by Ed Ifkovic
The mantra grew, feverish, picked up by rows of swaying women, filling the room to the rafters.
Holy daughters holy daughters holy daughters.
Then, from a microphone offstage, though with a technical squeak painful to the ear, the thunderous words, “Holy daughters.” And Clorinda appeared. “Holy daughters of Christ.”
George whispered. “She’s not talking to me, I guess.”
I whispered back. “Not to me either, obviously.”
Tobias glared at us and, shamefaced, George and I stared forward.
Clorinda swept around the stage in layers of filmy rainbow-colored chiffon that swirled and flowed around her. Isadora Duncan meets the Dance of the Seven Veils meets Salome—or, I thought irreverently, Little Egypt at a carnival. She looked luminous up there, moving, moving, undulating, her face magnificent under the soft overhead lights. She looked, bizarrely, a waif, some ethereal child, some forest denizen. But then, poised deliberately before the center-stage microphone, she began to sermonize, and her voice was whiskey-toned, honey-thick, soothing, awesome, even chilling. Not her speaking voice, to be sure, that mundane flat intonation, but now the cultivated speech of an actress. And actress she was—and I thought of her brief stay in Hollywood. Of—silent movies. No one back then heard those dulcet tones. Here she’d located her perfect milieu in her personal house of God.
She cast a spell on that crowd.
On me. On George. Only Dak, staring, seemed to be in his own world.
“‘Women in the Hands of a Demanding God,’” she thundered. “A headline wrought with power. We are the daughters of Christ, and we have a job to do. Let the men build the railroads and the skyscrapers. Let the men climb mountains and ford rivers. We serve, as daughters. The woman as God’s blessed emissary on the earth whose purpose is to insure the sanctity of heaven. Handmaidens of virtue.” Like Annika, she pointed out the various women in the temple, scattered in the rows before her. “And you and you and you. The mother of Christ, Blessed Mary, an inspiration. The harlot Mary Magdalene, herself redeemed.”
Slowly, methodically, she built her sermon, her voice rising and echoing off the gossamer-draped rafters. “To insure the sanctity of God’s kingdom, we women must…must…must lift our heads in praise of the Almighty King Himself. If our men be wayward, He straightens the path. If our men be cruel, we apply the balm of peace. If our men be weak, we bolster their courage.”
On and on, rousing and wild and chaotic.
Then her voice got incendiary, almost angry. “Look to the Bible. Look! Look! Therein lies the answer to our occupations. Not the feeble housewife in her kitchen. The typist behind her machine. The seamstress with her needle. No! As warriors, we conquer.”
George leaned in, whispering in my ear. “I guess I’m obsolete now.”
But Clorinda, in a trance, flowed from one subject to another. A half-hour flew by. She sang—for her spoken words seemed a melody—of Yael from the Book of Judges, the wife of Heber the Kenite, who saved Israel from the onslaught of King Jabin. “Deliverance!” Clorinda screamed. “It was a woman who saved the kingdom of Israel from the infidels with a dish of milk. The tyrant Sisera dead at her feet.” Then Clorinda swayed and intoned:
Extolled above women be Yael
The wife of Heber the Kenite
Extolled above women in the tent
He asked for water and she gave him milk
Gave him milk
Gave him milk.
A woman in the congregation howled and collapsed. Hands were raised, swayed in the air. Isolated voices from the hall chanted: gave him milk, gave him milk.
“And in the Book of Judith the voice of God…again. Judith. Yehudit. The One Praised. A woman so beautiful she made men lose their breaths, but a woman who invaded the camp of the infidel, the unholy Holofernes, lured him, seduced him, until he lost his head. Israel is saved from the godless hordes. So, too, in America you women must save the country from the godless who are everywhere. Here and there—and even in here!” She paused, dramatically, and a moan swept through the crowd, swelled, broke, weeping in the aisles.
