Answer as a Man

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Patricia!” Jason was horrified.

  “I wish you’d send him away, out of my sight! I can’t bear him!”

  Jason leaned back in his chair, his horror growing.

  “I never wanted him to be born!” Patricia’s voice was loud and shrill, and the servants in the kitchen halted their work and listened.

  “Why?”

  “He … he …” Then the years of careful discretion came to her aid. She fell back in her chair, swallowed convulsively, and momentarily shut her eyes. She whispered, “He came too soon.” She swallowed again. “There wasn’t any time just for us—to be alone.”

  Jason frowned. Then he was touched. So that was the trouble. “But the twins came very quickly, too, only a year after Sebastian. You didn’t resent them, Patricia.”

  She was desperately trying to control herself. “I was used to being a mother by then. That’s all. But I … I don’t think I ever wanted children anyway.”

  “That’s because you were always Dada’s little girl.” Jason’s compassion grew. “You didn’t want to grow up that fast.”

  She looked at him for several seconds, then said, “I suppose.”

  “Well, dear. I’d really like for Nick to see Dr. Conners tomorrow. Please, Patricia. It may be as you say, that he’s just an overactive little boy, but I’d like to make sure. I’m worried.”

  She smiled at him scornfully. “A perfectly healthy, cheerful little boy, who’s interested in everything! Unlike your pet, who has as much perception as a turnip. He hardly talks, he hardly runs, he hardly smiles or laughs. I think he’s feebleminded. He’s the one who needs to see the doctor, not Nicholas. I think he should be put away, in an institution. What do they call people like him now? Idiots or morons. Which do you think your pet is, Jason?”

  “Patricia, you never talked about Sebastian that way before.” He was profoundly shocked. “I know you’ve often been impatient with him, and called him ‘slow.’ You’ve often ignored him, because you don’t understand him. He’s a very quiet child, and thoughtful and studious. He doesn’t make a noise. That’s his nature. And he and Nicole adore each other.”

  Patricia became excited again. “Nicole’s just sorry for him! She as much as told me so! She knows what he is, even if you don’t.”

  “We’re getting nowhere, Patricia. If you or Miss Flowers won’t take Nick to the doctor, I will. In fact, I think I will.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.” Jason stood up. “It might interest you to know that Nickie—Nicole—asked me to take Nick to the doctor. Little Nicole.”

  “I don’t believe it! But she’s just a baby, and she’s devoted to Nicholas.”

  “I know. And the kid is worried about him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. She isn’t even four years old yet. How can such a baby think of anything?”

  “She’s a very intelligent young lady. Well? Will you take Nick, or will I?”

  Patricia was quickly frightened. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Patricia had always evaded responsibility, thought Jason, or perhaps she had never been forced to take it. Now she was looking at him with growing terror. She put her hands over her eyes. “I … I’m afraid. There’s nothing wrong, but I’m afraid. You’d better take him yourself. I … I don’t feel well, and I can’t seem to get up easily in the morning anymore. Take him. You’ll find out there’s nothing wrong.”

  “I hope so. I believe so. Patricia …”

  But she had literally flung herself from her chair and was running out of the room, to the closed silence of her bedroom and the hidden bottle. As she drank from it, she began to cry, sobbing deep in her chest. Then she whispered, “Oh, Lionel, Lionel!”

  She drank deeper, and as the night came on swiftly, she fell on her bed and wept into her pillow until she sank into a stupor.

  Dr. Conners was an old man with shaking hands and pale blue eyes and a small white Vandyke beard. But he was no fool. What he lacked in more modern learning he had made up for in that invaluable wisdom—experience. He motioned Jason into his examining room and looked at him with a troubled expression.

  “I’m just a family doctor, Jason,” he said as they both sat down. They could hear Nicholas burbling in the other room as Miss Flowers dressed him. It was an aimless chittering, like a squirrel’s, and very loud.

  “Well?”

