Father Under Fire

by Neil Boyd

  ‘I no sure we had twelve millions, Isaac. Perhaps.’ The Rabbi swallowed with difficulty. ‘Avinu Malkenu, Our Father, our King, be graceful to us,’ he chanted. ‘But your mother and father, Isaac. Your uncles and aunts. Your old granniemother.’

  Isaac sealed his lips, so that the Rabbi was forced to ask, ‘Am I a letter that you no answer me?’

  ‘Rabbi, Rabbi,’ Isaac moaned, ‘should foxes be proud of being foxes just because dogs are good at tearing them apart? Did we win prizes for going to the gaschamber? Must I remain Jewish because my family, peace be on them, were turned into soap?’

  The sound of cholent hissing and bubbling again, the smell of it so strong it nearly spoke to us. The light from the candles washed back and forth across two Jewish faces, as in a Rembrandt painting, inviting each in turn to speak.

  The Rabbi, at last, took up the offer. ‘Blood, my Isaac,’ he said, as if apologizing for mentioning something so obvious. ‘Blood.’

  Isaac let out a heart-rending sigh as if a blow, long awaited, had fallen on him, crushing him.

  ‘Blood, blood, blood. The blood of the Jews. Centuries of Jewish blood pumped in and out of Jewish veins. Seas of Jewish blood wetting the earth. From the time of the Patriarchs to you and me.’

  The Rabbi nodded. ‘That is the true. History I did not invent.’

  ‘Rabbi,’ Isaac pleaded, ‘can’t you see it’s just a myth? An old Jewish myth?’

  ‘Myth, myth, what is myth?’ The Rabbi understood as Isaac was on the point of explaining. ‘Ah, yes, myth.’

  ‘Can’t you see,’ Isaac said, ‘the Nazis had the same myth? They stole it from us. They turned it inside-out, that’s all. The Nazis said they were the chosen people, not us, and Hitler was their Messiah.’

  The Rabbi held up his hands as if all this was incomprehensible to his old brain but Isaac did not relent.

  ‘We gave the Nazis the myth that killed my father and mother, and your wife and children. Now that the Nazis are finished, the Gentiles have repented and given the Jews their myth back. And with that same myth you, Rabbi, are wanting to kill …’

  He pointed a finger at his heart but the last small word proved too much for him. Christine stood up, put her arms round his shoulders and kept kissing the top of his head until his shaking ceased.

  After a while, Isaac, dry-eyed, signalled Christine to sit again. And she, needing to defend her love, rounded on Fr Duddleswell. ‘You’re no better than him, Father,’ she said, indicating the Rabbi. ‘You have your religion, you don’t need people.’

  ‘Christine,’ Fr Duddleswell said.

  ‘No. You have your comfortable creed, you don’t need truth,’ she blazed. ‘You have your dogma, you don’t have to listen any more.’ She drew in a violent breath before saying stertorously, ‘you have your prayers, Father, you don’t even need God.’

  The outburst was the more pitiful for having been so obviously rehearsed any number of times inside her head.

  Fr Duddleswell was silent. From the shape of his mouth it was easy to see he was biting the inside of his lip.

  ‘Well, Father, what do you say to that?’ Christine’s challenge was petering out. ‘Please, Father, say something to me, Christine.’

  Bowing his head and beating his breast, he simply said, ‘Through my fault, through my most grievous fault.’

  ‘Oh, Father,’ Christine cried, ‘that’s no answer.’

  Isaac took hold of her hand again, the stag and the hind, wounded both and hounded, defending each other. A man and a woman, almost archetypal, I thought, loving each other passionately and, in their way, loving the God of love.

  Also two godly men who loved them above all ordinary love and, in Love’s name, urging them to part.

  A question flashed across my mind, piercing, rebellious: Does the love of man and woman for each other count for so little? And as I asked it, I had the strong impression that there were colossal centrifugal forces at work threatening the very room we sat in with disintegration. Not reason but forces disguised as reason were in operation, primeval forces that had increased rather than diminished over millenia and become focused to two nail points in the black, candle-lit figures of a rabbi and a priest.

  Isaac was threateningly calm now. ‘You have ears, Rabbi, listen. I have the right you should listen to me because you kept me alive. You gave me food from your own mouth.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ the Rabbi protested.

