He saw his hand, without its will, hovering over the button and again he shrank.
“Can you understand, you in there? Here I had been living my serene and pleasant life, with no disturbances, my busy, busy life, filled with comfortable or delightful events, and calm talk—always on the surface, you know—and traveling, and visiting the children and the grandchildren, and visiting friends—wonderful busy life. And all at once, my important life, my important city, my important family and wife, my important place in society, and in the country, dwindled down to nothing and was of no importance at all! I lived on a world that was hardly a sparkle even in its own solar system, and was not even a sparkle in its place in the galaxy, and would never be known on the billions of worlds which occupied that damnable, that damnable! endless space. It was the space, you see, the endless space. And none of what filled it was important, either. It was all meaningless, just as my life is meaningless and always was, my busy, busy life.”
There was sweat on his forehead and on his cheeks and on his hands. He was wiping it away without knowing what he was doing. His panting was quicker and louder in the utterly silent room. He had forgotten how he had come to be here; he had forgotten everything.
“I—I’ve tried to talk about this to other people. They just stare at me. They didn’t know how frantic I was. I talked to Mary. And she said comfortably, ‘Well, it doesn’t do, does it, to think a great deal about that? You could really go off your rocker. We’ll never know. So we just live as pleasantly and as serenely as we can, every day, and let the scientists think about all those things. That’s best, isn’t it?’ That’s what Mary said.
“But now, God help me, it’s not ‘best’ for me at all! I can’t stop thinking, and when I think I hate living, and then I am afraid to die and leave everything that I have, which is everything any man would want. Why can’t I put it out of my mind, and just go on enjoying myself, with my friends and family and the agreeable amount of work I do? It would be easier if I had any religion; then I’d let some mumble-jumble from a minister fill that spot in my mind. It would be easier if time had a stop, and I’d remain forever where I am. But, you see, I am growing older. In four years I’ll be sixty—And then, someday, there will be the end, and I’ll go out into the darkness. I won’t even see those infernal universes.”
He flung up his hands in an acute gesture of despair. “I’ll be nothing, just as my busy, teeming life is nothing. And I won’t be conscious to know that I am nothing. If only my family, in my childhood, had known any religion. Oh, they took me to church with them, for propriety’s sake, when I was very young. And, of course, there were always the proper marriages and confirmations and baptisms and funerals to attend, and a fine smooth minister to say the proper soothing words and congratulate his God on having so well-ordered and polished a congregation to bless.
“There were only words. I remember hardly any of them, if any. I sat soberly with my parents, and then with my wife, and then with the whole family, and friends, on the occasions when it was the thing to go to church. But it was all only words, and boresome. I always counted the minutes until I could go back to my busy life, my orderly and contented and interesting life.
“My life which is now nothing at all, because it was never anything.”
Again he flung up his hands and one struck the blue curtain. It trembled as if a wind, a boundless wind, blew behind it, and he was terrified. “Help me!” he cried. “I was never a colorful man, an intellectual. But you must be; you’ve heard all these stories—But don’t console me, for God’s sake, as Mary tried to do! Don’t tell me to stop thinking, to stop looking at space, and at the stars at night as I do now, and fix my eyes just on this daily round. Don’t tell me that! It won’t do any good; it won’t save my life and what reason I have left. Who was it said, ‘Consider the stars?’ Isn’t that Biblical, or maybe Shakespeare? If someone greater than I urged others to ‘consider the stars’ then it can’t be nonsense, can it? There must be a reason, mustn’t there? God, there must be a reason! Tell me it’s a mystery, and I’ll believe in what you say to me, and it’ll be some comfort. But, even mysteries have a frame of reference, and before God—before God?—I need a frame of reference!”
Slowly his hand approached the button, and then it rested on the cool silver. But he could not bring himself to press it yet. He was afraid of the calm face he would encounter, the compassionately amused eyes; he was afraid of the placid voice, soothing him, telling him to return to the once-loved toys which were now horrible to him.