  “In every way, Nicholas seems a healthy little boy, if a little thin. Perhaps too active. He could grow out of that. His heart beats a little too fast, but then, he’s excitable. A lot of children are that way. You’ve told me he often wets his bed. That’s not unusual for children like him. Boys need more training than girls. I’ll bet Nicole never does,” and the old doctor smiled.

  Jason did not smile. “Is there anything abnormal about Nick, Ben?”

  Dr. Conners hesitated. “Well, there’s the way he talks. Of course, girls talk much more coherently at that age than boys do. He seems unable to get out the words fast enough. In too big a hurry to express himself clearly. I’ve seen that before in children his age, especially if they have a very active mind, too.”

  Jason waited, and his eyes did not leave the doctor’s face. Dr. Conners carefully lit his old pipe and puffed at it reflectively. He did not appear to want to look at Jason. When the silence became too heavy, the doctor said, “I’ve not had much experience …”

  “In what?” Jason’s own heart began to thump too hard.

  “Let me say this: the human mind, or personality, is very mysterious, very … delicately adjusted. I’ve seen dull little boys, unable to learn in school, suddenly become scholars and make their mark in the world. I’ve seen little girls who did not talk, even at four, open their pretty little mouths one day and speak like ten-year-olds. No one knows why. There are some men in Austria—alienists, they are called. They are probing these cases; they have theories. Some of them seem absurd to me, some of them not.”

  Jason felt sick. “You mean they treat insane people?”

  “No, no! Please don’t misunderstand me! What is sanity, what is insanity? I’ve heard it said that an intelligent mind can reject an irrational world, make up one of its own in self-defense. The alienists call that schizophrenia, a complicated term. I don’t understand it, myself. It needs toughness to stand this world, Jason. Or it needs absolute stupidity. In fact, the ‘sanest’ people I know are the most stupid.”

  “Ben, what are you trying to tell me, for God’s sake?”

  The doctor hesitated again. Then he sighed and rubbed his chin. “If Nick were my child, I’d take him to Philadelphia to a neurologist, first of all. I can recommend a good man.”

  Jason’s body felt numb. “You suspect something, Ben. Tell me! I’m the child’s father!”

  The old doctor sighed again. “There was just … something. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was only an intuition, and I’m probably wrong. We doctors frequently are, you know. It’s a kind of look in the child’s eyes, a lack of even the slightest concentration. He … jabbers, Nick—aimlessly.”

  “As if there’s nothing there.” Jason’s voice was heavy and flat.

  “Now, now, don’t put words in my mouth, Jason. I’d say that Nick has no … control—not even a very young child’s control of himself. He stares at things, but I don’t think, forgive me, that he’s really interested in them. If he touches, it isn’t to get the feel; it is just an aimless touching, another physical activity.”

  “He’s got schizophrenia, then?”

  “No, no. He hasn’t that kind of a mind. I shouldn’t have mentioned the term; it has no relevance for Nick. I was just trying to explain the mysteries of the human mind. Nick hasn’t rejected the world; it just doesn’t seem to reach him.”

  “Like an infant.”

  “Infants are curious almost from the day they are born, Jason. Nick … isn’t.” He puffed at his pipe. “Let me call the neurologist now. It may be a very simple thing. In the meantime, I’
ll give you an elixir for Nick which will help to calm him. That may be all he needs.”

  “What in God’s name shall I tell his mother, Ben?”

  “The truth. That I’m only a general practitioner and that the little boy needs a more advanced examination. Don’t let Patricia get frantic. Be as detached as possible. Tell her Nick is wearing himself out with too much activity, and you need advice. That he needs building up. Remember, I may be wrong, and Nick may be perfectly normal. Besides, who knows what is normal or abnormal? Sometimes I, too, think the world was created by a divine madman.

  “You’re not alone, Ben.” Jason tried to smile. “I think that, too.”

  24

  Saul Weitzman had rented the rooms over his shop to a young widow with three small children; she was a seamstress and a general dressmaker of no great talent but with much diligence. He had let the premises for almost nothing, out of pity, and had then rented the Garritys’ old rear cottage for himself. He had retained the old furniture, including a buffet on which he displayed his few treasures, such as an ancient silver menorah, a red Venetian glass decanter and three matching goblets, and a beautiful plate or two, and some English bone-china teacups. Somehow he had infused the rooms of the cottage with a bright warmth, and he kept everything polished and excessively neat.

