Several years ago, my son married an Asian woman who converted to Judaism. At the simchah, my daughter-in-law wore a burgundy-and-gold sari. Thumbprints of sandlewood were pasted on their foreheads. A young Indian, barefooted and clothed in an ivory tunic over loose trousers played traditional Tamil music on a clarinet. At each table he bowed, and when the Tamil tunes gave way to a slow, haunting Hatikva the room was mesmerised. Jews and Tamils were celebrating together.
It had been very different when, as a young Jewish man, I had wanted to marry a German girl.
In 1942, my mother suddenly left home. I was told she had done a bad thing, but my father never spoke ill of her – or well. All I knew was that she had walked out on my father, me and my young sister. After the war, they divorced and she left for the US with an American pilot whom she later married.
I made a promise to myself: I would never let my father down. I was six. It was 10 years before I saw my mother again. I was 16 when the telephone rang and a husky voice said: “Hello, honey, it’s your mother.�
She wanted to see me. I went with my sister to my grandparents’ house. There, I met a dynamic, dramatic woman with black eyes and hair and film-star looks. She told me her side of the story. She had had a one-night fling, but never had any feelings for the man. She had simply wanted my father to pay her closer attention. She said that when she lost custody of my sister and me, she had tried to kill herself. I was enthralled by her and after she returned to the US I couldn’t get her out of my mind.
For the next few years, I fell in and out of love with every girl I met, but did not trust any of them. Then, in 1958, I met a beautiful German girl who introduced me to music and literature. She said that neither she nor her friends knew anything about the Holocaust. She was horrified by what I told her, saying that maybe her parents had wanted to protect her from the terrible shame, just as my father had done for me over the stigma of my mother’s affair.
When she left for Germany, we wrote often, but all her letters had to be sent to a friend’s house. My father would not have appreciated mail from the Fatherland in his letterbox.
For several months I tried to forget her. But I couldn’t and in 1960 I drove over to see her. In Heidelberg, I told her I was done with the secret life. She wanted to be Jewish and I wanted to marry her. I persuaded her to come back with me to London.
My grandparents, fleeing pogroms in Odessa, had arrived in England in 1905 where, two years later, my grandfather started a small millinery factory in London’s East End. After the second world war, my grandmother discovered from a cousin that six members of her family had been murdered in 1942 when thousands of Jews were either shot or burned alive by the Romanian army. For my father, every Jew who died was family and the Germans were responsible. I told him my German girlfriend had known nothing of the Holocaust, but he gave me a strict Jewish lesson and said she had to go.
I gave in, despising myself for my weakness.
Later, I told her what had happened. The following day, she fainted in the street and spent five days in hospital. One night, while visiting her, I told her it was far from over. I returned home to see the kitchen light on, the door ajar.
My father was sitting at the table, wearing a yarmulke and with a prayerbook in his hands. He pushed a letter towards me in an NHS envelope. He no longer looked angry, only deeply sad. He had just found out about her hundreds of letters and knew the whole story.
“You told me it was over,� he said. There was no chastisement and he was perfectly calm, but behind his sad eyes I saw the demand – silent, but insistent.
I wanted him to be angry. I hated him for wearing a yarmulke and holding a blackmailer’s prayer book. I hated my stepmother, who had found the letters in my bedroom. I searched his face for a sign of judgment, but saw only a man shackled to tradition who could act in no other way. But I could.
I made up my mind that I would walk out of the house and out of his life for ever. My triumph was short-lived. I remembered that childhood promise: never to be the one who let him down.
“It’s over,� I whispered. “She’s flying home tomorrow.�
Three months later, I flew to Baden-Baden to rekindle the dream. But when we walked through the botanical gardens, all my wonderful words were hollow and she knew it. After I came back to London, we both started dating other people.
In 1961, I went to Israel and forged a relationship with a girl I knew from London who was working on a kibbutz. But I was still hankering after the one who had introduced me to Beethoven. On our return home, I took a secret trip to Strasbourg for a few last passionate hours together. We were both about to get married – I to the girl from the kibbutz and she to an architect. I thought we had struck the best deal for everyone. I didn’t know then that I would be divorced within two years.
In 1970, I directed The Crucible by Arthur Miller for an amateur dramatic group, Nucleus. I cast a young student as Goody Proctor, and she later became my wife. She has been playing Goody Proctor for me and our children ever since.
One day, while living with us, my father inexplicably forgot how to make hats. Then he lost his way to the bathroom. He was barred him from the day centre he attended, for aggressive behaviour. Once, I caught him at the front door, car keys in hand, about to visit his sister. When I reminded him that he was no longer allowed to drive, he was fuming. When I reminded him that his sister had died the year before, he aged. I said: “You have Alzheimer’s, Dad. I’m doing the best I can, and I don’t want to let you down, but I don’t know how long I can carry on like this.�
How I wished I could take back those desperate words. But then, suddenly, my father-of-old miraculously reappeared. He was glad I’d told him that, said I shouldn’t worry about him: “Nobody’s going to let anybody down here, Alan. You do what’s best for the family.�
The following month, I took him to a home. He died four months later.
Watching my son dancing with his new wife on their wedding day, I wondered what questions they had asked themselves. I reflected how many lovers from different faiths and cultures still face a tragic choice. Today, for me, whatever the sacrifice there need be no blame on anyone.
I never blamed my father for his actions. He was an honourable man. But, for him, there had always been only one choice. The alternative was unthinkable. I came to believe that when two claims are made on the heart, sometimes there is no wrong choice and that honour is in the struggle.
• Waiting for Walter by AS Balfour (Matador, £8.99). To order a copy for £7.64, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders minimum p&p of £1.99.
