Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “He is not an attractive child. Yet he is pleasant in appearance and sturdy in bearing, and he moves with a certain grace and precision that imitates, if it doesn’t actually express, nobility. Once or twice a year, he is conducted across Europe on a tour of museums, salons, fashion houses, and the homes of the aristocracy. He finds them boring. There are few children in this circle of beautiful, accomplished people.

  “More than this, he is devout. He longs to throw his life into heroic causes, to have many adventures of a religious nature. He fasts, wears a hair-rope under his shirt, and sleeps on the floor of his bedroom for almost the whole of his twelfth year, until his secret is discovered by the nanny, and he is ever afterward forbidden by Mama to do such a strange and worrisome thing. He continues to talk to God in the privacy of the chapel, which is situated in the west wing, on the floor above his room, in the main house. He rises often in the night to visit this Presence which never replies. No words are exchanged. Even so, the red vigil light is a comfort to him. It pulsates in the darkened chapel. Old incense lingers on the air. There are glints of fire on the silver and gold threads of the tapestries. He sinks into the gentle warmth of this atmosphere, as if into an ancient refuge, a sanctuary, though he did not have words for such a feeling. Almost, he can feel the beat of a mysterious heart on which he rests, the warmth of arms enfolding him. He feels a profound peace that is always shattered by the dawn.

  “Nevertheless, he wishes to be a saint and to participate in glory. The chapel priest notices his attention to prayer during the Mass, and it is suggested that the young count may have a religious vocation. Perhaps he should attend for a year the seminary school at such and such a city, where the fathers are devoted to the education and edification of the young. But Mama won’t hear of such a thing! He is just a child! He is the only heir! Also, he is her main company in this vast house. The little count reads difficult novels to her at night by the fire, while she sips English sherry and practices her petit point. She seldom prays. She gossips heavily, aloud, to her son. She complains about his father, in subtle, exquisite terms. The little count does not raise the question of a religious vocation with Papa during his infrequent visits. He does not think to ask for a different life. He does not inquire into the meaning of his own life. He merely lives it. He is not moved to ask why he was born.

  “He has one fault, at first a very small thing, but a dangerous fault. Because he is fawned upon by his mother and neglected, except in a most formal manner, by his father, he does not learn to give when it costs something. He is the recipient of all that is best in civilization. Yet he does not know what it is to lack anything. He is ungrateful. He is proud. He is a master of throwing fits when he doesn’t get his way. He wants to have everything, do everything, be everything. He expects to achieve greatness in all that he tries, even sanctity, but has little opportunity to measure the meaning of greatness aside from the continuous stream of mental and physical disciplines that are set for him to learn. In time he becomes an attractive, intelligent, accomplished adolescent. He has everything. And he has nothing.”

  “Why does he feel such a thing?” asked Elijah.

  “He feels that he has everything on the outside of his life, and nothing in his interior. He is lonely. In his thirteenth year, he begins to taste the sweet, rotten fruit of the imagination when passion is joined to a profound loneliness. But the passion is unexplainable and undirected. He drives his Arabian mercilessly, and she falls and breaks a leg. It is necessary to shoot her. He breaks household objects, small things at first, bumped off tables by an errant elbow. And then increasingly more valuable objets d’art. There are worried consultations with Mama and Papa. There are lectures. There are disciplines. As punishment, he is consigned to spend a day entirely alone in his room. A maid brings him meals he does not eat. He hurls lead soldiers across the room. Their bayonets stick into the wall. He ceases to make his nocturnal visits to the chapel. He begins to think that the sensations of peace and enfolding were a fantasy. He feels growing reluctance to attend Mass.

  “He regularly steals the butler’s cigarettes and vomits afterward. He drinks a half-bottle of English sherry and nearly drowns in the fountain, but is saved by a servant who agrees not to tell. On a few occasions, he wanders through the village at night and looks in the windows at the family life of the poor. He kicks the horses, and they learn to fear him. He throws stones at his borzoi, who always forgives him. He takes his faults and sins to confession, but freedom from the impulse to hurt and to waste lasts only a few days, a week at the most. He asks for daily Communion, but Mama, anxious lest he return to his religious fanaticism, refuses. Eventually she tells the old chaplain not to return to the estate, and the family and staff partake of the sacraments once a week at a convent, a short carriage ride away. Mama prefers the landau pulled by two horses to the new motorcars that are so unhealthy, considering their fumes and the terrifying speeds at which they travel.”

