Answer as a Man Page 8

  Before the priest could speak, Bernard continued, “Eileen, my sister. Sixteen years old. When English soldiers were looting her parish church, she tried to intervene. She threw herself at the feet of the Blessed Mother and defied the soldiers. She was hanged three days later—a beautiful colleen. Who avenged her, Father, a child protecting her faith? Your God?

  “I saw her die on a scaffold in the public square, a rope around her little white neck. She was not even permitted a shriving. She had been ‘interfering with the duties of the military police.’ Have you a sister, Father?”

  The priest nodded. “Margaret, fourteen years old.” He seemed about to cry.

  Bernard leaned back in his chair. “See her, Father, in your eye now. A lovely little colleen, fourteen years old, hanging from a shameful scaffold before the jeering faces of a hating crowd. Would you ask forgiveness for them, Father? No, don’t speak. It would only be hypocrisy.”

  He stood up. “I will use the money for notices in the newspapers. A good day to you, Father.”

  During the next few days the nuns remarked that Father Sweeney seemed preoccupied and less carping and severe. When Sister Agatha heard that he had also become less irritable, she nodded with satisfaction. “He is growing up, then,” she remarked. “And it is about time.”

  Joe Maggiotti had what his neighbors called “a grand funeral.” It cost one hundred and fifty dollars, and he had a respectable stone too in St. Elizabeth’s Cemetery. That cost fifty dollars. The rest of the policy money was given to Father Sweeney for Masses for the repose of Joe’s soul and his swift release from purgatory. Bernard laughed at that, and even Jason felt uneasy at the laughter. Bernard hung the beautiful cross over Jason’s bed, and John felt not only slighted but insulted.

  The shop and contents and all Joe’s property in the building were sold, for eight hundred dollars. Bernard at once posted notices of reward in the two Belleville newspapers. A week later an informer went quietly to the police. Two youths were arrested for the crime, subsequently convicted and executed. They were not “poor.” They were twin brothers, seventeen years old; their father was a prosperous blacksmith and horse dealer and they lived in a comfortable house with many amenities. They had been inspired by hatred of “the foreigners and papists.” Their father was a member of the Know Nothings. He had hired a well-known lawyer to defend his sons, who pleaded their youth. The prosecuting attorney was a sensible man. He informed the jury that youth was no excuse for adult crimes, and that the murder had been senseless, excited by irrational hatred and malice and criminal minds. He was not reappointed.

  Two months after Joe’s death, Jason approached his grandfather and suggested that Joe’s cross be given to St. John the Baptist Church for the high altar. Bernard was outraged. “Joe would like it,” said Jason.

  “You’ve turned into a fool like your brother,” said Bernard, and did not speak to Jason for three whole days. Then, on the fourth day he thrust the heavy cross into Jason’s arms and said, “Oh, give it to the spalpeen, if it pleases you!”

  It was noted that Father Sweeney began to grow in dignity and was less censorious and open more to reason. This puzzled and disturbed John, who had regarded the priest as his mentor.

  4

  Bernard had no trust in any government, and he despised politicians and invariably referred to them as “rascals” or “imbeciles.” When President McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Bernard remarked, “I wonder what powerful men he offended in Washington and New York.” When questioned by an acquaintance to explain, he replied, “I read, boyo, I read. The newspapers. Didn’t your Benjamin Franklin say that reading one’s newspaper regularly was better than a college education—that is, if the newspaper was an impartial and honest one, and they are few, that I can tell you.” He subscribed to magazines also, notably The Saturday Evening Post, though it frequently deprived the family of meat. He read everything with at least a modicum of cynicism, and would debate loudly, at the dinner table, with a writer with whom he disagreed—as if the writer himself were present. He wrote to some writers, who often replied, and the resulting correspondence was lively and acrimonious.

