The Outsider (35 page)

“But why?” Millie pressed him. “You don't say why.”

“He can't say why,” Martin said.

“Oh, don't make it all that mysterious,” Lucy said with some exasperation. “One does something. It can be explained.”

“Perhaps by some,” Martin agreed. “By others, perhaps not. We say a man tries to save his own soul, but what does that mean? We don't know what a soul is and we don't know what saving it means. We are so confused about good and evil that one man's saint is another man's monster. I can't explain why I'm a minister. I only know that I must be.”

“There are things that can't be explained,” David said. “All we have are words. We use a word like love. It can mean a hundred different things, and all of them are elusive. I have heard ministers and rabbis say that they love God, that they fear God, that they serve God, that they honor God, and truly I don't know what any of them mean. Martin had to be a minister; I had to be a rabbi. It may have been a misfortune in my life, but there it is and I have to live with it.”

“Still, neither of you can say why you are what you are.”

“I'm not sure any man can.”

This came back to him now. He was here in Washington for no other reason he could think of, except that he was a rabbi — and as a rabbi he could not refuse, and this was the result of a strange mixture: the war, his son, himself. He still had an hour before Rabbi Gerson was to join him for dinner, and he drew a hot bath and soaked himself and argued with himself.

The moment he set foot on the plane at La Guardia, he had begun to have a disquieting feeling about this evening. Della had driven him to the airport. “Good luck, dear Rabbi,” she had said to him, which had probably planted the seed that started his brooding. In the tub, his mind picked out a tasteless joke, in which one man says to another, “What is your son's profession?” “He's a rabbi,” the second man says, and to this, the first man snorts, “What kind of work is that for a Jewish boy?”

When he was speaking at Wellesley, a psychology teacher had gone out of her way in an attempt to seduce him, only to break down and admit that she desired a clinical experience with a rabbi. He told the story to Della, who said, “Clinical baloney. She wanted to be laid, Rabbi. The perks of the road, my dear David. At last I see a reason for being a rabbi.”

Now as David dressed in what he always wore on such occasions, navy blue blazer, gray trousers, white shirt, and striped blue and gray tie, he decided that his brooding and ruminating, and his evoking reasons for his profession arose from the fact that he had accepted Rabbi Gerson's invitation and had sent Rabbi Gerson his speech. Gerson had requested it. David should have said that he never sent a copy of a speech ahead of him, and indeed he had delayed sending it until the previous day. Rabbi Gerson, when he arrived, was sufficiently unctuous to make David aware that he had received the script and read it.

“My dear Rabbi Hartman,” he said, “how very good finally to meet you. I do feel honored.” Excessive, David felt. Gerson was a large, heavy-set man with a thick neck and intense dark eyes. He underlined things with his eyes. “Shall we eat here?” he said, making it more a statement than a question. “We can talk privately.”

The last thing in the world David desired was to be pressed into a private discussion with Rabbi Gerson, but he saw no way to avoid it without hurting Gerson's feelings. To compensate for what David might have regarded as insensitivity on his part, Rabbi Gerson managed to insert in passing that of course his temple was picking up all the costs as well as David's honorarium. “Which is no great sacrifice on our part, David. We're a large and reasonably wealthy congregation. We seat a thousand people, and we can put up folding chairs for five hundred more. That's not because the Jews in Washington are necessarily
frum
— and incidentally I must say we have a good many members from Maryland and Virginia — but because any politician who wants to put his message to the Jews finds ours a most useful pulpit. And believe me, we have had the whole spectrum, from President to Secretary of State to Speaker of the House, and most of what's in between. We get maximum press and media coverage — all of which brings me to the draft of your speech, which I read this morning.”

“Did it disturb you?”

“No, David, it did not disturb me at all. I know how you think, and I agree with most of it. But it will disturb the very devil out of most of my congregation.”

“Then perhaps if most of your congregation is inhabited by the devil, it or he or whatever should be disturbed out of them.”

“Oh, come on, let's not get silly about it.”

“Ernest, I like to think that I am never silly, although I sound silly frequently and even more frequently stupid. Now why don't we get down to specifics. Tell me what will disturb all these good people.”

“For one thing, Muste. I have nothing against a rabbi quoting a Protestant minister. We're ecumenical enough for that. But A. J. Muste — he was a red, a wild, crazy radical.”

“Oh, no, he wasn't,” David said gently. “He was a Protestant minister and a good and saintly man.”

“Well, after I read your draft, I called Jeffrey, Cootes, and Herblin — three of the most important Protestant ministers in town, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodist — and all of them agreed that they'd call the cops before they'd let A. J. Muste use their pulpits. Now just let me read you the quote you use in your draft from A. J. Muste: ‘The world waits for a great nation that has the common sense, the imagination, and the faith to devote to the science and practice of nonviolence so much as a tenth of the money, brains, skill, and devotion which it now devotes to the madness of war preparation,'”

“A very simple, straightforward statement. Thousands of others have said the same thing, from George Bernard Shaw to Mark Twain.”

“Maybe so, but not in the context of your talk. You take a rigid pacifist position. You say that under absolutely no circumstances is it permissible to arm a man and send him out to take the life of another human being. You say that this is the basis of all ethics.”

“I said I would talk about ethics, and you agreed.”

“David,” he fairly shouted, “this is not ethics! This is madness.”

“Ernest, Ernest,” David said gently, “the simplest dictionary definition of ethics is the principles of honor and morality. The basis upon which we function as rabbis was specified by our father and teacher Rabbi Hillel. When the nonbeliever came to him and begged Hillel to teach him the Law, Hillel said, ‘Do not unto others what thou wouldst not have them do unto thee. There is the Law. All the rest is commentary.'”

