His face became a labyrinth of wrinkles.
“Harlem,” he said slowly. “Harlem.”
Father Thomas was a man of big silences. There was a long pause before he spoke again: “Perhaps you are being a bit of an enthusiast.”
I told him that it seemed to be what I ought to do.
Another big silence. Then he said: “Haven’t you ever thought about being a priest?”
Father Thomas was a very wise man, and since he was the head of a seminary and had taught theology to generations of priests, one of the things he might be presumed to know something about was who might or might not have a vocation to the priesthood.
But I thought: he doesn’t know my case. And there was no desire in me to talk about it, to bring up a discussion and get all mixed up now that I had made up my mind to do something definite. So I said:
“Oh, yes, I have thought about it, Father. But I don’t believe I have that vocation.”
The words made me unhappy. But I forgot them immediately, when Father Thomas said, with a sigh:
“All right, then. Go to Harlem if you must.”
IV
AFTER THAT, THINGS BEGAN TO MOVE FAST.
On the day before Thanksgiving I abandoned my Freshman class in English Composition to their own devices and started to hitch-hike south to New York. At first I was in doubt whether to make for New York or Washington. My uncle and aunt were at the capital, since his company was putting up a hotel there, and they would be glad to see me; they were rather lonely and isolated there.
However, the first ride I got took me on the way to New York rather than Washington. It was a big Standard Oil truck, heading for Wellsville. We drove out into the wild, bright country, the late November country, full of the light of Indian summer. The red barns glared in the harvested fields, and the woods were bare, but all the world was full of color and the blue sky swam with fleets of white clouds. The truck devoured the road with high-singing tires, and I rode throned in the lofty, rocking cab, listening to the driver telling me stories about all the people who lived in places we passed, and what went on in the houses we saw.
It was material for two dozen of those novels I had once desired to write, but as far as I was now concerned it was all bad news.
While I was standing on the road at the edge of Wellsville, just beyond a corner where there was a gas station, near the Erie tracks, a big trailer full of steel rails went past me. It was a good thing it did not stop and pick me up. Five or six miles further on there was a long hill. It led down to a sharp turn, in the middle of a village called I forget what—Jasper, or Juniper, or something like that. By the time I got another ride, and we came down the hill, my driver pointed to the bottom and said:
“Man, look at that wreck!”
There was a whole crowd standing around. They were pulling the two men out of the cab of the truck. I never saw anything so flat as that cab. The whole thing, steel rails and all, had piled up in an empty yard between two small houses. The houses both had glass store windows. If the truck had gone into one of those stores the whole house would have come down on top of them.
And yet, the funny thing was, the two men were both alive....
A mile further on the man who had given me a lift turned off the road, and I started once again to walk. It was a big, wide-open place, with a sweep of huge fields all down the valley, and quails flew up out of the brown grass, vanishing down the wind. I took the Breviary out of my pocket and said the Te Deum on account of those two men who were not killed.
Presently I got to another village. Maybe that one was called Jasper or Juniper too. The kids were just getting out of school, at lunch time. I sat on some concrete steps that led down to the road from one of those neat white houses and started to say Vespers while I had a chance. Presently a big old-fashioned car, old and worn-out but very much polished, came along and stopped, and picked me up. It was a polite old man and his wife. They had a son who was a freshman at Cornell and they were going to bring him home for Thanksgiving. Outside of Addison they slowed down to show me a beautiful old colonial house that they always admired when they passed that way. And it was indeed a beautiful old colonial house.
So they dropped me at Horseheads and I got something to eat, and I broke a tooth on some nickel candy, and went walking off down the road reciting in my head this rhyme:
So I broke my tooth
On a bar of Baby Ruth.
It was not so much the tooth that I broke as something a dentist had put there. And then a business man in a shiny Oldsmobile gave me a ride as far as Owego.
At Owego I stood at the end of the long iron bridge and looked at the houses across the river, with all their shaky old balconies, and wondered what it was like to live in such a place. Presently a car with a geyser of steam spouting over the radiator pulled up and the door opened.
It was a man who said he had been working on an all night shift in some war industry in Dunkirk that was operating twenty-four hours a day. And he said: “This car is running on borrowed time.”
However, he was going all the way down to Peekskill for Thanksgiving.
I think it was on the day after Thanksgiving, Friday, the Feast of the Presentation, that I saw Mark. I had lunch with him at the Columbia Faculty Club. The main reason why I wanted to talk to him was that he had just read the book I had written that summer, the Journal of My Escape from the Nazis, and he had an idea that somebody he knew might publish it. That was what I thought was important about that talk, that day.
But Providence had arranged it, I think, for another reason.
We were downstairs, standing among a lot of iron racks and shelves and things for keeping hats and brief-cases, putting on our coats, and we had been talking about the Trappists.
Mark asked me:
“What about your idea of being a priest? Did you ever take that up again?”
I answered with a sort of an indefinite shrug.
