The Children's War (173 page)

As they were walking again, there was a natural break in their conversation and they listened enraptured to the sounds of silence, then suddenly Zosia asked, “What is it you believe?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“About God. What do you believe? Are you still an atheist?”

“Oh, I don’t know if I would ever say I was an atheist.” He wondered what had prompted the discussion.

“Why not?”

“That’s a bit too active a denial of God for me. Up until recently, all I could say is I was raised without a religion and never cared to join one or formulate a sturdy belief structure on my own.”

“Up until recently?” They had stopped walking and stood side by side on the path.

“Yes, thanks to events, I’ve thought a lot more about such things recently, and I guess I feel more sure that I believe in something. I’m just not sure what it is.”

“How can you believe in it then?”

He shrugged. “Call it a spirit. Or the divine.” He ran his hand along the bark of the nearest tree. “Maybe a tree god or some other pagan concept, except that doesn’t quite work either. I feel it’s more focused than that.”

“So you’re a theist?”

“I suppose.”

“Then why not join an organized religion?”

“Oh, it’s all the other crap that goes along with it that stops me. It’s all so irrational and foolish.”

“So,” she asked quietly, “you think I’m foolish for having a religion?”

He fell silent, wondering if she had deliberately set a trap for him. “That’s not what I meant,” he answered finally. “I can understand what you do. If I had been raised with a religion, I’d almost certainly adhere to it, at least to the extent that you do. I miss not having a structure for my beliefs, I miss the community of fellow believers. I think I even feel the absence of ritual in my life. There’s a great deal of power in . . .”

After a pause Zosia asked, “In what?”

“In belonging. I don’t think I’ve ever really belonged anywhere.” He paused and added wistfully, “No matter how hard I’ve tried.” He thought of Joanna and how much she had made him feel as if he belonged, and a smile played across his lips, but he decided not to mention her, returning instead to a theoretical discussion. “Children seem to need that structure, that belonging. As do a lot of adults. It’s clear whenever there’s a vacuum in the belief structure, a new set of beliefs or mythologies or ideologies is invented to fill the gap, and it’s usually these newer structures that are the most zealous and therefore the most dangerous.”

“Like National Socialism?”

He nodded. “Among other things, yes.”

“So, why not join something established then?”

“Joining as an adult is different from belonging since childhood: it looks like an act of approval of all that the religion entails. When something annoys you, you can shrug your shoulders and say that there’s more than dogma involved. It’s your tradition, your culture, your family, your past. It’s not worth quitting about,
or you hope it will change, or even, if you’re really committed, you’ll work to change it. But for me to join, say, your church, right now, would be a commitment to things I don’t believe in.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for one, the treatment of women. I should think that would bother you more than me, but you just ignore it.”

“Ah, I assume it will change sooner or later.”

“But you see my point? If I were to accept membership, I’d be approving that policy. I’d have to lie even as I was being baptized.”

“No, you wouldn’t. There’s nothing in the statements about that! The status of women is traditionally screwed up, but it’s not in the creed.”

“There’s enough in there to cause me to feel uneasy. In fact, most of it doesn’t feel right. I find the whole Jesus thing problematic.”

There was a long silence, and he was sure he had truly offended her. Finally she said, “Oh.” After another long pause she asked, “Why is that?”

“I made the mistake of learning a bit of history. You know, the similar myths in prior religions, the timing of various bits of doctrine . . .” He hesitated as he tried to determine exactly the right words to convey his gut feelings.

Zosia stared off into the woods as if watching something. He looked to see if a deer or some other animal was in the distance, but he could discern nothing special in the direction she was staring. He continued, “I can accept a God who has awarded us free will and therefore cannot interfere; in fact, that’s the only way I can believe there is a God, what with all that has happened in the past century. What I can’t handle is the idea that there is some merit in suffering or that God in some way would encourage suffering.”

“I think the idea of the crucifixion was that God understands our suffering.”

“That strikes me as a convenient man-made fiction. It would serve well to tell the oppressed that they are doing something noble and see, look, your God did it as well!”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit cynical?”

He smiled without humor. “Forgive me if I don’t believe in the basic good nature of all humans. I found absolutely no nobility or piety in suffering.”

“But you wouldn’t have, since you didn’t believe.”

“That’s right, I don’t believe. Not in that. But if I had believed, I don’t think I would have found comfort in knowing that somebody else suffered. I didn’t want anybody else to feel what I felt! And if I were to believe that Christ’s suffering was voluntary, well, that I find utterly abhorrent.” He shook his head. “It’s all too medieval—this preoccupation with suffering and death.”

“There’s the resurrection.”

He shook his head but did not elaborate. Gruesomely murder your own child to prove a point about suffering and acceptance and then resurrect him. What sort of God did that?

There was another long silence. Zosia still did not look away from that distant
part of the woods. “It doesn’t need to matter,” she said at last in a quiet voice.

