Shipmates,
Please forgive the brevity of this post; I realize that much moral comfort is drawn from the portraits of my life that hang in this virtual gallery. And yes, I generally paint with a heavy brush to focus the wayward mind toward that point at which the exciting portrayal of my adventures best mingles with the intellectual and spiritual engagement so beloved by any admirer of the higher arts. But today I offer a post remarkable more for its conciseness than its verbosity; unlike Theseus’s trail, this post will leave you alone and unfriended in the labyrinth of your own moral decrepitude! Good luck!
So last night, whilst sauntering along the hallowed halls of the mighty Pequod’s library, a couple called me over to their table. It seems they were set to engage in a rousing match of Scrabble!
“Well,” I asked, “what, on this fine evening, may I do for you my good people?”
“Pardon us, kind sir,” they replied, “but may we trouble you for a Scrabble dictionary, 2 books, and a scrap of paper?”
“Two books?” I asked, puzzled. “Which two books?”
“Oh is doesn’t matter,” they answered. “Any two big books will suffice—we use the books to keep score you see.”
Well actually, no, I didn’t see, but, to paraphrase Tennyson, “ours is not to make reply, ours is not to question why, ours is but to do and die.” So, like the famed brigade before me, I charged head-on into uncertain fates!
I brought two books of appropriately weighty dimension, the Scrabble dictionary, and a piece of paper over to their table, and waited anxiously to what was to be done with these random books. It turns out that they wished to place the paper, now ripped in twain, on the page corresponding to their score.
“Would you prefer a pencil,” I asked, for once genuinely eager to help one of my patrons.
“No, this is perfect, thank you,” they answered. “We’re not writing anything during the cruise you see.”
Again, no, I did not see. Was this some form of relaxation technique beyond the likes of your humble narrator? It was not until I began walking away that I noted the small cloth cap perched upon the back of the man’s head and remembered that we had a large group of Jewish passengers aboard celebrating Passover. Eureka! This couple was not “a little touched” as the previous generation so charmingly would have described such people; rather, they were* Jewish!
I returned to their table to confirm my suspicions, and we had a pleasant discussion about the rites they observed during Passover, not to mention Sabbath. It was not until later that evening when they returned the materials I had procured for them that I realized a funny thing: one of the books I had provided for their Sabbath-friendly score keeping was, perhaps, a questionable choice. I had grabbed, unknowingly, Erik Larson’s book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. On the cover of this book is a photo of a government building in full Third Reich glory with no less than a dozen swastikas visible on various flags and pennants.
Oops.
They did not comment on my unfortunate choice, so I am left wondering if they think I am anti-Semitic or perhaps just “a little touched.”
*They probably remain Jewish.
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