  Smokrev paused and lit another cigarette, which precipitated a fit of coughing. When he was settled, Elijah said, “You were very unhappy.”

  “You are an observant fellow.”

  “Surely there is more.”

  “During the summer of that unhappiness, an extraordinary thing happened. I met my first friend.

  “I was walking moodily through our old orchard on a late summer day, and I came upon a boy gathering windfall apples from around the base of a tree. He looked at me, startled. We stood and stared at each other.

  “ ‘Who are you?’ I asked him.

  “ ‘Piotr’, he said.

  “ ‘Why are you taking apples from my trees?’ I demanded.

  “ ‘My mother sent me to get them. My father is Stanislaus, your father’s gardener.’

  “I knew Stanislaus. I knew that the gardener didn’t like me, because he had seen me do things of which he didn’t approve. In addition, it was he who had been told to shoot my Arabian when it broke its leg.

  “ ‘Is it allowed?’ asked Stanislaus’ son. He wasn’t much older than I, a year or two at the most.

  “I was so sorely tempted to shout No! at him, that these were our apples and he had no right to pick them without my mother’s permission. I wanted to exercise my superiority over his father, but I was stopped by something in the boy’s face. It was trust. It was as if he trusted that I would say yes, because that is what a good person would do, you see. Good people say Yes. Good people are generous. He had faith in me. He was projecting his heart upon the world, in much the same way I was projecting my own upon him. I expected him to be an unwanted parasite because I felt unwanted, unwanted by the whole world except by my lonely, affection-starved mother. I felt like a parasite. He expected me to be a kind master. But the truth of it is, he was the kind one.

  “He moved like a young god in an arcadian paradise. He pulled a small golden ball off the tree and handed it to me with a glance of friendliness that was completely foreign to me. ‘Here, take a bite. They’re really sweet’, he said.

  “I hesitated. After all, they were my apples. But the gesture touched me so much that I accepted it gratefully. I took a bite. The fruit was sweet and highly flavored. To this day, I can taste that first rush of pleasure on my tongue. It will forever represent for me the taste of friendship.

  “ ‘Sit down’, the boy Piotr commanded me, not unkindly.

  “I sat down beneath the tree, and he threw himself down on the grass beside me. He was tall and lithe, dressed in a heavy cotton tunic and baggy trousers. His hair was a sheet of gold, his eyes blue. His face was poised, clear, beautiful, and manly all at once.

  “ ‘You see this?’ he said opening a burlap sack. ‘My mama’s going to boil it down, and do you know what it will make?’

  “ ‘No.’

  “ ‘One jar of apple jelly.’

  “ ‘That’s not much.’

  “ ‘We’ll save it for Christmas dinner, to eat with the goose.’

  “ ‘Why don’t you boil more apples and get m
ore jelly?’

  “ ‘Because Mama said we’re allowed only one sack of windfalls. The rest go to the count’s—I mean your father’s—cows. Oh, they’ll get fat here!’

  “I laughed, and he laughed too. It was a glorious feeling.

  “ ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s a hot day. Would you like to catch a fish with me?’

  “ ‘Yes’, I said, barely choking out the word.

  “ ‘Come!’

  “He jumped up and ran off toward the thicket of birches bordering the southern extremity of our estate. A river meandered through it, a cool deep run, full of sun-speckled shadows where fish lazed.

  “Piotr threw in a string with a hook and slice of pork rind attached to it. In a minute, a brown carp was flopping on the bank. He put the string into my hand and showed me how to pitch the hook into the warm pools. The line sang in my fingers as it flew. The jerk and tug when a fish took it were delirious happiness. I shouted for joy when it tried to pull me into the water. Piotr bent double, roaring with laughter. Then, hand over hand, we pulled it in together. He left the final victory to me. I dragged the great golden carp out onto the shore and stood looking at it with amazement. I had had no idea that life contained such delights.

