The Collected Short Stories (28 page)
Read The Collected Short Stories Online
Authors: Jeffrey Archer
The rabbi paused. His heart ached because he knew so much of what was still to come, although he could not have foretold what would happen in the end. He had never thought he would live to regret his Orthodox upbringing, but when Mrs. Goldblatz first told him about Christina he had been unable to mask his disapproval. It will pass, given time, he told her. So much for wisdom.
Whenever I went to Christina's home I was always treated with courtesy, but her family were unable to hide their disapproval. They uttered words they didn't believe in an attempt to show that they were not anti-Semitic, and whenever I brought up the subject with Christina she told me I was overreacting. We both knew I wasn't. They quite simply thought I was unworthy of their daughter. They were right, but it had nothing to do with my being Jewish.
I shall never forget the first time we made love. It was the day that Christina learned she had won a place at McGill.
We had gone to my room at three o'clock to change for a game of tennis. I took her in my arms for what I thought would be a brief moment, and we didn't part until the next morning. Nothing had been planned. But how could it have been, when it was the first time for both of us?
I told her I would marry herâdon't all men the first time?âonly I meant it.
Then a few weeks later she missed her period. I begged her not to panic, and we both waited for another month because she was fearful of going to see any doctor in Montreal.
If I had told you everything then, Father, perhaps my life would have taken a different course. But I didn't, and have only myself to blame.
I began to plan for a marriage that neither Christina's family nor you could possibly have found acceptable, but we didn't care. Love knows no parents, and certainly no religion. When she missed her second period I agreed Christina should tell her mother. I asked her if she would like me to be with her at the time, but she simply shook her head, and explained that she felt she had to face them on her own.
“I'll wait here until you return,” I promised.
She smiled. “I'll be back even before you've had the time to change your mind about marrying me.”
I sat in my room at McGill all that afternoon reading and pacing
â
mostly pacing
â
but she never came back, and I didn't go in search of her until it was dark. I crept around to her home, all the while trying to convince myself there must be some simple explanation as to why she hadn't returned.
â
mostly pacing
â
but she never came back, and I didn't go in search of her until it was dark. I crept around to her home, all the while trying to convince myself there must be some simple explanation as to why she hadn't returned.
When I reached her street I could see a light on in her bedroom but nowhere else in the house, so I thought she
must be alone. I marched through the gate and up to the front porch, knocked on the door, and waited.
must be alone. I marched through the gate and up to the front porch, knocked on the door, and waited.
Her father answered the door.
“What do you want?” he asked, his eyes never leaving mine for a moment.
“I love your daughter,” I told him, “and I want to marry her.”
“She will never marry a Jew,” he said simply and closed the door. I remember that he didn't slam it; he just closed it, which made it somehow even worse.
I stood outside in the street staring up at her room for over an hour until the light went out. Then I walked home. There was a light drizzle that night, and few people were on the streets. I tried to work but what I should do next, although the situation seemed hopeless. I went to bed that night hoping for a miracle. I had forgotten that miracles are for Christians, not Jews.
By the next morning, I had worked out a plan. I phoned Christina's home at eight and nearly put the phone down when I heard the voice at the other end.
“Mrs. von Braumer,” she said.
“Is Christina there?” I asked in a whisper.
“No, she's not,” came back the controlled, impersonal reply.
“When are you expecting her back?” I asked.
“Not for some time,” she said, and then the phone went dead.
“Not for some time” turned out to be over a year. I wrote, telephoned, asked friends from school and university, but could never find out where they had taken her.
Then one day, unannounced, she returned to Montreal accompanied by a husband and my child. I learned the bitter details from that font of all knowledge, Naomi Goldblatz, who had already seen all three of them.
I received a short note from Christina about a week later begging me not to make any attempt to contact her.
I had just begun my last year at McGill, and like
some eighteenth-century gentleman I honored her wish to the letter and turned all my energies to the final exams. She still continued to preoccupy my thoughts, and I considered myself lucky at the end of the year to be offered a place at Harvard Law School.
some eighteenth-century gentleman I honored her wish to the letter and turned all my energies to the final exams. She still continued to preoccupy my thoughts, and I considered myself lucky at the end of the year to be offered a place at Harvard Law School.
I left Montreal for Boston on September 12, 1968.
You must have wondered why I never came home once during those three years. I knew of your disapproval. Thanks to Mrs. Goldblatz everyone was aware who the father of Christina's child was, and I felt my absence might make life a little easier for you.
The rabbi paused as he remembered Mrs. Goldblatz letting him know what she had considered was “only her duty.”
“You're an interfering old busybody,” he had told her. By the following Saturday she had moved to another synagogue and let everyone in the town know why.
