[45] Spontaneity’s funereal rites

About being Jewish, according to her grandfather, it’s hardly a religion any more, even for most Jews. From what I’ve seen, in this city it’s more like a club that people who don’t belong won’t let Emma quit. You grow up hearing from the Dominicans or somebody what Jews are really like, until you finally talk to a few, and they aren’t like that. You grow up listening to the Franciscans’ side of everything, and you get told the doctrine, and you get told the superstitions, but no one tells you the difference, and the priests are infallible anyway. That’s the first thing they tell you in school: ‘We’re always right.’ Then you get away from that, and if you have a mind left you try to sort out the difference between what they told you and what you see, but there’s no one to help you with that.

When Johnny was a bump, we worked it out – if it was a little girl, then her choice, but if it was a little man, the soldier was going to keep his helmet, and that took care of the other questions. That was before Johnny almost killed her. First it was the mahogany tubes on the doorposts – okay, that was an anti-mommy ploy. Then I came down from the studio on a Saturday night after dark, the week we moved back to the quay, and she’d lit two candles on the windowsill.

‘On a Saturday?’ her grandfather grinned, when I told him. ‘It doesn’t really mean anything on a Saturday. These days, I doubt if God cares about much except what a person hopes for others. She doesn’t want to deny she’s a Jew, which doesn’t mean she’s found religion. Sundays are supposed to be fun, Paul. There’s no purpose keeping all the rules if you break the Golden one.’

‘Which one do you people mean?’

‘Stand on one foot till it comes to you. Just keep the Golden one, you two.’

‘At dinner last Sunday, she put two salt rolls on a plate and covered them with a cloth. And she wouldn’t let me touch them right away.’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘What am I supposed to know about that one?’

‘Possibly she’s timing these things so you can share a day of rest together. It doesn’t have to mean anything, Paul. And even if it did, well … did you love each other on the Sunday? Did you share each other’s lives? Did the two of you play with the lad?’

I wonder sometimes whether her grandfather still gets any. It’s hard to imagine old people doing it, but you can tell he used to – he has that worldbeater look under that gentle smile, that seen-this-too way of measuring people. When he looks at me, I know he sees some of himself. There are moments when you can tell how many memories he’s kept, good and bad. There are moments he sees my own memories in me. The Saturday night with the candles, I turned to our bed from the window after kissing Johnny good night and she was lying there in her golden robe lifted by all the pillows we have, with a candle burning on the night table and her hair billowed out, with this queen-bee look and her lips slightly parted, and her knees cocked up as far as she can get them these days and the dresser mirror tilted just so. Okay, so we did it the practice way, but her heart still beats for it. And her face still burns for it, and her tears still sting as hot when we’re done. How, then, can I be missing anything? We count the same stars afterwards, we still sleep with the lions.