Then, totally spent, babbling, speaking in tongues, a mishmash of rambling phrases…“Nebuchadnezzar, Nineveh, Bagoas…Mulier sancta…into the hands of a woman…bare…fallen…grace…grace…Satan beaten down…decapitated…a strike in the eye…crushed the nonbeliever…the…sin…take you to…heaven…love.”
She stopped. The stage went dark for a moment. When the lights came back on, Clorinda was gone. An empty stage. The crowd hummed.
I glanced at Tobias who was awash in tears, his body trembling. He struggled to compose himself, holding onto George’s sleeve like a needy child. George looked at me, and, for once, seemed incapable of the cruel or even witty remark.
We didn’t move. So pervasive was the contagious emotion in the hall that it seemed foolish to speak…to stand. It was, I realized, a wonderful display of utter belief. But as that thought came to me, I realized how removed Clorinda and her followers were from the real world. And that included the sobbing Tobias, a man who had given himself over to God, complete, entire. As I watched the rapturous crowd, I thought of Dak, still on my left, nodding his head. He had been told to join this inner sanctum of belief, and he hesitated. But thoughts of Dak immediately led me to Nadine and to Dak’s past, his roving life. This was not Dak’s world. I understood why Clorinda and Tobias feared for Dak now—the idea of murder had no place in a room filled with vaporized ether.
Clorinda built a kingdom for folks who led lives of unsurpassed dullness, whose hunger for wonder demanded release.
Frankly, I was in awe of the woman’s power.
Tobias was in his own trance. With a large white handkerchief he mopped his brow and dabbed at his eyes.
“She is a gift from God, no?”
George and I nodded.
He leaned over, in front of us, and signaled to Dak. “Your mother is not of this Earth.”
Dak bit his lip, but kept still.
The crowd began shuffling out, and I noticed there were ushers at the end of each row who cradled bushel baskets. As congregants left, coins and bills dropped into the baskets. Over and over each usher intoned, “Bless you, sister. Bless you, brother. Alms for the journey to heaven.”
Suddenly Dak rose and tapped his leather satchel. “I’m headed home.”
“Where’s home?” I asked.
“I rent a room on Springfield.”
“I’m surprised you don’t live at your parents’ home.”
He didn’t answer but waved a good-bye.
Tobias was talking, his wrinkled face inches from George’s impassive one. “Clorinda is the incarnation of the great Billy Sunday.” He paused. “That great Pentecostal revivalist. You know, like Clorinda, he was worldly in his youth, a baseball player with the White Stockings. But God had a different path for him”—he grinned widely—“even though he was a good base runner. God touched him on the shoulder and walked him to a tent where the spirit waited.”
George and I stood, but Tobias was still talking. “I heard him preach once before he died. I can still remember his voice, horrible and compelling and seductive. He understood that we in America are in a holy war. A foolish nation, this one. No wonder the Depression has shut us down. We are drinking again—liquor in the bloodstream. Evil is afoot.” A dark grin that showed stained teeth. “Billy Sunday told us, ‘I have no interest in a God that does not smite.’”
***
Clorinda appeared in a day smock as though she’d just returned from buying groceries in the Village at Driscoll’s Food Market. Her voice was back to her gravelly inflection. She stood in front of us, a little timid, and addressed me. “So what did you think?” The ingénue auditioning for her first role.
What to say: I simply nodded like a doll’s head loosed from its bearings. The transformation in her
was so radical, this shift from spiritual to worldly, that I was at a loss for words. Yes, the diamond earrings were in place, the only color on the unadorned face.
Clorinda insisted George and I accompany Tobias and her to their home for dinner. Though we begged off—George actually became mute and kept nudging me, so obvious a gesture I was surprised nothing was said—we finally agreed. “A short stay,” I pleaded. “An early morning rehearsal. Right, George?”
He found his voice. “Edna needs special coaching.”
I glared at him.
“It’s settled. A feast awaits us.”
I didn’t know about that, but we followed both out to the town car where Alexander opened the doors for us. “We were hoping to see Dak and Annika again.”
