Answer as a Man Page 14

  The bankers looked at him with incredulity. “Pat,” said Mr. Rumpell, “do you understand the … the magnitude of what has been proposed to us, the money? And you let this … this young man prattle about partnerships and whatnot, he who probably hasn’t two pennies to his name!”

  In spite of his indignation, Mr. Mulligan was not without common sense. His dangerous color retreated. He gnawed a thumbnail and his eyes blinked furiously. He, too, for two years had been thinking of a certain matter. He suddenly beamed like a fat and rosy angel. He said, “Well, a partnership for fourteen acres—it does seem like too much, doesn’t it? Jason, we are talking of millions of dollars—and you want a goddamned partnership for fourteen acres.”

  “There are ladies present!” Mr. Rumpell said sternly.

  Mr. Mulligan waved grandly. “My apologies. Jason, don’t you understand? For those fourteen acres you will get fifty dollars apiece. A fortune! And I guarantee both you and Lionel fine positions up there, with splendid salaries.”

  Jason looked at him with dogged pain. “Mr. Mulligan, why not put out shares? I’ve been reading the papers—”

  “You mean, Jason, go public?” asked Mrs. Lindon, who knew all about stocks. “But a closed concern? Better?”

  She had lost Jason now. But Mr. Mulligan had been listening. “Shares,” he said. He sat up very straight in his chair to impress the bankers. “Small salaries, but some shares. Lionel, you can put in some money if you want to.”

  Jason looked aside, and the pain was deeper on his face. “I have nothing,” he said.

  “Yes, you have,” said Mr. Mulligan, loving him like a father. “You have yourself, Jason, you have yourself. And that’s worth more than money.”

  “You talk as if this … preposterous matter is already settled, Pat,” said Mr. Sunderland. “Ridiculous, of course, the whole thing. I’m willing to talk about it, if Gordon also is willing. It will probably come to nothing. Millions of dollars are involved. Chairmen of the board to be consulted. Investors. Other banks. It’s a wild dream! We haven’t even broached the whole matter. We’re not playing tiddledywinks. We’re talking about money! And the land hasn’t even been surveyed yet!” He pursed his lips in outrage at all this nonsense.

  Clementine became very cheerful. “I think everyone has forgotten that I own nine acres on that Shoulder. Gordon, would your bank sell me the other nine?”

  Shaken but smiling, Mr. Rumpell said with loverly indulgence, “And what would you do with them, Clem?”

  She took up Mr. Schultz’ forgotten card and studied it thoroughly through her lorgnette. “I think I will talk to this Mr. Schultz,” she said.

  8

  As Jason and Lionel went down the stairs, Lionel said, “My God, my God! Jase! Am I dreaming, or dippy, or drunk?”

  “I feel the same way,” said Jason. “I don’t know what will come of it, but I’m sure there’ll be something.”

  “They were talking in millions,” said Lionel, awed.

  “And I was thinking of a modest hotel!” said Jason, stunned.

  “Never tell them that,” said Lionel. “Or they’ll have you by the balls in two seconds. Think big, as the president says.” He laughed almost hysterically. “When it comes to millions, what are a few more or less?”

  “I thought of a smaller resort than Hadley Hall, Lionel.”

  “Think of a bigger version. Well, back to work. See you tomorrow.”

  Jason slowly rode toward home on his bicycle through the Sunday-still streets, where only the sounds of raucous gramophones could be heard and the muted whine of children and the annoyed complaint of some harried mother. Jason automatically winced at the new “ragtime” pouring through open windows. Church bells had begun to ring for early-evening services. A few men sat on the steps of small porches or on stoops, conversing quietly together and smoking, or indulging in some half-suppressed male laughter. Wheels ground at a far distance, and occasionally there was an explosive snort from an automobile. Otherwise the quiet was undisturbed.

