Free The Jew's Wife & Other Stories by Thomas J. Hubschman Page A

I’m a priest. After all, we don’t defer to Charlie here
because he subscribes to the engineering persuasion.”
       “ No
reason you shouldn’t,” Charlie replied, struggling with a cork that
had come apart in the bottle. “Without us engineers you’d all still
be in caves.”
       “ Really?”
       “ Damn straight,”
he said, digging at the stuck cork with a knife. The phrase had
been his favorite twenty years ago.
       “ You
don’t mean to imply that if it were up to Father Richie here we
still would be living in caves?”
       “ God-damn
cork.”
        Father Walther
regarded the woman carefully. This conversational mood was
certainly preferable to her earlier sulk, just as her present
attire was more appropriate to mixed company. But there was still
an edge to her that he couldn’t fathom.
       “ Just
‘Richie’ will do,” he reiterated. “Or ‘Richard,’ if you
prefer.”
        Her eyes
met his directly for the first time. They looked sea-green in the
candlelight.
       “ And if
I don’t—prefer, I mean, to forget you’re a priest?”
        The wine
was good—surprisingly so, since he had never known Charlie to drink
anything but beer, and that with a total lack of discrimination.
The breeze did blow out the candles, but Sylvia doggedly relit them
as if electricity had not yet been invented. By the time they
reached dessert, the wind had died. The surf pounded
emphatically.
       “ Cigar?”
Charlie asked, producing a boxful. “Can’t give you lung cancer.
Only lip- and mouth-.”
        Father Walther
accepted one.
       “ You haven’t
answered my question,” Rosalie reminded as he blew smoke into a
current of air. He was enjoying the glow of the wine and good food,
marveling at the abrupt changes of fortune he had been subject to
in the last few days. What would these people make of his bizarre
experiences as a hitchhiker, of his nostalgic whim to revisit his
adolescent haunt? But the sardonic sparkle in Rosalie’s eyes
brought him back to the present.
       “ How
often do you have a chance to get away—from your congregation, or
whatever you call it?”
        He rolled the
ash of his cigar on the edge of an ashtray.
       “ Two weeks in
the summer and a couple days at Christmas. I’m not sure I think of
it as ‘getting away,’ though God knows I need some time off by the
time August rolls around. Being a curate isn’t back-breaking work,
like digging ditches or...engineering,” he added with a grin, “but
it takes its toll.”
       “ Nothing
back-breaking about engineering,” Charlie said, examining the shaft
of his cigar. “Boring, yes.”
        Father
Walther regarded him curiously. He had presumed Charlie was happy
in his profession if for no other reason than because it afforded
him unlimited opportunity to play with slide rules—or whatever they
used nowadays.
       “How do you think of it?”
Rosalie persisted.
       Charlie reached for what was left
of the wine. Father Walther covered his glass to indicate he had
had enough.
        Rosalie
allowed the host to refill her own.
       “ Maybe I’m just
quibbling,” he said.
        Her eyes
hardened. Her smile took on a chill. “Not at all. I’m curious to
know how you see your profession. Do you consider it a form of,
say, social work?”
       “ Well, no....
Although there are elements of social work about it,” he added with
a smile for his hosts, who looked benumbed by the subject. “What I
mean is, it’s primarily spiritual—a ministry to the soul as opposed
to, say, a doctor’s ministering to the body. It’s...I’m sorry, but
I don’t know if you’re Catholic or not. Not that it matters. I just
don’t know if you’re familiar with the terms...”
       “ Try
me.”
        There was
mischief in her eyes. A mocking grin twitched at the corners of her
mouth, which looked very red in the candlelight. He was beginning
to sound pompous even to