Monday the Rabbi Took Off

Chapter Fifty-One

When I got your cable. I was sure you were bringing home some girl." said Betty Deutch as she maneuvered her car expertly out of the airport and onto the highway that led to Barnard's Crossing and home. "You said. 'We are arriving' instead of just 'Arriving.' It seemed an uncharacteristic extravagance to use two extra words, and then I thought it was your way of alerting me that you were coming with a girl you had picked up or who had picked you up."

Stedman laughed. "That was shrewd of you. Bet, but it wasn't a girl; it was Roy. I thought we'd come here for a week or so; but Laura met the plane at Kennedy, and Roy decided to go home with her first."

"Oh, I would have loved to have him down for a while. You know how I feel about him, Dan."

"Well, he's your only nephew—"

"When you have no children of your own, a nephew becomes something more than a nephew, even more than an only nephew."

"Well, he'll come down for a nice long visit after he gets settled." he promised.

"That's wonderful. He must have worked hard to get through so early. He's taken his exams already?"

"Well no." said Dan. "There was some mixup—"

"He's all right, isn't he?" she asked quickly. "He didn't get ill or anything?"

"Oh, no. He's fine. I'll tell you all about it when we get home. No sense in my having to repeat it to Hugo. How is he, by the way?"

She would have preferred to talk further about her nephew, but she knew her brother and knew he was not to be drawn. "Well, Hugo is in good health. He's always in good health." she added, "but he can be very aggravating at times."

Although she was intensely loyal to her husband, she was not blind to his faults, and although she would never mention them to an outsider, she did not hesitate to admit them to her brother, who was. after all. family and hence in a sense even closer than spouse.

"It's hard to be married to a rabbi; they're home so much of the time. They're around and underfoot. And then you never can tell when they're going to have to run off to some special meeting, maybe to substitute for a speaker that didn't show up. So you prepare a nice dinner and plan on going to a movie afterward, and there you are eating alone and watching TV afterward instead. Or it might be some youngster who is in trouble, or thinks he's in trouble, and has come to talk about it. And of course, it has to be right then and there because otherwise he'll run away from home or commit suicide or elope with someone quite unsuitable, and you sit and wait while the dinner gets spoiled, wondering whether to go ahead and eat by yourself or wait while you listen to the murmur of voices in the study and try to guess from the sound whether they're finishing up or will go on for a while."

Stedman laughed. "But surely you ought to be used to that by now."

"Some things you never get used to. When the roast is overdone, it doesn't help to remember that it was overdone last week too. But what I was going to say is that all that is nothing compared to living with a rabbi who is not actually holding a pulpit. When Hugo retired, he was full of ambition; he was going to edit his sermons and publish them in book form; then another book was going to be worked up from his notes on counseling; and another was a book on the Jewish holidays. He was full of ambition, full of the wonderful things he was going to do now that he finally had the necessary time. He had his typewriter overhauled and he laid in a supply of paper and carbons and an extra typewriter ribbon and a special kind of paper that made it unnecessary to erase if you made a mistake. And for just three days he went to his study right after breakfast and stayed there for a couple of hours. Then the next day he decided to take a walk first. I went into his study, not to spy. you understand, just to clean up and dust. And all there was were a few sheets of paper on which he had typed things like 'the quick brown fox' and 'Four score and seven years ago'— that kind of thing."

"Well, sometimes it's a little hard to get started."

"He never did get started. Dan." she said softly.

"I suppose all people who retire have to take a little time to adjust."

"But it's much worse for a rabbi." she insisted. "There is so much that he can't do. He has a certain image in the community that he has to live up to. Other people, when they retire, can play golf every day and cards every evening. They can go to the movies or read detective stories. But a rabbi is supposed to be on a higher plane; at least he thinks he is. It's all right to play golf occasionally, but if he's seen on the links every day, people will begin to wonder. We used to walk over to the library because it was a mile or so away from our house. It was a good distance for a nice brisk walk, and it gave us a destination of sorts. And we'd walk along the shelves and look at the books and every now and then he would point to a detective story and ask me to take it out on my card. The poor man didn't want the librarian to know he was reading something light. He'd take out books on sociology and comparative religion, that sort of thing, on his own card. But it was the books he had me take out that he read."

Her brother laughed. "What difference did it make to you what he read? It kept him busy, didn't it?"

"Oh, I didn't mind that," she said. "I just mentioned it to show you that it is different for a rabbi. But he couldn't read all day long. As a matter of fact. Hugo never was much of a reader. It was just that having nothing to do, the poor man would follow me around all day long. When I was making the beds, he was right there. And when I was in the kitchen, he was there, offering to do things, ready to hand me things I didn't want. You know, a woman develops a certain rhythm in her work. If she's used to walking over to the cabinet to get the pepper, it doesn't help her when she finds it at her elbow. It throws her off. I tell you. if this job hadn't come along. I would have gone out of my mind."

"But it did come along." Dan said.

"Yes, and it's really very pleasant here. And Hugo is very well liked by the congregation. As for the board, they just can't do enough to show how much they appreciate his coming. And Hugo loves it here, a lot better than his old congregation where he spent thirty years. He's had no quarrel with the board since he's come; everything is completely agreeable. From that point of view it's the easiest job he's ever had. And it's not as though he's an old man, you know. I mean, a rabbi at sixty-five is really at the height of his powers. After all. he doesn't dig ditches. And then he has all his old sermons that he can give, and of course, they're new to these people."

"But then it's only temporary." Stedman observed.

"Well, it needn't be. If Hugo weren't so indecisive about things and downright impractical, he could stay on here as long as he liked. I'm sure he'll discuss it with you. I’ve been talking to him, and I think I’ve about convinced him!"

She flashed her turn signal and made the corner. "This is our street." She brought the car to a halt at the curb, and simultaneously Rabbi Deutch appeared on the veranda to wave to them.

When Dan got out of the car, he was greeted effusively by his brother-in-law.

"It's good to see you. Dan. You're going to stay with us for a while, aren't you? Here, let me take your bag." Over his brother-in-law's protest he grabbed the larger of the two bags Dan had unloaded on the sidewalk and headed for the house.

"Life here must agree with him." said Dan to his sister. "Hugo seems a lot peppier, a lot more vital somehow than when I last saw him."

"Oh, he is. It's this new job here. He's really enjoying it. You must help me persuade him to stay on."

Stedman looked at his sister and pursed his lips. "We'll talk about it." he said enigmatically.