by Jane Langton
PENTECOST
“Des heiligen Geistes reiche Gnad”
Chorale harmonized by J. S. Bach
The Holy Spirit’s plenteous grace,
Dropped down from heaven upon this place,
The gift of tongues did freely fall
On the Apostles, one and all.
CHAPTER 77
Give thanks to God, who from the jaws
Of death saved you and me.
Now like a flock of birds we rise,
From clutching snare set free.
Hymn by Martin Luther
Dear Alan Starr,
There’s so much to say, I don’t know where to start. But first I must thank you for being so kind to Charley! We’re coming home as soon as I’m through at the university. I’ll write again. Gratefully,
Rosalind Hall
Dear Rosalind Hall,
It was easy to be kind to Charley. He’s such a great little kid. How is he? Yours,
Alan Starr
Dear Alan,
Charley’s fine. He’s really big! We take walks around the old city, and I’m the one who gets tired, not Charley. My organ teacher taught him to say Herr Professor! Thank you for telling me about Pip’s death. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry about the church, and I’m sorry about Pip too. Once upon a time he and I were close friends. Especially after my husband’s death, because Pip was so kind and sympathetic. There was something about him that made it easy to talk—you know, about private, painful things. He told me about his frustration over not having a good job, and about living at home with his mother, and breaking his heart over his sister Helen. And I told him about the things that tormented me, terrible things! My husband’s death was the worst, because it was partly my fault that Ted died in the crash of that helicopter. He’d borrowed my Seconal, because we were both having trouble sleeping, but I think he took too much, and fell asleep at the controls while he was in the air. When I looked at the bottle afterward, a lot of the capsules were gone. Pip said of course it wasn’t my fault, and he was so comforting, I began to feel better. So I told him about the other things. I said I was sure I was responsible for the fire in the balcony of the church and the death of the sexton. I’d been smoking in the balcony that night, sitting there at the organ, and, not only that, there had been a lot of candles at the wedding, and some of them may still have been burning. So when I heard the sirens and the fire engines and went out and saw the church on fire, I thought it was my fault. And then they brought out the body of the sexton, and he was like someone burned at the stake, and I was the one who had touched a match to the straw. And then I told Pip I’d had accidents with church candles before, not once, but twice. I just went on and on, weeping and sobbing, and told him everything. I even told him I’d tried cocaine in high school, and got caught. And Pip said forget it, just forget it. But I couldn’t, because Mr. Kraeger was taking the blame for the fire in the church, and I knew it wasn’t his doing, it was mine. I wanted to confess. I wanted to let everybody know he was innocent. But Pip kept saying, no, I shouldn’t, because everybody had forgiven Martin Kraeger, and his back was broad enough to carry the blame, whereas it would ruin my career, my whole life. Just shut up, he said, so I did, but I felt awful about it.
I’ve got to stop now. I’ll tell you more in my next letter. Here’s a picture of Charley at the castle on the rock above the city, with the River Neckar in the background. Do you have one of yourself you could send me? Cordially,
Rosie
Dear Rosie,
That’s a great picture of Charley. Here I am. Actually I don’t really look this good. I’ve got an uglier picture, but I’d rather have you think I look like this. Yours,
Alan
Rosie was coming back. Alan looked around his sloppy room on Russell Street and imagined what she would think of it. The place had to be cleaned up. He began sorting his books and papers and picking up his clothes. Only then did he rediscover, in the pocket of his padded vest, the box in which sound had been locked up.
It was Rosie’s copy of her own performance of “Wachet Auf.” Pip Tower had wanted to steal it, he had torn apart Rosie’s apartment in a failed attempt to find it, he had set fire to the apartment in order to destroy it, he had come to the church in the middle of the night and fired a shot at Alan and killed Harold Oates, and then he had been crushed himself under tons of falling rock, all for the sake of this little strip of tape.
It didn’t matter now whether the voices at the end of the cassette could be disentangled from the music. It was obvious that the male voice would be Pip’s. But just out of curiosity Alan found an audio technician in the phone book and went to him and handed the tape over and told him what he wanted.