  Bernard had thought the Spanish-American War “outrageous, disgusting,” and had so written to newspapers. This had resulted in an interview with Bernard by a lesser-government agent, and Bernard had routed him with facts. But the newspapers mysteriously ceased to publish his vehement diatribes. “Disagree with government at your peril,” he said to Jason. “A free country it is, then? And it will get worse, rather than better.” He had become one of the new president’s greatest admirers, though he loudly debated with him on the merits of the Panama Canal. “There’ll be trouble there someday,” he told what few friends he had. Bernard approved of the canal itself, but he heartily resented the new president’s remarks concerning the Central Americans, whom he had called “monkeys,” one of his less vituperative epithets. “Sounds like the Sassenagh concerning the Irish,” he said. “Politics is dirty enough and foul enough, God knows, without sneering at a man for his race, which is God’s business only, is it not? That is, if there is a God at all,” he would remark, more out of a desire to annoy than personal conviction. His feud with God had become more vehement, especially at the dinner table in John’s hearing. John was beginning to vex him more and more, and the dislike between grandfather and grandson increased. “It’s not his damned piety I hate so much,” Bernard said to Kate. “Let a man believe he has the Almighty’s personal ear, and I’ll not contradict him, unless he attempts to force his convictions on me or anyone else. It’s frightened I am when a man publicly asserts his own holiness and verity. I begin to wonder what deviltry he is up to in secret, and keep out of his path. I mind me of an old priest in Ireland, a saint if ever there was one, and he was always bewailing his own worthlessness and always calling himself a sinner. That I respect. That I trust.”

  When Father Sweeney expressed his horror that many young people were “being lured into Oriental mysticism and religions,” Bernard asked him, “And what is the reason, then? Do you of the clergy ever ask yourselves why? What is it the boys and colleens find in Oriental mysticism that they don’t find in their churches? What consolation, what hope, what spiritual values? What is the lack they feel in their parents’ religion? You lads of the clergy had best discover the answers, before our Lord calls you false shepherds.”

  Bernard approved of the “new woman” in America, who was concerned with the exploitation of very young children who, between the ages of six and twelve, were working in the factories and cotton mills for as much as twelve hours a day, six days a week, for less than to keep them fed. The “new woman” was also passionate against the enforced prostitution of little girls, against the crowding of people in filthy tenements, against the general and widespread use of drugs among the young as well as their elders. He had not, as yet, come to agree that women should vote, unless they, as well as their men, were intelligent and understood for what they were voting. “Many’s the man, too, who should not be permitted to vote. The majority have the intellect of cattle, if I may insult the poor beasts by comparing them with humanity.”

  When a magazine writer condemned “the new working woman,” Bernard raged in a letter to the editor: “And what in hell have women been doing for all these thousands of years but ‘working’? On the farms, in their houses, in the fields, and God knows where else. The only difference is that they didn’t receive wages for their work, and their work was despised, though it kept the country running.” He thought of Kate, who not only held her household together but did laundry for “strangers” to “make ends meet.” He thought of the many thousands of other women who did the same. Their labor was lightly called “cottage industries.” Bernard wrote furiously of the “sweatshops” where young girls labored for almost nothing, becoming consumptive in the process or starving to death. He wrote of the thousands of women in the factories, since the Industrial Revolution, and in the coal mines.

  Like all
full-blooded Irishmen, Bernard respected and loved women, and their wrongs infuriated him. When John said coldly, “I thought you believed that women should remain out of men’s affairs,” Bernard had grinned wickedly. “They’ve been in our affairs since Adam and Eve. We’ve been trying to get them out, too, but, by the grace of God, we haven’t succeeded. Now, then. I do not like aggressive women who hate being women, and also hate men and want to displace them in the so-called scheme of things. Women, God bless them, are more powerful when they use their power in less noisy ways. Such as kicking their men gently in the arse to reform things. Niver was a man who didn’t fear his woman, with good reason, but niver was the man better for not fearing her. A man may not listen to other men, but in bed he listens to his female—or God help him.”

  He added, “If women lose their power over men, in their own clever way, the world will be the poorer, and then we will have chaos, and a godless society.”

