The Listener

by Taylor Caldwell

  The snow and the wind tore at his clothing. He carried little baggage. He bent his head and rushed into the brilliant airport, where anxious throngs teemed at the airline desks, only to learn that almost all planes East and West had been canceled. He went to his own airline desk. “Dr. Kadimo?” said the harassed agent. “I’m sorry, but your plane to Washington has been canceled. But one plane is leaving for —in about half an hour. That will take you half your way; we can book you through from there to Washington, though the plane doesn’t leave from — until tomorrow morning. There is a good hotel right at the airport, though, where you could stay overnight.”

  “And I can’t stay in Chicago overnight and then take my scheduled plane for Washington?”

  “You’ll be taking a chance, sir. The weather reports are that this storm is just beginning. It’s expected to be worse tomorrow. This is a bad time of the year.”

  Dr. Kadimo shivered with cold. His gray face was pinched with it. He was also very tired. Perhaps it would be best to stay in Chicago and wait, even two days if necessary. He could call Washington tomorrow. He wanted only to find a warm hotel room, to take off his clothing, eat a light supper with wine, and go to bed. His whole body ached with the desire for rest. “I think — ” he said, and stopped, startled.

  The clerk looked at him expectantly. “Yes, sir?”

  The strangest urgency had come to the doctor. He regarded it with surprise. The urgency demanded that he take the soon-leaving plane for — , a city he did not know. He would be in a plane again for at least an hour. He shook his head.

  “Sir?” said the clerk.

  The urgency was like a strong voice in him. He said quickly, “I think I’ll go to —. I’ve never been there.” The clerk nodded approvingly and made out the new ticket. The doctor said to himself, I’m a fool. Why did I do that? If I could have gone to a hotel here, I could have rested and thought and tried to see what I must do. Now I’ll be completely exhausted. He wanted to lift his hand and stop the busy clerk, but his hand felt numb and weak.

  And then he remembered an extraordinary thing. When he was twelve, just before his family had brought him to America, he had gone walking with his dog. The snows were deep and heavy, but he had snowshoes, and the dog loved the snow. They had gone into the shining marble silence together, he whistling, the dog barking. The house stood on the edge of the small town, and so there were fields and woods about. Atino slogged toward the forest. All at once the dog stopped and whined. “Come on, old fellow,” said the boy. But the dog whined. The boy shrugged and started for the forest without the animal. Then the dog, as if possessed, ran after him, seized his coat, and held on. His eyes gleamed up at his young master desperately. His back arched in his struggles to stop Atino. He growled madly in his throat.

  “Very well,” said Atino impatiently. “We’ll go back. You are cold, eh?”

  The dog was a small one but resolute. He raced before Atino, as if pleading for him to hurry, and so Atino, to humor him, hurried. They had just reached the path to the house when Atino looked back at the forest. A great gray shape, haggard with starvation, stood like death at the very border of the woods, fangs glittering visibly even at that distance. A wolf.

  “A wolf. Yes,” said the doctor.

  “What, sir?” asked the clerk, startled.

  “Nothing. I was just remembering something. What is my gate to the plane to — ?”

  I’m superstitious, thought the doctor, hurrying to the gate. What has this delay, this new plane to — , got to do with that wolf of my childhood? Surely I have not been delayed and rerouted for any significant reason! I am a scientist and I deal with facts, not gauzy mysticism. There are a dozen men, my companions on the plane, going to —with me, on their way to Washington. What delayed, rerouted them? Nothing.

  But his ancient blood was placated. He took the plane and did not ask himself anything again. He dozed restlessly on the journey. He had to be awakened to disembark. The hotel was comfortable, the food good, the wine excellent. He fell into bed, tried to think. But a warm cloud came over his mind and he slept suddenly.

  He awakened, rested. But his fearful problem was still with him, unresolved. And the storm had leaped to this city. The sky was dark and close; the snow blew past the windows in long white curtains torn by the savage wind. He called the airport. All planes had been canceled. They would keep in touch with him, however. And so he missed his plane again to Washington.

  Now he called the officer he knew in the Pentagon. “You should have stayed in Chicago,” said the officer, his irritation sounding through his deep respect. “The storm stopped there about dawn. We were expecting you at two this afternoon. Now you are stuck, you say.”

  “Yes. It’s very bad here. I’m sorry to inconvenience all of you.” He was disgusted with himself. “Perhaps I can get a train tonight for Washington. I’ve already made inquiries, and they tell me there is not even a seat. Very busy in Washington, eh? But there may be a train cancellation. I’ll call you if there is.”

  “All these important people waiting for you,” said the officer reproachfully.

  “I know. I know. I will do my best. It was foolish for me to come here. But it was advised. Sorry.”

  Yes, he should have stayed in Chicago. He’d have been on the way to Washington by now. He thought of the clerk without favor. Yet he had no answer to his problem. If he had arrived at the Pentagon he would have arrived in confusion and darkness of mind. At least he could think here in this warm and quiet room.