“Well, I’ll try,” said the technician. “The trouble is, a lot of the music will be in the same range as the human voice, so I can only erase the high and low frequencies. But it should help some. As for the crying baby, Jesus! Well, some of it’s probably high frequency, and we can get rid of that much. I don’t promise anything. I’ll call you.”
A few days later Alan came back, and the technician played for him the brutalized tape.
“Awful,” said Alan, grinning at him. “God, it’s awful.” The music was tinny and thin. When the voices began they were scratchy and flat, but the words were audible, and there was no question about the identity of the man who said, You’re not just in trouble. You’re in prison. “Good,” said Alan. “Thank you, it’s what I thought. The dissonance has been resolved.”
“Dissonance? What dissonance? Was it a question of dissonance?”
“No, no, not on the tape. It’s J. S. Bach. It’s the way he uses dissonant harmony sometimes and then resolves it. You know what I mean.”
“Could be. I’m not into classical music myself. Jazz. Bluegrass. Country music.” The technician turned on a machine, blasting Alan with a nasal whine from Nashville. Swiftly he paid his bill and headed for 115 Commonwealth Avenue.
Cleaning up his own place had been simple. Doing something about Rosie’s was a different matter. Alan spent the last of his savings on a couple of new rugs as much like the ruined ones as he could find. He hired a crew of upholstery cleaners. He painted the walls and ceilings and washed the woodwork, with Mrs. Garboyle popping in now and then to exclaim with rapture, “She’s coming home! I can’t believe it! Darling Rosie! That adorable boy!”
Alan was excited himself, although he tried to temper his anticipation with Homer’s warning, “You know, kid, she may not be what you expect. You pick some random girl out of a sack, it’s like a pig in a poke. She may be pretty ghastly.”
Rosie wrote another letter.
Dear Alan,
It’s too bad you’re not as good-looking as your picture. I really like it. You look like your sister Betsy. I’ll bet I’d like the ugly picture too. I wish you’d send it.
Where was I? I think I was telling you how Pip kept urging me to say nothing about the night of the fire, to just keep quiet about it and it would be all right.
But then suddenly he changed. He came in all upset, about a week or ten days before Christmas, and he’d just come from the hospital where he works, and he’d heard some people talking. He was scrubbing down a bed with Lysol or something, and he couldn’t help hearing this police detective in the next bed, who was recovering from an appendectomy, and he was talking to some visitors, a couple of other policemen, about the case of some woman, and pretty soon Pip knew they were talking about me. They knew my whole history, he said, they knew about the cocaine and the earlier fires and they knew everything about my involvement in the fire in the Church of the Commonwealth, and they said I was about to be arrested. Worst of all, they’d been investigating my husband’s death all this time, and they were ready to indict me for murder. They had the bottle of Seconal! And the label had my name on it, not Ted’s, and my fingerprints were all over it. When Pip told me that, I ran to the medicine cabinet, and it was true, the bottle was gone. So there were t
wo things, two terrible things. The death of the sexton was only manslaughter, Pip said, but Ted’s was murder in the first degree. They’d be coming for me any minute, he said, any minute! They might be coming to the door right now. So of course I ran to the window to look, and they weren’t there, but I knew they were coming soon, very soon. Pip said I had to decide right now. I couldn’t waste time. I had to pack up and run away with Charley.
Well, of course I was shocked and scared, and I didn’t want to go, but he kept harping on Charley. If I were put in prison, what would happen to Charley? So at last I said, all right, I’d go to Heidelberg and study at the university and take master classes with Hans Holder on the organ in the Jesuiten Kirche, because I’d always wanted to do that. It was a reasonable solution. I could already speak German, because I’d spent a couple of years in Cologne with my parents as a child. Then Pip said I’d have to use a false name, and he’d fix up a passport and order our plane tickets. Oh, I didn’t want to go, but he kept saying, what about Charley? So I packed and got all ready, but then a couple of days later, it was a Sunday, I felt so tearful and sentimental, I went to church, and they have childcare, so I dropped off Charley and went to the service and heard Martin Kraeger’s sermon. And afterwards I heard some of his parishioners whispering to each other about what he had done to the church, and how a lot of people were dissatisfied—you know the way there are always people who want to stab their minister in the back. Anyway, I changed my mind. When Pip came, I wouldn’t go. I couldn’t let Martin Kraeger take the blame any longer. And then Pip tried to drag me out—well, you know the rest. Affectionately,
Rosie
PS. Do you know if Helen’s all right?
