The Day the Rabbi Resigned

by Harry Kemelman

  “None of the houses are particularly attractive,” she pointed out, “but the net effect is quaint. Which is why the town has begun to attract a lot of artists. Uncle Cyrus doesn’t approve of them and won’t rent to them. But he’ll sell them. He says if they’ve got enough money to buy a house, they’re probably pretty stable, but if they only want to rent, you can’t trust them not to have wild parties and do damage.”

  As it began to grow dark, he suggested dropping in at one of the numerous cafés for coffee, but she explained, “We have supper promptly at seven. Mrs. Marston—she’s the cook and the housekeeper—kind of expects us to eat then. She’s apt to get annoyed if we’re late.”

  “What does she do? Break dishes?”

  “No, but she somehow manages to show it.”

  “Well, how about a movie afterward?”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “There’s a good movie at the Criterion. I’ve wanted to see it, but neither Uncle Cyrus nor Aunt Agnes cared to go, and I don’t like to go alone.”

  Supper was served by Mrs. Marston in the large paneled dining room. Conversation was concentrated on their afternoon excursion. “Did you see …” “Did you show him …” “Why didn’t you take him to …” And he was called upon to give his impressions, of course approving of what he had seen.

  When they finished the meal, Margaret announced, “Victor is taking me to the Criterion.”

  “I hear it’s a good picture,” said Agnes.

  “Don’t bring her home too late,” said Cyrus with a twinkle, from which Victor deduced that he expected them to go someplace afterward rather than come home immediately after the movie was over. Then he added, “We go to the early Mass, you know.”

  The movie ended shortly after ten, and this time they did go to a café. He could have had a cocktail, and he wanted one, but he forebore because he thought it might be politic not to, and ordered beer instead. They sat and talked about themselves mostly. She told him about her school, about the teachers she had liked and those whom she did not care for.

  “Your uncle said you had thought of entering a convent,” he said at one point.

  “Yes, I thought I had a vocation, but my uncle felt that perhaps it was just that I had been in contact with the Sisters all my life, and it was that rather than a real call. He wanted me to experience the secular world a bit before making up my mind. He’s been so kind to me, I thought the least I could do to reciprocate was to do what he wanted me to do.”

  “And has your experience of the world changed your mind?”

  “I haven’t experienced very much of it, so I can’t tell.”

  They got home just before midnight.

  After church they spent the morning watching the various political programs on TV and reading the Sunday papers, and dinner was served after the last news program was completed. It was a lavish meal with Cornish game hen as the main course, and Victor enjoyed it, but he was also beginning to get fidgety. If he could have gone off for a walk, or if Cyrus had taken him into his study for a talk, the situation would have been tolerable. But he sensed that Sunday was the day they were supposed to be together, and that to split up in any way at all would be taken in bad part. He wondered how long he was expected to stay, and whether he might not plead the necessity of having to prepare his lectures for the next day as an excuse for leaving early. Fortunately, Cyrus was called to the telephone, and when he hung up, he said, “I’ve got to run up to Revere. I can take you to the Swampscott station, where you can make the three o’clock into Boston.”

  “Oh swell, I’ll get my things.”

  When he dropped him off at the train station, Cyrus said, “I hope you had a nice time.”

  “I had a wonderful time, Mr. Merton. You were all so kind.”

  “How about next week? Agnes asked me to ask you, and I know Peg would like to see you again.”

  “I’d certainly like that.”

  “Look, I have an idea. I’m coming in to Boston Friday. Why don’t you plan on coming out Friday instead of Saturday. Bring your things to school, and I can pick you up after your last class and we could drive out to Barnard’s Crossing together.”

  “Well—I had sort of a date to go to a driving range and hit a couple of buckets of balls. It’s the only exercise I get.” He had actually planned to see Marcia Skinner if she was free.

