No One Hears but Him Read online

  “The fear of God. It’s been replaced, nowadays, by what they call ‘love.’ You must love every punk and every scoundrel you encounter. They’ll ask you, making big eyes, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ They don’t know, or have forgotten, that it was the murderer, Cain, who asked that question. And when Cain asked it God didn’t say, ‘Sure, you are your brother’s keeper!’ He only said, ‘Your brother’s blood cries up from the ground against you.’ And for that Cain was marked and exiled, and became the father of all the criminals who have ever lived in the world since that time. But now we don’t mark them and exile them! We give them ‘love.’ And they come back again and again into the same courts and are hugged by the same social workers—and they prance out to do the same job over and over again.

  “I’ve noticed, and every other cop has noticed it, too, that the majority of the crimes are committed by released criminals, over and over again. We can look at a job and almost always we can name the man who did it. But bring him in again, and we are faced with all kinds of hampering restrictions handed down by courts. Confessions are rarely accepted by judges any longer; they believe that all confessions are ‘forced’ and false, and were extracted under ‘police brutality.’ Even when the criminal looks the judge in the face and tells him the truth the judge beams down at him compassionately. And it’s hard to get a decent, self-respecting jury nowadays to bring in the right verdict. They’ve all been corrupted by this Godless ‘love’ you hear and read about everywhere.”

  “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”

  “That’s right!” said Fred. Then he halted. Had he heard that from the man behind the curtain or had he only been thinking it? A faint confusion fell over his mind. It was this silent place where a man’s thoughts seemed to be external to him and not internal. “Anyway, it’s right,” he said, “whether I heard you say it or I only thought it.

  “Do you know something? All this love you hear about these days is unclean. That’s what it is: unclean. You look at the people mouthing it and you get the sensation of moral and spiritual uncleanliness—unnatural, indecent. Like—well, like the ‘love’ between homosexuals and other perverts. It may be ‘love,’ but I don’t call it that! And I don’t call all this pervasive ‘love’ in the national atmosphere real love, either. It’s repulsive; it’s disgusting. It’s unmanly. It’s dangerous. Have pity on the unfortunate, yes, the truly unfortunate, like the sick and diseased and crippled or handicapped and the old, and those who are truly victims of their wonderful fellowmen. But not on the criminals, the misfits, the perverted, and the habitual thieves. No, not on them, these real enemies of society. They chose to be what they are. I was raised in the slums, myself. My father was a laborer. I don’t remember eating well the greater part of my childhood.

  “But I sure as hell was afraid of the old man! He was the boss of the family. He sent us to school and to Mass, and God help us if we failed in either school or in catechism! He taught us to be clean, mentally and physically, even if we were crowded four to a dark little bedroom. One step out of line, and we smarted for it for days.

  “None of us became criminals, though we were what they now call ‘disadvantaged.’ My brother is a lawyer. My two sisters married good, God-fearing men. And we sent ourselves to school and to college, working on vacations and at night and on weekends, to finance ourselves. No one paid for us, and we’re proud of it.

  “But next door to us lived another family of six people. The husband and father worked with my own dad. But what a difference! The kids raced the streets. They were expelled over and over. They were delinquents before they were in their teens. They never went to church. They ended up thieves, and one is a murderer, and one is a convicted childmolester. Their father never beat the hell out of them, never disciplined them. He’d talk to my dad about ‘loving your kids,’ but if ever a man hated his children he did! How do I know? The police records show it. The man let them do as they wanted to, and gave them as much as he could and asked nothing in return, and never even mentioned to them what it means to be a good citizen and a good American. They had no duty except to gratify themselves at the expense of society. If that isn’t hate I’d like to know what it is.

  “One of them killed a cop. And he tried to kill me.”

