The King's Indian: Stories and Tales

by John Gardner

  The King’s Indian

  Stories and Tales

  John Gardner

  To Nicholas Vergette

  CONTENTS

  Book One

  * * *

  THE MIDNIGHT READER

  * * *

  PASTORAL CARE

  THE RAVAGES OF SPRING

  THE TEMPTATION OF ST. IVO

  THE WARDEN

  JOHN NAPPER SAILING THROUGH THE UNIVERSE

  Book Two

  * * *

  TALES OF QUEEN LOUISA

  * * *

  QUEEN LOUISA

  KING GREGOR AND THE FOOL

  MURIEL

  Book Three

  * * *

  THE KING’S INDIAN

  * * *

  A Tale

  A Biography of John Gardner

  Book One

  THE

  MIDNIGHT READER

  PASTORAL CARE

  1

  I know pretty well what I look like in front of my congregation and how they’re disposed to think of me. I’m not exactly dwarfish—a man of medium stature—but I’m by no means as tall as I would have been if anyone had given me a vote in the matter. I do have the freedom to wear my whiskers and hair as I please, and despite the pursed lips of certain members of my congregation I wear them longish, really from vanity, though I once preached a sermon which I think was true, as a metaphor at least, on my beard in relation to conformity, the death of religion. John the Baptist, I soberly observed, lived far from town as a religious ascetic, and society said, “He’s crazy.” Jesus, on the other hand, enjoyed people, all kinds of people, and society called him an encourager of immorality. Any denominational executive could have told them both that their behavior was stupid; things would be ever so much better with the church if John would merely comb his hair and Jesus would try to be a little more discreet.… But however that may be, I do not deny that my square black beard and the curls at my collar are to me a compensation for my failure to reach six feet. I stand, by habit, somewhat stooped; I must have recognized in early adolescence that I was locked forever from the joys of imposing height. But my shortness, my stoop, are not the worst of it. My gestures come more from my mother than from my father, a thing not especially unusual in my trade, but offensive to me just the same. Between genes and my early environment—my mother’s love—I’m not left much room to move around in. Very well to read Spinoza and Tillich on Free Will. I am, for all their philosophy, disadvantaged. All this passes through my mind sometimes when I’m lecturing my flock, and I smile suddenly, to their consternation. Actually, I am richly blessed, it occurs to me. My failure to look truly distinguished keeps me honest, keeps me Christian. However righteous, however learned my explication of the Biblical texts, I can’t forget that by ideal standards we’re all of us silly-looking, witless geese; we’d better be kind to each other and trust in the Lord. So I stand, somewhat precariously balanced, on the footstool hidden behind my pulpit, and I gesture with my long white fingers like a lady choir director, and I give them the Word.

  I tell them mainly, in a thousand different ways, the secret of shaking their foolish gloom, their dreadful and regular depression about things. They do not understand in the least what they’re here for. The institutional church is not the church at all, I say to them, but a foul encrustation, a birthday party for a man who’s left town and forgotten to leave us a forwarding address. I read them scripture: “And the Lord said through his prophet Amos, ‘I hate and I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.… Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ ” They are troubled by this, and they know where I mean to take them with it. To “the crisis in the church,” the weather-beaten sign on my office wall, THE CHURCHES OF CARBONDALE WELCOME YOU—memento (mori) from the good old days, when building buildings was the glorious mission, which first meant building congregations, pulling in dollars, shanghaiing in the lame and halt, the fat-cat self-complacent and the crazy, letting them imagine that the purpose of the church is social respectability, support of the government, perpetuation of the old traditions, the proper maintenance of graveyards real and symbolic. They know I will bring up the church’s involvement with William Sloane Coffin and the peace movement, John R. Fry and the urban poor. They compress their lips, avoid my eyes, and look miserable. Some of the staunch in my little congregation are nervously wiping their sweaty hands in their handkerchiefs. That above all brings trouble from the pulpit. I will tell them the Christian message is one of exuberant joy—“Christianity is a wide, smooth street where all the lights are green,” I say. But how can my people believe such things? Not Christian worshipers but infiltrators, people never even informed about the strange Christian theory.

