It was not until his observations on the subject of "The Jews" began to be interspersed with anti-Jewish anecdotes and rather unfunny jokes which Charles Drake had usually heard from "a man downtown"-well, he undoubtedly had; Erica knew from her own experience that there were a large number of people with that particular kind of sense of humor-that Erica realized what was happening to him.
The faint air of deliberateness had gone; having set out to convince his daughter, Charles Drake was in danger of convincing himself. He had already forgotten what he had been told about Marc downtown and over at Divisional Headquarters. After a very brief appearance, the individual had once more been obliterated by the generalization.
Some time very lately he must have begun to associate the interminable gossip about Jews which he heard "downtown" directly with Marc, to assume more and more that this endless stream of astronomical generalizations which tossed sixteen million human beings, scattered all over the pre-war world, into one heap and covered the lot of them, must inevitably apply at least to some extent to the man his daughter was in love with and probably intended to marry. From then on, every chance remark that other people made either to him or simply in his hearing, must have struck home, until the idea that someone about whom such things could be said, might also in the future be referred to as Erica’s husband and C. S. Drake’s son-in-law, became finally too much for him.
It was an indication of how far Charles Drake had degenerated in the past two months that he could tell a pointless and sordid story of "Jewish" behavior during the Blitz, for example, and insult both Erica and himself by suggesting, even indirectly, that it reflected on Marc. All his life he had been unusually free of malice and in spite of his explosive prejudices, he had had a certain largeness of mind and generosity of spirit which had prevented him from gibing at individuals for characteristics beyond their control. That he should have lost so much of what had been the best in him in such a short time, was also an indication of the way he was suffering.
He no longer seemed to care what methods he had to use in order to get through to Erica, provided she could be made to face facts. There was no reason why she should be protected and encouraged to go on living in a world of illusions, among a handful of friends who apparently believed that one war could change the whole structure of human society. Married to a Jewish lawyer whose parents had been ordinary immigrants, life would be no easier for Erica in 1945 than in 1910.
He had no idea what she would do with Marc Reiser; he had no idea what any of them would do with him. He could not be made to fit in, one Jew among a lot of Drakes. Wherever they took him, to the houses of their relatives or their friends, he would stick out like a sore thumb.
That was not all. Later on there would be children, Erica’s children who would be half-Jewish by race and probably brought up in the Jewish religion-Jews and Catholics could always be counted on to look out for their own interests-so that his grandchildren would be wholly Jewish by faith.
And what on earth would they do with Marc Reiser’s family, since presumably he had a family? When your son or daughter marries, you cannot pretend that the relatives of your daughter-in-law or son-in-law simply do not exist.
Charles Drake could not imagine what Marc Reiser’s family would be like. The fact that their son was presentable enough on the surface proved nothing, since there was often an extraordinary difference between the first and the second generation. He remembered what a shock he had had when the parents of a Jewish importer whom he had known for years and had always regarded as quite exceptional, the very best type of Jew… what a shock he had had when the fellow’s parents had turned out to be pure ghetto. The old man wore a black skull cap, both he and his wife kept dropping into Yiddish, and what English they knew sounded as though they had learned it on New York’s East Side. Their accent had reminded Charles Drake of the old days of vaudeville and the inevitable cheap Jewish comic who had elected to make a living by holding up his own people to ridicule. There always seemed to be one on every program and either he or his straight man was usually called "Ikey". To this day Erica’s father did not know what had possessed their son when he had suddenly invited C. S. Drake to his home for "supper" on Saturday night; it was one of the most uncomfortable evenings Charles Drake had ever had.
Uncomfortable or not, however, at least he had been able to escape at the end of the evening. From the elder Reisers there would be no escape, and no end, from the day on which he would find himself standing beside his wife and a couple of middle-aged immigrant Jews from some small town in Ontario, attempting to introduce his son-in-law’s parents to Montreal society.
It is no good thinking of life in terms of vague and idealistic principles; life is not made up of common sense, logic or even elementary justice. It is made up of the way people think, feel and behave, with or without due cause, and when they have felt and thought that way for two thousand years, one war and a fresh outburst of lofty generalities about a better world are not going to make much difference. Even supposing by some miracle or other, the Reisers should turn out to be moderately well-bred, from a social point of view they would still be unmanageable.
Charles Drake was almost beside himself.
At breakfast, at dinner and in the evenings when Erica was at home, he would suddenly start in on the Jews again and go on talking, talking, talking; he said anything that came into his head without fully realizing what he was saying, except that he was careful never to refer to Marc directly. It was as though everything he had ever heard against the Jews, back to his earliest childhood, was coming out all in a period of a few weeks, five, ten or fifteen minutes at a time, during which he would keep his eyes fixed on Erica, searching her face to see if at last he had succeeded in making an impression.
He did not succeed; he failed altogether. Erica had lost the faculty of thinking in reverse, she was no longer even capable of applying the generalization to the individual. She knew Marc, she was in possession of the evidence, of the actual facts concerning Marc Reiser, and between those facts and her father’s statements about Jews, there was simply no connection. He was still talking about someone else.
She would sit and listen to him in silence, or at any rate she appeared to be listening. His voice only reached her at intervals, becoming audible and then fading away again, according to the rise and fall in the level of her consciousness.
What he was saying was of no importance in itself, it had all been said before so many times, repeated parrot-like but with an air of acute perception and originality by one person after another, in one country after another, all the way down through history. After all, even Hitler was unable to think up anything really new on the subject of the Jews; he merely said what everybody else had been saying, only of course he said it louder and oftener, and put it a bit more strongly.
The importance lay, first, in the fact that it was Charles who was saying it, and second, in the fact that if he believed what he said, if he believed that even half of what he was saying applied to Marc, then, whether or not her father ultimately came round, it would make no real difference. He might put up with Marc, he might endure him for her sake, but he would never like him. He would never even get near enough to Marc to find out whether he was likable or not.