by Pat Conroy
He fell down, spent and beaten, listening to the voice of the storm, its whine becoming something almost human to him. He thought of his son, Henry, burnt and twisted beneath the steel sculpture of a downed plane. He imagined the soul of his son, freed of his body, muscular and eager, floating like a young calf, driven by the soft breath of God toward a paradise of light and rest.
“I have given enough, Lord,” my grandfather said to the wind. “I will give nothing else.”
Exhausted, he fought the urge to sleep, and so fighting, slept.
He awoke to sunshine and birdsong. He looked down and saw the boat resting on the muddy barn floor. I woke up crying. My mother’s eyes opened at my cry, and her milk flowed in a reflexive, sympathetic reaction.
Sarah Jenkins was dead and my grandfather had to pry her arms loose from the three white children she had helped save. My first night on earth had ended.
For three weeks my father lived in the bell tower and listened to the life of a German village play out below him. Each night the priest would visit him, change my father’s bandages, teach him how to speak German, and bring him news of the war. The priest brought sausages, loaves of bread, great jars of pungent sauerkraut, bottles of wine, and the best beer my father had ever tasted. The first days were very bad for my father because of the pain. But the priest ministered to him with those clumsy, soft hands through one long hard night when my father thought he might die. After that he began to grow stronger.
At first, because of his fear, the priest only came at night. The image of booted Nazis kicking down his door haunted him; and my father’s innocent, freckled face, the priest knew well, could bring this image to life. My father’s presence had created a moral nightmare for the priest and it tested abundantly the mettle of his character. The priest felt he had been given the soul of a rabbit in times that called for lions. He told my father that after they had passed a week together. My father’s coming had required the priest in him to rule over the man.
As my father healed, the priest’s evening visitations lengthened. The priest had always found nights very hard. The loneliness of his vocation was unbearable at times. The priest ached for the easy, uncomplicated friendships he witnessed between some of the men in the village.
Arriving after sundown, the priest would often not leave my father’s side until long after midnight. In my father, Günter Kraus had found the perfect friend: captive, injured, and always available.
“Why did you become a priest?” my father asked one night.
“The first war. I was in the trenches of France. I swore to God if he let me live I would become a priest. So.”
“Did you ever want to have a family, a wife?”
“I am very ugly,” the priest replied simply. “When I was a young man, I could not even speak to a young woman.”
“I have a son. His name is Luke.”
“Good. That is very good . . . I often wonder what a son of mine should be like. I dream sometimes about the sons and daughters I will never have.”
“Have you ever loved a woman?” my father asked.
“Once,” the priest answered. “In München. I loved a very pretty woman whose husband was a banker. Nice woman. She liked me very much, I think. But in a friendly way. She was a very good woman but she has many troubles. She came to me to advise her. So, I advise her. Then I start to love her. I feel it inside me. I think she loved me too but in a friendly way. I tell her she must not leave her husband because of God’s will. But he beat her. She leaves him and goes to her mother’s house in Hamburg. She kiss me on the cheek when she comes to say goodbye. I thought many times of going to Hamburg. I thought I loved her more than I loved God. But I did nothing.”
“Why didn’t you go to Hamburg and just bang on her door?”
“Because I feared God.”
“Look, Günter,” my father said, “he’d understand. He made that woman beautiful to you for a reason. He probably put a lot of time into making her. Did she have a nice shape?”
“Please,” the priest said, “I am a priest. I do not notice such things.”
“Oh, sure.”
“She had a good soul. I hope to meet her in the life after life.”
“I’m glad you didn’t follow that woman up to Hamburg, Günter.”
“Because you think it would be a sin?”
“No, because you wouldn’t have been here at this church when I needed you.”
“Ach. Why did you have to choose my church? This I did not need.”
“Well, you sure saved this ol’ cowpoke,” my father said, turning his head on his pillow and looking straight at the priest. “I want you to visit me when this war is over.”
