“Then what are you beefing about?”
“Simply this. For the last two or three years Jerome has been inviting this competition with Dr. Rodgers in the hospital. I don’t think he realizes the extent to which he’s done it. That man’s always trying to prove something – God only knows why. Maybe just to himself.
“Now look at this from Dr. Rodgers’ point of view. He’s old enough to be Jerome’s father. He’s taught Jerome a great deal. He once regarded him as his protégé. And in case you’ve picked up from Jerome the wrong idea about Dr. Rodgers, let me tell you an absolute fact. Ten years ago Rodgers was regarded one of the greatest surgeons in the world. Now how do you think a proud old man is going to like it when he discovers that on one of the few occasions when he’s made a mistake, the one man he especially dislikes sees the details of the mistake and puts it right?”
“Then Rodgers did botch the job?”
Christopher turned away in exasperation, then back again. “I’d appreciate it very much, George, if you’d suggest to this friend of yours with the funny name that he can be grateful for what’s been done for him, and that if he wants to show his gratitude the best way he can do it is to keep his mouth shut. I saw this fellow at the hospital and I didn’t care for the look of him. He looks like a remittance man to me.”
“Do you think he enjoys knowing that everyone thinks that about him?” I said.
Jack went over to Catherine, said he was leaving and thanked her. The conversation went on in the room as though he had never been there and had never departed, and a little later I joined Catherine in the corner. I knew from her face that she was not listening to a word anyone said.
When I sat down her hand closed on mine, pressed it slightly, dropped it. She looked away.
“You should be safely married to somebody nice,” she surprised me by saying. “You shouldn’t be involved with me.” I laughed and said something non-committal. Then I saw the pain in her face, I saw her deep inner seriousness transparent.
“I suppose you know all about it?” she said calmly. “All about what?”
“Our trouble. Has nobody told you?”
“What is it, Catherine? Jack was talking in a vague kind of way, but – what trouble, Catherine? What trouble?”
She lifted her hands and dropped them: “It would be so easy if the question could be easily answered. What trouble? Oh George, it must have been easy fiffty years ago when everyone knew who was to blame for what.”
I looked at her baffled. “How can I blame anyone? Even that girl. I don’t like her, but how can I blame her. She’s not responsible. How can I blame Jerome? He can’t help this thing inside of himself. How can I blame myself? I can’t believe this war in Spain is a crusade. But he does. You see – oh George, you ask me what the trouble is? Do I know anyone who can tell me what the trouble is? Life, perhaps. Life in this time.” Her pale, smooth face remained calm. “Or perhaps it’s the vacuum left by his lost religion. I tried to fill it. I thought I’d filled it, but now I know I didn’t.”
I looked over my shoulder, but none of the others were paying any attention to us. I saw Arthur Lazenby’s profile intent on some argument and turned to Catherine again.
“Everyone takes it for granted he’s having an affair with this Blackwell girl,” she said calmly.
“I’m sure he isn’t.”
She smiled elliptically: “I wouldn’t care if he was so long as he didn’t feel responsible for her. You see, George, he doesn’t understand women. The way some of them scheme and rationalize, the way some of them play on a man’s better nature and make him feel responsible for situations they’ve engineered themselves – Jerome didn’t grow up with girls, and he’s worked so hard he’s never had time to find out what some of us are like. Even if he did understand them, I’m not sure he’d understand Norah Blackwell.”
Catherine sat small and erect, hurt and proud, yet her heart-shaped face was serene. “I’m worried about Norah Blackwell,” she said, “and not for any of the reasons people believe. I’m not going to pretend I like her. I’m not going to pretend he hasn’t hurt me horribly on account of her. No, I’m not noble at all. But George, none of this matters compared to one thing. That girl is mentally unbalanced.”
“I think she’s unhappy and intense, but would you say that –” Again she looked at me calmly: “She’s lethally attractive, George.”
“I don’t think she is at all.”
Catherine smiled; she smiled almost pityingly at me. “To a man like Jerome she’s one of the most fatal women I could possibly imagine. She looks so soft and gentle, and at the same time she’s apparently very good at her work – which is almost his work. She’s unfortunate. She wants to better herself – indeed she does! She hero-worships him, and he’s so terribly insecure.”
“Jerome insecure!”
“More than you’ll ever be. And he doesn’t even know it. He’s too proud. Or – no, it’s not even that. Underneath he’s too desperate.” Catherine took a deep breath and sighed. “If only Norah Blackwell was not so noble-minded!”
I could think of nothing to say and just looked at her. “I don’t under-rate her, George. Not for a minute. Quite possibly she may love him, though I know he’ll never be able to love her for long. I don’t think he ever did, really. I don’t think he does now. But one thing I do know – she’ll cling. She’ll make him feel responsible. He’s not a light man, George. He’s still religious underneath. He’s never done anything like this before, that I know. If he had, he’d have told me. He can’t stand anything undercover. He has a compulsion to confess. Oh George, what a winter this has been, what a winter!”
“Catherine!”
“Don’t feel sorry for me like that! Don’t let me do things to you!”
“All right. I won’t.”
