Argument By Design

Argument by Design

By Howard M. Cooper

In the death camps during the Holocaust it was as hard to find faith as it was to find mercy. There was nothing but pain and humiliation in every moment. It was difficult to accept that a deity could exist at the same time that such horror could happen. It was equally impossible to see so many people suffer and die under brutal and methodical intent and not be hardened. Yet in 1944, in the year his camp was liberated, Isaac thought constantly about the existence of G-d. It was a preoccupation. His mother and three sisters were most certainly dead. His father was in slave labour at the Siberian front, an ordeal from which virtually no one ever returned. He had seen thousands of corpses tossed like waste in mass graves. At fifteen years of age he wanted to know that something meaningful still remained.

Time transforms everything. Sixty years later, Isaac was a guest of honour at his granddaughter's wedding. Eli, her younger brother, was 21. He was dressed in a black tuxedo and a powder blue cummerbund for the affair. The theme had been powder blue and white. It was all around, on balloons hanging from trestles at each table, from long streams of paper draped from the walls, from the napkins placed casually across the tablecloths and even in the ribbons woven into the fabric of the dresses the bridesmaids wore.

With the clock pushing on towards eight o'clock, the bride herself had changed into a blue and white travelling suit. She was standing on some stairs perfectly poised to perform a gesture she had day dreamed about almost from the time she could remember. She laughed gently into the light and knowing air. She smiled radiantly, blushing softly from the ventricles of her heart. She first turned away from her guests like she was abandoning them. They cried out like children and reached towards her. She arched her back and tossed the bouquet like an ancient promise over her left shoulder. In this simple gesture she captured the heart of a meaning anyone who knew her well might have guessed. In her subjective understanding of the world and all it contained, she had always been meant to be a bride.

From his seat at the head table Isaac was wondering if he was sober enough for one more rye and ginger. As he left his seat and made his way to the bar, Eli approached his trajectory.

"Have a drink?", Isaac asked his grandson. The boy towered over him. He was 6'1". Isaac stood a shade over five foot three. He regarded his grandson, who was good looking, athletic and intelligent, as G-d's answer to the Holocaust.

"I'm not drinking, Zaide. I have to drive tonight. I just wanted to say hello before you left. We haven't talked all evening." Eli, on the surface, sometimes seemed amused by his grandfather. In fact, he had nothing but admiration and love for him.

Isaac asked the bartender for a rye and ginger, having decided that he deserved to have a very good time at this particular celebration. "I'm not leaving for a while and I'm not driving. I'm what you call the designated drinker."

Eli responded to his Zaide's good humour. His grandfather didn't drink often and Eli enjoyed it almost as much as Isaac did. "There's certainly plenty of reason to celebrate." He said. It was not so much encouragement as it was an invitation to interact.

"You want to know something? It's self-defence! If I didn't drink, I'd shed tears." Isaac said.

Eli was curious. What could make Isaac weep at this celebration? "Is something making you unhappy, Zaide?"

Isaac shook his head swiftly. "No, you misunderstand me. Not from sorrow. From joy!"

Eli considered the circumstances. When he realized what Isaac meant he broke into a broad smile. "She is a lovely bride."

Isaac smacked his full lips. "She's what you call a natural."

Eli laughed. He thought of his grandfather as a small angel, someone who had experienced both heaven and hell but lived without debt to either one. Even so, Eli treated his grandfather with a gentle tact, sometimes so much so that he lapsed into an affectionate stupor in which he became foolishly patronizing, as though Isaac were made of tissue paper. "Zaide, would you like me to drive you home later?", he asked.