He thought there was a movement in the room, a flash of light or an increase in light. He shook his head impatiently. And then with wonder.
“I’m not a man of words, except in the courtroom. Why am I talking like this to you, a stranger, in a strange city? I haven’t even told you my name, and I don’t intend to. I am nothing to you; worse than nothing, for I am dying, and I can’t stand the thought of it. For just when I can afford to live and know life, it is taken away from me. But why should I tell you?”
He waited. There was no answer. “I think,” he said almost kindly, “that it’s damned decent of you to sit behind that curtain and listen to any stranger who wants to come in and whimper his little tale of woe at you. At least I get paid for it!” He laughed. “I assume, of course, that you are doing this out of charity.”
He heard no movement, no breath. He walked to the curtain and looked at it curiously and read the plate near the button. “Well, I will certainly not push the button and intrude on your privacy,” he said. “Besides, it would embarrass me. I’d rather be faceless to you, as you are to me.”
He walked again. “I don’t know how old you are or how young. But, good God, do you know what it feels like to be sentenced to death? Irrevocably sentenced to death, without hope of appeal, without hope at all? No, you can’t know. My mind accepts the fact, but something in me refuses to accept it, repudiates it as if it were a lie, a subornation of the truth, the blackest falsehood ever uttered by any man. That is what I can’t understand. I say to myself, ‘You are dying. Very shortly you will be dead and in your grave, and that will be the end of hoping, loving, life. And light’. And then something answers me as angrily as if I had another self in me and it won’t even listen to reason. If there was all acceptance in me, then I could feel more peaceful, more resigned. But something won’t accept the irrefutable fact that I will soon be dead and that that is the end.”
“Of course,” he said thoughtfully, “I suppose that is the old will to live asserting itself in the very face of fact. It can’t be anything else.”
Up and down he paced, echoing step after step. He was very weary; his bones ached, and he could feel his life seeping from him drop by drop, like inner tears.
“If only there was some way to avert this, to stop it!” he exclaimed. “If only I didn’t have to face this! If only I could have it taken away!”
Once again his heart was startled and struck, more deeply this time. It appeared to have a sound, reverberating, so that it filled his body as if a strong voice had spoken. And then, without any reason at all, he saw the picture of the garden he had seen as a child, a colored picture of dark cypresses against a half-hidden moon, a spread of dark grass, a stone, sleeping men wrapped in cloaks. And someone near the stone — kneeling? His mind became confused.
“If only I didn’t have to die just now,” he muttered. “If only this — cup — could — be — taken — from — my — lips.”
He stood very still, yet rigid, trying to remember. His struggle was so intense, so concentrated, that he burst into sweat, and he felt an unendurable anguish and sorrow and fear. “I’m afraid,” he whispered to the curtain. “I’m only a man, and I’m afraid. Not the actual death, but the pain of it, and the last agony. Because after that Do you understand how it is to feel this way, this fear, this rejection of death, this hope of life, when you know you must die? But no, how could you know that, unless you have experienced it yourself?”
He had no desire to approach the curtains again or touch the button, but he found himself moving swiftly, and his hand was reaching forward.
The curtains swung aside at once, and the light gushed out. Eugene fell back rapidly and looked. And looked again. And could not stop looking.
Then he sighed, and there was no more pain in him, no fear, no terror, no anger, no despair. Only peace and a sense of releasing grief.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said in a low voice. “You do know how it is, the rejection of death, the hope that you will not have to accept it — and the sentence of death. The loneliness of it; the horror of it.
“Yes, of course. Now I remember the whole picture of the garden, and you were kneeling, and your companions, the ones you hoped would pray with you, slept. They, in a way, were hiding from your death, as we all hide from each other’s deaths. Denying it, in sleep.
“I’m terribly sorry. I haven’t thought of you since I was a child, not honestly or deeply thought of you. There was too much work to do. Work. As if it were an end in itself, as if we had all the time in the world to live as well as work. All the time in the world. But we have hardly any time at all, have we? Only enough to know why we were born, what we must do here, and prepare for our leaving. I’d forgotten that. In a welter of work that prevented me from knowing what is of the only enduring value in the world — what a waste of time! How I wasted my time!
“I know you hear me and that you brought me here. Give me a little more time, three or four weeks. So I can tell my children what I really know now, so I can comfort my wife and assure her of the real truth — that there is no death.”
He came closer to the man who looked so piercingly at him, and he smiled. “The truth, the one great truth we have — that there is no death.”
He had made a few spontaneous gestures in his life. He hesitated, then he bent awkwardly and kissed the man’s feet. “I have all the time there is,” he said. “I have eternity.”
SOUL NINE
The Anointed
You have not chosen ME, but I have chosen you,
and have appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. . .
