Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “That night I twisted and turned on my bed, confused and terrified by what I had done. I thought of running down to his place before sunrise to take him the hay and the carrots, to ask his forgiveness. I considered it and rejected it. After all, I argued, he’s our servant. Why should I beg for his favors? Why should I, who one day will be the count, be forced to grovel before a peasant who has sprung from a family of ignorant peasants? Slowly, as the hours ticked away, I gave into the urge to resent him for his beauty and his goodness. Above all, I hated him for his refusal to permit me to hold his glory in my hands, to possess him. My Piotr. Mine! Gradually, the resentment built and built in the darkness, surged and swam with a burst of sexual desire. Hatred, hurt, anger, and lust boiled together, seeking release.

  “In the morning, it found release. I saw him coming across the field in the dawn, coming toward the house. I thought, He’s going to tell my mother. I thought, He’s going to mock me and then I’ll feel small and ugly. I’ll feel a cursed thing. I’ll be beneath him. My hatred of him burst like an abscess, and I ran downstairs swiftly. The borzoi whined at the door. I took him outside but held tightly to his collar.

  “Piotr stopped a few meters away. He was holding one of his big gray rabbits in his arms. He waved at me and grinned. ‘Boleslaw, you feel better? You were crazy yesterday. But let’s forget it. Today’s another day, right? Let’s go fishing!’

  “I said nothing in reply. I stared at him with a hatred colder than death. Piotr quickly lost his smile. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say good-bye yesterday’, he said in a quavering voice. ‘But, look, I thought maybe you’d like to hold Ludmilla. Maybe you’d like to stroke her. She likes it. If you want to, you can keep her.’

  “For a moment I hesitated. His goodness washed over me like a wave, and it nearly broke my resistance, but I knew that if I gave in he would be above me again. He would be superior. I am the count, I said to myself. Who is this peasant to play the prince! Piotr stood waiting. I strode over, went up to him, and took Ludmilla by the scruff of the neck. I tore her from his arms and I hurled her onto the ground beneath the jaws of my dog. She landed with a thump and a squeal. The dog took one look and tore into her.

  “ ‘Stop him!’ cried Piotr.

  “I said nothing. I folded my arms and watched as the borzoi tore the legs off Ludmilla and ripped the rest of her to pieces. She screamed, and it sounded like a baby in agony. That sound was a pleasure, a deep, delicious, black pleasure.

  “I heard the sobs of Piotr. I observed his face twisted in horror and grief, and that too was a pleasure to me. He turned and ran away and never again came to the house. Did I feel remorse? Sadness? No, I felt fine. I felt a sense of mastery. I was above. I was lord of life and death. Granted, it was a small life, a small death. But it seemed to me that it was the first step in a long career that might one day lead to being above many things, many people, and that it might give me the power to rule over everything. I would never again feel small and ugly and unlovable.”

  Smokrev sat back with a smile. He reached over and lit another cigarette and began his cycle of puffing and coughing. When it was finished he said, “Time for intermission.”

  Elijah exhaled and could not raise his eyes from the floor.

  Smokrev rang a bell. The manservant entered and placed a tray of coffee and biscuits beside the priest. He went out and returned shortly with a tray of medicine for the count.

  “You are silent.”

  “The tale was not a comedy.”

  “Have I managed to shock you?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you look at me?”

  “I am thinking.”

  “I can imagine your thoughts.”

  “I am thinking that a confused boy, gifted in so many ways, could have taken a different course in life, if he had had a little direction.”

  “Absolutely. You are coming close, close. Keep thinking. You will eventually arrive at the conclusion to which I am leading you.”

  “You cannot control everything.”

  “Yes, I learned that eventually. But I can rule rather a lot.”

  “You cannot capture men’s thoughts.”

  “Those are the easiest things of all to capture.”

  “Not this man.”

  “We shall see.”

  Oh, God, he prayed interiorly, grant me grace to stay with him, grant me strength to walk down with him into the pit of his soul. Help me, help me to resist him with love.

