"Grantville Gazette.Volume XIX" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

A Gentile in the Family?
Terry Howard

Late winter 1635

"Sarah? Just what do you think is going to happen when your father finds out?" Rivka asked as they left the grade school. She was one of those precocious little girls who behave like they were born twenty years old and started aging from there.

"Finds out what?" Sarah replied. Snow was falling in large wet flakes all around them.

"You know what! I saw you kissing that boy. It wasn't the first time you kissed him either. If I saw you, others have too. Someone will tell and it will get talked about down at the shul. What do you think your father will do when he finds out?"

Rivka was not allowed to walk the two blocks home from school without an escort; which was usually her brother Chaim and their cousin Yudl. When Chaim sat detention, Rivka waited in the library with Yudl until they could walk her home. On those detention days her brother and Yudl needed to go to the shul after school for Hebrew lessons; Yudl could not wait without being late. So Rivka waited until Sarah came after the high school let out to walk with her.

Sarah traveled to and from school without a chaperone. At first she left for school with other children in the family on the trolley, which was contracted to move school children so the buses could handle the areas not yet serviced by a rail line.

When she landed a before school job at a bakery, an escort for form's sake was discussed, even though she had to leave the house at four in the morning. It was agreed Grantville was safe, so the escort was foregone. When there is not a Jewish quarter where the boundary is set and behavior changes, a family must decide what is and is not allowable.

Sarah's boyfriend Hans accompanied Sarah as far as the grade school and said goodbye there. Eventually Rivka saw them saying good bye.

"I'm going to marry Hans!" Sarah told her young cousin.

"No, you're not. You tried to bring it up with your father and he wouldn't even hear you out. There's no way you're ever going to get him to give his consent."

"I don't need his consent. This is Grantville. He does not own me. I do not have to have a dowry. I do not have to have his permission. When we've graduated Hans will get a job, we will get a place of our own and get married, and there is nothing my family can do to stop us."

"Until you're eighteen you can't get married without parental consent." The age of consent had been hashed out by the government. It used to be even lower in some places back up-time. Some down-timers wanted it higher still and others thought no girl or women should be allowed to marry without the consent of a guardian, for their own protection.

"We might not have to wait that long!" Sarah said in a dreamy voice.

"What do you have planned, little bird?" Rivka asked, translating a family endearment into English.

"Oh, nothing really."

"'Fess up, Faygeleh." Rivka saw nothing odd about the hash of languages.

"Hans is checking on something. He knows a boy who was fighting with his parents over how much of his paycheck they got and how much he could keep. The father wanted the whole thing. Well, they yelled at each other so loud and so often the neighbors called the police. The police told the boy if he had an income and a place to stay he could get the court to declare him an emancipated minor and he could move out. So he did.

"I've got an income from the bakery. All I need is a place to stay and then I can do what I want and I don't have to wait to get married."

Sarah!" Rivka was truly shocked. "Do you want them to sit shiva for a dummy and declare you dead to the family? I'd never be allowed to speak to you again!"

"They won't do it unless I convert."

"You're getting married by a priest. You will have to convert."

"Rebecca didn't."

The conversation ended right there for the time being. Chaim, out of ear shot, was heading straight and fast for three boys who were waiting on the corner, snowballs in hand. They would get off one shot and then they would have to run or Chaim would be all over them.

"It was a fair fight," Chaim said once, "there were four of them." When it became clear that as long as he was not the one starting the fight, all that would happen was a few hours of detention, fighting became Chaim's passion. At first his family was proud; after a bit they became annoyed. When the rabbi complained he was late to Hebrew classes because of detention for fighting, it became a serious topic of concern, almost as troublesome as Chaim wanting to cut his ear locks or Daniel taking a second shift job in the munitions plant and missing Hebrew classes because of it.

Chaim just plain liked to fight.

"Chaim Bookbindern," Sarah called out loud and clear, "don't you dare. If you are one minute later getting to the shul than you need to be you will be in serious trouble, young man."

So Chaim was plastered with three snowballs and then three more as he hurried past with a promise of "later," being his only response. He would have gotten hit a third time but Sarah's stern "Drop them!" put a stop to it.

Then Sarah and Rivka were home so the conversation was put on hold.

Two weeks later Sarah's trouble with her parents came to a head.

Yankel, his brother Avram and Moshe, who was married to Cousin Leah, trudged home against the icy wind to the house shared by all three families, after a long day at the shop. They entered the kitchen off the back porch. The very word "kitchen" was warm. In their minds it meant: hot soup, hot oven, good food, and happy wives. But most of all it meant: a rich man's house with a room just for cooking and eating. What awaited them ended any warm thoughts. They stopped in the middle of taking off their cold weather trappings.

