“What kind of book are you writing?” he asks her at the airport. They have arrived an hour early; she has checked her suitcase, filled mostly with fine Paul Revere pots and pans, the wedding presents he kept for her while she was traveling. They stroll along the hall to the gate and back to the lobby; “It’s not really fiction,” she is trying to explain to him, “it should please you—” But he hasn’t the patience to listen and interrupts to tell a story by the Hungarian humorist Karinthy. He shrugs and they laugh.
“You were crazy about me when you were three years old,” he says unexpectedly; “Do you remember that?”
Her admission does not relieve him. It’s too late to comfort him, his hand clutching hers insists, as he recalls those happy days when she was three years old. “And it was pure sex,” he adds, “Do you know that?”
“I know.” She laughs, but he hasn’t heard, or felt her kiss. He stands alone before the gate, his eyes grieving, unreconciled to the ancient loss; he sets his mouth bitterly, bravely.
She cannot please her father; perhaps no person had or could ever please him. He is a priest after all.
“What kind of book are you writing?” he asks, as they continue walking. “Can you explain to me what kind of book this is?”
(The courtroom is filled with orthodox Hungarian rabbis and their families. EZRA, a skullcap lying insecurely on unruly hair, stands by the Judge’s table with his father-in-law, RUDOLF LANDSMANN. LANDSMANN is wearing a gray fedora. A rabbi is delivering vehement invectives in Hebrew. The CROWD roars in approval.)
LANDSMANN. Why are they screaming? The place stinks. My God! Dissolve the marriage!
EZRA. They’re your people, Landsmann, these Hungarian fanatics. In Poland we called them Calvinists.
LANDSMANN. (Sighing) It’s true. The disciples of my grandfather, the holy Reb Smuel of Nyitra. We called them the Dushensky gang. My beautiful sister married to one of those brutes, gassed in Auschwitz. She is there, I see all of them: Papa, Mama, Grandfather. But why do they want my daughter?
EZRA. They want your daughter because she is the great granddaughter of the holy Reb Smuel, your mother’s father.
LANDSMANN. But why? What has she done? What are they screaming? I don’t understand. What! They charge her with uncleanness, holding heretical doctrines, practicing abominations, loathsome and abominable forms of copulation. (He laughs) My daughter? Ezra, did you know about this? Are we back in the Middle Ages? My daughter practicing loathsome and abominable forms of copulation? With you perhaps!
EZRA. Narrischkeit. The point is your wife—I mean my wife, your daughter—has no legal status. (Furiously) These people mean business, Landsmann. If you had listened to me we wouldn’t be in this mess.
LANDSMANN. (Offended; bitterly) You’re crazy. Everybody is meshuga. I’m taking my daughter out of here. All I need is the signature of two analysts to have her declared insane and placed under our professional custody.
EZRA. Landsmann, you agree the most important thing is the marriage.
LANDSMANN. The marriage must be saved. That’s why I insist on having her under my custody. A divorce at such a moment! It’s terrible. I refuse to be present at marital squabbles. I am not going to listen to any more “he says” and “she says”—I can’t stand it. All my life, in my marriage, in your marriage, in my consulting room, in fifty years of analytic practice that’s all I hear. People should learn to live with each other and devote themselves to science.
EZRA. Landsmann, where did your daughter get money to run away with the children?
LANDSMANN. I didn’t approve of what she was doing.
EZRA. You can’t handle her.
LANDSMANN. She married you without my approval—I’ll never forget that three a.m. long-distance call confronted with a fait accompli.
EZRA. There you have it. And I took a plane to visit you the same week. Alone. Your daughter was in a play, you recall? And did I get her out of the theater?
LANDSMANN. You did.
EZRA. And did I see that she finished college? And got a doctorate? Did I show her half the world? And did I give her children?
LANDSMANN. With my money.
EZRA. Landsmann, you didn’t know what to do with your daughter or your money.
(The coffin is brought in)
LANDSMANN. Oh my God...
(They remove the lid. SOPHIE, in a white gown, stands up in the coffin)
EZRA. You have to admit she looks good. Fifteen years married to me; you can’t say she isn’t well preserved. As good as the day I married her. How many husbands do you think—
LANDSMANN. (Weeping) My beautiful daughter. The tragedy! She is my daughter.
RABBIS. We want her.
(Everybody approaches the coffin. There is a commotion as KAMILLA DE VITHEZY, Sophie’s mother, enters, making her way to the coffin carrying a fur coat on each arm. Everyone is scandalized. The rabbis and their wives jeer with disgust at her perfume, jewelry and the fur coats.)
KAMILLA. I have come to take my daughter home. My poor darling! Why do I always find her in a rag! Sophie, aren’t you going to kiss me!
EZRA. For this I’m not responsible. Whatever you might blame me for, Landsmann, I am not responsible for your ex-wife.
LANDSMANN. We all make mistakes.
KAMILLA. Aren’t you glad to see me? Look, I brought you my three best fur coats and my swan feather wrap. I saved them for you through the Nazi occupation and the Russian occupation. (SOPHIE tries on the wrap) Sophie, have you no feeling for your mother!
(She bursts into tears and runs out screaming. SOPHIE scandalizes rabbis with obscene gestures and postures, showing her naked behind, etc. RABBIS spit and jeer.)
RABBIS. Witch. Whore. Jezebel. Babylon. Mitzraim.
EZRA. (Sighing) She doesn’t know how.
LANDSMANN. Please Sophie, that’s your uncle, the chief rabbi of Transylvania—
SOPHIE. A sanctimonious bastard! He led his congregation to death trains, torture, gas chamber, typhus. His own wife and daughters. They could have saved themselves. A fanatical brute. A murderer. Burn him!
EZRA. Na ja. They did.
LANDSMANN. Can’t this be stopped?