  Fred shuddered, as he remembered that night only a month ago. He said, “We got an alarm that a jewelry shop was being looted. This was one of a series. I went out with four of my men. We cornered the three thieves, but not before one of them shot at us, killed one of my best kids and almost got me. They’ll be coming to trial, soon. The softheaded judge has already appointed one of the city’s big lawyers for them. If they get five years each, even the murderer, I’ll be surprised. For the murderer has already said that his confession was ‘extracted under police brutality.’ And we caught him with the gun still smoking in his hand! I know that lawyer. He boasts he always gets his clients off. He’ll do it this time, too. The social workers are already busy. They’ve made full dossiers about the criminals, all about how they were ‘culturally deprived and disadvantaged’ and all the other measly words, the unclean words.”

  He struck the arm of his chair with a fist. “And when these criminals commit the same crimes again, people will write to the newspapers and ask, ‘Where are our police?’”

  The man behind the curtain did not speak.

  Fred said, “All my life I wanted to be a cop. My father had great respect for the police, and he taught us that respect, too. He said he’d always wanted to be a policeman, himself. To him there wasn’t a better occupation than being a guardian of the city, and the city’s peace and safety. Why, it was the most important thing in the world to him. And it was to me. I’d walk with the young and the old cops on the beat and talk to them by the hour. They were proud to be policemen then. People admired and respected them. A mother had only to say, ‘I’ll tell Mr. Mullaney on you the next time I see him,’ and the kid behaved. The cop was lawful authority, next to God, Himself, and must be obeyed and honored. The priests told us that, too.

  “But nobody tells us that, now. The kids jeer at the police and taunt them and dance just out of reach. They’re the ‘fuzz.’ They’re the contemptible members of society.

  “So, I know it’s useless. I’m getting out. I’m leaving police work. I want to live a little before the inevitable fall of my country. I’m getting out.”

  “Watchman! What of the night?”

  Fred nodded grimly. “Yes, what of it? And all the watchmen will be killed or disgraced or disarmed. I don’t want to be one of them. Don’t tell me, as the Chief did last week, that the local police are the only defense the people have, not only against criminals, but against tyrants themselves. I know he’s right. But I’m sick of derision and contempt; I’m sick of the miserable pay for risking my life and trying to uphold law and order against all the stupid will of the people who prefer chaos and tyranny. Let them have it, I say. In the meantime I want to live a little, myself, respected and reasonably secure against being murdered.”

  “What of the night?”

  “Well, what of it? It’s coming, of that we can be damned sure. And I’m leaving the walls and the gates of the city and my lonely lantern and my weapons and my trumpet. Let some other poor slob take them—if he wants to—and get killed in the doing of his duty.”

  He suddenly saw the face of the young patrolman, Jack Sullivan, and the peculiar look in his eyes. “Me, I’m only a dumb cop.” And then he had walked away.

  “A dumb cop,” muttered Fred Carlson. “A watchman in the night.”

  He looked at the curtain again. “Where shall we go to be safe?” he asked. “Soon there won’t be any safety in the world for anyone—”

  “Watchman!”

  “Don’t call me that!” he shouted with anger. “I’m finished with it, I tell you! I’m not your watchman any more!”

  He jumped to his feet and confronted the silent curtain with crushing rage. “You can’t say anything, can you?
You’re one of them, aren’t you, whimpering over all the criminals and thieves and misfits and pouring love on them? What do you care about the decent people, the little kids, the helpless women, the hard-working citizens? Tell me, what do you care?”

  He saw the button beside the curtain, and he struck it with his fist, cursing under his breath.

  The curtains silently parted and in the light they revealed he saw the man who had listened so silently to him.

  “Oh, my God,” he muttered, and fell back.

  He sat down and pressed his hands to his eyes. He felt the light that surrounded the man. He felt his silent rebuke, and heard his questions. It seemed that he sat for a long time in the chair, his eyes hidden, and with a thin trembling running along his nerves.

  At last he dropped his hands and he and the man regarded each other in the intense quiet.

  “I know what you’re really saying,” said the policeman. “You are reminding me that you never left the walls and the gates of the city and never will. You won’t deliver the people up to their tyrants and their murderers and leave them hopeless. You’ll patrol all the time with your light, and you won’t sleep. You’ll sound the alarm; you’re always sounding the alarm, aren’t you?

