Earth and High Heaven (32 page)

Eric, what are we doing? How are we going to live, you without me and I without you?

“Would you like to know what I think?” asked David suddenly beside him.

He started and then answered shortly, “Not if it's what everybody else thinks.”

“It isn't. At least it's not what Mother and Dad seem to think. I told them that if you decided you wanted to marry Erica Drake, I was going to back you up.”

“You're going to back
me
up?” he said incredulously.

“Well,” said David shrugging, “Erica anyhow. I don't know about you yet, I want to hear your side of it first.” He paused and then remarked, “I gather the chief objection to her is the fact that she's not Jewish.”

“Obviously. There aren't any other objections.”

His brother glanced at him briefly and said, “I didn't realize that you were so particular.”

“It's not me, for God's sake,” said Marc irritably. “I don't give a damn whether she's Jewish or not. It's what will happen to her — what has already happened to her, in less than three months. You don't know how much she's changed. She's been getting it from every direction because of me — because just by being what I am, I lay her open to it. And I can't help it, I can't even do anything to make it easier for her. I just go on making it harder.”

He said, “I keep seeing her the way she was when I met her ...” and broke off, as the picture of Erica in his mind divided into two impressions, one three months old and the other less than a week old, two portraits labeled “Before” and “After,” before and after Marc Reiser, only reversing the usual order because After was always supposed to be a great improvement over Before, instead of the other way round.

Two portraits side by side, of Erica as she had been the day he had met her, with that look of having come to terms with life, and Erica as she had been up at the clearing near the top of the mountain the day he had left her, bewildered and beaten.

He said to the short, stocky figure marching along beside him, “You haven't any idea how much she's changed — My God, how much she's changed! She doesn't even look really young any more. If I'd deliberately set out to see how much damage I could do, I couldn't have made a better job of it. What kind of case have we got? I haven't given her anything compared to what I've already taken away from her.”

Not for years and perhaps never again would he walk this road as he had walked it so many times with a fishing rod and a basket slung over his shoulder, this road which led back through the fields and the bush to the hills, standing like sentinels against the sky, but he had forgotten where he was; he might just as well have been walking down a city street, he who had always loved Algoma and the bush and had always hated cities.

He said to David, who was having a hard time keeping up with him, his legs were so much shorter than Marc's, “The first weekend we went away, she had a copy of The Shropshire Lad with her, and when I picked it up it fell open at those lines that begin:

‘
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle
...

Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.
'”

“It's no use going on like that, Marc.”

“Do you remember the rest of it?”

His brother did not answer.

Still walking blindly up the road, toward the bush which began abruptly at the edge of the last stony field just ahead of them, Marc said,

“
‘Think rather — call to thought if you now grieve a little,

The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.'
”

“All right,” said David, exasperated. “You don't need to go on, I know every word of it. So that's your idea of Erica now. All you have to do is be noble, make your exit, and Erica will promptly forget all the horror and scorn and fear and indignation and go back to sleep again. Is that it?”

“I suppose so.”

“She must be a nice, simple soul.”

He glanced at Marc again and asked, “By the way, just what did you think was going to happen while you were home this weekend?”

The road had entered the bush and narrowed down to a rough track which looked as though it might end at every turn, but which actually continued for miles, winding its way through the trees and undergrowth and bracken and then through the hills and on into the heart of the mining country. Staring at a flaming sumac a few yards ahead, Marc said, “I suppose I thought there would be something that she couldn't ...”

“Something you belonged to and she didn't?”

“Yes.”

“And was there?”

Marc shook his head. “It was the opposite. Because she wasn't with me, I felt as though I didn't belong either. I kept wishing she was here, so I could take her around and show her things. I even felt that way about the service this afternoon — how interested she would have been, and how much it would have impressed her, because it is impressive, and how much more it would have meant to me if she'd been beside me.” He stopped, embarrassed, and remarked, “I guess it sounds pretty silly, doesn't it? After all, nothing could be much more exclusively Jewish than the Day of Atonement.”

“I don't see what that has to do with it. Does it sound silly to you?”

“No, but it probably would to everybody else.”

“Oh? And what have they got to do with it?”

There was a bridge crossing a small, clear stream just ahead, and they left the road and sat down beside the bridge at a place where the light came filtering down through the trees from the west and shone on the clean sand underneath the water.

As he felt through the pockets of his windbreaker for one of the several pipes he always carried about with him, David asked, “Has Erica ever said anything at all, to justify this theory of yours that you'd do less damage in the long run, by just walking out on her?”

“No, but ...”

“Isn't that something she's entitled to decide for herself? Or isn't Erica entitled to decide anything for herself? I don't wonder she's changed so much in the last three months, but I wouldn't blame it all on her father if I were you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're enough to drive anybody nuts.”

