Departures

“I ought to be thanking you.”

“Nonsense. I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.” After they said their good-byes, Kaplan took the floppy over to the computer and played it back.

Most of it, he discovered, consisted of Genetic Enterprises advertising videos. If half of what they said about the R strain was true, as soon as the first little porker turned thirty-five, it was going to get elected President. Rhapsodies over how nutritious the meat was, however, did not matter to Kaplan. Ordinary pork was perfectly edible. The problem lay elsewhere.

The rabbi learned that the R strain’s digestive tract was modeled after that of cows, sheep, and goats, but was not created from their genetic material. From the tone of the video, he gathered others had tried that approach and failed.

He was glad Genetic Enterprises had done something new; it was a minor point in favor of the R strain. Leviticus 19:19 said, “Thou shaft not let the cattle gender with a diverse kind.” In the Shulkhan Arukh, Karo extended that to working with a team of different animals, such as a horse and an ox, and said that two mules working together should be examined to ensure that both were the get either of a stallion and je

Kaplan waded through a series of charts and graphs extolling the R strain’s ability to put on flesh quickly. Again, that was beside the point. Moreover, while it was important to farmers, the rabbi found it mind-numbing after a while. He hit the fast-forward button.

He jabbed the stop control. There stood Peter Delahanty. He hadn’t changed in the year or so since Kaplan had seen him last: he was fair, just past thirty, good-looking in an abstracted way, and very sincere. This had to be the press conference he had mentioned. Maybe, Kaplan thought hopefully, it would give a tidy summary of all the data with which he had been bombarded. Lionel was certainly cuter than a pie chart.

The questions Delahanty had gotten were interesting, and his answers did help clarify matters, but only from a dollars-and-cents standpoint. Kaplan listened for fifteen minutes or so. He was about to give up and turn off the disk when a reporter with a bushy gray mustache stood up and asked, “Will they interbreed with unmodified pigs?”

When Delahanty said no, Kaplan felt like Archimedes in his bath. For that matter, a naked, dripping man ru

He called Genetic Enterprises again; by now he did not have to look up the number. “I have the determination,” he said when Delahanty came on the line.

“And?”

“In my opinion, Jews may eat animals of the R strain, as they may any other beasts that have divided hooves and chew a cud.”

“Do you really think so? Do you mind if I ask you why you say so?”

“I was hoping you would,” Kaplan said truthfully; he had enough ego to want his reasoning appreciated. “The key is that properly speaking, these R strain beasts are not pigs at all.”

“No? What would you call ‘em, then? They look like pigs, they oink like pigs, they taste like pigs-though I don’t suppose you’d know about that. You told me you weren’t going to find the R strain kosher just to be doing it; it seems to me that’s what you’ve done. I don’t want that, Rabbi Kaplan.”

Kaplan almost burst out laughing. Of all the ridiculous situations in the world, for him to be explaining to an Irishman why a pig wasn’t a pig had to fall into the top ten.

He said, ”I was going to say no until I heard you tell the press that the R strain and ordinary swine weren’t fertile with each other.”

“No, they’re not,” Delahanty agreed. He sounded doubtful, then suddenly excited.”Oh, I follow you, I think. One scientific justification for calling two populations distinct species is that they can’t breed together. Is that it? Wouldn’t it just make the R strain a different kind of pig, though?”

Admiring his quick wits, Kaplan quoted Leviticus 19:19: “ ’Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind.’ The clear implication there, of course, is with a diverse kind of cattle. But the R strain can’t gender at all with pigs. And if they can’t gender with pigs, how can they be pigs, no matter what they took like?”

After a minute Delahanty said, “You’d make a good Jesuit, Rabbi.”

Kaplan grunted. Being a good Jew struck him as quite hard enough, without the added burden of lifelong chastity. Despite all his other strictures, Karo did not enjoin anything of that sort: In Chapter 150, he recommended cohabitation nightly for married men of strong constitution, twice a week for laborers working in the town where they lived, and once a week for those working in a different town. His injunctions included scholars, although Rabbi Eleazar said that “he used to have cohabitation with such awe and fear that it appeared to him as if a demon was forcing him to do it.”

While he was musing on Karo’s prescriptions, Delahanty said something he missed. “I’m sorry?” he said, embarrassed.

“I asked how serious you were about all this. Giving an opinion is easy, but do you mean it?”

“Of course I do,” Kaplan said indignantly.

“Then-” Delahanty hesitated, went on. “Look, if you think I’m out of line, tell me and I’ll shut up, and I certainly won’t think any less of you. But I would like to ask… having said what you’ve said, would you eat meat from the R strain yourself?”

He should have guessed the question was coming, but it took him by surprise just the same. Suddenly and bitterly, he understood how Ruth felt. Intellectually, he had convinced himself that the R strain was acceptable. Emotionally, Lionel, pink and plump and curly-tailed, was a pig, no two ways about it.

“Rabbi?” Delahanty said when he did not reply at once.

Having given the response he had, Kaplan saw he had no choice now. “I would eat it,” he said. “I will eat it. By your phone code, Genetic Enterprises is in Westwood or somewhere close by. Give me your address; I can be there in a half hour. I don’t care to make commercials for you, though, if you don’t mind.”

“I put you on the spot,” Delahanty said. “I apologize; that was nasty of me. Don’t let me make you do anything you wouldn’t want to.”

“You’re not. Tell me that address now, please.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Kaplan said firmly. He wrote down the street number Delahanty gave him, exchanged another minute or so of small talk, and hung up.

He threw on a battered corduroy jacket and was on his way down the hall when Ruth called “Where are you going?” from the den.

Sheepishly (under the circumstances, he thought, that was not quite the right word), he explained. He stayed right where he was; at that moment he didn’t feel much like facing her.

“You told him his pigs were kosher,” she said in a voice so flat he could make nothing of it.

“Yes, and this is what it got me.” He heard her get up. “What are you doing?” he asked in some alarm.

“Getting a hat.”

“What for?”

“So I can come with you, of course.”

He was still gaping when he stepped into the hall. He finally found his tongue.”What are you coming with me for? You were the one who told me to say the R strain was trafe and have done with it. You can’t want to go eat pork with me.”

“But it’s not pork, or that’s what you told Delahanty.”

“But to you it is.”

“Who’s the rabbi in this house?” she said, and laughed at his thunderstruck expression.”Besides,” she added softly, ”it’ll be easier if you’re not alone.”