The Listener

by Taylor Caldwell

  I could walk, of course, he said to himself with humor. Only two hundred miles!

  The Man who Listens. Atino looked about his room. The restlessness was like a fever in him, and the urgency was even stronger. He found himself putting on his coat. He would, of course, not give his name. Danger! Danger! He could conceal his face with his handkerchief. Danger!

  The scientist in him, he told himself, wanted to investigate this absurdity.

  “The desolation.” The wolf at the edge of the forest. He could see the wolf clearly gigantic, astride the world, with ravenous fangs, with madness in his furious eyes. Atino ran from the room, taking his small suitcase with him, which he must never leave for a moment. He was stopped in the lobby. He said impatiently, “Dr. Atino Kadimo. My suitcase? It has some papers —If you wish, I’ll pay you now, but I’m returning. Here are my credentials. Thank you very much. No, no apologies, please. I understand.”

  The manager himself, craven with regrets, went out into the storm and called a taxi for the doctor. Atino found himself in warm moving darkness, his bag at his knee.

  “Out to old John Godfrey’s place, eh?” said the driver.

  “Why, yes. Is it interesting?”

  “Well, sir,” said the driver, “I think it is. You know something? I went out there two years ago. I have a wife and a couple kids. I was always a big drinker, and then it got out of control, see? I was always on a binge, and I was in court a couple of times for non-support. Then I went to see the Man who Listens. I told him all about myself. And after that I didn’t drink no more. No sir.”

  “Oh? He gave you excellent advice?”

  The driver was silent for a little. “Well, now, come to think of it, I don’t remember if he ever spoke to me or not. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. They have a button there, see? You could open the curtains if you wanted to. But I didn’t. I was kind of ashamed to, after what I’d spilled about — everything. All I know is that since I went there I ain’t had a single drink. No sir. Not one. And I don’t want any. Everything’s fine now.”

  The doctor waited for the inevitable, inquisitive question:

  “You in trouble too?” But the driver did not ask it. Instead he said, “I drive lots of people there. Mostly from out of town. I took five people from that there hotel of yours today, alone.”

  “There is trouble everywhere,” said the doctor with cautious conventionality.

  “Mister, you can say that again!” said the driver fervently. “With all them atom and hydrogen bombs waiting to blow the world up. Not that it don’t deserve it, at that. I sometimes wonder about the guys who think them up — the scientists, you know? When I was a kid I used to see movies about the ‘mad scientist’. Make your hair curl. Why, those guys in the movies was Sunday-school teachers when you think of the scientists now! I’d like to hit them with a wrench where it’d do the most good. Yes sir. Ever know a scientist?”

  “I think I met one or two at some time,” said Atino. He felt sick. “At school. My teachers.”

  “Glad I didn’t go to high school. I might’ve got a few ideas myself about blowing people up. I sometimes look at my kids. Nice kids. Not them juvenile delinquents. Mass at least three times a week. Regina says she wants to be a Sister. Well, we’ll see. And there’s Jimmie. He wants to teach school. Well, sir, I look at them kids, and well — ”

  Here was one of those who manned the desperate outposts of the world. Not a maker of wines, a poet, a philosopher, a musician, an artist — only a father with children. The outpost he manned was the most desperate of all.

  “Well, here you are,” said the driver. “You got to walk up that path. See the building up there?” He added admiringly, “It don’t matter if three inches of snow fall all at once. The paths’re always cleared right away. Ready for people.”

  It was only three o’clock, but the sky was very dark. The driver said as he made change, “It’s funny. This’s the worst storm we’ve had for twenty-five years. That’s what the radio says. The worst storm. Never saw anything like this myself.”

  Atino paused. “No storm like this before?”

  “Not that I remember,” said the driver cheerfully. “It’s one big storm, ain’t it? First time I remember that planes were ever grounded here, either.”

  Superstition. Atino, grasping his suitcase firmly, went up the path. He looked at the glowering dim sky and felt the sting of the blizzard in his face. It reminded him of home. He saw Father Rozniak again. “A stench... of violence and terror.” How had Father Rozniak died in the fury of the first World War? Hunger? A bayonet? Exposure? He had known it was all coming and he had not been afraid for himself. He had been afraid only for his people. He too had manned a desperate outpost. Manning it, he had faced the wolf. He had not run away. Men of God never ran away anywhere. Cardinal Mindszenty. He had not run away. The ministers, the rabbis, had remained to comfort their people, though their people, risking everything, would have helped them escape. They had remained. A shepherd does not leave his flock — to the wolf.

