“Yes, I think so.”
“Maybe it sounds silly, I don’t know. I haven’t even tried to explain it to anyone else because — well, because there isn’t anyone.”
She said after a pause, “I got the most awful jolt that day. It was the result of three things, really — first of all, the ...” she smiled at him quickly and said, “the wavelength, I guess, then what you said about that apartment house, and then Charles — all one right after the other ...” Her voice trailed off and then she remarked, “You must think I’m awfully stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.” His eyes left her face and looking straight ahead of him he said, “Only you don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. It’s a lot more comfortable to be on one side or the other than out in the middle where you get it both ways.”
“I don’t care whether it’s comfortable or not.”
There was a brief silence and then she heard Marc laugh.
“What a weird conversation for two people sitting on a park bench who’ve only met once before for half an hour! The trouble is that I feel I know you so well that I can’t be bothered going through all the preliminaries. I hope you don’t mind.”
Erica slid down on the seat until her head was resting against the back. Looking up at a patch of blue sky between two trees she said, “No, but I do want to know more about you.”
“What, for example?”
“Well ...” She paused, considering, and then asked, “Is your family very religious?”
“No, not particularly. I doubt if I’ve been in a synagogue more than half a dozen times since I was confirmed. Why?”
“I think I’m trying to get an idea of the general background.”
“The general background in my case is more middle-class and small-town Ontario than particularly Jewish.”
He threw away his cigarette and with his hands in his pockets and his eyes following the cars passing by on the other side of the square he said, “It’s funny, but for some reason or other it doesn’t seem to have occurred to most people that the agnosticism or whatever you call it which has swept over the democratic countries in the past fifty years has hit the Jews in those countries to about the same extent as everyone else. There are still good Orthodox and Reform Jews, of course, but there are still a lot of good Catholics and Protestants too. The chief difference is that the strength of religious feeling among Jews depends to a certain extent on the degree of persecution, so that in general, you might find that even among Canadian Jews, the ones who came originally from Poland and Russia tend to be more devout than those of us who came from Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia.”
He broke off and said, “By the way, don’t ever imagine that I’m giving you ‘the Jewish point of view,’ will you?”
“Why not?”
“Because there isn’t one. You get Jews like Mr. Aaronson who are British Imperialists, Communist Jews who are Russian Imperialists, Jews who are Zionists, Jews who are violently anti-Zionist, Jews like me who are just Canadians or Americans or Englishmen, and if you put them all together and tried to work out a ‘Jewish’ viewpoint, you wouldn’t get very far. There are only two characteristics which most Jews have in common, that I’ve ever been able to observe anyhow — one of them is a determination to survive, if possible, and the other is a basic sense of insecurity. Yet there’s no unanimity on how survival is to be accomplished, and the sense of insecurity takes the form of almost every conceivable kind of behaviour from the extreme of aggressive materialism to the opposite extreme of complete idealism. I have a theory that the ghetto produces a disproportionate number of both and that the effects of the ghetto take two or three generations to wear off, but I may be wrong. It’s impossible to prove or disprove it because wherever we go, the ghetto environment still exists to some extent.”
He said after a pause, “The only thing to do is to go on being yourself, but in order to do that, you’ve got to remember when someone’s rude to you not to say to yourself that it’s because you’re a Jew; when you meet people and say, ‘How about lunch,’ and they turn you down a couple of times, to remember that other people get turned down too and it’s probably just because they don’t like your face — not to get a chip on your shoulder, not to start looking for insults, not to misinterpret things people say ...”
He remarked ironically, “Reiser on the subject of the inferiority complex,” and then rather abruptly a moment later, “That’s enough about me. Have you seen René lately?”
“Yes, I had lunch with him today.” There was a group of soldiers a few yards away, reading the inscription on the pedestal of the Boer War Memorial, and as one of them said something which made the others laugh, she remarked, “René seems to think the war is just a racket.”
“I know. He says it’s just another war for conquest between the Great Powers and the political aspect of it doesn’t matter because ideologically, we’re immune. Just why he imagines we’re more immune to Nazi ideas than anyone else, I don’t know. Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“No, what is it?”
“Are you in love with René?”
“No, why?”
“Well, I know how he feels about you and I thought ...”
He did not go on to explain what he had thought, and she said, “I asked him to bring you to lunch today ...”
“And René wouldn’t.”
“Would you have come?”
He smiled at her and said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“I guess René knew you wouldn’t. You know why I wanted you to come, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She brought herself back to a straight sitting position and said, “I wanted to explain and tell you that I ...”
“My dear child, do you imagine that you can possibly tell me anything I don’t know already?”
“No,” said Erica, “I guess not. But I don’t want you to think that Charles makes a habit of that sort of behaviour. He has some Jewish friends downtown and knows quite a lot of refugees ...”
