The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (27 page)

FATHER UDOVIC PLACED the envelope before the Bishop and stepped back. He gave the Bishop more than enough time to read what was written on the envelope, time to digest
The Pope
and, down in the corner, the
Personal
, and then he stepped forward. “It was in the collection yesterday,” he said. “At Cathedral.”

“Peter’s Pence, Father?”

Father Udovic nodded. He’d checked that. It had been in with the special Peter’s Pence envelopes, and not with the regular Sunday ones.

“Well, then . . .” The Bishop’s right hand opened over the envelope, then stopped, and came to roost again, uneasily, on the edge of the desk.

Father Udovic shifted a foot, popped a knuckle in his big toe. The envelope was a bad thing all right. They’d never received anything like it. The Bishop was doing what Father Udovic had done when confronted by the envelope, thinking twice, which was what Monsignor Renton at Cathedral had done, and his curates before him, and his housekeeper who counted the collection. In the end, each had seen the envelope as a hot potato and passed it on. But the Bishop couldn’t do that. He didn’t know
what
might be inside. Even Father Udovic, who had held it up to a strong light, didn’t know. That was the hell of it.

The Bishop continued to stare at the envelope. He still hadn’t touched it.

“It beats me,” said Father Udovic, moving backwards. He sank down on the leather sofa.

“Was there something else, Father?”

Father Udovic got up quickly and went out of the office—wondering how the Bishop would handle the problem, disappointed that he evidently meant to handle it by himself. In a way, Father Udovic felt responsible. It had been his idea to popularize the age-old collection—“to personalize Peter’s Pence”—by moving the day for it ahead a month so that the Bishop, who was going to Rome, would be able to present the proceeds to the Holy Father personally. There had been opposition from the very first. Monsignor Renton, the rector at Cathedral, and one of those at table when Father Udovic proposed his plan, was ill-disposed to it (as he was to Father Udovic himself) and had almost killed it with his comment, “Smart promotion, Bruno.” (Monsignor Renton’s superior attitude was understandable. He’d had Father Udovic’s job, that of chancellor of the diocese, years ago, under an earlier bishop.) But Father Udovic had won out. The Bishop had written a letter incorporating Father Udovic’s idea. The plan had been poorly received in some rectories, which was to be expected since it disturbed the routine schedule of special collections. Father Udovic, however, had been confident that the people, properly appealed to, could do better than in the past with Peter’s Pence. And the first returns, which had reached him that afternoon, were reassuring—whatever the envelope might be.

It was still on the Bishop’s desk the next day, off to one side, and it was there on the day after. On the following day, Thursday, it was in the “In” section of his file basket. On Friday it was still there, buried. Obviously the Bishop was stumped.

On Saturday morning, however, it was back on the desk. Father Udovic, called in for consultation, had a feeling, a really satisfying feeling, that the Bishop might have need of him. If so, he would be ready. He had a plan. He sat down on the sofa.

“It’s about this,” the Bishop said, glancing down at the envelope before him. “I wonder if you can locate the sender.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Father Udovic. He paused to consider whether it would be better just to go and do his best, or to present his plan of operation to the Bishop for approval. But the Bishop, not turning to him at all, was outlining what he wanted done. And it was Father Udovic’s own plan! The Cathedral priests at their Sunday Masses should request the sender of the envelope to report to the sacristy afterwards. The sender should be assured that the contents would be turned over to the Holy Father, if possible.

“Providing, of course,” said Father Udovic, standing and trying to get into the act, “it’s not something . . .”

“Providing it’s possible to do so.”

Father Udovic tried not to look sad. The Bishop might express himself better, but he was saying nothing that hadn’t occurred to Father Udovic first, days before. It was pretty discouraging.

He retreated to the outer office and went to work on a memo of their conversation. Drafting letters and announcements was the hardest part of his job for him. He tended to go astray without a memo, to take up with the tempting clichés that came to him in the act of composition and sometimes perverted the Bishop’s true meaning. Later that morning he called Monsignor Renton and read him the product of many revisions, the two sentences.

“Okay,” said Monsignor Renton. “I’ll stick it in the bulletin. Thanks a lot.”