“Surely,” said John Service in a voice he would have considered craven only a year ago, “I’m not alone. Surely others have asked the same question and have felt the same fear. Surely others have felt—forsaken. Forsaken! That’s how I feel. If others feel so, why haven’t I found them, so we could talk it out together and forget we are alone? Or, do they feel it, so many of them—all those who commit suicide?”
Now his fingers pressed the button and the curtains silently parted and flew aside. Beaming light fell over his face like a wave of brightness. And in that brightness stood the man who listened, and who listens forever.
John Service looked and at last he was silent. He began to fall back, slow step after slow step; but his eyes never left the face of the man. He could feel the great eyes looking at him and into him, and he saw the tremendous compassion in them. He uttered a faint sharp cry and laid his arms on the top of the chair and buried his face in them. He did not know he was crying; he could not remember that he had ever cried. His lean and disciplined body shuddered over and over, and he shrank in himself as if bitterly cold.
And then at last he remembered some words—or did someone speak them in the room?—“Be still, and know that I am God.”
Be still. Be very still. Be removed from all the busyness of life if only for a little space, a little time. Be still enough not to hear all the world’s pleasant voices, or even the ugly ones. Just be silent. Still. “Be still, and know that I am God.” And in the knowing, know that all is well and on some day you know not of all will be explained.
Be still, and know that you can bear your life, that it has a distinct and unique meaning, belonging only to you, important more to God than even to yourself, and that to God it is of more worth than the sun or a billion suns. With that importance in his heart a man can walk fearless, joyful with a true joy, peaceful with a peace that no pleasure can give, and no busy life satisfy.
“No, no,” said John, his head still on his cradling arms. “I can’t believe it. Not even though you said it, yourself. For you see, I can’t believe you know anything about it, or ever did. It was all such a tragedy—if it ever happened at all.”
He turned his head a little and looked at the man with reddened eyes.
“You thought it was important, all of it, didn’t you?” he said. “How tragic. It isn’t, you know. Did you discover that for yourself, later, or were you really not—”
He was not an imaginative man. But all at once he thought he saw a powerful sentience in those majestic eyes, in that tormented yet truly serene face. He thought the eyes focused on him and saw only him, and that there was actually a voice in his ears which said, “I have not forsaken you, busy child. All your thoughts have been my thoughts, and all your fear of being forsaken was my fear, also, for do I not bear your flesh and your wounds—though you did not know they were wounds? Come to me, and let us speak together, out of our human nature, and let us reason together, and be still, and know that there is God.”
Later, he was certain that the man had spoken so to him. He could remember the very tone of that deep grave voice, that manly voice, the voice of a father. But he could never tell anyone of this, for it was his secret alone. He moved around the chair and sat down and as he did so, facing the man, the black cold agony left his mind and the only true serenity he had ever known replaced it. All that he had thought was serenity in his past life was revealed to be what it truly was: Sound that meant nothing, joy that w
as not joy, delight that was not delight, contentment that was only a luxurious animal’s contentment.
He said at last with humility, “It will be very hard for me, you know. It won’t come easy to remember what you said, and act on it. How shall I act on it? Will you tell me? Yes, I am sure you will tell me. But how strange my life will be, then! How mysteriously strange. I don’t even know if I’ll like it!
“But I do know one thing. I’ve got to find a different way, and a reason. I’ve got to believe something I’ve never even dreamed of, not once in my life. But it’s going to be exciting.” He smiled, as if in apology. “It’s going to be the most exciting thing I’ve ever encountered. An adventure. A wonder. That, at the very least, will make life worth living. At the best, if I come on it, then it will be all the world, and more. I’ll have my answer at last, and I won’t know fear any longer, or confusion, or despair.”
SOUL TEN
The New Breed
“They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have lain Him.”
John 20:13
SOUL TEN
“Where’re you going, Lucy?” asked a young girl of her companion as they moved together to the parking lot of the campus.
“Well, I thought I’d just run around—someplace,” said Lucy Marner.
Her friend peered at her inquisitively. “Something wrong? You haven’t been looking on the ball for a couple of months.” The friend giggled. “Nothing wrong, uh?”
