New York

by Edward Rutherfurd

But in fact, the visit went very well. His mother seemed delighted to see them. She told Sarah how she’d given the big party for the publication of Edmund Keller’s book, back in the old days. And she promised to bring people to the gallery opening.

  “I want you to give me at least thirty invitations I can send out, my dear. I’ll write a letter, and telephone. I know a lot of people who I’m sure would buy.”

  “That would be wonderful, Mrs. Master,” Sarah said.

  They were leaving the building when the tiny incident happened. George the doorman had hailed a taxi. Charlie disliked the usual business of people sliding across the seat, so he’d walked round the taxi while George on the sidewalk held the door open for Sarah. And just as Sarah got into the taxi, he saw the doorman staring down at her head with a look of disgust.

  “Is there a problem, George?” he said sharply.

  “No, Mr. Master.”

  “I hope not,” said Charlie, threateningly. He’d be inheriting that apartment one day, so George had better watch out. He got in beside Sarah, frowning.

  “So,” she remarked as they started down Park, “what was that about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He looked at me like that when I arrived, too. But you didn’t notice.”

  “I’ll have him fired.”

  Sarah stared out of the window for a moment, then changed the subject. “Your mother’s great,” she said. “She could be really helpful with those invitations, you know.”

  It was a week later when he was having dinner at his mother’s that she brought up the subject of Sarah.

  “Your girlfriend seems nice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The girl you brought round.”

  “Sarah Adler. She’s doing a good job with the show, I think.”

  “I’m sure she is, dear; she seems very competent. She’s also your mistress.” Rose looked him in the eye. “I can tell, you know.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s very young. Can you manage?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s nice. Is it difficult, her being Jewish?”

  “Should it be?”

  “Don’t be silly, dear. This isn’t exactly a Jewish building, you know.”

  “The damn doorman was impertinent.”

  “What do you expect? It’s never arisen, as far as I know, but I don’t imagine the co-op board would let a Jew buy into the building.”

  It was one of the features of apartment life in the city that Charlie had always found amusing. Most of the apartment buildings on Park were cooperatives now. His mother no longer rented the apartment, but was a shareholder of the building. And the shareholders elected a board which had the right to vet anyone trying to buy in. So if you wanted to sell your apartment to someone whom the other people in the building thought undesirable, the board could refuse to let you complete the sale. They might give reasons. They might not. But the unspoken rules were generally understood.

  “It’s absurd,” he said. “We’re in the 1950s, for God’s sake.”

  “There are plenty of buildings that do. On the West Side, anyway.” She gave him a thoughtful look. “You’re not planning to marry her, are you?”

  “No.” He was quite taken aback by the idea.

  “They’d take you out of the Social Register, you know.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, I believe they would. They don’t mind people being poor,” said Rose, “but they care about who you marry.”

  “Damn the register.”

  “Anyway,” she said, matter-of-factly, “you really can’t afford another family, can you?”

  Another effect of the relationship was Charlie’s realization that he didn’t actually know much about Judaism. He had Jewish friends; he might go to a wedding or a funeral. The Jewish wedding service, apart from the chuppah and the breaking of the glass, didn’t seem so different from a Christian wedding, as far as Charlie could see. The familiar Christian blessings were clearly taken straight from the Hebrew tradition.

  But beyond that he knew very little. Sometimes he’d ask Sarah about her family life, and about Jewish customs. He became quite curious.

  It was late in March when Sarah suddenly asked him:

  “Do you want to come to a Passover Seder?”

  “A Seder? Where?”

  “In Brooklyn. With my family.”

  “You mean, meet your parents?” He was well aware that Sarah’s parents had no idea of their relationship. Apart from anything, she had explained, they still imagined, or at least hoped, she was a virgin. The thought of meeting them intrigued Charlie, but also made him nervous. “You really think that’s a good idea?” he said.

