A Tender Victory

by Taylor Caldwell

  “A nice place,” said Johnny charitably.

  “Terrible,” said Jean, with new confidence in his own opinion.

  “Not nice,” said Pietro.

  Jean leaned his head against Johnny’s shoulder. “Good house, good doctor, good man,” he said.

  “Yes,” replied Johnny, moved. So Jean was thinking of the operation, too. Johnny pressed the boy’s hand strongly.

  Men were coming home from work, anxious, white-collar men with flat brief cases, or men with dinner pails, plodding. Johnny watched them as he drove slowly home. They were his people, these men with pale faces or stained ones, these men with their troubles, their hopes, their doubts, their uncertainties, their griefs, their small pleasures, their ambitions for their children, their love for their hard-working, hard-driven wives. Shabby suits or overalls, they were his people. They were one. He glanced up at the mauve mountains, cold and shining with the late sun. He saw the clusters of great homes there, proud and reserved, half hidden by trees. And they too are my people, he thought. He saw the white house of Mr. Summerfield. He drew a deep breath. And he too is one of us, he said to himself.

  Tomorrow he would take Max to the rabbi. He had already made the appointment. The rabbi had sounded bewildered, though his voice had been full and kind. Not the voice of an old man, Johnny had commented to himself.

  He passed the church, his own church, and it appeared even more dismal than before to him, with its starved steeple. From over the smoky city bells began to ring. The steeple of the Church of the Good Shepherd was silent. Perhaps there were no bells—. But of course, there must be. Johnny began to plot about ringing the bells at sunset. His first sermon, on Sunday, perhaps. The need for comforting bells.

  “See!” exclaimed Pietro, pointing. “The doctor!”

  Dr. McManus’s car, the long black limousine with the chauffeur, stood before the mean little parsonage, all glisten and chrome. Johnny was pleased. He wondered what new articles from Mrs. Burnsdale’s “list” were being delivered personally. He brought up his modest old car behind the limousine, and jumped out, followed by the children. Perhaps, he thought, he could persuade the doctor to have dinner with him and the children. He owed so much to the savage old man with the soiled hands and the furious eyes.

  He and the children ran up the small stairs. Johnny whistled, and the boys sang an accompaniment. They burst into the small hall and Johnny shouted, “Hello! Hello! We’re home!”

  But only silence answered them. The dull sunset light filtered in through the windows, enhancing the shabbiness of the parlor, which could not be brightened even by the fine, expensive green rug, the gift of Dr. McManus. Mrs. Burnsdale had unpacked Johnny’s books, but they sagged in the badly made long bookcase against the wall.

  “Hello,” said Johnny again. And now something gripped him with an awful premonition, a heavy falling of his heart. He ran into the dining room, and then the kitchen. A savory pot was bubbling contentedly on the new white stove, but the kitchen was empty. Johnny tried to control himself. There was an explanation, a very reasonable one, for the absence of Mrs. Burnsdale and Kathy, Emilie, and Max. Perhaps they had gone to a local store. But where was Dr. McManus? “Hello!” cried Johnny, and he rushed to the stairway, feeling the yielding of nightmare in his knees, hearing, loudly, the flap of his black coat on his body.

  He was about to fly up the stairs when he heard a heavy step above. Dr. McManus appeared, grotesquely massive and wide, his hat on his head. He looked down at Johnny in silence, then slowly began to descend. “What is it? In the name of God, what is it? Where are the children?” Johnny cried.

  Dr. McManus did not answer. Heavily, heavily, making the staircase quake under his somber tread, he came down. He reached the bottom. Then he looked up at Johnny and his face was malignant. “Sit down, and stop that damned yelling,” he said in a vindictive voice. He paused, looked at the frightened faces of Jean and Pietro. His mouth twitched, jerked. Johnny seized his arm, and his voice was hoarse. “Something’s wrong. Tell me. Don’t let me wait like this.”

  “Tell these kids to go out and play in the back yard,” said the doctor, snatching his arm from Johnny’s grasp. “Go on, you two, out. Out, I said. Stop staring like idiots. Jean, you’re a bright boy; take Pete here out in the yard. The yard, I said. Not on the street.”

  Not on the street! One of the children had been injured, probably by a car! Johnny groaned. The boys clung to him. But he spoke as gently and calmly as possible. “Jean, do what Dr. McManus said. I’ll tell you if—anything—is the matter. Later. Please, Jean, my son.”