“That’s a little different,” said Marc. “I’m sure that if I’d been sixty-five and preferably direct from Europe, he’d have been perfectly charming.”
Erica let out a long sigh and then said, slightly embarrassed, “You know too damn much!”
At the end of a brief silence he remarked, “There’s a man over there selling popcorn. Do you want some?”
“No thanks.”
A middle-aged couple stopped on the walk in front of them, glanced from the sleeping derelict to the New Zealand fliers and then started toward Marc and Erica’s bench. They both moved over. After another pause Marc said in a low voice, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees so that all she could see was the back of his head and part of his profile, “But you know, Eric, your father’s quite right not to want you to get mixed up with me.”
After waiting for her to answer he asked, “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, I heard you.”
“I don’t blame him. I guess he realized what was likely to happen, otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered. It’s obvious that I don’t fit into your particular social set-up. I don’t know when I’ve felt so completely out of place as I did after René walked off and left me and before you came along. It would be silly for me to try and deny it. I was the only Jew in the room, except for a couple of refugees and they don’t count. I’d probably just go on being the only Jew in the room so far as your family and most of your family’s friends are concerned, which isn’t awfully pleasant for either them or me.”
He had stopped again, evidently still expecting her to say something, even though it was again obvious that if he agreed with Charles, then nothing she could say would make any difference.
She continued to sit motionless and silent beside him, feeling completely cut off from him, as though he had suddenly closed the door in her face without warning, leaving her standing on the mat outside. It had happened so fast that to the people passing by and gl
ancing casually in their direction, she thought they must already look as though they were as unrelated and as irrelevant to one another as they themselves were to the middle-aged couple at the other end of the bench.
Anything would have been better than to find that Marc was, in effect, taking the same side as her father. Where does that leave me? Exactly nowhere. That was probably what Marc had meant when he had made that remark about how uncomfortable it was to be stranded somewhere in the middle. Uncomfortable is not the word for it, thought Erica, and with her eyes following a shabby, very young girl who was wheeling a carriage down the walk away from them, she asked indifferently, “Have you any other reasons for thinking he’s right?”
“Didn’t you listen to what I was saying a while ago?”
“Yes, of course I was listening.”
His voice was pitched so low that it was almost inaudible, and she could still see nothing more than the back of his head and part of his profile. “Do you think I usually talk about myself that way?”
“I don’t know.” She went on mechanically after a pause, “I suppose I thought you wanted me to understand as much as I could so that I ...” So that what? So that nothing. Understanding doesn’t get you anywhere; you are not permitted to make use of it. It is of no practical advantage, since the issues have been decided long ago and both sides have agreed that it is too bad, really most unfortunate, but human nature being what it is, nothing can be done about it. We’ll stay on our side of the fence and you stay on yours, and that way, there won’t be any complications and nobody will get into trouble.
“Did you ever see The Insect Play?” asked Erica.
“No.”
“The last act is the battle between the Black and the Red Ants for the space between two blades of grass. If there’s anyone on Mars at the moment, I guess that’s about the way we look to him ...”
He did not let her go on. He said, not patiently, but as though he had been scarcely listening, “I was trying to give you the other side of your father’s case, Eric.”
“My father’s case is already quite complete, you needn’t have bothered. Anyhow, I didn’t take it that way. I thought it was the case for the defence.”
“No, it wasn’t. With things as they are, you haven’t any case and neither have I, and if I’d had any sense, I’d have said, ‘Hello, how are you,’ and left you standing by the notice board trying to find the train from Quebec under ‘Departures.’”
That was as much as Erica could stand.
She said, “Well, better luck next time. You came pretty close to it, anyhow,” and got up, adding over her shoulder as she started away from the bench, “I guess we’d better be getting back.”
He caught up with her after a few steps, but she said nothing to him all the way back down the square, across Dorchester Street, past the line of carriages, through the arched stone entrance of the station and along the concourse to Track 5, where Miriam’s and Mr. Aaronson’s train was already in sight, far down at the other end of the long shed.
He was standing beside her in the crowd behind the rope barrier by the gate when he said suddenly, “I meant to buy you some flowers.”
For one appalling moment Erica thought she was going to cry. She blinked, swallowed, kept her eyes fixed on a sergeant of the Provost Corps who was standing just inside the gate talking to a railway policeman, and when the danger had passed, she asked stonily, “What for? As a sort of going-away present?”
“Don’t be a bloody fool!” said Marc, exasperated.
Then suddenly it was all over. She said, “You can’t call me a bloody fool the second time we meet, it isn’t polite.” She let out her breath in a long sigh of relief and then asked with interest, “What kind of flowers would you have bought me?”
“I don’t know. What kind do you like?”
She glanced down at her beige suit, observing tentatively, “Everything seems to go with it ...” and, after another pause, “I think I would have liked dark red carnations.”
“Supposing there weren’t any?”
“Then I would have liked white carnations.”