Dear Rosie,
I hope you got the flowers. I’ve never sent flowers to anybody before, especially across the sea. You’re probably tired of roses, because probably that’s what everybody gives you.
Of course you know it was Pip who took the bottle of Seconal, not the police. And he was lying about what happened in the hospital. The day he got so excited and told you to leave must have been the day he discovered Castle had stomach cancer. Instantly he had a powerful ambition to get Castle’s job, and that meant getting the other candidates out of the way by one means or another, especially you. So he made up that story about the police detective in the next bed and came rushing to tell you to leave the country.
I don’t know how Helen is. Living with her mother must be horrible. Give Charley a kiss for me.
Love,
Alan
Dearest Alan,
The flowers are beautiful. I’ve always loved roses best. I kissed Charley for you. Could you send my love to Helen? And take some for yourself! I’m tired of being just a messenger!
Rosie
On the tenth of June Alan waited at the international terminal, watching travellers emerge from customs one at a time—a Japanese family, an elderly couple, a knot of teenagers with backpacks. He recognized Rosie at once, the woman with the small child. Charley was walking by himself, a big two-year-old. Rosie’s hair was longer and darker than he had expected, and she was thinner than the girl in the picture.
Her luggage cart wobbled toward him. She tugged Charley forward.
He hadn’t meant to embrace her at once, but neither of them could help it. Then Alan swept up Charley and held him over his head and looked at him. “Oh, Charley, it’s really you.”
“Daddy,” said Charley.
“I’m sorry,” said Alan to Rosie. “It’s my fault. I taught him to say that.”
“It’s all right,” said Rosie. “I’m glad you did. I’m so glad.”
They had built up a great thirst. In Rosie’s apartment Alan showed her all that was new, and together they put an exhausted Charley to bed in his crib. Then they went at once into the bedroom and helped each other out of dress and trousers and shirt and underwear, fumbling with zippers and buttons, kissing lips, shoulders, breasts, elbows, thighs.
“Oh, Rosie, Rosie, I was afraid we would never—I mean, there’s a story by Henry James.”
“It’s all right,” murmured Rosie. “It’s all right now.”
CHAPTER 78
We must read, sing, preach, write, and compose verse, and whenever it was helpful and beneficial I would let all the bells peal, all the organs thunder, and everything sound that could sound.
Martin Luther
“Mary, dear, that’s a stunning outfit. What do you call it?”
“It’s my new persona. I made it. I’m going to make a lot of them. I’ve solved my wardrobe problem at last.”
“Well, it’s just great. Really majestic and African or maybe Greek. This is who you really are, is it? You reached down deep within yourself and fumbled around and decided this is what you’re all about?”
“Oh, no. I was just lazy. I took a huge piece of fabric and cut a hole in the middle and left openings for my arms in the side seams. That’s all. It’s not a big statement, or anything like that. But I’m never going back to being ladylike. Never in all this world.”
It had been a year since the collapse of the vaulting. The cycle of church life went on, even while the rubble was cleared away and new concrete pilings were driven down with the tremendous earsplitting noise of the pile driver ramming them into the ground. As the new walls went up within the shell of the old, the school auditorium continued to house the ceremonials of the Church of the Commonwealth. There were weddings and funerals and the welcoming of new parishioners.
Helen Tower was one of the new members. Alan and Rosie introduced her to the church, they took her to concerts and museums and the zoo, she played with Charley, she gossiped with Rosie. Then Mary Kelly found a cooperative residence for people with miscellaneous nerve disorders, and at last Helen was able to move out of her mother’s house.
