How Far Can You Go?

by David Lodge

  “Well, it’s nothing to be sad about. Nothing to be ashamed of. God made you that way, didn’t He?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “So accept it. Be proud of it. You have qualities straight people don’t have.”

  Bernard let his arm drop from Miles’s shoulder and put it round his waist, almost hugging him. Miles felt, in quick succession, surprise, panic, then a comforting reassurance. “That’s all very well,” he mumbled, “but what about …”

  “What about physical sex? You’ll find it easier to do without it once you’ve accepted yourself for what you are.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  “Anyway, there are worse sins. As long as there’s love. It may be imperfect, but it can’t really be evil if there’s genuine love.”

  “Bernard,” said Miles, blinking back tears, “you’re the first person who’s ever given me hope.”

  Bernard laughed delightedly. “I’ve always thought that Hope was the most neglected of the Theological Virtues. There must be a thousand books on Faith and Charity for every one on Hope.”

  They had come within sight of the monastery buildings. Bernard disengaged his arm from Miles’ waist. “You’ll be all right,” he said, twinkling. And patted Miles lightly but unmistakably on the bottom.

  Still Ruth lingered on the coast of California. “I take it you have severed your connection with the Order,” her Mother Superior wrote, “No, still looking for an answer,” Ruth wrote back. She received no reply.

  One day she had a letter from Josephine, the Paulist nun who flashed upon her inward eye every time she saw an advertisement for a certain brand of bourbon. Ruth opened the letter fully expecting that it would announce that the writer had left her Order, probably to get married. To her surprise, Josephine wrote; “After I got back from San Francisco I nosedived into the usual pits. Then I started to go to a prayer group and it changed my life. I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit, and I’ve never felt so calm, so happy, so sure of my vocation.”

  This was not the first testimony Ruth had heard to the growing prayer group movement, or Charismatic Renewal as it was sometimes called, but it was the most impressive.

  At this time, in the early summer of 1973, Ruth was earning her keep helping in a residential institution for mentally handicapped adults near Los Angeles – or perhaps it was in Los Angeles – she never quite knew where the sprawling city began and ended. The institution was lavishly furnished and equipped with the conscience money of the families who had dumped their defective dependents there, but the work was demanding and sometimes distressing. The place was run by a diminutive red-haired nun called Charlotte who generally wore training shoes and a track suit. She was a Judo black belt and sometimes she needed to be.

  Ruth showed her the letter. “What d’you think about this charismatic business, Charlotte?”

  “Me? I couldn’t exist without it.”

  “You mean you actually go to one of these prayer groups?”

  “Sure. Haven’t you tried it?

  “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be my cup of tea. I’d just be embarrassed.”

  “Everybody’s embarrassed at first. You soon get over that. You wanna come along with me one evening?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Later Charlotte said, “Hey, Ruth, next weekend there’s a Day of Renewal over in Anaheim. A big affair, folks from all over coming to it. There’s a plenary session in the morning, then small groups in the afternoon. Wind up with mass. Whaddya say?”

  Encouraged by the prospect of a large gathering in which she could be an observer rather than a participant, Ruth agreed to go. The following Sunday Charlotte drove them over to Anaheim, a dull satellite of LA chiefly celebrated as the home of Disneyland. Some two or three hundred people were gathered together in the assembly hall of a Catholic junior high school. There were few seats vacant by the time Ruth and Charlotte arrived, and they had to separate. On the stage, which was festooned with banners declaring “JESUS LIVES” and “PRAISE GOD”, was a small band of guitar and accordion players dressed in jeans and plaid shirts, and a priest MC at the microphone who led the assembly in hymns and prayers. Ruth was faintly reminded of a concert party at a Girl Guide rally she had attended many years ago: there was the same air of determined joyfulness and good fellowship about the proceedings. When the MC instructed everyone to hold their neighbours’ hands as he prayed for the Spirit to descend upon them all, she stiffened in recoil and surrendered her hand reluctantly to the clammy palm of the stout woman sitting next to her. It seemed such an obvious gimmick to create an illusion of togetherness. The MC invited anyone present to pray aloud as if they were in their own homes and to share their thoughts with others. Several people obliged. The accepted mode of prayer was highly informal, personal, intimate, speaking to God as though he were another person present in the room. “We praise you, Lord, simply because you’re alive and with us, and that makes all the difference.” “Lord, I just have to tell you that I think you’re really great.” “Lord, you make the sun shine and the flowers grow, you made everything. You’re so wonderful, Lord, you lift us up when we’re down, you comfort us when we’re sick, you rejoice with us when we’re happy. We really love you, Lord. We really praise you.” Listening to this drivel, Ruth felt herself burning in one big blush.

