Читать книгу Twentieth Century Limited Book One - Age of Heroes - Jan David Blais - Страница 9

I AM HEADING FOR THE DECK when the phone rings. “Professor Flynn?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Susan Leone, Paul Bernard’s assistant. Sorry to bother you but it’s about Paul’s papers. I had a call yesterday from a lawyer for Rudolph Latimer, you know, LTN. He said he was sending somebody to pick them up. Says they’re Latimer’s property and they want them back.”

“That’s ridiculous! How do they even know about them?”

“Beats me, but he said Paul worked on them when he was on Latimer’s payroll so they belong to LTN.”

“That’s bullshit! ... Sorry.”

“I’m familiar with the word. I told him to buzz off. He said ETVN would be hearing from him at a more appropriate level. The asshole! What a nerve!”

“We’ve never met, Susan, but I love you already.”

“Paul always spoke well of you, too.”

“We need to make sure those papers are safe. They’re Paul’s personal papers, they’re nobody’s business.”

“And now they’re yours. He dictated a document making you his literary executor.”

“He never told me that.”

“He never got around to signing it. I don’t know if that matters, but I have the tape.”

“How much stuff is there?”

There is a pause. “Sixteen boxes, would you believe.”

“No wonder it was taking him so long. Where are they now?”

Another pause. “Professor Flynn, you owe me – you really owe me. My roommate and me, we moved them last night. They’re in our spare room, in Cobble Hill, you know, in Brooklyn. All we have is a little car, one of those minis. Three trips, it took. I got to bed at two-thirty.”

“Susan, you are something else.”

“That call really shook me up. I didn’t want Paul’s stuff sitting here. No way Latimer or his asshole lawyer’s going to get their hands on them, not if I have anything to say about it.”

“You used to work for Latimer.”

“Twenty-three years. I came over to ETVN with Paul. ”

“What about ETVN? Will they claim them too?”

“They’re cool. There’s no love lost between them and Latimer, you can imagine.”

“Well I owe you. What about dinner for you and your friend at a nice place, a very nice place?”

She laughs. “That’ll do, for starters. No, seriously, I’m happy to do what I can for Paul’s memory.” She was quiet a moment. “I hear you’re working with some writer. To me the important thing is give people a chance to know the real Paul. He was a peach.”

“Whatever you do, hold onto those boxes. I’ll talk to my lawyer. Larry Cahill, he’s in Boston. He’ll take care of everything.”

“You want me to send them to you?”

“Hang onto them for now. I’ll call you when I reach him.”

“Okay. Nice to meet you finally, even if it’s on the phone.”

“Likewise, and count on that dinner. I can’t believe you did all that.”

“No problem. I work out at Golds, three, four times a week. I figure that was my weight training for the week.”

“That lawyer better not mess with you.”

“That’s for damned sure.”

I look at my watch. Cahill won’t be in yet but Jonathan is waiting. I’ll get him started, make the call mid-morning. We sit down over today’s batch. Jonathan leads off. “There’s that Christ-killer comment again. Gus, he’s old enough to know better.”

“He’s just repeating what he’s been told. That was the Church’s position for centuries.”

“I’m sorry but I have zero tolerance on this subject.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but a child is exposed to many things. You’ll agree Paul was no anti-Semite, in fact for a long time he was a great friend of Israel.”

“That’s true. Well, at least he’s made his first Jewish friend. I guess that’s a start.”

“You know, I identify with that Benny – he couldn’t care less about sports. I felt the same at his age, though I always followed the Red Sox. But Paul’s interest was personal, he wanted desperately to play the game.”

“Doesn’t sound like he was that good at it. His brother was the athlete. Siblings can be so different. My brother and I, you’d never know we were related.”

“I had five, and four sisters. Remember Cabbage Patch Kids? No two alike.”

* * * * * * *

IN FIFTH GRADE religious study remained the big deal, as we were preparing to become soldiers of Christ. I had decided to take Maurice as my confirmation name. But a second focus had emerged. This year’s teacher, Sister Mary Francis, sensed that God wasn’t the only one who’d hold us accountable for what we knew. Geography, my favorite, continued putting flesh on the dry bones of History (sorry, Gus – this was before I met you), every map, every new country a treasure. And what a relief to set the math tables aside and work on real-life problems. How I would use any of this I had no clue, but it was dawning on me that learning for its own sake might be a good thing.

