Milk and Honey (33 page)

He bit his lip, then said, “We’ll never really know about Song, will we?”

“Not in this lifetime.”

“Well, maybe that’s good. Finding out the truth means one of us loses big.”

“This way, we both just lose,” Decker said.

“But not quite as big,” Abel said. “We can both rationalize.” He turned to Decker. “How’d you find out about her?”

“We captured her husband that morning. He had her picture in his pocket.” Decker lit up another cigarette. “Same picture she gave you. My eyes almost dropped to the floor. Guy had no qualms about giving his wife away. Guess he figured if he gave her to us, we’d be lenient with him. Bad strategy—it left him dead. God, what an absolute friggin’
mess
!”

“And all this time, I thought it never bothered you.”

“What did you think?” Decker said. “I was made out of stone?”

“I just remember the look on your face when you fired,” Abel said. “You looked so happy.”

“Dope,” Decker said, “made everything look happy. No, I wasn’t happy, Atwater. I was
terrified
!” He finished a second can of beer and dropped his half-smoked cigarette in the empty can. “Like I said, if I was given a second chance, I might have handled it differently.” He stared at Abel. “But you still had no call to do what you did to Rina. She’s forgiven me, even forgiven
you
. But man, she was shaken. Poor girl has really been through the wringer. Then you pull a stunt like this.”

“It was low,” Abel said.

“She could have shot you. I’ve got to tell you, I’m surprised she didn’t.”

“I’m not,” Abel said. “I knew she couldn’t do it.”

“She should have.”

“Yeah, I won’t argue that.”

“Jesus, what happened to you that you’d pull a suicide act like that?”

“Like I said, I guess I just went nuts. I was coming off a really bad time. Really bad one this time, Pete. Tons of blackouts, waking up in strange places, getting arrested for vagrancy, drunk and disorderlies.”

“They’re not on your rap sheet.”

“They were in small towns—east and north of L.A. God only knows how I got there. You know, I can tell when I’m gonna have a low period. The memories start in my sleep. Then I start seeing things during the day, hearing gunshots every time a car backfires. My mind goes on strike until the memories start fading. Then I come out of it. And I was coming out of this one, too. But then this rape thing…”

Abel didn’t continue his thought, and Decker didn’t say anything. He’d almost made the case, but almost wasn’t good enough. He waited for Abel to speak.

“You bailing me out.” Abel spun the beer can on the tabletop. “Then, looking at me like I was a criminal…I thought to myself, Who are
you
to judge me? Then I saw Rina looking at me in the same way. Why’d you
tell
her?”

“I had to,” Decker said.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Hey, I did what I thought was right.”

“Even if it meant making me look like a jerk.”

“Buddy, you did that to yourself.”

“I didn’t
rape
that whore.”

“I’m not saying you did,” Decker said. “But you fucked her. You want to stay out of trouble, you don’t fuck whores.”

“Thank you, Reverend Decker…uh, excuse me—Rabbi Decker.”

“Abe, this is pointless.”

“Truce,” Abel said waving the gooseneck lamp. “Look, I know I shouldn’t ask you to do this, but I wrote something to Rina. Can you give it to her for me?”

“She left for New York last night,” Decker said. “Glad to get out of here.”

“Did I mess things up between you?”

“We’re okay. No thanks to you though.”

“Can you mail the letter for me? I don’t even want to know her address.”

“What’d you write?”

“You can read it,” Abel said. “No cheap excuses. Just a note of pure apology.” He paused, then said, “You tell her what the deal was?”

Decker didn’t answer right away. Finally, he said, “No…no, I just couldn’t. I fudged. I told her we had a big blowout over a girl.” Decker laughed hollowly. “Talk about a bad choice of words.”

Abel said, “Why didn’t you tell her?”

“I don’t know.” Decker cleared his throat. “It’s too hard to talk about it. Like you said, Song was only sixteen, and I still think about that a lot. Of course, I was only nineteen—a war of teenagers. We were all so young and stupid. The scene repeats on me every once in a while.”

“Our little secret,” Abel said. “It’s what we have between us.” With his fingertips, he traced part of an imaginary barrier separating him and Decker. He said, “And it’s what we have between us.”

