"Perhaps you are looking for something too big and too important. Or too active."
"What you are saying seems to me every bit as superstitious as what the fathers believe."
"Who cares? It's the superstition I live by. There was another superstition—quite unproven—Copernicus had it—that the earth went round the sun. Without that superstition we shouldn't be in a position now to shoot rockets at the moon. One has to gamble on one's superstitions. Like Pascal gambled on his." He drank his whisky down.
"Are you a happy man?" Querry asked.
"I suppose I am. It's not a question that I've ever asked myself. Does a happy man ever ask it? I go on from day to day."
"Swimming on your wave," Querry said with envy. "Do you never need a woman?"
"The only one I ever needed," the doctor said, "is dead."
"So that's why you came out here."
"You are wrong," Colin said. "She's buried a hundred yards away. She was my wife."
CHAPTER TWO
I
In the last three months the hospital had made great progress. It was no longer a mere ground-plan looking like the excavation of a Roman villa; the walls had risen; the window-spaces were there waiting for wire nets. It was even possible to estimate the time when the roof would be fixed. The lepers worked more rapidly as the end came in sight. Querry was walking through the building with Father Joseph; they passed through non-existent doors like revenants, into rooms that did not yet exist, into the future operating-theatre, the X-ray room, the fire-proof room with the vats of paraffin wax for the palsied hands, into the dispensary, into the two main wards.
"What will you do," Father Joseph said, "when this is finished?"
"What will you, father?"
"Of course it's for the Superior and the doctor to decide, but I would like to build a place where the mutilated can learn to work—occupational therapy, I suppose they call it at home. The sisters do what they can with individuals, especially the mutilated. No one wants to be a special case. They would learn much quicker in a class where they could joke a bit."
"And after that?"
"There's always more building to be done for the next twenty years, if only lavatories."
"Then there'll always be something for me to do, father."
"An architect like you is wasted on the work we have here. These are only builders' jobs."
"I have become a builder."
"Don't you ever want to see Europe again?"
"Do you, father?"
"There's a big difference between us. Europe is much the same as this for those of our Order—a group of buildings, very like the ones we have here, our rooms aren't any different, nor the chapel (even the Stations are the same), the same classrooms, the same food, the same clothes, the same kind of faces. But surely to you Europe means more than that—theatres, friends, restaurants, bars, books, shops, the company of your equals—the fruits of fame whatever that means."
Querry said, "I am content here."
It was nearly time for the midday meal, and they walked back together towards the mission, passing the nuns' house and the doctor's and the small shabby cemetery. It was not kept well—the service of the living took up too much of the fathers' time. Only on All Souls night was the graveyard properly remembered when a lamp or a candle shone on every grave, pagan and Christian. About half the graves had crosses, and they were as simple and uniform as those of the mass dead in a war-cemetery. Querry knew now which grave belonged to Mme. Colin. It stood crossless and a little apart, but the only reason for the separation was to leave space for Doctor Colin to join her.
"I hope you'll find room for me there too," Querry said. "I won't rate a cross."
"We shall have trouble with Father Thomas over that. He'll argue that once baptized you are always a Christian."
"I would do well to die then before he returns."
"Better be quick about it. He will be back sooner than we think." Even his brother priests were happier without Father Thomas; it was impossible not to feel a grudging pity for so unattractive a man.
Father Joseph's warning proved wise too quickly. Absorbed in examining the new hospital they had failed to hear the bell of the Otraco boat. Father Thomas was already ashore with the cardboard-box in which he carried all his personal belongings. He stood in the doorway of his room and greeted them as they passed. He had the curious and disquieting air of receiving them like guests.
"Well, Father Joseph, you see that I am back before my time."
"We do see," Father Joseph said.
"Ah, M. Querry, I have something very important to discuss with you."
"Yes?"
"All in good time. Patience. Much has happened while I have been away."
"Don't keep us on tenterhooks," Father Joseph said.
"At lunch, at lunch," Father Thomas replied, carrying his cardboard-box elevated like a monstrance into his room.
As they passed the next window they could see the Superior standing by his bed. He was pushing a hairbrush, a sponge-bag and a box of cheroots into his khaki knapsack, a relic of the last war which he carried with him across the world like a memory. He took the cross from his desk and packed it away wrapped in a couple of handkerchiefs. Father Joseph said, "I begin to fear the worst."
The Superior at lunch sat silent and preoccupied. Father Thomas was on his right. He crumbled his bread with the closed face of importance. Only when the meal was over did the Superior speak. He said, "Father Thomas has brought me a letter. The Bishop wants me in Luc. I may be away some weeks or even months and I am asking Father Thomas to act for me during my absence. You are the only one, father," he added, "with the time to look after the accounts." It was an apology to the other fathers and a hidden rebuke to the pride which Father Thomas was already beginning to show—he had very little in common with the doubting pitiful figure of a month ago. Perhaps even a temporary promotion could cure a failing vocation.
"You know you can trust me," Father Thomas said. "I can trust everyone here. My work is the least important in the place. I can't build like Father Joseph or look after the dynamos like Brother Philippe."
