A Tender Victory

by Taylor Caldwell

  Johnny sat near the desk, and the priest sat behind it. Jean and Pietro stood on each side of Johnny, and he held their hands tightly. They regarded the priest with respectful if fierce interest, on guard against a stranger. He in turn, understanding the fear and uncertainty in them, gave them only quick smiles, and did not speak to them immediately. He had been listening to the young minister, his deeply sunken gray eyes fixed on Johnny’s face.

  As Dr. McManus had said, the priest was in his thirties, and had the tall and heavily muscular physique of an athlete. His motions were sure, well coordinated, without nervousness. He had a large, darkish-blond head, a big flushed face, and a strong mouth. In general appearance he was only a bulky, strong priest, with broad peasant hands and extra-large feet. But when one looked into his steadfast and all-seeing eyes one saw an immense spirituality and resolution and fortitude, not too tempered by gentleness, and utterly devoid of illusions.

  “So,” said Johnny, “I baptized them—conditionally. But I am sure they are Catholics.”

  The priest smiled. “Conditionally,” he repeated, and his light blond eyebrows twitched. “That’s a Catholic phrase. But, as you’ve told me, you were a war chaplain, and one of your friends was a priest.” He paused, considering Johnny. He had listened in silence to the long story, and sometimes his eyes had narrowed on the minister with doubt, and sometimes with incredulousness. “I’m glad your board and the Ladies’ Aid eventually agreed with you. But, you know, you’re going to have a lot of unpleasantness, with the rest of the congregation.” He coughed. “Esepcially with the women. I know. There’s the Sodality, and the nuns in our school. Women have naturally good hearts with regard to children, but they can be very—difficult.”

  Like Johnny, he smoked a pipe. A large vase of gladioli in many brilliant colors stood on the desk. He stared at the flowers and thought.

  “Very—unconventional,” he said. “A minister bringing up two of his adopted children as Catholics. The nuns are going to have words to say about them living in your house; they’re going to talk about our small orphanage. You see, Mr. Fletcher, it’s human nature to distrust human nature. I’ll have to talk with them emphatically, pointing out that you needn’t have done this at all, but could have brought the children up in your own way. That’ll make them more mistrustful and suspicious of you for a while. They’ll wonder what your real object is.”

  He scrutinzied Johnny intently, but Johnny only smiled. “I know all about human nature. It’s fundamentally all right, once you cut through the layers of animal suspicion and expediency.”

  The priest said, “I’ve been dealing with people for quite a long time. The first thing they think of when something is offered them in all goodness and Christian generosity is what they call an ‘angle.’ That’s a nice commentary after two thousand years of Christianity. A Christian is practically as strange on this earth as a man from Mars. He needs getting used to. In the meantime, the reservation is that he has an angle, and that the angle will show up eventually. In fact,” the priest added candidly, “I thought of that myself, when you called this morning.”

  “Why?” asked Johnny.

  The priest shrugged. “I told you; I’m only a human being. I kept asking myself: What is really behind this? A Protestant minister who has two children states that he is bound by honor to bring those children up in another church, particularly a Catholic one! Wouldn’t it be more logical to suppose that he’d want them to be Protestants? I’m sure every minister and priest would ask himself that same question, with doubt about your real intentions.” Again the priest smiled, and suddenly his smile was kind, and a little wondering, as he said wryly, “You see, we meet so few Christians, in the full meaning of the word, don’t we?”

  Johnny smiled in return. He smoothed Pietro’s quivering arm tenderly, and the staring little boy became quiet. “I don’t know,” he replied thoughtfully. “I’ve met a lot of Christians who didn’t know they were Christians. Like Dr. McManus, for instance. And I’ve met, unfortunately, very vociferous Christians who were really pagans, without any heart or sympathy or compassion or kindness.”

  The priest nodded. He opened a door in his desk and brought out a bottle of wine and two small wineglasses. He filled them carefully, his brow wrinkling with thought. His forehead was sunburned and very broad, and peeling, for his highly colored skin was fair. He gave Johnny a glass of wine, then looked at him gravely. “To a Christian,” he said, and sipped the wine.

