Answer as a Man

by Taylor Caldwell

  Once Molly had said, innocently, “He’s very big, the baby, for being premature, isn’t he, Dan?” And Daniel, looking gravely thoughtful, had replied, “But Jason is a big man, my love, and Patty is ho midget. And Jason’s grandfather is a giant, too.”

  Molly was glad that her brother, Lionel, and his wife, Joan, had no children. “There’s enough wickedness in this world, Dan, and those two are genuinely wicked, without adding to their number.” Daniel agreed. Molly was still childless after three years, and this saddened them both.

  Bernard, sitting with Saul on the sun-warmed bench in the park, was thinking of his great-grandchildren, Sebastian, four, whom he loved devotedly, and the twins, Nicholas and Nicole. Idiotic names! Bernard knew that Patricia did not even try to hide the fact that she disliked Sebastian, ignored and slighted him, and complained of him always. There were times when one saw real hate in her eyes as she looked at the little boy. Yet, he was gravely handsome, tall for his age, and always courteous and obedient and unfailingly kind. To Bernard he had “a lovely face,” for it was square and serious, with good bones, large agate-colored eyes like his mother’s, a short sharply defined nose, a faintly smiling mouth which did not detract from his usual gravity, and thick curling brown hair with a hint of deep red in the clustering waves. A true Garrity, Bernard would think. The boy was already being tutored at home, and he had intellect as well as intelligence. He kept his childish thoughts to himself, but Bernard suspected that they were not childish at all, and in this he was right.

  The three-year-old twins were another matter.

  Nicholas was, as Bernard described it, “disjointed.” He was small even for three, and incessantly in motion, giving the appearance of a crudely carved marionette held by uncertain but vibrating strings. He ran and moved very fast and was always falling, for despite his smallness and his compact frame, he was clumsy. He also wailed, even though not hurt by these mishaps, and then would spring feverishly to his feet and scamper off, his arms and legs not quite coordinated, and thrown out as if he was in flight. He had a rectangular face, sallow and bony, with the large Garrity nose, a tremulous excited mouth, and dark slate-colored eyes protruding as if he were out of breath, which he usually was. He had Patricia’s thin fine hair, perpetually in disarray and always drooping over his forehead and into his eyes. He had large ears which were strangely a bright pink. He gave the impression of incurable dishevelment.

  He was “harmless, I’m thinking,” to quote Bernard, “but no brains at all.” When Patricia mentioned that he had a delicate nature and was exquisitely sensitive, Bernard would snort to himself. “An artist,” Patricia would declare with passionate love, “and always trying to draw pictures.”

  It was his twin sister, Nicole, who had “the brains.” But to many people she was a most ugly little girl, for she was even shorter than her brother, and at three a veritable fat dumpling of a child, shapeless and all belly, with thick arms and legs and a round fat face. Her skin was coarse, though she was hardly more than an infant, with no rosiness of cheek or mouth. But her face was perpetually resolute, her lips extremely firm and controlled, her chin heavy and dimpled. She had the look of a matron, which amused Bernard, for she resembled his grandmother amazingly. Her brown hair was harsh if abundant, and without light. No nonsense about the little colleen, Bernard would say fondly. She had one excellent feature—truly beautiful and radiant gray eyes with long dark lashes like stars.

  Despite her fatness, which was mostly muscle, she moved with surety, like Sebastian, and always with purpose. No pretty frocks could conceal that stalwart little body with its square shoulders and large belly and broad chest. Frills and bows, on which Patricia insisted, mocked the strength that was so evident, and made her look like a parody of a frivolously bedecked doll. When she walked, one could hear her steady footsteps even on the heaviest carpets. Bernard watched Nicole with affectionate amusement. “A tartar,” he said once, without disapproval. “She’ll make her way, but God help the man she’ll marry. He’ll know who’s in charge, from the start.”

  Patricia thought her daughter “adorable” and a beauty, and never noticed the ridiculous disparity between the dainty name and Nicole herself.

  From babyhood Nicole had understood her twin brother. Even at three, she was sorry for him, and protected him and brushed him off when he fell and wiped away his endless tears. All her actions, with him, were maternal. In spite of Patricia’s rebukes, Nicole called her brother Nick and he called her Nickie.

