A Wedding in Montauk

Part One of Two Short Story Parts

“The wedding ceremony will be held after sundown,” says Rachel.

A silvery spring sky arches over the jeep, though it’s already August. Rachel’s fingers clasp the thick steering wheel like children’s hands. The air-stream, still cool from the previous night, pulls back her black curls and exposes her fresh profile. The streets are carelessly covered with asphalt, as if a road construction machine dropped chunks of tar in a straight line and lazily flattened it. Since Amagansett and East Hampton, where Rachel picked up Judith from the train, the road has become hillier. The land reflects the waves of the sea and their bodies have given in to the sway of the jeep. Next to the road pedestrians, joggers and dogs have trodden down the unwieldy grass into trails. The sweet-acrid smells of the bushes imbue the air. Wooden houses stand in uneven distances from one another, golden and black Labradors play on the lawns. No fences.

“Directly behind the bushes starts the sea,” says Rachel.

 “Strange to marry after sundown,” Judith says, “in Germany we do it in the afternoon.”

“We can’t do it earlier, it’s Sabbath, you now. I am Jewish, after all.”

Her words hit Judith’s brain with a dull thud. ‘I’m Jewish.’ Rachel hasn’t even lowered her voice to say it. You can’t just say something like that. Rachel continues to look straight ahead. The smile on her lips makes them curl at the corner of her mouth. Black and white movies start playing in Judith’s head, hasty movements and jerky cuts, the images running slightly overspeed. The tinny voice of the lunatic, people in dark clothing, who seem to be waiting for something in accurate lines, heaped up skeletons with skulls that turn out not to be skulls, turn out not to belong to decayed carcasses, but to bony bodies with disfigured faces, which not long ago must have been alive.

Rachel drops her off in a sandy parking lot. “I’ve got to go sightseeing with the new in-laws. Adam will take you back from the beach. I’ll see you later!”

Judith stands still for a second, as if she first has to comprehend what to do, then she follows the path that leads through a dune. The dune is narrow and the path merges into the sand. A moment later she sits on her red towel; coarse sand sticks to her feet. Only in the distance she sees some colorful spots. Most vacationers find it too cold for the beach today. Judith doesn’t mind the breeze. After she was transferred from Düsseldorf to New York a month ago, she has spent most of her days in an air-conditioned room and programmed computer software with Rachel. Skinny, washed-out grass bows deeply on the dunes. In the distance she even spots a European canopied beach-chair, but there’s no doubt: This is not the North Sea, which breaks against the main-land every few miles, the Atlantic thuds on the sand too heavily. 

Far out in the sea, Judith notices two rubber-covered heads in the water. One must be Rachel’s fiancé David, who she will marry in a few hours. He buoys next to his surfboard. The other is Rachel’s brother Adam. He sits on the board shining like an olive. Two weeks ago Judith and Rachel went to the Bronx zoo and Adam had come along. They had laughed a lot and Adam had called Judith afterwards, but they hadn’t found time for another meeting. Rachel had spontaneously invited Judith to the wedding. “We’re really relaxed about the whole thing,” Rachel had said, “it would be great if you can make it.”

And now this. Judith has never talked to a Jew before. She has only known dead Jews. In the movies Judith has seen in school the word “Jew” was only used as an insult, because she has only watched propaganda movies in her German history class. Judith doesn’t know Chanukah, Rosh Hashanah, not Yom Kippur, or what you do at a Bar Mitzvah. She knows about Auschwitz. She has seen a model of Auschwitz, many black and white pictures and a location plan. She had thought there were no Jews left in normal life, except in Israel, but Israel was located in a different corner of the world, which looked dusty and colorless on TV.