“This girl – if only she schemed consciously. But I don’t think she does. I’m not even sure she arranged a situation for him. Perhaps it just happened. He was tired, I was sick, with flu, they looked at each other, they happened to be alone, and he exploded. But that look in her eyes – she’ll cling, George. With the best motives in the world she could ruin him. And on top of it all she’s a communist who’s all in favor of him going to Spain, and I’m not a communist and that makes him feel alone with me at the very time when he shouldn’t. I could help him with Norah. I could help him and save his pride, too. But this other thing is too much. And one thing more, George – I believe that at bottom Norah Blackwell is a suicidal type, and I believe Jerome knows it and is scared to death.”
Again we were silent and the rest of the room with its political talk might not have existed for us.
“Conscience is such an awful thing, and he has such an awful conscience,” she said. “I’ve failed him so badly. I’ve battened on him too much.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true. I made him my whole life.”
“There’s also Sally.”
“Yes, bless her and thank God.” She smiled with rueful bravery. “I’ve said such hateful things in my own mind about Norah Blackwell and I loathe myself for it. About Jerome, too, and of course he senses it. So Spain becomes an escape for him.”
“I’m sure it’s more than that.”
“Yes.” Her face suddenly looked older. “Yes, it is more than that. What he told you about killing Germans in the war was all too real. He has that terribly on his conscience. He thinks that in this Spanish war he has a chance to make recompense by saving life. Oh conscience – it really does make cowards of us all! George, George, I’m so frightened for him! If he goes to Spain the communists will capture him for good. His home means more to him that most people will ever guess. This girl can’t begin to understand that. She sees me only as a partial invalid holding him down. Yes, but I also keep his home. This foolish girl! How I wish she’d never been born!”
Suddenly I couldn’t stand it and got to my feet. “I think I’d better go,” I said. “I think I’d better g
o up to the hospital and see how Shatwell’s doing.”
The April air tasted delicious as I walked up the steep slope of the city, the starlight filtering down through the bare trees, and reached the hospital where Jerome worked. It was late for visitors, but nobody paid any attention when I went up in the automatic elevator to the floor where the sunroom was. The convalescent patients were all in their beds and the hospital was very quiet. Windows were open in the sunroom and the cool air stole in sweet and clean. The lights were turned low and in the far comer I saw the shadows of two men, one lying back in a chair and the other hunched forward talking to him. I recognized them as Shatwell and Jerome, and Jerome was talking.
“She’s going to be all right,” Jerome was saying, “and so are you.” Shatwell had apparently broken down, for I heard him sobbing. “This does you no discredit, old man,” I heard Jerome say, and his voice would have healed almost anyone. “You’ve had a hard life – the hardest any man could have – and of course it’s not been easy to bear.”
“Hard!” I heard Shatwell, his Englishness entirely collapsed, almost sob. “I’ve been worthless. I’m not fit to live. I’ve failed at everything.”
“No,” said Jerome, “you have not.”
“You don’t know about me, Doctor.”
“I know the only thing that matters about you. You’re a kind man, Mr. Shatwell.”
“Does that matter?”
“It matters far more than you can ever guess. Oh, it’s not easy for anyone not to be able to do what his society expects. It’s to your credit you failed in the English colonies. A man like you was bound to, for a simple reason. You were too kind. Now” – Jerome stood up – “come with me and I’ll give you a sedative, and then you’ll sleep and wake up a new man.”
Jerome saw me as they passed on the way out, but Shatwell did not. He walked unsteadily, and smelling whisky I guessed he had been drinking pretty heavily to deaden the pain of his anxiety. I waited, for Jerome had made a gesture indicating that he would return, which he did after ten minutes.
“Well,” he said, and his voice sounded tired, “it was the only thing to do. There were indications of septicemia and if we’d waited there wouldn’t have been much chance.”
“Is everything all right now?”
“Yes, everything is fine so far as she’s concerned. How are things at home?”
I made no answer and was aware of him searching my face in the shadows.
“Has Kate been talking to you?” he asked in that abrupt way he sometimes had of striking through to a main point.
“I don’t suppose it matters if I say that she has.”
He put his hand on my forearm and pressed it: “I’m sorry, George. I’m so sorry I –”
I said nothing because there was nothing to say. “The weakest excuse a man can give is that he can’t help himself. But what else can I say but that? For sometimes I can’t.”
There was a kind of despair in his voice; not self-loathing but despair at his own helplessness against inner forces.
“Are you in love with Norah Blackwell?” I forced myself to say. “In love?” He shrugged. “It all started with my trying to help her. She was confused. She’s never had much of a chance.”
“She’s also an attractive girl.”
“Yes. Especially to a man of imagination.”
“I think Catherine understands that.”
His voice changed. “But she doesn’t understand the meaning of Spain and I can’t make her see my side of it at all. If I didn’t adore Kate – if I didn’t worship her –” He turned away and then back again. “These people” – a sweep of his hand toward Montreal – “these people think I’m a Red because I want to help the Spanish Loyalists. My God, how stupid can they be! I’m not a revolutionary. I see a thing that has to be done – like tonight – and I do it. It gets damned lonely bucking the current all the time.” His eyes stared into mine. “Have you the slightest idea how lucky you are, not being born with my temperament?”