He was more angry with himself than with Benjamin. He should have visited Harvard to let his son know that his love for him had not changed. So much for his powers of forgiveness.
He took up the letter once again.
Throughout those years at law school I had plenty of friends of both sexes, but Christina was rarely out of my mind for more than a few hours at a time. I wrote over forty letters to her while I was in Boston, but didn't mail one of them. I even phoned, but it was never her voice that answered. If it had been, I'm not even sure I would have said anything. I just wanted to hear her.
Were you ever curious about the women in my life? I had affairs with bright girls from Radcliffe who were majoring in law, history, or science, and once with a shop assistant who never read anything. Can you imagine, in the very act of making love, always thinking of another woman? I seemed to be doing my work on autopilot, and even my passion for running became reduced to an hour's jogging a day.
Long before the end of my last year, leading law firms in New York, Chicago, and Toronto were turning up to interview us. The Harvard tom-toms can be relied on to beat across the world, but even I was surprised by a visit from the senior partner of Graham, Douglas & Wilkins of Toronto. It's not a firm known for its Jewish partners, but I liked the idea of their letterhead one day reading “Graham, Douglas, Wilkins & Rosenthal.” Even her father would surely have been impressed by that.
At least if I lived and worked in Toronto, I convinced myself, it would be far enough away for me to forget her, and perhaps with luck find someone else I could feel that way about.
Graham, Douglas & Wilkins found me a spacious apartment overlooking the park and started me off at a handsome salary. In return I worked all the hours Godâwhoever's Godâmade. If I thought they had pushed me at McGill or Harvard, Father, it turned out to be no more than a dry run for the real world. I didn't complain. The work was exciting, and the rewards beyond my expectation. Only now that I could afford a Thunderbird I didn't want one.
New girlfriends came and went as soon as they talked of marriage. The Jewish ones usually raised the subject within a week; the Gentiles, I found, waited a little longer. I even began living with one of them, Rebecca Wertz, but that too endedâon a Thursday.
I was driving to the office that morningâit must have been a little after eight, which was late for meâwhen I saw Christina on the other side of the busy highway, a barrier separating us. She was standing at a bus stop holding the hand of a little boy, who must have been about fiveâmy son.
The heavy morning traffic allowed me a little longer to stare in disbelief. I found that I wanted to look at them both at once. She wore a long lightweight coat that showed she had not lost her figure. Her face was serene and only reminded me why she was rarely out of my
thoughts. Her sonâour sonâwas wrapped up in an oversize duffel coat and his head was covered by a baseball cap that informed me that he was a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays. Sadly, it really prevented me from seeing what he looked like. You can't be in Toronto, I remember thinking. You're meant to be in Montreal. I watched them both in my side mirror as they climbed onto a bus. That particular Thursday I must have been an appalling counselor to every client who sought my advice.
thoughts. Her sonâour sonâwas wrapped up in an oversize duffel coat and his head was covered by a baseball cap that informed me that he was a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays. Sadly, it really prevented me from seeing what he looked like. You can't be in Toronto, I remember thinking. You're meant to be in Montreal. I watched them both in my side mirror as they climbed onto a bus. That particular Thursday I must have been an appalling counselor to every client who sought my advice.
For the next week I passed by that bus stop every morning within minutes of the time I had seen them standing there, but never saw them again. I began to wonder if I had imagined the whole scene. Then I spotted Christina again when I was returning across the city, having visited a client. She was on her own, and I braked hard as I watched her entering a shop on Bloor Street. This time I double-parked the car and walked. quickly across the road, feeling like a sleazy private detective who spends his life peeping through keyholes.
What I saw took me by surpriseânot to find her in a beautiful dress shop, but to discover it was where she worked.
The moment I saw that she was serving a customer I hurried back to my car. Once I had reached my office I asked my secretary if she knew of a shop called “Willing's.”
My secretary laughed. “You must pronounce it the German way; the W becomes a V,” she explained, “thus, âVilling's.' If you were married you would know that it's the most expensive dress shop in town,” she added.
“Do you know anything else about the place?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“Not a lot,” she said. “Only that it is owned by a wealthy German lady called Mrs. Klaus Willing, whom they often write about in the women's magazines.”
I didn't need to ask my secretary any more questions, and I won't trouble you, Father, with my detective work.
But, armed with those snippets of information, it didn't take me long to discover where Christina lived, that her husband was an overseas director with BMW, and that they only had the one child.
But, armed with those snippets of information, it didn't take me long to discover where Christina lived, that her husband was an overseas director with BMW, and that they only had the one child.
