The Listener (8 page)

Mary looked at the curtains again in vague fear. “You are listening, aren’t you? I could sort of feel you listening. And look, it’s half-past three. Easter morning. When Our Lord rises from the dead. Oh, I shouldn’t even speak about Him! I’ve got no right to, a woman like me. Why, He’d turn me away, wouldn’t He? Like — like — it was something I read in the Holy Bible — No, He didn’t turn the woman away. I wish I could remember the whole story.

“Well, I got my money out of the bank, and I was in my best dress, with a short white coat and hat, and I had my suitcase, and I was happy again. Phil would meet me at the bus station at four, and we’d leave town at five. I ate a big breakfast, then I was sick at the stomach again and had to throw up in the ladies’ room. But I was happy just the same. I sat in the bus station the whole day, reading a magazine.

And then it was four o’clock. And I went to the door and watched for Phil. And then it was half-past four, and quarter to five, and they were loading the bus for this city. And Phil didn’t come. So I ran to the telephone, and the old lady answered it, and though I tried to disguise my voice she knew it, and she screamed at me about the police and hung up, and I knew Phil couldn’t come; maybe they had him locked up in his room and they wouldn’t let him out. I got on the bus and I came to this city, and I found myself a room in a cheap hotel, and then I wrote to Phil, telling him where I was.

“But they must have opened my letters. He never wrote me, and he never came to me. And after a month I knew I’d never see him again. I got a good job as a waitress. That was ten years ago.”

She leaned back in the chair, exhausted. “Maybe everything would have been all right, except Well, in a couple of months I found out I was going to have a baby. I couldn’t believe it! I still didn’t know how it happened, I was that dumb. Phil’s baby. So I went to a doctor, and I asked him what was the matter, and he told me, and he said, ‘Mrs. — ?’

And quick as a wink I said ‘Mrs. Mallon’. And then it hit me. I don’t even remember getting back to the rooming house where I lived.

“I thought and thought. God didn’t want me. Phil couldn’t come to me. I didn’t want to hurt him. His father would have killed him. I even thought of killing myself. And then I got this good job I have now, and I told people my husband was in the Army and I was Mrs. Mallon. I was, in my heart. All the time. And that’s what they know me as now. And I had my baby, a dear little boy, and I called him Phil, after his father, and the people in the hospital mailed letters I wrote to Mr. Phil Mallon in the Army. But I didn’t put any return address on them. I was getting smart by now. And I paid everything myself.

“I got my little boy out in the country, where all the little kids should live, with the grass and the trees and flowers and fresh air. I pay good for him, too. He’s a darling little boy. And everything would be all right, except that a year ago I met Francis Lewis. He’s a young farmer, and it’s a big farm, and he’s all alone on it since his dad died a couple of years ago. He came in the restaurant; he’d just brought his beef cattle in. And right away we liked each other, and he came back and took me out.”

Mary shivered. “And now you’re really going to hate me. I told Francis I was a young Army widow with a little boy, and he believed it. It didn’t matter at first. And then I sort of began to think of him. He’s so good and kind. I don’t feel for him like I felt for poor Phil, who couldn’t come to me and who doesn’t even know he has a little boy nearly ten years old. Imagine that! Not knowing you have a child! I just ache for Phil.

“Then Francis asked me to marry him, and I thought of being his wife, safe on that nice farm, with somebody to care about me again, and how wonderful it would be for little Phil, and we’d be all together. And then I thought what a cheat I was, and so I had to tell Francis, and I knew that would be the end. But do you know something? It wasn’t! No sir, Francis is that kind of man; he’s thirty-two. It’s just that he hates Phil — not my little boy — my Phil. And he said, ‘It doesn’t matter, Mary. I will just be marrying a young widow with a child. We’ll have to keep that up, for the boy’s sake and ours’. That’s the kind of man Francis is.”

Her young face suddenly glowed, and she smiled. Then her smile went away. “But how can I do that to Francis? He deserves a better girl than me, somebody good and nice. We’d have to be married in the Church, and I’d have to go to confession, and what will the priest say? He’d say just what God would say, and old man Mallon. So I’m holding off, and I won’t take a ring yet, and here I am.”