  It infuriated Patricia that between Sebastian and Nicole there was a profound sympathy, and that both children had made themselves the guardians of the disorganized Nicholas. When Jason, exhausted from long hours of dealing with mutinous workers, from maids to gardeners and cleaners, to window washers and laundresses, arrived home, he would inevitably be greeted by Patricia’s tinny but emphatic complaints about Sebastian, and how he was inciting the twins to many numerous crimes, especially against her.

  Jason loved his children, but between him and Sebastian there was an unspoken compatibility, a mature tenderness. He would take Sebastian with him to the library and shut the door, not to administer punishment, as Patricia hoped and believed, but to sit in gentle silence with the child on his knee, their hands clasped together warmly, their eyes communicating in wordless comprehension and consolation. Then they would emerge, Sebastian too often to a lonely dinner in the kitchen with an indignant cook, and the other children to the firelit nursery with their special nursemaid, or even with their parents occasionally.

  Jason could not understand—nor did Bernard—the hatred Patricia had for her older son. But always, to Bernard’s exasperation, Jason endured her whims, complaints, and evident dislike of him and was infinitely tender and patient with her. Jason firmly believed that Patricia was of ineffable substance, above other women as a flowering tree is above ordinary grass. Can’t he see how stupid she is? Bernard would ask himself. How vulgar, how cunning, how selfish and self-centered, how incapable of tolerance and consideration of others? But Jason did not see all this, just as he could not know the source of Patricia’s aversion to Sebastian. He had persuaded himself that it was all due to “birth difficulties” and incompatible differences of temperament. He was, certain time would solve these things nicely, an attitude astonishingly different from his usual realistic outlook.

  Besides, he was always so tired now. He would fall into bed overcome with weariness, only to find his mind spinning with problems, with doubts, with conflicts and worries. He and Patricia had separate bedrooms, at her insistence—she needed her rest since she was very high-strung. They had not slept together since the birth of the twins. Jason understood that she feared more pregnancies. She was too fragile for this world, he would think.

  It was odd that he had not as yet recognized how similar he and Sebastian were in nature, just as he was never doubtful of the child’s paternity. Patricia’s pettiness toward Jason, her not hidden resentment, her frequent ridicule of his person, her implied contempt for his intelligence, her cruel accusations that he had no social graces, never truly entered his consciousness. He was always trying to win her admiration. This, too, enraged Bernard, who thought of her as a silly and pretentious fool and a woman of no delicacy.

  Always thin, she was now emaciated, though she had retained her style and taste. She loathed her father’s house just as she increasingly scorned. Patrick himself and deprecated him frequently to Jason. That she was desperately unhappy was not apparent to Jason, nor did he ever know of her tears and yearnings when alone in her bed. Bernard, in moments of rare empathy, suspected that something “ailed” her, but he could not guess what. It was unnatural for a woman who had so much to be so miserable.

  Bernard was thinking of all this now, and he sighed. Saul said, “We go back to the shop and have a little lunch, eh? Made some gefilte fish, for Passover, next week. You like it, eh? And some matzohs, and chicken soup. Not kosher.” He chuckled.

  “Good,” said Bernard. />
  It was then that the Farrell youths returned, crunching on the gravel as they ran toward the two old men. They stopped at a distance, nudged each other, grinned, then began to chant: “Ido sheeney, Ido sheeney!” One picked up a stone and hurled it at Saul. He dodged, pale and trembling.

  “Off with you, damn you!” Bernard shouted, and half-rose, seizing his cane. “And you at Mass this morning, with your dada and mum!”

  “Aw shut up, you old man!” the elder boy shouted with an obscene curse. “Want a stone down your gullet?”

  Bernard stood up. His cheeks turned crimson and the veins in his temples swelled. Saul caught his arm. “They are only children,” he pleaded.

  Bernard shook off his hand and glared down at him. “They’re devils,” he said. “The kind who murdered old Joe Maggiotti. God damn their souls.”

  “Bernie …” said Saul.

  The eldest boy turned a face of gleeful malice on him. “Wait till you see what we did to your kosher shop!” he shouted in delight. “Peed on all your groceries and sausages!”

  Saul became white. He said in a choked voice, “Oi gevalt!”

