Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

8. CHAPTER EIGHT (continued)

"She comes often into my mind now, when I am here alone, with only the four walls. We were aber dumm, we women-- but how dumm! She was too smart for us, your mother. Too smart. Und eine sehr brave frau."

And suddenly Fanny, she who had resolved to set her face against all emotion, and all sentiment, found herself with her glowing cheek pressed against the withered one, and it was the weak old hand that patted her now. So she lay for a moment, silent. Then she got up, straightened her hat, smiled.

"Auf Wiedersehen," she said in her best German. "Und gute Besserung."

But the rabbi's wife shook her head. "Good-by."

From the hall below Doctor Thalmann called to her. "Come, child, come!" Then, "Ach, the light in my study! I forgot to turn it out, Fanny, be so good, yes?"

Fanny entered the bright little room, reached up to turn off the light, and paused a moment to glance about her. It was an ugly, comfortable, old-fashioned room that had never progressed beyond the what-not period. Fanny's eye was caught by certain framed pictures on the walls. They were photographs of Rabbi Thalmann's confirmation classes. Spindling-legged little boys in the splendor of patent-leather buttoned shoes, stiff white shirts, black broadcloth suits with satin lapels; self-conscious and awkward little girls--these in the minority--in white dresses and stiff white hair bows. In the center of each group sat the little rabbi, very proud and alert. Fanny was not among these. She had never formally taken the vows of her creed. As she turned down the light now, and found her way down the stairs, she told herself that she was glad this was so.

It was a matter of only four blocks to the temple. But they were late, and so they hurried, and there was little conversation. Fanny's arm was tucked comfortably in his. It felt, somehow, startlingly thin, that arm. And as they hurried along there was a jerky feebleness about his gait. It was with difficulty that Fanny restrained herself from supporting him when they came to a rough bit of walk or a sudden step. Something fine in her prompted her not to. But the alert mind in that old frame sensed what was going on in her thoughts.