A Tender Victory

by Taylor Caldwell

  They went in softly. Jean looked very small and sunken on that white bed amidst the overwhelming bower of manycolored roses. His eyes were closed. But he opened them immediately when Johnny stood beside him. His hand fluttered. He murmured: “Papa? C’est tu?”

  The sedative had him deeply; his pale eyes were glazed with dreams. Johnny held his hand tightly. “Oui, c’est moi, mon petit.” The boy’s eyes closed again, and he smiled tranquilly, and slept. The children peered at him, awed. The smile remained on Jean’s face; he was back in the quiet and sunlit warmth of some forgotten little villa, with the fragrance of a vineyard blowing in through a latticed window, and falling light on low green hills. His father was reading to him. His mother arranged crimson and yellow flowers on a polished old table. He turned his head and she gave him a long sweet look. He murmured in his sleep, comforted.

  Johnny knelt beside the bed, and the children knelt with him, in silent prayer. When he stood up he said, “And now we must leave Jean to his good friends the doctors, and when he wakes up we’ll come to see him again.” He clung, in his mind, to the vision of the tide and the horizon and the pearlcolored spaces, and went out with the children. Dr. McManus and Dr. Klein were gone. But the priest was waiting. His concerned eyes searched the young minister’s face. He said, “How about us going down to some diner and introducing the kids to some hamburgers and hot dogs and milk shakes?”

  “Two hours, they said,” Johnny muttered.

  “It takes time,” said the priest. “Well, kids, how about it?” He took Pietro’s hand. Pietro was always ready for novelties, and he jumped, even under Kathy’s reproving eye. Max smiled. There was a little color in his parched cheeks.

  “I have a parish,” said Johnny. “I must call the house first, and see if there’ve been any sick calls—or anything.” The priest glanced aside and said heartily, “Good. We’ll wait downstairs for you.”

  But no one had called at all, Mrs. Burnsdale said regretfully. Then she added, “I guess everybody knows you’re in the hospital today.” She did not go on with the thought in her mind that surely someone, anyone, might have called to inquire about Jean, or to express either approval or disapproval of yesterday’s sermon, or to extend a friendly invitation. Johnny hung up. He remembered the welcome dinner. How kind, how enthusiastic, the board had been that night, how fervent the Ladies’ Aid, and the other wives! Yet now there was only silence. I’ve failed, some way, thought the minister. Where? How? Nothing I touch prospers. The pain in his heart became a sick and fiery gnawing as he remembered Jean and Emilie.

  “I think I’m a false or ineffective shepherd,” he said to Father Krupszyk as they all walked down the gritty street to the priest’s favorite diner. “Perhaps it’s because I have doubts—I don’t know. All at once I feel I’m a weakling, some way. Perhaps my first sermon shouldn’t have been about sin and repentance and atonement. Perhaps it ought to have been a sermon of gratitude that my congregation had accepted me, and perhaps I should have given promises of the things we’d do together.”

  The priest turned to him; Emilie rode contentedly on Johnny’s shoulder. The children walked closely about him. The priest said, “The gospel is always love, repentance, atonement, sacrifice. There is no other.”

  “But still”—said Johnny.

  “There can be no consolation, no consciousness of God’s love, until a man knows what he has done and is contrite. We cannot give the greatest of the Sacraments without an act of contrition first. How else, except through humility and knowledge of ourselves, can we approach God?” said the priest.

  He added, “While it is true that God went out into the dark and the wilderness to look for the lost lamb, He well knew that He had a stubborn and disobedient flock. The lamb would not have been lost in the first place if the flock had cared for it, if the flock had warmed it and kept it safe.” He patted Pietro’s bouncing head. “Hi, lamb,” he said. Pietro was delighted. He skipped forward a few steps, and now, to Johnny’s pleased astonishment, Max skipped after him awkwardly, the first playful gesture he had ever made.

  “Of course,” said Johnny, and his voice was stronger.

  13

  But two hours later Jean was still in the operating room. Johnny rode home with the children in the priest’s car, a lively and noisy ancient vehicle. “I’ll be in touch with the hospital all the time,” said Father Krupszyk, “and when the time comes I’ll be at the hospital with you.”