  But the scientists evoked the wolf. Mea maxima culpa.

  The sitting room was warm and serene. There was no one there but Atino. He put down his suitcase for a moment and looked about him with pleasure. Then he remembered the warnings he had been frequently given. Meticulously he examined the furniture, the underside of tables. He lifted the rug in various places. He scrutinized the walls. He tapped everything. But why should anyone ‘bug’ this place, where only the obscure and desperate came? Habit was sometimes hard to overcome. He felt a little foolish.

  A chime sounded. He started and looked at the solid oak door. He grasped his suitcase and went into the serene marble room with its shut curtains and marble chair.

  He looked at the curtains suspiciously. Then he went to them and tried to pull them aside. They would not stir. He looked at the button and read the inscription above it. He pressed the button. The curtains did not move. Very, very mysterious and melodramatic. He sat down in the chair. He took out his handkerchief and covered his face, then remembered that if anyone had wished to see him before this he had already been seen. He removed the handkerchief.

  He faced the curtains. A phrase he had read in the pamphlet returned to him: ‘All the time there is’. All the time. He said to himself: But there is very little time now.

  He sat and waited. He could hear no storm here, no traffic, no voice, no opening or closing of doors. If the man behind the curtains had ‘all the time there is’, so did he. He would wait the time out and see who would become impatient first. He laughed inwardly at himself for coming here. The clergyman behind those curtains would discover a man of infinite patience. But was anyone there, really?

  Atino bent forward, his head held sideways. He listened for a long time. There was no sound, but he knew powerfully that someone was there, and listening. The Man who Listens.

  Then Atino heard himself say aloud suddenly: “I am from an old country.”

  He waited, angry at himself for having spoken. He waited. Then he sat upright. Had he really heard an answer — “And so am I”?

  Atino jumped to his feet and examined the marble walls. Where did that light come from? Very interesting. He talked rapidly to himself, for his heart was thundering, and it must be controlled. He passed his hands over the walls. Solid. Nothing could be hidden. Nevertheless, he was frightened.

  “Oh you of little faith! Why are you afraid?”

  Atino swung around and confronted the curtains. “I heard you!” he exclaimed. “Who are you?” He sat down.

  The room was silent. I am going mad, thought Atino. I did not hear a voice at all! I only heard something in myself. Or did I?

  “There is a terrible storm outside,” he said aimlessly in his distraction.

  “Yes. A most terrible storm. It is just beginning.”

  “Just beginning,” Atino assented. Then he sat up, stiff and yet trembling. Had he heard a voice again, or had he imagined it? He tried to recall the voice. It had bee
n strong and full of echoes and sad. No. He had not heard the voice. It was only his own thoughts. Still. . .

  Then he remembered another poem. (Strange that he should remember poems today!) Francis Thompson? The Hound of Heaven.

  . . . must Thy harvest fields

  Be dunged with rotten death?

  Not Yours, O Lord, said Atino in himself. Only ours. Only ours. We have destroyed Your harvest fields. We have dunged them with rotten death. We will dung them again.

  “That is why I came,” he said to the curtains. “I must have an answer. Tell me what to do.”

  The silence waited. “I never hated anyone,” said Atino.

  “I — we — discovered something. How to — ” How to split, fuse, the atom, he continued in his thoughts. It was a marvelous discovery. We had discovered one of the secrets of God. Or had He given that secret to us? Why? For our knowledge, for our love, for our use, for our revelation?

  “Yes,” said the deep and echoing voice.

  “What?” cried Atino. “Did you speak? Or am I going insane?”

  He looked about the room desperately. He heard the echo only of his own spoken words. He was sweating. “I am a man in despair,” he said without volition.

  The room waited, and the light grew brighter, as if with encouragement.

  “I was brought up in a very religious atmosphere,” said Atino. “I was brought up in the fear of God. But that was in the old country. Few, if any, fear God now.”

  Silence.

  “I love life,” said Atino. “I love all life. Because God created it. I am a vegetarian. They laugh at me. But I never wished to destroy life. One knows that God gave the animals of the world to man, to eat and to hunt. But still, I could not bring myself to destroy life.” He stopped, and then he said, “But I have destroyed life. I did not mean to do it. They took what we had to offer, to make life more glorious, and they used it for death. Useless, malicious death. It was not necessary. A general told me it was not necessary. We were betrayed. Have you ever been betrayed?”

  “Yes,” said the voice.

  Atino stared at the curtains. “Did I hear you answer?” he asked. “Or did I imagine it?”

  Silence.