  The MC introduced a speaker evidently well known to the audience, who applauded him vigorously. He was a tall, bony, middle-aged man, with flat hair combed back from a tanned, wrinkled face. He wore a sports jacket and slacks with a collar and tie. He looked as if he might be a salesman for something agricultural. First he relaxed the audience with a few in-jokes. “Did you know that Bishop Fulton Sheen and Cardinal Mclntyre were travelling to the Holy Land for a Charismatic Congress and the Cardinal said to the Bishop, ‘If you’re going to speak in tongues, I’m going to be walking on the water.’” The audience laughed and clapped. Then the speaker asked if there were any Britishers present. Charlotte, seated a few rows ahead of Ruth, looked back at her expectantly, but Ruth kept her hands clasped firmly in her lap. A few hands went up among the audience. Well, said the speaker, they would know that the British had an airline called British European Airways, BEA for short, and it had struck him when he was on vacation in Europe and flying BEA from Amsterdam to London that those letters could also stand for true Christian faith: “Believe, Expect, Accept. Believe in God. Expect Him to come to you. Accept Him when he comes.…” After talking for a while on the power of prayer, and the difference it had made to his own life, he led the congregation in his favourite hymn, “Oh, the love of my Lord is the essence.” When they had sung the words of the last verse, he continued to hum the melody into the microphone, and the congregation followed suit, modulating into a variety of strange noises, keening and coaxing and crooning sounds, harmonized like a humming top, punctuated with occasional ejaculations – “Amen!” “Hallelujah!” “Praise Jesus!” Ruth glanced around her. Most of her neighbours had their eyes shut and were swaying in their seats. The stout woman had her fists clenched and was muttering over and over again, “Praise Jesus, Praise Jesus, Praise Jesus.” Suddenly, from the back of the hall, a voice was raised high in some foreign language, a strange, barbaric-sounding dialect, full of ululating vowels, like a savage chant. So it was true: people really did speak in tongues at these gatherings. How childish it was, just like abracadabra, anyone could pretend to do it. But in spite of herself Ruth felt her skin prickle with the strangeness of it, the high, confident, fluent tone of the utterance. It stopped abruptly. “Thank you, Jesus,” said the speaker at the microphone casually. “Thank you, Jesus,” the congregation echoed. “Could we pray for an interpretation?” said the speaker. There was silence for a moment, then the stout woman beside Ruth stood up and said, “The Lord says, ‘If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.’ The Charismatic Renewal is the new creation. It is everyone’s chance to be born anew. We can be like
newborn babes in the Spirit.” She sat down. “Thank you, Jesus,” said the speaker. “Thank you, Jesus,” murmured the rest. “Could we pray for a healing?” said somebody. “Could we pray for my sister’s little boy who is seriously ill with a suspected brain tumour?” The speaker asked them all to join hands while he prayed with them. At this point Ruth got to her feet and left.

  Charlotte hurried out into the lobby behind her. “What’s the matter, Ruth?” she asked anxiously. “You OK?”

  “I just couldn’t take any more,” said Ruth. “I felt faint. Something about the atmosphere.”

  “Yeah, it is kinda stuffy.”

  “I mean the emotional atmosphere.”

  “Take a little walk outside, you’ll feel better. This afternoon it’ll be the small groups. Quieter. You’ll maybe feel more at ease.”

  “I really don’t think I can take any more today, Charlotte.”

