“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.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Yeah, this is Ben Goralsky talking. All right, I’ll hold on… Hello, hello…” At the other end he could hear someone talking, and then he realized the voice was not talking to him but to someone else in the other room at the other end.
“Mr. Goralsky? Ted Stevenson speaking.”
“Oh, hello Ted, nice to hear your voice. Where you calling from?”
“From our offices.”
“On Sunday? Don’t you guys ever stop working?”
“There are no regular hours and no days off for top management in this company, Mr. Goralsky, not when there’s important business to be done. And if you join us, you’ll work the same way.”
Goralsky had an inkling of the purpose of the call, and the implication of the “if” was not lost on him.
“We were going to call you yesterday, as a matter of fact,” Stevenson went on, “but we knew it was your holiday and assumed you would be at your synagogue.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t go. I was right here all the time. My father took sick, and with a man that age-”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. How is he?”
“He’s all right now, but for a while it was kind of like touch and go.”
“Well, I’m delighted to hear he’s on the mend. Give the old gentleman our regards and best wishes for his recovery.”
“Thanks. He’ll be pleased.”
The voice at the other end shifted gears abruptly. “We have been somewhat disturbed over here, Mr. Goralsky, over the action of your stock in the last week or so.”
“Yeah, well, Ted, you know how it is. Rumors of a merger get out. We tried to keep it mum at this end, and as far as I know no one here has leaked. But when your crew came down, someone may have recognized somebody in your party-I tell you, when it first got back to me, you could have knocked me over with a feather. But I guess that’s the way it is in these things-”
“No, Mr. Goralsky, that’s not the way it is. We know that there always are rumors preceding a merger, and that can affect your stock. But your stock has climbed so precipitously, we did a little investigating. We inquired among some of our good friends in the market down in Boston, and we learned that the reason for the climb was not the rumor of a merger with us but some new process.”
“Well, that turned out to be a dud, I guess,” said Ben unhappily.