  “Tell me why, priest. Why didn’t God stop me from becoming what I have become?”

  “Shall we begin a dialogue on the nature of freedom?”

  “Later, later. Just tell me why God didn’t rescue me. Why didn’t he rescue Ludmilla from me?”

  “It is not God who is on trial here. It is Man. To be more precise, a man. You. Why didn’t you stop yourself?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Aha!” Smokrev cried gleefully. “I have heated you up. There is anger in your voice.”

  “Do you want me to pretend that tearing a creature to pieces doesn’t make me angry?”

  Smokrev shrugged but said nothing.

  “I am, in fact, angry at the forces that manipulated your life, that made your parents what they were, that tempted you, and into whose jaws you fell. That makes me angry.”

  “Touché!” whispered Smokrev, pensively. “I shall have to search hard for a riposte to that one. Well done!”

  “This is not badinage, Count. This is life. This is the fate of your soul.”

  “Ah, yes, yes, yes. But let’s get on with it. There is so much to tell you, and I have only begun.”

  “Tell me, first, did you ever approach your friend Piotr again? Did you ever ask forgiveness?”

  “Yes, actually. Some fifty years later. But that is a boring incident.”

  “I am interested.”

  “All right then. Needless to say, I couldn’t help loving Piotr even though I now hated him as well. He preoccupied my thoughts incessantly for years. I always held out the hope that he would one day come and beg for my forgiveness, would apologize for his rudeness. It wasn’t to be, of course.

  “When I was working for the communists, it struck me one day that I should drive out to our old holdings. They had passed into the hands of the state after the war, and I had always felt quite bitter about that. I hadn’t seen the place since the nineteen-twenties, when I left for studies in Paris. It was as if I had been released from a cage. I felt such loathing for my birthplace that I hoped somehow it, and my parents along with it, could be burned or bombed without losing any of our capital. Believe me I felt no nostalgia for the estate for the longest time. When I returned to Poland after the Germans arrived, I found it confiscated by the General Government and in the hands of Hans Frank. It was used as a watering hole for high-ranking administrators. After the War, the communists did the same thing with it. But my parents had been smart enough to liquidate some of our other land holdings before the invasion, and our savings were in gold, in Swiss banks. As a result, I have never suffered extreme want. But the invaders, one after another, inhabited the palace. In Paris, I developed the habit of calling my ancestral home a palace. It opened many doors. My mother was a Habsburg, you know, and if about thirty or forty people ahead of me in the line of succession had been wiped out, I would have become the crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian empire. However, that was demolished in 1919. By then I was at the Sorbonne studying decadent modernist literature. Nevertheless, my title was quite useful. It unlocked the doors of many palaces, studios, and bedrooms.”

  “You were telling me about meeting Piotr again. About forgiveness.”

  “Well, sometime during the Jaruzelski regime, when Solidarity was starting to make its nasty moves, and that Pope was pulling the foundations out from under everything, it struck me that the Soviet influence could very well be gone from Poland in short order. And I thought, what if the new regime decides to restore the old e
states to their rightful owners? As it turned out, my chequered past had followed me; the government had peered into a rather fat dossier about me that had been put together by various governments. It decided that I was undeserving. But before it did so, I was possessed by a whim to see what remained of the old place.

  “It was a half-day’s drive. Going out there I felt a thrill of expectation such as I have rarely felt. But the palace turned out to be a disappointment. It seemed incongruously small compared to my memory of it. The grounds were well kept, but apparently the original lands had shrunk considerably. I wasn’t permitted to enter the house because it was now a government retreat center, and high-level visitors were in conference there that day. Nevertheless, I went on a tour of the grounds. The orchard was gone. The barn was gone. There were several new farm buildings constructed of metal. The stone stables were still there. The woods were now a thick forest of enormous trees. But the river was unchanged. I walked the paths alongside the water for hours, but I couldn’t find the bridge or the clearing. Later I drove to the village on the other side of the forest.

