A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Felix, I am very naïve.”

  “All I can tell you is that there was nothing sordid about it, nothing nasty. And I was grateful beyond words that I could feel for—toward—a woman all that I felt for Wendele. After Sarah, I thought I could never love a woman. But I loved Wendele. And then, on one of their trips, they were killed in a car crash. For a long time I asked myself if it was a just punishment—not for them, but for me. I could never bring myself to answer yes to the question, though I went on asking it for a long time. Then, when the will—they were wealthy, but they had no children, no close family. They left most of their money to various charities, but they left a trust fund for me—almost as though they’d known they were going to die. The only string was that the fund was to be used for theological education. It could be any denomination; it didn’t even have to be Christian. They wanted me, simply, to give my life to God, and I found that I wanted that, too. I’m not even sure why I chose the Episcopal Church; it was almost coincidence, happenstance, though I don’t believe in coincidence. I was living in Chelsea and there was a seminary right around the corner. There. That’s enough revelation. And here comes our antipasto. It’s really excellent here.”

  When they were served, she prodded him. “Felix. Your phone call. About you and Allie.”

  “Oh. Yes. I felt I needed to tell you how I got into this line of work. And I’ve been good at it.”

  “Yes. I’m sure you have. Now. You and Allie.”

  “All right. I’ll have to take the long way around.”

  “I’m in no hurry. And the restaurant’s not crowded. We aren’t keeping anyone from a table.” She was not in a hurry. For the first time in longer than she could remember, she was not. And she wanted to know, not so much out of curiosity as out of growing affection for Felix.

  2

  “When I was in my mid-fifties”—Felix took a small bite of prosciutto and melon—“I was dean of the cathedral in San Francisco. On the surface, things were going well for me. I was well thought of, I really was, well thought of enough so that I was shortly elected Bishop of New York, though nothing could have been further from my mind at the time.” He let his fork rest on his plate. “What was in my mind was dust, dry dust. I preached brilliantly—you should have heard me, Katya—and I heard confessions and did a lot of counseling and helped people—I really did—and rather casually took part in diocesan politics, because I was good at that, too. But I was lonely. Trying to give one’s life to God can be a very lonely business, especially when God often seems to be absent. I knew his presence when I was in the pulpit; I was on fire with his presence. And then: emptiness.”

  Katherine watched Felix absently pick up his fork.

  “I lived in the deanery all by myself, and I had someone to do the heavy cleaning, and a couple who came in to help when I entertained—which I did a lot of, both in the line of business and because I was lonely. At intimate dinner parties I reconciled quarrels which had been going on for years; I raised money; I did all the right things. I had friends, some of them close, most of them dead now because most of them were older than I. Am I boring you?”

  “No, Felix. Go on.”

  “I’m not trying to avoid the subject, but I have to set the stage.” He glanced past a table of young Japanese students to the large photograph over the bar, then back to Katherine. “As I said, I was lonely. Admired and surrounded by people, I was lonely. I know—everybody is lonely. But I didn’t understand that, not then. I didn’t understand that it was all right to believe only part of the time all that I base my life on. Sometimes when I was counseling someone I heard myself saying the right things, but the better the things I said, the less I believed afterwards, the emptier I felt, the lonelier. I took my faith and I gave it away, gave it to people who needed it, and then it seemed that there wasn’t any left for me.

  “I was due a sabbatical. I knew part of my problem was being overextended and overtired. But that didn’t make the emptiness, the unfilled God-hole within me, any easier. I knew I came across to others as a man of great faith, and when I was alone it was ashes, nothing but ashes. I wonder—did that kind of accidie ever attack your friend Cardinal von Stromberg?”

  She picked up a forkful of lentils and regarded them. “I don’t know, Felix. It wasn’t the kind of thing we talked about. He was old enough to be my father, I suppose—but go on.” She had talked to Wolfi, endlessly, it seemed. How often had Wolfi talked to her?