“Ach. This war will never be over. Hitler is crazy. Every day I pray that God will make Hitler a good man. My . prayers mean nothing to God.”
“You can’t make chicken salad out of chickenshit.”
“I do not understand.”
“Just a saying.”
“I pray hard. But Hitler is still Hitler.”
There was a full moon over Germany the night my father left the bell tower. The feeling in his left arm had returned slowly, though his face was still partially paralyzed. The priest had brought him clothes for the journey. They ate their last meal together, and my father, touched and grateful, tried to find words to thank the old man, but words failed him, and they ate their meal in almost complete silence.
After the meal, my father studied the route of escape the priest had planned for him, noting where he was most likely to run into Nazi patrols and the exact point where he could enter Switzerland.
“I have brought you a hoe to carry with you, Henry,” the priest said.
“For what?”
“If someone sees you, he will just think that you are a farmer. You can sleep in barns when you are tired. Hide yourself well, Henry. I have packed food in this bag, but it will not last. You must go now, Henry.”
“You’ve been so good to me,” said my father, overwhelmed with a free-flowing love of this man.
“You needed help, Henry.”
“But you didn’t have to help me. You did. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I am glad you came. It gave me a chance to be a priest. The first time God tested me I did not act like a priest.”
“What first time?”
“Long before you came, a family came. They were Jews. The father I knew well. He was a good man, a merchant in the next town. He has three children. All girls. A nice wife, very fat. He comes to me one night and says, ‘Father, please hide us from the Nazis.’ I refuse to hide the Jews. That is bad enough. But my fear is so great that I turn them in to the Nazis. They die at Dachau. I try to do penance for the Fischer family. I ask God to do something to remove the blood of the Fischers from my hands. But no, even God is not this powerful. Even God cannot forgive this. I cannot escape the eyes of the Fischer family. They gaze at me when I say Mass. They mock my vocation. They know the whole truth about Günter Kraus. So if I had not turned the Fischers over to them, I would not have let you stay, Henry. I could not bear another pair of eyes following me. I fear so many things. I fear so many things.”
“I’m sorry about the Fischers, Günter. That means I owe them a debt, too. After the war I’m coming back to see you. Then you and I are going up to Munich to drink beer and chase women.”
“Ach. I am a priest. I do not chase women. I pray that God delivers you to your family safely, Henry. I pray for you every day. I will walk with you in my heart. I will miss you, Henry Wingo. You must go now. It is late.”
“Before I do, Father, I want to do something.”
“Yes, Henry?”
“After the Agnus Dei part of the Mass. You know the part? I hear you saying it every morning to those three women who come to church. After all the bells, you feed them something. I saw it the first morning.”
“It is the Eucharist, Henry. I feed them the body and blood of Christ.”
“I want you to feed
it to me before I leave.”
“No, Henry, this is not possible,” said the priest. “You have to be a Catholic before I can give you Communion.”
“Then I’ll become a Catholic,” my father said, undeterred. “Make me one right now. Maybe it will bring me luck.”
“It is not so easy, Henry. You must study much. There is much to learn before you become a Catholic.”
“I’ll learn it later, Günter. I promise I will. There’s no time now. It’s a war. Look, you baptized me, gave me Extreme Unction. Hell, a little Communion won’t hurt.”
“It is not regular,” the priest said, rubbing his chin abstractedly with his hand. “But nothing is regular. First, I must hear your confession.”
“Fine. What’s that?” my father asked.
“You must tell me all your sins. All that you have done wrong since you were a child.”
“I can’t, there are too many.”
“Then tell me that you are sorry for your sins and that will be enough.”
Father Kraus began to say the sonorous prayers of the confessor. He absolved my father from all sin and the moon gleamed whitely like a cleansed soul, its light enfolding them beneath the great bell above Dissan.