“You know,” he said, “I talked about that to someone who knows what it is all about, and he said that the fact you had let it all drop, when you were told you had no vocation, might really be a sign that you had none.”
This was the third time that shaft had been fired at me, unexpectedly, in these last days, and this time it really struck deep. For the reasoning that went with this statement forced my thoughts to take an entirely new line. If that were true, then it prescribed a new kind of an attitude to the whole question of my vocation.
I had been content to tell everybody that I had no such vocation: but all the while, of course, I had been making a whole series of adjustments and reservations with which to surround that statement in my own mind. Now somebody was suddenly telling me: “If you keep on making all those reservations, maybe you will lose this gift which you know you have....”
Which I knew I had? How did I know such a thing?
The spontaneous rebellion against the mere thought that I might definitely not be called to the monastic life: that it might certainly be out of the question, once and for all—the rebellion against such an idea was so strong in me that it told me all I needed to know.
And what struck me most forcibly was that this challenge had come from Mark, who was not a Catholic, and who would not be expected to possess such inside information about vocations.
I said to him: “I think God’s Providence arranged things so that you would tell me that today.” Mark saw the point of that, too, and he was pleased by it.
As I was taking leave of him, on the corner of 116th Street, by the Law School, I said:
“If I ever entered any monastery, it would be to become a Trappist.”
It did not seem to me that this should have any effect on my decision to go to Harlem. If it turned out that I did not belong there, then I would see about the monastery. Meanwhile, I had gone down to Friendship House, and discovered that on Sunday they were all going to make their monthly day of retreat in the Convent of the Holy Child, on Riverside Drive.
Bob Lax went up with me,
that Sunday morning, and together we climbed the steps to the convent door, and a Sister let us in. We were about the first ones there, and had to wait some time before the others came, and Mass began, but I think Father Furfey, their spiritual director, who was teaching philosophy at the Catholic University and running something like Friendship House in the Negro quarter of Washington, spoke to us first at the beginning of Mass. Everything he said that day made a strong impression on both me and Lax.
However, when I came back from receiving Communion, I noticed that Lax had disappeared. Later, when we went to breakfast, I found him there.
After we had all gone to Communion, he said he began to get the feeling that the place was going to fall down on top of him, so he went out to get some air. A Sister who had noticed me passing the Missal back and forth to him and showing him the place, hurried out after him and found him sitting with his head between his knees—and offered him a cigarette.
That night when we left the convent, neither of us could talk. We just walked down Riverside Drive in the dusk, saying nothing. I got on the train in Jersey City and started back for Olean.
Three days went by without any kind of an event. It was the end of November. All the days were short and dark.
Finally, on the Thursday of that week, in the evening, I suddenly found myself filled with a vivid conviction:
“The time has come for me to go and be a Trappist.”
Where had the thought come from? All I knew was that it was suddenly there. And it was something powerful, irresistible, clear.
I picked up a little book called The Cistercian Life, which I had bought at Gethsemani, and turned over the pages, as if they had something more to tell me. They seemed to me to be all written in words of flame and fire.
I went to supper, and came back and looked at the book again. My mind was literally full of this conviction. And yet, in the way, stood hesitation: that old business. But now there could be no delaying. I must finish with that, once and for all, and get an answer. I must talk to somebody who would settle it. It could be done in five minutes. And now was the time. Now.
Whom should I ask? Father Philotheus was probably in his room downstairs. I went downstairs, and out into the court. Yes, there was a light in Father Philotheus’ room. All right. Go in and see what he has to say.
But instead of that, I bolted out into the darkness and made for the grove.
It was a Thursday night. The Alumni Hall was beginning to fill. They were going to have a movie. But I hardly noticed it: it did not occur to me that perhaps Father Philotheus might go to the movie with the rest. In the silence of the grove my feet were loud on the gravel. I walked and prayed. It was very, very dark by the shrine of the Little Flower. “For Heaven’s sake, help me!” I said.
I started back towards the buildings. “All right. Now I am really going to go in there and ask him. Here’s the situation, Father. What do you think? Should I go and be a Trappist?”
There was still a light in Father Philotheus’ room. I walked bravely into the hall, but when I got within about six feet of his door it was almost as if someone had stopped me and held me where I was with physical hands. Something jammed in my will. I couldn’t walk a step further, even though I wanted to. I made a kind of a push at the obstacle, which was perhaps a devil, and then turned around and ran out of the place once more.
And again I headed for the grove. The Alumni Hall was nearly full. My feet were loud on the gravel. I was in the silence of the grove, among wet trees.
I don’t think there was ever a moment in my life when my soul felt so urgent and so special an anguish. I had been praying all the time, so I cannot say that I began to pray when I arrived there where the shrine was: but things became more definite.
“Please help me. What am I going to do? I can’t go on like this. You can see that! Look at the state I am in. What ought I to do? Show me the way.” As if I needed more information or some kind of a sign!
But I said this time to the Little Flower: “You show me what to do.” And I added, “If I get into the monastery, I will be your monk. Now show me what to do.”