  Jean gazed at him and saw his terror. He smiled encouragingly. “Oh, okay, Papa. We’ll play. Pietro will play with me.” He took Pietro’s hand and dragged the little boy out, in spite of his screams of mingled curiosity and fear.

  But Johnny looked only at Dr. McManus. His sharpened eyes suddenly saw bloodstains on the old man’s sleeves. Fresh bloodstains. “Max?” he asked faintly. “Emilie? Kathy? Mrs. Burnsdale? Car?”

  “No,” said Dr. McManus, and his squeaking voice was loaded with hatred. “Not a car. An older weapon. Human hate, human bestiality. Sit down, right there. You’ll need it.”

  A cold film of sweat broke out on Johnny’s face; it glistened in the dimming light. He swallowed, for salt water had rushed into his mouth in a nauseating flood. The doctor stood before him, his short, trunklike legs spread, his hands in his pocket. The old man stared at him stonily. “I told you, I warned you, Johnny. People are people; dogs are dogs. Same thing. The story got around, from the Ladies’ Aid, to the neighborhood. Your parish. Mrs. Burnsdale and I can’t get all the story yet. The girls are all right; that is, they’re up in their room. It’s Max.”

  “Max,” repeated Johnny, in a feeble voice. Max, with the dry, peaked hair, the lost, dreaming eyes, the pale, empty face, little Max with his cries for his father in the night. “What happened to Max?”

  “Mrs. Burnsdale let the girls and Max go out to look over the neighborhood. Ordinary, sensible thing to do. Get acquainted with where they’re living; normal idea. Except that people aren’t normal. People are swine. God damn them!” the doctor added, and the squeak in his voice broke, as if he were inwardly weeping.

  “Max,” prayed Johnny. “Is Max—?”

  “No, he isn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. We can’t move him, or I’d take him to the hospital. Got to notify the police in a minute; haven’t had time yet. Had to work fast. Hey, you’re a grown man, son, and you aren’t going to faint on me, and I ain’t going to bring you any water, or smelling salts. Listen!”

  But he put his powerful hands on Johnny’s shoulders, and clutched them tightly. “Max’s going to need you, boy, so don’t go womanish on me. He needs you right now, in fact.

  “I don’t know rightly what happened, and neither does Mrs. Burnsdale. So the kids go out to look around, that sensible girl Kathy taking care of Max and the baby. Just kids, walking shy on the street. And then the other kids come. Oh, they’d heard all about you and the kids from their mothers! Mrs. Burnsdale looks out the window and thinks to herself, Well, that’s sweet! Kids coming to play with your kids. So she walks back into the kitchen.

  “That’s all, until she hears the girls screaming. Five minutes or so later. So she runs to the door, and there’s Kathy helping Max up the stairs, into the house, and the baby, Emilie, running and jumping and shrieking like she’s gone out of her mind, poor baby. And Kathy’s trying to control her. But it’s Max Mrs. Burnsdale looks at. Max, with his right chin and part of his neck laid open and bleeding; Max, looking like he’s already died. A knife.”

  “Oh, God,” said Johnny, and he pressed his clenched hands to his forehead. “What happened, what happened?”

  Dr. McManus said, “Don’t know it all, yet. The girl, Kathy, can’t talk right about it. Won’t press her. Just got enough to know that some big dog of a boy started in calling Max a dirty Jew. Twice as big as Max. Maybe Kathy hit the boy; maybe Max began to cry or scream
. Anyway, other boys started to punch and kick him. And then the big boy. Don’t know how Mrs. Burnsdale got his name, but she did. I know his family,” the doctor continued, as Johnny groaned again, over and over. “Father makes dental supplies. Bradford’s the name. Live four, five streets from here.”

  The hands on Johnny’s shoulders knotted into fists. “Don’t worry. We’ll get Sid Bradford. Boy about fourteen. Should’ve been in a reform school long ago. Mama’s pet. Big brute of an ape. Feeble-minded, I always said. They always are. Caused lots of trouble before this. Max just happened to get in his way—. Look here, now, don’t scrunch down in the chair like that, as if you’d been kicked in the stomach.”

  But the doctor pulled a chair close to Johnny’s and sat beside him, very close, his hands on his fat spread knees. He shook his monolithic head. “God damn everybody,” he said slowly, and repeated it, with hatred.