  ‘It is true. Yes, yes, yes. Do you think I did not know that in that accursed camp you gave me more than half your food? You lived for months on air … and on faith and prayers.’ Isaac had to add that, though it weakened his case. ‘I know, Rabbi.’

  The Rabbi broke in, speaking rapid Yiddish. Isaac held up his hand to silence him as though he feared some magic in his native tongue.

  ‘Listen to me, Rabbi. You are a scholar. You learned Polish because you were a cheder boy and went to a rabbinical seminary. I was fourteen years old before I learned a word of it. Imagine, for 800 years we Jews lived in Poland and hardly any of us spoke Polish.’

  The Rabbi said something in a language I could not grasp.

  Isaac again silenced him with a gesture. ‘Eight centuries of solitary confinement, Rabbi. A ragamuffin in the port of Alexandria will pick up a smattering of German, English, French, Italian, Greek – any language you care to mention. And we lived in Poland for eight centuries and most of us could not even say, “Dzien dobry”.’

  ‘Was it our fault, Isaac mine, if Gentiles would not wish us “Good day”?’

  ‘I picked up Polish,’ Isaac said, ignoring the Rabbi’s intervention, ‘first in a barn and then in a cupboard. My mother –’

  ‘Blessed be her memory,’ the Rabbi said.

  ‘My dear mother could not, would not learn it. It was like dirt in her mouth. The Gentiles who saved our lives were the first I had ever spoken to. I blushed because I could not even say “thank you” in words they understood.’

  ‘They understood, my Isaac.’

  ‘Please, Rabbi, do not keep interrupting me. Not even “thank you”. Do you know what that means? In a barn and in a clothes cupboard, I had freedom for the first time.’

  The Rabbi held up his hands. ‘Freedom,’ he sighed, as if to say, Was that ever a problem?’

  ‘Not the freedom you had, Rabbi, lying in your grave and talking endlessly with the God of Israel. The freedom I tasted was being a man, a human being. In a barn and in a cupboard, Rabbi, I was for the first time in my life outside the ghetto. Not our Warsaw ghetto, you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you, Isaac, why you talk no sense?’

  ‘For the first time, Rabbi, outside the ghetto of race and religion, outside crippling prejudice.’

  ‘Who builded the blasting walls, Isaac, tell me that?’

  ‘And, Rabbi, I am not going back.’ Isaac stopped to look, misty-eyed, across the table at Rabbi Epstein who had taken to muttering Hebrew prayers as though he were munching a carrot. ‘Not even,’ Isaac added in a whisper, ‘for you, little father.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Christine said, facing Fr Dudleswell, ‘if I marry Isaac in the Register Office or in a synagogue, will I be living in sin?’

  Fr Duddleswell turned away sharply without replying.

  ‘I won’t be allowed to go to confession and communion any more, will I, Father?’

  ‘Please, Christine,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘do not let us talk about it.’

  ‘Father,’ Christine insisted, ‘I want the truth.’

  ‘All right, Christine.’ He spoke drily like someone reciting the catechism. ‘Your marriage will not be a true marriage in the sight of Almighty God. You will be denied the sacraments until you put your marriage right.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Exchanging vows before me after you both promise that your children will be Catholics and the Bishop has granted you a dispensation.’

  ‘Now you, Rabbi,’ Isaac said.

  ‘What did I teach you, my Isaac, in
the shadow of the death?’

  ‘I want it from your lips now when you are teaching me about me.’

  The Rabbi shook his head wearily. The task was too big for him. All he could say was, ‘Hear, O Israel.’

  ‘Rabbi,’ Isaac said, ‘for Jews, our church is our home. Only the child born of a Jewish mother is really a Jew, isn’t that so? If I married Christine in a Register Office or a Catholic church you would turn me and my children out of the House of Israel.’

  ‘Not I, Isaac.’

  ‘God, then, with a face like yours?’

  The Rabbi shook his head once more. ‘Not the God of Israel even can stop a man walking out the House of Israel.’

  Isaac pushed his chair back a few inches, noisily scraping the bare boards.

  ‘Priest and Rabbi,’ he began, for all the world as if he was delivering a judicial decision, ‘you tell us we should not marry because our religions are different. We have the same God of love but not the same religion. How can that be?’