  “It had become a large town. It had many stores and a discotheque. On the outskirts, I found the place where our former gardener had lived. The lot was empty. I asked a neighbor if he knew where I might find Piotr’s family. You mean the baker!’ said the neighbor. ‘Sure, I know them. They used to live here before the War. Piotr’s in town now. He runs the bakery.’

  “On the main street, I discovered the Star of Mazovia Bakery. I went in feeling some trepidation. My driver kept the Daimler purring outside in case there were any scenes. The shop had a bistro attached to it. I sat and ordered coffee, prunes, poppy-seed cake, and a hot croissant.

  “An enormously fat man brought it out and set it on the table. ‘Here you are, sir’, he said. ‘Sorry for the delay. The kitchen boy’s sick today. My grandson. A good lad but something of a lout. Lazy—like all the young generation.’

  “Yes, that is what the apollonian youth had become. A baker, A large, jolly man, bald, wrinkled, red-cheeked, wearing a greasy apron. The eyes were almost perfectly preserved. They were—yes, after fifty years—they were still kind.

  “I must have stared at him without answering, for he cocked his head at me curiously and said, ‘Are you from around here, sir?’

  “ ‘I grew up near here. I left in the twenties.’

  “He could see clearly that I wasn’t a peasant. When I told him my name, he scratched his head as if recalling a memory of the vaguest sort. ‘Oh, yes, the count and his family. My papa used to garden for them. You weren’t their boy, were you?’

  “I nodded, unable to speak.

  “He smiled. I couldn’t believe it. He smiled.

  “ ‘Now I remember. We used to go fishing, you and me!’ He burst into a hearty laugh and thrust out his hand. We shook hands.

  “ ‘Here we are, two old men!’ he said. ‘Who would believe it!’

  “Then suddenly his face fell, and I thought I was in for trouble. ‘I heard,’ he said, ‘I heard about your papa, the count. I remember when the Germans took him away. They killed him, didn’t they?’

  “ ‘Yes, they killed him.’

  “’So many things happen in a life. So many.’ Piotr’s eyes filled up with tears, and he wiped them with his dirty apron. ‘My wife, she died last year. Cancer. God rest her soul.’

  “Still I couldn’t utter a word.

  “ ‘Say, why don’t you have supper here? It’s almost closing time. I’ll make you something nice. Do you like sausage? A sip of beer? We’ll talk about what it was like before all the troubles, when we were boys. It was beautiful then, wasn’t it? It was always summer. Do you remember the river, the fat carp, the bells ringing for Mass, the sound of wind in the poplars on autumn nights? Hey, you probably don’t know this, but I almost was a priest. I went into the seminary in ’28 and lasted a year. I wasn’t cut out for it. I met my wife in ’32 and apprenticed with Wajda the baker. He gave me this shop before he died.’

  “ ‘How many children have you?’ I managed to ask.

  “ ‘Nine. Not as many as my mama and papa. But we’re a fertile lot. Six married, one nun, two priests; one of them works with the bishop in Krakow. All of them happy. It’s been a hard life but good.’

  “ ‘You have much to be proud of.’

  “ ‘Dziękuje! Tell me, what do you do for a living?’

  “ ‘I sell paintings and statues in Warsaw.’

  “ ‘You like that?’ ”

  “ ‘I like it.’

  “ ‘A good life?’

  “ ‘Yes.’

  “ ‘I’m glad’, he said.

  “Then he looked into me with perfect penetration, and I realized that he remembered everything. He had all along. It was his nature to refrain from recrimination.

  “Do you remember Camilla and Ludmilla?’ I asked him.

  “ ‘No’, he said in a very quiet voice.

  “ ‘I think you do remember.’

  “He didn’t answer me. Then, after a long pause he said: ‘I remember a little boy who was alone too much. I liked him. I always wondered what became of him.’

  “ ‘You are good’, I said.

