19

Sunday was another day.

It began about dawn, dolorously, with Johnny’s dream.

First he was aware, in his dream, of a great sorrow in himself, which had no source he could discover, and a great yearning. All this was part of a gray and dark chaos in which he was standing. Then the chaos swirled away, and he discovered himself standing in a lonely wasteland, bleached and parched and empty, and utterly silent under a sunless sky. There was not a tree or a blade of grass or a flower. The wasteland cracked, here and there, in an intricate and meaningless pattern, running to the horizon. Johnny walked, and his steps were soundless. He looked for hills, and there were none. He looked for water, and there was none. All that I thought I had was only a dream, he said to himself in his dream. He bent and picked up a piece of earth; it was the color of whitish clay; it dissolved to dust in his hand, and it blew off in a wind he did not feel.

He remarked on his extraordinary exhaustion, as if he had worked himself to the point of death. Finally he stopped walking and stood looking at the endless desolation to which there was no end. He had no memories; he did not think of any future.

Then, all at once, a patch of brilliant and shining blue appeared on the horizon, a tiny patch no bigger than his hand. It is the sky, he thought, with joy. But it was not the sky. It was moving toward him, a strange and luminous color, and suddenly his heart pounded with eager happiness. He began to walk rapidly in the direction of the color, and then he saw that it was in reality a little figure, and it was waving to him, and he lifted his hand in a returning salute. He hurried. Then he noticed a most extraordinary thing. The wasteland, as if given a mysterious signal, was breaking out into herbage of a bright green tint. It reached his ankles, began to climb, rustling, toward his knees. In an instant or two more it was filled with flowers of every hue, red, yellow, white, lavender, pink and gold, and perfume rose in clouds from it. Johnny was filled with strength; he could actually feel the quickened flow of his rejuvenated blood.

He could not take his eyes from the figure in the distance. Birds were singing now, and the sun came out in a burst of light. It shone on the figure, and it was a young woman with pale and luminous hair, and Johnny knew her, and he shouted, “Lorry! Lorry!” He broke into a run.

She was suddenly in his arms, and all the flowers, the songs of the birds, the sun, were emanations of her. He had never felt such delight, such fulfillment, such rapture. He held her face in his hands, and looked into her eyes, and they were not the hard and ruthless eyes he now remembered, but eyes of misty sweetness and tender beauty, and they regarded him with love.

“I thought you had gone away,” he said. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Lorry laughed and laid her cheek against his. “I never went away,” she said. “How could you imagine such a thing?”

“I sent you away in my thoughts,” he replied, humbly. “There were the children—”

She laughed at him, lovingly. “The children? Johnny, they are mine too. So many children, so many thousands of them. Listen to their voices!”

He listened, holding her hand. Now the air was clamorous with the voices of a multitude of children, seeking voices, lost voices, infant voices, calling voices. Johnny looked about him in bewilderment, but there was no one else there but himself and Lorry.

“Because of you, they are my children, all of them,” said Lorry, and leaned against him. “Because of you—”

He awoke then, in his dreary bedroom. He could hear Jean breathing in the semidarkness. The autumnal rains, gray and unrelenting, poured heavily from dejected skies; he could hear them pounding in the streets, washing his one small window. Johnny lay still, trying to hold to his dream, but it slipped away from him, and he was left with an enormous sense of loss and grief. A dream, he said to himself, a dream that could never happen, because she could never want me or care about me.

He did not sleep again. When he got up the house was just beginning to stir. In a state of mournfulness and sadness he dressed, went to the church, and glanced in. It was, at least, clean, in the leaden light from the sky.

He ate his breakfast in an exhausted state of mind, and hardly spoke to the children, who looked at him soberly with large eyes. Kathy was dressed in a new plaid skirt and white blouse, ready for Sunday school later. She was already a power among the little girls of her class, and was not above correcting the rather pale young teacher in a precise voice when Miss Fair misquoted a word or two from the Scriptures. The other children regarded Kathy with awe, for she was so brisk and efficient, and handed the prayer books around with an air of no-nonsense-and-let’s-do-this-properly. Pietro had returned from early Mass, and was slightly subdued. Mrs. Burnsdale had caught a cold and was inclined to be brusque. Jean’s arm and leg were paining him this dank morning, and Max was too quiet, and little Emilie was in bed with a fever Moreover, Johnny’s sermon did not please him. He also had a premonition of more anxiety to come.