John 15:16
Mrs. Giuseppe Pirotti entered the sitting room with the shy yet brisk air of one who is well known, half wishes not to be recognized and half desires to be so, affronted if not, yet relieved. She was stout and short and rosy, with crisply curling black hair under her mink hat, and her rotund figure bulged under her modish mink coat. She had large and vivid gray eyes, delicate features set in a full face, and an eloquent dark red mouth. She did not look her fifty-four years. There was an air of robust and hearty living about her, as of one who enjoys every moment of living and who savors each second like a fine rich sauce, and who has prepared that sauce.
This was quite in character, for she and her adored husband owned and personally operated one of the best restaurants in the city, which served only the most delectable of Italian foods. Giuseppe had learned his art under a famous chef in Rome. They had been married when he was twenty-two and she, Agnes, only seventeen, the daughter of a restorer of old paintings. He was one of eight accomplished children, she the daughter of a bourgeois and loving family of ten.
They had come to America not to ‘seek their fortunes’, for Giuseppe could have remained at the Excelsior in Rome at a tremendous salary, but simply out of an ardor for adventure. They had settled in this large city, where there were cousins with big families and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. They had been successful from the start. Reservations at their beautiful yet intimate restaurant could not be accepted less than forty-eight hours before the scheduled party, and sometimes patrons had to wait a week during holidays. Their Italian and French wine cellars were famous. If Giuseppe was not there, Agnes was sure to be found, and during most of the time they were both present. They supervised everything meticulously. Their kitchens had been photographed many times for national magazines. ‘Dinner at Giuseppe’s’ was an event. Everything was cooked to order, nothing served hastily. ‘If you cannot spend two hours at least with us,’ was politely printed on the top of their menus, ‘we cannot serve you well’.
There had been always one table left vacant, however, for any priests who might come in. And that, thought Agnes Pirotti with bitterness, had probably been the cause of all this terrible trouble. Oh, little Joe!
There was no waiting table for priests any longer at ‘Dinner at Giuseppe’s’. A loving and obedient wife, she had had her first and terrible disagreement with her hu
sband, and she had won. The priests understood, delicately; they did not go to the restaurant anymore. Agnes would make it too uncomfortable for them.
No one recognized her in the sitting room. But then, these were all strangers, either from out of town or people who could not have afforded her restaurant, where the cheapest dish was four dollars, and a la carte, at that. She sat down defiantly. She wondered if she was committing a sin, then tossed her pretty head. It would be a long, long time! Yes indeed, a long, long time.
She had been born of a busy family, of an industrious people. She carried knitting with her. She opened her large bag and brought out a half-finished sweater of the finest black wool. She looked at it, and then her eyes were full of tears. She tightened her lips and thrust the work back into her bag and scowled before her, trying to control the shaking anger of her mouth, and her grief.
One by one the people about her rose silently as a chime summoned them, and she watched them go. She was the last; she looked at her diamond watch. She must be back at the restaurant in less than two hours. She twitched impatiently. Then the chimes sounded for her. She rose, made her short body as tall as possible, and marched into the white marble room, with the light flowing down gently upon her.
Well, anyway, it wasn’t a church. She sat down decisively in the chair and contemplated the curtains. Who was behind them? No one knew. A priest? She hoped so! She would never be finished with giving priests a piece of her mind. She said coldly, “Are you a priest?”
She waited. She said, “Then I don’t think I should be here. I’m all through with priests, Father. I want to make that clear.”
She had a rich, womanly voice with the musical accent of her people. She had learned several languages in Italy in a convent school, and she spoke English precisely.
“I’m Mrs. Giuseppe Pirotti,” she continued. “We own the best restaurant in town.” She paused. “And if you’re a priest, which I suppose you are, then you know all about it! We used to have a table always waiting for any of you. But not now! I don’t want your company or your patronage — not that we ever charged priests, not even the bishop himself. And I can’t help it if Giuseppe is miserable about it. I’m not!”
Tears ran into her eyes again, but she held up her head very high and set her mouth firmly.
“Giuseppe and I were married when he was twenty-two and I was seventeen. I suppose if you are an American priest you don’t know much about how we Italians feel about children. One time I heard that Italy was a paradise for children, Paris a paradise for women, and England a paradise for horses. I think America’s a paradise for movie actresses and baseball players, and that’s all.
“Oh, they make a big fuss about children in America! I’m an American citizen, by the way, so I can criticize. Everything’s for the children in America! The best school palaces, recreation, parks, milk, vitamins, amusements, clothes. You can’t pick up a magazine or a book or a newspaper that doesn’t have an article or story about children. The big boys and girls, the ones they call teen-agers, rule the country. No wonder it’s full of disobedient, untrained young people who are just bored to death. Yes, they are bored to death. They have ‘security’, and so there’s no adventure, no danger, no excitement for them, nothing unknown. No wonder they’re always getting into trouble and marrying very, very young and getting divorces! Why, even when they’re eighteen they think of themselves as children and have childish wants! They hate growing up, even if they’re bored in their sanitary nurseries with all the parents and teachers and doctors fluttering around them like hens over giant chicks.