  To Jason, it was a refuge. He did not ask himself why, and he no longer confided very much in Lionel; in fact, he rarely saw Lionel alone. When he did, Lionel would look at him with the old affection and humor, but that flicker in his eyes was still there, accompanied recently by a sort of furtive wariness. In Saul, Jason found the perfect confidant, paternal, patient, and kind. Saul was very old, but his eyes were bright and understanding, his words always sensible and to the point. He was hardly more prosperous, but his boots shone with polish and his linen was always trim and snowy and his ancient suit pressed. He would say, “I have all I need. What more does a man want?” He would rock in his chair and listen to Jason like a father, nodding his head judiciously at times, comprehending even when Jason spoke with difficulty. Saul would speak of Bernard, not implying the past tense but the present, and when he did so, Jason felt the presence of his grandfather in the little room.

  Saul had not known Kate Garrity, but he spoke of her as of an old friend, valued and admired and loved. He rarely mentioned Joan or John, and when Jason did he would just listen and smoke his pipe.

  Jason had come to see Saul late this hot September night, and it was evident to Saul that Jason was not only upset but also sick with some almost unendurable pain. It was a while before he could speak other than in a desultory fashion, sipping a glass of port. The windows were open; there were stiffly starched white muslin curtains over them, which blew out into the room with a soft rustle. Thunder complained in the passes of the mountains and lightning flickered in the distance. There was no rain as yet. The air was heavy, hard to breathe, and the gaslight burned languidly. Saul rocked in his chair with the linen cover and waited. He had rarely seen Jason so distressed, so burdened with words he could not yet say. He had aged in one week, his gray eyes weary with sleeplessness and suffering. At one moment he appeared to be about to speak, and then he would sink back into silence, as if he had no power to reveal what he wanted to say.

  Saul poured him another glass of port. Jason’s torment was almost palpable, a presence that touched both of them. For some time there had been total silence between the two men, and Saul wondered if at last Jason would decide to say nothing at all. There were times when speech could not encompass a man’s agony.

  The thunder came nearer and the lightning grew more frequent.

  Then Jason said in a voice filled with sorrow, “It’s my little boy, Nick.”

  Saul regarded him solemnly through his polished glasses.

  “You know Nick,” said Jason. He tried to light a cigarette, and it slipped from his hand. “He was very active, always running—as if he wasn’t going anywhere. Jabbering. You’ve seen and heard him.” Jason looked at his friend now, and the stark grief in his eyes was appalling.

  “Yes,” said Saul.

  “I just brought him back from Philadelphia yesterday. Nick … His mind will never be more than four years old.”

  Saul’s face became very old, almost stern, in the shared pain.

  “I took him to the best neurologist, and he sent me with Nick to a team of alienists. They all examined him. He’ll always have the mind of a four-year-old. Always.”

  Saul murmured something like a prayer in Yiddish.

  “They don’t know …” said Jason, his voice lower and hoarser than before. “They don’t know what causes it. Nick isn’t exactly an idiot. He’s what they call a … a low-grade moron. Moron. Some people have a euphemism for it now. They are calling it ‘slow.’ But it’s feebleminded! He can learn a little more—a very little more. Take care of himself, perhaps better. But hardly more than an idiot. Never be able to read, to think as a human being. He … his body is healthy. He will grow to manhood, but he’ll still be a little child. Nothing can be done.”

  Jason put his hands over his eyes and rubbed them. Then he looked at Saul, and his pain was like a wound.

  “They’ve given me some medicine. It will keep him … better, under control. One of them suggested an institution, where he’ll be trained. But the alienists said he would do better for a time in his home with his family—more secure, protected. They said he may never be—oh, God—dangerous to himself or others. They can’t tell. We … I … just have to watch. If the time comes. Oh, God, he’s my child, my little boy. What in the name of Christ can I do?”