  So there was only waiting, now. Johnny had told Mrs. Burnsdale about Emilie, and the woman cried a little. She put Emilie to bed, and Johnny and the three other children went to walk in the barren garden. “It takes time,” Johnny had assured them. “While we’re waiting, suppose we choose the places where we’re going to plant our trees?”

  He could see the bleak and cindery street over the small, leaning fence. Children were running home from school; housewives trundled by, arms loaded with bags, or pushing baby carriages. The light grew more murky; the pervading stench of industrial fumes was more sickening. Johnny and the children walked over the shaven grass and many cropped weeds, and seriously planned the coming garden. The fruit trees would line the back of the plot. Along this side there would be flowering shrubs; along the other side there would be climbing roses, and a clump of lilacs. The children were absorbed. They argued with Johnny and among themselves.

  Would there ever really be a garden here? thought Johnny. He looked at the side of his gaunt little church, its dirty walls, its ugly steeple. Everything was so desolate. It extended the desolation of his spirit, in spite of himself. The silence of his congregation was ominous. He listened anxiously for a call from Mrs. Burnsdale. The back door remained obdurately shut. If only someone would call, just someone, he thought. I feel alone. But worse, I feel I’ve made some terrible mistake, and that I’ve been rejected. Or—and now he stopped, and his body grew cold—is it the children who have been rejected? Were they to be rejected forever, not only by murderers across the gray ocean, but here also? Were they never to have a home, to sink roots, to be one with the rest of humanity? Pariahs forever, these innocents who had done nothing to deserve torture and hatred? Was man’s vengeance on innocence never to be satisfied?

  No, thought Johnny, it is never satisfied.

  The children had left him for a vehement discussion of exactly where their particular trees were to be placed. He stood alone in the center of the desolation of the starved plot, a tall black figure against the wan sky. He did not see the group of youths who had gathered on the opposite side of the fence. Their schoolbooks were slung over their shoulders. They were leering at the minister with malice, their eyes gleaming.

  Then one of the boys shouted at him, in a scream of gleeful hatred, “Take the kikes out of here, blackbird! Get the hell out of here!”

  “Get out!” shouted the others, and they leaped up and down on the sidewalk in their ecstasy of hate, their almost voluptuous urge to destroy and rend, an urge ever eager, never sleeping, always slavering and writhing under a precarious surface of civilization. “Get out!” they shouted. Crucify him, they said in their hearts. Crucify him, because we have never known him, and because he is harmless and innocent and is a reproach to us. Vilify him, for he is compassionate and has done no evil.

  Johnny started. His first concern was for the children. They had stopped where they were, and were standing in frozen silence, their faces still. Then Kathy gathered the two boys to her tightly, her arms about them. They waited.

  The fury of the big boys, however, was not directed now against the children, but against the visible symbol of what they feared and fled from, every moment of their lives.

  Johnny started walking toward them, slowly and steadily, his face white, his blue eyes blazing. They stopped leaping and screaming, and waited for him, their twisted lips wet, their eyes glittering. “Who are you?” he asked sternly. “What are you doing here?”

  The leader of the boys gave the others a sly and shining glance. His hands gripped the
pickets of the low fence; he was bent as if about to spring. “This here’s our church,” he said in a voice like a growl. “We belong here. You don’t. We want you out, see? You, and those”—and he uttered a foul word.

  Johnny halted, about ten feet from the fence. He said, “Your parents told you that?”

  They shouted a demented affirmative at him, and began to leap about again, as if mad with their orgiastic rage against him. They were the insane dervishes of all wickedness, whirling in circles. The leader did not move, however. He just kept his basilisk eyes fixed on Johnny with menacing glee.

  Johnny was silent. There were no words on his tongue. What did one say to such as these? What would be effective? What would turn their hatred aside? His heart burned with anger. This was his flock; these were his children, in a spiritual bondage. Here were the youths who tomorrow would be men; here, in this church, they had been baptized, confirmed. Here they had been taught—Christianity?

  Who had failed them, from the very moment they had been horn?

  He gave all his attention to the leader. His voice was less stern. “You say you belong here. So you must be a Christian. Are you a Christian, now?”