“I object to this persistent use of the past conditional,” said Marc. “I’m asking you for purposes of future reference so the least you can do is put it in the indicative. Do you always insist on carnations?”
“No,” said Erica faintly, “just get whatever you like.”
The train had stopped and as the first passengers began to appear on the long platform stretching away from the gate, he asked, “Could we have dinner together some night next week?”
She turned suddenly so that she was facing him and said quickly, looking up into his oblique, greenish eyes, “Are you sure you want to?”
“I told you I haven’t any sense,” he said under his breath. “Wednesday?”
“I’d love to.”
“I’ll call for you about seven. There’s Mr. Aaronson.”
“Which one is he?” asked Erica.
“The fat man with the briefcase and the cigar, just in front of those two sailors. Do you see your sister anywhere?”
“It’s much too early for Miriam to put in an appearance. She’s always the last one off.” She drew back a little as Mr. Aaronson came through the gate and said, “You’d better go, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, I guess so. Goodbye, Eric, see you Wednesday.”
“Goodbye, Marc.”
The long concrete platform was empty except for a few straggling passengers, some porters and a noisy little motor pulling half a dozen clattering freight wagons toward the baggage room when she caught sight of Miriam at last, stepping down from a car near the other end.
She was wearing a black suit with a foam of white at her throat, carrying her hat in her hand and walking rapidly with that extraordinary grace which characterized all her movements. She was perfectly proportioned, tall, slender and yet fully developed, what the French call fausse mince, with her father’s dark eyes and dark hair, and her own almost flawless features, the only really beautiful woman Erica had ever known who seemed to take her own beauty for granted. She seldom made use of it and when she did, it was always with her tongue in her cheek and usually in order to manoeuvre her way out of a ticket for speeding, or past a gateman. People in general did not interest her, and she could rarely be bothered to go out of her way for anyone. Most of the men who fell in love with her bored her; she would put up with their efforts to make an impression for just so long and then, because they always turned out to want just one thing, and worse still, were apparently incapable of believing that she herself could really be interested in anything else, still wholly unimpressed, Miriam would proceed to get rid of them. In spite of her appearance, she had a pronounced intellectual streak which was generally ignored by all unattached men under sixty, and she had grown thoroughly tired of always discussing the same subject. She had told Erica when they had been together in Paris three years before, that it was like being expected to subsist entirely on a diet of cake, adding with an abrupt change of expression that it was not as though cake had ever agreed with her very well either.
She had always been uncommunicative, and that remark in Paris was one of the most revealing that Erica had ever heard from Miriam.
As soon as she saw Erica standing by the barrier, Miriam began to run, lifting her shoulders and half turning her body like a dancer to get past the few remaining people at the gate.
“Eric!”
“Hello, darling,” said Erica with a catch in her throat. She kissed her sister somewhere near her ear, then drew back and looked up into the glowing dark eyes a little above her own. “How are you? Is everything all right? We’ve been scared to death ever since we got your letter about coming back. What kind of crossing did you have?”
“Just a minute,” said Miriam. “Where are Mother and Dad?”
“They’re up in the mountains for the weekend, I couldn’t reach them. If you’d only had enough sense to wire from Halifax ...”
“When w
ill they be back?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“How are they?”
“Oh, fine, although Mother still doesn’t know how to say ‘No’ when people ask her to take on still more war-work. Three years are too long if you’re that conscientious, and not so young as you once were; she’s practically worn out and so are most of her friends.”
“And how about you?” asked Miriam as they started after the porter who was trundling Miriam’s luggage toward the station entrance.
“I’m still on the Post,” said Erica.
“My God.”
Erica did not know what she meant by that exactly. She asked, “How’s Tony?”
“Having the time of his life. You knew he’d been promoted, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
In the cab Erica said, “You’ll have to go and see Madeleine tonight, or sometime tomorrow anyhow ...”
“Why the rush?”
“Because she’ll be dying to hear about Tony, of course. How long is it since you’ve seen him?”
“About three weeks.”
“Well, it’s almost six months since Madeleine’s seen him.” There was evidently still a lot about people which Miriam didn’t grasp until it was explained to her. “How’s Peter?” asked Erica idly.
“He’s been missing since Hong Kong,” said Miriam in the same tone in which she would have said that her ex-husband was lunching at his club. They had gone three blocks when she suddenly added, “I spent his last leave with him in London. It was the one thing he seemed to want and I ...” She broke off and then observed, “I guess there are times when it means a lot less to you to do something than not doing it means to someone else. There must be quite a few women in the world who have gone to bed with motives which, in almost any other form of human conduct, would be regarded as thoroughly unselfish,” she remarked in the quizzical tone which characterized most of Miriam’s more serious utterances. “Still, we’d been divorced for over a year by that time, so perhaps you’d better not mention it to the family.”
Earth and High Heaven Page 10