He put the car in gear just as Ruth opened her mouth to go, It’s green. She closed it again. If he called her on that one, she’d deny everything. Well, he would have denied it, too, if she tried to gig him for something he hadn’t actually said.
After a moment, she did speak up again: “I’m glad you’re burying the hatchet with Marvin.”
“You mean, and not in Marvin?” he asked, about three-quarters kidding. The remaining quarter was enough to make her look worried, or maybe scared. He took a hand off the wheel and waggled it to let her know she could relax. “I won’t start anything if he doesn’t, promise.”
“Okay.” She sounded relieved. If she knew one thing about her husband, she knew he kept his promises.
He was trying to get Leon to be as serious about them as he was. So far, the results were mixed. He kept reminding himself Leon was just a little kid. Not many his age were smarter, but his age wasn’t very big. He was still working out where his imagination stopped and the real world started.
Up into the hills Aaron drove. The way it looked to him, Marvin was still working out the same thing. The difference was, Aaron’s brother didn’t have the excuse of being a toddler.
When they got to Marvin’s house, Aaron and Ruth both popped open umbrellas. Leon paid no attention, but started to charge up the walk on his own. Then he discovered that raindrops were more fun when they were on the outside of something and you were on the inside. He came charging back to Daddy and Mommy and the shelter of their bumbershoots.
Aaron knocked on the front door. His brother opened it. “Look what washed up on our shore,” Marvin said. “Nice weather for ducks, hey?”
“Yeah, it’s not all it’s quacked up to be,” Aaron said. Marvin sent him a reproachful look. So did Ruth. She’d known Finches made bad puns before she met him, but she hadn’t known how bad they could get.
Marvin stuck the umbrellas in a brass boot. He was the kind of person who put a brass boot in the front hall in case of umbrellas. “Come on in,” he said, gesturing toward the living room. In Aaron and Ruth and Leon came.
“Surprise!” everybody yelled. Actually, Caesar the German shepherd barked, but he barked twice, so even that worked out.
There were Sarah and Olivia and Sarah’s mother, who lived with them. There were Ruth’s two brothers, Chaim and Ben-alike as two balding peas in a pod, except one was thin and the other chunky-and her sister Bernice, all in from the wilds of Reseda in the Valley. Bernice looked the way Ruth would have if she dyed her hair red and weren’t so pretty. There were Roxane and Howard and Roxane’s mother, Fanny Seraph. And there was Herschel Weissman, a martini in his hand.
Everybody but Caesar started singing “Happy Birthday.” By the way Ruth joined in, Aaron knew she’d been part of the plot. His actual birthday had been the Sunday before. Ruth had fixed a big mess of chicken pippiks and hearts, which he loved. And she’d got him a copy of The Caine Mutiny. He really wanted to read that one. He hadn’t been a Navy man, but he’d seen shipboard action himself. He’d figured that was as much of a celebration as he’d get. It was as much as he wanted. But he’d figured wrong.
“Happy fiftieth, you alter kacker,” Marvin said, clapping him on the back.
“Good God!” Aaron said. “I think the last time I had a birthday party, I was turning nine.” Everyone laughed.
Bernice kissed him on the cheek. Her breath smelled of whiskey. It often did. Aaron thought she was holding the bottle and not the other way around, but he wasn’t sure. She sold shoes at a store on Sherman Way, the Valley’s main drag. Chaim wrote bulletins and manuals at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys. Ben…Ben had come back from the South Pacific with malaria, and maybe with combat fatigue, too. He was bright, but he was also damaged. He had trouble finding a job and more trouble holding one.
People pressed presents on Aaron. He found himself awash in booze, which was nice, and in ties, which he could have lived without. No way in hell he would ever wear the gaudy one Howard Bauman gave him-he thought blue dress shirts were loud. He made grateful noises anyway.
Dinner was an enormous ham with candied yams-they were Sarah’s specialty. Marvin raised a glass. “Here’s to treyf!” he said. Almost all the Jews at the table drank. Leon didn’t, but his only drinking was a taste of Manischewitz at Passover. He ate ham and yams with great enthusiasm. And neither did Fanny Seraph, who clung to Old Country ways. There was chicken for her.
Two apple pies served as dessert. When Sarah’s mother brought them out of the kitchen, Aaron said, “What will the rest of you eat?” He got another laugh.
After dinner, the talk turned to politics. Everybody had an idea about who would run for the Democrats now that Truman had bowed out. Roxane and Howard, predictably, liked Hubert Humphrey, who stood furthest to the left. So did Sarah and Ben. Marvin was for Averell Harriman, and seemed offended that his wife dared have an opinion of her own. Aaron and Ruth and Bernice and Chaim spoke up for Adlai Stevenson.
“I’d like to like him,” Herschel Weissman said. “I do like him-as a man. But he’s not in touch with the people. He thinks too much. He doesn’t feel enough. He’d make a better professor than a President.”
That was more sensible than Aaron wished it were. Not caring to argue with his boss, he said, “Any of them would be okay. The real question is, Who will the Republicans run against our guy?”
“Before the war started, I would have bet on Taft or Eisenhower,” Weissman said. “Now…Now that McCarthy mamzer is making so much noise, he may grab it in spite of everything. Everything sane, I mean.”
“God forbid!” Aaron exclaimed, at the same time as his wife said the same thing in Yiddish.
“He’s a Nazi,” Roxane said. Howard nodded vigorously. He would, having made the acquaintance of the Un-American Activities Committee. But Aaron had trouble arguing with his wife’s cousin himself.
“Alevai it won’t happen!” Chaim said.
“Alevai omayn!” half a dozen people chorused.
“Alevai omayn!” Leon echoed. Sometimes you were lucky, not having any idea of what was going on.
–
“Here you go, Comrade Captain,” the Hungarian secret policeman said in German, the only tongue he shared with Boris Gribkov. “Drink this. It will put hair on your chest.”
This was a tumbler of strong red wine. Gribkov had never been much of a wine drinker. He chose beer for a little buzz, vodka when he was serious about pouring it down. Declining here, though, didn’t seem like a good idea, so he drank.
“Very tasty,” he said, putting the tumbler down half-empty. “Yes, very tasty.” His German wasn’t as good as the Hungarian’s. “What do you call it?”
“That, my friend, that is the famous Bull’s Blood of Eger,” the secret policeman replied. “It is a wine to send men roaring into battle. Then, after they have won the victory, they celebrate with sweet Tokay.”
When the Red Army wanted to send men roaring into battle, it fed them a hundred grams of vodka. That did the trick just fine, as any number of dead Germans-and Hungarians-might have testified. More vodka helped men descend from the peak of fighting madness.
Again, Boris kept his thoughts to himself. He took another swig of Bull’s Blood and said, “I thank you and your countrymen for your kindness.”
“It is our pleasure. It is our privilege,” the secret policeman said. His name was Geza Latos or Latos Geza; Gribkov wasn’t sure which. The Hungarians seemed to put surname first, which struck him as an odd thing to do. The man went on, “The Slovaks deserve everything you can drop on their heads. They’re nothing but rubes with shit on their boots, and we don’t want their trouble spilling over into the Hungarian People’s Republic.”