  I wax eloquent, smile, show my large square teeth. I think of the stubborn, stupid sheep of Palestine, Christ’s comic metaphor for all of us, and I butt them with quotations, roll my eyes, look wildly alarmed for no clear reason. “Cheer up!” I tell them. “God loves you, crazy as it seems!” I can hardly be surprised at their uncertainty. The older members of the congregation came up through a church that no longer exists, a church ruled mainly by spiritual guides who in the privacy of their sterile cells rolled frightened eyes and bleated in vain for the spirit, terrified by Hell. You encounter them yet, those clerical antiques: leftover dinosaurs angrily, confusedly hunting for the herd; mock saints in mortification chains; collectors of offerings for stained-glass windows. (Surely God loves, if not us, stained glass.) Against their influence I prate and howl and hoot.

  “One of my favorite wealthy conservatives,” I tell them, “financed an edition of the letters written by pastors in Geneva during the period of Calvin’s dominance. He thought they would show the church’s distaste for political involvement. What they showed was that these early Calvinists were actively plotting the overthrow of the French government.” I tell them, with ecstatic joy, of the revolutionary Wesley.

  They look miserable. Hopelessly, absurdly unredeemed. The first four rows are completely empty. There are only four people, as usual, in the fifth—Dr. Grewy, who is for some reason my friend; Professor Watson, from the university, who has heard everything and maintains a coolly professional disinterest; his wife, whose present affair is with a dentist and who comes to talk with me three times a week; and old Elbert Finch, stone-deaf but a creature of rockfirm habit—a virtue I profoundly admire, though not a Christian virtue. In the rows beyond sit the clustered remains of the crisis. Once again I praise God for my ridiculousness. If I weren’t ridiculous—balanced (vanitas) on my pulpit stool—I might easily grow scornful, indifferent to these people. And if my pitiful flock were not confused and unhappy, they would joyfully go out into the world and leave my church empty. We need each other. I give them a vision they only half understand, a vision vaguely exciting, though alarming. I explain for them words in Greek and Hebrew and they frown, beginning to perceive. One day, it comes into my mind for an instant, they will suddenly get it, and they’ll rise as one man and shout Hosanna!, and I’ll become supererogatory. Hastily I toss in something to confuse them: kheseth, the Hebrew for God’s steady love. The Hebrews, I tell them, lived in a much less comfortable world than ours, and they assumed that pain and death were to be expected. For them, any break in the flow of pain was a matter for remark; the mere fact of survival was a miracle. Then hurriedly, slyly, I wind it up. “Thank God therefore for his goodness!” They purse their lips, give me a glance up-from-under like a bull, and bow their heads. I notice, near the back, a face I haven’t seen before—a rather ghostly
face, bearded, prophetically staring. He does not bow with the rest for the benediction. I lose my place, hesitate, repeat myself.