  “They’d be so honored. Remember, they’ve heard of you as the owner of the Keller collection. My first really important client. They know you’re a big deal to me.”

  When the day arrived, Charlie drove over the Williamsburg Bridge, and down through Brooklyn. He didn’t know the borough that well. There were the huge acres of docks all along the waterfront, the endless collections of small factories, warehouses and plants that still made it one of the major places of production in the nation. You knew that, of course, but you didn’t really get to see it in Charlie’s world. He had a friend, a professor, who lived in a large and handsome brownstone on the Heights near Prospect Park; he’d been there a few times. It reminded him of the spacious houses on the West Side, and walking in the huge spaces of Prospect Park itself was delightful. A few miles further east, he knew, was Brownsville. He’d heard there were a lot of Jews there, but the thing he really knew was that it was a dangerous slum area where the gangland killing agency of Murder Inc. had been born. From Prospect Park, however, Flatbush Avenue ran south, so he supposed Flatbush itself might be quite a decent sort of place.

  Needless to say, Sarah had made him a perfect map and directions, so he found her parents’ house with no difficulty. She met him at the door, and brought him in.

  They were all there. Her parents, her brothers, her sister Rachel and her family. Even her Aunt Ruth from the Bronx, who hated Robert Moses, had come. He felt a little out of place as the only Gentile in the house, but the Adler family didn’t seem to mind at all. As Sarah had told him, he was the honored guest. “We shall explain the Seder to you as we go,” her sister Rachel assured him. The idea seemed to please the whole family.

  Dr. Adler turned out to be everything Charlie expected. As the father of the family, this was a very important day for him, and his face was beaming with pleasure. It only took Charlie a few moments to engage him in conversation about the composers he most liked to play, and the pianists Charlie had seen at Carnegie Hall.

  The family also wanted to hear about the exhibition of Theodore Keller’s photographs which Sarah was working so hard at. So he told them about his family’s relationship with the Kellers down the generations, and how close a friend he’d been to Edmund Keller, and how honored he’d felt when Edmund had laid this duty upon him.

  “For me,” he explained, “looking after and showing the collection is an obligation to the Keller family. But it’s more than that. I have a duty of respect toward the work itself.” He turned to Dr. Adler. “Imagine how you’d feel if the family of a composer you admired gave you all his papers, and you found dozens of compositions, even whole symphonies, that had never been played or published.”

  This was greeted with much respect.

  “That’s a big obligation,” said Dr. Adler.

  “Well,” said Charlie, seeing his chance, “I am just so grateful to your daughter for doing such a wonderful job at the gallery. This is very important to me.”

  Dr. Adler beamed. The whole family looked delighted. If they were being friendly and welcoming before, there was a new warmth in their manner toward him now.

  Only one false note interposed itself. Charlie was talking to Rachel when he overheard it. Sarah was speaking to her mother, a few feet away.

  “So,�
�� he heard Mrs. Adler say, “you still didn’t tell me. When are you seeing Adele’s grandson again?”

  “I don’t know. Soon, I expect.”

  “Adele says he took you out to dinner in the city.”

  “Is nothing private?”

  “She says he likes you very much.”

  “She knows this?”

  “Yes, he told her so. He’s a very good doctor.”

  “I believe it.”

  “Well, I won’t interfere.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  Charlie had been listening so carefully that he almost lost the thread of the conversation he was having with Rachel about her children. What doctor? When did Sarah have dinner with him?

  Then it was time to begin. The table was laid magnificently. Every bit of silverware had been polished until it gleamed. As the meal took its slow, ceremonial course, Rachel or her mother would explain what was happening, with one of Sarah’s brothers occasionally chiming in.

  “The mitzvah of Passover is to teach the next generation about our bondage and deliverance out of Egypt,” Rachel told him. “So, the ceremony is in two parts. The first is to remind us of our slavery in Egypt; the second is to remember our freedom.”