  “We took the fish home to his mother, and I saw for the first time the house in which they lived. I had known that most people live in pitifully small accommodations, but it had been a theoretical knowledge. Here I was for the first time in a peasant’s house. Piotr was the eldest of thirteen children, and so you can imagine the noise and activity in that place. Swarms of children came leaping and shouting round him. They hung on his arms. He was so good. You could see how his younger brothers and sisters loved him. He was like a little father to them. I envied them.

  “His mother greeted me with a bow and a smile, and thanked me for the apples. When we presented the two fish to her she was very pleased, for combined they would easily make a meal for the entire family. This woman, I tell you, was one of the few genuine saints I have ever met. Her lot in life wasn’t easy. Stanislaus was not an even-tempered man, but she managed him well. The house was full of icons and crucifixes, and noise and joy. There were fervent prayers before the meal. Yes, the little master was invited to stay. Never before or since have I tasted such a meal as that.

  “Afterward, the parents and the thirteen children got down on their knees, lit a candle beneath a very primitive icon of the Mother of God of Częstochowa, and prayed the Rosary. I had prayed the Rosary in chapel, with the priest, and occasionally with visitors. But never like this. You felt a surge of religious energy, the marshaling of all religious powers of the soul. You heard the sounds of prayer penetrating heaven’s gate and achieving a hearing at some far, far throne. It was then that I understood my wretched condition. I saw with stark clarity that these people were truly rich and I was a pauper. I made my excuses and ran home, where I received a scolding from the nanny for being absent and worrying the entire staff half to death. I slept well that night, after a brief visit to the chapel. I had intended to thank the presence above the red light, thank Him for this extraordinary day, thank Him for giving me my friend Piotr. But the light was extinguished and the tabernacle door wide open. From boredom or fear, I never could tell which, Mama had chosen that very day to attempt a reform of our lives. She thought that a more social existence, less traditionally religious, more cosmopolitan, would restore me to what she called ‘balance’.

  “Throughout that fall and winter, Piotr and I frequently met in the woods and talked of many things. We hiked throughout my father’s holdings as if they were Piotr’s and I were the visitor. He pointed out to me the many species of tree on our land, and I learned their names from him. He taught me to make small toys from chestnuts. He strung me a longbow and cut arrows for me, and fledged them with feathers from pheasants. He listened patiently to my stories about ships and the adventures of abandoned boys. He laughed at my first feeble attempts at jokes. He clapped me on the back when I did things well; he grew quiet and turned our attention to other things when I failed. He was like a brother to me. Sometimes we prayed the Rosary together, walking along the snow path around the perimeter of our grounds. Prayer became very sweet to me, a companionable thing, a mystery shared. I came to love him as brothers love each other. I was happy.

  “I recall the day when desire burst through the membrane that separates chaste love from lust. It was a spring day. The last of the snow had just disappeared. He was showing me the new bunnies produced by his rabbits. They were his own animals, a special project. Wire cages behind their cow shed contained two large, gray females, a mournful brown buck, and dozens of offspring. Flemish giants. It had been a harsh winter, and Piotr was running low on hay. I told him that we had hay to spare up at the main barn. Also, more carrots were buried in our sand-bins than we could hope to feed the horses. I asked him if he would like some for his rabbits. He agreed enthusiastically.

  “ ‘Can Camilla and Ludmilla come with us?’ he asked.

  “ ‘Good idea! Maybe we’ll see some greens on the way and they can nibble. Bring a sack for carrots.’

