Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [124]
Soon all the uneasiness would be gone. She’d learn to love Mother. Mother would teach her proper taste and etiquette. Mother was widely traveled in Europe. She came from a fine old German family. The family home was near Central Park in New York. A mansion. Wait till Leah saw it. When Mother eloped to marry Father, there were a few years of ruckus. It was that damnable business of the German Jews looking down their noses at the Russian Jews. However, when Mother became pregnant, the family relented and established Morris in the mercantile business in Salisbury. At first they thought it an exile, but when he became very successful, the family let him in, inch by inch. Elberon was filled with wealthy German Jews, their answer to Newport. Oh, Leah, how lucky I am! We’ll show them our marriage will be as good as Mother and Father’s.
Leah stirred on the chaise longue.
“Leah,” Richard said softly.
She blinked her eyes open.
“I’ll order dinner,” he said. “The first courses should be up in half an hour or so.”
He left shyly for the parlor, rang for the butler, and ordered a magnificent banquet. Mother had taught him how: a cultivation he enjoyed. He adored ordering for his mother.
When he returned to the bedroom, Leah was dressed in a revealing petticoat and quickly held the lap quilt in front of her with modesty befitting an ante-bellum belle.
“We are married, you know,” he said.
“Of course we are, Richard. I’ve just got to get used to—” She stopped. “Why don’t I take a soak in the tub until the food arrives.”
“Very well.”
The table was set in a softly candlelit rounded alcove, which overlooked the courtyard. The butler lifted one silver cover after another and, to his own delight, described the dishes in French, a litany of gourmet appetizers.
“If this is a Jewish resort, he should learn to speak Yiddish,” Leah said. “Who understands what he’s saying?”
“Here,” Richard said, filling a cracker with an unknown substance.
“What is it?” Leah asked.
“Caviar. We should have it with a pinch of dry sherry. Actually, I prefer iced vodka,” he said to the butler.
“Caviar. I’ve heard of it,” Leah said and nibbled. She grimaced. “My God, it’s salty. What is it made out of?”
“Fish eggs. Sturgeon, imported from Iran.”
“Sturgeon. From sturgeon we know,” Leah said. “Momma used sturgeon sometimes to make gefilte fish, when we can’t find carp. Sturgeon eggs? Well, no accounting for some people’s taste.”
Richard grinned sicklily. “To us,” he proposed, handing her a thimble glass of sherry. She sipped and set it down quickly.
“I’m rather delicate. Too much alcohol makes me giddy. Oh, look, lox and liver.”
“The liver is actually, well, a pâté. A very special blend called pâté de foie gras and truffle ... goose liver with very rare mushrooms ... and, er, the lox is salmon ... from Scotland. ...”
“Oh, my, my, my, fancy-shmancy.”
As Richard went on and on about his mother, Leah’s jaw clenched tighter and tighter. Successful they were, but not successful enough to find their precious son a high-class German Jewess for a wife, she thought. Who would want to go to Salisbury on the Eastern Shore but a poor Yiddish girl from the slums. That’s why they settled on me. Look at him!
A few moments later, the butler revealed a pair of cold stuffed lobsters and uncorked the champagne.
“Nu, what is it now?”
“Why ... why, it’s lobster ... uh ...”
“Shellfish!”
“Yes ... but ...”
“So, what kind of a Jew are you, Richard Schneider? This is traif, forbidden food. Momma would have an apoplexy if she could see this.”
“I’m sorry, Leah, but we don’t keep a kosher home. It is impossible in Salisbury.”
“That’s not the half of it. You go to synagogues that have organs and mixed chorus and the men sit with the women and they don’t even cover their heads. And you call yourself Jews. It was also impossible for Momma to keep kosher in Havre de Grace, but we’d never eat filth from the bay. Do you have any idea what these creatures feed on? They eat sewage and human you know what. It’s very, very dangerous