The Loves of Leopold Singer

by L. K. Rigel

  George acquiesced, though he felt no love for the creature. He decided to trust in the Lord and follow the advice of his patron. In a gesture to romance, he made a set of copper pots as a wedding gift to his bride. When she accepted them with a sigh, he felt diminished. Something clicked in his brain, and he knew he would never love her.

  As a preacher, he enjoyed being asked for his opinion and counsel as well as he liked being asked to dinner. Still, nothing moved him in the profound ways he had expected. He came nowhere close to St. Paul, caught up to the highest heaven. At least, not until a Sunday late in October of 1802 when he looked down into the green eyes of heaven.

  -oOo-

  The girl who usually played the pianoforte with methodical competence pounded out an enthusiastic hymn. Every pew was filled. Reverend Grim was home again, returned from his tour with the famous preacher, Lyman Beecher. From the whispers around him, Leopold surmised that an exceedingly fiery sermon was expected by all.

  The hymn came to an athletic close, and the parishioners hushed as they would for the opening soliloquy of Romeo and Juliet.

  The man who took the pulpit was over six feet tall and muscular as a workman. His thick black hair fell loose to his shoulders, his complexion rough and tanned from his journey. He surveyed the congregation with sad affection. For all the dourness of his gaze, his features were almost pretty. He could be no older than twenty. He nodded, and the girl left the instrument to light a single candle set on a bare table between the reverend and his congregation. She retook her bench as if it were a perch of high office.

  “Let us pray.” Reverend Grim’s voice matched his name. “Lord, make us, sinners all, worthy of your notice.” He let a long silence develop as he made eye contact with members of his flock.

  Leopold sighed. It was often difficult to bear the deity’s spokesmen.

  “We on earth,” Grim began in a near whisper, “are engaged in battle.” He waited for the words to penetrate the minds of his listeners. “Today. Here. In this moment and in this very congregation! We, poor sinners bound to Christ’s chariot, wrestle with the principalities and the powers, forces unleashed by Satan, forces which threaten the precious and beautiful soul of each of God’s elect. Who knows what the libertine Jefferson concocts at this very moment with that incarnation of godlessness, the French Republic!”

  It occurred to Leopold that the Democratic-Republicans he knew belonged to the Unitarian Church at the other end of the boulevard.

  “Even now we sit comfortably in this land of plenty, this glorious New Canaan, seduced by the happy illusion of security. But Beelzebub and his minions are perched, ready for the instant in which we lapse, the moment we forget, relax, and presume to enjoy this earthly trap. And what a trap it is! Never forget what transpired even in this good land of Massachusetts when daughters of Eve engaged in necromancy!”

  Leopold stifled a laugh. In London, people had ridiculed how seriously the colonies took their religion. Cromwell’s Puritans were alive and still sure of themselves right here in this little portion of Shermer Landing.

  “We must never forget the sin of Eve, though we love our mothers, adore our wives and treasure our sisters. We must be vigilant and know that for their sakes—for the sake of their very souls!—that we guard them as we guard against them.”

  George relished the way the words guard against them seemed to hang in the air. He sent his sentinel gaze over his audience until it fixed on two wide-open and unfamiliar hazel green eyes. All sound evaporated but for a rhythmic and rushed pounding in his ear—or was it his chest? All light dimmed but the light in those eyes. He gripped the pulpit.

  “Who among us,” he struggled to continue, “has not been moved by a well-timed tear? Who has not experienced the stir of feeling evoked by the sight of a tender breast or an exposed ankle? The soft cushion of innocent lips can make a man lose all, even to the point he endangers the very soul captured within the form that entices.”

  Grim forced his attention away from the beautiful creature, but he couldn’t break free of her. “Ours is a wicked history,” he continued. “Our foremothers did practice with the Devil at Salem, and the Evil Presence endures. We do well to meditate on this threat to our New Jerusalem. In this season when the light of our days grows short and the dark nights become longer, we can light one lamp.”

  He gestured toward the burning candle. It smacked of pagan ritual, he knew that. But he had found that minor theatrics could be most effective. “One lamp. And invite the light of Christ our Savior into our hearts!”