This was a Communion Sunday, and Johnny was not certain how many glasses stood in the dusty cupboard, and whether they would be sufficient. The sacramental wine, he had discovered, was of a very cheap variety, and had a bad color. It also had dregs. He sat at the breakfast table and gloomily contemplated the rain. “There were many people at Mass,” Pietro said. Johnny answered with rare sarcasm, “I won’t have to worry about that in my church, I suppose.”

Mrs. Burnsdale said sourly, “You don’t have enough candles. And those piddly little candlesticks! I suppose if you turn the lights on there’ll be complaints about the electricity bill.”

“Our church,” said Pietro, with some condescension, “has many candles. On all the altars. Pretty statues, too. Our Lord has a new gold halo.”

Johnny uneasily reflected on what Dr. McManus had told him. He said carefully, “Well, God hears us without candles, or with candles, provided we really pray to Him.”

The telephone rang, and Johnny went to answer it. The caller was Dan McGee. “Say, Mr. Fletcher, terrible weather, isn’t it? Don’t suppose there’ll be many people in church this morning.” He coughed. “Wonderful, though, how everything went last night, wasn’t it? Lots of the miners called me to tell me how wonderful you were. Sorry they aren’t your parishioners, though.”

Johnny waited. His premonition was very lively now.

Dan went on, after another cough; “Guess, though, our own parishioners don’t like it. They called me too. They think the miners are pretty trashy folks, and never have anything to do with them. They wondered why the miners should march to your house and raise hell—I mean, the devil. They don’t think it was dignified.” He tried for a laugh. “Some of ’em have their noses in the air about it. I told them off.”

Johnny still waited.

“You can’t tell about people, Mr. Fletcher. They were all excited, and mad, about the miners. They—kind of think in some way it was your fault. I tried to explain. They said it never happened before, to any of their other ministers. Mobs, and things.”

“In other words,” said Johnny, “I’m in the doghouse.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Fletcher.”

“Well, what would you say, Dan?”

The union president hesitated. “Just take it easy, and don’t worry, sir. If the church isn’t filled this morning, just let them get over it. Most of the board members will be there, with our wives, to give you moral support.”

“So I need moral support?”

“Say, Mr. Fletcher, you don’t sound very cheerful. You mustn’t take it that way.”

“It’s Communion Sunday,” said Johnny.

“Well, so it is! Maybe lots of people forgot.”

Johnny went back to the kitchen in less than a happy state of mind. He picked up his coat and trousers which Mrs. Burnsdale had carefully pressed. “They’re pretty green,” she said reproachfully.

“Mildew,” said Johnny, and went to dress. It was almost time for the service. The little room behind the altar smelled of mice and dust and old wood, and the raw bulb in the ceiling seemed particularly dreary. Johnny counted the glasses. There would be quite enough. The organ had begun to whine dismally, faltering stiffly over a few notes, for it was second-hand and had been cheap originally. Johnny winced, waiting for the reedy-voiced choir of elderly folk to begin. They did. And then, to his surprise, he thought he detected a happy note in the hymn. He put the glasses on an old japanned tray and carried them into the church.

Then he stopped in astonishment. On each side of the altar had been placed huge baskets of golden chrysanthemums, shining like ragged golden balls in an amazing display of candlelight. The little candlesticks had been replaced by two giant seven-branched candelabra, each of the many sockets blazing with stately white candles, the carved silver glittering, the bases gleaming with reflected light. The altar seemed to be a focus of incredible shifting brilliance in the dark church, casting bright shadows on the close old walls, and stretching up long fingers of radiance to the groins of the wooden ceiling. There was no need for the mean chandelier, and only a few small electric lights burned in the rear. It was magnificent.