The old rabbi breathed deeply as he glanced up at the clock on his desk, more out of habit than any desire to know the time. He paused for a moment before returning to the letter. He had been so proud of his lawyer son then; why hadn't he made the first step toward a reconciliation? How he would have liked to have seen his grandson.
My ultimate decision did not require an acute legal mind, just a little common senseâalthough a lawyer who advises himself undoubtedly has a fool for a client. Contact, I decided, had to be direct, and a letter was the only method I felt Christina would find acceptable.
I wrote a simple message that Monday morning, then rewrote it several times before I telephoned Fleet Deliveries and asked them to hand it to her in person at the shop. When the young man left with the letter I wanted to follow him, just to be certain he had given it to the right person. I can still repeat it word for word:
Dear Christina,
You must know I live and work in Toronto. Can we meet? I will wait for you in the lounge of the Royal York Hotel every evening between six and seven this week. If you don't come be assured I will never trouble you again.
Benjamin
I arrived that evening nearly thirty minutes early. I remember taking a seat in a large impersonal lounge just off the main hall and ordering coffee.
“Will anyone be joining you, sir?” the waiter asked.
“I can't be sure,” I told him. No one did join me, but I still hung around until seven-forty.
By Thursday the waiter had stopped asking if anyone
would be joining me as I sat alone and allowed yet another cup of coffee to grow cold. Every few minutes I checked my watch. Each time a woman with blond hair entered the lounge my heart leaped but it was never the woman I hoped for.
would be joining me as I sat alone and allowed yet another cup of coffee to grow cold. Every few minutes I checked my watch. Each time a woman with blond hair entered the lounge my heart leaped but it was never the woman I hoped for.
It was just before seven on Friday that I finally saw Christina standing in the doorway. She wore a smart blue suit buttoned up almost to the neck and a white blouse that made her look as if she were on her way to a business conference. Her long fair hair was pulled back behind her ears to give an impression of severity but however hard she tried she could not be other than beautiful. I stood and raised my arm. She walked quickly over and took the seat beside me. We didn't kiss or shake hands and for some time didn't even speak.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
“I shouldn't have, it was foolish.”
Some time passed before either of us spoke again. “Can I pour you a coffee?” I asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Black?”
“Yes.”
“You haven't changed.”
How banal it all would have sounded to anyone eavesdropping.
She sipped her coffee.
I should have taken her in my arms right then, but I had no way of knowing that that was what she wanted. For several minutes we talked of inconsequential matters, always avoiding each other's eyes, until I suddenly said, “Do you realize that I still love you?”
Tears filled her eyes as she replied, “Of course I do. And I still feel the same about you now as I did the day we parted. And don't forget I have to see you every day, through Nicholas.”
She leaned forward and spoke almost in a whisper. She told me about the meeting with her parents that had taken place more than five years before as if we had not
been parted in between. Her father had shown no anger when he learned she was pregnant, but the family still left for Vancouver the following morning. There they had stayed with the Willings, a family also from Munich, who were old friends of the von Braumers. Their son, Klaus, had always been besotted with Christina and didn't care about her being pregnant, or even the fact she felt nothing for him. He was confident that, given time, it would all work out for the best.
been parted in between. Her father had shown no anger when he learned she was pregnant, but the family still left for Vancouver the following morning. There they had stayed with the Willings, a family also from Munich, who were old friends of the von Braumers. Their son, Klaus, had always been besotted with Christina and didn't care about her being pregnant, or even the fact she felt nothing for him. He was confident that, given time, it would all work out for the best.
It didn't, because it couldn't. Christina had always known it would never work, however hard Klaus tried. They even left Montreal in an attempt to make a go of it. Klaus bought her the shop in Toronto and every luxury that money could afford, but it made no difference. Their marriage was an obvious sham. Yet they could not bring themselves to distress their families further with a divorce, so they had led separate lives from the beginning.
As soon as Christina finished her story I touched her cheek and she took my hand and kissed it. From that moment on we saw each other every spare moment that could be stolen, day or night. It was the happiest year of my life, and I was unable to hide from anyone how I felt.
Our affairâfor that's how the gossips were describing itâinevitably became public. However discreet we tried to be, Toronto, I quickly discovered, is a very small place, full of people who took pleasure in informing those whom we also loved that we had been seen together regularly, even leaving my home in the early hours.
Then quite suddenly we were left with no choice in the matter: Christina told me she was pregnant again. Only this time it held no fears for' either of us.
Once she had told Klaus the settlement went through as quickly as the best divorce lawyer at Graham, Douglas & Wilkins could negotiate. We were married only a few days after the final papers were signed. We both regretted that Christina's parents felt unable to attend the wedding but I couldn't understand why you didn't come.
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