  He looked everywhere, anywhere, but where he wanted to look.

  “There is the hope of man’s perfectibility! We examine our lives for signs of God’s purpose active through those lives. Husbands and fathers, brothers, uncles and sons: Look to the females of your households and be to them as a pillar of support, ever willing to instruct, to guide, to hold your beloved daughters of Eve close to the purifying fire of our Lord’s love and keep them from the damning cold of Satan’s darkness.”

  He felt torn into two persons. One wanted to bellow against the beautiful creature in the third pew. The other wanted to fall at her feet in worship. His final words were soft, nearly intimate. “My brothers, it is your Christian duty to cherish your daughter of Eve, to protect her from her weakness, to keep her soul safe in the bosom of Abraham.”

  He pushed away from the pulpit, and the pianist lunged into the doxology as he strode to the front of the worship hall.

  The music ended, and the room was quiet. No female spoke. Leopold noticed a frail little woman in the front pew, staring into the emptiness before her. She wore a dark bonnet trimmed with lace, which on anyone else would be pretty. The fecund piano player, following Grim, gave the sad lady a look of contempt.

  “I suppose we will have to invite him to dinner,” Leopold whispered with a tone of mock despair. Marta did not respond.

  George Grim felt transfixed in an altered, exalted state. That night, when his wife closed her eyes to him with her usual dread, he was not put off. He blew out the candle on the night table and worked his way into the dull mound of flesh to which he had been yoked by God. When he surrendered to ecstatic spasms of physical release and spiritual joy, he was indeed caught up in a vision: the vision of Marta Singer’s open eyes.

  Obadiah

  Obadiah Augustin Singer was born on a fair afternoon in May after an easy labor. He had no strawberry birthmark. There was but one speck on his perfection: the brow above his right eye broke in its soft, furry line to expose a line of pale pink skin at the apex of the arc. The gaze he fixed on Marta was an intense beam of love and calm.

  All was right with the world. No matter what instrument he came through, Obadiah surely came from God.

  The next day, she felt well enough to leave her bed, but Leopold would have none of it. He and Gisela made up a bed in the parlor adjoining the dining room, where everyone came to see the new baby. Dieter and Josef made fun of the name Obadiah and kept asking to hold him. Reverend and Mrs. Grim came to dinner, and Gisela brought a tray of food to Marta where the two women could easily hear Grim’s droning, not-quite-resentful benediction.

  “Lord, we bow our heads in Your awful presence and harness ourselves to the chariot of Christ Your Son. Humbly we thank You for the many signs of favor which You have bestowed. You have led our brothers in Christ, Leopold and Jonathan, to our little valley. You have given them fields of barley, oats, and rye. Their gardens are laid in with potatoes, turnips, onions, beets and pumpkins. They have a fine stock of dairy cows and fowl that shall surely multiply. Today we give special thanks for the birth of Obadiah Augustin Singer, a child in Christ entrusted to the care of Leopold and Marta, Your servants.”

  Grim’s tone lent the celebration an air of sorrow, and Jonathan Zehetner shifted from foot to foot.

  In an awful moment, Marta saw a confused vision of the farm, now beautiful with the fruits of all their labors, melting down into a pit. And swirling down into the cen
ter of that pit she saw her lovely Obadiah—in the arms of Sir Carey Asher.

  “Let me have him!” she screamed, confusing Grim with Sir Carey.

  Shock spread over the reverend’s face. “The Evil One has got her!”

  “Mama! Papa!” Josef and Dieter ran to their parents. Willie stood between the preacher and the parlor door.

  Zehetner muttered, in German, “Didn’t we cross an ocean to get away from superstition?”

  Leopold retrieved the infant and brought him to Marta. “My dear, here he is. The child is fine.”

  Marta shook her head. She knew. Obadiah was already lost.

  The next day, the baby’s skin looked a bit yellow. Within three days, the whites of his eyes were yellow. Within the week, he was gone.