She waited. The room was still shimmering with light, and it was almost dawn. “Tell me!” cried Mary in despair. “Tell me that I must be real strong and send Francis away, and that God wouldn’t want him, either, if he marries me! Tell me! All at once I feel I love Francis, but I can’t do this to him!”

There was no sound. Mary stumbled to her feet. She extended the flowers. “I brought these for you. They’re so pretty; Madonna lilies, too. Take them.”

She crept to the curtains, read the brass plate, then touched the button, her whole body shaking. The curtains fell apart, and she fell back, uttering a great and terrified cry.

She looked at the man before her, and she trembled more and more. The light appeared to grow stronger, more triumphant. Mary bowed her head.

She whispered, “Will you take my flowers? They’re all I have to give you. Maybe, because of all my sins, I should’ve given the money to charity or something. But I want you to have them. Will you take them? Please?”

Closer and closer, blinded by tears, she approached him again. She put the flowers tenderly at his side. “You did listen,” she murmured. She straightened up, weeping reverently. “Why, you always listen, don’t you? Look! It’s Easter morning! It’s dawn outside. And you — you — ”

She knelt down and clasped her hands. “I remember now. The woman wasn’t turned away. ‘She loved much’. I remember now. Yes, I loved very much, and I love again.

“You want me to have Francis and my little boy, don’t you? Yes, that’s what you want! Oh, I’ll be so good to them both!” She swallowed her tears. “And there was another Mary, and a man she thought was the gardener. And now I know no priest will ever turn me away. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t!”

She bent her tired head and pressed it against the man’s feet, and suddenly she slept for a little while.

The bells of the churches began to ring. “The Lord God is risen! He is risen!” And Mary slept, and the flower scent filled the room. He watched over her, in her safety, and her golden hair covered his feet. They kept the vigil together.

All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.

Francis Thompson: “The Hound of Heaven”

“I hope” said the young man coldly as he looked at the curtains this warm, late spring day, “that you aren’t a psychiatrist. You see, I was in analysis, myself, for over a year, and I know only too well now — as I did even before that — that I am in the wrong profession, maladjusted, a round peg in a square hole, and that so long as I remain in my — profession — I will be emotionally disturbed and troubled and will continue to have my psychosomatic headaches. Which are really disabling, I assure you, even if there is no physical basis for them.” He laughed disdainfully.

“So I won’t waste your time if you are a psychiatrist. Frankly, I am a little tired of the jargon. In the light of what I’ve learned, the jargon seems puerile to me, though of course I’d never tell my — ” He paused abruptly. “Are you a psychiatrist?”

The room stood about him in its fresh white silence. He waited. Then he nodded, relieved. “I’m glad you’re not. So you must be a physician. But then you may be a marriage counselor. I am not married, though I am thirty-eight years old. The girl to whom I was engaged — We had a violent disagreement, and the engagement was broken. Her ideas, to say the very least, were childish. Of course there are men in my profession who would disagree, especially those of the Roman persuasion, but after all, the majority of young men in my profession, in these days, understand that we’ve advanced beyond the kindergarten era.”

He looked down at his well-kept hands, his dark blue trousers and fine shoes, and he dusted a speck from the sleeve of his excellent blue and brown sports jacket. Absently he examined a new callus on his right palm. He had been doing a great deal of golfing recently. The greens were fine this year, the club smarter, the people more suave and cultured and better-mannered. That was, of course, because of new and younger members. He was very popular among them and saw them regularly, and not only at the club. In fact, he had never been so popular. It was a mark of a well-rounded personality if people liked you; at least he was no neurotic. Even Dr. Bergson had assured him of that. “You could do much better as an executive,” Dr. Bergson had said, “or a consultant in human relations. Eminently fitted for that, I’m convinced. Especially that. Personnel work. You know people and their problems; there’s a big demand for your specialized sort of work.”