  “I used to walk a lot in the evenings. It wasn’t terribly safe, even with a clerical collar, but it was all that kept me sane. I went occasionally to plays or concerts with parishioners. I heard you play. Odd, how complex and intertwined life is. Every time I think I’m settling for chance and randomness, then pattern enmeshes me in its strands. Is your antipasto good?”

  “Excellent.”

  “So. I’d gone to hear you play. Odd that it should have happened when I was going to hear you, Katya, in an all-Bach program. I’d been going to go with one of the older women who worshipped at the Cathedral and who’d been recently widowed. But she came down with a virus, so I went alone. We had fine seats, first ring, front row. And during intermission a young man slipped in and sat in my friend’s empty seat. Do you remember how we used to do that—buy the cheapest seats in the house, and ‘case the joint,’ as we used to say, and then at intermission move to better seats?”

  “I remember.”

  “So I wasn’t surprised to have a young man take advantage of an empty seat. He was so young! He looked about fifteen, though I discovered later that he was a good ten years older. He settled himself in, and then pulled a paperback out of his pocket and began to read. I’m always impelled to see what people are reading. It was King Lear. He saw me looking and explained that he was with one of the small acting groups that tend to crop up in San Francisco, and he was studying the role of the fool. Then he went back to his book, and I could see that it was all marked up. His lips were moving slightly as he studied, and he was deep in concentration. He had very fair hair, and pale skin, too pale. There were lavender smudges under his eyes—he had that transparent skin which shows the blue of veins. His features were clear and clean, like the stone-chiseled features of a statue. He did, in fact, look like a very young Greek god.”

  The waiter took away their plates, returned with the main course, uncorked and poured the wine, and waited for Felix to taste it. The old man swirled the wine absentmindedly, tasted it, and nodded at the waiter. He continued, appearing hardly to have noticed the interruption.

  “The lights went down, and he was focused as intently on you and the music as he had been on his script. Young John Davidson has that same intensity, the total self-emptying. You have it; you’ve always had it. I love music, but I’m not drawn into it in that utterly concentrated way. I was listening to you, yes, and listening well enough to know that you were playing superbly, but I was also watching him listening.

  “And that, I thought, is how one should listen to God, and I wondered if I had ever let myself go that completely, if I had ever fallen into God the way that child was falling into your music.

  “You know, Katya, I’d thought of going backstage that night and making myself known to you again. I thought maybe enough time had passed so that you wouldn’t mind seeing me.”

  Where was she in her own life, all those years ago? Michou was dead. Wolfi was dead. She, too, had times when there seemed to be nothing but ashes.

  “I wonder what would have happened if I’d gone backstage?” Felix continued. He had not touched his meal. “The concert ended, and they kept bringing you back for encores, and he kept applauding, beating his hands together with that rapt look on his face, and finally people began straggling out, and the curtain came down for the last time, and we stood up, too, and made our way out, not speaking, going our separate ways, although we were close enough to touch, and still were when we got to the sidewalk. He turned right, and I was about to turn left, still thinking I might look for the
stage door, when I saw him stagger. He would have fallen if I hadn’t caught him. He was very light; it was like holding a child, and that’s how I thought of him. He was deathly pale, but conscious enough to bend over, so that the blood came back to his head, and he managed to tell me that he hadn’t eaten for three days.”

  “Signor,” the waiter appeared by them, asking anxiously, “is the dinner not all right?”

  Felix looked in surprise at his untouched plate, picked up his knife and fork. “Yes, it’s fine, fine, thanks,” and waved the waiter away, looking at Katherine. “Are you still with me?”

  “I’m still with you.”

  Shaking his head, the waiter moved on to another table. Felix continued, “There was a small, after-theatre sort of restaurant nearby, and I managed to get him there, half carrying him. I was probably as strong then as I’ve ever been, taking good care of myself, going regularly to a gym, playing a lot of tennis, though you wouldn’t know it to look at me now. So I got him into a booth and ordered coffee, because I knew we’d get that immediately, and then soup and a sandwich.