  2

  As I stand at the back of the somber, dark-beamed church shaking hands, the smell of furniture polish all around me, the church windows burning with autumnal light, my people become individuals once more, as I too become individual. I’m used to this change and approve of it, though it baffled me some, when I was younger—made me doubt my authority. I would not say to them, individually, the things I have told them—the things I have been free to tell them—from the pulpit. Poor old Miss Ellis, the piano teacher, whose house is crammed with massive, ornately carved furniture from Burma, where a dear, dear friend (I have never heard the dear friend’s name) was a missionary. Miss Ellis hates Communists, destroyers of temples, and she does not like it that Jesus was killed for suspected revolutionary activities. Her bosom heaves and her blue eyes blink tears when she speaks of Foreign Missions. Once when a novelist from Kenya spoke to the Ware Class, gently but firmly explaining to those venerable ladies that the chief effect of Foreign Missions has been to soften up ancient cultures for colonialism and capitalistic exploitation, Miss Ellis nearly had a heart attack. Her mouth gaped, her face went pale beneath the paint and powder, her small, liver-spotted hands pressed hard against her heart. She was indignant, outraged, the man was an ungrateful beast. An animal! Miss Ellis spoke with tender passion of her friend’s dedication. The man from Kenya was sympathetic, the soul of courtesy (although a heathen). He did not mean that missionaries were aware of their effect. They were saints; no one who had watched them could deny it. But their effect in Africa was history. Miss Ellis left the meeting shaking, prepared to cancel her pledge because we’d invited such a man. But three days later she sat weeping in my office. She was lost. The world was meaningless. She told how her mother, all her life, had given every spare penny to the Missions. It did not matter that Miss Ellis had done the same. It was not her own waste that broke her heart. She had her music, at least. But her mother had meant to do good in the world—a generous, warm-hearted, love-filled woman: Everyone who ever knew her had been devoted to her. “Think of it,” she whispered. There was terror in her eyes, an emptiness dark as what astronomers call the coal-pocket. “Think of her lying there, in her grave in Philadelphia, and her whole life nothing, as if she’d never even lived!” She sobbed. I searched my wits for some honest comfort. She told of the death of her missionary friend during World War II in Burma. Her life, too, the friend’s, was meaningless. Everything was. Everything!

  I could have told her—I hinted at it—that that was the point of Christianity. All systems fail: psychologies, sociologies, philosophies, rituals. To believe in any firm system whatever, even Foreign Missions, is to be left—like Adam biting into the apple—with a taste of blowing ashes. Flexibility is all, the Christian’s ability to respond, get up again, die if necessary, because everything is finally all right. We follow not a system but a man, I could have said. A conviction, a vital spirit. But who can say that to a piano teacher, for whom sharps and flats are the rock of ages, and goodness is not situational but metronomic? What I did— sighing, with a hasty private apology to God—was get down on my knees with her and pray. “Dear heavenly father have mercy upon us in our torment and confusion, for we are as children,” etc., etc. Miss Ellis wept, her scaling, painted lips trembling, her white fists doubled at her chin. And it was true, I saw, that she was very like a child, like one of her own terrified students suffering through Bach in the aquatic light of Miss Ellis’ front room with its oppressive oriental chests and red velvet drapes. I did not like the theology in which she was reared, but I was no missionary. Let her be converted on Judgment Day. She sobbed, kneeling on the carpet beside me, her face turned up toward the sign, THE CHURCHES OF CARBONDALE WELCOME YOU. And it worked, of course—as how could it not? She accepted her bafflement and disillusionment, turned over her helplessness to Jesus, just-as-she-was-without-one-plea and so on. Exactly as a Christian would have done. I could have told her, if I’d wanted, that prayer itself can be idolatry—a confusion of the symbol and the fact. I didn’t. I led her in a hymn. (The door was closed. My secretary, Janice, was in the back room running off mimeographs.) What a friend we have in Jesus, all our griefs and pains to bear … Our voices quavered uncertainly up to THE CHURCHES OF CARBONDALE WELCOME YOU. Miss Ellis caught my hand—hers was small, but her grip was as powerful as a monkey’s. What a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer. When we finished we stood up. “Reverend Pick, I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. Tears, trembling smile. I said, “Don’t thank me, Miss Ellis, thank Our Savior.” Callous, you may say. I prefer to view it as a momentary lapse from charity. Love is a difficult thing to sustain without hypocrisy on the one hand, stupidity on the other. I felt sympathy for her, but not enough sympathy to abandon my theology, accept her as an equal. Miss Ellis proves more generous. I sometimes think she no longer listens to anything I say in the pulpit: I’m a harmless lunatic, a dear, dear friend. But she does listen, strange to say. Heaven only knows what she thinks of it all. She tips her head now (blue hat, white berries), preparing her face for my greeting.

  “Good morning, Miss Ellis.”

  “Good morning, Reverend Pick. Such a splendid sermon! It makes a person think!”