Rachael, Ruth and Leah were waiting. They could have been sitting shiva for the dead from their solemn faces and quiet ways. It was a heavy, sour quiet, like an over-filled balloon on the edge of popping.

Avram voiced his worse fear. "Is Daniel…?" He worried every day about his eldest son working at the munitions plant.

"Daniel is well," Ruth answered. There was more to tell, yet she was a dry pump.

Avram primed. "What has happened?"

"Sarah has moved out."

"What? She can't. She's not married. Where would she go? Why?"

"She's moving in with a girl she works with who lives at the bakery," Ruth replied.

"Why?"

Ruth closed her mouth and her eyes. The former was leaking pain, the latter tears. She rocked back and forth in her chair as if she were davening, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

Rachael spoke. "She is going to marry a boy from school. A Baptist."

"She can't. I forbid it!" Avram shouted.

"It is against the law," Moshe added.

"No, it isn't," Yankel said.

"Yes, it is! She is under age," Avram answered.

"We tried that argument," Rachael said. "She said she is seventeen; she has an income and an address. She can get the court to declare her-what was the word-an emancipated minor. Their laws will not stop her for us."

"The marriage is against the law!" Moshe said.

"No, it is not!" Yankel said.

Moshe looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

"Rebecca?" Yankel paused. "She married Mike?"

Moshe paled. "So we will get no help from the Abrabanels in this. Sephardim!" He used the word for Spanish Jews as an obscene curse. "They approve! Why did we ever comen here?"

Leah spoke. "For a good living, to be safe."

"At what price? Is this any better than a pogrom? If she were killed at least we would have a body to bury," Yankel said.

"We do not have to treat her as one who is dead. She is not converting. She is just getting married without permission, unless you decide to give your consent," Rachael said. She looked at Avram, while Sarah's mother continued to sob quietly.

"How can she get married without converting? The priest will not allow it," Moshe said.

"The Baptists do not have priests. They have a minister. They are different. Rebecca did not convert," Rachael countered.

"I never thought this could happen to us," Avram said.

Chaim came in from after school Hebrew class with a blast of cold air. He was late getting home because he was late getting to the shul . With the number of detentions he was sitting for fighting it almost seemed normal. The fathers were home. Dinner would be ready. He too stopped with only the first button of his coat undone. The table was not set. Dinner was not ready. His father and uncle were pale, his aunt was weeping. His mother was stern faced. Everyone looked at him.

"I haven't been fighting!" Chaim said.

"Go to your room."

"I haven't done anything!"

His father said, "Do as your mother told you!"

"You're fine," his mother said. "It is nothing you have done. I will call you when dinner is ready."

In the room Chaim asked, "What is going on?"

"Shhhh," he was told in a whisper by a cousin with his ear to the heat run.

"Ruth told them Sarah is marrying her goy boyfriend," another cousin whispered. Chaim swallowed his questions. He knew it wasn't easy to hear through the duct. If the furnace kicked in there would be an end to it, so the thermostat was turned down even farther than its normal frugal setting.

"Avram wants to kidnap her and go back home," the boy at the listening post reported. "Moshe says we'd get caught." He paused to listen. "Leah says would it be so bad if she does? Rebecca is doing well."

"My daughter will not marry a grauber jung!" This did not need repeating. All the boys heard it through the walls. They also heard the door slam as Avram stormed out.

"Rachael says you had better go after him," the listener said. "Leah says they had better have dinner ready when they get back." Then he said, "Turn the heat back up." If they were making dinner there would be too much noise to hear what was said. No one wanted an adult asking why the heat was turned so low.

Sarah was not at the bakery. The girl who lived there checked a phone book and gave them an address for Sarah's boyfriend.

Avram knocked on the door of a neatly-kept house in a good neighborhood, forgetting, in his grim mood, about door bell buttons.

The pre-teenaged girl who answered the door got a look at who was there and stopped with a word not half out of her mouth.

"I am looking for Sarah!" Avram said.

Avram spoke loudly enough to be clearly heard through the front of the house. "Ask Mister Bookbinder to come to the kitchen, Clara."

The three bearded men followed the girl through the living room. In the kitchen Janice had just put two cups on the table, when she saw her quests she took two more from the cupboard.

"I am looking for my daughter!" Avram declared.

"Please be seated. Clara, would you check the tea, please?" Real tea was now available in Grantville, though mints and herbs were still what most people were calling tea. "Mister Bookbinder, I am Janice Shaver." She held out her hand.