Johnny’s eyes filled with tears. The grace of light had been given him. He had seen those enormous candelabra in the doctor’s Victorian mansion, standing on an immense bureau. He put the glasses on the altar with trembling hands. He looked at the flowers; they exhaled a scent of the living earth. The fourteen beeswax candles, each fully two feet tall at least, sent out their clean odor as their golden tips illumined the cold air. Johnny slowly turned to his congregation. Dr. McManus was sitting lumpily in his first pew, staring at nothing, refusing to meet Johnny’s eyes. “Bless you,” said Johnny to himself, in a mist that almost blinded him. All at once it did not matter that there were only forty people in the church, the nearest pews filled with resolute middle-aged ladies and their upright board husbands, and behind them a straggling of uncertain folk. And Lon Harding, with his parents.

Johnny stood in all that vast aureole of light and did not know that he had a youthful majesty and that his face glowed and that his eyes were filled with an intense blue. Now the voices of the choir, for all the chronic laryngitis which usually afflicted it, rose in exaltation and the nearly empty church enhanced the music until it shook with power, for all the banality of the hymn. The rain could pound against the windows, and the autumnal winds howl dolorously. The hymn took on some of the grandeur of a Gregorian chant.

His sermon, finished yesterday under appalling circumstances, was not in keeping now, he knew. So he lifted his hands a little and said in a voice of loud and triumphant passion, “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.”

The choir murmured softly into silence, and there were only the rain and the wind and the great candelabra with their fourteen slender columns of resplendent flame behind the minister. And now the women’s cheeks were touched by tears, and the men’s mouths moved in a trembling. Dr. McManus raised his eyes and regarded Johnny fixedly.

“There is always the light of God,” said Johnny, and his voice broke. “The eternal light which, when created, was commanded never to darken again, not anywhere in the universe. The interstices of space are illuminated with it; the stars roll in it, in their mysterious passage; the galaxies drift in it. The soul is bathed in it, shut though it is in the darkness of the flesh. The light which is the love of God for all He has made can never be extinguished, nor can the grave hide it, nor the hatred of man dim it, nor sorrow, nor war, nor blood, nor death, nor pain diminish it. It is the boundless ocean which flows through all things, and blends the suns and the hearts of men into one body and one being, with God.”

He paused, and the mighty candles rose on a wave of effulgence.

“In all the terrible centuries which have passed, and in this terrible day in which we stand now, and in all the terrible days to come, the light remains. The works of man and his confusions and his fears, his ambitions and his dreary hopes, his disappointments and his agonies, his griefs and his bitternesses and his lostness, are like a dark city, windowless and walled in black stone, closed against the sky and the love of God. We dwell in that dark city, and think of it as the only reality, and we look at the somber shadows and call them life.

“And yet we need only leave that city, for the gates are not locked, though we believe they are. We need only walk a step, and open one door. And there is the light, and the dazzling thunder of its reality, and the endless realms of peace filled with its radiance.

“No one halts us on that step; no jailer bars the door; no evil can challenge us. It is we, and we alone, who have set the chains on our hands and about our ankles; it is we, and we alone, who have said, ‘There is no light behond these walls, beyond these gates, beyond this door.’ We have bound ourselves with our gloomy imaginings, our faithlessness, our dejections, our terrors, our envies, and our greeds. The streets of the sunless city we have made are ghostly with our lightless forms, and echo with our lamentations. We cry for light, and yet we do not open that door.”

The church stood in absolute silence. Dr. McManus bent his head and half covered his face with his hand.

Johnny moved closer to the step that led to the altar. He held out his hands. “I too have done that, though I know the light is waiting for my asking, for my one step.” He smiled. “Only a short time ago I stood in the little room behind this altar, and I said to myself that nothing is waiting for me here, in this church, that I was abandoned, that I had failed, that I was utterly useless, and the work I have tried to do had collapsed about me. Like Job, I questioned the reason for my existence, and I had no answer, for the walls had closed shut around me, by my own faltering will, my own failing faith.