Lucy flushed. “No,” she said in a short tone. She did not invite her friend to accompany her. “But I—well, I’m going to the doctor for the early summer check-up. No use waiting until the end of the semester, when things begin. ’Bye now, Sandy.” She walked very fast to the parking lot. She was usually proud of her smart white convertible and would glance over it to be sure no hot-rod had marred its bright finish. But today she merely threw herself onto the red leather seat and roared off the campus. Friends, young men and women, hailed her but she did not reply for she did not hear them. The heat of the early summer day poured down on her bare red head and her pale set face and shone in her green eyes. She was a pretty girl, only twenty, but despair had tightened her expression, a despair which had been increasing for over a year as she learned more and more and really knew less and less.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she addressed the great arching trees over the road of the campus which led to the street. A squirrel ran across her path and without volition she stepped on the accelerator to run it down. It skipped up a tree, terrified, and Lucy said aloud, but faintly, “Oh, excuse me I didn’t mean to do that. But my God, why did you bother getting out of the way? Why does any of us?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid, sang the tires on the street as Lucy recklessly drove. Everything is stupid, stupid, stupid. “Sing, bright Spring!” said Lucy. “Sing yourself to death, you idiot bastard!” Idiot yourself, she remarked inwardly. Why are you doing this, anyway, going to that kookie place?
She came to a busy thoroughfare and stopped for a red light. Her eye fell on the textbooks on the seat beside her. Again without volition, but with violence, she swept the books onto the floor and kicked them with her heel, over and over, with increasing lack of control. Someone sounded an impatient horn behind her, and she screamed a curse over her shoulder. Then she roared on, reckless of traffic and alarmed horns. Her red hair, long and straight, streamed behind her like a flag, and her white profile had the tenseness of a leaning statue. “Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid,” she moaned softly, screaming around a corner. “Go home, you imbecile, go home and smile, and smile and smile, and be lovely to Dad and Mom, and answer the telephone messages, and plan and plan and plan for all the exciting activities for the summer.”
There was the most taut pain in her slender shoulders and the back of her neck. There was an aching in the small of her back. She fumbled in her purse for the tranquilizers Dr. Morton had given her two months ago. Then she pushed the purse onto the floor also, where it lay on top of the kicked books. No, she thought. I don’t want to feel so calm for a while. This thing has to be faced eventually, face to face. But, what is there to face? What’s the matter with me, anyway? Maybe I need a headshrinker, who’ll smile at me urbanely and tell me I don’t want to face maturity and just want to be a kid all my life. But what in hell is there to face? Maybe it’s only excess hormones, after all, but I’m not going to be like Sandy and the others, wrestling and sweating around and worrying whether the Enovid’s going to work this month. Maybe I’m maladjusted. Granny, why the hell did you ever tell me all those superstitions? You did this to me—You clot! Why don’t you look where you’re going?”
She was addressing a sedate elderly man who was driving his car with excessive caution along the noisy street which she had entered. The man stared at the furious young vision in the gay convertible and he thought to himself: No responsibility these days. Everything given ’em without effort. Everything soft and easy for them. No worries. What we need is a good depression again, to shake ’em loose and make them go to work. Look at that girl in her fancy car! Bed of roses, like they used to say.
I could, thought Lucy, whose eyes were smarting dryly, drive this heap down to the river and just keep going. Oh, come off it. That’s no answer. Or, is it?