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter that in these days the people laugh at you, too, and make fun of your fellow watchmen in the night. You know that the night’s rushing in on us, just as I do. Somebody’s got to be around, to guard the people—

  “Somebody. I suppose you mean that’s me, too?”

  He shook his head. “I’m remembering something. When it was a choice between you and a criminal the people chose the criminal. They always do; it never fails. But you didn’t hold that against them. You’ve been watching all through the night, and you’ll be on hand when the last night comes.”

  Fred Carlson stood up and approached the man slowly. He knelt before him and blessed himself and bowed his head.

  “Watchman,” he said, “you’re not going to be alone. I’m going to be right there with you. Patrolling the walls and the gates of the city.”

  SOUL TWO

  The Sadducee

  “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”

  SOUL TWO

  “Is that all you can tell me?” asked the desolate woman.

  What is it you want me to say to you? the man commented to himself. Do you want old-fashioned and sentimental cant in which I don’t believe and which is absurd in these enlightened and sophisticated days? I am no parson, dear lady, full of soothing platitudes and maudlin aphorisms. I am a teacher, a leader, a guide to my congregation. Do you expect me to soothe you with evangelical hysteria or invoke some tribal god? The Catholics are not the only ones who have gone in for “aggiornamento.” We have been evolving that since Luther. Now religion is intellectual and must appeal to the intellectual, and to modern reason.

  He, Dr. Edwin Pfeiffer, looked down from the top floor of the smooth and gleaming apartment house and saw the bright turbulence of the trees in the spring wind. That confounded “Sanctuary” down there! He could see the red roof of the low white building in its masses of foliage and flowers; lovely red tulips, really, and all that golden forsythia and those bursts of lilacs and mock orange blossoms. A silly old hymn came to him from his childhood, in his minister-father’s church: “The Old Time Religion!” He saw his father’s parishioners, simple men and women, singing heartily and fervently, the men in their Sunday suits, the women in cheap cotton dresses and hatted and gloved. They loved the foolish and passionate old hymns which appealed to the emotions and not to the mind, but after all, they were emotional people who believed simply and accepted things simply, and had a—wholesome?—fear of the Devil and all his works. Dr. Pfeiffer sighed and smiled. Yes, they accepted all things, including their hard lot, meekly. But their sons and daughters, thank Heaven, believed in the perfectibility of man’s nature and in changing society to fit new wants and demands, in order to satisfy modern man’s felt needs for comfort and satisfaction, and some of the joys of the material world. Those poor undemanding people of his father’s day! They had nothing much of worldly pleasure and satisfaction, except their religion which, while teaching them ancient religious values also kept them too industrious and too docile in the face of social injustices.

  He saw their faces suddenly, calm, kind, strong, and peaceful. Sudden uneasiness came to him. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. Why did he not see such faces in his own church in these days? Why had he not seen them for years? Well, men were more aware now, more seeking. Was that not desirable?

  “Nothing at all?” said the woman behind him, who was seated on a long sleek sofa in her elegant living room. But Dr. Pfeiffer did not hear her. Ethics, reason, civilized behavior: That is what we teach these days in the place of the unthinking emotionalism of the past. Man advancing mentally and spiritually to a state of supra-manhood, under the guidance of the Teacher, an evolving supra-Christ. Chardin. He really liked Chardin. Now, there had been a priest, a true mystic with a vision of the Fulfilled World, here on earth. An intellectual. But all his old fellow priests were adamantine against him, and the Hierarchy did not permit his books to be published during his lifetime. What bigotry, really. In these modern days! Pastel statues and bleeding hearts! Didn’t they realize—?

  He heard a faint sound behind him, and turned, glazed with his thoughts. He said, with real distress—and did not know how helpless he sounded—“Dear Susan.”

  “You have nothing to say to me,” she said, behind her hands. “Nothing but words without comfort or consolation.”