“And yet—and yet I opened the door of that little room, and I stepped in here among you, and there was the light, the visible, shining light, and your trust, and the flowers; and my soul, imprisoned in its despondency and hopelessness, turned again to the Eternal Light of God, and knew it was there, changeless, smiling, filled with everlasting love and consolation.”

He could not speak for several moments. As if it had a life of its own, and was not stirred by human hands, the organ spoke in soft joyfulness, and the music lingered in the cold shadows of the church.

Johnny said unsteadily, “I can say no more. There is nothing else for me to say, except to give you my benediction, and ask you for yours.”

He turned to the altar and knelt before it, and the little congregation slipped to its knees. A woman sobbed, and a man or two cleared his throat. The candlelight soared, and the organ spoke again.

Johnny was not at the door, later, to shake hands with those who had come courageously to be with him, and uphold him, nor would they have wanted him to be there. They walked outside into the rain, entranced, without speaking. For the first time in many years the communion service had not been a mere ritual to them; it had been a sacred rite, full of divine meaning, and happiness.

The minister stood in the little room behind the altar, himself dazed and greatly moved, forgetting to take off his vestments. He stood with his hands clasped before him, his head bent. He started when he heard Dan’s subdued voice: “Well, sir, that was a real sermon. No, not a sermon. It was like someone talking, saying something we’d forgotten. Something we hadn’t remembered, away back, maybe when we were kids.”

Mr. Schoeffel was with him, his gentle face blurred with emotion. He held out his hand to Johnny, and Johnny took it. Dan McGee passed his broad miner’s hands over his white drift of hair, and shook his head wonderingly. He and Mr. Schoeffel had brought in the two collection plates which had been used that day. “Look,” he said. “A sprinkling of big silver, and twenty one-dollar bills! But look what’s on top! Two one-hundred-dollar bills! Old Al just threw them in like they were nothing at all. And those candlesticks! He told us this morning, before services, to tell you he was loaning them to you, as long as you stay here. They don’t belong to the church, he says. Just to you, long as you’re here. You know, it was funny, Mr. Fletcher. At eight o’clock this morning my wife says, ‘Dan, I have a feeling the Ladies’ Aid should dress up the altar real nice this morning, with extra-wonderful flowers, in honor of Mr. Fletcher,’ and she calls up a couple of ladies, and the flowers got here just ten minutes before service, just when Al’s man Joe was bringing in the candles and the sticks!”

“It was kind of like a message to you,” said Mr. Schoeffel, awed. “You know, Mr. Fletcher, I never saw a hundred-dollar bill before.”

“I think,” said Johnny, “that in gratitude to my congregation I should buy myself a new coat.” And he began to laugh softly, and the others joined him. All the children must see the candelabra blazing, he thought, and the flowers. It will be a message for them too.

That afternoon, in spite of the rain, Father Krupszyk and Rabbi Chortow visited Johnny in the parsonage, to comfort him because of his ordeal of the night before. There had been something on the radio about it. They found him romping with Pietro and Kathy and Max in the drab living room, full of laughter. They had never seen him so gay and so boyish. He shook their hands enthusiastically, to their astonishment. “You must come into my church at once!” he said. “I want to show you something.” He smoothed down his hair, released himself from Pietro’s gleeful grip. “No, you can’t come again, Pietro,” he said. “You saw everything once. That’s enough.”

The three clergymen went out into the rain, and Johnny led them to the front door, which was unlocked. The priest commented to himself again that never had he seen so dreary a church, no, not even when he had been a very young man with a country parish. He said, “The door isn’t locked in the afternoon?”

“It’s never locked,” said Johnny gaily. “Except at night, of course. I gave orders the church was to be open not only all day Sunday, but every day. You see, I’ve seen too many locked churches, and I always wondered why God had to be under lock and key all the time.”

“Well, well,” said Father John Kanty, pleased. The rabbi nodded his head sagely. “In the old country,” he said, his delicate beard gleaming with little drops of rain, “the doors were open for the prayers of the weary. There is no special time when men should pray; they need to pray when the need comes. And who should deny them their temple?”

