Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

CHAPTER TWELVE

Nothing Sykes said had prepared the rabbi for Mrs. Hirsh. He found her surprisingly young, in her early thirties, for a man in his fifties. And she was tall. Even though her blue eyes were swollen from weeping he found them attractive, and her red hair was striking. At first he thought she looked flashy. Although she was dressed in black, her silk dress had flounces and lawn sleeves hardly appropriate for mourning-but then he realized she probably had not bought it for the occasion and must be wearing it because she had nothing more suitable. Normally of a gay and happy temperament, this would be reflected in her wardrobe.

He introduced himself.

“Oh, come in, Rabbi. Dr. Sykes phoned to say you were going to drop over. Peter Dodge was here earlier, he said he knows you. And the Lutheran minister, Pastor Kal-Kalt-”

“Pastor Kaltfuess.”

“That’s it, and then there was the Methodist minister and the Unitarian minister, I guess. I sure got a lot of spiritual comfort today.”

“They came to console you.”

“Oh, I know. And are you, too, going to tell me that Ike’s soul is in Heaven or in a better world?”

Because he was aware that grief can take many forms the rabbi was not offended by her bitter flippancy. “I’m afraid we don’t peddle that kind of merchandise,” he said.

“You mean you don’t believe in life after death, in a Hereafter?”

“We believe that his soul lives on in your memory and in the remembrance of his friends and in his influence on their lives. Of course, if he had children, he would live on in them, too.”

“Well, that’s pretty obvious.”

“It doesn’t make it any the less true.” He paused, reluctant to broach the real reason for his visit. No matter how much experience he had with death, he still had not acquired the professional touch.

But she helped him out. “Dr. Sykes said you wanted to ask me some questions about my husband.”

He nodded gratefully. “Burial is a ritual, Mrs. Hirsh, and I must be sure that your husband was a Jew according to our Law. And since he married out of the faith-”

“Does that make him any less a Jew?”

“Not that in itself, but the circumstances might. Tell me, who officiated at your wedding?”

“We were married by a justice of the peace. Do you want to see the license?”

He smiled. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Impulsively she said, “Forgive me, Rabbi. I’ve been bitchy, haven’t I?”

“A little, and now you’re trying to shock me.”

She smiled. “All right, let’s start again. Ask me any questions at all.”

He settled back in his chair. “All right, why do you want to give him a Jewish burial?”

“Because Ike was a Jew. He never thought of himself as anything else.”

“And yet he never practiced our religion, I understand.”

“Well, he always said there were two ways of being a Jew. You could be one by practicing the religion or just by being born and thinking of yourself as Jew. Was he wrong?”

“No,” said the rabbi cautiously, “but a Jewish funeral is a religious ceremony. Would he have wanted that?”

“I know it can be done by a funeral director, but what connection would he have with Ike? No, this is what he would have wanted. We never discussed it, of course. For himself, he probably wouldn’t have cared. But out of respect for my feelings, I think he would have wanted some kind of ceremony. And what could have any meaning for him except a Jewish ceremony?”

“I see. All right, I’ll perform the service. It’s customary to say a few words at the grave. But I didn’t know your husband. So you’ll have to tell me about him. He was quite a bit older, wasn’t he? Were you happy together?”

“Twenty years, but we were happy.” She thought a moment. “He was good to me. And I was good for him. As for his being so much older-well, I had had enough of the other before I met him. He needed me and I needed him. Yes, I think we had a good marriage.”

The rabbi hesitated and then took the plunge. “I understand his death was due indirectly to his-to his drinking. Didn’t it bother you-his drinking, I mean?”

“That really bugs you people, doesn’t it? Well, it bothered Ike a lot, too. Oh, of course it made things hard sometimes. He lost jobs because of it, and sometimes we had to move and that’s not easy, making new arrangements and finding a new place to live. But it didn’t frighten me the way it might some. He was never ugly when he was drunk, and that’s what counts-more weak and silly like, and would cry like a child. But never ugly and never nasty to me. And it didn’t really bother me. My father was a heavy drinker, and my mother was no teetotaler. So I was kind of used to it. Later on, when he got worse and began to black out-that was frightening, but I was frightened for him because there was no knowing what might happen to him.”

“And did that happen often?”

She shook her head. “The last couple or three years he never touched a drop, except once or twice when he got started and couldn’t stop. I mean, he didn’t drink regularly. He was on the wagon, but whenever he fell off it was all the way. The last time was months and months ago.”

“Except for Friday night.”

“Yes, I forgot about that.” She closed her eyes, and the rabbi was afraid she was going to break down. But she opened her eyes and even managed a smile.

He rose, as if to signify he had finished. Then he thought of something. “Could you tell when one of these spells was coming on?”

She shook her head.

“Can you account for his suddenly starting to drink? Was something bothering him?”

Again she shook her head. “I guess he was always bothered about something. That’s why people drink, I suppose. I would try to comfort him-you know, make him feel I was always there and would always understand.”

“Perhaps you were better for him than he was for you,” suggested the rabbi gently.

“We were good for each other,” she said emphatically. “I told you he was always kind to me. Look, Rabbi, I was no innocent when I met Ike. I had been around. He was the first man I had known who was nice to me with no strings attached. And I was good to him; I took care of him like a mother.”

“And yet he drank.”

“That started before I met him. And I’m not sorry,” she added defiantly, “because that’s how I met him.”

“So?”

“He had holed up at this little hotel where I was working on the cigar counter in the lobby. If he hadn’t been on a bender, how could the likes of me have met a man like him?”

“And you feel you got the best of the bargain?”

“It was the best kind of bargain there is, Rabbi, where both parties feel they’ve got the best of it.”