Clorinda tilted back her head and laughed. “Lovebirds, those two. Dakota wanted to go hide in his rooms, but I told Annika to waylay him for a short hop over to Newark. A weekly visit to an old folks home where, not surprisingly, my handsome son gets a few old ladies’ hearts aflutter.”
“A missionary,” Tobias insisted.
Clorinda sighed. “If left to his own devices, Dakota would do nothing but hole up in solitude and draw, draw, draw.”
Tobias muttered, “A dilettante, that boy.”
I kept still.
At the grand home a supper was already spread, the housekeeper Hilda greeting us without humor and ushering us into the dining room. A buffet of cold dishes: an ice-cold Hungarian sour-cherry soup, aspic, sliced tongue, cold roast beef, various pickles and relishes. On the sideboard a monstrous Black Forest cake. Tempting, this confection, though I planned to pick at the other drab fare.
Tobias was still under the spell of his wife because he couldn’t stay still, rocking back and forth on his heels, repeatedly touching Clorinda’s elbow affectionately, nodding at her. Nothing short of utter delirium, I considered. She looked embarrassed by his fawning attention, but I caught her winking at him when George and I turned away.
“Before we eat, come.” He pointed to a hallway that led to a study, the walls covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with—my cursory glance noticed—Biblical texts and scholarly studies. A concordance to the Scriptures lay open on a desk. On a library table a copy of What Would Jesus Do? as well as Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows. Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps. Popular fare, Biblical exempla glossily reduced for mass consumption. Best sellers all, hypnotic confections. Notes for Tobias’ own book—what had he said it was?—the herbs and plants of the Bible?—lay in neat, careful piles. Dried herbs—or so I assumed—displayed in small, squat bottles, corked.
“There is something I want to show you.”
He pointed to a small poster mounted under glass, a black-and-white placard for a silent moving picture. I peered closer: The Way Back, directed by Fred Fischbach, and starring Wallace Reid and Alice Blake. But Tobias indicated a line at the bottom, small print that identified some of the minor players. Included was: Clorrie House. He bowed toward Clorinda. “My beloved wife.”
Clorinda was shaking her head. “He found that idiotic bit of my past in a Salvation Army store in Newark. Displayed in the front window with other best-forgotten junk. A past I fled.” She looked at him. “Fled. My girlfriend Virginia got me the part. The two of us played sisters. Wide-eyed and innocent colleens. I had one real scene—We batted our eyes at Wallace Reid and followed him down the street.”
“Then you found Sister Aimee,” Tobias said.
“God directed me away from sin and perdition. Hollywood is nothing more than Satan’s playground. A cesspool.”
“But then you left Aimee Semple McPherson’s church, no?” I said.
A deep sigh. “Ah, Sister Aimee—the temptations of the flesh. She was too enamored of Hollywood herself, with those radio broadcasts and onstage shows and the splendid sensationalism. She started small in a modest chapel, you know. A true believer. I loved her. But then she built the Angelus Temple in 1923. I started to suspect some great corruption there. The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. She was herself an advocate for women, but she was a bit of a fraud with her faith healing and the promised return of Christ. And of course look what happened to her—that fake kidnapping in 1926 at Venice Beach, that supposed adulterous tryst. Who knows the real story?” Clorinda shivered. “Horrible. I wanted a more rigid religion. Old-time religion.”
“My religion,” Tobias added.
“After my husband died, the world was different for me. A scary place for me.”
Clorinda shooed us back into the dining room where, I discovered, Ilona was seated at the table. She was smiling, though it seemed an orchestrated smile, frozen in place. A long black dress, ruffles around the neck. She looked in mourning. “Hello again.” We nodded as we sat down. “Did you enjoy Clorinda’s sermonizing?” Again we nodded.
“I think they were…surprised,” Clorinda confided. “I’m a different soul up there. When I am doing the work of the Lord.”
“Very impressive,” I croaked out.
“Wasn’t it?” Tobias remarked. “It never fails to shatter me, this wife of mine.”
I changed the subject. “I was hoping Dak would stay and talk with us.”