  The farm erupted into a raucous circus of new life. Marta went about her daily routine with dull efficiency. When she was stronger, Gisela brought her to the Shermer Landing Ladies Circle to cheer her. The group of ladies made blankets for the poor and, as important, exchanged the latest gossip one day each month.

  But Marta hated all living things. She resented the fat sheep watching over their playful lambs. She saw the once-sweet swine for the monsters they were with their obscene huge litters. Every female creature in the world had offspring; even Gisela could not hide her once-again growing belly.

  One morning, Marta wandered back to the kitchen. “Is there coffee?”

  “In this house?” Cook was kneading dough. “I’ve learned to keep it brewed and hot all the day. Come sit by the fire, my dear.”

  The hot liquid was sweet and spiced the way Leopold drank it.

  “Oh, dear and bless my soul!” Cook said. “I forgot to collect the eggs. Young Josef went out with his father and brothers today, and I told him not to worry about fetching them. Oh, dear.” She looked at her dough in dismay.

  “Give me an apron then,” Marta said. “I feel so restless this morning, a turn at the dough will do me good.” Cook left to fetch he eggs, and Marta dug into the soft, yeasty pile. If she couldn’t make a child that lived, at least she could make bread.

  Obadiah had been born so easily and was so perfect, it was all more than she deserved. She had displeased God with Sir Carey. It was the only explanation for her baby’s death. After all, God took the baby that King David and Bathsheba conceived against His law. Why should Marta escape judgment? Bathsheba had gone on to have other children. Marta must do the same.

  But what if…what if Leopold was unable to get a child? What if Obadiah really had been planted by Sir Carey? What if she was fated to be childless? And what kind of woman was she, that she’d rather have the child of a man not her husband than no child? She’d recoiled at the possibility her baby was conceived by Sir Carey, but once Obadiah was born, it had meant nothing. She ached for him.

  Leopold stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at her with the worry she was coming to dread. He wanted her to be happy, to be alive again. But wanting doesn’t always lead to having. She had to drive these thoughts from her mind or she would never get out of the dark place. She kept at the dough.

  “It’s been six weeks,” he said. “You haven’t spoken more than a dozen words.”

  She clenched the yeasty lumps on the table.

  “I respect your sorrow, but my love…” He moved closer but did not touch her. “Love compels me to say something, try something to help you. I wish you would unburden yourself to me—or do you want a minister? Revered Grim is rather—well, grim. I have thought that the Unitarian man…”

  “No. Grim is the one.” She jerked her head up, her eyes rimmed with tears. “I will see him today.”

  When Ezekiel Shermer first came into the valley in July 1660, the last thing he meant to do was found a town. He’d abandoned organized society in general and Boston in particular after the fathers of that town saw fit to hang Mary Dyer for the crime of being a Quaker. Ezekiel had loaded his tools into his wagon and drove west until he saw this valley populated by oak and ash, bordered by foothills on the north and east and a river on the west. He had stopped to rest his horse under an ancient oak whose limbs spread over the river. He stayed there for the rest of his life.

  He set up his wheelwright shop under that tree, and custom came to him. The blacksmith who supplied his iron hoops was somewhat of a freethinker, and he soon moved his works “out to Shermer Landing” to escape the righteous Boston air. More people came and stayed, and soon enough God came too. The very Congregational Church that would see George Grim in its pulpit was built in 1685, and Ezekiel Shermer suffered its existence pitifully.

  By 1715 the hamlet had grown to more than 500 residents and a second church. A fine boulevard connected the two houses of God, completed just before Shermer died. He suggested the street’s name: Taenarus Boulevard. Years later, a scholar passing through pointed out that Taenarus was the mythological gate to hell.

  Grim’s church anchored one end of this thoroughfare. Sunlight splashed over its white walls. Its steeple ascended toward heaven in three straightforward, tapered sections. The town green south of the church had a grandstand and a statue of Ezekiel Shermer at its center. On the north, a small house contained the large Reverend Grim and his negligible wife.

  At its front door, Marta put a hand on Leopold’s chest. “Wait for me?”

  “You’re not going in there alone.”