  “Golf? You play golf? Then bring your clubs with you Friday. There’s a golf course in Breverton, the next town north of Barnard’s Crossing. Maybe half an hour’s drive. Bring your clubs and Peg can drive you out there Saturday morning, and she can walk around with you. And you can have lunch at the club afterward. They have an excellent dining room.”

  In the half-hour ride from Swampscott to Boston’s North Station, Victor Joyce thought about the weekend he had just spent. He felt certain that the reason for the invitation was not so that Cyrus Merton could judge his candidacy for tenure, but as a possible husband for his niece. Pretending some business so that she could substitute for him in showing him the town was pretty obviously an attempt to throw them together. He suspected that if he had not invited her to go to a movie, Cyrus or Agnes would have suggested it. Maybe all that questioning about what they had seen and what they had missed in the tour of the town was intended to justify a suggestion that they make another survey of the area. And the invitation for the following week, that clinched it, didn’t it?

  Well, why not? He was thirty-two and she was, what? Nineteen? Twenty? It was time he got married. True, she was not what he had pictured as the kind of girl he would marry. He had rather thought in terms of someone beautiful and voluptuous. And she was certainly not that. On the other hand, they had made it plain that since she was their only relative, she would eventually inherit what they had indicated was a very considerable estate. That was in the future, to be sure, but on the immediate question of tenure, surely there could be no doubt.

  In some departments the tenured members voted on who was to be granted tenure and thereby included in their number. In other departments, and the English Department was one, the chairman of the department decided. He would then notify the dean, who would pass on the recommendation to the Committee on Faculty of the Board of Trustees, whose chairman, Cyrus Merton, would notify the president, who made the final decision. Well, if he were an in-law of Merton’s would Arthur Sugrue, chairman of the English Department, dare to nominate someone else? With all that Merton had to say about salaries, allocation of funds, even courses of study and subjects to be taught?

  But the girl was plain. On the other hand, she exuded a kind of virginal purity that was—his mind fished for a word—challenging, even exciting, sexually exciting. The train pulled into the station. He made his way to the subway station to go home. He fished in his pocket for change for the turnstile, and found Marcia Skinner’s card. He considered for a moment, and then went to one of the public pay stations.

  When she answered, he said, “Marcia? Are you free? I’d like to finish the weekend.”

  “Oh, it’s you. Where are you? You want to come over, is that it?”

  “Yeah. I could be there in half an hour.”

  “All right.”

  When she opened the door for him, she was wearing a long silk dressing gown. She glanced at the bag he was carrying. “You plan on moving in?” she asked.

  “Just for the night,” he said, and took her in his arms. His hands stroked her back as he held her close to him. Then he reached for the zipper tab at the back of her gown. “And I thought we’d make it an early night,” he said as he pulled it down.

  7

  Tuesday, the rabbi made his usual trip to the Salem Hospital. He stopped at the front desk to get a list of the Jewish patients, and then repaired immediately to Morris Fisher’s room, so that if he were absent again, he could see the others and then double back to Fisher.

  Fisher was a man of seventy, short and fat, with a bald head surrounded by a fringe of grizzled white hair. He had suffered a small stroke f
rom which he had largely recovered, but was being kept at the hospital for further observation. When the rabbi came to see him, he was out of bed, sitting in the one chair in the room, in his pajamas and bathrobe. For a few days his left side had been partially paralyzed, but he had now recovered motion and feeling in both his leg and his arm, and all that remained was a slight twisting of the left side of his mouth, which gave him a sardonic look.

  When the rabbi entered, Fisher greeted him with, “Hello, Rabbi, I bet you don’t recognize me.”

  Since he was one of those who rarely appeared in the temple except on the High Holy Days, the rabbi might very well have failed to recognize him, but obviously that was not what was intended by the remark. The implication was, rather, that his physical appearance had changed so radically by reason of his illness that intimates would fail to know him.

  But the rabbi rejected the gambit and asked innocently, “Lost a little weight, have you?”

  “That, too,” Fisher conceded. “I’ve been here a week now. You can lose a lot of weight in a week.”

