The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (26 page)

   “
I suggest we
both get some sleep. If you want another blanket it’s on the
chair.”

   “
Thanks.”

   
She hesitated.
“Are you alright?”

   
He smiled, but a
great sadness had suddenly taken hold of him. He couldn’t put a
name to it, and it hardly made sense, considering how happy he had
just said he was. “I’m fine.”

   
But after she
had said goodnight and he had turned off the lamp, the same feeling
came over him again. Only, this time he understood why. At this
time tomorrow he would be back in his rectory, getting ready to
resume his duties as assistant pastor. The Monsignor would be
snoring down the hall. Margaret would be finishing up her chores in
the kitchen. Another year of saying mass for the superannuated
women of the parish, of account-checking and invoice-filing, would
begin. The dreamlike existence he had been leading for the past two
weeks would become a preposterous memory. As he lay on the uneven
cushions of Rosalie’s sofa, staring up at the ceiling dappled with
streetlight, the idea of this short episode ending seemed suddenly
too much to bear. Was this the Pain of Loss, the consciousness of
eternal deprivation he had been warned all his life was a pain more
acute than the physical suffering of hell? It had never occurred to
him that he could feel it while his soul and body were still
joined. Why couldn’t he serve God and still remain a member of the
human race? He had been taught no one could serve both God and
Mammon. But surely the pain he felt at being severed from this
world of ordinary people could not just be a temptation of the
devil. Could he only freely be himself after he had safely drawn
his last breath?

   
A car motored
quietly down the suburban street. Rosalie flicked off a light
switch on the floor above him. He began to feel sleepy. He was back
in Rosalie’s yard again, admiring her lilac bushes and enjoying the
cool sunny evening. His border collie—his heart skipped with joy to
see her after all these years—bounded suddenly across the grass in
pursuit of sparrows. He had only had the animal a few months before
the family doctor said he was allergic to dog hair and advised his
mother to get rid of it. One afternoon he returned home from
school, and she was gone. No house ever again seemed so silent and
empty as his did that day. And yet, he hadn’t thought about that
animal for years. Why this sudden joy at being reunited with her
shade in this half-waking dream? he wondered. He tried to conjure
up the dog’s image again, but she had turned into something else—a
different dog entirely, older, unfriendly, even vicious.

   
The local church
was a nineteenth-century stone building that reminded him of the
old church in the parish where he had grown up. It did not, like
the original in his memory, stand on top a high point overlooking
the lower Hudson Valley. But a large tract of undeveloped land
surrounded it, and the view to the west was of rolling hills tinted
orange by early sun.

   
He had awakened
at five a.m. refreshed, despite the wine he had drunk the night
before and the late hour he had gotten to sleep. He fixed himself a
cup of instant coffee in Rosalie’s kitchen, taking care not to
disturb her. Then he drove the couple miles to church, delighting
in the scenery and anticipating with pleasure, for the first time
in months, the rite he was about to perform.

   
The church’s
front door was open, but he could see no one inside, where the only
light was provided by a big stained glass window above the organ
loft. Even his unschooled eye could tell the glass was old. The
quality of the reds and blues was beyond anything he had seen in
any of the newer churches. The scene itself, of the Madonna
ascending to heaven, was Italianate, a copy or at least
approximation of a renaissance painting.

   
He walked down
the short main aisle. The dark pews were vacant. When he called
last night to ask permission to say mass, the curate told him there
was no need for him to stop by the rectory, which was located a
couple miles from the church. Someone would come by to open up. But
whoever it was that had unlocked the church had not
remained.

   
He unhooked the
gate that formed the central part of the communion rail and stepped
into the sanctuary. A red vigil light flickered beside the altar.
He genuflected and offered a prayer.

   
The day’s
vestments were already laid out in the sacristy. They were white,
because it was still within the octave of a major feast. The satin
and brocade chasuble was on the bottom, trimmed in gold with a big
“IHS” on the back. Then came stole and alb, laid out in opposite
order to which he would put them on. His own sexton or one of the
nuns arranged vestments for him and his fellow priests in a similar
fashion every morning. And yet, he could sense the care with which
these had been handled, as if their arrangement, no less than his
own performance on the altar, were part of the ceremony.

   
He turned on the
altar lights and lit the candles. Whoever had arranged the
vestments had also filled the cruets with wine and water. He began
mass facing the pews, as he had been doing ever since the
vernacular liturgy was mandated. Turned toward the congregation
instead of facing an altar set flush against the rear wall of a
church was the only way he had ever said mass, unlike most of the
older clergy. For some of them the difficulty was not so much
adjusting to the exposure which facing the congregation involved;
after all, much of a priest’s life already involved public
appearances of one sort or another. The problem for those men had
been one of religious, not physical orientation. All their clerical
lives they men had shown their backs to the congregation as if
leading them in a petition to the deity. The faithful had been
separated from the sacrament both by the sanctuary and locked altar
rail as well as by the celebrant’s own person. It was as if what
happened on the altar was strictly between the priest and God, with
the laity only allowed to observe from a distance. Facing the pews,
though, meant inviting the congregation to participate. In a sense,
the change democratized the mass, and for some of the clergy this
reorientation, more than the use of English instead of Latin, was
like asking a royalist to accept government by popular
election.