  Usually the squalid atmosphere of Sunday in a small town depressed Jason. Today he saw and heard nothing of it. At moments he felt incredulous; at other moments he felt a surging exhilaration which resembled drunkenness. Sometimes his breath caught short in his throat; sometimes he felt he was wheeling on air, far above the pavement. Money. What would it do for his family? Everything. His grandfather had once said, “If money can’t buy happiness, nothing else will, and niver you mind the nonsense of ‘poor’ happiness. That is for the very young or foolish, or for one who lives only for the instant sensation. How can one be happy if hungry or with the rent not paid, and no job? Only a baby wetly bubbling in its cradle. Money will give freedom; freedom must be bought in this accursed world, and mind you, bucko, freedom is worth more than life itself.”

  Freedom.

  Jason thought of his mother in the hospital. He had visited Kate that morning. For some mysterious reason, she had appeared fragilely radiant, as if expecting some wondrous boon or joy. Her poor haggard face had taken on a hectic bloom; her ravaged lips had been pink, her hand not so hot. “Yes, love,” she had said. “I feel much better.”

  Jason had looked about the small wretched room which was so determinedly clean, at the two sagging beds, one of which his mother occupied, at the curtainless little window, at the two commodes and the single kitchen chair. Poverty. The other bed contained a very old woman, a gray shadow of a human being, senile, muttering, sobbing, unaware, abandoned flotsam of a grim world, forgotten, nameless. She had stared sightlessly at Jason and then had called him “Jim.” Her almost inaudible cry had been full of longing and despair.

  It was from this atmosphere that Jason and Bernard wished to remove Kate: a room of her own, undisturbed by the anguish of another human being. Kate worried about her roommate and the natural indignities of very old age and abandonment. “Mrs. Flood doesn’t know,” Jason had told his mother, and his mother had gazed at him with pain in her fever-bright eyes. “Who told you that, then, Jason?” she had asked, and he had no answer. Kate also worried about the money being spent for her in the hospital. She never said a word, but she hoped she would die soon so as not to be a burden on those she loved. A week ago she had received extreme unction, and had rallied, a miraculous event not unknown to priests. The next day she had actually been able to sit in a chair near the window. From that day on she had coughed less than usual, and the blood did not appear so often from her riddled lungs. She claimed to “enjoy” the miserable food, the food of a poverty-stricken little hospital. Never once had she complained during the weeks of her confinement here. The nuns said she was a “saint,” at which Bernard had nodded his head.

  Jason’s strong pedaling legs slowed. There would be money—but it would not be in time to help Kate. He thought of his fourteen acres, so necessary for the phantom hotel gleaming in pale gold on a far horizon, a horizon in the future. He had time; Kate did not. He had been offered fifty dollars an acre. It was an enormous sum. It would remove Kate immediately from her disheartening environment. It would provide her with better food and a nurse for herself—at home. It would give her the comfort she never had had. It would restore her to her family and lessen her worry.

  His heart sickened as his dream retreated. But his mother was more important than dreams. She had never asked for anything. It was time for her to receive, late as it was. The pedaling came to a stop at a corner. Dusk was increasing; the forlorn street melted into it. A chill wind chased away the day’s earlier warmth. The mountains became mere ashen ghosts against an ashen sky, and most of them faded into obscurity. A gust arose, bringing grit against eye and teeth.

  I must think of my mother, said Jason to himself, and it seemed to him that his heart sank like cold lead with this resolution. But above all there was his mother—he could wait.

  Something stirred in him as if someone had spoken, but he could not distinguish what was said. He went on more quickly, without hope but with less pain. The euphoria was go
ne; he moved as one under a drug. He would tell his grandfather only what was needful. Some instinct warned him that the pragmatic Bernard would not agree with him, for above all, Bernard was a realist, and not even love could delude him. There would be hundreds of dollars for Kate. That would be enough to tell Bernard.

  The kitchen gaslight had been turned on in the dreary small house. His grandfather, at least, should be there. It was not time for him to take up the last hours in Mr. Saul Weitzman’s shop, the shop Bernard had sold years ago on inheriting it from Joe Maggiotti. Joan should be there, home from her outing with the “woman.” But Jason had the alarming sensation that the house was empty. He did not, in his haste to go inside, notice a bicycle leaning against the wall.

  He flung open the door of the kitchen. There at the table, sat Bernard, not moving, with a bottle of cheap whiskey at his elbow on the table. And there, also, was Father Sweeney, as silent, as impassive, with a glass in his hand. The two men looked up at Jason as he entered, and he felt that something calamitous awaited him.

