The Bell Tower

by Walter Blum

  “Sounds like a movie.”

  “It’s better than a movie. It’s in the Bible, Adam. It’s all there.”

  The diatribe went on like that for another ten minutes. It was impossible to escape because, in order to leave the house, you had to pass the doorway into the living room, and invariably Mrs. Warren’s burning eye fastened on you and kept you from leaving. When the Bible appeared there was no stopping it. Adam had come to dread the scene, the feeling of being trapped in the house on a Sunday morning intact. He tried making a game of it. He thought if he teased her enough, she would stop harassing him, but the Lord did not come into this world to make jokes.

  She meant well, of course. The Warrens had no children and, in a way, Adam was the son she had never conceived. His safety, his well-being meant everything to her. She was consumed with fear for his soul, with the knowledge that it was her sacred responsibility to save him from the fire, from the pain, from the foolishness of the unbeliever and the imprudence of his own youthful ignorance. If only she knew what he had said that night in the street, the way he had addressed the Almighty—assuming that’s where his words were directed—she would be appalled.

  Mrs. Warren had no conception of what it was like to be young, to be alone in the world and constantly cold no matter what you put on.

  He was, of course, not completely alone. A few days later his parents came down from New York to spend some time with him. It was the first he’d seen them since leaving home to begin his climb to success in radio.

  The relationship between parents and son was tepid at best. Lou Bernstein was a CPA who worked hard and joylessly, squirreling away a small nest egg that would some day go to his only son. His wife, Sylvia, a large, well-padded woman with deceptively soft brown eyes and a small mustache on her upper lip, however, did all the talking. A domineering woman who believed the only life worth living was one that had been properly organized, she arranged her husband’s clothes in the morning, planned Adam’s education and ordered her own days from dawn to retiring. From her, Adam inherited his need for neatness.

  They lived in a high-rise apartment building in Queens, where Adam had grown up. They traveled only sporadically. Adam would have preferred to reserve a room for them at the Jefferson Davis, but he was well aware of his parents’ protectiveness toward a dollar. Instead, he put them up at the Belle Mansions Motel, a mile and a half away, and got up early so he could show them around Canelius.

  As usual Mrs. Warren intercepted him.

  When told he was on his way to meet his parents, she suddenly became deeply interested in what they were like, and what they were doing during their visit.

  “You know,” she said, “we have services at our church on Sunday nights. Since your mother and father are in town, they might like to drop by after supper and join us. It would do them a world of good.”

  Adam didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I doubt it,” he said.

  “Think about it, Adam.” Her eyes shone. “You’re not offended, are you?”

  “No, not at all. It’s the thought that counts.” He wondered if Mrs. Warren had decided to give up on him and go after his parents. That would have been a conquest, all right. Neither his father or mother was particularly religious—his own upbringing had been nothing short of secular—but Mrs. Warren’s beliefs would have struck them as bizarre beyond comprehension. In their own way, they were as conservative and moral as Mrs. Warren.

  Mrs. Bernstein was concerned about what her son was turning into. She had still not reconciled to his new name.

  “What’s wrong with Bernstein?” she wanted to know when he told them. “You’re ashamed of Bernstein, is that it?” Adam explained that for radio, “Bell” had a more attractive sound. His mother made a face and the subject never arose again.

  In fact, it had been Bernstein all through college. They had sent him to NYU, anticipating their son and heir would eventually go into one of the Jewish “professions.” Not medicine—he had neither the patience nor the ability for such an undertaking—but there was always law or business and, if Adam wanted to follow his father into accounting, that wouldn’t have been so terrible either. Never in a million years would it have occurred to them that Adam might earn a living in—they spoke the phrase in hushed tones—show business!

  Lou Bernstein tried to convince his wife that being a radio announcer didn’t have the same stigma as something like an actor or a nightclub comedian. Sooner or later, Adam would see the light. He was a good, practical boy, too smart for this sort of hazzarai. So they went along with it, silently, convinced that in the end it was just one of those things young men have to go through as part of the ritual of growing up.