“Do you mean to say that you think it's all my fault?” asked Marc incredulously.

He shrugged and said, “Well, not
all
your fault. Say about ninety-eight percent.”

“Why?”

“Because you've let her down too. That makes it unanimous, doesn't it? Only you were the one who mattered most to her, so that if you hadn't let her down, it would have made all the difference. I suppose,” David went on conversationally, “that you've been doing it nice and gradually, a bit of letting down here, and a bit of letting down there, so that she really had nothing to hang on to, while she was fighting her family ...”

“Shut up,” said Marc, suddenly.

“I thought you wanted to know why she's changed so much, and whether what has been happening to her is quite as inevitable as you seem to think it is. You said that you couldn't do anything to make things easier for her; all you could do was just go on making it harder. I don't agree.”

He paused, looking across the stream at a pine which had fallen down the bank and was lying with its upper branches in the water. “Must have been a bad electric storm lately,” he remarked. “The split's quite fresh.” Then he said deliberately, “You and I weren't brought up to play games at other people's expense. You're old enough to know better, and you're starting too late to be able to get away with it. Don't fool yourself, laddie, you won't get away with it. You're going to find out that for every person who's stepped out of line and lived to regret it, there are two people who stayed in line because they got their values mixed and lost their nerve, and who have lived to regret it still more. You don't hear about those people because they're still in line where they don't show. You only hear about the others.”

“Do you believe that?” asked Marc, startled.

“I wouldn't say it if I didn't. From my own experience, that is, from what the people themselves have told me, I'd say the proportion was somewhat higher than two to one. In the old days, the difference in religion was probably a real barrier to mixed marriages, but you don't take your religion that seriously and I don't suppose Erica does either, so what you'd be up against would come chiefly from outside. That makes it a lot easier, and if you and Erica are really in love with each other, then all you have to do is figure out what matters most to you — whether you'd rather be out of line with Erica, or stay in line without her. You can't have it both ways.”

“I wish Eric could.”

David said sharply, “She hasn't been getting it either way so far, has she?”

“I guess not.”

He saw Marc's expression and said, “Sorry, but sympathy is not what you need at the moment. What you need is a good swift kick in the pants.” It seemed to Marc that what he needed most at the moment was time to think, and he said, “I wish you'd shut up.”

“All right,” said David, settling back with his shoulders against a log.

He wanted to think about Erica, and with a shock he realized that in the end, it had taken David to get him to listen to her. Only a few days before, when she had been trying all over again to tell him what mattered most to her, she had said, “I wish you'd believe me,” and when he had protested that he did believe her, she had answered hopelessly, “No, not quite.” Like her father, he had always assumed that Erica did not know what she would be letting herself in for, and again like Charles Drake, he had considered himself to be in some mysterious way better qualified to decide what would be best for her in the long run than Erica was herself.

In refusing to believe her, he had placed himself beyond her influence and relegated her to a position where all she could do was to stand back and watch him being influenced by other people and in effect, being influenced against her. He had shut her out, although now he remembered exactly the way she had said, “Give me a chance to understand, and if I let you down, well then you can shut me out. I guess I'll have deserved it. It's not my fault that I'm not Jewish and I can't do anything about it, but surely, surely the fact that I love you so much makes up for it!”

The day he had met her he had asked her what she wanted most and she had said, “Just what every other woman wants; I'm afraid I'm not very original,” and the last day, three months later, he had asked her again, for somewhat different reasons, and she had said, “I want you to
believe
— to believe in us. I don't care how long I have to wait, that isn't what matters. I don't think I matter much either. What does matter is you, and what I can't bear is the idea of your going overseas with nothing to come back to at the end of it but a world in which there is no place for you and me.”

“What's wrong?” asked David, watching him.

“Nothing,” said Marc. “I was just thinking.”

They were silent again and finally David asked, “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Go ahead,” said Marc without interest.

“Is there anyone in this collection of people who are so dead against your marrying Erica, or her marrying you, who happens to know both of you?”

“No.”

“Is there anyone who knows both of you who's in favour of it? I don't mean people who just know you casually.”

Marc thought for a moment and then answered, “Yes, there's one. Erica's sister Miriam.”

“Good,” said David. “That makes two of us.”

Marc almost missed it at first, and then he demanded, “What do you mean, two of you?”

“Miriam and me.”

“You don't know Eric ...”

“Well,” said David, “not intimately, but I did spend last Saturday night with her from six o'clock till my train left at eleven.”

“You did
what
?”

“I told you I was in Montreal for a three-day clinic.”

“Yes, but ...”