“But it does matter. I’ll accept Jesus as historical, but divine? No! If I ever voiced such disbeliefs, they would be enough for me to be excommunicated.”

“Call them
concerns,”
Zosia suggested. “No, not really. I imagine if you did it vociferously, you’d be excommunicated, but you don’t need to do that. Nobody will mind what you think about the doctrine; it’s not like being a priest or a theologian. Anyway, most of us don’t believe in the leadership, so as far as we’re concerned, they can’t excommunicate anyone.”

“If you feel that way, then what’s the point? Why do you belong?”

“To belong. To have that structure there when I need it. To feel that I’m part of a community of people who believe in something beyond the mundane. To pass it on to my children. Because of tradition.”

He nodded his understanding of her reasons.

“I want you to belong as well!” she implored. “Join us. You don’t need to believe anything more than what you do. It’s enough for me.”

Peter bowed his head as he considered Zosia’s request. Was this the reason for his exile? Did she feel he had rejected them by remaining aloof from their traditions? Was her rejection of him simply retaliation for that? His inability to participate in Joanna’s requiem mass came to mind. He could have learned the words, could have recited them to comfort himself and to offer Zosia the solace of his company. Yet he had rejected all that, standing aloof and apart anytime they mourned a comrade or celebrated a wedding or baptized a child.

Would it be so difficult to have some water splashed on his forehead and recite a few words of consent? Was a piece of bread and a sip of wine so hard to swallow? If Paris was well worth a mass, wasn’t Zosia? If entire kingdoms had converted for political convenience, couldn’t he do it for love? Did he really believe deep down that the Vatican would take notice and would gleefully conclude that their patriarchal nonsense had triumphed over rationalism as the last recalcitrant Englishman gave in?

There was, he had to admit, something in the nationalism aspect to it all. It would be easier to consider the Church of England, though it held no greater theological attraction for him. He had all his life associated Catholicism with fanatics. Or the Irish. Same difference, his father would have said. In any case, it was something that he was not. Indeed, he recognized that such a perception was almost certainly propaganda from a bygone era, left over as a knee-jerk prejudice in the populace. If he had told his parents or friends that he had converted to Catholicism, they would have been horrified, yet if he mentioned that he had a Polish or French or Italian Catholic wife, they would have accepted the information with a shrug; just so long as it was not an Irish Catholic, or even worse, an English Catholic!

So, it was not so much a religion that Zosia was asking him to accept, rather,
she was asking him to give up a lifetime perception of his place in the world with respect to that religion.

“Why are you asking this of me now?” he asked. “I understood before our marriage that you respected my beliefs, or lack thereof.”

Zosia looked up at the sky as if searching for answers there. Then she lowered her head and said, “Two reasons. The first is that I was wrong. I thought it wouldn’t be important to me, but it is. I want to have something we do together, something that makes us feel like a family. We do so little together. You’re not fluent in my language, you won’t dance with me when that is one of my passions, you don’t go skiing with me—”

“You know the reason for all that,” he interrupted bitterly. “I can’t help—”

“—you reject my family—”

“They rejected me!” he retorted angrily.

“You don’t want to hear me out, do you?” Zosia asked with exaggerated patience.

“I don’t need a list of how we don’t work well together.”

“You think I work too much and am too committed to my cause. In fact”— she raised her voice to preempt another interruption—“I think you think I’m rather a fanatic.”

“Oh, Zosiu,” Peter moaned, “it’s only when you judge me to be a failure. It’s just self-defense: I can’t live up to your standards! My past can’t measure up to your expectations, and I’ll never be as good as your ghosts.”

She ignored that. In some ways, she seemed determined not to argue. It was as if she were informing a reporter of the difficulties she had with him, but saw no reason to engage herself emotionally in a debate. “The second reason,” she stated dryly, “is the child.”

“I have no intention of stopping you from raising the baby with your beliefs and traditions.”

“How very helpful,” she commented sarcastically.

“What do you want from me?”

“I want a father who can participate! Not someone standing smugly off to the side with a look of cynical superiority!”

“I won’t do that!”

“You already do. And even if that were to change, your lack of participation will be enough of a statement. Can you imagine your child’s important days, his first Holy Communion, say, with him asking you why you don’t join in? I can just hear your answer: ‘Oh, because I don’t believe any of this crap your mother foists on you!’ ”

“You know I wouldn’t say that!”

“I know it would be said without words. I’ve seen you at all our gatherings, the rationalist superhero! We can all see it on your face: the I’m-not-part-of-thismumbo-jumbo look!”

“I don’t do that! You’re seeing things that aren’t there.” That was not what he
thought, so why, he wondered, did she see that in his face? Was it what she wanted to see? Did she want to view him as different and alien? “There are all sorts of religions here. There are other nonbelievers here. I’m not the only one.”