The Recognitions (109 page)

In the community, "Dick" also sang (he had a very agreeable "white tenor"), and conducted the Boy Scout troop. There were, among the local mothers of fourteen-year-old boys, a few who felt they understood "Dick" very well, and cherished him accordingly; there were on the other hand a few elders who did not understand him at all, even to one sturdy old man who complained at the new minister's pronunciation. —Don't like the way he says Gawd . . . said that gray eminence, with the petulance of a man defending someone in his immediate family, and he never entered the church on his own feet again. The ladies of the Use-Me Society found "Dick" a very agreeable listener; and he soon had some idea of how matters had gone before him, how the church (where he took one look and said, —Gee, we'd better dig right in . . .) came to demand such extensive refurbishing, and so forth. —And don't you know . . . said one of the ladies (who already referred to him as "Our 'Dick' "), speaking of the late sexton, —I once heard him say, It's only we that have no care for dying who never manage it ... And from other things she, and her companions, said from time to time, their relief at having been delivered from the prospect of burial by those hands was evident, as though he might have laid them in askew, to hamper that mighty leap when the Trumpet sounded. "Dick" heard of the demented girl who had lived up there, since taken to a state institution where she should have gone in the first place (for her own good) but for the Reverend's charity (which often extended too far), that she had rewritten the Bible and was in the act of printing it herself when "everything came to a head." Even the reliable details of her rumored cure of the sexton's paralysis were brought from these rotting-rooms and aired quite solemnly: the old man had got both legs into one leg of his pajamas one night on going to bed, cried out, —A stroke! ... or —Paraplegia! ... or some such, and she had come down the hall to the rescue. Though where they had gained this intelligence, or that she never left the house because she feared falling through the cracks in the sidewalk, they did not disclose. As for the Reverend himself, it was generally admitted that his efforts and accomplishment, especially in those two final days of his dominion, had been prodigious, and, for one man, incredible; as it was generally agreed that he had, in his lifetime, suffered severe trials, and in sharing the magnanimous aggregate of their own troubled pasts, they were able to concur in granting him the right to a prolonged, confined, rest, in a private institution, where what remained of his own funds after the cost of repairs to certain community property, and his neighbor's bull, had been deducted, would suffice to maintain him until he was delivered (or summoned: there were two distinct opinions on this) by the Lord; and where "Dick," being of an earnest, responsible nature, decided to visit him. And he did manage to emerge with the consolation that the familiar figure whom their community of kindness had enthralled showed no signs of breaking out to return and violate them with signs of appreciation, and appeared, if not grateful, distantly resigned to what, in the compound agreement of their own, they were pleased to call the Lord's will. Happymount had been built originally as a natural history museum, by a philanthropist who felt that such things should be located in the country. When, eventually, it became evident that people were unwilling to make this excursion simply to see stuffed animals and stuffed Indians, it was suggested that they might come out to see human specimens, especially if they were relatives. The lighting inside was very bad. Beyond an iron palisade which separated it from the cares of the world, Happymount rose on a sea of green lawns tended by lonely lunatics: what could be more restful and rewarding than following the lawnmower up and down the green swathes day after day, and by the time one reached the laundry it was time to start at the front gate again. The grassless winter proved a problem. —Then you are the son? The doctor stared brightly through gold-rimmed glasses. He had proved, when he stood behind his desk a moment before, to be a good head shorter than "Dick," who was himself barely average height. -The what? I? ... —Miss Inch, the doctor called, and a nurse appeared in the door. —The son . . . the son . . . —It's a beautiful day, doctor. -Ward G . . . —Wait a minute . . . wait a minute . . . It is true, the grassless winter proved a problem for everyone. Once outside in the sunshine, the nurse said, —You must not mind Mister Farisy. We have put him to sharing quarters with Mister Farisy. Mr. Farisy's dossier at Happymount was a slim one: it detailed little of his successful years as an eminent anatomist, did not, in fact, even mention the process he said he had perfected for curing hams while still on the pig. It commenced in volume only at the point where (according to his own testimony) he had been appointed by the Congregation of the Sacred Rites, at the Vatican, to investigate early methods of crucifixion: were nails driven through the hands? or the wrists? As a scientist, Mr. Farisy had always relied 712