The door to the rabbi’s study was open, inviting. The room was done in warm dark woods. Two walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with tomes of Jewish law and commentary, volumes of Jewish history, sets of American jurisprudence, and secular works on philosophy. A third
wall was covered with display cases of antique Jewish artifacts and religious objects, including an old set of phylacteries made in Czarist Russia. They had been owned by Decker’s biological father—a religious man who had never seen fit to marry, rather remarry. Decker had met him only once. He’d looked up his adoption records and, after introducing himself to the old man by phone, took a quick trip out to New York to meet him in person. They had nothing in common except physical appearance, yet some kind of bond must have formed in the old man’s mind. All his religious articles had been willed to Decker.

The fourth wall was taken up by an oversized picture window that framed a canyon view of towering eucalyptus trees, shrubbery, wildflowers, and mountains. Rav Schulman’s desk was in front of the window, placed away from the wall so that chairs could be positioned on either side. The rabbi sat with his back to the window, and when Decker entered the room, he motioned him to the chair with the view.

But Decker didn’t sit right away. Instead, he studied his father’s phylacteries.

Rav Schulman regarded Decker’s restlessness, had known something was amiss when his student called him immediately after the Sabbath requesting to learn. Schulman had told Decker to come to his study an hour after his Saturday night lecture to his rabbinic students.

Decker shifted his gaze to Schulman. As usual, the rav was dressed in his black silk suit, starched white shirt, black tie, and high-polished oxfords. The old man met Decker’s stare with perceptive eyes. Though Decker had second thoughts about being here, it was too late now. Schulman knew he was troubled, so he might as well get it over with.

Decker spoke first, saying, “Rabbi, how much of our behavior do you think is inherited?”

Schulman shrugged. “I wouldn’t even hazard a guess, Akiva.”

Calling Decker by his Jewish name. His name for over a year. But it still sounded foreign.

“My father”—Decker paused, then clarified—“my adopted father, my
real
father, I should say, is a very gentle man. Gruff outside but a sweetheart inside. I’m anything but gentle. I wonder if my biological father had a nasty temper.”

The rav stood, his eyes pained by Decker’s question. He twirled the tip of his silver beard around his finger. “What’s really on your mind, Akiva?”

“I met an old friend of mine,” Decker said. “We served in Vietnam together. He brought back memories—of myself—I’d just as soon forget. But it wasn’t just him that made me aware of this. Once in a while, something will happen and I’ll just lose control. I get this murderous look in my eye. Happened just the other day with Rina.” Decker blushed. “You knew Rina had been in town, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Schulman said. “We had several nice long talks.”

The old man had to know they were sleeping together, but Decker couldn’t read it in his face.

“I owe you a
mazel tov
, Akiva,” Schulman said.

“Thank you,” Decker said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for her to say yes.” He cleared his throat. “I want to be a good husband to her, a good father to her boys. I want…I don’t want them to be afraid of me. But sometimes it’s as if I’m possessed. Something just takes control of me.”

“Yetzer Harah,”
Rav Schulman said.

Decker considered his answer. The
Yetzer Harah
—the evil inclination. As good a description as any. He said, “It’s not lust or gluttony or greed. It’s just plain evil. Desire to destroy. What the he—what’s
wrong
with me?”

“What do you do when your
Yetzer Harah
is strong in you?” Schulman asked.

“I usually manage to hold it in until I get off work,”
Decker said. “I work out the horse—too vigorously. I take potshots at my barn. If someone’s around, I’ll scream at them. Once, I kicked my dog. Funny thing is, these rages aren’t necessarily brought on by anything big. It’s just a feeling that overwhelms me.”

“You seem to be controlling yourself pretty well,” Schulman said. “Though we should be kind to animals of course.
Tzar ba’alei chaim
.”

“The only trouble is, now I live alone, and no one except maybe the dog and my horses know about my temper.” Decker faced the old man. “But that will change. Rina saw me lose control once. I don’t want her to see it again.”

“Well,” Schulman said, “it’s nice to be able to be perfect, but we all lose our tempers—”

“But—”

“Wait,” Schulman said holding an upright hand.

“Sorry.”