The young man put his hand to his forehead; another of those damned headaches. He was a tall and slender man, with a long, intense, ardent face which he kept under control constantly; he knew his secret tendency to ardor and passion and all the other disheveled emotions. Once or twice, lately (but only once or twice!), he had forgotten to keep his voice modulated in the club when some ass had made a gently sneering remark and had mentioned ‘bad taste, these days’. The young man’s heart had suddenly pounded then, his cool face had flushed, and he had been guilty — that was the only word for it, guilty — of raising his voice a little vehemently. The older men in the locker room at the club had looked disturbed but serious, and one or two had nodded; but the younger, his close friends, had appeared startled and embarrassed and had hurriedly changed the subject, as if to spare his shame and cover up his social blunder. His social blunder.

“Did you speak?” he asked, suddenly aware of a change of quality in the atmosphere of the silent room. “Did I hear you say, ‘A social blunder?’ in a questioning tone of voice?”

No one answered him, but he was convinced that he had heard those words. He said as if his thoughts had been spoken aloud and heard in entirety: “Of course, there in the locker room, I was guilty of a faux pas. In a way. That was no place for discussion. My study is the place. And my pulpit. For you see, I am a minister, and I have one of the largest and most desirable parishes in this city. I am the Reverend Mr. Anson Carr. So if you are a clergyman you will see we have much in common.” He laughed with a carefully cultivated ease.

It was strange, and purely imaginary, certainly, that he should have the impression of a gentle smiling, a sense of brotherhood. But it made him laugh with genuine ease now, as if in the company of an older colleague to whom he could speak frankly.

“I was right to come,” he admitted. “I suspected that you were ‘of the cloth’, as my grandmother used to call it. There is a Mrs. Merrill Sloane in my congregation, a lady for whom I had had little sympathy two years ago because of her various personality defects. A most remarkable change has come over her, and I hinted I’d be interested to learn what had accomplished this. She told me only that she had been here to see you, and then she said — that was a month or more ago — ‘Do go yourself, Mr. Carr. It is just what you need’. I must admit that I was disturbed at this; I wasn’t aware that I ‘needed’ anything. Not anything that was visible to my congregation, at least. If a woman once so self-centered as Mrs. Sloane was aware of my ‘need’, then it must be flagrantly evident. I hope you are not offended, but that is the reason I am here: to find how to conceal some of my — thoughts — from my congregation.”

He paused. His headache was becoming very ferocious. He took a beautifully enameled pillbox from his pocket and slipped a tablet on his tongue and swallowed with a little difficulty.

“Not that I will have a congregation much longer,” he said, clearing his throat. “I have no right to it. For you see, I am dry. Dry as death, dry to the very marrow of my bones. Like David, I cry out to my God from the darkest depths, and there is no answer. Have I lost my faith? I don’t know. Perhaps. It is as if I’ve been working for years on a desert, excavating parched bones and presenting them as living forms. A desert. Dry bones. A minister has no right to a church and a congregation when he experiences that dryness, has he? He is, in a most important way, a total fraud. So I am doing more than merely considering leaving the ministry. I intend to resign in September — and accept another position. Money is no object; I have a private income from my father’s estate, and Mother has her own income. She is living in Florida with my sister.”

He looked about the room with pain in his gray eyes. “It’s very strange,” he said. “My family was very pious, even though my father was a successful businessman and very popular and belonged to all the best clubs in this city — I am a member too. We had prayers every evening, as well as prayers before our meals. Father used to lead us in the Bible reading and in the prayers. He was, I suppose, a very old-fashioned man. I worshiped him. When I told him I wished to be a minister and not take over his business later, he well, he became very emotional in the way of Victorians. I wasn’t embarrassed, but after all, I was only seventeen then. One doesn’t expect men with high self-esteem and a sense of individual worth to burst out crying with joy — not in these days! I think we have better control of our emotions now, don’t you? If I were a father, for instance, and had a son who told me he wished to enter the ministry, I’d say to him, ‘You must give a great deal of consideration to this and weigh the advantages and the disadvantages thoroughly. I think we should consult an expert on aptitude tests and then a psychiatrist before you commit your life to any — profession’. ”

He waited. No one answered him. Then something rose in him like the high and thundering swell of a wave. He fought it down, but it rose high and higher, and out of its smothering he cried, “ ‘Profession!’ I call it ‘profession’! But it is a calling — a calling! — isn’t it? That is what my father said — ‘a holy calling’!”