  Sometime during those four years it was suggested to Adam that he take a speech course to “correct” what was perceived as a noticeable New York accent. Adam had never been aware of it, but a person seldom hears his own speaking voice, and when he first listened to it on a tape recorder, what came through the speaker startled him. It was much too high. He had to deepen it. It had a cadence that bothered him. That had to go. He tried his hand at student dramatics and enjoyed reciting lines, but had no flair for the theater. The thought of spending his life in front of an audience turned his stomach to jelly and visited on him a mild case of laryngitis.

  Radio was an afterthought. He discovered that you didn’t have to take acting lessons, or memorize scenes from plays, or make a fool of yourself while others looked on. The problem of spectators was solved when you didn’t have to look at them, and his first audition record turned out to be rather respectable. He followed up ads in Broadcasting magazine. The audition record made the rounds.

  It was an interim period in the industry, a pause between the so-called Golden Era of big, expensive network shows broadcast live from Hollywood and New York, and the individualistic, formulaic, rock-’em-and-sock-’em time that was to come. In the ’50s, announcers could devise their own shows, give them a personal sound, program the music, build a universe out of nothing. Of course, you were expected to do the whole job yourself, from reading the news to sweeping the floor. The pay was bottom-level, but where does a young man go with only a liberal arts degree and a love of music as his principal assets?

  To his surprise, he quickly landed a job in Illinois. He worked briefly at a 500-watter in Arkansas, and when an opportunity opened up in Canelius at almost twice the salary, he jumped.

  Larry had warned him about the life of an announcer. There were guys all across the country swimming in the same sea, reading commercials and news, playing records and running control boards, moving from town to town, from station to station—gypsies, all of them, going nowhere. If you were an Arthur Godfrey or an Al “Jazzbeaux” Collins or a Martin Block with his “Make Believe Ballroom”—in other words, if you were one of those personalities who worked in a major market and could command $50,000 a year or more, why then, life could be very sweet. But that was the big time. Canelius was either a way station or a dead end, depending on how things worked out.

  Still, it was a not unpleasant way to spend the better part of a week. The demands were few, and even if it was just an illusion, you could pretend your voice was being beamed to an audience of millions. His hours in the Bell Tower eased the prowling pain. There were worse places than Canelius to settle in, and it wasn’t until later that he discovered the secret imp that lived in the wings, waiting to strike.

  “Adam?”

  The voice of the Lord invariably broke into his meditations. “Yes, Mrs. Warren.”

  “You do have a Bible, don’t you?”

  Adam stared at her, puzzled. “I’m not sure I’d know what to do with it if I had one.”

  “Read it, read it.” Mrs. Warren shook her head sorrowfully. Irony was not exactly her strong point. “Oh, Adam!” she cried. “How can you let your life go by like this without knowing what scripture says? You must have a Bible. I insist that you have a Bible.”

  “OK, I’ll buy one the next chance I
get,” he agreed, hoping she would then move aside and let him pass.

  “No, no, there’s no time to lose. Listen, Adam, there’s a Bible up in the attic that used to belong to my grandmother, and you can have it if you promise to read a chapter every day. Every day, Adam.”

  “Well, I don’t know . . .”

  “Please.” The hooks were out, and they were reeling him in. “For my sake. You’ll never know the good news if you don’t open it up and read what’s in there. There are wonderful things to be learned.” She took him by the arm. “Adam, right now. Go upstairs and fetch that book down for me.”

  “Mrs. Warren, I’m supposed to meet my parents in twenty minutes.”

  “It’s just upstairs in the attic. It won’t take you more than a few minutes. There’s a large metal trunk that’s tied up with rope, and when you untie the rope and open the trunk, the Bible’s right on top. I’d go up there myself, but the arthuritis in my knee is hurting something awful today.” She pronounced the word “arthuritis” as though it belonged to a relative by that name.