  “I do what I can, but it isn’t always enough,” said Johnny with a sudden depression. The priest flashed him a glance of pity and nodded again. He put down his glass, turned with an air of authority to the children, and swung his chair about. “Come, little ones,” he said.

  The boys stood stiffly beside Johnny and did not move. But he did not urge them. The priest’s piercing eyes rested on them, and he held out his hands with gentle command, waiting in patience.

  Then Jean glanced at Johnny, and the minister smiled. Then, with determination, Jean stepped forward and seized Pietro’s vibrant hand, and pulled him slowly to the priest. But they stopped just beyond the reach of his hand.

  Johnny spoke quietly. “This is Father Krupszyk, boys. I told you this morning. Abbe, Jean. Padre, Pietro.”

  “Padre!” cried Pietro, and gave the priest his blazing dark smile. He made a small jump. Jean looked at him sternly. “Don’t,” he said. Pietro continued to grin and eyed the priest with a kind of respectful mischief. Father Krupszyk laughed. He said to Jean, “In Pietro’s country the priests are always happy when the children jump with pleasure at the sight of them. The priests sometimes play with them, throwing ball, or racing, or helping them pick flowers, or kneeling with them at wayside shrines.”

  “Like Papa,” said Jean, and some of his austerity lessened.

  “Like your papa,” said the priest. He still held out his hands, and now the children approached him slowly. He put a hand on the shoulder of each of them, and as he studied their faces his own face deepened with compassion and love. He spoke to Pietro in Italian, “Little one, I am your friend. Never fear me.” To Jean he spoke in French, “I am your curé, your confessor, your friend, my child.”

  The children gazed at him, puzzled, searching in the almost forgotten places of their minds to understand him. Then they smiled. The priest lifted his hand impulsively, and then—to Johnny’s astonishment, for he had thought they did not remember—the children knelt immediately and bowed their heads, and the priest blessed them. To Johnny this was so moving that he swallowed hard. Jean had recalled, all at once, the sign of the cross, and he made it; Pietro, watching him, quickly lifted his hand uncertainly, and imitated him. When the children stood up the priest put his arms about them, hugged them briefly. Then he opened a drawer in his desk and brought out two rosaries with black beads and silver crucifixes, and gave them to the boys. They examined them with intense curiosity.

  “Do you know what that is?” the priest asked of Jean.

  The boy frowned, his pale eyes seeking into the distance. He rolled a large bead in his hand, and then in the voice of a sleepwalker he said, in French, “Our Father—”

  Pietro cried out shrilly, as he touched a smaller bead, “Madre—Madre!” He jumped again, in his excitement. He clasped the rosary in both his hands and pressed it to his meager chest in glee. The priest watched him affectionately. He said to Johnny, “There is no doubt that they are baptized Catholics, with some Catholic instruction, which was interrupted by the madness of the war, and concentration camps.” Pietro ran to Johnny, showing him the rosary. “See! See!” he exclaimed. “Vittorio had. Pietro had. Got lost.”

  Johnny lifted him to his knee, and Pietro nestled against him, giggling with delight. Johnny smoothed his black curls. The priest said to Jean, “First Communion. Do you know what that is? The Table of the Lord—”

  Jean was silent. Again, his eyes sought in the distance. Then in that strange far voice he murmured, “The Bread. The Blood.”

/>   “Yes,” said the priest. He looked at Johnny. “He must have made his First Communion, then, long ago.” He sighed. “But the little one, Pietro, did not, I think. He must have been too young. His brother taught him the rosary, apparently, in the concentration camp. The poor, devout, good young man, who must have been very young himself. There are times,” the priest added, and his voice hardened, “when, in spite of myself, and when I think of what has happened in the world, and what will probably happen again, I become bitter.”

  He pushed a button on his desk and after a few moments an elderly nun, accompanied by a middle-aged, aproned woman, entered the library. Johnny stood up. “This is my sister, Mrs. Sakowski, who is also my housekeeper. She practically runs the parish—and me, too.” Mrs. Sakowski, who was as big as her brother, gave Johnny a reserved smile, and the priest an admonishing one. “And this is Sister Sylvia,” said the priest. “She is principal of our school. As school opens next week I thought she should know the children. Sister Sylvia, this is Jean Fletcher, and Pietro Fletcher. Perhaps you’d like to take them and show them the school, and the church, too.”