"I will try not to let the school suffer," Father Thomas said.
"I am sure you will succeed, father. You will find that my work will take up very little of your time. A superior is always replaceable."
The more bare a life is, the more we fear change. The Superior said grace and looked around for his cheroots, but he had already packed them. He accepted a cigarette from Querry, but he wore it as awkwardly as he would have worn a suit of lay clothes. The fathers stood unhappily around unused to departures. Querry felt like a stranger present at some domestic grief.
"The hospital will be finished, perhaps, before I return," the Superior said with a certain sadness.
"We will not put up the roof-tree till you are back," Father Joseph replied.
"No, no, you must promise me to delay nothing. Father Thomas, those are my last instructions. The rooftree at the earliest moment and plenty of champagne—if you can find a donor—to celebrate."
For years in their quiet unchanging routine they had been apt to forget that they were men under obedience, but now, suddenly, they were reminded of it. Who knew what was intended for the Superior, what letters might not have passed between the Bishop and the General in Europe? He spoke of returning in a few weeks (the Bishop, he had explained, had summoned him for a consultation), but all of them were aware that he might never return. Decisions might already have been taken elsewhere. They watched him now unobtrusively, with affection, as one might watch a dying man (only Father Thomas was absent: he had already gone to move his papers into the other's room), and the Superior in turn looked at them and the bleak refectory in which he had spent his best years. It was true what Father Joseph had said. The buildings, wherever he went, would always be very much the same; the refectories would vary as little as colonial airports, but for that very reason a man became more accustomed to the minute differe
nces. There would always be the same coloured reproduction of the Pope's portrait, but this one had a stain in the corner where the leper who made the frame had spilt the walnut colouring. The chairs too had been fashioned by lepers, who had taken as a model the regulation kind supplied to the junior grade of government-officials, a kind you would find in every mission, but one of the chairs had become unique by its unreliability; they had always kept it against the wall since a visiting priest, Father Henri, had tried to imitate a circus-trick by balancing on the back. Even the bookcase had an individual weakness: one shelf slanted at an angle, and there were stains upon the wall that reminded each man of something. The stains on a different wall would evoke different pictures. Wherever one went one's companions would have much the same names (there are not so many saints in common use to choose from), but the new Father Joseph would not be quite the same as the old.
From the river came the summons of the ship's bell. The Superior took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it as though he wondered how it had come there. Father Joseph said, "I think we should have a glass of wine..." He rummaged in the cupboard for a bottle and found one which had been two-thirds finished some weeks ago on the last major feast-day. However there was a thimbleful left for all. "Bon voyage, father." The ship's bell rang again. Father Thomas came to the door and said, "I think you should be off now, father."
"Yes. I must fetch my knapsack."
"I have it here," Father Thomas said.
"Well then..." The Superior gave one more furtive look at the room: the stained picture, the broken chair, the slanting shelf.
"A safe return," Father Paul said. "I will fetch Doctor Colin."
"No, no, this is his time for a siesta. M. Querry will explain to him how it is."
They walked down to the river-bank to see the last of him and Father Thomas carried his knapsack. By the gang-plank the Superior took it and slung it over his shoulder with something of a military gesture. He touched Father Thomas on the arm. "I think you'll find the accounts in good order. Leave next month's as late as you can... in case I'm back." He hesitated and said with a deprecating smile, "Be careful of yourself, Father Thomas. Not too much enthusiasm." Then the ship and the river took him away from them.
Father Joseph and Querry returned to the house together. Querry said, "Why has he chosen Father Thomas? He has been here a shorter time than any of you."
"It is as the Superior said. We all have our proper jobs, and to tell you the truth Father Thomas is the only one who has the least notion of book-keeping."
Querry lay down on his bed. At this hour of the day the heat made it impossible to work and almost as impossible to sleep except for brief superficial spells. He thought he was with the Superior on the boat going away, but in his dream the boat took the contrary direction to that of Luc. It went on down the narrowing river into the denser forest, and it was now the Bishop's boat. A corpse lay in the Bishop's cabin and the two of them were taking it to Pendele for burial. It surprised him to think that he had been so misled as to believe that the boat had reached the furthest point of its journey into the interior when it reached the leproserie. Now he was in motion again, going deeper.
The scrape of a chair woke him. He thought it was the ship's bottom grinding across a snag in the river. He opened his eyes and saw Father Thomas sitting by his bedside.
"I had not meant to wake you," Father Thomas said.
"I was only half asleep."
"I have brought you messages from a friend of yours," Father Thomas said.
"I have no friends in Africa except those I have made here."
"You have more friends than you know. My message is from M. Rycker."
"Rycker is no friend of mine."
"I know he is a little impetuous, but he is a man with a great admiration for you. He feels, from something his wife has said, that he was perhaps wrong to speak of you to the English journalist."
"His wife has more sense than he has then."
"Luckily it has all turned out for the best," Father Thomas said, "and we owe it to M. Rycker."
"The best?"
"He has written about you and all of us here in the most splendid fashion."
"Already?"
