Meaning the traffic in Jerusalem.
FIVE
1
IN THE EASTERN CHURCHES and in Orthodox countries, Christmas is not as heavily celebrated a holiday as Epiphany. Children get their presents on Epiphany. Adults get their liquor on Epiphany. Priests get to say one of the most beautiful eucharistic liturgies ever written on Epiphany. Gregor had never lived in an Orthodox country—and wouldn’t have wanted to—but he had grown up in an Armenian household. He was geared to Epiphany. Downtown Philadelphia, with its stores full of after-Christmas sales and its streets full of shoppers and pickpockets, disoriented him.
Either that, or his headache was even worse than he thought it was. This was why he hadn’t become an alcoholic after Elizabeth’s death. Not willpower, not strength of character, not common sense, not any of the things he prided himself on—-just the simple fact that liquor always gave him a wicked headache, and soon. Some people could drink and feel high and happy for hours. For Gregor, the hangover always started in the middle of the third glass of wine.
On the sidewalk in front of Independence Hall, Gregor hailed a cab and put Tibor and himself into it. Tibor was happy. The wine seemed to have gone right through him, making him cheerful but not drunk, and he was stuffed full of something called a hot fudge crepe. He was also entranced by the American Christmas spirit, Philadelphia style. To Tibor, after-Christmas sales, overstuffed Christmas stockings, straining credit card limits and mountains of discarded silver foil paper were not vulgar. They were miracles.
“It’s a good thing I’m not a Puritan,” Tibor said. “I have never understood the Puritans. I understand them intellectually, of course. But I don’t understand them.”
“Well,” Gregor said, “they always sounded to me like a very unpleasant group of people.”
“Illogical,” Tibor said. He had lit a cigarette, rolled down his window, and stuck his head into traffic. Now he pulled back again. “What these Puritans did, Gregor, their theology, it was not Christian. Fate and money, that was all. And no enjoyment of the money.”
“I thought money was the root of all evil.”
“Gregor, Gregor. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil, and love in that passage means—means—obsession? Yes, obsession. Lust, like with people who are insane with sex and think of nothing else. It doesn’t mean being happy you can buy a microwave oven.”
“Do you have a microwave oven?”
“I have two. Anna Halamanian gave them to me. She thinks I never eat.”
The cab turned onto Cavanaugh Street at the north end, onto that block that was only nominally part of the neighborhood, where the Armenian-American families were interspersed with student artists and student writers and student actors. From here, they could see the painted dome of Holy Trinity Church, glittering gold even in the half-hearted sun. The cab began to slow down.
“Do you think he’ll miss the church?” Tibor said. “All the cabdrivers, they always miss the church.”
“They do?” Holy Trinity wasn’t an especially large church, but it was large enough. And it didn’t look like anything else in the neighborhood.
“You tell them church and they think of spires,” Tibor said. “They get to Cavanaugh Street and there are no spires and they go right past.”
“Oh.”
“I’m very disappointed in you,” Tibor said. “Money is the root of all evil. That is trite, Gregor. That is the kind of thing American college students say when they think they can show how intelligent they are by letting you know how much contempt they have for their fathers.”
The cab had pulled to a stop in front of the church, a perfect landing. Gregor got out his wallet, paid the fare, and gave the driver an extra-large tip, because of Tibor’s cigarette. Gregor had no way of knowing if the driver minded, or if it was legal to smoke in cabs in Philadelphia. He did know that no one ever challenged Tibor’s right to smoke. With priests and foreigners, people never did.
Out on the sidewalk, Tibor was pulling up the collar of his coat against a new onslaught of snow. Gregor, who felt as if he’d been snowed insensible over the last few days, didn’t bother with his own.
“Maybe the college students have a point,” he told Tibor, searching through his pockets for the gloves he never remembered to bring with him. “We were in Liberty Square. You must have noticed people sleeping in the street.”
“Of course I saw them.”
“But what did you think of them?”
Tibor shook his head. “Gregor, Gregor. Christ said, ‘Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless.’ Not, ‘Be sure to vote for the congressman who promises to build the most low-income housing.’”