As soon as Father Udovic hung up, he doubted that that was what the Bishop wished. He consulted the memo. The Bishop was very anxious that “not too much be made of this matter.” Naturally, Monsignor Renton wanted the item for his parish bulletin. He was hard up. At one time he had produced the best bulletin in the diocese, but now he was written out, quoting more and more from the magazines and even from the papal encyclicals. Father Udovic called Monsignor Renton back and asked that the announcement be kept out of print. It would be enough to read it once over lightly from the pulpit, using Father Udovic’s version because it said enough without saying too much and was, he implied, authorized by the Bishop. Whoever the announcement concerned would comprehend it. If published, the announcement would be subject to study and private interpretation. “Announcements from the pulpit are soon forgotten,” Father Udovic said. “I mean—by the people they don’t concern.”

“You were right the first time, Bruno,” said Monsignor Renton. He sounded sore.

The next day—Sunday—Father Udovic stayed home, expecting a call from Monsignor Renton, or possibly even a visit. There was nothing. That evening he called the Cathedral rectory and got one of the curates. Monsignor Renton wasn’t expected in until very late. The curate had made the announcement at his two Masses, but no one had come to him about it. “Yes, Father, as you say, it’s quite possible someone came to Monsignor about it. Probably he didn’t consider it important enough to call you about.”

“
Not important!
”

“Not important enough to call
you
about, Father. On
Sunday
.”

“I see,” said Father Udovic mildly. It was good to know that the curate, after almost a year of listening to Monsignor Renton, was still respectful. Some of the men out in parishes said Father Udovic’s job was a snap and maintained that he’d landed it only because he employed the touch system of typing. Before hanging up, Father Udovic stressed the importance of resolving the question of the envelope, but somehow (words played tricks on him) he sounded as though he were accusing the curate of indifference. What a change! The curate didn’t take criticism very well, as became all too clear from his sullen silence, and he wasn’t very loyal. When Father Udovic suggested that Monsignor Renton might have neglected to make the announcement at his Masses, the curate readily agreed. “Could’ve slipped his mind all right. I guess you know what that’s like.”

Early the next morning Father Udovic was in touch with Monsignor Renton, beginning significantly with a glowing report on the Peter’s Pence collection, but the conversation languished, and finally he had to ask about the announcement.

“Nobody showed,” Monsignor Renton said in an annoyed voice. “What d’ya want to do about it?”

“Nothing right now,” said Father Udovic, and hung up. If there had been a failure in the line of communication, he thought he knew where it was.

The envelope had reposed on the Bishop’s desk over the weekend and through most of Monday. But that afternoon Father Udovic, on one of his appearances in the Bishop’s office, noticed that it was gone. As soon as the Bishop left for the day, Father Udovic rushed in, looking first in the wastebasket, then among the sealed outgoing letters, for a moment actually expecting to see a fat one addressed in the Bishop’s hand to the Apostolic Delegate. When he uncovered the envelope in the “Out” section of the file basket, he wondered at himself for looking in the other places first. The envelope had to be filed somewhere—a separate folder would be best—but Father Udovic didn’t file it. He carried it to his desk. There, sitting down to it in the gloom of the outer office, weighing, feeling, smelling the envelope, he succumbed entirely to his first fears. He remembered the parable of the cockle. “An enemy hath done this.” An enemy was plotting to disturb the peace of the diocese, to employ the Bishop as an agent against himself, or against some other innocent person, some unsuspecting priest or nun—yes, against Father Udovic. Why him? Why not? Only a diseased mind would contemplate such a scheme, Father Udovic thought, but that didn’t make it less likely. And the sender, whoever he was, doubtless anonymous and judging others by himself, would assume that the envelope had already been opened and that the announcement was calculated to catch him. Such a person would never come forward.

Father Udovic’s fingers tightened on the envelope. He could rip it open, but he wouldn’t. That evening, enjoying instant coffee in his room, he could steam it open. But he wouldn’t. In the beginning, the envelope might have been opened. It would have been so easy, pardonable then. Monsignor Renton’s housekeeper might have done it. With the Bishop honoring the name on the envelope and the intentions of whoever wrote it, up to a point anyway, there was now a principle operating that just couldn’t be bucked. Monsignor Renton could have it his way.

