Rufi Thorpe - Dear Fang, with Love

The restaurant that Kenneth brought us to was in a basement, brick walled with low arched ceilings, and one entire wall was cold case after cold case of fine beers. During the hubbub of pushing tables together to accommodate our large party, I floated over to the glass case to ogle. All the labels were in Lithuanian, and they all appeared to be microbrews.

Once seated, Kenneth and I were transformed into comrades by our mutual excitement over the beers. We proceeded to over-order a multitude of beers for the table to sample. The food menu was quite limited, however, and it turned out that Kenneth had brought us to a bar and not a restaurant. We ordered fried bread and charcuterie and a cheese plate.

Judith was very upset that there was so little to eat. She was a vegetarian, so the charcuterie was useless to her.

“I must learn to be thin, like you,” she said to Vera.

“Nonsense, you must eat,” Vera said, and reached across the table to snag Judith some of the fried bread.

It was very hot down there and the only light was candlelight and very quickly we were all drunk. I did not even try to stop Vera from having some of the beer, though I did try to keep track of how much she drank. She was almost eighteen, which was the legal age to drink in Lithuania anyway, and honestly, it had always seemed to me like kids were better off drinking around their parents who could look after them and make sure things didn’t get out of hand. I said these things loudly inside my own head as I watched her at the table, her face luminous in the candlelight, smiling over something Daniel had said.

Vera and Daniel were speaking softly at one end of the table, which left Judith, Susan, Kenneth, and me in a foursome. Kenneth was not a writer, and he was also, he mentioned, not Jewish. He was very red in the face, perhaps from the beer, perhaps from the heat. “But I find Jews very interesting. I like to study them,” he said.

An awkward silence fell. There was something off in the way Kenneth had phrased this, but I was sure he meant well. He was just clumsy, like the Owl People. A bit tone-deaf. After all, this was a largely Jewish history tour — we were all here because we found the Jewish experience interesting.

“They’re mysterious!” Kenneth went on, laughing. “Always keeping to themselves, refusing to mix with the rest of us.”

Judith cringed politely as though Kenneth had just blown his nose into his napkin at the table, but she nodded and said, “It is true — the extent to which Jews, especially in Eastern Europe, were uninterested in assimilating does imply that they did not find the pretty glass beads and top hats of Western civilization to be of much value.”

“Oh, but Civilization, man,” Kenneth said, “you can’t ignore her! She’s coming for you! Can’t turn your face away from steam engines and guns or you wind up like Anne Frank!”

I was just drunk enough that I was having a hard time keeping track of exactly how outrageous Kenneth was being. In some moments, especially in the dim light, Kenneth’s sweaty red face seemed animal and gross, and I was sure he was an anti-Semite come to this history tour out of some dark impulse, the way a serial killer likes to revisit the crime scene. I knew a boy in high school named Scotty Nicholson who collected Nazi memorabilia, plates and cups engraved with swastikas, hidden under his boarding-school bed. Maybe Kenneth was like Scotty Nicholson. Or maybe, Kenneth was just some fumbling average Joe, unable to couch his very human observations in a politically correct way. It was unclear and I wished I were more sober.

“Civilization as some kind of advancing monster,” Judith mused, clearly trying to be generous.

“I sometimes think part of it,” Kenneth said, leaning in conspiratorially, “part of the Jew Hate, is that they kept their women so covered up.”

There was a heavy silence at the table, though at the phrase “Jew Hate” both Vera and Daniel had tuned back in.

Susan cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, what? What did you just say?”

“Covering their hair and everything, doesn’t it kind of imply that other people aren’t good enough to even look at their women? I think it’s part of why people don’t like Muslims, either. Subconsciously, I mean.”

Susan made a “hmm” sound and nodded, but around the table there was the growing feeling that Kenneth was a creepy weirdo. But was he enough of a creepy weirdo that he must be stopped? In a group of mostly women like this, any confrontation would fall to me. I accepted this as part of being an adult and an able-bodied man, but I was also a naturally conflict-avoidant person. I didn’t have a lot of practice at drawing lines in the sand.

“As a Jew,” Susan said, and I was grateful that Susan had thought to do that — to make Kenneth aware that he was talking to Jews and not just about them, “it is hard for me to relate to what you’re saying.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Kenneth cried. “Jesus Christ, are you all Jews?”

Susan and Judith and Vera and Daniel all nodded, and I realized I was the only non-Jew.

“I’m not an anti-Semite or anything,” Kenneth said, holding up his hands as though to say, Don’t shoot. “I’m just a history teacher!”

There was a deflation of tension at the table — he was a history teacher! To each of us, this instantly meant that he was on our side: the side of human knowledge, the side of rationality. There was a collective sigh of relief.

“These history tours are tax deductible,” Kenneth explained, “and they’re great fun. I’ve done them all! And, I gotta say, I do just find all the Jew stuff fascinating.”

Kenneth went on to talk about his job teaching history at a community college, about his recent divorce and his ex-wife who was apparently very coldhearted. He was in a confessional mood, and he became maudlin when discussing his dogs. Apparently, he bred cocker spaniels and one of his bitches had been impregnated by some neighborhood monster, some Doberman or something, who got into his yard.

“I was going to let her keep the puppies,” he said, “but then they exploded inside her.”

“What?” Susan said.

“Killed her. Pups got too big, just exploded her insides.”

None of us knew what to say to this, except Judith who said, “Well, that is horrifying!”

But then Kenneth didn’t respond. He was staring at Vera and Daniel who had paid no attention to his story and were in their own world again. Kenneth’s eyes were very glassy and there was a nasty expression on his face.

He set down his beer. “She was the only reason I wanted to have dinner with you all, but it looks like he beat me to it!” He gestured at Daniel.

The idea that Kenneth had thought he was a possible suitor for Vera was so shocking that I had a hard time even making sense of the words. As soon as I did, I wanted to punch Kenneth in his fat red face. I stood up without thinking about it, but then just stood there, swaying at the table.

“What did you say?” I asked.

Vera and Daniel looked up from their end of the table.

“Don’t get so uptight, man,” Kenneth said.

“I’m not being uptight,” I said. I wanted to hit Kenneth, or shove the table, or do something, but to throw a punch or break glass in a bar was a serious thing. And besides, Kenneth was still sitting down and he was older, there was white in his red beard, he was drunk and wearing glasses that were smudgy with finger grease — I could see all this in the candlelight.

“Maybe you should just go and call it a night,” Susan said, touching Kenneth’s arm.

“Guess that’s my cue, eh? Thanks for dinner,” Kenneth said, and chugged the rest of his beer, stood, and threw his napkin on the table, then walked out of the bar, so drunk he was weaving.