  The nun had a bright face and brown eyes glinting behind glasses. She was small and plump and motherly, and the children went to her at once. She took their hands and led them out, followed by Mrs. Sakowski. “Those two!” said the priest, as one man to another. “If one of them isn’t giving me—a tongue-lashing, the other is. Sister Sylvia is quite a character. She resents my even entering her precious school, and I have to tread there lightly. She seems to think the school belongs to her personally. And my sister thinks I belong to her. The two don’t agree on anything except that I’m a simple fool who has to be guided and directed and managed.”

  “I know,” said Johnny sympathetically. “I have a housekeeper, Mrs. Burnsdale.” The priest gave him a condoling look, and then they both laughed.

  Father Krupszyk talked of the city. It was evident that he detested Mr. Summerfield. “A rascal,” he said in a cold, emphatic voice. “He uses those papers of his to bring dissension and hatred and strife to this city, and to the county too. He writes his editorials in simple and emotional language, so that there’ll be no misunderstanding. Aimed at the man in the street. I understand he tried to buy one or two New York and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh papers. But God was merciful, and—mysteriously—no one would sell to him, though one or two were practically bankrupt. So he concentrates on Barryfield.

  “At first he was inclined to be friendly to me. He poses as an unconventional Christian, a noncomformist, as he calls himself. He invited me to visit him, and I did. Then he began to talk about ‘the poor, Polish minority of your congregation.’ Now my people are Americans; they know that their forebears were Poles. It never occurred to them that they were an abused minority. But Mr. Summerfield convinced them! Yes indeed. Then he convinced them that they were being exploited by the mine owners and the factory owners. The Polish character is not sullen; it has its playful and merry aspects. But now my people became sullen. I tried to undo the damage Summerfield had done. But people like, for some perverse reason, to think they are poor souls, badly put on. In some way I haven’t yet fathomed, it inflates their ego. Makes them feel important.”

  He sipped his wine broodingly, and his eyes seemed to sink deeper into his head. “So now the children of my parish form gangs, and they fight their neighbors, and there’s endless trouble. That’s what the Summerfields want, of course. And now we have labor trouble, all stemming from the original evil. Polish people are hard workers; they’re not rabblerousers. Give them a fair wage, treat them decently, and they’ll give a good day’s work for a good day’s pay. Now they’re being ‘oppressed’ by their employers. However, I had some success with them. I know Mr. McGee, the president of the union, and he was alarmed as much as I was. We worked together to convince the people that the mines are paying them as much as they possibly can, and the men don’t want to strike. Round one to us.”

  He moved the bottom of the wineglass gloomily on his desk, his head bent. A wan shaft of sun struck his hair, and it gleamed like dark gold for an instant.

  “Summerfield hates me. He more than hints in his editorials that ‘the shepherds are false shepherds,’ and that our business is to keep our people poor and docile and exploited. We’re in league with the rich mine owners. We want to keep our people ignorant. You see, I told him exactly what I thought of him, and exactly what his motives are, and exactly who he is. A man can stand anything except exposure. I told him I’d fight him. You know what he did? He wrote to my bishop.”

  Johnny said with anger, “And what did your bishop write to him?”

  The priest smiled. “That’s something, of course, that I’ll never know. But now Summerfield is attacking my bishop in Philadelphia. He has a friend who is editor-in-chief of one of the Philadelphia newspapers, and he writes an occasional editorial for that paper. Not under his own name, of course. But I recognize the style.”

  Sister Sylvia returned with the children, shooing them competently before her. She gave Johnny a gracious smile. “They’re very good boys,” she said. “They like the school. Jean tells me, Mr. Fletcher, that you’re going to get a retired schoolteacher to instruct them for a few months so they’ll be able to enter their proper grades.” Her glasses glinted at Johnny with some reservation. “I know just the person.”