  “Please, Adam.”

  “You want me to have your grandmother’s Bible?”

  “Yes, yes! You’ll see. You won’t be sorry. It’ll do you a world of good.” She pushed him out into the hall and to the foot of the stairs. “It’ll only take a couple of minutes.”

  The Warrens, it seemed, rarely went up in the attic. Clouds of dust flew around his ankles as he climbed. At the top he paused to look around. Half a century’s worth of memories and castoffs filled the tiny room. The ceiling was low; he bumped his head on a beam and had to stoop to make sure it didn’t happen again. He almost stumbled over a large steamer trunk filled with ancient toys. Strange, the Warrens never mentioned having had children. Beside the trunk was a faded brown rocking horse that bounced on rusty springs when he touched it.

  He found the Bible in the trunk, just as Mrs. Warren had promised. Like the one she always carried around, it was bound in fake leather but, when he opened it, some of the pages, tissue paper thin, were loose and almost came away in his hand. Not that he had any intention of pursuing daily chapters, as Mrs. Warren insisted, but it was pointless getting her dander up. He quickly closed the book and started for the stairs.

  Halfway down it happened.

  His ankle was the first to give way. He could feel it soften, and then he was pitching over and down the stairs. His head struck something, hard. He could hear something on his shirt tear. In a desperate effort to stop his fall, he threw out his left hand to catch the banister and hit the wall instead. There was a tiny crack, as though someone in the next county had shot off a rifle, and a lightning bolt went up his arm and became transformed into pain. To Adam, it felt as though whatever was happening would never stop. In reality, it couldn’t have lasted more than two or three seconds.

  When it was over, he lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. He felt sore all over, but everything seemed to be focused on his wrist. He was sure it must be broken. The word “concussion” also flashed through his mind.

  The hall around him was spinning and a wave of nausea welled up in his throat. Mrs. Warren had rushed to his side, as fast as her arthritis would allow. Mr. Warren appeared at the other end of the hall, strode up to the fallen figure and wrapping a thick arm around his shoulder, managed to get Adam to his feet. Together they hobbled out to the garage, and Mr. Warren drove him in his Dodge pickup to the hospital.

  At Lyman General, he was taken in a wheelchair to X-Ray. A chubby young resident with an odd New England accent poked and prodded his wrist. The X-rays confirmed what he feared. The bone was broken—a simple fracture, but it would require a cast and take six weeks to heal.

  As the doctor wound the wet, warm, plaster-soaked bandage around his arm, Adam swore there would never again be any Bibles in his life. It was a Bible that brought him to that attic and ended with a bone being cracked. He was damned if he’d ever let himself be drawn into another of those endless tirades about Armageddon and messiahs and the Sunday morning preaching of the Reverend Mr. Elton Garrison.

  Loaded with painkillers, Adam was wheeled upstairs to a semi-private room and tucked into a bed. The doctor arranged it over his protestations. “You may have a concussion,” he said. “Or you may not. Either way, I want you in the hospital overnight for observation.”

  His parents showed up just before 3:00 PM. They’d already been to the house and learned of his misfortune. His mother kept insisting to his father that the only proper medical care for their son was to be found in New York. Adam had come to expect this, but her reasoning was ridiculous.

  “I’m here in Canelius,” he explained. “I’ve got to wear the cast for six weeks, and there’s not much else anyone can do.”

  “You won’t be able to manage,” his mother told him. “I’ll stay until you’re in better condition.”

  It was not a question, but a statement of fact. Adam glanced at his quiet, unsmiling father. In his youth, Lou Bernstein had been a tall, slender man with a cautious smile, a way with the ladies, a promising tennis player and an excellent golfer, but the years had put on pounds and taken away grace. As in the Warrens’ house, it was his wife who had assumed command of the marital ship. Unlike Mrs. Warren, there was a coldness about Sylvia Bernstein that held everyone at arm’s length. She was the kind of possessive woman who sought every opportunity to bestow favors, for which gratitude was expected in return, and a modicum of subservience.