   
He took his
time, making something special of the liturgy, the way he did when
he was newly ordained or, even earlier, when he used to play priest
on his mother’s metal kitchen table. A pew creaked as the advancing
sun warmed the old wood by degrees, but otherwise he felt totally
alone in the church, like a monk in his monastery cell. His words,
spoken in an undertone or even, at the consecration, in a stage
whisper, echoed back from the old stone walls. There was no sermon,
so the mass was short, a mere fifteen or twenty minutes. But as he
approached its conclusion he found himself slowing the pace,
regretting its end. How different this was from the way he had been
saying mass in Holy Name. There he had rushed through the service
as fast as was decently possible, the tension in him rising as if
what he were doing were something by its nature disagreeable. He
had scarcely been conscious of the dozens, sometimes hundreds of
faces in front of him, although he was obliged to wait for their
responses at several points in the liturgy. But that had been a
very different kind of solitude from what he was now feeling. He
would have welcomed a few parishioners to share the experience with
him this morning. He might even be able to preach a halfway decent
sermon, something along the lines of his conversation on the beach
with Rosalie.

   
Finally there
was nothing left but the Last Gospel, his favorite part of the
mass. When he served as altar boy, the rhythm of the verses used to
thrill him long before he knew their meaning. They seemed like the
grand finale to a symphony, a pell-mell rush to joyful climax. He
anticipated them every time he served mass and, after his
ordination, when he celebrated it himself. “In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In Him
all things were made, and nothing has been made without Him. In Him
was the light of man, and the light shineth in the darkness, and
the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man, one sent from
God, whose name was John...”

   
Tears filled his
eyes as he recited the words from memory. They seemed every bit as
beautiful as they did in his childhood. It was like seeing an old
friend he had given up for dead. His voice broke when he reached
the last verses. “And we saw His glory, the glory as of the
only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth.” He paused
to collect himself. Then he raised his hand as if in benediction of
the vacant, dark church.

   
As if in
response, one of the back pews again creaked.

   “You were there the whole
time?”

   “
I hope you
don’t mind. I couldn’t help wondering what you looked like as a
priest.”

   “
Did I come up
to snuff?”

   “
You were
wonderful. I mean, I guess you know I’m not a Catholic. But that
was the most beautiful service I’ve ever attended.”

   “
Thank
you.”

   
They were in a
local diner, having driven there separately by arrangement the
night before.

   “
The mass means
a lot to you,” she said, sipping her coffee and regarding him with
a deference he was of two minds about. He was pleased she had been
present, but afraid she might begin treating him differently now.
“I could tell by how you said the words and performed all the
different gestures. It was beautiful to watch.”

   “
Actually, you
were present at one of my better performances, if I might use that
word. Ordinarily, I’m not able to get into it so deeply. Sometimes
I wonder if I wasn’t miscast for the role.”

   
The waitress
arrived with eggs and toast. She set the plates down, then refilled
their coffee cups.

   “
How can you say
that? You have such a feeling for the mass. You make it seem like a
work of art. Watching you was like being at a really fine opera
performance of. Do you know opera?”

   “
I’ve never been
to one.”

   “
You should go.
You’d see what I mean.”

   
By the time they
left the diner, the sunny day had clouded over. Rosalie led the
way, driving very fast down the deserted country roads. Father
Walther would have preferred to linger over the cow pastures and
rolling hills. This was the last day of his vacation. But he did
not mind having to return to his parish as much as he would have if
he had not had these two days with Rosalie. He hated to think what
his attitude would have been if he had returned right after his
disastrous visit with the mechanic and his wife. How remarkably his
luck had turned the moment he had exited the Turnpike and called
Rosalie. There were plenty of people—he’d rather not think how
many—who would cluck their tongues at the idea of a Catholic priest
spending a weekend in the company of an attractive single woman.
And yet, the most serious indictment anyone could fairly advance
was the scandal he might have caused if someone had recognized him
last night on the dance floor.

   “
Do you think
it’ll rain?” he asked as he closed the trunk of Rosalie’s car after
she had deposited her clubs inside.

   “
Not a chance.
That sky is much too high for rain. Perfect golf
weather.”

   
He arched his
neck for a better look at the cloud cover but could see no
difference between this kind of overcast and the kind that led to a
downpour.

   “
If you play as
much golf as I do, “she said, “you get to be a pretty good
weatherperson. Take my word. We’ll get in eighteen holes
easy.”

   
He believed her,
not that he would have dreamed of canceling the day even if the
weather were more threatening. She always seemed to know what she
was about, whether it was frying an egg or handling a tricky wedge
shot.

   
He got in on the
passenger side of her car (there was no sense using his own, she
argued, since he had a limit on the mileage he could accumulate).
She was about to get in herself, then hesitated, scowling at the
house entrance.

   “
Damn.”

   “
You forgot
something?”

   “
No. The phone
is ringing.”

   
He could just
barely make out the faint sound, like the tinkle of an oriental
mobile.

   “
I’ll be right
back.”

   
She was gone
long enough to conclude a brief conversation. But instead of
returning to the driver’s seat, she approached the open window on
his side.

   “
It’s for you.
Your darling Margaret.”

   
He got out of
the car quickly. He knew that, harridan or no, his housekeeper
would only telephone if something serious had happened. That could
mean his mother had taken a bad turn.

   “
Hello,
Margaret.”

   “
Father! Thank
God I’ve reached you. I’ve been trying this number all
morning.”

   “
What is it,
Margaret? Is something wrong?”

   “
It’s himself,
Father. He’s bad. Very bad.”