He put the heels of his hands hard over his eyes. “Oh, my God,” he murmured. “To think that there were people long ago who thought God ‘called’ them! Now we gravely consider the impulse we have toward the ministry and wonder if we are well rounded enough, and fully psychologically educated, and adjusted, to become ministers of the Gospel! Are we good administrators? Do we like people? Do people instinctively like us? Are we excellently grounded in the social ethic? Do young people naturally gravitate toward us? Are we expert businessmen? Do women like us? Are we liberal in our ideas? Do we have good voices which inspire confidence? Can we meet men on their own ground easily and confidently, whether it is the golf course, the broker’s office, the club, the family living room, the parish hall, the community activities, the schools, the theater, the good restaurants? In short, are we ‘good fellows, sweet guys, regular people’? Are we enthusiastic about sports and take an active part in them? Are we ‘broad’? Men of ‘diversified’ interests? Conversant with television? Are we on the board of this and that? In short, are we ‘active’?”

He stood up, looking about him with a kind of wild hopelessness. “In short,” he cried, “must we be everything but ministers of the Gospel?”

The white walls were lined with his questions. He stared at them. He shrank. He fumbled for the chair and sat down again. He was breathing in short gasps. He looked at the curtain. “You probably know,” he said. “As a clergyman, you probably know. You can see, surely, what confronts every minister, a pastor, a shepherd.”

The room appeared to become cold, the light glacial. “It’s not my fault,” said the minister. “Not my fault. It is what they want. I give it to them. And it is killing me.” He added in a groaning voice, “It is killing me.”

He waited. Then he said roughly, “You are probably a very successful clergyman. Your people love you, admire you, and talk over your lectures — I mean, your sermons. You satisfy them. You give them what they want, easily, silkily. You never tell them about their ‘sin’! You never rebuke them. No minister would dare, these days.

“Do you know that no one speaks of sin these days? Except, of course, the Roman Catholic priests and perhaps a scattered Orthodox rabbi here and there? There is no ‘sin’. It’s a matter of environment, of conditioning, of lack of opportunity, of society’s ‘oppression’. Of broken homes. Of racial discrimination. Of bad housing. Of slum conditions. Of ‘rejection’ by parents. Of physical disability. Of not being able to adjust to the ‘peer group’. Of lack of conventional clothing, or money, or recreational advantages, or luxurious schools, or unsympathetic teachers, parents, neighborhoods, ministers, priests, rabbis. In short, ‘sin’ is not the fault of the individual. It is not his responsibility. He has ‘rights’ and ‘claims’ but he has no duties. Not to himself, his community, his church, his parents, his wife and children, his pastor, his country. He has ‘rights’. And,” said Mr. Carr in a low and desperate voice, “he has no sin. There is no sin. Man, as Rousseau said, is sinless. Only the institutions around him provoke anti-social behavior, for which we must be compassionate, surrounding the sinner with ‘help’. But we must never blame him. We must never say, ‘Rise, and sin no more’. We must never call evil people a ‘brood of vipers’, as John the Baptist called them. We must never call them liars and hypocrites, as Christ called them. This would give the ‘victim’ a trauma. We must, at all costs, reassure the sinner that he has been sinned against.”

His voice rose, stammered. “Above all things, we must never say, ‘You are evil; you have an immortal soul which is in danger. God will not be mocked. You are black with sin, a sinner. But you can be saved. Repent, and do penance, before it is too late’. No, we can’t say that to our congregations. Not our congregations who gather on Sunday morning well shaved, well brushed, well dressed, well furred, happy with themselves. And those of us who are ministers to the poor dare not call our people ‘sinners’ either. The damned social workers would be rushing in, in droves, in their fluttering black skirts and ballet slippers and fierce little faces, screaming about ‘discrimination’ and what ‘chance’ did our congregation have in this competitive society.”

Mr. Carr stood up again, straining tensely toward the curtains, which did not move.

“Who is the competent receiver of all this? The government? With its slips of green paper recoverable in more green paper at the bank? What value is in that? Who will ‘recover’ our world for us? Who will teach us to say, as we all ought, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’? How can we pastors call our congregations vipers, liars, hypocrites? There would not be a church standing if we dared to say that!”

