Читать книгу The Sublime Jester - Ezra Selig Brudno - Страница 9

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His constant day-dreaming and the feeding of his imagination on poetry and romance cost Albert much misery at the end of every semester. He invariably failed in all studies except literature and philosophy.

On his arrival home one afternoon he found Father Schumacher engaged in a serious conversation with his mother. Father Schumacher was a picturesque figure, prematurely gray with a fine head set upon broad shoulders and a pair of brown eyes that twinkled mirthfully. There was something in his shrewd eyes that seemed to say, “I know all the meanness and frailties of human nature, I know this earthly planet is no paradise, but we are here and must make the best of it.” He was loved by all regardless of creed. After the French had conquered the city and reopened the Lyceum, he was named rector. The new ruler knew that Father Schumacher could be trusted in spite of his German allegiance. He was very learned and familiar with all the philosophies—from Socrates to Kant—which he taught at the Lyceum without, however, interfering with his loyalty to Rome.

The friendship between the former priest and Bessie Zorn ran back to the time she was a little girl, when he was a classmate of her brother, Joseph, and was almost a daily visitor at her father’s home. Since her father’s death and her marriage to David, Father Schumacher was a frequent visitor at the Zorn home, and of late Albert had been an added attraction. The rector was very fond of the boy and often gave the mother encouragement when her enthusiasm waned.

Albert was about to enter the living-room, where his mother and the visitor were seated, when he overheard his mother saying, “Indeed, he is quite a problem. If I could only keep him away from poetry and French novels I could knock his poetic nonsense out of his head.”

“I’ve let him attend my class in philosophy,” the rector struck in. “Perhaps that will put some reason into his head.”

“Yes, that might turn him into a Kantian,” laughed the mother, “and I don’t know which is worse, a befogged Kantian or a beggarly rhymester.” After the briefest pause she added, “I am going to get him a special tutor for mathematics. He doesn’t seem to grasp any scientific subject—I’d like him to study banking.”

“You’ll never make a banker of that boy,” he replied. “He isn’t cut out for a mercantile career and you’ll but waste your efforts. Why don’t you give him to the Church? I might be able to be of good service to you in that direction. I know quite a few dignitaries in Rome.”

“I don’t think a priest’s robe would be becoming to Albert’s style of beauty,” she said laughingly.

“Ah, you haven’t seen how chic the abbes in Rome wear their garb,” he returned in a tone of levity.

“No, I am afraid this is out of the question.”

“It’s better to give him to Rome than to Greece,” the former priest pressed his point symbolically. “It was the Church that saved the Italian masters from idolatry. Don’t you think it would have been far better for Voltaire, and mankind, if he had been won by the Church? I know Albert, he needs the Church. He might carve for himself a glorious career in Rome!”

“Personally I’d have him anything rather than a rhymester,” the mother burst out passionately, without concealing her horror at such a prospect.

“But with the present unrest what else is left for a gifted young man?” proceeded the Jesuit. Then he added in a lower voice, “One day we are Prussian, the next French, and we may be Russian some day, God only knows. And while you know how free I am from prejudice, the boy’s faith will be in his way. I hear that the Jews in Berlin have almost exhausted the holy water of the baptismal font there.” He laughed indulgently as he referred to the great number of conversions in the Prussian capital.

“No one knows better than you,” she presently said, “that you can’t make a good Christian of a good Jew. The most you can do is to turn a bad Jew into a worse Christian.”

They both laughed amicably.

“Honestly, I don’t believe Albert has a religious sense,” she added a moment later. “Nothing is too sacred for him to make fun of.”

“That’s only the boy’s sense of humor,” he contradicted her. “He has more religion than you think. Sentiments of any kind are impossible without a religious sense, and Albert is full of sentiment—”

Albert’s entrance interrupted further conversation. Bowing, he walked up to Father Schumacher and kissed his extended soft white hand.

The rector’s eyes now rested upon the boy’s face with renewed interest. He was still thinking of his suggestion to the mother. Albert’s narrowed eyes registered acute sensitiveness. The mother’s eyes also fell upon her son as if she, too, had noticed the peculiar expression on his countenance for the first time.

“What a pity he was not born a Catholic,” muttered the former priest as Albert bowed out of the room.

When the rector was gone the mother took her son in hand. She did not scold him—she never scolded him—she only tried to reason with him.

“Albert, dearest, what will become of you?” she pleaded.

He said nothing. He stood like an accused at the bar of justice, guilt in his heart.

“How can you ever amount to anything unless you pass your examinations—especially in mathematics?” she proceeded.

The unshed tears in the mother’s eyes overflowed. His eyes, too, began to fill. He was not grieved because he had failed in mathematics but it pained him to have his mother worried. He was silent. He had no words of justification. Soon his chin began to quiver, his lips to twitch, and his eyelashes trembled.

“Father’s business is going from bad to worse,” she resumed in a kind, though plaintive, tone, “and what can one do without money? Everybody thinks we are well-to-do, but we have hardly anything. If it weren’t for Uncle Leopold we would have been on the point of starvation long before this.”

Still not a word from Albert. Only hot tears burned his tender eyelids.

Suddenly, without a word, he flung his arms around his mother and kissed her tear-stained cheeks. Indeed, henceforth he would apply himself to mathematics and would study hard, day and night.

But before long he had again fallen from grace, despite his steadfast efforts to please his mother. This realization did not dawn upon him until toward the close of the following term. With a heart filled with contrition he reviewed the past. Alas! he had spent most of his time on poetry and novels and mythology but had scarcely given more than fleeting glances to his other studies.

Conscious of guilt he sought to justify himself to himself. With such an indulgent audience he had no difficulty in purging himself of all wrong. What difference did it really make to him whether a plus b equaled x or sixteen? What was it to him that the sum of the interior angles of a polygon equaled two right angles, taken as many times, less two, as the figures had sides? Of what concern to him was the expedition of Cyrus the Younger against his brother Artaxerxes thousands of years ago when a greater expedition of a greater hero had so recently ended disastrously! Why tax his brain with the Greek aorist and the Latin grammar and the stilted speeches of Clearches? Ah, if he could only become a great man without being compelled to learn these things!

But his mother had impressed upon him again and again that the road to greatness lay through a labyrinth of angles and equations and logarithms, with impediments consisting of irregular verbs of decayed Romans, of dead Greeks, and of Hebrews who would not die!