  Charlotte eyed her quizzically. “You’re sure you’re not fighting something, Ruth?”

  “Only nausea. Look, I don’t want to spoil your day. I’ll meet you back here at four, all right?”

  “What will you do till then? Why not join a small group this afternoon, huh? Give the Holy Spirit an even break.”

  Ruth shook her head and left the building. For a while she walked aimlessly along the rectilinear streets of one-storey houses, each with its little plot of coarse grass over which the sprinkler hoses plied monotonously, then through a commercial district of shops, gas stations, motels and funeral parlours. Most of the shops were shut, as it was Sunday. Ruth felt hungry and thirsty, but there seemed nowhere suitable to go, only drive-in hamburger places which she felt self-conscious of approaching on foot, or dimly lit bars advertising topless dancers. Eventually she found herself among crowds converging on Disneyland, and thinking that this would be as good a place as any to kill time, passed through the turnstiles. There was certainly no shortage of refreshment inside – the only problem was deciding in what architectural facsimile you wanted to consume it: a Wild West saloon or a wigwam encampment or a space-ship or a Mississippi paddleboat. It was a world of appearances, of pastiche and parody and pretence. Nothing was real except the people who perambulated its broad avenues, fingering their little books of tickets, patiently lining up for the Casey Jr Circus Train, the Peter Pan Flight, the Jungle Cruise, the Monorail Ride. Music filtered from loudspeakers concealed in the trees and fountains played and the Stars and Stripes hung limply from a hundred flagpoles. Huge grinning plaster figures of Disney characters proffered litter baskets at every intersection of paths. Children ran about with balloons, ice-cream, candy-floss and popcorn under the complacent eyes of their parents.

  One such couple, overweight, brightly dressed, festooned with cameras, sat down on Ruth’s bench to rest their feet, and the wife volunteered the information that they had come all the way from South Dakota. “Not just to see Disneyland?” said Ruth, with a smile, but they didn’t seem to see anything amusing in the idea. “Well, we’re seeing a lot of other places as well,” said the woman, “but this is the high-spot of the vacation, isn’t that right, Al?” Al said it was right. “He’s always been crazy to see Disneyland,” said the woman fondly, “ever since I started dating him.”

  It struck Ruth that Disneyland was indeed a place of pilgrimage. The customers had an air about them of believers who had finally made it to Mecca, to the Holy Places. They had come to celebrate their own myths of origin and salvation – the plantation, the frontier, the technological Utopia – and to pay homage to their heroes, gods and fairies: Buffalo Bill, Davey Crockett, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The perception at first pleased and then depressed her. She looked at the crowds ambling along in the smog-veiled sunshine, from one fake sideshow to another, chewing, sucking, drinking, licking, and was seized with a strange nausea and terror. For all their superficial amiability and decency they were benighted, glutted with unreality. Ruth began to recite to herself the words of Isaiah: “For the heart of this nation has grown coarse, their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, for fear they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and be converted and healed by me.” But she must have spoken the words aloud, for the woman from South Dakota turned to her enquiringly. “I was just thinking,” said Ruth “that if Jesus really lives, you wouldn’t know it in here.” The woman stared. “Well, I don’t go much on religion, myself,” she said, uneasily. “My husband used to be a Christian Scientist, didn’t you, Al?” Al gave a sickly grin and said they ought to be getting along. They left Ruth sitting alone on her bench, staring back at her over their shoulders from a safe distance.

  Ruth got to her feet and walked rapidly in the opposite direction, to the Exit turnstiles. She hurried back to the school. In each of the classrooms a small prayer group was in progress. She went from room to room, looking for Charlotte through the little observation windows in the doors. One door had no window, and she opened it. Half a dozen faces turned in her direction. Charlotte’s was not one of them. The stout woman who had sat next to her in the assembly hall smiled at her. “Come and join us. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been to Disneyland,” Ruth said, closing the door behind her, and joining the circle of chairs. The others laughed uncertainly.

  “And what did you think of it?”

  “I thought it was like the world must have been before Christ came.”