  No answer came.

  ‘What do we have in common, then? Flesh and blood. What every man and woman who love each other have in common. More, we have in common that our parents were killed by the same enemy, our families incinerated. We have in common that we were both branded by the same Beast. But that is not enough for you. You are religious men.’

  The last words were spoken not ironically, as I would have expected, but almost with veneration. Isaac waited a moment before adding:

  ‘Priest and Rabbi, if you force me to choose, I choose Christine for my family, my race, my creed, my religion, and if you say I am defying Him above, I choose her for my God.’

  Blasphemy, but it seemed more like a prayer.

  All the same, there was one other common factor that Isaac failed to mention: both he and Christine had had their life saved by the minister of their respective religions sitting at table with them.

  After a long silence, Fr Duddleswell suggested another meeting at St Jude’s.

  ‘What d’you say? Why not wait a couple of weeks till the pair of you have had time to pray about it and think things through?’

  It was agreed.

  Walking home with Fr Duddleswell, I was troubled by the feeling that we had forgotten something important. What could it be? I snapped my fingers.

  ‘What is the matter with you, lad?’

  ‘No cholent,’ I said.

  Late one evening, I found Mrs Pring in her kitchen almost in tears. She was reading a book. She held it up for me to see the title: Kosher Cooking.

  ‘A Jewish cookbook, Father Neil.’

  Fr Duddleswell, to atone for our bad manners in not eating the cholent, had invited the Rabbi to lunch with us on the day of the next meeting. He had promised the Rabbi that Mrs Pring would prepare the food in the orthodox Jewish manner. Kosher Cooking would provide the guidelines.

  ‘The book must tell you what Jews can eat and what they can’t, Mrs P,’ I said, trying to buck her up.

  She nodded. ‘They can’t eat pork, eagles, vultures, crocodiles, polar bears, camels, lions, rats, reptiles, snakes, horses, and pachyderms in general.’ She looked up from her list. ‘What’s a pachyderm?’

  ‘I think it’s a four-legged animal with hoofs that doesn’t chew the cud. But what can they eat?’

  ‘Chickens, goats, cows and things,’ she answered, sniffing sadly, ‘provided there’s no blood in it.’

  ‘What about fish?’

  ‘Anything with fins and scales.’

  ‘Not oysters, then. That’s a relief.’

  ‘Not shrimps,’ she read, ‘lobsters, frogs, snails, octopuses, squids, mussels.’

  ‘Give us plaice and chips,’ I said, as if I were in a restaurant, closing the menu.

  Fr Duddleswell appeared clutching a letter.

  ‘What is bothering you, Mrs Pring? You have a long face on you like it has been through the mangle.’

  ‘I can’t cope with Jewish cooking, Father D, and that’s the God’s honest truth.’

  ‘Where is the trouble, woman? Pick out a recipe and follow it.’

  Mrs Pring looked obstinate. ‘Did you know that Jews keep meat and dairy products separate?’

  ‘I knew something of the sort,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Well, it means special utensils and dishes for different courses. The money for it won’t come out of my pocket.’

  He pretended to shudder. ‘Send me the bill.’

  ‘Listen to this,’ she said, and she read from the book. ‘Meat is not kosher if the animal is not slaughtered by the instantaneous severance of the carotid arteries in the neck.’

  ‘Where is the problem, Mrs Pring?’ Fr Duddleswell had the face of a man who slaughtered animals every day at the altar.

  ‘I don’t know what a carotid artery is.’

  ‘Plaice and chips, Mrs P,’ I repeated. ‘I bet you fish don’t have arteries.’

  ‘Do your best,’ Fr Duddleswell said cheerfully. He showed her his letter. ‘The Rabbi has accepted me invitation. But he requests that you, Mrs Pring, sit at table with us.’

  Mrs Pring firmed the line of her jaw. ‘I’ll not sit down with you at table, Father D,’ she said, ‘not even in the Kingdom of Heaven.’

  Mid-morning and our three guests arrived together.

  ‘Come in and kindly welcome,’ Fr Duddleswell said.

  This meeting began in a calmer atmosphere than the first. Everyone seemed determined to listen rather than argue. But argument was not long in breaking out.

  The Rabbi said, ‘It is not easy to be member of the chosen race.’