That evening Father Udovic called him and asked that the announcement appear in the bulletin.

“Okay. I’ll stick it in. It wouldn’t surprise me if we got some action now.”

“I hope so,” said Father Udovic, utterly convinced that Monsignor Renton had failed him before. “Do you mind taking it down verbatim this time?”

“Not at all.”

In the next bulletin, an advance copy of which came to Father Udovic through the courtesy of Monsignor Renton, the announcement appeared in an expanded, unauthorized version.

The result on Sunday was no different.

During the following week, Father Udovic considered the possibility that the sender was a floater and thought of having the announcement broadcast from every pulpit in the diocese. He would need the Bishop’s permission for that, though, and he didn’t dare to ask for something he probably wouldn’t get. The Bishop had instructed him not to make too much of the matter. The sender would have to be found at Cathedral, or not at all. If not at all, Father Udovic, having done his best, would understand that he wasn’t supposed to know anymore about the envelope than he did. He would file it away, and some other chancellor, some other bishop, perhaps, would inherit it. The envelope was most likely harmless anyway, but Father Udovic wasn’t so much relieved as bored by the probability that some poor soul was trusting the Bishop to put the envelope into the hands of the Holy Father, hoping for rosary beads blessed by him, or for his autographed picture, and enclosing a small offering, perhaps a spiritual bouquet. Toward the end of the week, Father Udovic told the Bishop that he liked to think that the envelope contained a spiritual bouquet from a little child, and that its contents had already been delivered, so to speak, its prayers and communions already credited to the Holy Father’s account in heaven.

“I must say I hadn’t thought of that,” said the Bishop.

Unfortunately for his peace of mind Father Udovic wasn’t always able to believe that the sender was a little child.

The most persistent of those coming to him in reverie was a middle-aged woman saying she hadn’t received a special Peter’s Pence envelope, had been out of town a few weeks, and so hadn’t heard or read the announcement. When Father Udovic tried her on the meaning of the
Personal
on the envelope, however, the woman just went away, and so did all the other suspects under questioning—except one. This was a rich old man suffering from scrupulosity. He wanted his alms to be in secret, as it said in Scripture, lest he be deprived of his eternal reward, but not
entirely
in secret. That was as far as Father Udovic could figure the old man. Who was he? An audacious old Protestant who hated communism, or could some future Knight of St Gregory be taking his first awkward step? The old man was pretty hard to believe in, and the handwriting on the envelope sometimes struck Father Udovic as that of a woman. This wasn’t necessarily bad. Women controlled the nation’s wealth. He’d seen the figures on it. The explanation was simple: widows. Perhaps they hadn’t taken the right tone in the announcement. Father Udovic’s version had been safe and cold, Monsignor Renton’s like a summons. It might have been emphasized that the Bishop, under certain circumstances, would
gladly
undertake to deliver the envelope. That might have made a difference. The sender would not only have to appreciate the difficulty of the Bishop’s position, but abandon his own. That wouldn’t be easy for the sort of person Father Udovic had in mind. He had a feeling that it wasn’t going to happen. The Bishop would leave for Rome on the following Tuesday. So time was running out. The envelope could contain a check—quite the cruelest thought—on which payment would be stopped after a limited time by the donor, whom Father Udovic persistently saw as an old person not to be dictated to, or it could be nullified even sooner by untimely death. God, what a shame! In Rome, where the needs of the world, temporal as well as spiritual, were so well known, the Bishop would’ve been welcome as the flowers in May.

And then, having come full circle, Father Udovic would be hard on himself for dreaming and see the envelope as a whited sepulcher concealing all manner of filth, spelled out in letters snipped from newsprint and calculated to shake Rome’s faith in him. It was then that he particularly liked to think of the sender as a little child. But soon the middle-aged woman would be back, and all the others, among whom the hottest suspect was a feeble-minded nun—devils all to pester him, and the last was always worse than the first. For he always ended up with the old man—and what if there was such an old man?