“You get angry, I get angry, everyone gets angry. What you seem to be talking about”—The Rabbi spoke in a crisp, accented voice—“is extraordinary anger, which I suspect has something to do with your war experiences, otherwise why would you bring that up in the first place?”

Decker didn’t answer.

The Rosh Yeshiva went over to his desk, pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. He poured a big one for himself, a smaller one for Decker, and said, “So, do you want to tell me about it?”

Decker held the glass, swirled the whiskey. “It’s hard.”

“Let me guess.” Schulman downed the first shot. “You killed someone. You probably killed more than one person, but one specific person is sticking in your mind. Notice I used the word ‘kill’ and not ‘murder.’ A war situation, Akiva, you cannot consider yourself a murderer…unless the killing was gratuitous.”

“I didn’t think so at the time,” Decker said. “I swear—”

“No
shevuah
, please,” the old man said. “Swearing is serious business.”

“I really thought that this girl—she was a sixteen-year-old girl—was enemy. I shot her at point-blank range. She…exploded all over me. Her blood was still warm…God, it was awful.”

“Sit,” Schulman demanded. Decker obeyed. The old man said, “Did you rape this girl before—”

“God no!”

“Just a question,” the old man said. “You’d be surprised what kind of confessions have come through this office.”

“I thought Jews don’t confess.”

“To God, we confess everyday,” the rav said. “But confession to man is not a part of our religion. Unofficially, however, my
bochrim
have told me things. Believe me, you’re not the first young man to tell me his dark secrets.”

He poured himself another shot and urged Decker to drink. “Since this isn’t confession in the Catholic sense—where a parishioner unburdens his soul and a priest listens and forgives in the name of God—I’m going to tell you one of
my
war stories.”

“Please,” Decker said.

“You know I was in the camps,
nu
?”

Decker nodded.

Schulman said, “I escaped in a very strange way. Only God could have fated such a rescue. I was young, but I came down with a very bad case of pneumonia. No use to the Nazis anymore. The Germans took a truckload of us out into the forest to be shot. Why out there, I don’t know. The grounds around Auschwitz were piled high with dead bodies, maybe they were running out of room.”

Decker winced, but Schulman was calm.

“So they drove us out for miles,” the old man continued. “Deep into the forest until they found a clearing. They stripped us naked and commanded us to line up against a
row of trees. Oaks. That I remember, strangely enough—the leaves, the bark…Anyway, the Nazis ordered us on our knees, backs straight up, hands behind our heads—typical execution position. They had dogs with them in case any of us decided to make a run for it. I thought, This is it. I said
Shema
.

“But as we were lining up to be shot, I limped behind a tree and tried to hide. I should have been spotted at any moment—the tree trunk was narrow, minimum shield—when suddenly, poof, I’m swallowed up by the earth.”

Decker stared at him.

“Just like that!” Schulman snapped his fingers. “I went straight down. I figured out later that I must have stepped into some kind of animal trap. No one noticed my absence, because who counted Jewish bodies? Piles of leaves and mulch covered my head.”

Schulman paused a moment and knitted his brow in concentration.

“I heard everything. The crying, the moaning, the shooting. Pop, pop, pop. One by one. All the while, I’m shaking, thinking at any moment I will be discovered. I was petrified I was going to sneeze or cough. But I went unnoticed.”

“A miracle,” Decker said.

“Truly,” Schulman said. “A
ness
—a miracle from
Hashem
. Now, to make a long story short—”

“No, please—” Decker said. “Don’t cut it short for my sake.”

“I cut it short for my sake,” Schulman said. “You don’t like your memories, I don’t like mine.”

Decker said nothing.

Schulman said, “I somehow survived my bout of pneumonia—
baruch Hashem
it was the summertime—and I became a very sturdy young man, living like an animal in the forest for two years. Throughout my wanderings, I met very few people. Hermits with beards down to their knees. Cra
zies, feral, bestial people who lived by their instincts and wits. Maybe even a few of the crazies were escaped Jews like myself. But no one would let on,
nu
?”

Decker shook his head.

“Finally, I came upon a righteous Gentile couple who befriended me. Allowed me to live in their barn an entire winter. They provided me with blankets, hot coals, and coarse bread. This couple even dared to risk their lives by hiding me in their haystack when their SS son came on a surprise visit.”