  He intended it, I’m sure, as an expression of sympathy for Isaac in his predicament. That is not how Isaac saw it.

  ‘The chosen race,’ he snapped in derision.

  ‘Isaac, my son,’ the Rabbi said, soothing him, ‘I always tell you Israel was not chosen because she is special but –’

  ‘Special because she was chosen,’ Isaac concluded for him. ‘Words, Rabbi, words.’

  ‘True words, my Isaac.’

  ‘Dangerous words,’ Isaac said. ‘If we are chosen, others are not chosen. They will resent us thinking they are not chosen and hate us for it. As they always have.’

  ‘We were only chosen to serve, Isaac.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, little father,’ Isaac said in a weary voice. ‘Does it make any difference what we were chosen for? Even if we were chosen to suffer and die for the rest of the world that makes us special and the rest of the world won’t thank us for that. And can you blame them?’

  ‘My God,’ the Rabbi said ironically, ‘you want I dance on Good Friday? What I do, Isaac, convert? Tell me and I turn today.’

  ‘Do you want me, Rabbi,’ Isaac retorted, ‘to wear a long gaberdine, a tiny hat, grow earlocks like wood-shavings and pray to the east wall? Do you want me to be always one of the zydy, one who is chosen to be in exile always and everywhere? Don’t you think I have burdens enough?’

  ‘Shoulders are not for carrying only heads, Isaac. Anyways, everybodys is chosen for something.’

  Isaac sighed deeply before his features loosened and he adopted a rueful smile. ‘You mean God chose everybody else not to be Jewish, Rabbi.’

  ‘Excuse.’ The Rabbi did not grasp the point.

  ‘Everybody else is personally chosen by a sensitive God not to be a member of the chosen race.’

  The Rabbi still looked bewildered. ‘Isaac, what you want I should do? Preach we are not the chosen? What sort of teaching is that for a Jew and a rabbi? If I blink the facts, they will say me, “Who you try kidding, Rabbi?”’

  Isaac banged the table. ‘That is my point. It’s got to stop. It’s going to stop with me.’

  The Rabbi shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Yes, Rabbi. I refuse to say I’m a member of the chosen race even if that phrase means nothing more than that God chose me to have my Jewish head knocked off for His sake.’

  The Rabbi was shaking nervously. ‘Nobody will believe you, Isaac.�
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  Isaac conceded that that at least was true.

  ‘Everybodys else believe we are chosen, Isaac.’ Isaac nodded. ‘Even your fellows Jews, they will say, “Why Isaac Brader say he not chosen, why he think he so special?”’

  This amused me so much, I felt relaxed enough to make my first contribution.

  ‘You are chosen, Isaac.’ He was startled to find I could talk. ‘And you know you are chosen.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ he said, recovering from the shock.

  ‘However much you protest, you believe that you have been chosen out of all mankind.’

  ‘I do not,’ he said, his spirit rising at this Gentile interference in a specifically Jewish squabble. ‘I wouldn’t be so arrogant.’

  ‘It’s not arrogance but humility.’

  ‘What are you, Father,’ Isaac said, ‘a secret member of the Hassidim?’

  I spoke slowly and carefully. ‘You believe, Isaac, in all humility that you were chosen, yes, you, out of all mankind’ – he tried to silence me but I insisted on finishing – ‘by Christine.’

  Isaac collapsed. For the first time he smiled, showing a perfect set of teeth. Even that made me choke. Hell, I complained inwardly, he smiles and it’s sad. Lack of vitamins in the camp must have been responsible. Only in his twenties and he had false teeth.

  ‘Father …’ He was searching for my name.

  I helped him out. ‘Boyd.’

  ‘Father Boyd.’ He raised his left hand, curling it from somewhere around his ear until it was flat, palm upwards, above his head. There it rested as if it was asking God a question on its own. A thoroughly Jewish gesture. ‘When stones speak, Father Boyd, you should expect what you least expect.’

  A strange noise emerged from the Rabbi’s throat. Yiddish was my guess. It sounded like a cockney sparrow with a speech defect trying to speak German. It went on for fully five minutes. Several times Isaac attempted to stop the flow and, in the end, decided to wait until the Rabbi ran dry.

  ‘What you think, Isaac?’ the Rabbi said, at last.