  “Don’t they feed you well?”

  “Oh, you pick your own menu. And when do you pick it? You pick it for the following day when they bring your breakfast. How can you tell what you want to eat tomorrow when you’ve just finished eating? And they serve it at set times, all on a little tray. So you eat faster so your ice cream won’t be all melted by the time you’re ready for your dessert. And your coffee waits there on the little tray getting cold before you can get to it. Now I like a cigarette with my coffee. I’m not a heavy smoker, but I like to smoke while I’m having my coffee. But here, a cigarette is regarded like you’re perpetrating a gas attack on the entire hospital.

  “They wake you up in the middle of the night to take your blood pressure and temperature. And somebody comes around to take samples of your blood. And then an intern or the resident comes in to examine you. He listens to your chest, and he squeezes your belly, and taps your knees and elbows with a little rubber hammer. And it’s usually a different one each time.”

  “But your doctor—”

  “Who sees him? He might come in once during the day, or in the evening to say hello, but everything is done by the interns and the nurses. It used to be that your doctor sat with you and talked with you. No more. You see him like a private sees a general.”

  “Things have changed quite radically in recent years,” the rabbi remarked, “not least among them the practice of the professions.”

  “You can say that again,” said Fisher. “Your own profession, for example. My father was sickly, and was in and out of hospitals for a good portion of his life, and not once did a rabbi come to see him. And we were living in Boston at the time, where there were any number of rabbis.”

  The rabbi nodded. “But I’m sure he had plenty of other visitors. Visiting the sick is enjoined on all Jews, but here in Barnard’s Crossing where Jewish practices have largely lapsed, the rabbi of the congregation is expected to do it because he’s engaged, in part, to be the one practicing Jew. We also have a Visiting Committee who are supposed to—”

  “Oh, yeah, some of them have been.”

  “And family?”

  “I don’t have any family, Rabbi.”

  “No children?”

  Fisher shook his head vigorously. “My wife was a career woman and never got around to having any. Not that I was anxious for children at the time. I was—”

  A young woman, wearing a white coat and a stethoscope draped around her neck, entered the room. “Mr. Fisher? I’m Dr. Peterson.” She looked at the rabbi. “If you don’t mind—”

  “I was just going,” the rabbi said. “Good luck, Mr. Fisher.” As he walked down the corridor to his next appointment, he wondered if he had benefited Fisher in any way, or had he merely obeyed the injunction to visit the sick?

  8

  The next Friday, Victor brought his golf clubs in to school, along with his spiked golf shoes, slacks, a sport shirt, and a windbreaker, in addition to the pajamas, slippers, and bathrobe he had brought the first time. To the questioning looks of his colleagues in the English Department office, as he placed his clubs and suitcase against the wall behind his desk, he said only that he was going away for the weekend. He did not say where he was going.

  When he came back to the office at two o’clock, after his last class, he found Cyrus Merton there waiting for him. None of his colleagues was present, however—there were not many classes Friday afternoon—for which he was grateful. Although aware that a special connection with Cyrus Merton might be to his advantage, he did not want them to know just yet.

  Cyrus Merton was a slow and careful driver, and it took him almost an hour to drive the thirty miles or so to Barnard’s Crossing, even though traffic on the road was light. It was after three when they arrived at the house on the Point, too late to do anything except sit around the house, watch TV, and wait for supper.

  The next morning, shortly after breakfast, Victor in his golf clothes loaded his clubs into Peg’s roadster and the two set out for Breverton. The Point, a long fingerlike promontory extending into the harbor, was connected to the rest of the town by Abbott Road. Peg drove slowly, and Victor, anxious to get to the golf club, asked, “Do we have to crawl along like this?”

  “It’s a populated area, speed limit twenty-five miles an hour,” she explained, “and it’s patrolled, but after about three miles we come to the state highway.”

  “And how far is it then from the Breverton Country Club?”