Johnny threw open the doors with a flourish. The dark little church was full of golden light, for the candelabra still stood on the altar, and the flowers shone like suns in the illumination. If the other two clergymen were astonished, Johnny was more so, for the church was half filled with seated or kneeling worshipers for the first time in its history on a Sunday afternoon loud with rain and wind, or on any Sunday afternoon for that matter. “What do you know?” Johnny whispered, as he led the way down the aisle toward the altar. So absorbed were the men and the women in the pews that they hardly noticed the passing clergymen. News spreads, thought Johnny with joy. He saw strange profiles he had never seen before, and children, and young boys and girls. A lump rose in his throat.

“Beautiful,” said Father Krupszyk, looking at the great candles, which had hardly dwindled. He stepped closer and smiled broadly. “Why, those candles came from our religious supply store! They’re imported. I shouldn’t wonder if they had been blessed!” The old rabbi went very close to the candelabra, and his tired eyes widened. “Those are Jewish candlesticks!” he whispered, agitated with amazement. “At least three hundred years old, or more! See, I recognize them by this, and this,” and he pointed to the carving on them. “There is a history about them.”

Their faces, above their somber clothing, floated in the broad and soaring light, like the heads in a Rembrandt painting, vivid and moved and full of expression against a dark background. They stood there a long time. The priest noted that there was no cross in the church. Johnny said in a low voice, “I hope to have a large cross, very soon, above the altar.”

They returned to the house, where Mrs. Burnsdale had sent the children upstairs, had put an extra shovel of coal on the furnace, and was now preparing tea in the kitchen. “I’d never have believed it of Al McManus,” said the priest choosing his seat cautiously in the parlor with due regard for broken springs. “And I’m not gong to give him, even now, any credit for symbolism. I’ve seen those candlesticks in his house many a time, and he told me he bought them in Europe, and I know he doesn’t have the slightest idea what they are. And he sent out for those candles to our store, because we’re the only ones who carry them. I think this is all a mysterious message to us from God.”

Mrs. Burnsdale proudly brought in the tea and a plate of cake. The china was very delicate and pretty, and Dr. McManus had sent it to her from the limitless supply in his house. Father Krupszyk was a man of taste, and he examined one of the fragile yellow cups. “Antiques, and very beautiful,” he said. Mrs. Burnsdale said to the old rabbi, “There’s only good fresh sweet butter in that cake, sir, and no lard.” He smiled at her gently, and took a piece of the cake. He tasted it. “My wife can bake no better, he assured her.

The two clergymen decided that they would not mention the riot of the night before to Johnny, for they saw that it no longer meant anything to him. It was obvious that he believed everything was now very splendid. The priest and the rabbi, who had had more experience with men, were not so sanguine. A lion may lick your hand today, thought the priest, but tomorrow he will bite your head from your shoulders. He sipped his tea, and one of his blond eyebrows rose speculatively. He only hoped that Johnny would have some respite for a while, before coming face to face again with the world of men.

Johnny spoke of Lon Harding, and an idea he had evolved. “Lots of churches go in for athletics and dancing and juke boxes in the parish halls,” he said. “But the kids get all that in their new schools. What they don’t get, in some of our public schools, is a full education. They get group integration and life-adjustment stuff instead, and a smattering of mechanical trades in the vocational schools. Not in yours, though, Father,” he said to the priest.

“No,” replied the priest thoughtfully. “We still believe in education, m the liberal arts, in religion, in languages, and Latin, in the humanities. ‘The whole child,’ the educationists say. But the brain, and disciplined learning, are part of ‘the whole child’ too. They forget that. Or,” he added sternly, “maybe they know only too well, and they don’t really want ‘a whole child’ at all. Just robots.”