“You told me about her that night we ran into each other at the Rosenbergs' in Toronto, and then when you wrote to say that you were on draft and going to Petawawa, you sounded even more depressed about the whole thing, so I figured that since I didn't have anything to do from five until my train left at eleven, I might just as well have a look at her and see what it was all about.”

“How did you find her?”

“I just picked the Drake with the fanciest address. Got the right one first shot,” he added with a certain amount of pride. “Anyhow, I rang up, and when I got her, I said I was your brother from the backwoods, and would she care to have dinner with me. She sort of gasped and then she said, ‘You're David,' as though I'd suddenly dropped down from Mars. I don't know whether she was crying or not, it sounded like it anyhow. There was a longish silence, because I couldn't think of anything to say, until finally I asked her if she'd mind if I called for her at six so that we could have a couple of drinks ...”

“You called for her?” repeated Marc.

“Naturally,” said David. “I don't make it as easy for people to dictate terms to me as you do.”

“Go on,” said Marc, staring at him.

“Well, she said she'd be ready at six, and I got a taxi so much sooner than I expected that I arrived there promptly at a quarter to.”

“Did you meet any of the family?”

“Yes,” said David. “I met Drake.” He picked up a flat stone and sent it skimming out over the surface of the water upstream. “I was standing with my back to the door looking at that picture over the fireplace when someone said behind me, ‘Mr. Reiser, I'm Erica's father.' As soon as I turned round and he saw my face, it was obvious from his expression that something was wrong somewhere ...”

“I'll bet it was,” said Marc grimly.

“No, not the way you mean,” his brother answered him immediately. “He was just puzzled. I said that I was afraid he'd got me mixed up with you, and that I was Dr. David Reiser, so we shook hands and he gave me a cigarette and then asked if I'd like a drink. I said, ‘Yes, thanks very much,' so he got one for each of us and one for Erica when she came down. He said he'd just heard the maid say the name Reiser, when she'd gone up to tell Erica I was there, so naturally he thought it was you.”

He paused and then added deliberately, “The next thing Drake said after that was, ‘I'm sorry to say that I've never met your brother.' And there was no doubt he meant it.”

“He said that?” asked Marc incredulously. “But why? Why after all this time, for God's sake? I don't get it.”

“I gathered from Erica, that her father's opposition had collapsed, the day after he heard that his son was missing. I don't suppose he felt much like going on with it after that. He looked pretty well shot when I saw him. Anyhow, he asked me what I was doing in Montreal, and I told him that I'd come down for a clinic. He wanted to know where I practiced, and I told him that too, and he seemed genuinely interested and kept on asking me questions, so I kept on talking. It may seem funny to you but I liked him. And by the way, the last thing he said to me was to tell you that he hoped he'd have a chance of meeting you when you're in Montreal on Wednesday.”

“That's day after tomorrow.” He was still trying to believe it, when he heard David asking abruptly why he had allowed Drake to get away with it.

“Get away with it?” said Marc.

“Yes. Why didn't you go and see him at the very beginning, before this whole mess had a chance to develop?”

“I couldn't do that.”

“Why not?” asked his brother. “I know what happened, or at least I've got a pretty good idea, because Erica told me the whole story. The point is that it takes two to play the game Drake was playing, and he couldn't have got away with it at all if you'd behaved like an ordinary, intelligent human being, instead of like a Jew with an inferiority complex. I know,” he said in a different tone, “it's easy to talk, particularly at this distance.”

In the intervals of silence they could hear the wind stirring in the trees overhead, the sound of running water, and sometimes the rustling of an animal in the underbrush.

Staring unseeing at the tangle of trees, bushes, and vines across the little stream, Marc said at last, “I almost did see Drake once. I got as far as his outer office.”

“And what happened?”

“I guess I just lost my nerve.”

A moment later he burst out violently, “O.K., go ahead and tell me I've made a hell of a mess of it!”

“Give me time, laddie,” said David imperturbably. “Don't you want to know how Erica is?”

“I already know how she is,” he said under his breath.

“I wrote her a prescription for some stuff to make her sleep — my idea, not hers. I hope she got it filled. She didn't seem to be very interested in herself, all she could talk about was you. She did say that she was going to enlist this week, but she hasn't a hope of passing her medical till she's put on ten pounds and had a good rest.”

David changed his position, sitting higher, with his back instead of his shoulders against the log, and said dispassionately, “As I've already remarked once, you're old enough to know better. This whole mess, as you call it, is your fault from start to finish, only having started it, you haven't got the guts to finish it; all you do is listen to a lot of people yapping about a situation they don't know the first thing about, and refusing to listen to the one person who does. And then you let those other people finish it for you.”