  There was a surprised silence.

  “Walt Disney was a good man, a godfearing man,” said someone, a shade reproachfully.

  The stout woman said, “I don’t think Ruth is really telling us about Disneyland. I think she’s telling us something about herself. Isn’t that right, honey?”

  To her astonishment and acute embarrassment, tears began to roll down Ruth’s cheeks. She nodded and sniffed, groping in her handbag for a Kleenex. “All my life as a nun there’s been one thing missing, the one thing that gives it any point or sense, and that’s, well, real faith in God. It sounds ridiculous, but I don’t think I ever had it before. I mean, I believed in Him with my head, and I believed with my heart in doing good works, but the two never came together, I never believed in Him with my heart. Do you understand what I mean?”

  The stout woman nodded eagerly. “Would you like us to pray over you, honey?”

  Ruth knelt, and the other people present clustered round and put their hands on her head. Even before the woman began to speak, Ruth felt a profound sense of bliss descend upon her.

  That night she began to pack her bags for the journey home. She wired her Mother Superior: “BY THE WATERS OF DISNEYLAND I SAT DOWN AND WEPT STOP HAVE FOUND WHAT IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR STOP RETURNING IMMEDIATELY”

  As part of her Open University course on the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Tessa had to attend a residential summer school, held at one of the new universities in the north of England. “I believe Robin Whatsisname teaches there,” said Edward. “You remember, the chap who married Violet, the dotty girl at Angela and Dennis’s wedding. You ought to look them up.”

  “Oh, I’ll be much too busy,” said Tessa. She was excited at the thought of the week ahead, her first trip away from home on her own since she had been married, and she did not want to waste precious time paying courtesy calls, especially not on the notorious Violet.

  The student body at the summer school consisted largely of mature men and women like Tessa, who could scarcely believe their luck at having a cast-iron excuse to abandon spouses and children for six whole days and do nothing except talk, read and enjoy themselves. There were lectures and seminars in the mornings and afternoons, and for the faster set, drinking and a disco every night. Tessa retired dutifully to her room to read immediately after dinner on the first two evenings, but on the third, the rhythmic thud of amplified music and the hum of voices drew her downstairs to the bar. She hesitated at the threshold, peering in. There was a general effect of blue denim stretched tightly over buttock and crotch, of empty beer glasses and overflowi
ng ashtrays, of flirtation and pursuit.

  “Extraordinary spectacle, isn’t it?” said a voice at her shoulder. It was George, a middle-aged teacher in her seminar group, a dapper, drily amusing man, with a habit of dropping his head and looking over his glasses when he delivered his opinions about Anna Karenina, the week’s set text. He looked over them now, delivering his opinion on the roaring throng. “They discuss adultery all day and commit it all night.”

  “How do you know?” Tessa laughed.

  “Well, I’m reliably informed that all the Durex machines in the men’s loos are empty,” he said. “And it’s only Tuesday.”

  Tessa blushed and looked away.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve shocked you. My apologies,” said George.

  “No, no,” said Tessa, feeling foolish, and to re-establish herself as a mature, sophisticated woman, accepted his offer of a drink. “Are you married, George?” she asked conversationally, when they had found a table.

  “No,” he said with a smile, “I’m a bachelor. But you’re quite safe with me. I don’t feel that way about girls. Now I’ve shocked you again.”

  “Oh, no,” said Tessa earnestly, “how terribly interesting.” This was certainly living.

  “Same again, both of you?”

  It was another member of their seminar, Roy. A rather vain young man, Tessa had already decided, very conscious of his blond wavy hair and china-blue eyes. He had perfected a lazy film-star’s smile that slowly uncovered a row of strong white teeth, and he gave the general impression of being about to burst out of his jeans and cheesecloth shirt. They discussed the foibles of their seminar leader, and whether it was better to read criticism before or after reading the original text. Tessa offered to lend Roy a book on the language of fiction that she had found particularly useful. She insisted on buying another round, which George fetched from the bar. Then Roy asked her if she would like to dance.