  Bernard rushed at the two older youths, grasped them by the necks, and pounded their heads together. They howled and struggled. He held them with hands like iron. He looked at the youngest, Matt, who was suddenly alarmed. “Matt,” said Bernard, “I want to see your dada now, in the shop. With these spalpeens I’m taking with me. You go for your dada or I’ll … I’ll kill your brothers.” He longed for the sight of blood. Saul got heavily to his feet, his kind face twisted. Matt ran off, whimpering.

  Bernard banged the youths’ heads together again, over and over, until they cried like infants. “Curse you,” he muttered. “Damn the law. I’d like to kill you, but you’re not worth hanging for.” His lips were engorged with purpling blood. He could hardly breathe; there was a terrible pain in his head. He wanted to press his hand against it, but he could not set loose the youths he now had again by their throats. “March,” he gasped in a hoarse voice. “Down the street. To the shop. Saul, come.” Saul picked up the discarded cane, and weeping, followed the old man and his captives back to the shop.

  The door was open. A barrel of pickles had been overturned on the immaculate floor. Many eggs had been tossed at walls, and their contents were oozing over Bernard’s bright green paint. Loaves of bread had been stamped and crushed. Cans had been thrown about in fierce abandon. Milk had been poured out on every surface. Small blocks of ice had been taken from the icebox and sent skidding over the floor and under counters. Dress goods had been unfolded, befouled, and thrown about recklessly. Many were torn.

  Saul openly wept now, covering his face with his hands. He was poor and lived frugally by necessity. He saw months of profits hopelessly destroyed. But worst of all was the evidence of foulness in the human soul, of monstrous cruelty and hate. He felt that his heart was crushing between stones. Bernard stood with the youths in the midst of all this, and resumed banging their heads. “Damn your souls to hell!” he said, and he poured out his own hate on them with a string of imprecations.

  “Bernie,” Saul stammered. “You’re killing them. Their noses bleed. Bernie—”

  “Shut up,” said Bernard, but he halted the banging. A numbness ran down his right side, and his legs buckled. However, he did not release the youths, whose faces were streaming with blood and tears. It was then that Dennis Farrell, their father, rushed in. He saw everything immediately.

  “Oh, God damn,” he said. He was a tall, very lean man, muscular from hard labor. He had a dark narrow face and belligerent black eyes. “God damn,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” said Bernard. The two youths looked imploringly at their father. “We didn’t do nothing,” the older sobbed. “Nothing at all. This crazy old man—”

  Dennis walked calmly over to his son and struck him, backhand, on the face. He did the same to the younger one. They fell to the filthy floor and curled up like fetuses. Dennis said, “Bernie, do you want to thrash them, or shall I?” He removed his belt slowly, deliberately.

  “It’s your place,” said Bernard. He was leaning heavily against a counter, struggling for breath. The pain in his head increased unbearably. For a moment he shut his eyes. His breathing was like a groan. “But who’s to pay for all this destruction, Dennie?”

  “I will,” said the younger Irishman. “Saul, you make out a bill. Get you the money from the bank tomorrow.” He added, “Never raised them this way. Don’t know … More and more, it’s like this with the kids. Who’s doing it, teachin’ them these things? Where’s the Church, the priests? It’s not the parents, though they say it is. It’s Original Sin.”

  “Always was,” said Bernard. “Always will be. You can’t cure humanity.” He could speak no more.

  Dennis Farrell walked to the youths on the floor, who looked up at him with affrighted eyes. Without rage, without words, he began to beat them, methodically, unsparingly. They were too afraid to scream, though they cried feebly and tried to writhe away. At last his arm tired. He put his belt back on. He said, “Now, you bastards, on your feet, and clean up here, every inch, or you’ll get more.”

  “Mr. Farrell …” said Saul, who had watched, horrified. It was not the beating so much that had overcome him. It was the dispassionate calmness of the stern father. He glanced down at the youths with pity. So young, so bad.

  “Go on upstairs, Mr. Weitzman,” Dennis said. “Saul. You and Bernie, you go up. When it’s clean down here, I’ll call you.”

  It was then, with a dreadful cry, that Bernard Garrity collapsed on the floor, cans rolling about him, his face turned into the pickle brine.

  Jason had asked his friends and relatives to leave him alone with the dying man for a few minutes.