Well into April and sooty snow lingered in the corners of our schoolyard. One Monday morning we were summoned to the auditorium, the whole school. Assemblies were special occasions, for a movie when we’d sold enough raffle tickets for St. Teresa to meet its diocesan quota, for example. But this morning there was no screen, no projector. The principal, Sister Superior, Philomena of God, was on the stage along with Father Donnelly.

“Children, I have very sad news.” She looked even grimmer than usual. “Your classmate Eugene Sullivan has died. He has drowned.” A hush fell over the hall. Genie Sullivan! Impossible! “His body was found in the Woonosquatucket River this morning.”

Genie was in my grade, one of my special friends. Just Saturday, a bunch of us went down to Merino to see if the field was getting dry enough for tryouts. Now I remembered... he was missing from class today, his name read off as absent.

Sister Philomena paused. “Father Donnelly will now lead us in the rosary, for the repose of Eugene’s soul.” Father Donnelly said you never know when your time is coming so be ready. I hoped Genie was ready, but who’s to know? How can you be sure, yourself? We pulled out our rosaries... the five sorrowful mysteries, of course.

The funeral was Thursday. There was a closed coffin at the wake which, this being my first one, I learned was unusual. They said Genie’s body was bloated from being in the river and smelled very bad. They put his picture on top of the casket in a gold frame. Next day, the church was packed. Many times I have heard the Dies Irae sung magnificently, but our young voices on that sad morning echo in my memory. Candles flickered, like Genie’s life. The incense rose to greet his soul. It was hard to think we would never see our friend again, not until we met him in heaven. After Mass we went back to school. It was a long time before we laughed again.

These days much of the news was about Korea. At night we gathered around the television as John Cameron Swayze invited us to sit back, light up, join the Camel News Caravan and watch the war. I liked the attack planes best, Skyraiders, screaming over the tree-tops, dropping those tumbling canisters then you’d see this tremendous ball of flame and oily smoke on the ground. That was napalm, and it killed everything it touched. The color pictures in Life gave you an idea how hot it was. Once in a while you’d see a picture of some North Korean burned to a crisp. Good thing it wasn’t anybody who mattered, Jim said, like an American. This bothered me, though I couldn’t say exactly why.

I was older now and my scrapbook was a thing of the past. For my eleventh birthday I was given a camera, a Sears Tower Special I carried everywhere. Film was so expensive I mostly practiced, framing shots and capturing action, panning for cars to blur the background and give the impression of great speed. The pictures I did take, the best ones, I put in a photo album, sliding the corners into triangular pockets I glued to the coarse black paper. I’d write a caption, just like in the Bulletin but in white ink – what was happening, when it happened and so on. I had already staked out a windowless corner of our cellar for the darkroom my father promised to build me.

Television brought the war close. That remote part of the world was important, we were told, because there we were up against the evil of atheistic Communism. Russia had the A-bomb and we couldn’t trust them not to use it. Then there were the Chinese hordes. To me all this was confusing and troubling. How could my country, my home, be attacked? How, if we were as powerful as everyone said and under God’s special protection?

We practiced against the blinding flash that could come any moment. Without warning the school siren would sound, like a fire drill but an uninterrupted wail. We’d drop everything and dive under our desks, covering our heads with our hands. Not until the all-clear, a series of short blasts, would we crawl out again. Some kids thought it was a joke, a fun way to break up the day, but I knew better – I’d seen it on TV. If a little napalm did that to a person, what would an A-bomb do? Or an H-bomb if Russia ever got one of those! I showed my father ads for bomb shelters but he wasn’t interested. That’s what a basement’s for, he said, and anyway, when your number’s up, it’s up.