“Damnit, David, you insult my intelligence! Would there be an Israel today without the Israeli Army? Would there be a world today without the Allied armies that fought Hitler? Jesus said almost the same as Hillel, but it's not the Christian definition of ethics.” He picked up the draft of David's speech and shook it. “You leave no room here. No room for any thinking except yours. I can't have it that way, David. As much as I honor and respect you, I have my own position. And yours. They will hoot you off the
bimah.
”

“I don't believe it.”

“Take my word for it. This congregation has raised millions for Israel. Our sacred plaque at the entrance has one hundred and seventy-three names of members who have died in World War One, World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam. Are you going to face their relatives and friends and tell them that no war is just?”

David was silent now, studying Rabbi Gerson.

“David?”

Still he was silent.

“David,” Rabbi Gerson said, “I heard you speak on the religions of the Semites at American University three years ago. I heard you field the questions. You don't need this draft. All I ask is that you modify your position somewhat. Simply make it palatable.”

“But then, it's not my position, is it?”

“For one night, does it make that much difference?”

“To me. In any case, I know you're not in a hole. You made provisional arrangements before you came here.”

“I had to.”

“Of course. Who is he?”

“Harry Fergerson.”

“Chairman of the House Committee on Ethics?”

“That's right. David, we still intend to send you your full stipend.”

“Please don't. If you do, I will only return it.”

“Give it to your synagogue.”

“They don't need it.”

“All right. You're the most stubborn man I ever knew. We'll still pay the expenses. You must take that.”

“Yes, that I'll accept.”

“I wish it could be you. We advertised you. People want to hear you.”

“I'm right here,” David said without malice. “All you have to do is ask me.”

Gerson shook his head. “I can't.”

David considered the possibility of returning on the shuttle that same evening, but he found that he was quite tired. He had brought Tolstoy's
War and Peace
with him, a book he had meant to read for years, and which he had started and put aside at least half a dozen times. This time he was well into it, over two hundred pages into it, and lost in the charm and complexity of the wonderful and colorful nineteenth-century Russian families. Strangely, he was not terribly upset by the fact that after his trip to Washington, Rabbi Gerson had decided that his speech would blow the roof off the synagogue, which Rabbi Gerson was careful to call a temple. David did not agree with him, and right now he was much more relaxed sitting here in his hotel room reading
War and Peace.
He thought of how pleasant it would be to belong to one of those extended families that Tolstoy wrote about. His own family was attenuated rather than extended. Sarah had married a very nice Protestant boy. David had thought that he could take that in his stride, but once it happened, he found it quite disturbing, even though Martin had officiated at the wedding ceremony. They were both teachers without tenure as yet at Arizona State, where Sarah taught archeology and the boy taught physics. Sarah had a year-old baby, a girl she had named Priscilla, after the boy's mother. Aaron was happily writing sports for the
Los Angeles Times.
Aaron's delight in it puzzled David a good deal, since once out of prison, his service over, Aaron had dropped both engineering and medicine as career objectives. David got out to see both children at least twice a year, but the distance, both geographic and otherwise, between himself and his children always oppressed him, and since Aaron had fallen out with the Andrews girl, there was nothing to keep him here.

He tried to concentrate on the book and found himself dozing, and rather than go to bed at this hour, he went down to the hotel bar and ordered himself a Scotch and soda.

David had seated himself at the bar, which was rather crowded, just a few empty seats here and there. One of the empty seats was alongside him, and a moment later this was occupied by a good-looking, dark-haired woman of forty or so. She glanced at David once or twice, evidently measuring him before she decided to strike up a conversation, and then she asked him whether he came there very often.

“First time. I'm from out of town.”

“Where out of town?”

“I'm afraid you never heard of it.”

“Try me. There are few places I haven't heard about.”

“Leighton Ridge, Connecticut.”

“I never heard of it.” She stared at him approvingly, nodding slightly. “What do you do there?”

“I'm the local rabbi.”

“You're putting me on.”

“No, not at all.”

“Rabbis don't look like you.”

“How do they look?” David asked, smiling.

“They look Jewish — “ She bit off her words. “Good God, I did it, didn't I? I'm so sorry. But people do look Jewish, don't they?”

“Yes, I suppose they do.” He finished his drink, said good night to her, and went back to his room. He was very tired but no longer drowsy, and it turned into one of those long, sleepless nights, during which he brooded over his own unwillingness to respond with anger to so many situations that demanded it.

The following morning, striding through the terminal to board the shuttle for New York, he heard his name called and turned to see Jack Osner — the first time David had seen him since Mel Klein's funeral. Aside from the fact that he had put on some more weight around the waistline, he was little changed.

“Glad to see you hale and hearty,” Osner said, falling into step beside him. “From what Gerson indicated last night, I expected total collapse.”

“Well, we had a rather basic difference of opinion, and he had to have some explanation for his pinch hitter.”

“Of course you did. If the damned fool had a brain in his head, he never would have invited you. Now Fergerson, that's another matter. That old whoremaster would sell his own mother at bargain rates if it meant a few dollars in his pocket. Head of the Ethics Committee! He not only has a wife and three kids and goes steady with a gal who works for the Commerce Department, but he visits a massage parlor every week.”

“How on earth would you know that?” David wondered.

“Because I have the same masseuse, and she doesn't limit herself to massage. Anyway, Fergerson talks too much, and one day he's going to talk himself into a neat scandal. I can't say that I mind. The idiot's a Democrat. Shall we sit together?”

David realized that Jack Osner had forgotten he had parted from David in anger five years before. Evidently, he lived a very full life, in which each day crowded out the past. Just as well.

“Of course,” David agreed.

Settled in the plane and awaiting the takeoff, Osner explained, “In case you've been wondering why the new chief of the Security Council uses the shuttle —”

“It never crossed my mind.”