  “Have a little faith, Mr. Singer.” She disappeared into the parsonage.

  Leopold decided that, whatever happened in the interview with Grim, he and Marta would visit the Unitarian church next Sunday. He didn’t like Grim. The fellow was too dark, too full of bleak judgment. Children died, a fact of life. Often, one didn’t know why. But Marta was taking it too hard, as if she had become a shade along with Obadiah. Surely the best cure was to get her with child again.

  He was plagued by anxiety on that score. All around were signs of sex. The animals on the farm, Gisela Zehetner’s obvious condition—even the daffodils burst out in a charge along the drive to his front door, and their gusto mocked his inactivity. He wanted to grab hold of Marta and worship her body in celebration of his good life. But there was no worshiping a rag doll drained of joy. If only they could recapture the intimacy they had shared that last night in London.

  George Grim nearly knocked his wife over as she offered Mrs. Singer tea. Mrs. Grim was so small and such a nothing that he often didn’t see her.

  “Please don’t trouble,” said Mrs. Singer, graciousness itself. She was even more beautiful so close and so sad.

  “Nonsense,” George said. “Of course Mrs. Grim will send in tea.” His massive hand trembled on Marta’s shoulder. “Come with me, child.” After he said that, he realized she must be close to his same age.

  The sitting room was furnished with a desk and chair and a short sofa. In the small vegetable garden visible outside the window, early peas were in bloom. Grim sat with Marta on the sofa. Their knees nearly touched, and he held her small hands. “Have you come to ask God’s guidance in your sorrow?”

  “I have been thinking about the death of my son.”

  “But have you been praying on it?”

  “I believe I have.”

  The odd response stopped him for a moment. “And has God answered your prayers?”

  “Obadiah was such a sweet angel.”

  “The great Jonathan Edwards himself has assured us that children are young vipers, infinitely more hateful than vipers in the sight of…” His great voice filled the small room, but her wide-eyed reaction stopped him. It was physically painful to see such distress blight her loveliness. “But I recall Obadiah, and he was a sweet infant.”

  He had never said anything so kind, and the effect amazed him. A torrent of penitential liquid gushed from the pitiful woman’s eyes, and he was compelled to pat her hand. Did these sweet feelings flow as part of his ministering duty? He knew they did not. With all his heart and with all his soul, he longed to kiss her soft, pink fingers.

  “I am to blame.�
�� Marta sobbed through tears and phlegm. “God punished me for my pride. This morning, I saw things clearly. I was with my kind husband, my dearest friend who deserves a wife not suffocated by grief.”

  “It is a sin of pride to attach to our grief. That is true.” He felt begrudging kinship with Mr. Singer. His own wife lingered in her suspended state and was a trial to him. And yet the loss of that wilting leaf would be nothing compared to the loss of this exquisite flower.

  “When the farm was looking so fine and I was with child, I was proud. When I saw little Obadiah, I thought I was the happiest of women.”

  Why do I lie? Marta thought. My real sin is that I am as wicked as Bathsheba.

  “I never once thanked God. I blessed my husband for his strength and goodness. I blessed the patriots for making this free country. I congratulated myself on my own labors.”

  That much is true. And I blessed the Queen of Heaven.

  “When you gave the benediction at The Farm that day, I knew that in my happiness I had forgotten God. He took Obadiah because I’m not worthy. I am wretched. Sinful.”

  He took Obadiah because I prayed to a bronze idol.

  Grim felt paralyzed by this manifestation of spiritual agony. Mrs. Singer was married to the wrong man. If the world were just, Grim would have the right to caress her cheek and kiss her forehead. He would pet her and reassure her. He most violently wished to fill her with his own seed and watch her grow with it. He squeezed her hands and prayed silently, Lord, steady me. Help me guide this woman, and do give me continence.

  “My dear Mrs. Singer, no one is worthy. Else what would be the meaning of God’s grace? Do you imagine for one moment that you, a wretched sinner, could earn anything from Him?” He let loose his big voice, for his protection more than for her good. “Lord, drive all wretchedness from this woman your daughter. Open her to your purpose.”