"He telegraphed his first article from Luc. M. Rycker helped him at the post-office. He made it a condition that he should read the article first—M. Rycker, of course, would never have allowed anything damaging to us to pass. He has written a real appreciation of your work. It has already been translated in Paris Dimanche."
"That rag?"
"It reaches a very wide public," Father Thomas said.
"A scandal-sheet."
"All the more creditable then that your message should appear there."
"I don't know what you are talking about—I have no message." He turned impatiently away from Father Thomas's searching and insinuating gaze and lay facing the wall. He heard the rustle of paper—Father Thomas was drawing something from the pocket of his soutane. He said, "Let me read a little bit of it to you. I assure you that it will give you great pleasure. The article is called: 'An Architect of Souls. The Hermit of the Congo'."
"What nauseating rubbish. I tell you, father, nothing that man could write would interest me."
"You are really much too harsh. I am only sorry I had no time to show it to the Superior. He makes a slight mistake about the name of the Order, but you can hardly expect anything different from an Englishman. Listen to the way he ends. 'When a famous French statesman once retired into the depths of the country, to avoid the burden of office, it was said that the world made a path to his door'."
"He can get nothing right," Querry said. "Nothing. It was an author, not a statesman. And the author was American, not French."
"These are trifles," Father Thomas said rebukingly. "Listen to this. 'The whole Catholic world has been discussing the mysterious disappearance of the great architect Querry. Querry whose range of achievement extended from the latest cathedral in the United States, a palace of glass and steel, to a little white Dominican chapel on the Côte d'Azur.. "
"Now he's confusing me with that amateur, Matisse," Querry said.
"Never mind small details."
"I hope for your sake that the gospels are more accurate in small details than M. Parkinson."
" 'Querry has not been seen for a long while in his usual haunts. I have tracked him all the way from his favourite restaurant, the l'Epaule de Mouton.. "
"This is absurd. Does he think I'm a gourmandising tourist?"
" 'To the heart of Africa. Near the spot where Stanley once pitched his camp among the savage tribes, I at last came on Querry. " Father Thomas looked up. He said, "It is here that he writes a great many gracious things about our work. 'Selfless... devoted... in the white robes of their blameless lives.' Really, you know, he does have a certain sense of style.
" 'What is it that has induced the great Querry to abandon a career that brought him honour and riches to give up his life to serving the world's untouchables? I was in no position to ask him that when suddenly I found that my quest had ended. Unconscious and burning with fever, I was carried on shore from my pirogue, the frail bark in which I had penetrated what Joseph Conrad called the Heart of Darkness, by a few faithful natives who had followed me down the great river with the same fidelity their grandfathers had shown to Stanley'."
"He can't keep Stanley out of it," Querry said. "There have been many others in Central Africa, but I suppose the English would never have heard of them."
" 'I woke to find Querry's hand upon my pulse and Querry's eyes gazing into mine. Then I sensed the great mystery'."
"Do you really enjoy this stuff?" Querry asked. He sat up impatiently on his bed.
"I have read many lives of saints that were far worse written," Father Thomas said. "Style is not everything. The man's intentions are sound. Perhaps you are not the best judge. He goes on, 'It was from Querry's lips that I learned the meaning of the mystery. Though Querry spoke to me as perhap
s he had never spoken to another human soul, with a burning remorse for a past as colourful and cavalier as that St. Francis once led in the dark alleys of the city by the Arno... I wish I had been there," Father Thomas said wistfully, "when you spoke of that. I'm leaving out the next bit which deals mainly with the lepers. He seems to have noticed only the mutilated—a pity since it gives a rather too sombre impression of our home here." Father Thomas, as the acting Superior, was already taking a more favourable view of the mission than he had a month before.
"Here is where he reaches what he calls the heart of the matter. 'It was from Querry's most intimate friend, Andre Rycker, the manager of a palm-oil plantation, that I learned the secret. It is perhaps typical of Querry that what he keeps humbly hidden from the priests for whom he works he is ready to disclose to this planter—the last person you would expect to find on terms of close friendship with the great architect. "You want to know what makes him tick?" M. Rycker said to me. "I am sure that it is love, a completely selfless love without the barrier of colour or class. I have never known a man more deeply instructed in faith. I have sat at this very table late into the night discussing the nature of divine love with the great Querry." So the two strange halves of Querry meet—to me Querry had spoken of the women he had loved in the world of Europe, and to his obscure friend, in his factory in the bush, he had spoken of his love of God. The world in this atomic day has need of saints. When a famous French statesman once retired into the depths of the country, to avoid the burden of office, it was said that the world made a path to his door. It is unlikely that the world which discovered the way to Schweitzer at Lambarene will fail to seek out the hermit of the Congo.' I think he might have left out the reference to St. Francis," Father Thomas said, "it might be misunderstood."
"What lies the man does tell," Querry exclaimed. He got up from his bed and stood near his drawing-board and the stretched sheet of blueprint. He said, "I won't allow that man..."
"He is a journalist, of course," Father Thomas said. "These are just professional exaggerations."
A Burnt-Out Case Page 13