  He was shocked. He had talked with her for over an hour, as one reasonable and intelligent person to another, giving her fortitude and strength. She had only stared at him with desperate hunger. What did she want? What, in Heaven’s name, did she want? He had known Susan Goodwin for over fifteen years, and her late husband, Frederick. She was a member of his congregation. (One didn’t speak of “parishes” these days, as if one were a shaggy shepherd in charge of a mass of unthinking sheep.) She had always impressed him as the true modern woman, suave, urbane, polished, poised, intellectual. He knew the story behind the Goodwins. They had been intelligent and educated young people if frightfully poor. Then, about twelve years ago Frederick had unexpectedly inherited what would be considered a fortune even in these days, from a relative he hardly had known. Two years after that, at the age of thirty-four and thirty-two, respectively, they had had their first and only child—after a marriage of ten years. The boy was now how old? Ten, of course. Not yet confirmed. He had baptized the child, himself, Charles Frederick Goodwin. A fine boy. Unfortunate about the father, who had died of a heart attack five years ago. Susan had only her son, now, to whom she was devoted. It was not likely that she would marry again; she had been shattered when her husband had died. And, at forty-two, even if she remarried, she would hardly have more children. Unfortunate, unfortunate. But, after all, one must have fortitude and strength of character and not turn, in such absolute despair, to sentimentality and one must never demand from a spiritual adviser what he could not give in all honesty—but what did she want?

  “Only ten years old,” said Susan, from behind the hands pressed against her face and her eyes. “And now he must die, if not tomorrow, then within a year at the most.”

  “We mustn’t give up hope,” said Dr. Pfeiffer, glancing furtively at his handsome watch. “They are doing some excellent work on leukemia, you know. They are keeping children alive far longer than it was possible to do a few years ago. And any day, now, there may be a breakthrough. There is always hope.”

  But Susan said, “He’s had three transfusions this week. He may never come home from the hospital.” She dropped her hands. Her face, her usually composed and faintly smiling face, was ravished with grief and suffering so that she seemed much older than her actual age. Her light chestnut hair was disordered as if she had repeatedly plunged her fingers through it; her slender body had taken on an appearance of emaciation since her child
’s disease had been diagnosed only a month ago. An acute case. But her eyes—and somehow this heartened the minister—were tearless. He did detest unrestrained tears in the face of fate and before inexorable facts. That was for peasants and not civilized ladies.

  He went to her and sat down beside her gravely, a tall and well-built man in a fine secular suit, with a florid and alert face and keen dark eyes and dark waving hair. It did not offend him too much when some young and irreverent people declared he looked like a film star. He was proud of his sonorous voice, and his presence. He said, “Susan, things have to be faced with courage, you know. There are some things that can’t be—wished—away, no matter how desirable that could be. Fortitude. Resignation—”

  “Resignation, to my child’s meaningless death?” Her blue eyes flared on him now with total anguish. “Why does he need to die? Why, why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dr. Pfeiffer with genuine distress. “These things happen all the time, unreasonable, inexplicable things. We can only face them as strong human beings, not permitting ourselves to dissolve into mindless despair. That isn’t worthy of humanity. There isn’t an hour that someone doesn’t cry out, ‘Why, why?’ We—”

  “Yes, why?” asked Susan.

  “I don’t know,” he repeated, feeling a flushed uneasiness again, and a little pang of resentment at her childish demand. “But one must be realistic—”

  “You don’t know,” said Susan, and the blue eyes were bitter. “And you a minister!”

  He was vexed but he was also full of pity. He wished, for the first time, that cant would come to him and he could say in honesty, “It is all God’s mysterious will, and His ways are not our ways, and someday we will understand, if not here, then beyond the grave.” But he was an honest man. No more than anyone else did he really know what lay beyond the grave, if anything. The Resurrection of Christ, of course, was only symbolic. The Spirit of Christ, of course, had survived His death, and had persisted through the ages and, it was to be hoped, would always persist. Just as the spirit of man—the reasonable, civilized, enlightened spirit—would survive through offspring into all the future generations. One looked for immortality through one’s children. In the meantime, before death, one lived an orderly and reasonably disciplined life seasoned with some legitimate pleasures and joy in mere existence, and did as little harm as possible to others.—It was the heritage of man which survived, the heritage of an historical being, his influence on his present. What more could an intellectual being ask or desire?