  “Max,” whispered Johnny. “Of all the children—Max. Max, who couldn’t stand it. Max, who was beginning to forget.” He looked at Dr. McManus. “How—badly—?”

  “Twenty stitches in lower chin and neck. Knife just missed jugular vein, but got an artery. Mrs Burnsdale’s a bright, intelligent woman. Calls me right away; just got me leaving the hospital. Carries the boy upstairs, and presses pads of cloth on the wound. Saved the boy’s life. If that’s any comfort,” he concluded, grimly. “I got a nurse, and ordered a transfusion. Boy can’t be moved. Not because of the wound, but—”

  “But?” pleaded Johnny. The room was gliding about him in increasing darkness.

  The doctor hesitated. “It wouldn’t be a good thing to take him to a hospital. Away from you. He needs you. And so do the girls. Max’d go out of his mind if you weren’t with him practically all the time. Got him under a sedative now. But though I gave him the limit he won’t fall asleep. I think you’d better go up to him. Or can’t you?”

  Johnny began to get out of his chair, but the sinking anguish made him stagger. Dr. McManus caught his arm roughly. “Look, you’ve seen worse than this. The kid’s quiet, at least, but he keeps staring at the door and talking that German gibberish of his. He wants you.”

  He helped Johnny up the stairs. He saw that the door to the girls’ room was closed. He heard Mrs. Burnsdale singing a hoarse lullaby, and the creak of a rocker. But no child’s voice spoke to her in the leaden silence of the house. The telephone began to shrill insistently, but no one heard it. Someone rang the doorbell, but no one cared. The minister’s bedroom door was open, and Johnny, with the help of the wall, and the doctor, approached it. Then he heard a faint, familiar rustle, the whispering of Max in the terror of the nights. He pulled himself upright, and answered clearly and loudly, “Yes, Max! It’s Papa.”

  He marched resolutely to the door with loud steps. The bedside lamp had been lighted. Max was lying in Johnny’s bed, shrunken, small, as if hiding, no pillow under his head. His hair was peaked against the white sheet; his face, the color of death itself, was turned to the door. But his lightbrown eyes were wild with despair and torment, his mouth open and whispering. So little a boy, so helpless a child, so innocent, so undone by a murderous, insane world.

  Johnny stood on the threshold of the room, and all at once he knew hatred for the first time in his life, hatred so monstrous, so overwhelming, that he felt the lust to kill. He had often wondered what the desire to kill was like; he understood now. It was a surging of the blood, a blackening before the eyes, the curving of hands into claws.

  “Steady,” said Dr. McManus with compassion.

  “Papa, Papa?” whispered Max, and one of his hands lifted. His face wrinkled, and he began to cry soundlessly. His neck was heavily bandaged. “Papa, bist du?”

  Johnny went to him and knelt down by the bed. He took Max’s wandering hand and held it tightly. He kissed the sunken cheek tenderly. He smiled encouragement. But, he thought—what now? How can he go on again after this, when he was beginning to trust people? He’ll never forget what men have done to him before, and what they have done to him now. He’s lost, lost forever. For the first time in Johnny’s life his thoughts did not go at once, and instinctively, to God. There was a darkness, a silence, where the Light had waited, sure and shining and unshaken. An iron door had shut between him and God, and his hand had shut it in his despairful rage and hatred and sorrow.

  He did not know that he had laid his head beside Max’s until he felt a slight, wandering, blind touch on his cheek. Max had touched him, seeking. The cheap rosy light of the lamp filled Johnny’s eyes with a swimming haze. His head felt enormously heavy, yet floating. He shook it, and for a terrible moment or two he did not know where he was, or who he was. Absolute blankness overpowered him.

  Then he saw Max’s face, very close to him. Max was smiling a little, a tentative, child’s smile. But Max’s eyes were clear as they had never been clear before, and full of pity and understanding.

  Johnny looked at him, and the rapid fury of his heart slowly began to subside in wonder and amazement. “Max?” he murmured.

  “Papa,” said Max, and he spoke with painful clarity. “Papa must not cry. Papa must not be—mad. The boys—they did not know what they do—”

  The muscles in Johnny’s face tightened, flattened. Who had said that before? “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Ah, yes, but they always knew, they always knew!

  Dr. McManus stood by the side of the bed, and bowed his head so that his face was hidden. He put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder in silence.