  Johnny said at once, “Thank you, Sister. I’d hoped you would offer that.”

  The caution disappeared from the glasses. “We’ll be very happy to help the boys,” she said. She paused. “They have nice manners,” she added, with some condescension. “I must congratulate you. I don’t see how you managed it.”

  Father Krupszyk laughed, and immediately the nun regarded him sternly, as one would a frivolous person. She gave the boys a severe pat on the head, which, to Johnny’s surprise, they meekly endured. They also looked slightly subdued. The nun said in a precise voice, “They understand that they must behave, like all the other children. And no nonsense. Don’t you, boys?”

  “Yes, Sister,” said Jean, in a tone Johnny had never heard before. Johnny was filled with admiration for the elderly nun. He began to feel like a schoolboy himself, as she gave him her attention.

  “And they must come every morning for their catechism,” she said. “Before the regular classes. They know nothing about it.” She regarded Johnny rebukingly. Pietro shrilled excitedly, and in sudden defiance, “Papa is good, good, good!” And he glared at the nun. She, very expertly, glared back. “Manners, manners,” she said coldly, and Petro subsided at once, to Johnny’s renewed surprise. “You have a good papa,” she went on. “You must obey him and honor him and love him. But I am your teacher. Remember that, child.”

  Dismay filled Pietro’s bright eyes and he ran to Johnny for protection. Johnny put his arms about him. “Sister Sylvia is right, dear,” he said. “She wants to help you to be a real American boy, and if you don’t mind her she can’t help you. See?”

  Jean said with annoyance, “Pietro is fool.” He looked to Sister Sylvia for approval, but the nun regarded him sternly. “That is a wicked thing to say, Jean. Remember to ask forgiveness for it when you make your confession.” Jean, the wild, the fierce, did not retort loudly. He merely nodded his head and murmured, “Yes, Sister.” Johnny was more amazed than ever.

  The nun gave the four males in the library a long, suspicious, haughty gaze of warning, then departed, leaving behind her an air of proper contrition. “I told you—a real Tartar,” said the priest. “I’ve heard that she sometimes refers to me disparagingly as ‘the boy.’ That’s calculated to cut me down to size.”

  They were all somewhat melancholy, thinking of Sister Sylvia. When Johnny prepared to leave, the priest shook his hand warmly, all reserve gone. “I believe that God sent you here, Mr. Fletcher, for His own great purpose. We need you. But I must tell you that you’re going to have your big share of trouble. You see, you are a Christian.”

  Johnny’s spirits rose o
n the way home. Things were really going smoothly. He began to sing rollicking Army songs for the boys’ pleasure. They joined in the gay chorus, clapping their hands delightedly in rhythm. Their faces took on the expressions of normal boys, and even Jean’s flickering eyes were younger. Pietro’s voice was pure and sweet and strong. Johnny listened to the beauty of that young voice with deep attention. A singer, he thought. His mind was suddenly dazzled by a vision of himself, older, grayer, and proud, sitting in the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera at Pietro’s debut in Aida. He heard the ovation of the audience, and his eyes misted in anticipation.

  He tried not to think of Jean’s operation next week.

  The sun had come out, the early autumn sun. There was a smell of leaves burning somewhere, but that could only have been my imagination, thought Johnny. After all, it’s just the end of August. Still, the shadows under the trees, the sunlight on the sides of houses and on the roofs, the feeling in the air, the movement of the slight wind, suggested autumn, and spoke of the winter. The houses seemed more closed, more isolated, the streets more barren.

  Johnny went out of his way a little to show the boys the home of Dr. McManus. It stood in wide, iron-fenced grounds among lowlier houses. The lawns were sharply cropped, the trees standing alone. Beyond them was the house, huge, Victorian, unlovely, the graveled driveway raked and forbidding. Johnny thought that he had never seen so ugly a house, all wooden turrets and bay windows and gloomy porches. Even worse, the house had been painted a saffron yellow, with dark-brown trim. There were no flowers, only dark, glossy shrubbery hugging the porches. No one moved on the grounds, and there was no sign of life behind those narrow polished windows covered with lace curtains.