  The April afternoon had a sky of deep gray marbled with black streaks, like the lid of an ancient tomb. Lightning writhed through it, but there was no thunder. A long and angry wind hammered at the windows of the large hospital room, and steely rain tried to pierce the glass like arrows. Jason had donated this room to the Sisters’ Hospital, and other Catholics had “been squeezed” by Jason, to quote Patrick, to enlarge the building and improve it. “Do you want the proprietary hospital to be better and cleaner than ours?” Jason had demanded, and Patrick and Daniel had paid up, grumbling that they would be bankrupted. Now they were proud of the hospital, with its excellent nursing staff, an operating room, and two physicians on call, a fine big kitchen, and a small chapel which could hold twenty people.

  The room was warm, for new furnaces had been installed and the radiator hissed comfortably. The wooden floor had been scrubbed white, and there were gay curtains at the windows and a thick rug at the side of the high narrow bed. Everything smelled of beeswax and soap. A lamp stood on a table nearby, and its gentle light streamed on Bernard Garrity’s face. The paralyzed man could move only his head, but his eyes were as alive and aware as always. He was awake, but he did not look at Jason.

  “Da,” said Jason, leaning forward in his chair, “I want to know something. Blink once for no, and twice for yes. Do you hear me, Da?”

  The fallen head on its snowy pillows turned to Jason, and the vital eyes were full of accusation. Jason’s stricken face quickened with pain and grief. “All right, Da. I don’t know why there’s been a … division between us. I never asked. I should have. You’d have told me the truth. Was it something I did?”

  Bernard blinked twice.

  “My God,” said Jason, almost groaning. “I don’t know. It can’t be the new hotel. We talked that over many times, a long time ago. Da,” and Jason leaned closer, “I never deliberately hurt anyone in my life. I never committed the sins of false witness, theft, blasphemy, or envy. I never blackened a man’s name. I’ve tried all my life to be just and decent and patient, even at the worst of times.” He smiled weakly to keep from crying. “And … I never wronged a woman, either.”

  He never knew why Bernard’s face changed so strangely or why his eyes, thou
gh still piercing, became brighter. “Do you understand, Da?” A long moment or two passed; it was as if Bernard were thinking.

  The dying eyes blinked twice, for yes, and softened. The dying man struggled to speak. The dry white lips moved, but there was no sound. And then, to Jason’s astonishment, Bernard, fighting with his last dying efforts, raised one wavering hand. It seemed to beckon. Jason, trembling, fell on his knees beside the bed, and the hand descended and gently lay on his thick black curls as if begging for forgiveness.

  “Oh, Da,” Jason moaned, and turned his head to kiss the cold dry palm of his grandfather. Now he was crying, gulping to keep back sobs. He took that feeble hand, raised with a last mortal effort, and held it tightly in his own. Oh, God, if Da could only speak, only one word! But Jason knew that the rift between them had gone, and all was forgiven. Then the hand fell. Jason looked up, eyes filled with tears. Incredibly, Bernard, for the first time since his stroke, was smiling, a smile of infinite love and remarkable tenderness. Jason had seen this expression only a few times before, and it was always for Katie.

  Bernard had been given the last rites, for his death could occur at any moment. That great face might be sunken, but it remained indomitable. For Bernard in his dying did not forgive humanity for its crimes against the innocent and the helpless. To the last he questioned him whom he considered the adversary of man. God might forgive—but not Bernard Garrity!

  Jason’s friends and relatives came in now, moving silently, with only a faint rustling. Jason rose to give Father Sweeney the one chair. The priest now looked prosperous and well-fed. His clothing was the best silken broadcloth, and his cheeks, for the first time in his life, were pink and full. The auburn hair had faded until streaks of white appeared in it, but he had two modest chins and a considerable potbelly. He was eating well and regularly, thanks to Jason and the bounty of Patrick Mulligan. He looked almost benign. Standing at his shoulder was the young priest John Garrity, with his triangular face shining like bone in the lamplight and his pale eyes as censorious as ever, austerity like a grim shadow over his features. He stood, rigid and rigorous, as if at attention, and he gazed at his grandfather, who would not return his look, and his mouth was a white slash and his Garrity nose, attenuated, reminded one of the edge of an ax blade.