  The boy licked his lips, and the sharp glitter in his eyes intensified. He was enjoying himself. “Yes, I sure am,” he said. “Good, white American Christian. That’s what I am. Don’t like foreigners, dirty foreigners, see? We got enough in this town already, and we don’t want yours. See? What kind of a minister are you anyways, bringing ’em here?”

  Johnny took another step toward the fence. The other boys rushed to the side of their leader like bits of iron to a magnet. They clustered about him, all malignant and bobbing heads.

  “You know,” said Johnny gently, “that’s what the people in Jerusalem said about Jesus. Do you know His name? Jesus. He was from Galilee. He was poor and homeless. He didn’t—talk—the language—right. He had an accent, not like the people in Jerusalem, who had advantages. He was a stranger. Like my children here.”

  The youth had a vicious face, but an intelligent one. His eyes gleamed upon Johnny. He was silent, and his eyelids blinked. “Get him” muttered one of his companions. The leader ignored him.

  “What’s Jesus got to do with these here foreigners you brought here?” he asked contemptuously.

  “Foreigners,” said Johnny ponderingly. “Oh, yes. That’s what the people in Rome called God’s Apostles. And God Himself. When you pray, do you ask a Foreigner to help you? If you pray?”

  The boy blinked again, and he frowned. No one ever told him, thought Johnny. No one ever told him the truth. Johnny said, “God chose a Jewish maiden to be the Mother of His Son. And her Son was clothed in Jewish flesh. Haven’t you heard?”

  “It’s a lie,” said the youth.

  “Haven’t you read the Bible?” asked Johnny. “Didn’t anyone ever give you a Bible?”

  “Never heard Christ was a Jew,” said the boy defiantly.

  “God is every man, every race, every color,” said Johnny. He had reached the fence now, and put his hands on the pickets. “God is every Catholic, every Jew, every Protestant, every Mohammedan, every Buddhist. Haven’t you heard? Where are your teachers? Where are your parents? Where are your pastors?”

  The boy’s hands fell from the pickets. “Uh?”

  “Who betrayed you?” asked Johnny.

  “Betrayed?” asked the boy in return. He scowled. He was about sixteen, with a cropped head, a lean, cavernous face, and he was dressed in a slovenly fashion, deliberately. “Oh, you mean who let me down, eh?”

  “Yes, who let you down? Who let the world down?”

  The boy stared at him shrewdly. “Maybe you did,” he said. And he laughed scornfully. The boys jumped about him, not understanding, their eyes distended.

  “Yes,” said Johnny, “I think you’re right.”

  The boy looked away, chewing his lips. His hands clutched the fence nervously. He glowered, and his eyebrows twitched. Another boy said restlessly, “Let’s get goin’.” The leader again ignored him.

  “What do you mean, I’m right?” he asked sullenly.

  “You said I did,” replied Johnny, and his voice was full of regret. “I betrayed you. Every pastor you ever had betrayed you. And your parents, and your teachers. Forgive us, son, for we knew what we did all the time.”

  “He talks crazy,” said one of the boys. “What’s the matter with you, Lon?”

  “Geez, he’s a nut,” said another.

  “Shut up!” shouted the leader, and he turned with frenzy on the others. “What you doin’ here, anyways?”

  But it was too late. One of the boys lifted his big hand and hurled a stone at Johnny. The rock struck him on the temple, and he staggered.

  Flame burst in a ring about his head. So, he thought, dazedly, that is what the crown of thorns felt like, individual points of fire piercing the skull. Now, how did He endure it, the innocent One, the blameless One? Sudden darkness engulfed him; far back in its abyss he could see the upheld Cross, somber against a livid light. Well, yes, he thought, there it is; I think I forgot. But what was this mass of faces around him now, faces like inflated balloons, puffed out, white, glaring, staring, with wide-open mouths that uttered screams and yells? Go away, he thought he said aloud. I’m very tired. I think I could sleep. I need to sleep, so I can stand what is happening to Jean, and Emilie. Rest, rest. “Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Wind of the Western Sea,” a woman sang, the sweet voice of a young woman, his mother. He had forgotten her. She had died when he was twelve. Sing to me, Mother, he cried in himself. I’m so very tired. A warm hand touched his face, and there was the dropping of tears on his cheek.

  The darkness whirled about him. I shouldn’t think of my mother, he thought. I shouldn’t remember love and softness and tenderness. What do they call these things today? Sentimentality? Eternal verities. Listen how they laugh.