  “Where have you been, then, all these hours?” asked Bernard, but his voice was without emphasis. It sounded both indifferent and exhausted.

  “On the mountain, as usual,” replied Jason. He glanced at the priest, and a chill ran over his flesh. “Joan?” he said. “Something’s happened to Joan?” The gas mantle was suddenly surrounded by a wavering halo. He felt a nauseating drop in his stomach.

  “No,” said Bernard, and he shifted in his chair. He took up his glass of whiskey. A tear slowly ran down his cheek. “It’s your mum. She is dead.” He drank deeply. His head dropped, and he looked old and broken. The priest gazed at Jason compassionately. “No,” said Jason.

  Bernard began to speak, as if he were alone in the chill kitchen and was talking only to himself, remembering. His voice was slow and hoarse and without emotion. He looked at nothing but the glass in his hand. Jason stood near him, motionless. The brick walls, the varnished ceiling, all the furniture in the room became stark, strange, unfamiliar.

  Bernard had worked that morning and until two o’clock at Mr. Weitzman’s shop. Then he had gone to see Kate at the hospital. She had greeted him with her own sweet and gentle smile. He had sat beside her, holding her hand, while the very old woman in the next bed peevishly complained about her children “messin’ up my kitchen.” She had been unusually restless.

  Bernard had seen too many consumptives to be deceived by Kate’s brightness and soft chatter, her quick lucidity, her appearance of restored life. He had gone out to the elderly nun who patrolled the hospital. She had assured him that Mrs. Garrity was “much better today,” though she had not got out of bed even once. Bernard had said shortly, “Send for Father Sweeney.” But Father Sweeney had been called in an emergency and was not expected back soon.

  “I sat there. I looked at her. She chattered. She even laughed. She talked of you, Jason, and Jack and Joanie. She said, ‘You’ll be looking after them, won’t you, Da?’ I said I would. She sat up, and kissed me, and smiled. She lay down, still smiling, still looking at me with those dear eyes.… Then I knew she was dead.”

  Bernard took another hard swallow of whiskey. “The old lady near Katie—she said, ‘An angel just walked out of the room,’ and she clapped her hands. I knew she was right. An angel … left.”

  Jason blindly reached for a chair and fell into it. He could as yet feel nothing.

  “So,” said Bernard. Now he turned ponderously to the priest, and there was fire far in the deep sockets of his eyes. “Tell me, bucko,” he said. “What did Katie do to deserve her life and her death? Tell me!” and he struck his clenched fist with sudden violence on the table, and the glasses and the bottle jumped. “Tell me,” he shouted, “damn you!”

  “Bernard …” said the young priest.

  But Bernard shook his head like an old wounded bull. “Give me none of your homilies, Bill. Tell me no lies of the ‘sufferings of the just.’ Why should they suffer? Are they an amusement to your God, Bill? A sacrifice—to what? Why don’t the wicked suffer? It’s in your Bible, isn’t it, that the wicked flourish like a green bay tree and their children dance with joy in the streets? Why is it that the gentle and the good and the innocent are tortured? Why are the faithful always deceived, the trusting betrayed? Don’t talk to me about Satan, the prince of this world! Who made him the prince, who allowed him to be the prince? Your God. So … our Lord suffered on Calvary. Was it worth his sacrifice? Who made this evil world, this murderer of the sweet and pure and honest and just? Your God, damn you!

  “Katie knew no comfort in her poor loving life. No peace, no laughter. Only work and pain. What did she do to offend your God? Did her virtue outrage him, and so he sent suffering to her in revenge? Don’t tell me that she’s now at peace, among the angels, playing a harp! Is that a reward for her blameless life, then? Christ!”

  He put his veined hands over his eyes and wept the racking and terrible tears of the old. “There is no God,” he said behind his hands. “There is only the Devil. Perhaps we should worship him instead of—”

  “Bernard,” said the priest, who would have been horrified only four years ago, but was now only dismayed by the old man’s pain.