It was getting to be precariously near the wrong way to pray—making indefinite promises that I did not quite understand and asking for some sort of a sign.
Suddenly, as soon as I had made that prayer, I became aware of the wood, the trees, the dark hills, the wet night wind, and then, clearer than any of these obvious realities, in my imagination, I started to hear the great bell of Gethsemani ringing in the night—the bell in the big grey tower, ringing and ringing, as if it were just behind the first hill. The impression made me breathless, and I had to think twice to realize that it was only in my imagination that I was hearing the bell of the Trappist Abbey ringing in the dark. Yet, as I afterwards calculated, it was just about that time that the bell is rung every night for the Salve Regina, towards the end of Compline.
The bell seemed to be telling me where I belonged—as if it were calling me home.
This fancy put such determination into me that I immediately started back for the monastery—going the long way ’round, past the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes and the far end of the football field. And with every step I took my mind became more and more firmly made up that now I would have done with all these doubts and hesitations and questions and all the rest, and get this thing settled, and go to the Trappists where I belonged.
When I came into the courtyard, I saw that the light in Father Philotheus’ room was out. In fact, practically all the lights were out. Everybody had gone to the movies. My heart sank.
Yet there was one hope. I went right on through the door and into the corridor, and turned to the Friars’ common room. I had never even gone near that door before. I had never dared. But now I went up and knocked on the glass panel and opened the door and looked inside.
There was nobody there except one Friar alone, Father Philotheus.
I asked if I could speak with him and we went to his room.
That was the end of all my anxiety, all my hesitation.
As soon as I proposed all my hesitations and questions to him, Father Philotheus said that he could see no reason why I shouldn’t want to enter a monastery and become a priest.
It may seem irrational, but at that moment, it was as if scales fell off my own eyes, and looking back on all my worries and questions, I could see clearly how empty and futile they had been. Yes, it was obvious that I was called to the monastic life: and all my doubts about it had been mostly shadows. Where had they gained such a deceptive appearance of substance and reality? Accident and circumstances had all contributed to exaggerate and distort things in my mind. But now everything was straight again. And already I was full of peace and assurance—the consciousness that everything was right, and that a straight road had opened out, clear and smooth, ahead of me.
Father Philotheus had only one question:
“Are you sure you want to be a Trappist?” he asked me.
“Father,” I answered, “I want to give God everything.”
I could see by the expression on his face that he was satisfied.
I went upstairs like somebody who had been called back from the dead. Never had I experienced the calm, untroubled peace and certainty that now filled my heart. There was only one more question: would the Trappists agree with Father Philotheus, and accept my application?
Without any delay, I wrote to the Abbot of Gethsemani, asking permission to come and make a retreat at Christmas time. I tried to frame my request in words that hinted I was coming as a postulant, without giving them an opportunity to refuse me before I had at least put one foot inside the door. I sealed the envelope and took it downstairs and dropped it in the mailbox, and walked outside, once more, into the darkness, towards the grove.
Things were moving fast, now. But soon they began to move still faster. I had barely got a reply from Gethsemani, telling me that I was welcome to come there at Christmas, when another letter came in the mail. The envelope was
familiar and frightening. It bore the stamp of the Draft Board.
I ripped it open and stood face to face with a notice that I was to report at once for a fresh medical examination.
It was not hard to see what that would mean. They had tightened up their requirements, and I would probably no longer be exempt from military service. For a moment it seemed to me that Providence had become deliberately cruel. Was this going to be a repetition of the affair of the year before, when I had had my vocation snatched out of my hands when I was practically on the doorstep of the novitiate? Was that going to start all over again?
Kneeling in the chapel, with that crumpled paper in my pocket, it took a certain amount of choking before I could get out the words “Thy will be done.” But I was determined that my vocation would not fall in ruins all around me, the moment after I had recovered it.
I wrote to the Draft Board at once, and told them that I was entering a monastery, and asked for time to find out when and under what conditions I would be admitted.
Then I sat down to wait. It was the first week of December, 1941.
Father Philotheus, hearing about the sudden call from the Army, smiled and said: “I think that is a very good sign—I mean, as far as your vocation is concerned.”
The week ended, with no news from the Draft Board.
Sunday, December the seventh, was the second Sunday in Advent. During High Mass the Seminarians were singing the Rorate Coeli, and I came out into the unusually warm sun with the beautiful Gregorian plaint in my ears. I went over to the kitchen, and got one of the Sisters to make me some cheese sandwiches and put them in a shoe-box, and started out for Two Mile Valley.
I climbed up the hillside, on the eastern slope of the valley, and reached the rim of the thick woods, and sat down in a windless, sunny place where there were a lot of brown dried ferns. Down the hill by the road was a little country school house. Further out, at the mouth of the little valley, near the Alleghany, were a couple of small farms. The air was warm and quiet, you could hear nothing but the pounding and coughing of a distant oil-pump, back in the woods.