The First Inquisition
I WENT WITH MY wife to buy a Christmas tree. She had a talk with me before this day. She expected a better effort from me in the making of our holiday this time around. Nothing was actually said about the tree-buying, but I knew that would be the first test of my commitment. Jean would be watching for signs of my involvement right from the start.
I didn't think she was asking too much. My literary hero, Italo Svevo, author of the novel Confessions of Zeno, was a secular Jew who married a Catholic. To please his young wife, Svevo, whose real name was Ettore Schmitz, had himself baptized at age 35.
To please Jean, I didn't need to go to that extreme. All I needed was to give some proof of Yuletide spirit. It started with the tree-buying.
We went to our usual Christmas-tree place, an asphalt lot facing our town's public middle school. Both my children evinced the proper spirit. Dora and Guy, as soon as we arrived, scampered down one of the Christmas-tree aisles. Yes, so imbued were they with Yuletide spirit, they didn't just run down the aisle, they scampered. And laughed with actual glee no less.
That kind of display wasn't expected of me, but I do think I could have done more than I did when Jean exclaimed, "I love the smell of Christmas-tree lots!" I gave a little nod and said, "Yeah, it's nice." That was our first exchange on arriving.
I redeemed myself during the actual hunt. In the past, when Jean would go searching the aisles, I'd follow behind like the dutiful husband whose wife has dragged him along to a dress shop. This time, when Jean made her first stop in front of a tree, I passed her by with a purposeful air and halted in front of a tree of my own. I knew what to do from having watched Jean in prior years. With my mittened left hand, I stood the tree up and gave it a vigorous shake by the neck. This is what Jean calls "shaking it open," a bringing down of the folded-up limbs. After the shaking, one checks for "gaps" by swiveling the tree completely around. It helps to have one person swivel the tree while somebody else stands back and does the checking.
This tree of mine was too short-for Jean. I knew that, but just for the sake of the thing, I called her over to check it for gaps. This was my very first swiveling of a tree that I myself had picked out, not Jean. This would definitely win me some points.
When it was my turn to check for gaps and Jean had the job of swiveling a tree, I put a new snap of authority in my voice. "This one has some major gaps," I'd say. Or, "This one has a big gap at the bottom, but no one would see it if we put it against the wall."
Once we settled on a tree we liked, I carried it over to the man in the shed. I asked the man, "Can I get a fresh cut?" The term was correct, but I instantly regretted it. What if it was correct for Christians only? If the man in the shed rightly took me for a Jew, then the term coming from me would jar on his ears. He would take me for someone trying to "pass."
If the man with the hacksaw knew my secret, he didn't let on. He dropped to a crouch and in a pleasant voice-or was it too pleasant?-asked where I wanted the cut. He was wearing a pair of fingerless gloves, like the kind Alec Guinness wore as Fagin in Oliver Twist.
I paid him in cash for the tree-$50. Then I slipped him an extra 10 bucks for helping me lash the tree to the top of our minivan. Was this too much? Perhaps it only confirmed his hunch that I had appropriated a term not my own. I felt like someone who offers a bribe in the hope his secret will not come to light.
On leaving the lot with our lashed-down tree, I handled the car like a hearse bearing a coffin, creeping along under 20 miles an hour and taking each corner at a practical standstill. I had a fear of the tree falling off and people watching the Jew fight the tree. Luckily, we only had to go a few blocks. I breathed again when we came to a stop in our gravel driveway, the tree still on top.
I've reached the stage in my married life where getting the tree in the house and setting it up is a job I can comfortably do on my own. But because it's not something native to me, I refer to notes I've made over the years. I have a little section called "Christmas Tree" in a worn green ledger with the word "RECORD" on the cover. I sometimes think I could do a little course on Christmas-tree set-up, based on my notes. I would teach the importance of a well-watered tree, to reduce both needle loss and risk of fire. I imagine my students as all fellow Jews.