Free Acts of Faith by Erich Segal Page B

extinguish the lights.
    Aware that it was improper even to be in the same room with him, Deborah nodded her head and began to rise to her feet.
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I must be holding you up.”
    “That’s all right. Actually, I’m a little early. I can go take care of the Shapiros and come back.”
    “No, no,” Deborah protested. “I’ll stop reading.”
    She closed the book, placed it carefully on the table, and left the room.
    “Good night,” the young man whispered. But she seemed not to hear.
    When Timothy Hogan had first begun to work for the Lurias, he had barely noticed Deborah, who was then a shy, gawky adolescent with dark, curly hair. Yet with thepassing of time he had fallen under the spell of her exotic beauty.
    He knew it was wrong, yet in moments of weakness he would pray that when he arrived to perform his Friday duties he might catch a glimpse of her.
    He watched her dissolve into the shadowed hallway and realized he had behaved improperly. These girls were not supposed to talk to
any
boys—much less Irish Catholics. Though she had spoken only a few words, the echo of her lovely voice lingered in the room.
    Curiosity impelled him to overstep the boundary once again. He leaned forward to see what she had been reading and was struck by the fact that this pensive rabbi’s daughter had been sitting all alone with the Holy Bible.
    Upstairs, Deborah undressed in the darkness of her room, but as she lay on her pillow and the onset of sleep relaxed her thoughts, she could still see the blue light of Timothy Hogan’s eyes.
    I must tell my father, part of her said. But then of course Papa would fire him, and I would never see him again.
    But I was wrong to answer him. Why
did
I?
    Suddenly it dawned on her.
    Tim Hogan had been speaking Yiddish.
    Although she made a solemn oath to go to bed earlier the following Friday, she was still downstairs when Timothy arrived at the unprecedented hour of ten-thirty.
    “Please don’t let me disturb you,” he said, a slight tremor in his voice.
    She pretended to ignore him. But she did not rise and leave as she had the previous week.
    After another moment, Tim asked softly, “Would you like me to come back later?”
    She sat up and said almost involuntarily, “How come you know Yiddish?”
    “Well, it’s been four years since I started working for the families, so I’ve had a lot of time to pick it up. Anyway, it’s sure a lot easier to speak than to read.”
    “You can
read
—?”
    “Only very slowly,” Timothy answered. “You know Mr. Wasserstein is almost blind. After I started helping him on Friday nights, he persuaded me to come in a couple of afternoons a week so he could teach me to read the
Daily Forward
to him.”
    Deborah was touched at the thought of their eighty-year-old neighbor reaching into the semidarkness of his memory to explain Hebrew letters to this young Catholic boy.
    “But how can he teach you if he can’t see the page?”
    “Oh, he’s worked out a very interesting system. He knows the Psalms by heart, so he makes me turn to the one that begins with whatever letter we’re learning. For example, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ begins with
aleph
, ‘When Israel left Egypt’ begins with
bet.
And so forth.”
    “That’s very clever,” Deborah said with admiration. “And very generous on your part.”
    “Oh, it’s the least I can do. Mr. Wasserstein is so lonely—except for me, his only contact with the outside world is
shul.
”
    Suddenly, he suppressed a laugh.
    “What’s so funny?” Deborah asked.
    “He keeps joking that I’d make a good rabbi. Sometimes I actually think he’s serious.”
    “Jews don’t proselytize,” Deborah stated, herself puzzled that she should be so dogmatic at this moment.
    “I’m not worried.” Tim smiled, and Deborah suddenly felt uneasy. His expression was so … angelic. “Actually, if Father Hanrahan finds a place for me, I’ll be going to seminary where knowing