She thought of her devoted and gay youngish parents and involuntarily she swung her car about and started toward the river. Then at the next corner she called herself a vile name, turned the car again and resumed her drive. It’s insane, she thought. I can’t really be going there! But where else is there to go? Who will give me the answers? A clergyman? Dr. Pfeiffer, with his glossy collar and his talks to Dad about golf and the Racial Problem and our Community Responsibilities and our Duties to Those less Privileged? That’s all they talk about when he comes to our house and sips a nice little discreet glass of sherry or maybe a weak highball. Sitting there with all the polished antiques around them and the hi-fi going softly, and the pictures shining on the walls in the last sun—just before dinner! What if I told him about me, and this thing in my chest and my mind? He’d say, “But dear child, I’ve been talking about that in my pulpit—” Have you, Dr. Pfeiffer, Reverend Pfeiffer? Have you, damn you, have you? No, you haven’t! Maybe you think it’s all settled so you don’t even have to mention it. I have news for you: It’s never settled. There’s no deposit of knowledge in the younger generation; do you think it’s acquired by osmosis, Reverend Pfeiffer, or that we breathe it in, in this lovely, sweet, tolerant, wishy-washy Christian civilization, all full of tenderness and compassion for the Disadvantaged? Dr. Pfeiffer, you’re an ass! You’ve fallen down on the job, Dr. Pfeiffer, clunketty-clunk. We’re all so civilized, aren’t we? Nowadays the things that preoccupy us are Civil Rights, segregation, desegregation, integration. Dr. Pfeiffer, does it ever occur to you that the Negro doesn’t want to “loved” by us, damn it? He just wants to be treated like an ordinary man, Reverend, and the hell with our “love!” The hell with everything, Dr. Pfeiffer, and go back to your sweet and stylish wife and your golf game! Go back to the Sunday recessional, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” and know nothing, as usual, either about God or any Fortress at all in this Goddamn, stinking, senseless world! Oh, Granny, I could cut your throat! If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be thinking of the river all the time.
She reached the place of the Sanctuary, the name the people of the city had given it over the years. There was a broad path, intersected by narrower paths on the immense green lawns. She turned her car onto the wider path, but an old gardener working nearby came running. “You can’t drive your car up there!” he shouted to her. “That’s not a driveway.”
She stared at him with her eyes full of green fire, and she had an impulse to strike him down with her car as she had tried with the squirrel. She swallowed. “Where’s the parking lot?” she demanded.
“Ain’t none.” He waved his hoe vaguely. “Park somewheres on the street.”
“You mean I have to walk up there?” She pointe
d incredulously to the shining white building on its gentle rise behind the golden willows and the blossoming crabapple trees and soaring elms.
He grinned at her. “Crippled? That why you got that go-cart of yours? What’s the matter with your legs? You kids think walking an eighth of a mile or something is goin’ to break you down. On your way, sister. Park on the street, if you can find someplace.”
“So that kind of talk is what they teach you up there in that damned little chapel, is it?”
“Ain’t never been in it. Just work here on the grounds.” He grinned at her again. “Never needed to go in. What for? I ain’t got no aches and pains. But you sure look as if you have, girlie! On your way, before I call the cops.”
“The hell with you,” said Lucy Marner, who had been taught all her life to be courteous to the Deprived. She swung her car around and was pleased that her tires made ruts in the beautifully cultivated grass and made the old man yell angrily. She drove off. She circled all the adjacent streets for a long time, in that crowded business section which was also full of apartment houses and shops. Then at last she found a parking lot, at least a mile from the Sanctuary, and she whirled into it so fast that she almost collided with a car that was leaving. The attendant came running and shouting. She flung herself out of the car without a word, seized her purse, and ran, heedless of the ticket waved at her back.
“Crazy little bitch,” began the attendant sympathetically to the startled matron in the car which Lucy had almost struck. “They get worse and worse,” she responded. “Too much money, too much time, too much food, too much fun.”
“You said it,” replied the attendant, getting into Lucy’s abandoned car. “Look at this job! Must’ve cost at least seven thousand dollars.”
Lucy was running down the congested main street, dodging pedestrians who glared at her with umbrage. She had a wild appearance. Eventually, she became aware of laughs about her, and reduced her run to a fast walk. Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead; the glare of the late sun on the buildings blinded her eyes. She fumbled for her sunglasses; when she did not find them immediately she began to sob with dry frustration. At last she had them and she put them on and at once she was soothed. She was hidden; she was no one at all; she was protected. She smoothed her tossed hair with trembling hands, and shifted the light rose linen on her wet shoulders. Slow down, slow down, she told herself. He won’t run away. What do they call him? The man who listens. He’s always there, day and night. Wonder what his wife thinks of it? And why the hell are you going there, you fathead?