by Howard Fast
“No, thank you.”
“Don’t think I’m heartless or senile, rattling on like this. I’m trying to put you at your ease. You’re filled with pain.”
“How do you know?”
“The way you made the appointment. The way you look now. Lost weight. Circles under your eyes. No ease — no plain pleasure about you, David.”
“My whole world has gone to pieces, Rabbi Belsen.”
“Worlds go to pieces. It’s an old habit.”
David sought for words for what he had to say. “A failed priest” had a ring of history, tradition, but a “failed rabbi” was very flat indeed. He sat facing Rabbi Belsen, who waited patiently, gently stirring his tea, and then David blurted out, “I’ve lost my faith.”
“Oh?” The old man shook his head. “What you lost is unclear to me, David. Faith is a very Christian thing. The dictionary, if I’m not mistaken, usually defines faith as a belief without proof. Did you have such a belief to lose, a belief without proof? If you did, tell me what kind of proof you would have required to turn your belief into a fact?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean. I believed in God. Now I don’t believe anymore. I’m a rabbi who does not believe in God.”
“You know, it’s such a long time we’ve been in America,” the old man said. “A hundred and fourteen years since my father came here. Nothing of course to compare with the people who settled Leighton Ridge, but nevertheless long enough to become totally confused. David, I would watch the way the people who came more recently from Eastern Europe drank their tea, holding a cube of sugar in their teeth while they drank. I tried it once, but it was not very satisfactory.” He paused and shook a finger at David. “No, I’m not losing my wits. I’m still trying to put you at your ease. I ask myself why you lost your belief in God. Is it because the world shows no indications of sanity anywhere? Or is it because people do terrible things? Both are underlined simply by reading the Bible, which will provide you with chapter and verse of acts of terrible horror consummated without atomic weapons or gunpowder.”
“I don’t know why I stopped believing. I only know that I don’t believe anymore.”
“I suppose you know that we say a Jew doesn’t stop believing, he simply becomes very angry with God.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“You see, David, I am not arguing with you or trying to convince you of anything. At a moment like this, argument on my part would be useless. It would merely serve to sharpen your wit and force you to work out good arguments to support your case. I prefer to leave you confused. After all, you’ve had excellent rabbinical training, which is, I think, as good as what the Jesuits are said to provide. You know, David, a very wise doctor once said to me that no one who studies the human liver could fail to believe in God. But that would be no solution, would it?”
Smiling, David shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Good. You feel a little better. I can imagine the agony you felt.”
“It’s not simply a question of my own belief. I have to give up the synagogue.”
“Why?”
“How can I talk about God and belief and hope when I have no belief and hope?”
“From all I’ve heard, you’re a very good rabbi. That’s important. Do you feel that if you go on, you’ll turn into a worthless rabbi?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“If you resign, will they find a better replacement?”
“I don’t know, Rabbi. I can’t answer such a question.”
“And I can’t tell you what to do, David. I can’t find God for you, and I can’t tell you anything that will convince you that God exists. This is something you must discover for yourself. But is it possible that you never actually believed in God — something you have never been willing to face — until now?”
“No, that’s not possible,” David answered, almost fiercely.
“All right. But think about it.”
“And you’ll replace me at the synagogue?”
“Well — not yet. I’m not actively involved any longer in the placement of rabbis, but I can talk to the people who are. But not so quickly. You must think about this. Examine yourself more deeply. And don’t think it would be so easy to find the proper person for Leighton Ridge. So for the time being, please, David, go on with your work.”
David left the Institute annoyed with himself and with Rabbi Belsen in equal measure, annoyed with himself because he had come whimpering to the old man without a shred of pride or dignity, as he saw it, and annoyed with Belsen because Belsen had offered nothing, neither hope nor knowledge. Hands thrust into the pockets of the old seersucker suit he was wearing, head bent, indeed his whole long, bony figure bent, he drifted along the city streets, turning over in his mind what he would have done had Belsen told him that he was through and that he should turn over his pulpit to someone else. He would have to tell Lucy that he no longer had a job and that the house they lived in was no longer theirs. And then what? What else was he fit for? His whole training, his whole competence, was for being a rabbi. He knew of a good many rabbinically trained men who ended up in various universities, teaching Bible History or Hebrew, or the Religions of the Middle East, but none of these speculative futures held any great attraction for him, even assuming that he could ever be hired by a college.
He found himself walking along Riverside Drive, and he paused to lean on the stone wall and look out at the river. There was enough wind to make the water dance in the sunlight, and directly opposite him, a large yawl was making its way up the river, trimming its sails to catch the wind. There were two men and two women working the sails, scampering across the boat, dodging the boom as it swung around, all of them sunburned, young, alive with the exhilaration of the struggle with wind and sails. Watching them, David realized that he had never been on such a boat, indeed on any sailboat, and suddenly his life appeared gray and meaningless, dull, a dullness interrupted only by the years of World War Two, and looking back at those years, he could recall instantly, and not without pleasure, the excitement, the danger, and the horror.
“My God,” he said aloud, “is the only way to be alive, to participate in the worst slaughter man ever created?”
