of a Jewish mother, two things would follow. First, everyone’d do their damnedest to dissuade me, and put the guy off by their unpleasantness if he showed his face. Including you, I’m afraid. Then, if that failed, they’d cut me off, wouldn’t they? Shove me out the door and slam it behind me. Never darken this threshold again.’ She let herself sound angry, but could sense herself trembling.

‘That’s so,’ Siegel answered slowly. ‘I would try to dissuade you, yes. But you know why, Helen. If we allow wholesale assimilation the faith will disappear.’

‘And if we don’t permit any, it’ll start disappearing anyhow, because people like me will leave, whether we marry out or not.’

Siegel stood up. ‘
Gott in Himmel
! What am I hearing? Jews survived where most other small nations perished, because when faced with persecution we knuckled down and refused to convert. Exactly that.’

Helen bit her lip. The last thing she wanted was to hurt him: yet she had embarked on the altercation and desperately needed to conclude it to her own satisfaction, if not to his.

‘The outside world would make people like me very welcome. If I were to marry out, I could anticipate that my new husband’s family might find it in their hearts to welcome me. There’d certainly be a huge contrast between their attitudes and my family’s in reverse, wouldn’t there? Even if some of the Christians felt antagonism, they’d believe they had to conquer it. We don’t. We regard it as a virtue to reject a non-Jewish partner, however honourable and decent he might be. And I hate it. I hate it!’

Suddenly the strain was too much and she burst into tears. For several moments the Minister let her cry, then fished in his trouser pocket and brought out a large but slightly used handkerchief, which Helen accepted with a wry smile.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered and wiped her eyes and face. Then she shook her head as if to free herself of pain, and continued. ‘I remember what Mr Mannheim once said when he told me about his fiancée in Nazi Germany. He couldn’t get her to see that it was unacceptable to live under a regime which divided people up into Aryans and the rest. It made racialism the law, see? To him it didn’t matter whether they were likely to be victims or not – it was simply
wrong
, and a dreadful place to be. If she’d taken any notice, she’d have escaped. She’d have walked away from it.’

‘You are being very hard, you know.’ Siegel kept his voice mild. ‘Jews have fought racialism
throughout the world. In the front line.’

‘Then why do we practise it? Oh, I can’t go over it again. I keep going back to this same question, over and over. I do
not
accept it, and I will not live by it.’

Siegel put his hand on her head, as if he would bless her. His dispute with the young ordinand came back to him forcibly, and silenced him. His hand fell to his side. Helen rose, tears still in her eyes.

‘And I suspect I’m not the only one, though most young people won’t agonise quite so much about it. Why should they? They’ll drift away, find somebody nice to marry, and be lost.’

‘If you’re right, the religion will shrink. I hope to God that won’t occur. Samuel Butler once said you can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. All the creeds are facing the same problem, Helen. People have stopped believing – in God, in the power of prayer, in the strength of a community if it acts together. They don’t see the weakness of the individual. They don’t see the emptiness within, if there is no faith, no moral code. Where the religious life is suppressed – as in the Soviet Union or Poland – it flourishes underground as a symbol of resistance. Like ours did, I suppose. But take away the pressure and what is left? Only kindness, and we can suffocate in that in no time without even realising.’