Monday the Rabbi Took Off

Chapter Thirty-Nine

As Rabbi Hugo Deutch. still in pajamas and bathrobe, went to the stove to pour himself a second cup of coffee, his wife, still in nightgown and housecoat, said anxiously, "Hadn't you better get dressed, dear? You don't want to be late for the board meeting."

"I'm not going. It was suggested that I stay away today. I gather that they're going to discuss the question of my staying on here. So I decided to take a holiday and pass up the minyan as well."

"Then why don't we take our coffee out on the porch? It looks lovely and warm out. Smell that air!" She opened the porch door and stood on the threshold, coffee cup in hand.

"It's an offshore breeze. We're getting the smell of the ocean."

"Spring in New England. Hugo— I never enjoyed it so much before."

"Well, Darlington is a factory town and spring breezes there were apt to be full of smoke and that sulfur smell— remember?"

"Mm. Oh, I'm glad. Hugo, that we're going to stay. I was afraid you were going to be stuffy about it."

"Just a minute, Betty." He brought his cup and sat down on a porch chair beside her. "I haven't changed my position. I just said I'd be willing to stay on if Rabbi Small decided not to return."

"But you said—"

"The meeting today? That's to decide if they want me— if Rabbi Small doesn't come back."

"You mean that Drexler told you that they want Small, and you are just their second choice?"

He sipped his coffee. "No. my impression is that if we were both equal candidates. I would be their first choice. But it's really his job."

"Is that their opinion. Hugo, or is it yours?"

"That's my opinion." he said stubbornly. "I'm not taking a man's job away from him."

She bit her lip to keep back the angry words that welled up within her. She knew how her husband reacted to opposition when he was having one of his stubborn streaks. Then her face cleared, and she smiled. "It's an easy job for you, Hugo, isn't it?"

"It's a real vacation. I’ve thought about it— why it's so much nicer here than it was in Darlington. I think it's a matter of money as much as anything. The rabbi depends on the congregation, on the board really, for his salary, and so subconsciously they can't get over the feeling that he's a salaried employee. Since they're the ones that are paying, that gives them the whip hand, and it's only human nature when you’ve got a whip in your hand to flick it occasionally. But they know I'm on a pension and don't need their salary. So that puts me on a somewhat different plane."

"Oh, I don't think it's only that. I think they're a nicer class of people than the congregation we had in Darlington."

He shook his head. "No. I won't go along with you there. These people may be a little better off financially, but it's new money that they've made in the last ten or twelve veers. And a lot of the lovely homes we've visited are mortgaged to the hilt. As a matter of fact, there's a kind of meanness that I detect every now and then, that I didn't notice in Darlington. Take this matter of Rabbi Small's not drawing a salary while he's in Israel."

"Yes, but you said it was a matter of his own choice."

Rabbi Deutch nodded. "That's what they said. But you know how these things work. They back a man into a corner, and he practically has no alternative. The decent thing would have been not to mention it at all, but to just go on sending him his checks."

"And this bothers you? Is this why you won't come right out and accept the job?"

"Oh, for myself it doesn't bother me at all. I was just thinking of poor Small. As far as I'm concerned, it's probably a little wicked of me, but I rather enjoy the situation. You see, here I have the upper hand. I don't need them. We have enough for our needs, and I have no long-term career here that I have to safe-guard. If I remain here, it will be for three years? Five? Seven at the most. You notice in the time I've been here. I haven't had any rows, no crises of the sort that seemed to come up every other week at Darlington. They know that when I take a position. I'm going to stick to it." He smiled complacently.

"But you don't take a position quite so often here." she pointed out.

"I guess that's true. too. Since I think of the job as essentially temporary, I don't have the same feeling of urgency on most things as I did in Darlington. There, when some minor matter came up. I sometimes had to make an issue of it. not because it was important in itself, but because I was afraid of what it might lead to. Here I don't bother. If it should develop into a major crisis. I feel strong enough to handle it then. Do you remember Mr. Slonimsky in Darlington?"

Mrs. Deutch laughed. "Abe Cohen was in the hospital a whole week. Rabbi, and you didn't go to see him." she mimicked.

"He also kept tabs on the number of times I missed the minyan." The rabbi chuckled.

Now that he was in a good humor, she tried again, cautiously. "Did you ever think that it has been a welcome change for me. too. Hugo?"

"How do you mean, my dear?"

"As the rebbitzin, I had to be careful and circumspect. My behavior might affect your job. I had to trim my friendships to the politics in the synagogue. Arlene Rudman would call me practically every morning and chat at me for as much as an hour at a time, and I listened and never cut her off, because her husband was the big moneyman in the congregation and one of your strongest backers."

"But you continued to talk to her on the phone after I retired." he said.

"Only because when you form a habit, it's hard to break." She looked off into the distance. "Whenever they came to visit us. I always had the feeling that she was making an inspection of the premises."

"Really! I thought you liked her."

"I never really liked her. Hugo. I just got used to her. And when you retired, things didn't change for me. The attitudes of the women of the congregation to me and my attitude toward them had been developing for thirty years. You can't change that overnight. I never had any real friends; friendships that you cultivate on the basis of the importance of their husbands to the congregation don't mean much."

"But when I retired—"

"That made it worse. I was no longer the official rebbitzin and didn't have to be consulted. And I had no children or grandchildren to visit and busy myself with. Except for Roy. we never had any young people in the house. And we only saw him when Laura would pack him off to us when she wanted a little rest herself. And I always felt that he was in your way and was disturbing you. I think he felt it. too. poor boy." She seemed on the verge of tears.

"Believe me. Betty. I'm fond of the boy. As for Darlington, I had no idea— but— but we don't have to go back to Darlington when I get through here." he soothed. "We can live anywhere now and meet new people and make new friends. We can take an apartment in Boston or Cambridge, where I can work at the library—"

"It's no good. Hugo. Scholarship just isn't your cup of tea. If you had a real interest in it. you would have done something about it long ago. Grubbing away at dusty books just isn't your forte. You have to deal with people. You're good at that. I know you'd make a bluff at it and trot off to the library every morning with a briefcase full of notebooks and pencils, but the first bit of bad weather, you'd stay at home, and that would break the routine, and you'd hang around the house more and more after that until finally you gave up all pretense and just followed me around from room to room as I did my housework— two old people with nothing to say to each other, getting in each other's way."

He did not answer immediately; and there was a long silence between them. Finally, he said. "What do you want me to do?"

"Take the job if they offer it. Leave the question of the ethics of the situation for them to answer. That's where it belongs."