He drove back to Leighton Ridge, wondering why he had come to New York, and when he tried to explain to Lucy why he had gone, she said to him, “David, you don’t have to explain anything to me. You’re a grown man, and you have the right to go to New York or anywhere else without consulting me or explaining to me.”
“No, I haven’t. You’re my wife.”
“Yes, and I know what you intend to tell me. You’re going to tell me that you went to New York to see Rabbi Belsen or someone else in that strange place and ask them to give back to you the God you lost somewhere down the line.”
He was hurt. She could hurt him more deeply and easily than anyone else, and she saw the hurt on his face.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she cried.
“It’s all right. That’s what I was going to tell you.”
“But why, David? Why? Not me — this you do to yourself.”
“You know, I want to tell you why, Lucy. You’re my wife and I love you, so I should be able to tell you why. But it’s so hard to say.”
“Try me, David. We’ve been married over ten years. Isn’t it time you were able to talk to me, or each of us to talk to each other?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, talk to you about it — it’s just so hard to put it into words. I guess since I was a high school kid, I just knew that I was put on earth for a certain kind of service. No, that doesn’t say it. Let’s say I put myself in God’s hands, and then whatever happened, it was all right. No matter how terrible it was, it was all right — as the poet put it, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world. And then, all of a sudden, the hands were no longer there.”
“David, David darling, they were never there. There are no hands. There are just people — you, me, the kids, our frie
nds — just people. We do everything that’s awful and we do everything that’s good.”
“No!”
“David, look around you. There’s an old religion called golf, and a new religion, absolutely ecumenical, called tennis, and the new apostles are the tennis pros. And God? David, he’s out to lunch. David, look at what you’re in. If you must have a God and if there is no God, what do you do?”
“I don’t know,” he said hopelessly.
“You and Martin — you’ve painted yourselves into a corner.”
Two months after this incident, about ten days before the children were due to return to school, David and Lucy were finishing a late supper. The children were asleep, and Lucy suggested that they take their coffee into the living room. “I have something very important to discuss with you, David.” She had arranged for Mrs. Holtzman to be there — for reasons David couldn’t understand, since there were only the two of them at the table — but she wanted to talk out of Mrs. Holtzman’s earshot.
David sensed the chill of what was coming, if not the substance. For weeks now, the cord binding him to his wife had been stretched thinner and thinner. Their lovemaking had come almost to a standstill; their talk was more formal; the silences longer and longer. Tonight, Lucy said, “We must talk, David. We must talk about things you usually don’t want to talk about, namely, you and me.”
“What good will it do to talk? You’ll become angry. You always do. I can’t fight you, Lucy. You shred me to ribbons.”
“Not tonight. But that’s it — the question of becoming angry.”
“We’ve been through that.”
“Not really, no. If we could both become angry enough to fight with each other, we’d be alive. No, I don’t mean that. I’m trying to say that there’s something missing in our marriage, something I need desperately, as much as I need air to breathe.”
“And what is that, Lucy?” he asked quietly.
“I’m not sure. Laughter, maybe. Joy. A kind of excitement. Maybe to be eager for tomorrow to come because you know there’s something good tomorrow, but not to have tomorrow no less dreary than today.”
“And that’s how you feel?”
“That’s how I’ve felt for a long time, David. Didn’t you know that?”
“No — not the way you put it.”
“It’s not that I don’t love you. You’re so good and kind.”
“That’s not enough, is it?”
“David, I have to get away. Otherwise, I shall go absolutely mad. I’m not talking about a divorce. But I want to take the kids and go to California for one school term. From now until February. I spoke to my mother on the telephone, and she discussed it with my Uncle Bert and Aunt Freda. He needs help desperately in the store, and he’ll pay me a hundred dollars a week.”
“And that’s what you’re leaving me for,” he said unbelievingly, “to work in a saddle shop somewhere in California? Lucy, I don’t even know where Santa Barbara is. And you’re taking the children?”
“I’m not leaving you. Well, I am, but I’m not. I’m not asking for a divorce, only to save my — no, I’m not going to say my sanity. It’s my life, David.”
“I don’t understand. I just don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Did you ever understand what I am saying?”
“That’s not fair,” David protested. “I listen to you. I always listen to you, and I try to see your point of view.”
“Well, here it is, flat out, my point of view,” her voice rising. “My point of view is that if I don’t get away from Leighton Ridge, I will go insane, I will kill myself, I will scream until my vocal cords part, I will become a mumbling idiot, I will divorce you — any and all of them. Oh, Jesus, I don’t know. I don’t want to end our marriage. I don’t want a divorce, but I can’t go on this way. So I worked out this separation. You won’t have to send us money. Momma found a nice house with extra bedrooms, and we’ll live there with her. She’ll help with the children while I’m working — “ He was trying to control the pain he felt, and she broke off, trying desperately not to burst into tears.
“How can I explain it?” she asked hopelessly.
David didn’t answer. He sat motionless, stiff, in his chair, looking at his wife, and perhaps a minute went by, and then he said to her, “When do you want to go?”
“In a few days, David, so that I can put the kids in school when their term begins.”
