A Twist in the Tale (26 page)

When I walked back on to the track only
the ground
staff were
still around I took one
last look at the finishing line before I
strolled over to the Forsyth Library. If
elt
unable to
face the usual team get-together,
so
I bird to settle down to write an essay on
the rights of married women.

The library was almost empty that
Saturday
horning
and I was well into my
third page when I heard a voice say, “I hope
I’m not interrupting you but you didn’t
come to Joe’s. “
Hooked
up to see Christina
standing on the
other side of the table.
Father, I didn’t know what to say.
Ijwt
stared up
at
the beautiful creature in her fashionable
blue mini-skirt and tight-.fitting sweater
that
emphasised
the most perfect breasts,
and said nothing.

“I was the one who shouted ‘Jew boy ‘when
you were still at High School. I’ve felt
ashamed about it ever since. I wanted to
apologist to you on the night of the prom
dance but couldn’t summon up the courage
with Greg standing there.
“ I
nodded my
understanding – I couldn’t think of any words
that seemed appropriate. “I near spoke to
him again,
“ she
said. “But I don’t suppose
you even remember Greg. “

I just smiled. “Care for coffee?” l asked, tying to sound as if I
wouldn’t mind if she
replied, “I’m
very, I must get back to Bob. “

“I’d like that very much,
“ she
said.

I took her to the library coffee shop, which
was about all I could afford at the time. She
never bothered to explain what had
happened to Bob Richards, and I never
asked.

Christina seemed to know so much about
me that I felt embarrassed. She asked me to
forgive her for what she had shouted on the
track that day two years before. She made
no excuses, placed the blame on no one else,
just asked to be forgiven.

Christina told me she was hoping to join
me at McGill in September, to major in German. “Bit of a cheek,” she
admitted, “as it is
my native tongue.
“

We spent the rest of that summer in each
other’s company. We saw St Joan
again,
and even queued for a film called Dr No that
was all the craze at the time. We worked
together, we together, we played together, but
we slept alone.

I said little about Christina to you at the
time, but I’d bet you knew already how
much I loved her; I could netter hide anything from you. And after all
your
teaching
of
forgiveness and understanding you could
hardly
disapprove.

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 toward 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
overre
-acting. We both knew I wasn’t. They
quip 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
had
been, when it was the
first time for both of us?

I told her I would marry her- don’t all men the first time? –
only
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 l 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.

Loon 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 h change your
mind about marrying me.”

I sat in my room at McGill all that afternoon reading and pacing –
mostly pacing - but she never came back, and I didn’t go in search of her until
it was dark. I crept round 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 road 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.

Her father answered the door.

“What do you want?” he asked, his eyes never leaving me 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 be didn’t slam it; Adjust closed it, which
made it somehow born worse.
l
stood outside in the
road staring up at her room for over an hour until the light went out. Then I
walked home. I recall there was a light drizzle that night and few people were
on the streets. I tried to work out what I should do next, although the situ-
ation
seemed hopeless to mc. 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?” 1 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
honoured
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 12th, 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 an enforced absence might
male
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 post
one of them. I even phoned, but it was never her voice that answered. Wit 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 girl from Radcliffe who
were
reading law,
history or science, and ones with a shop assistant who Ricer read anything. Can
you imagine, in the very act of making loon, always thinking of another woman?
I seemed to be doing my work on autopilot, and corn my passion for running
became reduced to an hour’s jagging 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 l 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 eye
I could feel that way about.

Graham Douglas &, Wilkins found me a spacious apartment overlooking
the park and started me off at a handsome salad. In return I worked all the
hours God - whoever’s God – made. Hi 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 l 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 Hertz,
but that too ended – on a Thursday.

I was driving to
the of
dice that morning - it
must have been a little after eight, which was late for me – when 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 five – my 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 se-
rene
and only reminded me why she was rarely out of my
thoughts. Her son – our son – was wrapped up in an oversized duffle coat and
his head was covered by a baseball hat that informed me that he supported the
Toronto Dolphins. Sadly, it really stopped me 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 on to a bus. That
particular Thursday I must have been an appalling
counsellor
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-parted the car and walked
quickly across the road – feeling like a sleazy private detective who steeds
his life peeping through keyholes.

What I saw took me by surprise – not 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 ounce 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 ‘
Villing’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?” 1 asked, tying 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. “