Civil defense, spiritual defense. Extra prayers Pius XII himself wrote for the conversion of Russia. Strange as it seems, we came to love our enemy. The day our prayers were answered, Russia would be like us and nobody’d have to worry about being annihilated. A couple of nights a week our church had special Novenas to Our Lady of Fatima who possessed a special power for this perilous time. Let my father scoff, I knew my next breath could be my last.

Not everything was so serious, of course. During recess, roughhousing was the name of the game. Picture cards were big, too. From our knees we’d sail them up against the school wall, beat up cards only – you never saw one with crisp edges and corners, still smelling of pink gum. A few were off limits, Williams and DiMaggio and Musial. If only we’d known enough to keep them! Johnny Wyrostek, Eddie Waitkus, that kind of card you saw everywhere, also football cards which were inferior even when brand new.

We collected everything, traded everything. Superman and Batman were the most common comic books, The Heap the oddest. Pepsi caps with state outlines under the cork, Hoodsie lids with movie stars covered by peel-off wax paper (girls collected these) and foil from chewing gum you’d roll up, trying for the biggest ball. It was a sad day the grocery began selling aluminum wrap, debasing an important collecting art. Some improvement!

Horse chestnuts were the best. Dangled from a shoelace, five whacks for you, five for the opponent, then back and forth until one of them breaks. Legend has it, one time two nuts exploded at the same time but nobody I knew ever saw that happen. Squeeze the lemon, needless to say girls were excluded, and while there was no reason they couldn’t compete in horse chestnuts or picture cards, they’d no sooner be seen doing that than a boy jump rope.

By this time a light fuzz had appeared on my upper lip and chin. I figured in a couple of years I’d be shaving. Jim started when he was twelve. I’d also developed little brown hairs on my chest like my father who had a lot of those and darker, also on his shoulders and back which he liked to show off when we went swimming at Scarborough or Olivo’s near the my parents’ friends’ house in South County. One day I came home pretty scraped up, I don’t recall why, and after taking a bath and drying off my mother put ointment on the bruises. I noticed her inspecting my chest, then she reached out and traced something with the back of her fingernails against my chest and stomach.

“Have you ever noticed those hairs of yours form a cross? It may be a sign,” she said soberly. “I’ve heard for a boy this may be the sign of a vocation.”

I grimaced. The nuns were always dropping hints and sometimes one of the priests would promote the idea, but however my life spun itself out, being a priest would be no part of it. I was surprised my mother even mentioned it, she had such a dim view of priests, most of them. Seeing my reaction, she smiled. “It would be below your potential, but there is the will of God to consider. There’s always room for a good priest – if nothing else, you’d raise the average.”

Jim was in his freshman year at La Salle and already a big shot. He started his first jayvee game at tackle and late in the game with the team way ahead the coach put him in at fullback to see what he could do. Needless to say, he scored, in fact he scored twice, one on a long run he said winded him so bad he barely made it to the end zone. Jim smoked a lot more than my parents knew, which I thought was dumb for an athlete. By mid-season they’d moved him up to the varsity and he even got his picture in the paper a couple of times. The Frosh Phenom, they were calling him, a shoo-in for All-State next year.

By now I had a better but still maddeningly approximate idea what “fuck” meant. You must realize, we had no opportunity to observe the female body and even pictures were hard to come by. One day I lined up with my nickel to inspect this picture book a couple of eighth graders were showing around, when Sister Philomena swooped in and confiscated the book and all the proceeds. Luckily she didn’t notice who was in line exposing himself to the occasion of sin. Word was, there was a medical book in the downtown library I needed to take a look at. I’d already checked out our book about the natives I mentioned before, but those grass skirts covered what I was told were the most interesting parts.

My father was no help at all. He said I was still too young to understand. But my body was acting in ways I suspected had something to do with that mysterious activity called fuck. I told him about waking up with my thing hard which really worried me. I must have some disease nobody will talk about because it’s so terrible. He said don’t worry, all it means you need to take a leak. When I woke up in that condition I made a special point of visiting the bathroom but it didn’t help. Finally somebody had pity on me and filled me in. Of all people, my brother.

“Why didn’t you ask me before?” He sounded hurt. “I’d of told you.”