A faint titter from Clorinda. “You know how youngsters are.”
“Actually I don’t. I’ve never married.”
Ilona eyed me intently. “Nor have I, though I raised Dak as a son. The spinster mother, although our father”—she glared at Clorinda—“took special care of him, doting on him, favoring him, stupidly indulging, but nevertheless stern with a swift rod against the boy’s bottom. The only grandson. I was sometimes…helpless.”
“Yes, yes,” Clorinda interrupted, nervous. “Miss Ferber heard you last time.”
For a second Ilona wore a hurt look, mixed with some anger, but then her face looked resigned, the shuttled-about sister dependent on the largesse of Clorinda and her Johnny-come-lately rich husband.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked her.
The question surprised her. “Since our old home was sold.” She glared at her sister.
“I came back to our old home,” Clorinda added. “A comfort zone, that place. Those interminable tours on a broken-down bus—tiresome. When Dakota and I needed to refresh ourselves, we came home. But when I married Tobias, he wanted a grand place. This place. After Hollywood I just wanted to come home. Away from there.” She looked around the room. “All the old furniture. Calm. Serenity. Tobias insisted we not change the old trappings. The table we’re eating at was my grandfather’s, brought from Vermont in the last century. This was to be a home for Dakota. A sanctuary. Someday he’ll live here. With Annika.”
“Where does Annika live now?” I asked.
“In a young ladies’ lodge in Newark. A refined Christian home. She is happy there. She was an orphan who came into town for the Junior Christian Endeavor Society on Saturday nights. Then she found us.”
“Of course.” My words might have been too clipped. George shot me a look, which I ignored.
Then, out of nowhere, Tobias launched into an animated—and unnecessary—animadversion on the proper conduct of young folks, some screed I imagined Cotton Mather would deliver as an Election Day Sermon, filled with admonition and punishment and Biblical quotation. He went on too long, of course, and it got worse when Clorinda added her New Testament softening to his Old Testament harangue. A genial battle of damnation and redemption for a heaven neither George nor I was allowed to enter. Or, I supposed, most folks living after the Enlightenment. No matter; their spiritual and dogmatic banter was obviously some sort of marital foreplay, private and cozy and titillating, and the rest of us were idle spectators.
At one point during a particularly tiresome ramble about America as metaphor for Sodom and Gomorrah and the trials of a beleaguered Job—my mind wandered, lost as I was in my own irreverent reverie—I
caught Ilona’s eye: a bemused look that suggested she understood how bored I was—and a certain joy that I had now had insight into the horrible hell she was living in this grand mausoleum.
She actually winked, then looked away.
I noticed how pronounced the veins in her neck were, how tense her fingers were as they gripped a fork. She was wearing a shrill crimson lipstick, so out of place in the puritanical room and with her own pitch-black monastic outfit, as though she’d slapped on a blood-red mouth to garner attention. A scarlet letter for the untouched spinster. Now, unfortunately, the garish red had smeared onto her front teeth. She looked as though she’d gnawed into raw flesh.
George seemed to be nodding off, though I knew such feigned drowsiness was one of his preambles to a barrage of cruel comment. Sometimes unexpected dinner invitations were fodder for his satire. The people you dine with—especially invitations you were compelled to accept—were born to be mocked. That was his impish thinking. Elmer Rice once quipped that George said many “devastatingly witty things, but never a kind one.” And George once dismissed me as a Confederate general, then added, “Remember, I’m from Pittsburgh.” We’d been through this scenario before, and I was always the recipient of a headache. I sensed a volcano ready to erupt, so I caught his eye. No, George, I signaled, no.
Tobias shifted the conversation with a remark about saving Clorinda—and now Dakota—from the clutches of Hollywood’s fiery maw and the satanic hold of life on the stage.
George looked up. “I know that there are people who see the theater as evil but”—a clownish grin on his face—“does anyone really want to know such people?”
Quiet in the room. Ilona snickered.
Tobias narrowed his eyes. “They murder each other, sir.” Said with a finality that silenced us all.