The reading lamp standing beside his chair was almost in line with Erica and himself, shining into his eyes whenever he looked up at her. She was still standing with her back to the windows, and the pupils of her eyes were so enlarged that her eyes appeared black instead of green. Her pupils had always done that when Erica was either very angry or had gone too long without food.
He swung the lamp out of the way and said at last, "You know as well as I do that among the people we know-your mother’s friends, my friends, even your own friends for that matter, or most of them at any rate-a Jewish lawyer sticks out like a sore thumb. He just doesn’t fit; from a social point of view, he’s unmanageable-makes everybody else feel awkward, and if he’s as decent as you seem to think your friend Reiser is, after an intimate acquaintance of half an hour, probably he feels pretty awkward himself".
"He did".
"What’s all the argument about, then?"
"Go on, Charles", she said.
He shrugged. "Very well, then, since you asked for it. When you’ve known as many Jews as I have, particularly young Jewish lawyers who are on the make professionally, you’ll realize that when they choose to mix with Gentiles after business hours, it isn’t usually because they prefer to spend their free time with Gentiles instead of Jews. It’s because they’re out to do themselves a bit of good socially. Contacts count, Eric-the more contacts, the better. You never know when they’re likely to come in handy… particularly a contact with, say, people like us…".
"Speak for yourself, Charles".
He gave another shrug of his heavy shoulders and said, "All right-people like me. The point is that once they…"
"’They’?" repeated Erica innocently.
He said impatiently, "Jewish lawyers…"
"But we’re not talking about ’Jewish lawyers,’" said Erica. "We’re talking about Marc Reiser".
"I don’t give a damn about Marc Reiser!" said her father angrily.
"That was more than obvious", said Erica. "However, you started to say something about the point. What is the point, exactly?"
"The point is that once they get a foot in your door, if you treat them the way you would anyone else, either they deliberately take advantage of it, or simply misunderstand it, and before you know it, they’re all the way in and there’s no way of getting rid of them".
"So it was in the nature of a prophylactic measure".
"I don’t like your tone, Erica".
"Well, I don’t like your point of view, so that makes us even", said Erica, unmoved.
He said almost indifferently, "You’ll find my point of view is pretty general, whether you like it or not. I’ve had a great deal more experience of the world than you. I’ve no objection to Jews, some of the ones I know downtown are very decent fellows, but that doesn’t mean I want them in my house any more than they want me in theirs-it works both ways, don’t forget that-and I prefer to choose my own friends, and not have René do it for me".
Erica had heard most of that before, particularly the part about not having any objection to Jews, but, etc., which seemed to be the one that was always used in this connection… not by her father, but by people in general. She said mildly, "If René was doing any choosing, it wasn’t for you, it was for me".
What her father had said sounded all right, and there was no doubt that he was sincere; the only trouble was that it had nothing to do with Marc, and as the "explanation" of Charles’ treatment of Marc, it was totally unsatisfactory. You can’t offer a series of vague generalizations referring to the supposed characteristics of approximately sixteen million people scattered over the earth’s surface-that was the pre-war figure, of course-as a valid explanation of your attitude toward a given individual. It doesn’t make sense. Nor even, narrowing it down somewhat, by referring to the supposed characteristics of "Jewish lawyers". As she herself had just made a futile effort to point out, they were discussing one specific human being, not a category.
She watched her father relighting his pipe and said finally, "If you want to play the heavy father and start telling me whom I’m to know and whom I’m not to know, there’s nothing I can do to stop you, at least so far as the people I invite to your house are concerned-presumably whom I see outside your house is my own business". She paused and remarked, "You’re starting a bit late, of course", and went on, "however, if you don’t pay any more attention to my opinions than you did to Tony’s and Miriam’s, then you’re likely to end up in the same relationship with me as with them…".
"It’s up to you, Eric".
She said incredulously, "When I ask you particularly to be nice to someone and your answer to that is to refuse even to show him the most ordinary courtesy, how on earth can you say that what happens to us after that is my responsibility?"
There was no response, her father did not appear to be listening. After a lifetime of making mountains out of molehills, this time, for some inexplicable reason, he was evidently determined to make a molehill out of a mountain, or determined to try, at any rate. Nothing she had said so far had had any effect; for all she had accomplished, she might just as well have done what he had suggested when she had first told him that she wanted to talk to him, and gone straight to bed.
She sat down in the chair by the radio, regarded her father curiously for a while longer and then asked, "What’s back of all this, Charles?"
"I’ve already explained it once".
"You’ve only given me half the explanation. The other half is still missing". Strong as they were, she knew that her father’s anti-Jewish prejudices and his even more pronounced anti-Jewish lawyer prejudices were still not strong enough to stand alone when they came into conflict with his innate kindness and sense of chivalry. He would blast away at nations, classes, groups or categories of human beings, but to individuals he was unfailingly considerate, regardless of their category, or always had been, until this afternoon. He had objected violently and at length to a convent-bred French Canadian daughter-in-law, but the moment Anthony had stopped shouting and let all the misery inside him come out, his father’s opposition had collapsed. It had collapsed too late to get Tony back, but once rid of the generalization and confronted with the individual, Charles had been so consistently good to Madeleine that, of all the Drakes and outside of Tony himself, Charles was the one Madeleine was fondest of. It was rather unfair, when you came to think of it, for whatever Margaret Drake’s opinions had been on the subject, her sense of justice and her determination to respect her children’s right to make their own decisions had kept her from expressing them, and now, after she had done her best from the beginning and her husband had done his worst as long as he could, it was her husband who was Madeleine’s favorite. As Margaret Drake had once observed ruefully to Erica, Madeleine’s devotion to her father-in-law was just another example of Charles Drake’s extraordinary talent for having his cake and eating it. People with charm can get away with a lot.
"Do you want a drink?"
"Yes, please".
Her father poured some whisky into a glass and asked, "How much soda?"
"Two thirds of the way up".
He got to his feet and gave her the glass, then began to walk up and down the room, from the flat-topped desk at one end to the row of bookcases at the other, with his hands in the pockets of his dark blue dressing-gown.
As he passed her for the third time, Erica, still searching for the missing half of the explanation, remarked idly, "Of course you knew how much I liked Marc", because in some way or other, her father always knew these things, just as he always knew when someone was lying, and when a member of his immediate family was in serious trouble. His disconcertingly well-developed intuitive processes seemed to be unaffected by the distance between himself and the person concerned; three years before, he had been in New York on a business trip and his wife had been hurt in a motor accident in Montreal, and within half an hour of the accident, Charles Drake had been on the long distance phone, asking in alarm what had happened to her. One night during the Blitz he had had a "feeling" that something was wrong with Miriam in London and had suddenly taken it into his head to cable her: "ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?" The cable had reached her in the hospital to which she had been taken a few hours before, with a piece of shrapnel embedded in her left shoulder and another one in her thigh.