on empirical methods, and found no reason to abandon them now: twenty arms were delivered to his laboratory. He nailed each right hand, and each left wrist, to the wall, and attached mobile weights driven by a system of bellows which he'd removed from a player piano, to simulate the rising and falling motions of the breathing human being. Then he set the thing in motion: weights rose and fell; wood creaked; flesh tore; bones split; and something snapped in Mr. Farisy's head. Next day he called for two dozen arms, then a gross, and silence followed: he said he had been brought to Happy-mount soon after he'd been discovered swinging hand-over-hand in the trapeze of intricate and grand proportions he'd fashioned in his laboratory. (But then, he also said he was descended from Attila the Hun.) —Humm ... ho ... did Barabbas go free? Listen, I had a dream last night, a most ghastly nightmare. Do you want to hear it? —No. —I was on a mountaintop beside a little shed. I don't know how I could tell I was on a mountaintop, because I couldn't see the mountain. I couldn't even see other mountains. It was just because I knew I was on a mountaintop, so there! Ahhp . . . don't interrupt or I won't tell you any more. Maybe it was the light. The quality of light is different on a mountaintop, you'll see, thin, rarefied, the quintessence of purification. —Be quiet. Go to sleep. —The shed was an old board building. Weatherbeaten. Well, why shouldn't it be weatherbeaten, on a mountaintop like that, so there. The sun . . . —Hmmnph . . . —Yes the sun was behind me, covering me with its quintessential light, so there. I had him under the arms, with his back up against the shed but he was much bigger than I was, so much bigger I could hardly lift him. I decided the only way to do it was to nail one hand to one board and the other to a board higher up, then take the first nail out and put it in two boards higher, and then the same with the other hand, left hand, right hand, left hand right hand left hand . . . —Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. —Right up the wall. And why that's exactly what I was doing when I saw the hands were tearing to pieces. He was too big. I couldn't keep it up or the hands would be all torn to pieces by the time I got him up there. Oh, oh, oh, oh, it was terrible, and terrible, and discouraging from a scientific point of view, the way the nail just tore it apart, left hand, right hand . . . maybe I should have used smaller nails? That's the way I left him, with his trouser-cuffs dragging in the dirt. —Stop it. —There we were, in the pure quintessential light of the sun. —Hmmmnph . . . —On the mountaintop. —Transmogrification. Then, —Look! came in Mr. Farisy's hoarse whisper of confidence. —See? the hammer? I keep it all under my mattress. See the nails? Nails! one by one. I've taken them from the shop, one by one by one, ten-penty, twenty-penty one by one. We'll do it on the door frame, I measured it. I know how much you weigh. I looked at your chart. We'll do it scientifically. If they burn you afterward, one by one, ashes don't show scars, left hand, right hand, twenty-penty, thirty-penty, clink, clink, . . . listen! —Mabutone, said Miss Inch the nurse, —or Methyltestosterone Mucorettes, between the upper lip and gum above incisors. —Oops! . . . —Take his arm. —Luminal? —Sedamyl. —You have a guest. Your son . . . —He's not big enough. —Not you, not you. Doctor? . . . —Try Palagren or Passiphen, or Pento-Del or Phanodorn . . . —Reverend, your son? . . . —Ooops! . . . —The sun? —Seconal or Sedamyl, Tolyphy or Tolyspaz . . . —Wait a minute . . . wait a minute ... The refurbishing job which "Dick" had brought about in the church had been an extensive one. To begin with, the bell had been replaced with an electrically driven sound system which not only rang out the hour in more dulcet tones, but summoned the congregation on Sunday mornings by playing familiar hymns especially recorded for the purpose, and broadcast from the church spire in lively resonant notes originally drawn from a novochord, or something similarly up-to-date (it is true, there were days when the wind behaved badly that it sounded like a Hawaiian guitar). The hole in the roof had, of course, been repaired; and the interior done over in taupe and white. The gilded organ pipes had disappeared; and so had all of the harsh angles of woodwork; instead, eyes and voices were lifted to smooth turns and flexures in taupe, and two bullet-shaped chromium lights trained on the pulpit, whence the President of the United States was exhorted with benedictions for the first time since the assassination of James A. Garfield. The oaken boards, where hymn and verse had been posted during services, were no longer necessary, for programs were now printed up every Sunday, detailing not only the service but other church activities. The programs sometimes ran to three or four pages, not counting the front which bore a "nice" (slightly