  The strange young man I noticed earlier, no doubt a college student, comes up behind her. He’s very tall. He has curly hair hanging to his shoulder blades, and wide blue staring eyes. He moves like a zombie, a creature in a dream. Gives me the willies even now. I reach up eagerly to shake his hand and inadvertently—unless he arranged it— catch hold of his thumb. He gives me a power-to-the-people shake. As he does so he passes me, speaking not a word, turning to keep his staring, drowned-man eyes on me. He turns the way a sign would, or a hovering object near the ocean floor. He backs out the door, still staring at me. Beyond all doubt a maniac, or else stoned. Or Christ come down to check on me. I feel a brief, sharp tingle of fear, a rising of the hackles, but it passes at once. I have no idea why the stranger rouses such feelings in me; but it’s of no importance. They too, the members of my congregation—Miss Ellis, standing at the door, looking back—are alarmed by him. Their distress is in their eyes.

  “Good to have you with us,” I call after him.

  As he backs past Miss Ellis into the too-bright October sunshine, I have a fleeting impression that it’s the world, not the stranger, that’s moving. In the arch that frames him, trees rise past his ghastly head like planets.

  I reach toward Professor Stibitz, who catches my hand, squeezes hard, and smiles. “Very interesting sermon as usual, Reverend.” A voice like a cello.

  “Why thank you.”

  “Not at all.”

  3

  John Grewy, M.D., is in the church office counting money from the collection plates. Janice, my secretary, leaves as I come in. She never leaves anyone alone in the office. A careful guardian. Gentle as a dove, you might think at first glance; but watchful, everlastingly there. Her devotion could unchain earthquakes. I’m sometimes a little afraid of her myself. Dr. Grewy has his coat off—it’s on the back of his chair— and sits in his wide gray suspenders. He’s a short man, a few inches shorter than I am, and equally ridiculous. Brown hair crookedly parted down the middle, gold-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses, a neck whiter than a lily. He’d do well to grow a beard, in my opinion. Nevertheless, God loves him, and even I, I find, am glad, as usual, to see him.

  “We rich as the Vatican yet?” I ask.

  “Not yet.” Belatedly, he smiles. His eyes, behind the thick lenses, are like hens’ eggs.

  I have in some way slightly annoyed him, made him lose his bearings. I don’t worry about it, though I keep it in the back of my mind as I take off my robe and hang it in the closet. It comes to me at last that he dislikes jokes about the Vatican. By prayerful meditation—that is, by turning it over and over in his mind until the idea has become no longer shocking—he has
adjusted to the ecumenical movement. Now here I am, casting aspersions on another faith. I shake my head and smile, and, the same instant, I catch my reflection in the glass of the photograph of Lake Geneva. I’m startled, as usual, by the beard. I remember the strange young man at the door, how alarmed I was by his oddity, his offensive foreignness. So my flock must have felt when I returned from my summer of study in San Francisco. Poor Dr. Grewy, for instance; a man of routine; a conservative. (I watch him light his pipe, stretching his lips like an infant at the nipple.) Dr. Grewy was chiefly responsible for, as he calls it, our physical plant. That was in the time of my predecessor, a silver-haired solemn old man with a lisp, or a whistle, to be precise, a sort of birdcall on the s’S of Jesus. Dr. Grewy was hurt, “deeply wounded,” he said, when I first suggested, in some sermon or other, that the era of building in the forties and fifties was a theological error for which we must pay through the rest of the century. I gave him Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” and he not only read it but made it the subject of his men’s class discussions. I gave him Tillich, the letters of Bonhoeffer, and books on the work of inner-city churches. It gradually came clear in his mind that justice is more important than wine-red carpets in the lounge. Dr. Grewy was grieved, bewildered, obscurely ashamed of himself. He came to visit me one night at the manse. He stood in the twilight, two years ago exactly, clumsily buttoning and unbuttoning his suitcoat, looking vaguely around in his thick-lensed glasses at the porch balusters, the mat that says Hello!, the stack of rotting wood for the fireplace, butt-ends from the Carbondale railroad-tie factory. I hardly knew him at the time—I’d been here in Carbondale less than a month—though I recognized him as one of my church officers. “Good evening,” I said, reaching out for his hand.