Armed with this startling new information, I began looking at girls differently, especially Margaret. I started paying more attention to new features she was developing, though those baggy uniforms were no help. My sister was changing too, but no way I would think about her that way. Every month she and my mother disappeared in the bathroom, something about her not feeling well. Not long after, Jim showed me how to jerk off, and this exciting new activity opened expanses of pleasure and remorse. Now I understood what the priests were driving at when they said keep your hands out of your pockets. I never believed those stories about going blind, or acne which I had in spades anyway, but mortal sin and eternal damnation got your attention. If Lent lasted the whole year it still wouldn’t be enough to atone for my decadence. I had this mental picture of the devil catching my guardian angel and throttling him.

Jim said I took everything too seriously. I didn’t think so. The whole point of life is to make yourself a better person in the sight of God, which means doing what He commands and avoiding what he forbids, even when it seems impossible. Here, as with everything, I struggled while Jim just bopped along, going his own way.

OF COURSE I WAS AN ALTAR BOY. Maybe it was my looking like some kind of jayvee priest that pushed my mother over the edge with that vocation stuff. The job had a lot of variety. Low Mass, High Mass, Solemn High Mass, saints’ days, feast days, different color altar cloths and vestments for weddings and funerals, Month’s Mind, Novenas, Stations of the Cross. Weekday seven o’clock Mass was my favorite, compared to the Eight or on Sunday the Eleven. Getting out of bed in the dark was a struggle, then the twenty-minute walk to church, but I loved it. I usually arrived after old Mr. Drury who unlocked the doors and turned on the lights and heat. Mrs. Drury would be laying out the vestments in the sacristy, filling the cruets with water and wine and arranging flowers on the altar, picking out the wilted ones. The servers’ changing room was used for storing equipment, heavy candleholders we dragged out for funerals and during Lent, the kneelers (prie-Dieu in the French Church) for weddings, extra racks of blue and red votive lights, plaster statue of St. Francis with the bird’s head missing. I wondered how that happened, probably a plaster cat.

The Seven was quiet and peaceful. It attracted the faithful Irish and Italian ladies, bulky or frail in their black cloth coats, hats and tie-shoes, plus a handful of men going to work or getting home from the night shift, sometimes a policeman or fireman in uniform. That early in the day you felt especially close to God, because He knew what you went through to get there. When everything was ready, the priest and servers assembled at the sanctuary door then strode to the center of the altar. Briefly dropping to his right knee, the priest rose while we stayed on our knees for the prayers at the foot of the altar.

In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. That one you know.

Introibo ad altare Dei. I will go in to the altar of God.

Ad Deum Qui laetificat juventutem meam. To God, the joy of my youth.

I didn’t understand much Latin until I studied it later, but comprehension wasn’t the idea. What mattered was accurate, timely recitation. We were encouraged to use prayer cards, laminated five-by-sevens with prompts for the novice or the forgetful. Understood or not, the stately cadences resonating in the expanse of the church conjured up their own images, creating an overwhelming sense of piety and proportion.

The opening prayer didn’t fit, for I was not having that joyful a time, in fact, my relationship with God was troubled. Later, as it became even more complex, those tender years looked good by comparison. In a world bent on its own destruction, the steadiness of the liturgy, the progression of the Church Year from birth through death to renewal, was a sanctuary of security and sanity. Sadly, even that would change.

Our movements were orchestrated, no room for mistake or invention. We practiced until we could do them in our sleep. Short of stumbling over the Latin, nothing infuriated Father Donnelly like being out of position or missing a step. As I said, Father Donnelly was a thunderstorm – one minute he’d explode, the next he was okay. With Father Maloney we were always on guard, he was so gloomy and hardly ever spoke to you. It got to the point you thought more about not messing up than what the Mass was supposed to be about. Sundays, after reading the gospel in Latin, the priest approached the pulpit for the sermon. If it was Father Donnelly, you could count on hearing about the new roof the church needed and how the price of heating oil is going up. Since those days I’ve encountered many ornate pulpits, even gold-plated constructions resembling space capsules in those early Japanese science fiction films, but St. Teresa’s was simple, a plain wood lectern atop a short circular staircase.