He dropped his head. Then he said, “But first we must say that to ourselves. Yes, first of all to ourselves, we the false shepherds, who led our people into the papier-mache valleys of complacency, who laid mirrors in the earth, instead of living water, so that our people could contemplate themselves with self-congratulation, who spread carpets of artificial green grass for them, steam-heated, on which they could bask and forget the earthquakes rumbling below them. But which will never feed their hunger.”

He moved toward the curtain, his face damp and very white under the tan.

“Do you know what I said in that locker room, where I embarrassed the men of my age who were preparing to shower and go home for the nightly drinks, the well-served dinner out of the deep-freeze, and the hi-fi afterward, and the television, and their badly behaved and godless children? And the urbane programs which featured, in long and boring detail on a wide screen, the houses, jewels, furniture, dresses, shrill aspirations, simperings — and, God forgive me! — the evil nonsense of actresses, ‘public personalities,’ politicians, songsters, and dancers?

“I said to my friends, ‘This also is vanity’. I don’t know what made me speak! I said, ‘What have you done today for God? What did you do yesterday for God? What do you intend to do tomorrow for God?’

“If they were appalled — after all, it’s socially unpardonable to speak of God these days except in church, and then only in passing — I was even more appalled. No wonder they were embarrassed. I was even more so, though the older men nodded seriously. My friends covered up for me quickly, for which I am grateful. I had exhibited myself as a kind of Fundamentalist screecher, and that is not the picture I have of myself at all.”

He leaned sideways against the tall marble chair. He could hardly get his breath. His head pounded violently. It was some time before he could speak, and then only faintly. “What picture do I have of myself? A community leader, a sportsman, a good fellow, a shaker of hands, a soother of aggressive women, an adviser on problems on which I consider myself a psychological expert, a coordinator, a raiser of funds, a sweet patter of heads, arms, shoulders, a fine partner at bridge, an adolescents’ pal, an arranger of parish amusements, a smiler. God forgive me! Always a smiler! Forever and forever a smiler!

“What does Shakespeare say about that? ‘. . . Smile, and smile, and be a villain’. ”

He fell into the chair, slumping forward, his hands between his knees. “A villain,” he repeated. “That is what Alice called me when she broke our engagement. ‘What do you tell them of God, and the Laws of God, and penance and repentance, and their immortal souls?’ she asked me. ‘Do you ever say to them, “This night your soul will be required of you”? Do you ever tell them why they were born? Why do you let them believe that all will be forever sunshine for them on this earth, that they will always be young, their children forever children, their money always available, their health unfailing, their legs always strong and their hearts always brave, their security unshakable, their lives ever eager and full of food and entertainment and dances? Why don’t you tell them all that tonight, perhaps, but tomorrow, surely, their souls will be required of them, and that all the dancing they did and all the fun they had, and all the bells they rang, and all the money they made will be nothing at all, not even a memory?’ ”

The room waited, as if for an answer. Mr. Carr, waiting also, could see vast answers shaping in his spirit, and he cringed before them.

“Yes,” he said finally. “It is all my fault. The desert I live in; the dry bones I offer my people. For I am the desert and the dry bones. I am the liar and the hypocrite. I never had the faith to tell my people the truth, nor the spirit, nor the courage. I am the guilty. I not only never had a flock, I am not even a shepherd.”

He pushed himself to his feet, tired to the very heart, aching like an old man. He said to the curtain, “Do you understand? You are a clergyman too. But did you ever have a flock like mine, resentful of the truth, liars to themselves, complacent, hurrying, grasping, smirking, preening, authorities on everything, greedy, betrayers, hard-eyed, coveting social honors, doubters, atheists, hypocrites, adulterers, sportsmen, lovers of the trivial and the passing, sheepish before the mention of God’s name? Did you? If you did not, then you can’t answer me and you can’t help me!”

He ran to the curtains, his head roaring, his finger outstretched toward the button.

The curtains rushed aside. Mr. Carr stood and looked in the light. Then he stepped back slowly, foot by groping foot.

And then he fell to his knees.