  “You keep contradicting your own convictions, Da,” John, now fifteen years old, would remark. Bernard would grow expansive and look at his grandson with an inimical sparkling of his eyes. “A man who doesn’t change his opinions occasionally has become petrified,” he answered. “Like burying himself in cement, too. When I was a lad I thought that every successful politician should agree to be hanged on the conclusion of his term of office. Now I think he should just be exposed for the scoundrel he is and outlawed from decent society.”

  Once John, driven by his cold and silent rage, discussed with Father Sweeney his “fear” that his grandfather “might be excommunicated.” Father Sweeney, with new chilliness, had replied, “I certainly won’t start the process, Jack. It is not that I agree with your grandfather, but he has a right to his opinion, and so long as he does not oppose doctrine or dogma, he has nothing to fear.”

  “He fears nothing,” said John with enormous rage.

  Father Sweeney had involuntarily smiled. “He is an Irishman, Jack.” He began to wonder if John had a true vocation, for all his piety and tenacity. He even, to his own dismay, searched for flaws in John. He began to think of the Spanish Inquisition, so sternly condemned by the Church fathers in other countries. Extreme piety, he thought to his own shock, can be a sin in itself. Did not the Church condemn scrupulosity? He saw, with new clarity, that John confessed to sins which were not really sins but an expression of human nature, and not entirely sinful. John thought human nature, even at its best, despicable. He had once confessed that he believed congress between men and women was evil, and had waited for the priest’s approval.

  Father Sweeney had replied, “God himself blessed the union between men and women.” He had a sudden thought at which he winced. Was John masturbating? The priest was now two years older. Often his thoughts disturbed him. Was he growing too tolerant? Certainly old Sister Agatha sometimes smiled at him and answered him civilly. He prayed on the subject. He confessed to himself that he was feeling more comfortable and that his people were confiding more and more in him. He was becoming confused. But he was happier. He still, however, disapproved of Bernard, who often deliberately mocked him.

  Mr. Mulligan was highly pleased by his employees Jason Garrity and Lionel Nolan, though he was careful not to praise them too highly. Praise had a way of disconcerting and disillusioning the praiser, for those praised often began to feel “above themselves,” to quote Mr. Mulligan. They “took advantage.” Mr. Mulligan had had long experience with human nature, and though he was the most affable and just of men, he carried some bitterness in him. One of his late employees, highly praised, had become arrogant, impertinent, and slothful. Men had a way of overestimating themselves if too lavishly “appreciated,” Mr. Mulligan realized.

  He had discovered that Jason’s cheerful expression was more a formation of feature than of cheer itself. Jason, he found, had a sturdy character and a steadfast will, as well as possessing an admirable quality of not expecting too much of others. He could tolerate a gibe with good nature, if not accompanied by malice. But malice drew his implacable hatred and was never forgiven. There were times when his face took on an iron aspect, and it was this face, not often shown, which inspired both respect and fear. He was “Irish proud,” as Mr. Mulligan expressed it. He never complained. He was anxious to learn. The cooks in the kitchen liked him and taught him. They were frequently irascible with less intelligent workers under them, but in some way Jason had the ability of soothing both sides of a hectic quarrel. This led to more harmony in the kitchen, to Mr. Mulligan’s relief, and he had promoted Jason to general manager.

  Lionel was now headwaiter, and the ladies loved him for his blazing smile and blazing hair and natural courtliness and willingness to serve and even assist fellow waiters. He could deal smilingly with the most fractious of diners. Slights, brutal remarks from bellicose males, the impatience of the unusually hungry, meager tips or none at all, could not upset him. He shrugged off meanness and even malice as being comic, and this was no pretense. He found humanity to be infinitely amusing, even at its worst. His yellowish eyes always had a glint of humorous enjoyment, even when he was deliberately provoked by a man who had had too much to drink and who wished for a fight. Amiable and light in manner as he was, few ever noticed a certain sharpness on his alert face, a certain watchfulness, a certain cold keenness. Jason was intuitive about people, and avoided the malevolent and brutish. Lionel smiled, and no one knew that he remembered.