Gothi-cixed) likeness of the church itself. Sturdy brass basins had taken the place of the wicker baskets for the offertory (not, in this illuminated Protestant world, of course, the tendering of bread and wine for Divine approval before their consecration; but here, according to custom, that equally exquisite and perhaps more realistically inspired moment of communion, when "Dick" received the brimming basins from the ushers, and solemnly held them up somewhere over his head in a gesture of intercourse of the most intimate dimensions imaginable to those who had contributed). On the whole, the congregation looked rather younger; and it is just possible that "Dick's" "bad habit" might have had something to do with this. It seemed he had, at the outset, perceived that an entirely virtuous man, even one of the cloth, occupies an untenable position in society; and sensed the wisdom in giving one's neighbors some small vice upon which to latch their rancor at the absence of larger ones. Had his wisdom grown of years as well as wit, he might have gone a step further with his logic and had the good sense to conduct this vice in private, thus giving it the aura of secrecy, and so something to be spoken of in whispers among the townsfolk: but no. He did not give them that satisfaction. He let himself be seen in public, smoking his small cigars. Now for one thing, there were certainly members of this community who did believe an entirely virtuous man possible, men who themselves had shrunk to those proportions; and then among the ladies, there were some who had no intention of considering this a minor vice, but felt every bit as strongly about tobacco as did England's first, and Scotland's sixth, King James, whose Bible they retired to read in the clear dry air of their fathers, and the fathers before them, piqued in their solitude, it is true, on occasional Sunday mornings when the wind was wrong, and that air shimmered painfully with crystal tones and clear glissandos from the chaste spire turned campanile, where the new minister, whose forebears, it was generally known, sprang from somewhere in New Jersey, prepared to lead off with Hymn Number 347 in the Pilgrim Hymnal, —O God be-neath thy guid-ing hand . . . Our ex-iled fa-thers crossed the sea . . . Still, a number of gray petrous visages continued to appear, drawn on by a habit which they called duty, and perhaps, though none would have admitted it, a sort of perilous curiosity roused by this young man who invoked flesh and deity alike in whistling tones which bounced off their northern souls like shiny stones scaled over still water. As for those whistling punctuations, they were first credited to some electrical distemper in the public address system, for there was now a microphone mounted on the pulpit through which "Dick" managed to convey, if not severe awe, moments of anxiety, and if not wonder, moments of acute embarrassment; if he could not tender mystery, he could arouse curiosity, rewarded with ceremony if not ritual, inspiring, if not hope, then sincere desire, if not faith, allegiance, if not charity, tolerance. In keeping with the general spirit of refurbishing (for even the arrow at the entrance to town had been changed to point the real direction of the imminent curve, a kindness to strangers though it caused some confusion at first for the natives), the weathercock atop the spire had been exchanged for a cross, and "Dick" ministered wearing a pallium (he called it a "surplice"). All this, what elders were left him bore very well; and he was quite popular among the young people. They asked him weighty questions: one young lady, whether he would approve her reading a current novel, entitled SENSATION (it was one of those books called "bitter satire" by those who think life better than they find it, and "inadequate" by those who find it a good deal worse than they had thought); and he did not say no. (He was waiting, and would in vain, for it to appear condensed in the Reader's Digest.) It was the same girl who had asked him earlier if a passage she showed him from Katherine Mansfield were sacrilegious: something which mentioned the soul being "set before its Maker, hatless, disheveled and gay, with its spirit unbroken . . ." And though this was a sensation which had certainly never occurred to him, "Dick" indulged it in what he, with Saint Peter, regarded as the "weaker vessel." In spite of all "Dick" had done to brighten things up, the parsonage held a sense of bereavement about it. His heels clicking on the floors (for he wore metal taps, to save leather so he said) echoed sharply and came back to him in creaks in the woodwork. And he found himself, when he should have been busy culling a sermon, standing instead at the window of the dark downstairs room which he never used, staring through evergreen branches at a distant shrouded hill; or, as he sat quietly going through letters, or the church's business, bent forth from his chair, listening, staring at nothing, listening to and then for, creaking sounds from other parts of the house. And one afternoon in the bright upstairs room he had 716