Avram realized she was waiting for him to shake. Would it be rude of him not to? He was put in a quandary.

No Jewish woman would ask him to shake hands unless she was being rude, in which case it would be all right to be rude back. No self-respecting down-time female gentile would allow a Jew to touch her. Those without self respect could be ignored without being thought rude. But up-timers had a lot of strange ideas about equality and politeness. Some were a great pleasure and benefit. Others were a great puzzlement. Just look at the way the girls and many grown women dressed in what were clearly men's garments. Was this woman being intentionally ill-mannered? If not, then what?

There were so many things in Grantville where the old rules did not seem to apply, so many things that simply were not clearly defined. After a half second eternity Avram shook it with the lightest grip he could find and for the briefest of shakes.

"Please, be seated," Janice repeated. Moshe took a seat and the others followed suit.

The hot drinks were poured. Janice sipped hers and set it down. Neither Avram nor either of his companions so much as touched the cup in front of them. The kitchen was not kosher. They would not eat or drink anything prepared there. Politeness only goes so far.

She looked up from her cup and said, "Sarah is not here. I sent her home."

"We go, back to bakery!" Avram said, beginning to rise from the chair. His English was slipping, a sure sign he was losing his temper.

"Sarah is not there! I sent her home!" The calm certainty Sarah would do as she was told, the clear assumption she had the right to tell Sarah what to do was not half as astonishing as her next statement. "Sit down, Mister Bookbinder. We need to talk." Avram found his bottom firmly interfacing with the cushion on the chair.

"When Hans told me he was getting married, I asked if he had gotten the girl in trouble. Hans speaks English so well sometimes I forget it is a second language for him. My husband and I took Hans and Clara in back in '31. It seems like they've always been part of the family, so sometimes I slip up.

"When I asked was she in trouble I meant: was she pregnant? Hans said yes. He meant she was in trouble for wanting to marry without permission. Well, if she was in a family way then she and the baby were his obligation and if we are his family, then it is our obligation. So I agreed they could get married and she could move in until they got on their feet and settled.

"When I finally got my facts straight, I sent her home.

"My husband and Hans have her things in the car." They had one which had been converted to natural gas. "They've been gone for awhile and I'm surprised they're not back yet. Sarah will be home when you get there.

"Hans will be calling on you in the near future asking for permission to court your daughter. I realize your family is observant. I suggest you tell Hans he may only court her if he undertakes to study for conversion. It will take a year or more to learn Hebrew and then he needs to study the law. That will give them at least two years to finish growing up. They will probably be over this by then.

"I've just met Sarah, but I know Hans. If you tell him he can't, you've waved a red flag at a bull. I would hate to see them do something impulsive."

Moshe broke the silence. "Is it not unlawful for a Christian to convert to Judaism?"

"No, it is not," Janice replied. "Besides, I am not sure Hans is a Christian. My husband tells me the boy is circumcised. We asked him about it. He said he had always been that way." Janice chuckled. "He was half grown when we took him in and he couldn't tell us anything solid about where he was from or who he was. He was sure the people he was with weren't his family but beyond that it was 'a camp by a river, a sacked town with a castle, a long walk here, a long walk there. He called places by names we can't find on a map anywhere. He talked about people being killed, places being burned. He thinks he's eighteen; I think he's sixteen or younger.

"We explained that other than up-timers, only Jews and Muslims are circumcised. That is when he started asking Sarah about what it means to be Jewish. They talked a lot and now they think they're in love.

"As I said, I forgot he doesn't know English as a first language. I created this confusion. I am sorry about that."

Yankel was puzzled to the point of distraction by one thing. "Up-timers are circumcised? Even Christians?"

"My husband is a Christian. We don't attend but he was raised Baptist. We've sent Hans and Clara to Bible school in the summer and to Sunday School even if we don't go very often ourselves." In truth, if it were not for the occasional children's program, like the Christmas pageant, they wouldn't go at all.

"A lot of up-timers are circumcised. It is a sanitary practice."

Avram was much calmer than when he arrived. "Thank you for sending Sarah home. We will wait for Hans to ask to court Sarah. We need to be going now."

As they trudged homeward with the wind to their back Moshe asked, "What will we do?"

Avram replied, "We will take her wise advice. If Hans is a lost Jew then we should teach him how to be Jewish."

"Not just that, Avram. Chaim wants to cut his peyot. He is in a fight every other week. Sarah would marry without asking? Daniel is missing prayers because he works second shift and… " The word dwindled into the future and disappeared. "What will we do? How do we keep them safe?"

"I don't know, Moshe." Avram let out a deep sigh. "I just don't know."