“Do you know something I found out recently? A very fine family, with only one child, a girl of thirteen, comes in every Saturday night for dinner. A pretty girl, that Margaret. Her age is young, but not the size! She stands five foot nine in her expensive ballet slippers, and she’s fat, too. Blubbery, baby fat, and she thirteen! We like the parents, and we thought we’d lost them as customers — they give big parties on the holidays in our private dining rooms — when we told them firmly that we could not serve Margaret wine. It’s the law, you know, though much younger children drink wine regularly in Italy, and it never did them any harm. I never did think much of this milk fad, you see.
“I said to the parents, ‘We’d lose our license if we served Margaret wine. And please don’t give Margaret any of yours. It’s the law’. And the girl frowned at me angrily and said, ‘We kids are the law, and nobody else’. I thought she was joking, and then I looked at her parents and they had almost crossed themselves! Honestly! They looked at that big, overgrown girl as if she’d just begun to pray the Rosary!” Agnes snorted with deep contempt. “That wasn’t the worst. I wanted to soothe that discontented, impudent kid. I said, ‘My, you’re growing up, Margaret! You are almost a young lady. You’ll be thinking of getting married in five or six years’.
“Now what was wrong with that? Nothing! But if I’d hit the girl or kicked her, she couldn’t have looked more horrified and disbelieving! I’m not joking. She stared at me as if I were out of my mind. Then she shouted: ‘That’s a lie! I’m always going to be a child! Everybody knows that the world is full of big people and little people. I’m always going to be one of the little people! I’m never going to grow up! What a lie!’
“Now,” said Agnes, her color high and indignant, “if the girl was stupid or one of those poor, retarded kids, I’d have understood. But she’s a bright girl and gets honors in school. I couldn’t believe my own ears. I looked at her parents, and her mother hurries to put her arm about the girl — the girl was actually terrified! — and said, ‘Why, of course, darling, you’ll always be a little girl, our own little girl’. And she glared at me and said, ‘How could you hurt a little child like that, Agnes? You can injure her psyche that way’.
“Well, Father, I do have a temper. I looked at that big girl who actually thought she was going to stay a child all her life, and believed it, and at her silly mother and father, and I said, very snappishly, ‘Mrs. Knott, I don’t know about that girl’s ‘psyche’, but if anyone is injuring it, you are! She isn’t a child anymore; she isn’t a little girl. It’s time she knew that’. And I marched away, trying to keep down my burning, and I hoped they’d never come back. I couldn’t stand seeing a young person being treated like that, to the detriment of her immortal soul. I had to take a dose of baking soda for my heartburn.”
Agnes flounced in the chair. “I’ve discovered something. All this fuss and care and whimpering and fluttering around children means only one thing: American parents don’t like their children. Perhaps they even hate them. Isn’t that terrible? They hate their children! If they loved them they’d think of the children as just part of the family, with duties and responsibilities to the family, and they’d love them easily and without all that strain and anxiety, and they’d know, without anyone teaching them or ‘warning’ them in books and newspapers, how to treat children with justice. They wouldn’t have to read books or spend time at lectures! They’d just be natural, and strict, and enforce discipline, and make the kids go to church whether they wanted to or not, and they’d have prayers every night and give the kids work to do at home after school. Love means teaching responsibility toward others, and reverence, and duty to God, and love for God, and love for the family, and respect for parents. If the kids have all that, they don’t need big allowances and what they call ‘fun’, and fancy clothes, and dances. That all means nothing. But if they have love, real love, then they have everything else that means something.”
Agnes shook her head dolorously. “I don’t know why I’m talking like this. I think I wanted to bring out the fact that Americans don’t really love their children and so they try to make up for their guilt in other ways. You have only to look at the bold, dissatisfied faces of the American children, and see how bored to death they are, to know that their parents don’t love them in the right way. How often do you see an American child who looks happy? I mean really happy and enjoying life? And I don’t m
ean looking greedy and excited and staring after new things and running, running, running. What are the poor kids running from? I think their parents, with their duckings, and their teachers. I don’t blame them for running. But they have no place to run to that isn’t filled with adults waiting to pamper and give them what they call ‘care’. They want to grow up in an interesting world, and they’re kept babies, with a milk bottle in their mouths. And no interest for them anywhere, only a society that is all nicely organized and has a downy niche ready for them to cuddle down into. Is that all that a soul is born for?”
Agnes smoothed the sleeve of her coat abstractedly. “A downy nest. Even when they’re grown up, they just want a downy nest, always under wings, out of cold, heavy weather. They’re scared to death, and no wonder.”
She looked at the curtain. “But the people in the old country love their children. We have big families, and by the time a child is a year old he knows where he fits in the family and what he should do and what he shouldn’t do. He knows his parents love him but that they’re not going to stand for any nonsense and tantrums. So he is satisfied and feels safe. American children never feel safe.