The rabbi nodded. He took another piece of cake and eyed it approvingly. “Have I not been telling my people, the young people? Have they listened? No.” He looked at Johnny with his luminous eyes. “Not until recently. There is Sol Klein. He led the young people in their modernism. President of the men’s club. They have discussion groups about ‘modern education.’ It is all very foolish; they know nothing at all. Johnny, you have changed Sol. Our Sunday school is flourishing as never before. Sol led the way, with his own children. We must build a larger Sunday school, Sol has said.” The rabbi chewed his cake, and the luminous quality of his eyes deepened with tenderness as he looked at Johnny. “You have done so much good, my son. You have not heard? The young men and women have gravely decided, after a discussion group led by Sol Klein, that their rabbi is not really so stupid and old-fashioned after all, and that eternal ideas have not been destroyed by modern advancement. They have decided their rabbi must have a bigger and finer synagogue, and a nice new house.” He shook his head. “I was told, not consulted,” he added with a loving smile. “They sat about me, like children around a beloved, wise old father, who had too many greater things to concern him than the mere building of a new temple, and they asked my opinion of many things, and they seemed a little ashamed, the dear young ones.” He laughed gently. “‘I must play my part,’ I said to myself. I am the old wise man in the gates; there must be no worry about money for me. I am above such things. They informed me that my sermons are very inspirational!” He sighed, smiling.

“I wonder how long all this will last,” said Father Krupszyk.

“Don’t be cynical,” said Johnny.

The priest was silent a moment, then he began to smile. “Young Dr. Tim Kennedy’s parents once belonged to my parish. Now they live on The Heights, where the young priest is very brisk and modern, as far as what he thinks is due to his particular church and school. No nonsense about Father Frederickson. Well, he’ll get older in time.”

He grinned at Johnny, and his broad face brightened. “I wanted to tell you about Tim Kennedy. He collected money from the boys who were once in my parish, before they all got to The Heights. Eight hundred dollars. They sent it to me for the church. And last Sunday they came in a body to High Mass. The sermon was in Polish. They sat there as if they understood every word of it, and looked very righteous and pleased with themselves. And afterward they said they’d never forget me again. So you see, Johnny, you’ve helped me, too.”

Johnny blushed. He pretended to be very busy pouring fresh tea as his friends smiled at him. “Let’s get back to what I was talking about,” he said. “I want to turn the parish hall into a library, with tables and good lights. And with teachers, after their classes, coming in to help the boys and girls, using advanced textbooks. It’s an idea I discussed with the doctor, and the board. The children would learn things they never learn in school. A couple of teachers could teach French or German in the parish hall. Others could drill the kids in English, and in English literature, and decent penmanship. The kids wouldn’t come, the doctor said. I don’t believe that. I’m sure lots will.”

His voice rose a little vehemently. “We’re going to disprove the old European idea that a laboring man breeds stupid children, and that these children should be taught only trades, because they aren’t intelligent enough for anything else! Who says they’re not?”

Father Krupszyk stood up. “Johnny, your troubles have just begun.”

The priest looked at the whitening scar on Johnny’s temple. Johnny said, “Father, would you withdraw from any battle in which you had engaged in the name of freedom, God, and justice?”

Father Krupszyk thought of the years he had spent in one unending struggle in his parish. As he was, above all, an honest man, he pondered Johnny’s question. His wide Slavic face became very grave. He began to speak, slowly, “I am a Pole. My people have always been freedom-loving, and religious. They were betrayed to Russia by those who had sworn to protect them. The struggle, Johnny, is mighty. And now, answering your question, I can truly say that I would never withdraw, and I’ll never withdraw, either. I’ll fight with you, Johnny, no matter what it costs me.”

Rabbi Chortow echoed his sigh. “I am an old man,” he said. “Long ago, my years made me a peaceful man. This is no time for peace, for peace has become a betrayal. The Jews, who are an ancient people, prize peace above all things, and cooperation in the name of peace. My dear son, I will fight with you, too.” He gently smoothed his floating beard, and sighed again. He thought of his quiet library, and his old wife who was always so anxious about his health, and who was very timid and avoided all arguments. She must understand that even old people must forget their age and their love of peace, for these were terrible days. The old had much to offer in wisdom. If, in the name of God, they were called again, even to die, then they must die, and offer an example. For what else was a man born?

“I’ll need some books,” said Johnny, “for my library.”