  Adam hated having his parents here, hovering over him, giving orders and assuming the worst. “I’ll manage,” he tried to reassure them. He struggled to raise himself in bed, but his head was still swimming and he had to fight down the dizziness.

  “Don’t you understand?” he told his mother. “I have to do things for myself. I don’t want you to stay. If you’re here, you’ll fuss and take care of me, and I can’t stand that.”

  “And you couldn’t take a job closer to home, could you?” She glanced around the hospital room as though it were a mud hut in some remote African village, with flies buzzing around their heads and native doctors shuffling in and out. It had been etched in stone over the years that New York was the center of the world, and everywhere else served as a barely adequate suburb. Even the fact that Canelius actually boasted a synagogue and a country club failed to reassure her.

  “I want you to have this,” she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a small blue velvet box, which she set in his lap. Inside, resting in a nest of velvet, was a small diamond ring—the stone couldn’t have been more than one carat—but exquisitely set in silver and glittering in the room’s fluorescent overhead light. “Just in case something happens to us.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Adam promised.

  “What do you know?” Sylvia Bernstein said in her best doom-laden voice.

  Adam leaned back against the pillows, glancing at his father who had remained silent the entire time. No one would expect anything different from Lou Bernstein. Like J.D. Warren, he knew the power of a woman, and yielded to its inevitability. There was nothing his father could do to stop her when the smell of death wafted up her nose. She spent the next half hour detailing what should be done if, God forbid, there was a plane crash or their building burned down. She regaled him with the names of their lawyer and insurance man, the location of their safe deposit box, the investments, the insurance policies, the will, the lease.

  Fifteen minutes later they were gone and after another half hour trying to get comfortable with the cast on his wrist, which seemed to be much too tight, he finally felt the first fumblings of sleep. A hospital volunteer with a rolling cart filled with books and magazines and unidentifiable doodads popped her head into the room, and as the door swung open, Adam caught sight of a familiar lithe figure and a cascade of glowing blonde hair.

  It was just for an instant. She must be visiting someone down the hall, and as she passed and he smelled her perfume—so powerful, so distinctive he could sense
it even at this distance—and the wondrous aura that belonged to her, and her alone, invaded his life again, he wanted to shout out. He wanted to beg her to turn, to look in the door and see where he was. The glorious pain that clutched his heart and mingled with the dizziness of the concussion was back in force.

  And then she was gone. The hospital volunteer closed the door. He felt himself drifting off again, and the last thing that crossed his mind before darkness closed in, strangely enough, was Mrs. Warren’s Bible. He had let it fly out of his hands as he tumbled down the stairs. He hoped she had managed to retrieve it. Bibles are nothing to be trifled with, he thought.

  5

  Shaving with a cast on his arm required a certain amount of agility, since it involved squeezing the tube of shaving cream with fingers partially covered by plaster. Several times the tube would drop into the sink, which quickly filled up with cream.

  As a kid, he used to watch his father at the sink, lathering himself with an old-fashioned brush and carving his cheeks with a straight-edged razor. Adam didn’t see how it was possible that such a method of shaving didn’t draw blood. Even more surprising because his father’s beard was black and heavy; his own barely required three or four minutes, a simple ceremony and it was gone. Someday, he would have to see what a moustache and beard were like. They should do interesting things to his face.

  After dressing, he drove down to the B&B and ordered eggs and coffee—as usual. He read the morning paper while he sipped his coffee. Most of the items had to do with local issues: some sort of commercial development on the outskirts of town—a shopping center without a name—which didn’t interest him; a beauty contest in Forest Glen; weddings and deaths and meetings of the Kiwanis and Lions Club. It didn’t take long to get through the Canelius Post Ledger. Even the national news seemed scrunched up, as though the editors had decided that the world out there was an alien place, to be reported on as quickly as possible and ignored.