  “Oh, about twenty miles. Once we’re on the state highway, we should be able to make it in about twenty-five minutes or half an hour.”

  “Your uncle said it was about half an hour from his house.”

  “Oh. He was probably thinking of going by way of Pine Grove Road.”

  “So why don’t we go that way?”

  “I don’t like to drive it. It’s the old road connecting the two towns. It goes back to colonial times, I suspect. It’s narrow and rutty and curves in and out between ledge and swamp, and there are trees on both sides so that you can’t see more than fifty feet ahead. We can take it back if you like.”

  “Yeah, let’s plan on it.”

  “All right.”

  A thought occurred to him. “Look, are there shops in Breverton? I was thinking you might care to go shopping while I play, and we could meet around noon for lunch.”

  “I thought I’d go around and watch you.”

  “It’s apt to be a long walk,” he said doubtfully.

  “Oh, they have these little carts, and we could rent one of them and ride around together.”

  “They have electric carts, have they? Swell, then you can be my caddy.”

  “What’s a caddy do?”

  “Normally, he carries the clubs. But since we’ll be going around in a cart, all you’ll have to do is watch and see where my ball lands.”

  “I guess I can do that.”

  There were not many on the course, and he was able to finish the round shortly after noon. They repaired to the spacious dining room and he ordered a scotch and soda. He drank it while they studied the menu, and then when they gave their orders, he asked for another. Because he thought she looked askance, he explained, “The first one is customary after finishing a round of golf, and the one I just ordered is an appetizer for the meal to come.”

  They drove home by way of Pine Grove Road, and when they reached Abbott Road, he marveled at how little time it had taken. “Gosh, you’d think they’d fix that road up. It’s so much shorter.”

  “I suppose they don’t because there’s not too much traffic between the two towns, only those headed for the golf club would be apt to use it.”

  “That Pine Grove Road looks as though it’s probably used as a lover’s lane,” he suggested.

  She colored slightly and said, “I suppose it is.”

  Several times on the golf course when no other players were in sight, and in the car as they drove along Pine Grove Road, h
e had thought to make a move, to put his arm around her shoulder and then perhaps accidentally let his fingertips rest lightly on her breast. Each time, however, he was able to overcome his impulse, fearful that she might take offense.

  As in the previous week, he was taken to the train Sunday to catch the three o’clock train to Boston, but on Cyrus Merton’s suggestion, he left his bag and golf clubs behind.

  “You’ll be coming out next week, won’t you? I can pick you up on Friday again.”

  Once again, when he reached North Station, he called Marcia Skinner. And once again he went to see her, and once again she got the benefit of his frustration of the two preceding days.

  This became the pattern for the next few weeks. Cyrus would pick him up on Friday, and he would be brought to the train on Sunday afternoon, and then spend the rest of the day, and sometimes the night, with Marcia.

  Then he caught a bad cold. He managed to get through his classes Thursday, but Professor Sugrue, the head of the department, suggested after a particular fit of coughing and sneezing that he go home and go to bed and plan on not meeting his classes on Friday. He nodded his agreement, and even took a cab home rather than take the usual longish walk entailed.

  Mindful that he was expected in Barnard’s Crossing for the weekend, and that Cyrus would be coming to the English office the next day to pick him up, he called the Merton home. Cyrus answered. When Victor, in a hoarse voice interrupted by coughing and sneezing, explained the situation, Cyrus asked, “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have temperature?”

  “I don’t have a thermometer.”

  “Now you listen to me, Victor. I’m coming to your place tomorrow morning. I’ll get there about nine. I want you to bundle up warm, and when I ring your bell, you come down and I’ll take you out to Barnard’s Crossing where you can be properly cared for. There’s a lot of flu around, and we don’t want you catching anything serious.”

  Sure enough, the next morning, a little before nine, Cyrus rang his bell. He had a couple of blankets in his car, and after Victor entered, he put a blanket around his shoulders and one across his lap.