  “It was one of those hot spring afternoons that come early in the season to melt the ice in the soul. After filling sacks with carrots and hay up at the main farm, we turned and retraced our steps. The large mother rabbits lay heavy and docile in our arms. We took a shortcut through the woods, crossed the footbridge that’s over that way, and came upon a clearing on the other side. I hadn’t ever been across. It was new to me and seemed a perfect sanctuary of light in the dark copse. It was sun-filled, and fresh grass was pushing up. We lay down in it and immediately the rabbits began to eat furiously. Piotr and I rested content in this pool of amber light and grew drowsy. We talked for a while, then I closed my eyes. I must have dozed for a long time, for when I awoke the light had shifted in the clearing. Afternoon was moving toward the evening. Still, it was quite warm. I saw that Piotr was stretched out alongside me, and in the heat he’d removed his boots and socks, and his shirt. One of the rabbits was grazing beside his legs, and he was holding the other in the crook of his muscled arm. He was kissing its ears, which twitched back and forth, back and forth. He was amusing himself by this game, and the rabbit seemed well content to indulge him.

  “I watched them for a long time, and against my will, not understanding why it should be so, my heart began to beat like a hammer. Never had I seen such a perfect form of beauty. In this drowsy peace, in this exaltation of light, he looked like a form into which heaven had poured liquid gold. I stared at his face, so handsome and tender, so virtuous and oblivious. I must have swallowed hard, for he looked at me and whispered, ‘Sshh, bratko, dziecko.’ He called me brother, little one.

  “It was as if light had become love itself. I could hardly breathe. I reached up and touched his face with my fingers. He laughed and pushed my hand away. Mesmerized, I touched his lips with my fingers. He frowned.

  “ ‘Don’t do that, dziecko’, he said calmly and turned his attention back to Ludmilla.

  “Heat coursed through my body, and my heart hammered even harder. My face felt as if it were in flames.

  “ ‘Can’t I touch your face, Piotr? It’s so nice.’

  “ ‘Nie!’ he said firmly.

  “ ‘Please!’

  “ ‘Why do you want to touch my face?’ he said, looking at me strangely.

  “ ‘I don’t know.’

  “He sat up and dressed himself in haste. He said nothing, but I was troubled by his frown. At the time I was too young to understand. Years later it came to me that he must have been suffering what the astoundingly beautiful often suffer. Their looks attract all eyes, but who sees them for themselves? Who cares if they have a self, isn’t it so? Women put up with it all the time. But rarely is a man forced to endure this sort of humiliation. It’s experienced particularly by men who are too handsome. Usually youths who don’t know what to do with the emotion. That was Piotr’s pain. He didn’t like his own face; he considered h
is appearance unmanly. That it was causing problems for another boy was doubly distressing for him.

  “As for myself, I wasn’t in the least distressed. I was intoxicated, enamored, captivated, obsessed, rendered speechless with awe. It was worship.”

  He looked up at Father Elijah.

  “Do I detect the preliminary stages of disgust upon your guarded visage?”

  “I am merely trying to feel what you and your friend felt that day. Two very different emotions.”

  “Precisely. Which was the source of the trouble that was about to break loose like furies from hell.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The brother I had so recently become disappeared, and the selfish little count rose up in me like a fiend. I would not be denied such pleasure. If I could not be held in the arms of sanctuary, then I would reach out to touch it. I would take it! It would be mine. It was mine.

  “ ‘I want to feel your face’, I said curtly.

  “ ‘That’s stupid. Don’t!’ Piotr said.

  “ ‘You have to let me!’ I insisted.

  “ ‘I don’t have to let you!’ His voice rose, and I saw the first trace of fear in his eyes.

  “ ‘Yes, you do. You work for us. You belong to us.’

  “ ‘We work for you, but we don’t belong to you.’

  “ ‘You have to do what I say!’ I yelled at him. Piotr looked at me as if I were mad. He had never seen me throw a fit. He just sat there and stared. As if possessed, I reached over and began to stroke his face. Suddenly, his eyes filled with tears and his mouth twisted in rage. He didn’t hit me. He didn’t curse me. He merely stared at me with a look of comprehension. If he had kicked me, I probably would have forgotten the whole incident soon after. Instead, he leapt to his feet. Without a word he scooped up Camilla and Ludmilla and strode off into the woods in the direction of his home. He didn’t bother to take the sacks of hay and carrots.