It wasn’t easy. Mrs. Tower needed someone to be indebted day and night to her bitter sense of sacrifice, and she was reluctant to let Helen go. It took the assistance of Mrs. Barker in the Department of Social Services to pry Helen free.
“My God,” she said to Mary, “how long has this been going on?” And she signed her name to the document with a sweep of her hand.
For Mrs. Barker the rescue of Helen Tower was one of her small successes. There were so many failures! That same afternoon she experienced another disappointment while preparing to inspect a foster home on lower Washington Street. A young woman with a familiar face was leaning in a doorway, and Mrs. Barker recognized Deborah Buffington, although her childish features were almost obscured by thick eye makeup and lipstick, her thin fair hair was frizzed into a giant aureole, and her skinny midriff was bare above a shiny tight skirt.
“Why, Debbie, hello,” said Mrs. Barker. “Do you live in this neighborhood now?” But she knew with a sinking heart that this wasn’t where Debbie lived, it was where she worked.
Debbie glanced at her ferociously, and walked away on tottering heels.
Mrs. Barker rolled her eyes to the sky above lower Washington Street, which was a washed-out blue, empty of clouds, sun, moon, and God. “Just another botchup by the Department of Social Services,” murmured Mrs. Barker to herself, and then she began wondering what was happening to Debbie’s daughter Wanda. Oh, God, she’d have to find out about little Wanda.
The new Church of the Commonwealth was dedicated on a Sunday morning in May, only eighteen months after the collapse of the old building. James Castle played a tremendous prelude, Martin preached, Barbara’s choir sang at the tops of their lungs, and the congregation stared around at the plain white walls and the broad windows of clear glass. Some people were pleased, others were disappointed.
“It’s so cold,” said Bill Foose. “No stained glass, no carving, no decoration.”
“I miss the way it used to be so spiritual and medieval,” complained Melanie Chick. “Now it’s so modern.”
Ken Possett was irritated. “Well, at least,” he said, “it won’t fall down.”
After the service Martin and B
arbara Kraeger invited the Kellys over for a drink. It was their first wedding anniversary. “And we want to show you something,” said Martin.
Mary was curious to see their place on Dartmouth Street. She had visited it once with Homer during Martin’s bachelor days, when it had been bleak and shabbily comfortable. Now she was amused to find it just the same. Barbara too seemed to have little interest in interior decoration. But she was a good cook. There were tasty hot things to go with their drinks.
“Delicious,” said Homer, gobbling half a dozen. “You know I have to confess, Reverend Kraeger, your church services leave me in a condition of mortal starvation. You provide food for the soul, I suppose, not for the body, is that it? Why don’t the ushers pass around trays of snacks every time you make a point, up there in the pulpit? Now, tell us, what are we here to see?”
Martin grinned at him. “Walter Wigglesworth’s book. They found it in the cornerstone of the old building when they cleared out the last of the rubble.”
“Behold!” said Barbara. She heaved a large box onto the table and lifted the lid.
“Good heavens,” said Mary. “There it is, Divine Inspiration, just like the book in the painting.”
“Yes,” said Martin. He stroked the cover. “The painting’s torn to shreds, but at least we’ve got the book.”
“Well, what do you think?” said Homer eagerly. “Is it really inspiring? Is it full of spiritual secrets, you know, from one clergyman to another?”
“Oh, it’s inspiring, all right.” Barbara laughed. “See for yourself.” She lifted the heavy book and dumped it carefully in Mary’s lap.
Mary turned the pages slowly. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid it’s mostly Ella Wheeler Wilcox and James Gates Percival and Edith Matilda Thomas. How disappointing.” She shook her head, and dropped the book onto Homer’s knees.
Homer too was stunned. “Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, and my fingers wandered idly over the noisy keys—My God, I’d forgotten all about ‘The Lost Chord.’ You know, Martin, somehow I don’t think this stuff is quite right for you.”