  The room did not answer his question. He prayed, but there was some obstacle in his mind. It came to him as a surprise that he hadn’t prayed for a long time and he had not gone to church for years. When had he made his last confession? Before the death of Stella. Before the bombs had been dropped on Japan. Why had he not gone to confession? Because he was guilty of death and terror and ruin. He knew it in his heart. He also knew now that he had been dreadfully betrayed, himself. He had talked with a certain general later. But though he could have felt less guilty then, he did not. He had been violated. Nevertheless, he was guilty. For a week or two he almost lost his mind in his despair and rage. It was no use for his associates to assure him that even without him this thing would have happened. He had had a part in it, though he had been betrayed.

  “If you’d withdrawn, they’d have called you a traitor,” said an associate.

  “Better to be called a traitor than to know you are a murderer,” said the doctor.

  “But the Japs were our enemies.”

  “Do you think that they alone were to blame? No, we all were.”

  The associate, a close friend, had not repeated this. He too was feeling guilty and sick and terrified.

  The room was quiet and hushed about him. The storm roared on outside. He tried to read a book he had brought, but could not. He began to wander aimlessly up and down the room.

  He had always thought with precision. A scientist had no other choice, by nature, by profession. He began to think of himself and his fellows. At one time in the world’s history, and in the lifetime of many old men even now, scientists were above governments. They worked in their own version of ivory towers — the laboratory, the observatory. They had a very simple, even naive, code; they searched for truth, for the nature of the universe, for the nature of man. Politics was of no concern to them. Faced with the infinite, they knew little of and cared less for the finite. But at some time in their recent career their genius had been seized by governments, not in the search for truth, for God, for the nature of man, but for destruction. Why had they, the scientists, everywhere in the world, succumbed so easily? Armed with truth and insight, why had they become harlots? Patriotism? Why, any of those young Russian boys, the schoolboys pulled from their classrooms to man tanks, was nobler than all the modern scientists in the world. They had faced truth and had suddenly refused to surrender to oppression, to madness. This could not be said of the scientists, who had used their talents not to save man, to adva
nce truth, to search through the visible universe for the invisible Law which controlled all things. Had they delivered themselves over to prostitution out of mere mortal fear? No. They had suddenly developed the modern disease, the fatal disease, of the desire for flattery, of worldly importance, though God knew that it was not money they were after and not wealth after which they lusted. Flattery. Importance. Immediate attention. The desires of the wanton.

  Some, in search of these foul trinkets, these gauds, these little paste jewels, had become Communists, not out of conviction, truly, but out of egotism. If the posturing actor, the demagogue, could attain tremendous amounts of newspaper space and publicity by mere babblings, by striking a dramatic pose, by lies and sonorous stupidities, then why should the scientist huddle in the shadows? The scientist had fallen into the most ancient of traps, and the most evil: the lust for power. He did not actually want to wield power; he simply wished to know that he had it. He too (and it was quite pathetic when you thought of it) wanted the vulgar applause of the mobs, the mobs who had murdered their prophets and their kings, who had stoned truth in the reeking market places, who eternally set up gibbets and guillotines for their own savage hates, who at the very worst had murdered their Saviour. For that offered power, for that shameful applause, some scientists everywhere had become Communists. If ever a man like these needed pity rather than anger, the scientist needed it. He should be pitied for becoming only a foolish man and not remaining a priest at the altar of truth.

  Dr. Kadimo, himself, had said to one of these piteous and confused men on the eve of the latter’s appearance before a Congressional committee: “Why? Why, in God’s name?” And the scientist had looked at him with dazed eyes and had repeated: “Why? Why, frankly, I don’t know. They — they seemed interesting people, and there are so few interesting people in the world, aren’t there? Fewer than ever before in the world’s history? I really knew nothing of their ideology. They — they merely appreciated me.” And he had flushed and looked down.

  “Why should you care if they or anyone else appreciates us or not?”

  The poor man’s face had appeared to fall apart disastrously. “I shouldn’t have cared, should I? We never cared before. But a man does like some honor, doesn’t he? After all, we are human, aren’t we?”

  “That’s the trouble,” Dr. Kadimo had answered gloomily.

  How had he, himself, escaped being afflicted by the disease? First of all, he had had a childhood and youth of strict spiritual discipline. Second, he was of an old race and a cynical one, which never believed what men said. Third, his nation had been consistently violated by Russia over the centuries. Communism! The disorder and madness of the West! Strange that the oriental Russians should have contracted it. Had they been more susceptible, never having been afflicted with it before as all Europe periodically had been so afflicted, and thus acquired immunity? Why, even America, at certain periods in her history, had practiced communism. The disease of the West. The crime of the West. For Russia’s misery now, thought Dr. Kadimo, we of the West should plead guilty and ask for absolution. Before we die.