  A woman was calling desperately, somewhere far out in space. “Help me, help me!” she cried. Yes, he called back, but she did not hear. She turned her white face to him, and he saw her turquoise eyes, and they filled the whole universe.

  “Sure, sure,” said a man’s young voice. “We’re all right now. Everything’s all right.”

  But it isn’t, thought Johnny. Why do they always say that, when it is a lie?

  He opened his swimming eyes. He saw a wide sea of vermilion through the swaying outlines of a round window. Sunset, he thought. He was lying on his bed, and he was astonished. He turned his head and met the concerned but smiling eyes of Dr. Timothy Kennedy, and he was more astonished. He said in a feeble voice, “Emilie?” The doctor nodded. “Yes, Emilie. Right here. The kids are right here.” And Johnny saw them, at the foot of his bed—Emilie, Pietro, Kathy, Max, their young faces serious and pale. Then, as they saw he recognized them, they broke out in joyful smiles, and Pietro jumped excitedly. “Jean!” cried Johnny, and tried to sit up. But there was a monstrous pain in his head, and now all faces became double, and a horrible nausea rose in his throat.

  Dr. Kennedy pressed him down, though he struggled. A needle was slipped deftly into his arm, and he discovered that he was undressed, and in pajamas. What had happened to him? Jean. Then—the boys, the stone. He groaned. Mrs. Burnsdale was coming into the bedroom, a bloated, twoheaded Mrs. Burnsdale, and with her was a fearsome gargoyle, also two-headed, moving like a huge toad very close to the floor. He could hardly recognize this creature as Dr. McManus. He turned from the sight, sick, and then in a corner of the room he saw a large boy crouched on a chair, his hands clenched on his knees.

  He groaned again, “Jean? Jean? What—what—?”

  Dr. McManus lifted his wrist and counted his pulse. Then he squealed, “Can’t leave you out of my damned sight a minute! Get in the God-damnedest trouble. Now lie still. You’ve got a brain concussion. Take X rays tomorrow. Maybe a fracture; don’t think so, though.” He touched a bandage on Johnny’s head and said in a deadly voice, “However, this pig ain’t going to forget t
his day to the last day of his life.”

  The boy in the corner shouted, “I won’t!” He began to cry.

  “Shut up, swine,” said Dr. McManus in a conversational tone.

  “Jean, Jean?” murmured Johnny urgently. The pain in his head was dimming. But he could feel individual fire in it, points of fire.

  “Well,” said Dr. McManus, sitting on the side of the bed, “we got it just in time. He was developing osteomyelitis in one of the bones. Devilish thing to cure. Good chance, though, with this here penicillin; hopeless, almost, without it. We had to break the leg bones, and one in the arm. But, sir, we set ’em! Yes, sir, that boy’s going to be all right! Can come home in three-four weeks. Good as new in the spring; keep that in your mind, firm, for he’s got a rough road ahead for a while.”

  He wrinkled his thick gray brows at Dr. Kennedy. “Six clamps,” said the young doctor. “Concussion, as I thought.”

  Mrs. Burnsdale had placed a jug of water and ice beside the bed. Her stony eyes were red from weeping. She patted Johnny’s hand. “You see, it’s all right—dear. Doctor told me Jean’s awake, and—”

  “I must go to him, at once,” said Johnny, and straggled now with the effect of the sedative. “He needs me, and wants me.”

  “Quiet,” said Dr. McManus, and there was strength in the short arm which pushed him back. “We told him, after Mrs. Burnsdale called the hospital about you, that one of the other kids got sick, and you can’t leave him just now. He understands. That’s a bright boy. He ain’t alone. Sol Klein is still with him; God, what a job he did! He’s going on the staff of that hospital or I pull it down, piece by piece, myself. Or better, I’ll build a hospital three times as big, and put the best doctors on the staff. That’ll teach ’em. Now, look here, you stop trying to sit up. You can’t,” added Dr. McManus flatly. “Yon’ve got concussion, and it could be serious. Under other circumstances, I would haul you off to the hospital in an ambulance. But the kids’d worry themselves sick. You behave, or we put you in a strait jacket and trundle you off to the hospital after all.”