  “And that’s the matzo, the unleavened bread,” said Charlie, looking at a plate at one end of the table.

  “Right. Three matzos. Also, on the Seder plate, we have bitter herbs, to remind us of the bitterness of slavery. And charoset—that’s like a paste—for the mortar the Jewish slaves used when we built the storehouses of Egypt; for a vegetable, we have parsley. This we shall dip in salt water, to remind us of our tears. Also, as symbols, we have roasted egg, and roasted lamb-shank bone. During the meal we shall also drink four cups of wine—grape juice for the little ones—to remind us of the four promises God made to us.”

  Dr. Adler commenced the Seder with a blessing, which was followed by the washing of hands. The vegetable was dipped in salt water, the middle matzo broken in two, and then the telling of the first Passover began.

  As the evening slowly progressed, Charlie watched with admiration. He’d never realized how beautiful it was. When the invitation to the Seder was recited, not in Hebrew but in Aramaic, it struck him with great force that, of course, these were exactly the proceedings that Jesus must have followed at the Last Supper. And as he considered the crisp New England Episcopalians he knew so well, he wondered how many of them truly understood the rich Middle Eastern texture to which their own religion belonged.

  Then came the time for the youngest of Rachel’s children to ask the Four Questions, beginning with: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

  How moving it was. Charlie thought of Thanksgiving, the most rooted family celebration in the American tradition, and the joyful sharing of food. Thanksgiving was real. It was important, and it was already over three centuries old. Christmas, of course, was an ancient festival. But modern Christmas celebrations, the dinner and the Christmas tree, and even Santa Claus—the things which made Christmas for everyone now—these customs weren’t nearly as old as Thanksgiving, if the truth were told. Yet here in Jewish households was a tradition going back not for centuries, but millennia.

  And all the time, the children were being instructed. The Telling of the Passover, the Four Questions, the meaning of the Seder—the children had to participate actively in these. At some length, Dr. Adler spoke to them about the significance of the affliction and the delivery out of Egypt, and they enumerated the Ten Plagues. Then came the second cup of wine, another hand-washing, and blessings before the meal.

  As the ritual of the Seder went on through the evening, Charlie was not only moved but impressed. Dr. Adler’s face, so warm and fatherly, might have been that of any man sharing a meal with his grandchildren. Yet under it all was a passion, an intensity that Charlie could only admire. These people had respect: for tradition, for education, for the things of the spirit.

  Were such things to be found among the Gentiles? Certainly, in the families of professors, schoolteachers and the clergy, but not with this intensity. Sarah’s family belonged to a community which was conscious of roots going back three thousand years and believing, at least, that they had received the divine fire from the hand of God Himself.

  Late that night, as he left to drive back to Manhattan, he parted from Sarah and her family, moved with a new respect and admiration.

  Of course, he asked Sarah about the doctor pretty soon.

  “Adele Cohen’s grandson? He’s a very nice person, just not my type. But I let my family think I might be interested. It keeps them happy.” She gave him an amused look. “I suppose I’d have to marry him if he was my type. He’s everything a nice Jewish girl could want.”

  Charlie wasn’t sure what he thought about that. Thinking about it afterward, and feeling a pang of jealousy, he told himself not to be foolish. At some point, this girl would have to settle down with a proper young man of her own kind. But not yet. Not for a long time yet. Until then, he wanted her, very much, for his own.

  The aftermath of the Seder had some other consequences as well. He began to ask Sarah questions. Some were quite simple. “Why do you say synagogue, but most Jews I know say temple?”

  “It pretty much depends what kind of Jew you are,” she explained. “The real Temple, the Temple in Jerusalem, was destroyed nearly two thousand years ago. Orthodox and Conservative Jews believe that one day it will be rebuilt. This will be the Third Temple. But the Reform movement says that we should not be waiting for the Temple to be rebuilt, and so they call their synagogues temples. So there are all kinds of names for synagogues in the diaspora. Orthodox Jews often call it ‘shut,’ which is a Yiddish word. My family usually says synagogue. The Reform Jews usually say temple.”