The rabbi gazed at his strong and confident face, and again he sighed, this time in aged sympathy. The priest said, “I have a whole storage of advanced textbooks in my cellar. I’ll send them to you tomorrow. And others—about Our Lord. And His love for the world.’”

“But love,” said the rabbi, “is all there is, and ever will be.”

The priest was more practical. “Perhaps you can persuade your Lon Harding and his pals to protect you. You’ll need it, Johnny.”

Johnny waved away this eminently sensible remark as puerile. “So, I can get all the books I want, thank you, Father, and I am sure that Sol Klein will be able to get me scores; all his group, and his club, subscribe to the book clubs, and read many other books, and the rabbi probably has dozens too. And I’ll talk to the Ladies’ Aid about having their teacher friends help us in the parish-hall library. The only thing,” he added, as if it were a matter of no consequence, “is having those bookshelves put up, and the reading tables and good lights and chairs, and a desk or two for the teachers.”

He was very enthusiastic. He looked suddenly much younger. The priest and the rabbi regarded him with compassion. The priest said, “You’ve got powerful enemies. They’re not going to let up on you. Last night’s affair wasn’t spontaneous, as you know; it was planned. Worse things can happen, too.”

“The only really bad thing would be for me to be kicked out of my parish,” said Johnny. “And that won’t happen. I’ve got lots of friends here. Why, the Ladies’ Aid is going to have a special Thanksgiving dinner for me and the children; that is, they are going to give us a big turkey, already stuffed, ready for roasting, and everything that goes with it. To save Mrs. Burnsdale work, they said; like Kathy, she’s become very outstanding in the church.” Johnny smiled, thinking of Mrs. Burnsdale’s rather brisk remarks about the lackadaisical Ladies’ Aid. “But about the affair last night. Well, it turned out for the best, after all. Our Lord usually manages that.”

The priest and the rabbi went out to Father Krupszyk’s battered car, and drove off in a spume of smoke. Johnny’s mood of elation sustained him. Not even the thundering rain could drench his spirits. The priest was telling the rabbi, as they rattled through the streaming streets, about a priest of whom his grandfather had told him. “He was young, like Johnny, Rabbi. And he believed in people, that is, most of the time. He lived in a wretched little mud village—I’ve seen some of the Polish villages myself. He decided that the people not only lived like pigs, they thought like pigs. It was not their fault, he said. No one had tried to inspire them, to lift them up, and to teach them that the landowners were only men and could be brought to reason and justice, and to cease their oppression of the people. So the priest set up a little school, to teach not only children, but men and women, how to read and write. The landowners didn’t like that. But the people were so devoted to the new young priest that the landowners were afraid to bother him—much.

“His father had been a poor peasant. But the old priest of the village had detected a vocation in the young boy, and so he was educated for the priesthood. He would devote his life to his people, he said. And so he began.”

“It’s an old story,” said the rabbi with apprehension.

Father Krupszyk nodded, deftly swung his car away from the flooded gutter. It lurched. “Mustn’t get the points wet,” he said. “Sorry. One of these days I’ll try to find out how you get money enough from a parish to buy yourself a car that doesn’t break down and get its points wet all the time. A good thing for me that I’m a mechanic too. Well, about that young Polish priest. When the adults could read and write, the priest got books for them, though how he managed that is still a mystery. So they began to read, and when they began to read they began to think. My grandfather was a descriptive old party. I could see those poor peasants, huddling together, men and women alike, in the priest’s icy parlor, with the stove in the corner and sunflower seeds drying on the top of it, and not giving out much heat either, for priests were supposed to keep warm in the ecstasy of God—and the young priest in his worn cassock reading to them, and talking to them, and discussing things with them, and, later, giving them hot tea in thick glasses and perhaps some black bread smeared with pork or mutton fat, and the kerosene lamp fluttering and smelling, and, at the bare narrow windows, the snow coming down and down and down, mixing with the mud until it was all one flux, and the sky about the same color—well, I could see the big peasant faces turned to the young thin priest, the women’s hair under handkerchiefs, and all of them, men and women alike, in high felt boots, stamping their feet to warm them.”

