The Journey Prize Stories 21 by Various Page A

of them.
    â€œYou really thought I was a woman,” my father repeated, still amazed.
    â€œYou’re very convincing,” Professor Bell said.
    â€œSo convincing as to fool even someone as learned as you, a professor of anthropology! I’m pleased to know that.”
    The professor explained her interest in the correspondent in love with the Indian. She was involved in a study of the integration of immigrant Jews into American society. Inter-marriage between races and faiths of course played a large part. “This woman is exactly the sort of person I’m most interested in. I don’t have to tell you the symbolic value of her predicament. In love with an Indian, an original inhabitant of this land. Then there’s the lost tribe element, the possibility that, in terms of both faith and ethnicity, there is no actualintermarriage. This is invaluable. It could be emblematic for my entire study.” After a moment, when my father didn’t immediately reply, she added: “And the man’s desire to study Judaism, to return to roots he didn’t even know he had …”
    My father had thought hard about what to tell this woman. Much as he hated to lie, it was unthinkable to admit the fabrication. “I’m sorry to say I can’t really help you,” he began reluctantly. “The woman wrote no more than what we printed. There was no name on the letter, no return address on the envelope.”
    â€œAnd she hasn’t been in touch again?” Madelaine Bell asked hopefully.
    â€œNo.” After a moment, my father added: “It’s been almost four months now, so it’s doubtful she will be. Who knows what may have become of her.”
    â€œAh,” Professor Bell said. “I would dearly love to interview her.” She took off her eyeglasses and gently rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, a gesture my father found endearing. When she removed her hand, her eyes, a lighter shade of brown than he had first thought, were warm and inviting. “I wonder if I could impose upon you for a favour?”
    â€œIf I can be of service, of course.”
    â€œPerhaps you could insert a sentence or two in your column inquiring as to this woman’s whereabouts, ‘will the woman who wrote the letter on,’ I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten the date, ‘will the woman who wrote about her love affair with the Indian man please be in contact …’ Something along those lines. Would that be possible?”
    â€œAh,” my father said. Professor Bell had not yet put her glasses back on and he found himself gazing into those warm brown eyes. He felt a moment of panic, as if he were being drawn into those pools of liquid, chocolatey brown, where he would surely drown, but it quickly passed. What harm could such a subterfuge do – other than, of course, to compound the original fabrication? Heshberg, if he even noticed, would find it amusing.

    In matters of the heart, my father found, each situation was different. His experience was useless for the situation he soon found himself in.
    After some weeks had passed, he was able to imagine writing this letter:
    Esteemed Yentel Schmegge –
    I find myself unexpectedly in need of your sage advice. I’m enmeshed in an impossible love affair. In fact, I have inextricably entangled myself in a web of deception for which I have less and less stomach every day. The Americans have a phrase for it: “painting oneself into a corner.”
    I am a young man from a good Jewish home. Our family was not religious – I would characterize myself as an agnostic – but Jewishness, if not Judaism, is important to me. Yet I am involved with a Gentile woman, a
shiksa
, for whom ethnicity and faith are merely subjects of interest, to be examined and studied rather than adhered to.
    She is a professional woman, a woman of learning, for whom education is of the highest importance. I