  Other questions were more searching. What did Sarah feel about her duties as a Jew? How did she want to live? Did she truly believe in God? He discovered that she was surprisingly torn.

  “God? Who can know about God, Charlie? No one can be sure. As for the rest, I break a lot of rules. Look what I’m doing with you.” She shrugged. “I suppose the truth is, I’m secular during the week, and I go home to my tradition at the weekend. I have no idea how that’s going to work out in the long run.”

  Once, she found him reading a book about Judaism.

  “You’re going to know more than I do,” she laughed.

  But it wasn’t only Judaism that Charlie had become curious about. The encounter with her family had made him think about all the other communities he’d taken for granted in the big city. The Irish, the Italians, the people coming in from other places. What did he really know about his neighbors? Next to nothing, if the truth were told.

  The exhibition opened in April. It was a big success. Rose Master surpassed herself. Collectors, people on museum boards, people from the social worlds, she had managed to bring them all. The catalogue and the little historical notes that Sarah had put together were perfect. Charlie had brought journalists and literary people; the gallery had done the rest.

  Before he died, Theodore Keller had produced thousands of signed prints, and even during the evening, a large quantity were sold. Not only that, a publisher approached Charlie to suggest they do a book on his work.

  There were several Kellers there, the descendants of Theodore and his sister Gretchen. Sarah’s family had come, modestly staying in the background, but clearly proud of her success. Charlie had a moment of panic when he realized that several of his friends knew about his affair with her, but a quick word with a couple of them ensured that no one said anything about the relationship to her family.

  And Charlie made a charming speech about both Theodore and Edmund Keller, and graciously thanked the gallery and Sarah in particular for the show which, he assured them, was everything that the artist himself could have wished.

  Often at the end of an opening, the gallery would take the artist and a few friends out to supper. Obviously that wouldn’t be the case here, b
ut Charlie had wondered what he should do. The gallery owner and Sarah and her family were going out together, and he would have liked to join them. But his mother was tired, and after all she’d done, he felt he ought to take her home.

  But as he said goodnight to Sarah and her family, he felt so proud of her, and yet, at the same time, so protective; and he experienced a sudden sense of desolation at being parted from her.

  If only they could be together openly, he thought. But as what?

  One aspect of their relationship that amused Charlie was watching Sarah in his apartment. Since his divorce, he had reverted to his former bachelor ways. He wasn’t untidy—indeed, his white-walled apartment was simply and precisely arranged. “It’s almost like an art gallery,” she’d remarked, the first time she saw it. But it was spartan. There was hardly any food in the kitchen, because he usually ate out. She bought him pots and pans and implements which he didn’t suppose he’d ever use, and new white towels for his bathroom. She did it cleverly, however, and never in a way that was intrusive. And she seemed so pleased with the results, and so relaxed when she was there, that Charlie reckoned their tastes were very compatible. It hadn’t occurred to him before that he might have difficulty living with a woman who wanted to change his household or started putting up floral curtains when he wanted plain venetian blinds, but he realized now that he really didn’t want to go back to the conventional domesticity in which he’d lived when he was married to Julie.

  “It’s funny, but I don’t seem to mind having you in the apartment,” he once remarked.

  “Well, thank you for the big compliment,” she laughed.

  “You know what I mean,” he said.

  The only time he ever experienced a flash of irritation, and a moment of fear, it was over almost at once. He had come into his bedroom early one evening and found her going through his drawers.

  “Are you looking for something?” he asked in a sharp voice.

  She turned. “Caught in the act,” she said with a sheepish smile. “I need to see your ties.”

  In Charlie’s experience, women never managed to give him ties he liked, and he was wondering whether to discourage her from attempting such an impossible task, when she frowned, and pulled something out from the back of the drawer.