  Between the two youths, Jason eighteen and Lionel a year younger, their earlier friendship was deepening into the friendship of men. If Lionel found Jason’s often unbending ways, when it came to honor, somewhat hilarious, he never remarked on it. Honor, or principle, had many faces to Lionel. He was more gregarious than Jason, not out of affection for others but for his own entertainment. Where Jason found life grim and harsh, Lionel found it interesting and diverting. Jason was repelled by grossness; it was risible to the buoyant Lionel. Lionel quickly learned of lewdness, and also was amused by it. But Jason had much of the puritanical nature of certain of the Irish and would turn away in disgust at an overly obscene joke or remark. This was soon noticed in the kitchen, where he spent twelve hours a day, and had he not had a pugilist’s physique and a certain icy stare when offended, he would have been mercilessly taunted. Lionel only laughed, and with enjoyment, and he would tease Jason for being a “prude.”

  “That’s life,” Lionel once said.

  “So is the privy,” Jason had replied. “But you don’t make jokes about it. At least, I don’t.”

  They had just been told, during the lunch period, a most putrid joke about women in general. Jason had said nothing; his handsome dark face had remained impassive. But Lionel laughed and slapped his knee. “There are girls in the world, you know, Jase.”

  Jason thought of his mother and sister and said, “I know. I’m not blind. But they’re … defenseless, all of them, and a dirty joke is an attack on them. It’s not … manly.”

  Lionel thought of his own sister, Molly, with whom he was never en rapport. Molly had his own sharpness of inner vision, which he sometimes found irritating, for it was a sharpness looking for duplicity, whereas his was exigent. He did not love Molly and often disliked her, and he felt the sentiment returned. Molly was rarely amused by him, and he thought her humorless and bad-tempered. He did not dare repeat any little sexual jest before his parents, to whom he was indifferent. But his father had a hard hand and his mother was “straitlaced.” Being good-natured and flexibile, he attended Mass with his family every Sunday and holy days of obligation, for it was easier to accept boredom and inconvenience than to quarrel. Lionel hated quarrels, of which there were plenty in his home. He found them pointless and tedious.

  If Lionel ever wondered why he was so attached to Jason, Jason had no such speculations. Lionel was his friend; he had proved that on many occasions, and the proof had been sincere. They both despised John Garrity. Lionel had an easy way of inquiring about Joan, but the youth loved the crippled girl. There was something inten
se in Joan which responded to something in himself and he knew that Joan was aware of it too.

  Jason more than suspected that Molly, Lionel’s sister, did not overly like her brother, and this Jason resented. She had what Jason called a “spiky” voice when speaking to Lionel; she was the only one who could make his smile disappear, and Jason resented this also. He felt his friendship for Lionel attacked by a “nasty snip of a girl” who was too quick with her tongue and who would often look at him with what he thought was mockery.

  Jason was now deeply in love with Patricia Mulligan, who thought of him, if she ever thought at all, as “Papa’s kitchen drudge.” To Patricia, those who worked in humble or menial positions were hardly human and not to be considered by those who lived in her world.

  Jason, though quick and sure of movement, gave the impression of being somewhat ponderous. But Lionel reminded people of a fox, and they admired his deftness. Jason often felt compassion even for the cruel, if they were ignorantly so, but Lionel possessed no compassion at all, except, oddly enough, a twinge of it now and then for Jason. Never one to explore his own motivations or emotions for some subtlety, he merely accepted the fact that he infrequently pitied his friend. He did not ask himself why. Jason accepted life in all its aspects, not always with happiness and often with grim forbearance. Lionel accepted it, in all its aspects, as highly diverting.

  “I’ll niver know why Jason likes that Lionel,” Bernard would remark to Kate. “I wouldn’t trust him around the till.”

  “They say opposites attract,” Kate would answer.

  But Bernard was not satisfied. “It would be interesting to know why that redheaded spalpeen is like Jason’s shadow. I can’t fathom it.”

  Nor could Joan, his granddaughter. She had come to the conclusion that Lionel was so often present because of her, but certainly not for “stupid old Jason.” She would have preferred that Lionel like John, but she was early aware of the antipathy between the two. This puzzled her.