The Promise by Chaim Potok Page B

Gordon. They teased him good-naturedly about how he had misplaced the passports on the way out of France, had become airsick over the Alps, had let himself be fleeced by a taxi driver in Naples. Yet there was a faint aura of darkness about them too, a hint of strain to the cheerfulness; a sense of foreboding seeped through the occasional lapses in their talk. Michael sat quietly, listening and sipping at a Coke. Rachel came into the room sometime between the misplaced passports and the airsickness over the Alps. She had on her reading glasses and looked bleary-eyed. How wasLeopold Bloom? I asked her. Unhappy, she said. He had lost his Stephen. He was a star in the constellation of Cassiopeia. But Molly Bloom—Molly Bloom was something else. Molly Bloom was recumbent and big with seed. And she, Rachel, would drink to that with a Coke because she was practically done with Ithaca. Ruth Gordon said that Rachel should be thankful she hadn’t decided to do her paper on the Penelope section. Abraham Gordon laughed. Joseph Gordon grinned around the pipe he held between his teeth and said that was the best part of the book. Sarah Gordon gave him a sharp glance and nodded her head in the direction of Michael, who clearly hadn’t the slightest notion of what they were talking about.
    Later, Rachel walked with me down the dock to the Sailfish. She knew what my father and I had talked about with her uncle that morning. They all knew. They were grateful. What time did I think Danny would be able to come over tomorrow?
    I told her I didn’t know and would have to call her after my father and I talked to Danny. Then I told her that her aunt was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.
    She nodded absently. She was still wearing her reading glasses and they gave her a schoolteacher look.
    “What does she do?” I asked.
    “My aunt? She takes care of my uncle and Michael.”
    “No, seriously.”
    “I meant it seriously. She edits my uncle’s books. She edits them, types the final drafts, checks the galleys, goes over the footnotes, and sees to it that everything gets published correctly. In between she worries about Michael and about my uncle having another heart attack one day.”
    “He’ll have another heart attack if he keeps playing volleyball like that.”
    “The volleyball is exercise. On doctor’s orders. It was a mild heart attack anyway. Reuven, please call me as soon as you know when Danny will be over.”
    I promised I would. “Take off your glasses. Why do you wear your glasses when you’re not reading?”
    “I didn’t even know I had them on.”
    “Molly Bloom big with seed can make you forget anything,” I said.
    She laughed.
    I took the Sailfish back across the lake.
    My father was on the porch. He sat at the wooden table, staring out at the sunlight on the lawn and the maple.
    How were the galleys coming along? I asked him.
    He did not look at me. The galleys were all right, he said. There were some errors with the Greek words, and he had had to revise some passages that seemed a little obscure now that he was reading them in print. Otherwise, the galleys were fine. He spoke quietly, his voice sounding hoarse. I could begin checking the footnotes and the variant readings as soon as we returned to the city, he said. He would call the librarian at the Zechariah Frankel Seminary. There would be no problem obtaining permission for me to use the rare manuscripts. He was silent a moment. His face was pale, unusually pale, even for him. “We did not even talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls,” he murmured.
    I was quiet.
    “I meant to ask him about the Dead Sea Scrolls.” He sat there, looking at the sunlight on the lawn and the maple.
    Danny arrived the next day a little before lunch. He was tired. He looked haggard and he yawned repeatedly during lunch and said he hadn’t slept most of the night because of that emergency and all he wanted now was a year of sleep. He had never been up to the cottage before