  Max’s face was illuminated, as if some exaltation possessed him, some new knowledge. A little color came into his face. His hand warmed in Johnny’s. And then he pressed Johnny’s fingers, as a father presses the hand of a bitter child.

  “They did not know what they do—this I know, Papa.”

  He sighed deeply. His eyes closed, and he slept.

  “You can leave him now,” said Dr. McManus, in a constricted voice. “And something tells me you won’t have to worry about that kid any longer—his nightmares. He won’t have any. He knows too much—now. He’ll never be lost again.”

  Max slept in the light of the lamp, peacefully. Johnny stood up and put his hands over his face. The iron door had opened. The Light shone out, more vivid, more triumphant than ever. Forgive me, Father, he said in himself.

  He went to the girls’ room. Here a white bulb glared from the ceiling. Mrs. Burnsdale, that intrepid little woman, rocked alone in the chair. She hummed a lullaby steadily. In a corner of the room Kathy and Emilie were huddled together, the older girl’s arms tightly and fiercely about the younger. When Johnny entered, Kathy’s eyes flew to him, and they were the eyes he remembered in Salzburg—fierce, hating, terrified. She covered Emilie’s face with her arms, protecting her; the fine yellow hair was disheveled. Emilie whimpered like a frightened kitten, and crept closer to Kathy and clung to her. The children’s nice cotton dresses were stained with blood.

  “Kathy?” said Johnny.

  She did not answer. She continued to regard him with an animal’s strange and wary fear, and wildness.

  “Now,” said Dr. McManus, “what’s that sensible girl doing there on the floor, like a rabbit? Our sensible girl. Our Kathy.”

  “Never saw them like this before,” said Mrs. Burnsdale wearily. “Not even the first day. I talk and talk to them, and it’s like they don’t hear me and don’t know me.” She showed Johnny a long and angry scratch on her plump arm. “Kathy did that, poor little thing, when I tried to hug her—after she brought Max in. And little Emilie doesn’t understand, except that things’ve gone back to where they were.”

  Johnny took the scratched arm, and then helped Mrs. Burnsdale to her feet. He drew her toward the children. Kathy shrank back, and clasped Emilie closer to her. Silence stood before them like a barrier. Johnny lifted Mrs. Burnsdale’s arm, and showed the wound to Kathy. She looked at it, moistened her lips, returned that savage glare to Johnny.

  He said, “You did this to Mrs. Burnsdale, Kath
y? Mrs. Burnsdale who loves you, who combs your hair and cooks for you, who washes for you, who takes care of you? Kathy? You did this?”

  Kathy uttered a single sound—an awful growl. Johnny remembered it. So, Kathy had retreated again, in her fear and distrust. She had retreated to the place where Max would never wander again. The wound was not visible in her flesh, but in her spirit.

  Dr. McManus approached, squatted down on his heels, and contemplated Kathy. “Here’s a girl I always thought was sensible.” His voice had almost lost its squeak. ‘‘Let me tell you a story. Once a little girl, like you, Kathy, was born to me and my wife. But my wife died.” He paused and coughed, and cleared his throat. “And then the little girl died. She had yellow hair like you, Kathy, and blue eyes like yours. I thought you had come to be my little girl; if she’d lived she’d have been like you. Or maybe not. She wouldn’t have been so stupid.”

  Kathy’s eyes flickered as she stared at the doctor.

  “My own girl would have remembered how her Papa loved her. She wouldn’t have hurt anyone, as you did, and as you’re doing now. She would have trusted her father.”

  Kathy’s round face, usually so pink, was very white and fixed.

  Johnny said, “Max is all right, Kathy. He’s much better. He’ll never be afraid any more. For, you see, he trusts me, and knows I love him, and he knows that the—that the—boy who did that was sick. Here in his head. And that he wasn’t to blame for being cruel. Something made him be that way. He needs our pity.”

  A queer, sly look passed over Kathy’s face, narrowing her eyes.

  “And in Europe, too? The people were sick? Pity for them, too?” Her voice was slow and cunning.

  Johnny looked at her, full and serious. “Yes, Kathy. Yes, Kathy.”

  The convulsed arms loosened about little Emilie, and the child’s eyes peeped out, eagerly fastening themselves upon Johnny. “Papa?” she whimpered, and struggled to free herself.