The rabbi was half dreaming. He remembered those villages very well.

“The priest,” said Father Krupszyk, “had a wonderful voice, my grandfather told me. He could sing like an angel. And he had a flute. After the lessons were over he’d sing for his ‘children,’ though they were old enough, most of them, to be his parents, and he’d play his flute. It was a fine silver flute. He never mentioned who gave it to him. The peasants began to believe the priest was a saint. They were more and more devoted to him. They held up their heads a little. Then some of the peasants who worked on the land, encouraged by the priest, began to demand that the landowners treat them a little better, and mend their thatched huts, and give them some money. Ah,” said the priest, shaking his head, “that was a bad day for our young priest.”

“Naturally,” said the rabbi sadly.

“On more than one occasion,” his friend went on, “the young priest would lead delegations to the grand houses, and would talk temperately and gently to the owners, who let him come as far as the door. You see, they had their own church, about five miles away, and a very able priest, who had expressed his serious doubts of the young priest on more than one occasion. In fact, he’d written their bishop about Father Ignatius very strongly. The bishop would reply soothingly; he was a very just old man and not very popular with the landowners himself. He too had been a peasant’s son, and he was a little skeptical of the other priest who had been a landowner’s son, and who had ambitions to replace the bishop in the not too distant future. It wasn’t until much later that it was found out that the bishop had given Father Ignatius his beautiful silver flute. It’s in a church in Poland now,” said Father John Kanty thoughtfully, “unless the Nazis or the Russians stole it.

“The landowners decided that Father Ignatius was a menace. How to get rid of him? A delegation, in fine carriages with black horses and silver harnesses, went to see the bishop. The bishop knew they were coming. He deliberately received them in his kitchen, to their disgust, and as they talked to him he reflectively cracked sunflower seeds and threw the shells on the tiled floor. Then he said to them, ‘Go home, treat your people as fellow Christians in the sight of Our Divine Lord, and honor Father Ignatius as a devoted priest.’ You can imagine what they thought of the bishop then!”

“I haven’t any difficulty imagining,” said the rabbi.

“So they decided they’d have to take things into their own hands. Nothing as crude as the hired police, of course. That would make the people suspicious, and they’d resist. Moreover, the people said, the priest was performing miracles. Children brought to him in extremis suddenly revived. Men coughing their lungs out in consumption got up from their beds and went directly to the fields. Women lying in childbirth suddenly delivered, sat up, and demanded hot tea. That was during, or just after, the time Father Ignatius had visited them. This alarmed the landowners more than anything else. A saint would be much harder to discredit than just a poor young priest.”

“But saints die oftener,” said the rabbi. “And more terribly.”

Father Krupszyk nodded grimly. “At this point my grandfather would become a little obscure, and brief. He didn’t know just what happened. But all at once smooth men appeared to harangue the peasants in the fields. The priest was in league with the devil. They had been born, the peasants, to a humble station ordained by God; they would suffer hell-fire if they rebelled, and if they asked that their rumbling stomachs be filled a couple of times a week. The priest was leading them right down into the pit, teaching them rebellion against their ordained masters. It was anarchy.”

“A very old story,” said the rabbi again.

Father Krupszyk deftly brought his complaining car in front of the rabbi’s house. “There,” he said, “we got here, though I had my doubts that we’d make it.”

“What happened to Father Ignatius?” asked Rabbi Chortow.

“Oh, he was canonized quite a few years ago,” said the priest. “After all, he was a saint. They built a shrine to him, and the miracles went on. At least, that’s the last I heard, before the Nazis, or the Russians, got there.”

The rabbi looked at the priest’s strong, blunt profile, and he saw the brooding anger on it. He said, “Of course, Father Ignatius overcame his enemies, and lived to a fine old age, in honor.”

“No,” said the priest. “You see, the peasants burned down his house one night, and killed him.” He tentatively raced the ancient motor of the car. “They found the flute in the ruins. It wasn’t even smeared with soot.”