  If Russia, fevered by her alien malady, should loose universal death on the world, the Western world deserved it. To be even a little more specific, who had hurled the first atomic bombs on mankind? Who, in fact, was the only nation ever to do so? Mea maxima culpa, thought Dr. Kadimo. There is no virtue in us, no faith, no real strength, no fortitude, no justice, no integrity, no honor. There is only the fear of the rabbit — the weak, quivering fear — that we shall suffer as we have made others suffer.

  Now a fragment of a poem he had learned in his first American classroom returned to him. (Kipling?)

  The tumult and the shouting dies;

  The Captains and the Kings depart:

  Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

  A humble and a contrite heart.

  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

  Lest we forget — lest we forget!

  The winter wind thundered at the hotel window, and Dr. Kadimo, hearing it, heard also the singing of his father’s violin. “Lest we forget — lest we forget!”

  His restlessness became intense. It was as if he were wasting time while an enormous task awaited him, as if a man of overpowering importance were standing outside his door. But he did not know what to do. Aimlessly he pulled open a drawer of his empty dresser. A Bible lay in it. He took it and opened it. Its pages had not even been disturbed by those who had slept in this room before. Then Atino remembered that it was a ‘superstition’ (was it?) that a man in distress, or a man with faith, could open the Bible at random and he would find something pertinent in it that was of immediate use to him. Smiling palely at himself, he held the Bible, then let it fall open in his hands.

  The beginning of sorrows . . . For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor will be. And unless those days had been shortened no living creature would be saved — for nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there will be pestilences and famines and earthquakes in various places — the beginning of sorrows.

  Atino Kadimo stared before him. The desolation prophesied by the prophet Daniel. It was standing at the world’s door, the desolation summoned by man’s crimes.

  But still there were the men at the desperate outposts of the world.

  Very gently the doctor replaced the Bible. He had been answered sternly. He had been told what he already knew. But he had not been given the answer as to what he should do. His long fingers trailed over the top of the dresser and encountered a small white pamphlet. Vaguely he lifted it. The Man who Listens.

  Intrigued slightly, he opened the pamphlet after an approving examination of the photograph of the starkly beautiful white marble building on the cover.

  If you are in trouble and do not know what to do about your great problem, you are invited to come here to talk about it to the Man who Listens. Thousands of people over the past years have come and have been fortified and given hope. The Man who Listens has never betrayed a confidence. He never has. He never will.

  Scientists had to be discreet and top secret in the world of today. Atino found himself instinctively shrinking. Then he laughed a little. No one knew he was here —But, wait. Was he actually thinking of going to talk to the Man who Listens? Nonsense. He was a scientist with a terrible secret that only seven besides himself knew in all the world, and not a girl in trouble, a workman without employment, an anonymous widow, a clerk overcome by debts. He was a scientist on the way to the Pentagon in Washington.

  You are only a man, said a voice in himself. The voice was so clear that he started violently and looked about the room.

  The day was rapidly darkening; the heavy, sullen wind beat at the windows. The snow had increased. But it was silent, too silent in this room.

  Who was the Man who Listens? The doctor, still forcing himself to smile, searched through the pamphlet. The pamphlet informed him that no one knew who the man was. Some thought him a psychiatrist, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher. Thousands had seen him. Others had preferred not to see him. No one had ever told who he was.

  Automatically Atino put down the pamphlet. The sense of urgency, however, was stronger in him, like a powerful force. It was like magnetism, like the pull of gravitation. His heart was beating rapidly; he could hear the pounding of his pulses in his ears. An actual physical distress was on him. What was all this? He looked at the pamphlet and could not look away. He felt as though he were smothering.

  Superstition. Too, who knew who the man was? It was even possible he was a Communist, lurking in secret, listening. What would the Pentagon say of such indiscretion? What would his associates, the Dynamic Research Associates, say of it? If any word — He could be denounced, held up to public infamy — a traitor. He could even be called a Communist — if a Communist in that building made use of what he might say.

  But he could be discreet. Now why should I even consider going t
o this sentimental, out-of-the-way place, this melodramatic place? I thought I had become a one-hundred percent American, yet my heredity, my blood, is speaking in me. The wolf at the edge of the forest. The storm in Chicago, which had made him come here, only for fresh delay and a new storm. Marooned with himself, alone with himself, voiceless, drifting, hearing only his frightful thoughts. Worse, he had not solved his own problem, even in this silence.

  He would prove it all nonsense. He called the airport. All flights canceled, of course, indefinitely. The storm was only really beginning. He called the railroad station. Sorry, all reservations were filled; there was a long waiting list for cancellations. He then called the bus station; even if a bus left at midnight he would be on it. All reservations were filled for two days. He was marooned with himself, and what more appalling thing could happen to a man in despair? In one last effort he called the two companies who rented automobiles. Sorry, they would have none for him until late tomorrow.