Below us the city shimmered in its lights, around us the hospital was still. The sweet, gentle air of the April evening kept coming in.
Jerome, motionless and massive in the shadows, was silent for nearly a minute.
Then he said: “If I’d been raised like you and Kate maybe I wouldn’t feel the way I do about all this. But do you know, George – it’s always seemed to me an incredible privilege to belong to civilization.”
I said nothing. “You people take it for granted. I don’t. One more big war and it can go so fast. A life can go so fast. And when it’s gone?”
He lifted his hand and shrugged. A moment later he began talking again in a soft, gentle voice.
“In my work I often have to see old men die. They could live if – if they were younger. It’s as simple as that. Old men are running our civilization now. Men like Rodgers. Well-meaning men, but old and tired. They want to be left in peace. They hope if they look the other way the tiger will eat somebody else.” He hesitated. “I understand Kate better than she knows. I understand how hard it’s been for her. With that heart of hers, of course she wants to be left in peace.” Another pause. “But unless fascism is stopped in Spain, she won’t be. There’ll be a war we’ll probably lose. I know that’s what fascism is. It’s not political at all, it’s simply the organization of every murderous impulse in the human being.”
He got up and I rose with him, and for a moment longer he brooded out over the city.
“George, I’m not clever. Maybe I’m wrong in this, but I really believe it. The old countries which gave us our civilization are tired of being civilized. But people like me, people born on the fringes, we really care. When I grew up in Halifax” – he turned and looked at me with a shy small smile – “do you know what I used to dream about? I used to dream of a city on top of a hill – Athens perhaps. It was white and it was beautiful, and it was a great privilege to enter it. I used to dream that if I worked hard all my life, and tried hard all my life, maybe some day I’d be allowed within its gates. And now I see the fascists besieging that city and a handful of Spanish peasants holding out inside. They’re dying for lack of medical care. So what is my duty? Tell me that – what is my duty?”
CHAPTER II
In my years of work as a political commentator I have come to a conclusion which shocks some of my friends who think of politics as a rational occupation. I believe that most international crises are like gigantic mystery plays in which obscure and absolutely irrational passions are handled by politicians, and viewed by the public, in a form of ritual akin to primitive religious rites. Hardly anything anyone says or thinks in a time of political crisis is likely to be rational or a representation of the facts. The crisis is almost never about the outward things with which it professes to concern itself. Also no political crisis ever blows up quickly. It matures underground for years and months, the chemical ingredients are various and many. So it is within a nation, a human group or a city, and it often happens that the fulminate which fires the explosion is something nobody notices. We forget how in those days Spain was the stage on which a multitude of passions met. The big war which followed – very possibly because the powers refused to face what Spain meant – has made most of us forget what the very mention of the Spanish Civil War used to do to people’s minds. It was the fulminate to so many conflicting fears and hopes that it caused explosions thousands of miles away from Madrid and Barcelona.
The night after Jerome operated on Shatwell’s widow it caused an explosion in Montreal, and when it was over the newspapers pretended to be astonished that such an affair could happen in the city. But there was no reason why they should have been astonished, for the ingredients to make that particular explosion had been there for years.
My own part in the affair began quietly enough. Around noon the phone in my parents’ flat rang and I discovered Arthur Lazenby on the other end of the line.
“I suppose you know tonight’s the night when Jerome introduces this Span
ish tank officer?” Arthur said. “Are you going?”
“I’d been thinking of it.”
“Then let’s eat some spaghetti first and go together.”
Over our supper Lazenby talked with more excitement than I had ever heard from him. He looked lean, hungry and fanatical, something was on fire in him, but in a singular way he seemed happy and fulfilled. The successful, middle-aged Lazenby I know now has a dead face, but not the young one of that evening.
“There’s going to be trouble tonight,” he said over our coffee. “What kind of trouble?”
“You remember that priest who stopped the Loyalist priest from speaking this winter?”
“I know who he is. Isn’t that the time they had to hire a hotel suite and then the management was unable to get them out legally and turned out the lights to stop the meeting?”
“No, that was another meeting and another Spaniard. This priest orders his students to break up all meetings in favor of the Loyalists. He tells the priest-ridden fools the Loyalists are anti-Christ. You wait – there’ll be trouble tonight.”
The Mayor had evidently come to the same conclusion, for when we reached the hall we found police all over the place. They were stolidly good-natured in the way of most Montreal cops, but as we went in we had to pass between two men in plain clothes whose eyes were very sharp indeed.
“The rcmp,” said Lazenby.
Inside the hall the atmosphere was electric because the communists had packed the house. There was a solid bloc of them in the middle, and they were ominously silent and disciplined. The hall filled up and there was no hint of trouble except for this unaccountable air of tension. Then half a dozen extra-large cops came in and posted themselves at the doors, where they stood impassively surveying the house.
Suddenly there was a loud, organized hissing and the cry: “The Cossacks!”
Watch that Ends the Night Page 29