  “When he’d eaten—and I had to keep slowing him down so he wouldn’t wolf the food and then throw up—I asked him why he’d gone so long without eating, and he said he’d spent his last money on standing room for your concert. His English accent was so strong that I asked him how he happened to be in San Francisco.” Felix paused, looked at his plate, cut off several pieces of meat, and put a very small one in his mouth. “He explained that his aunt, who had raised him, had died shortly after he went down from Oxford. He’d read Greats, and taken a First, but he’d always been interested in the theatre. His aunt, of course, was dead against it, and he felt, he said, very beholden to her, as she’d taken him in after his parents’ death and been kind to him in a distant, English sort of way, and seen to his education. But after her death he was determined to try the theatre—his father had had something to do with the theatre, though I don’t remember what. Someone had encouraged him to come to the States, to Hollywood, so he did. His aunt had left him a sizable amount of money, but until he was thirty he received only a monthly allowance, a reasonable enough sum, but he’d found Hollywood dreadfully expensive, and he didn’t find work. At least, he didn’t find work which he would or could accept. He received a couple of offers for porno films, for instance. You do know by now that I’m talking about Allie?”

  “Yes, Felix. And do take another bite or the waiter will come hover again.”

  Dutifully, he obeyed. Then, “Somehow he made his way to San Francisco and got in with an acting group—serious kids—but he’d borrowed ahead on his allowance and he was broke and about to be evicted, and when I heard where he lived I thought that eviction was probably the best thing that could happen to him. But then, what?

  “Anyhow, I believed his story, and he wasn’t lying, it was all true. So I took him home with me to the deanery. It was raining and very chilly—San Francisco in the forties can freeze your marrow. I ran him a good hot bath, and told him he could stay in the guest wing for a few days. He began to whimper like a baby, and didn’t want me to go, and for a moment I was afraid—but all he wanted was for me to bring him hot milk, and then sit by the bed and rub his head as though he were six years old. So I did, and left him sleeping like a baby.

  “And so at last I had my son, the child I had expected to have by Sarah. And he—he had been deprived of a father when he was a small boy, and I know from experience that if one does not have a father’s love as a child, that need simply goes on growing, rather than decreasing. I had an intensely happy month with this cherished son. I have not always been innocent, but this was innocent. My faith came flooding back; I shone with it.

  “And then I realized that he was not, in fact, a child, He was older than I thought him that first night. And he was very dependent on me, and I did not want that dependency to become neurotic. His check had come from England, and I knew it was time for him to start looking for a place for himself. He could not go on being a small boy dependent on Daddy for everything. So I made up my mind that I would have to speak to him—and believe me, Katya, it was not an easy decision, because I was joyfully happy with things as they were. Yet I knew that things could not stay that way. Something would happen to—to smirch them.

  “How ironic life is: the night I had planned to speak to him he came home from rehearsal and said that he had something to tell me. He babbled about a book by Goethe called—believe me, I can never forget the name of that book—Die Wahlverwandtschaften. Do you know it?”

  “Sorry.” She had long finished her meal.

  “It means elective affinities. What a snobbish little group of sods those kids were, working on their ghastly production of Lear and dabbling in philosophy and love. But who was I to talk? After all, they were what I was like when I was their age. Only I didn’t want Allie to be like that. But he went on about elective affinities, explaining pompously that in chemistry it means a force by which atoms which are of dissimilar natures nevertheless unite. It’s like that with human beings, he said. And stars. Stars, two of them billions of light-years away from each other, are drawn together slowly by some unknown force of gravity. He was serious, and all I wanted to do as I listened to him was shake him. I finally asked him what he was trying to tell me. He kept beating around the bush, asking me if I believed that it is written in the stars that certain souls are drawn together by a strange magnetism more powerful than any force on earth. And then he looked at me and waited for me to say something, so I said that I had heard the theory but thought it was romantic nonsense and it had never happened to me. So he looked at me with those guileless blue eyes and said that it had happened with him and the girl who was playing Goneril—Wahlverwandtschaften. They were destined to be together; it was written in the stars.