  Very slowly Saul relit his pipe, contemplated it, bent his head. He said, “They call them God’s fools. He’ll never know all the misery we know, Jason. He’ll always be happy, a child, like a child, Jason.”

  “In other words, he’ll never be alive! Is that what you’re saying?”

  Saul sighed. “He’s alive in his own way, happy, too, Jason. This world isn’t the best place, is it? Don’t they all say that the life of a child is the sweetest and happiest? You and me, Jason, we can’t look back and say it was, for us. But for Nick, it can be, and it’s so, isn’t it? He seems like a happy little boy. There’s worse things than not growing up, Jason. Didn’t King Solomon say, ‘Better the day of your death than the day of your birth’? That’s for men, old in the world. Little Nick, he won’t have that suffering. For him life will always be sunshine and love and no worries.”

  But Jason said in a groan, “God damn God!”

  Saul winced. “Let me tell you something. I had a brother like that, in the old country. Happy as a lark, all his life; we all loved him. He lived until he was forty, gentle and sweet. What does a happy child see? Love and care, that’s it. Jason, there’s worse lives than that.”

  But Jason shook his head over and over in increasing torment. “But not for his parents; there’s no joy or peace, watching somebody like that. A waste of life …”

  “Is it a waste to those children? Is a bird a waste, or a butterfly, or a flower? Who can say it is?”

  “He won’t be a man.”

  “‘The days of a man’s life are full of trouble. Like the grass he is cut down.’ Job cursed the day of his birth. Nick will never do that.”

  “It’s better to suffer,” said Jason. “Then you know you are a man. It’s better to have pain than endless childhood. At least you know you are alive.”

  Saul shook his head wearily. “I’m an old man. I wish I’d never been born. It was God’s will—blessed be his name—and here I am in my old age, with none of my own. I’ll go to my grave and thank the Lord.”

  Jason turned to him sharply and really saw his friend for the first time, and they gazed at each other mutely in the awful light of revelation. Then Saul reached out his hand and took Jason’s, and together they listened to the thunder that rattled the sky like an enemy threatening the frail house of their lives. “It’s no bargain,” said Saul at last. “No, it’s no bargain.”<
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  He looked at Jason, and the saddest smile touched his face. “From this, then, Jason, your son was spared. This knowing.”

  The rain poured down as if in uncontrollable surrender to despair.

  “I know women, I know Patricia,” said Dr. Conners in the library of Patrick’s house. “Many women, on being forced to confront a disastrous or even a trivial problem, run screaming from the room in denial, hoping to be pursued and placated, persuaded it is ‘nothing’ or just a nasty joke. They want to be treated as children, sheltered from all unpleasantness; they want their world to be sweet. If this is denied them, and they must face reality, more often than not they will soon behave sensibly. They will grow up.” He paused. “Let’s hope Patricia does, though she has been protected by you both all her life.” The old physician looked with cold accusation at Patrick and Jason.

  “We want her to be responsible for Nicholas and help us,” he continued. “So, under no circumstances must you console Patricia; sympathize, yes, but not console. She must accept what Nicholas, her favorite, is, and help the child, too.”

  He lifted his hand warningly to the stricken father and the devastated husband. “Under no circumstances,” he repeated, “treat her like a hysterical child. It’s time she was a woman.”

  “God help us,” said Patrick. “Help us all. And you don’t know what causes this?”

  “No, no. And while Nicholas can be trained to do simple things for himself, like a well-disciplined child of four or five, he’ll never be a man. We can give him medicines to keep him quiet most of the time, but we’ll never know when he will become uncontrollable, as his body grows to maturity. He will have the strength of a man, with a man’s physical demands, yet his mind … You may have to consider an institution later, a fine private institution.”

  “No,” said Jason.

  “No,” said Patrick in a husky voice. “This is his home, with people who love him.”

  The doctor sighed. “We’ll see. If he becomes a danger to himself or others, the law might intervene. Or you could get a ‘keeper,’ a strong man, to watch him all the time, one who has experience with these unfortunates.”