They went down the steps that led to the interior of the church. The priest went to the altar, opened the tabernacle with a small key, and brought forth a gold chalice. The priest genuflected before the crucifix. The brutally crucified effigy of Christ gazed down onto the figure of my father, who knelt in the cold darkness of that stone church and prayed for his own deliverance. The priest turned and faced him.
“Henry, you are a Catholic now,” the priest said.
“I will try to be a good Catholic, Günter.”
“You will have to raise your children as Catholics,” he said.
“It will be done,” my father said. “Is that the body and blood of Jesus?”
“I must bless it.”
“You have to ‘Agnus Dei’ it?” my father asked.
The priest blessed the host in a dead language, then turned toward the newest Roman Catholic in the world and changed the history of my family’s life forever.
The priest knelt beside my father and they prayed together, priest and warrior transfigured by moonlight, by warfare, destiny, and the urgent, mysterious, and ineffable cries and secrets of souls turned inward upon themselves.
When my father rose up, he turned toward Günter Kraus, embraced him, and held the priest tightly in his arms.
“Thank you, Günter,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
“I wish the Fischers could say the same thing to me, Henry. I am a priest again.”
“I’d find you after the war.”
“I would like that. Very much I would like that.”
My father hesitated, then picked up his hoe and his bag. He stopped and embraced the priest once more.
Günter looked into my father’s eyes and said, “For three weeks God sent a son to dwell in my house. I will miss you, Henry Wingo. I will miss you.”
And Henry Wingo slipped out the side door of the vestibule, into the moonlight and the countryside of Germany. He looked back and waved to the priest in the doorway. The priest was blessing him. My father turned away, sinless and consecrated, and took the first step toward Switzerland.
For two weeks my father made his way through the hills of Bavaria, following the clear waters of the Lech River, and guiding himself by studying the position of stars and marking his progress as well as he could on the map Father Kraus had supplied him. It amazed him that the stars over Germany were the same as the ones that shone in the Colleton sky. He could look straight up at night and be home; he felt a fraternal, neighborly connection to the arranged light above him.
During the day, he slept in the lofts of barns or curled up in forests. Dogs became his greatest nemeses as he crept past farmhouses at night. He killed two of them in one night with the blade of his hoe and washed their blood off in a clear, mountain-fed stream. The land was lifting as he walked. Once, awakening during the day, he saw the Alps clearly before him and wondered how a stranger could ever find the right valleys and unpatrolled crossings that would carry him to safety. A southerner, he was unfamiliar with snow; a lowcountryman, he knew nothing about the secrets of mountains. He learned as he went along. He was deliberate and cautious.
A farmer’s wife discovered him asleep in her barn one day. She was pregnant and had dark black hair and a pretty face that reminded him of my mother. She screamed and ran to get her husband. My father ran through wheat and corn fields and hid himself for the rest of the day in a cave beside a river rushing out of the hills. He did not trust farms after that day, trusted nothing that appeared human. Afterward, he approached farms only to forage food. He milked cows in complete darkness and drank the warm milk from buckets, stole eggs and ate them raw, and plundered orchards and vegetable gardens. He lived for the dark and became impatient in the sunlight. The walk had turned him into a night creature. But then he reached the mountains and it became too dangerous and disorienting to walk at night.
By accident, he found his hoe did protect him, authenticate him. A farmer, plowing on a hilly pasture, spotted my father walking along a country lane just after sunrise. The farmer, far off, waved at him. My father waved back fraternally. It made him bolder and he began walking down obscure, untraveled lanes in broad daylight. Once he was surprised when a large convoy bearing hundreds of German soldiers in open trucks passed by him traveling at great speeds. He waved enthusiastically at the soldiers, smiled broadly. Several of the soldiers, perhaps envying him, waved back. The hoe gave him the right to be there. His labors produced the food that fed the German war machine. He almost began to believe it himself. After he had skirted the German town of Oberammergau, he passed unseen into the heavily patrolled border of Austria.