  “I’ve lived a long time,” said the hidden Bernard. “And niver have I seen the good protected and rewarded. But I’ve seen the wicked given the fruits—I’ve seen the innocent hanged and stabbed. I’ve seen the bad drink, laugh, and wench while the women and children starve. I’ve seen the noble despised and kicked, and looted and driven to starvation. I’ve seen thieves prosper and die a holy death.” He dropped his hands and his whole face was ablaze. “Tell me! Tell me your lies, your excuses, your fairy tales!”

  Father Sweeney drew a deep breath. He thought of his teachings in the seminary. He said, “I don’t know. God help me, I don’t know.”

  He would not have said this earlier. Something in his voice alerted the desolate Bernard. Pity moved into his eyes. He reached for the priest’s hand and held it. “For the first time you’re honest, Bill.”

  The priest said in a low voice, “Job asked the same questions.”

  “And what was the answer, then?”

  The priest’s young face saddened. “God’s own questions of Job are more … enlightening, more inspiring, than any answer.” He looked into the distance. “‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world—Arcturus with his sons—’”

  “Shit,” said Bernard. “We’re only men, only human. Did he expect us to converse in eternities?” He threw the priest’s hand from him.

  “Yes,” said the priest, “because we, too, are eternal.”

  The priest looked inspired, uplifted, as if he had heard a question that was an answer. “Do the wicked have the consolation of God? Do they hear his voice? No. But the good hear him in their dark night of the soul. That is the gift of life. The evil have only death. In the end they are betrayed by themselves.”

  “Silly lies,” said Bernard, and he wept again.

  The priest stood up, and his youthful face looked very old. He said to Jason, “Console him.”

  “I?” said Jason out of his stupefied agony.

  The priest contemplated him for a long moment. “Yes,” he said. “You.”

  He walked to the door, paused, and said, “It is vespers. I will return in the morning.” He left the house. Jason drew his chair closer to his grandfather. He felt his own grief lifting like a torch in his chest. He looked about the kitchen; he heard the silence in the house; he felt the loneliness. Always he had believed that his mother would return here, restored to health. That she was dead was incredible to him, not to be believed. Mum, Mum? he said in himself. Where are you, Mum? At any moment he expected to hear her loving voice in answer. The chill breeze outside had become a wind. It hammered at the wall, against the windows. The gaslight flickered in a draft. The stove was cold; the brick walls had become remote, freezing. Bernard’s loud weeping had diminished, the now silent tears testifying to a s
orrow too deep for words. When Jason put his hand on his shoulder Bernard started.

  “Da,” said the youth.

  Bernard said in a voice totally devoid of any feeling, “I’ve sent a telegram to Jack. Joanie will stay the night with Molly Nolan. The woman will be here in the morning.”

  “Da,” said Jason again. Now his face became like carved old wood, hard and harsh. “You were right. God is the … adversary. We can’t contend with him. He’s our … enemy.” He thought of the bankers he had just left, Mrs. Lindon and her pretty little harlots; he thought of the wine and the rich sauces and the silver. Jason added, “That is, if there is a God. I don’t believe it. The world would be a different place if he existed. Let’s forget him. Mum’s safe from him—if he lives. He can’t hurt her any longer.”

  Bernard stared. The tears dried on his cheeks. His mouth became tremulous. He rubbed one calloused hand slowly over it. His eyes never left Jason. “Jase,” Bernard said, and then halted. He rubbed his mouth again. “If there is no God … there isn’t anything for Katie, either. She deserves a God.”

  “She deserves rest and peace more, Da.”

  Bernard’s vivid gaze moved about the room. He listened to the silence, disturbed only by the hollow thud of the wind. He said, “I’d like to think there is a God—for Katie. The woman in the other bed—she said she saw an angel.… I’d like to believe it was Katie, going home.”

  Jason looked down at the table with its oilcloth covering. “Let’s believe it, then,” he said in a voice as emotionless as his grandfather’s had been.

  “I don’t want to believe in lies,” said Bernard. “A lie is the cruelest thing in the world, I’m thinking.”

  Jason said with loud bitterness, “What is it you are always saying is the motto of the Irish? ‘We endure.’ That is all we can do. It’s the only truth any man has, the only hope he has—to endure.”