  “I had met Goneril. A good role for her. But if the stars wrote anything about her and Allie, it was a dirty joke. Allie was going to move in with her and I did nothing to stop him. I could have, but if he had stayed with me it would have been for all the wrong reasons. He needed to be with a woman, even the wrong woman—and she was.

  “For a few weeks he called me ecstatically, spouting more Goethe, or whatever the little twerps were reading. Sorry, that’s not fair of me. They weren’t bad kids. Their production of Lear was no more disastrous than most, and Goneril was a good actress. But then the kids began working on another play, and he began seeing someone else, and I was called to New York, and I got only an occasional card from him. But that, Katya—that’s all there’s to be known about Allie and me. I loved him. I love him. But nothing ever—maybe I could have made it happen, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t. If Allie has sins of the flesh they’re not in that direction. He’s still hung up on this Wahlverwandtschaften stuff, but now it’s with Yolande, and certainly Yolande has been the only woman in his life for a long time. So why should I be afraid about that phone call, threatening to ‘expose’ Allie and me?”

  “Why indeed—except that I was also distinctly shaken by the disembodied voice accusing me of ambidextrous sexual activities. But there’s no point in being afraid, Felix, especially when there’s nothing to expose.”

  “People distort and destroy. If they should bring up that dishonorable discharge from the army … Allie’s friendship is more dear to me than I can say. I don’t want it smutched and smeared.”

  To herself, as much as to him, she said, “There is still no reason to be frightened.”

  “Untrue gossip has done all kinds of damage, unmendable damage.”

  “Isn’t it a bit late for that?”

  “Gossip knows no time limits. I don’t want it. I don’t know what started it, who made that phone call, but I don’t want it.”

  The waiter took their plates away, and they ordered cheese and crackers. No espresso.

  “Do I—does my return to New York have anything to do with your anonymous phone calls?”

  “No, no! It’s not you,” Felix said swiftly. “You’re i
nvolved only because of me, I’m sure of that. I’m the one who caused your horrid call, not the other way around, and I don’t want you touched any more than I want Allie hurt. Why do people always put the ugliest possible interpretation on things?”

  “Human nature has always tended to look for scandal whether there’s cause or not,” she agreed, and heard the echo of Justin’s voice after Willie’s suggestiveness about Wolfi. “Do you really have no idea who it could be?”

  “None.”

  “But it’s likely the same person who accused me of goings-on with both Mimi and you,” she suggested.

  “Lord, I wish it was true—I mean with me.” Felix sighed.

  Katherine asked, “How did Allie get from San Francisco and the theatre to the Church?”

  “A few months after my installation in New York, Allie arrived. He told me that he was not cut out for the theatre, that he was a good actor but not good enough, because he didn’t care enough. But he thought he might have a vocation to the priesthood and he wanted to find out. Of course, I helped him as much as I could. He got a scholarship to seminary, and with his aunt’s money he got by. And he did have a vocation, and he’s always thanked me for that. He might have discovered it anyhow, but perhaps I had at least a small part in it. We saw a good bit of each other, but not too much. He was popular at seminary, and he always had a string of girlfriends. I was, for him, the father he had lost, and he was the son I’d never been able to have.”

  “So why should anyone threaten you?”

  “God knows.”

  “Are your calls always about you and Allie?”

  “No, no, this was the first time, that’s why it upset me.”

  “What are they, usually, then?”

  “They don’t sound like much. ‘We’ll get you.’ Or, ‘Frightened, aren’t you?’ Sometimes my doorbell will ring at eleven or twelve at night—I go to the peephole and nobody’s there. Once it was the buzzer downstairs, and I called through the intercom and nobody answered. I called the guard, and he said nobody was there. I think he thought I was drunk.”