  “ ‘Who’s good?!’ he smiled. ‘Nobody’s good.’

  “ ‘You forgave me.’

  “ ‘Nothing to forgive, dziecko. Nothing to forgive.’

  “His kindness was too much. I controlled myself, stood and thanked him for the tea, made polite excuses, and left.

  “ ‘Come back some time’, he said as I got into the Daimler. In a minute, I had roared out of town and I never returned.

  XII

  Another Confession

  Smokrev shook himself and let out a long sigh. He looked up at Father Elijah.

  “Had enough?”

  “The tale is improving.”

  “Don’t worry. It gets worse. If you hang on long enough, it gets really bad.”

  “It is late. I should leave you to rest.”

  “Why don’t you stay for supper? Do you like sausage? A sip of beer? Why don’t we talk about what it was like when we were boys, before all the troubles? It was beautiful then, remember? It was always summer.”

  Elijah could not ignore the faintest note of pleading beneath the irony.

  “If you wish.”

  After supper, the nurse drew back the curtains of the bedroom window and turned down the lights. Only the bedside lamp remained aglow. Elijah went to the window and looked out at the river. The lights of the eastern shore were scattered brightly along the edge of the water. A tourist boat went past, trailing dance music and raucous laughter.

  “Why are you here in Warsaw, priest from Israel? Really, why?”

  “I am here to attend a conference on culture.”

  “I heard of it. It’s big. The President of the Europarliament is speaking at it.”

  “His opening address is tomorrow night.”

  “I will watch it on television, then we can discuss it the following day.”

  “I am afraid that is not possible. I must leave for Rome the day after his address.”

  “Then this is our final meeting. I have only a few hours left in which to refute your defense of God?! It’s not fair! I have amassed an enormous indictment against Him. You can’t get away so easily.”

  “A few hours? How can I possibly justify the ways of God in so short a time?”

  “It needn’t take long. I have arguments to make which I believe are irrefutable. If they can be refuted, why not simply?”

  “You have a point. But some answers are so simple, so true, that modern men like you and me have a difficult time grasping them.”

  “I will try very hard.”

  “Will you? Then let us attempt the impossible.”

  “Be seated, please.”

  Elijah once again took up his position on the easy chair.

  “And so, the continuing epic of Boleslaw Smokrev, late of the aristocracy, late of the fascists, late of the Nazis, lat
e of the Soviets, late of the international trade marts. Late of the intelligence community of several nations, not least of which is the Americans.”

  “You were an agent?”

  “I was an agent. Among my many masquerades and pompous acts, this was one of the authentic ones. I was in the Allied sector of Berlin when Germany was crushed. US Army Intelligence tracked me down and convinced me to get over into the Russian sector and then back to Poland. There, for the latter half of my life, I proved quite useful to them. The CIA kept me in the style to which I was accustomed.”

  “Then you are a patriot, after all.”

  “Oh, I was useful to everyone, most of all to myself. A typical wastrel, I had squandered the bulk of the family inheritance just before the War. As a result, I was in reduced straits and forced to buy and sell people. I traded in human flesh. Political flesh, not sexual. Oh, well, there was some of that too. As a literary critic, I made and broke several writers’ reputations. Careers, Relationships. I created and destroyed. It became my major art form. Between 1927 and 1989, I was always an international culture broker of one kind or another. I was at home in Paris, Berlin, London, Rome, Washington, Moscow—with a brief respite between ’39 and ’45. During the occupation, I was a consultant to the Reich Culture Chamber in Poland as well, and I had come to know many useful things. Later, after the War, I made myself most useful to the Polish communists and to the Russians. It became my task to assist in the negotiations for the return of the art treasures of Europe that Goering and the Einsatzstab Rosenberg had plundered. And on the side I made a fortune in black-market diamonds, state secrets, and art. Only the traffic in art remains to me now. But, of course, my energy is limited. I am old”, he concluded, striking a match below the tip of a cigarette.