“Are there any Jews there, Lucy?” with childish innocence.
“Of course, and in Los Angeles, just sixty miles away, about the same distance that we are from New York, there’s the second largest Jewish community in the world.”
“I could call you. That wouldn’t cost too much. And suppose I came out there, say in a month or two, I’d be missing all of you so much,” plaintively, hopelessly.
“Sure. We have five thousand dollars put away. I think half of it should be used by you for fare or whatever.”
He shook his head. “This is crazy. What happened to us?”
“It happens to a great many people, David.”
“But I love you. I always thought you loved me.”
“I do — in a way. But it’s not enough. It’s simply not enough.”
“I just don’t understand,” he said despairingly. “What do I do? Do I go on living here?”
“Mrs. Holtzman will move in and sleep in Sarah’s room. I’ve made all the arrangements with her. I told her I’m taking the children out to California to see my mother and to stay with her for a while, and that’s all she has to know or anyone in the congregation. You just tell them the same thing. It’s perfectly natural.”
“And live alone?”
“For a while, David.”
“You spoke of a whole school term, five months. Or is that just to ease me over the hurdle before the divorce?”
“I’m not asking for a divorce, David. Not unless you want one?”
“Why would I want one? Lucy, for God’s sake, don’t do this. There’s no reason to do it.”
“Only to save my own life, David.”
A week after Lucy and the children went off to California, because he had to talk to someone, he told Martin Carter the truth about Lucy’s visit to her mother, and quite understandably, since he was not sworn to secrecy, Martin told his wife. Millie promptly invited David to dinner, and then told her husband, “You be upstairs when he comes, and let me have a few words with him alone.”
Millie was in the kitchen when David arrived. He entered through the front door, which was never locked, and Millie called out to him, “Make yourself comfortable in the living room, David. Martin’s upstairs, showering.” She came into the living room with two tall glasses of gin and tonic. “For the dog days — you do like gin and tonic?”
David accepted the glass and smiled bleakly. He had been studying the furniture in the room, the chintz-covered, overstuffed chairs and couch, the eighteenth-century sewing table, the mahogany desk, the sunburst mirror that had belonged to Millie’s grandfather, the two old family oil portraits — studying them and trying, as he had a hundred times before, to understand Lucy’s flight from all this, her statement that everything — certainly beautiful old things like these included — everything in Leighton Ridge was stifling her, killing her. Yet their lives had not been confined by Leighton Ridge. He and Martin had been in every good fight, walked in demonstrations, signed petitions, preached against war and injustice. But that was himself and Martin; where had Lucy been?
Here now was Millie, as good a friend as Lucy ever had — this according to Lucy — coming right to the point: “David, why did you let her leave?”
“I didn’t let her.” He was taken aback, trying desperately to formulate his own attitude. “How could I stop her?”
“By telling her that you’re her husband and she’d better damned well not run off to California.”
“I couldn’t tell her that.”
“Why? For heaven’s sake, why?”
; “She’s a human being. She’s a person. In her place, if I felt the way she felt, I would have gone too.”
“No you wouldn’t. Now you listen to me, David Hartman. I’ve been married to one of you for more years than I care to count, and I know what I’m talking about, and I’ve been watching you for ten years now. It has nothing to do with religion. People like you and Martin turn to religion sometimes and sometimes to other things, I don’t know what, maybe revolutions, but whatever it is, you go into it because you’re some kind of damned saint, and God help any one of us who is married to a saint. I know. I’ve been there, and I know every thought Lucy thought and every feeling she felt, and I had the same screaming desire to run away — not once, but half a dozen times. But I was not brought up to think and act as freely as Lucy, and I had no one in California to run to, and if I had run, Martin’s family and my family would have cast me out into the dust. Not Martin, mind you. He would have exhibited that same lousy understanding that you saints are so expert with. Yes, I’m glad I stayed. Life is just as frustrating and meaningless in Santa Barbara or anywhere else as in Leighton Ridge, and underneath all his saintly denseness, Martin is a wonderful, beautiful man — just as you are. And my kids grew up with a mother and a father, which is the way it should be. It is not Leighton Ridge. It’s this stinking planet we live on.”
“But if you felt that way, what kept you here?” David wondered.
“What kept me here? Closed doors, David. I was a minister’s daughter married to a minister. That closes a lot of doors. I was not raised in a free-thinking, open household, as Lucy was, free to doubt and question, and do you know, I thank God for it — because I still have Martin.”
“If she still loved me, she wouldn’t have gone away. What sense would it make to force her to live with a man she stopped loving?”
Millie sighed hopelessly. “I don’t think I’ve ever known a man who didn’t have the brains of a tadpole, not when it comes down to anything concerning emotions or feelings. The few hours you spent with Sarah Comstock, God rest her poor soul, were hours of love. Very wonderful, but hours, David, don’t you understand that? In days it cools, in weeks it barely stirs, and in months it’s either replaced with friendship and consideration and compassion, or the lovers are ready to destroy each other. And most of them do. And Lucy respects you, honors you, and trusts you, and that’s a kind of love a lot better than what they sell us in the movies and on the tube.”