Though my family were long-time parishioners our name didn’t appear on the list sent around each year showing how much everybody gave. A few years earlier a box of envelopes arrived in the mail with our name on them for depositing in the Sunday collection. My mother sent the box back with a crisp letter. Of course my parents always put something in the basket, and I suppose they were generous enough, but to her it was nobody’s business what we gave or anybody else either. That was between the person and God. It’s a fine pastor, she maintained, who embarrasses the poor and encourages the rest to boast. If you want to report something for us, she said in her letter, just put down zero. Instead we were deleted.

The heart of Mass is the consecration. The priest washes his hands, says some more prayers, then the bells are rung. Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! Now, the most solemn moment of all, changing bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Here I have to tell you about Father Maloney. He would roar through the Mass at breakneck speed, but when he reached this part he slowed to a crawl, almost a stop. His hands shook as he held the host. Hic...est...enim ...Corpus ...meum. For this is my Body.

I do not exaggerate when I say it took him at least a minute to get through those five words. Watching him start and stop, start and stop, I wondered if he was overcome by the importance of the moment. At last he would genuflect, straighten, and lift the host over his head. Then once again he hunched over, inclining the chalice toward his face and speaking into it. Hic est enim Calix Sanguinis mei, novi et aeterni testamenti, mysterium fidei, qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum. For this is the Chalice of my Blood of the new and eternal covenant, the mystery of faith which shall be shed for you and for many unto the forgiveness of sins. Two full minutes. Father Maloney had been a chaplain in Europe and people said he got shell-shocked which I figured explained this strange and troubling behavior. When he got through this part he was fine and we raced ahead to the prayers for the dead and the living and what you were asking God for. Then it was the Pater Noster, the Our Father, and we were ready for communion. As you’re walking beside the priest you have a chance to check out where your friends are sitting, who’s lining up to receive, and so on.

This is as good a time as any to mention it. It’s one thing to get a hard-on when you were serving, usually there’s time for it to pass, but there were two deadly exceptions. When you were moving the Mass book from one side of the altar to the other – for at least fifteen seconds, I timed it once, you were out in the open with both hands holding the heavy book. Anybody with an eye in their head could see something was happening under your cassock that wasn’t on the program.

Then while assisting with communion. Here, the groin area of all but the very shortest boys was several inches above the altar rail. Picture it. There you are, standing right in front of a person with this... thing practically in their face. For me, a glimpse of Margaret Foley was all it took, but most of the time it just happened. It had a mind of its own, I tell you. I had no idea what anybody else thought because speaking about such things was off-limits. But it was mortifying. You knew everybody was laughing at you or thinking you were a sex fiend. You can tell me the hole in your tooth feels bigger than it really is, but believe me, some things are plenty big enough for everybody to see.

For funerals the altar was draped in black and the priest wore black vestments. You used lots of incense, the server igniting the charcoal in the bottom of the censer then holding it open as the priest sprinkled what looked like birdseed on the glowing coals, from which would arise this beautiful, pungent smoke. The soul of the faithful departed flies up to heaven. Eugene.

One funeral I remember vividly was for a soldier killed just before Ike stopped the Korean War. After putting everything away, I changed out of my cassock and surplice then remembered I’d left something in the sacristy. I was surprised to see Father Maloney there – he was supposed to be on his way to the cemetery. He had strewn his vestments across a chair and was just sitting, staring straight ahead. He must have thought he was alone, for here was this tough, grizzled man, a retired Colonel, the priest who struck terror into the hearts of altar boys, the person you couldn’t talk to without him biting your head off, and he was crying. Crying! His eyes were red and tears were streaming down his cheeks. He was smoking and his hand shook so badly he could hardly lift the cigarette to his mouth. When he noticed me, he looked surprised. Then his face softened. I had stumbled upon a part of him nobody knew. Instead of exploding he gave me this odd smile. and he sighed.

“War is a bad business, Paul,” he said. “A foul, evil business.”

I was shocked. He had been in the Army. How could he say that? He wet his lips and took a long drag on his cigarette, then he said something I will never forget.

“How sad God must be, watching His children kill each other.”