It was only when he reached the high country that he despaired. For a week he climbed higher and higher. The farms disappeared. He struggled through a beautiful, nightmarish land, past gorges and vertiginous cliffs. He found himself above the tree line, lost and disoriented. The map was useless; the stars lost their meaning. He discovered the treachery of mountains, their false passes and dead ends. He climbed one mountain only to discover he could not descend the other side. He retraced his steps and climbed up toward another peak. Each mountain was different, containing its own surprises and deviations. He was seeing snow for the first time in his life. He ate snow. He ate beetles and grubs. At night he covered himself with the branches of fir trees to keep himself from freezing to death. How can a man freeze to death in October? the Carolinian asked himself. He was in Switzerland for two whole days before he descended, half dead, into a Swiss village named Klosters. He thought he was surrendering to the Austrians. He came down the mountain and entered the town with his hands raised, listening to the puzzled villagers speaking German to him. That night he ate at the home of the mayor of Klosters.
Three days later, my mother received a telegram from my father saying he was alive and well and had become a Roman Catholic.
My father returned to his squadron and for the rest of the war flew sorties over German territory. When he released his bombs over the blacked-out cities and they exploded into fire beneath him, he would whisper, “Fischer. Fischer. Fischer. Fischer,” as the sounds of the explosion reached him. “Fischer” became my father’s battle cry as he dove toward the earth, spreading death and fire behind him, a pilot of dazzling, supernatural gifts.
After the war, when my father joined the armies of occupation, he returned to Dissan to thank Günter Kraus and to tell him there were no cowboys in South Carolina. But there was a new priest in Dissan, horse-faced and callow, who took my father to the back of the church to show him Father Kraus’s gravestone. Two months after my father was shot down, two British pilots had parachuted to safety somewhere near Dissan. In the ensuing search, the Germans discovered my father’s bloody uniform, which the priest had saved as a cherished memento of my father�
�s visit. Under torture, the priest admitted he had once hidden an American pilot and helped him escape to Switzerland. They hung Günter Kraus from the bell tower and his body swung there for a week as a sign to the villagers. In his will, the priest had left all his worldly possessions, meager as they were, to a woman who lived in Hamburg. It was all very strange and sad, the young priest said. Besides, Günter Kraus had never been a very good priest. It was well known in the village.
My father lit a candle at the statue of the Infant of Prague, at the exact spot where his blood once fell on the priest who would save him. He prayed for the repose of Günter Kraus’s soul and for the souls of the Fischer family. Then he rose, tears in his eyes, and slapped the young priest across the face and warned him always to speak of Günter Kraus with respect. The young priest ran out of the church. My father took the statue of the Infant of Prague and walked out of the church, carrying it under his arm. He was a Catholic now and he knew Catholics preserved the relics of their saints.
My father’s war was over.
Every year on my birthday, my mother would take Savannah, Luke, and me out into the country to visit the small, unkempt Negro cemetery where Sarah Jenkins was buried. The story of Sarah Jenkins was told and retold over and over again until I knew it by heart. On the same day, my father had roses placed on the grave of Günter Kraus. Those two heroic figures were as mythic and immemorial to us as any Caesar could ever be. Yet later, I would wonder if their courage and sacrifice, the selfless, mortal choices that led to their own ruin and to the survival of the house of Wingo was not part of some obscene joke whose punch line would take years to evolve.
When we were old enough, the three Wingo children bought a tombstone for Sarah Jenkins. A year before I married Sallie, I took a short trip to Europe and visited the grave of Günter Kraus. Nothing in Europe, not the paintings in the Louvre nor the stark beauty of the Roman forum, moved me half as much as the sight of that name carved into the gray stone above him. I visited the tower where my father had hidden. I visited Klosters, where my father stayed when he came down out of the mountains. I ate dinner at the mayor’s house. I tried to live the whole story over again. Or thought I did. My father did not tell the whole story. There was one part he left out.