  “The great Commandment,” said Atino. “ ‘Thou shalt not kill’. ”

  He put his hands over his face. “ ‘Thou shalt not kill’. Above all, you must not kill. That is my problem. I don’t know what to do! If I give — them — what we eight know — there will be more terror, more death. They will say to us: ‘But if we don’t have this, if they first have this, then we’ll die’. If I say — if we say — this must not be used for death, then we’ll be execrated. We’ll be called traitors. Traitors to what? The code of killing, for killing’s sake?

  “Dear God,” said Atino, “I’m not a murderer. Help me. If You do not help me, then the world will die. They’ve already heard something of what we are doing and what we know. That is why I am on my way. If you do not help me, Your beautiful world, Your garden, will be destroyed. My associates have given me all authority. I don’t know why this is, why they gave me authority to speak for them.”

  He looked at the curtains with tormented eyes.

  “Do you know that between Mars and Jupiter there was once a world, a planet like ours? A planet, like ours, with life upon it? God never created anything lifeless; He could not, for He is life itself. But that planet exploded. Or did it explode? Were there men like ourselves there, with death and hatred and evil and war in their black hearts? I know that many astronomers say that life would have been too cold on any such planet between red Mars and Jupiter. It might have had an atmosphere unlike ours. But must every life be like ours? Might not the oxygen we breathe be deadly to other creatures? The methane on the moons of Saturn may be breath of life to the inhabitants of the moons and Saturn. The breath of life is not only oxygen. We are too provincial. We insist on casting life in our own meager image. What our animal lungs can absorb must, per se, be what other lungs can absorb. What heat there is on this world must necessarily be the heat other creatures must need. What folly! What stupidity! Must everything be what we need, what we demand? Must everything be tempered, fashioned, arranged, heated, and cooled — in the universe — according to man’s needs? Are there not others with other needs, ordained by God? God has established the boundaries of the worlds. Perhaps He intends, by other atmospheres, by other thermodynamics, to keep evil from spreading from one world to another — to bar man everywhere. To bar murder — everywhere. To keep it restrained, in its own prison.”

  Atino leaned toward the curtains, twisting his hands together, forgetting caution, forgetting everything but that he was a man and a soul.

  “The way between Mars and Jupiter is full of immense debris, enormous, fragmented. It was a world. Did the inhabitants destroy that world?”

  The silence answered him.

  “And so,” said Atino, “we can — we probably will — destroy our world too. Help me. I am only a man, and I am afraid. I was not born in this country and so am open to suspicion. By whom? By the provincials, by those who will not understand, or those who pretend not to understand. For their own wicked reasons.”

  He looked with passion at the curtains, straining forward. “Does goodness reside only on one particular continent, in one country? Are all other countries outside the pale? Who gave any country ‘the leadership of the world’? Not God. Only the egotism, the pride, the folly, the stupidity, the meanness, the hate of any particular country. Are we all not men, the children of God? Where is there leadership — except in God? But one must not mention God these days! If you do, there are smirks and winkings and sidelong glances. There are intimations that you are mentally ill.”

  He groaned. “ ‘In God we trust’. That is on our coins. We in America pretend to believe that. We do not. We trust only in weapons and bribes and treaties and admonitions — as does our adversary. The old, old history — the history of death. What man ever stood on the battlefield and cried out: ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ Never, in the history of the world. Killing is our reason for living. We are all guilty, everywhere. None save God is good.”

  He clasped his hands vehemently together and extended them toward the curtains. “The United Nations. Oh, God. What have they done to prevent murder? To establish justice, freedom, love, under God? Nothing! A congress of quarrels, of self-seeking, of secret betrayals of men of good will. They have stood silent before evil. When an affair of magnitude comes before them, they count the population of cats in the world! Dear God, it is quite true. Quite true. Dear God. Dear God! They won’t even permit Your Name to be mentioned there. It might offend somebody!”

  He stood up, violently trembling, broken. He went to the curtains. “Do you hear me? Will you let me see you? Will you answer me?”

  He touched the button. The curtains flew aside.

  He saw a great alcove, more than twelve feet high, more than six feet wide, curved like a protecting and hallowed shell, filled with light.

  He saw in the alcove a tremendous crucifix of roughly carved wood, broad and wide.

  On the cross was nailed the Son of God, the Son of man, true God, true man, carved of ivory, or perhaps of the finest white wood. More than life-sized it yet seemed formed of living and pulsing flesh, exquisitely tinted, majestic.

  The figure was not of the dead Christ but of the living One. The head was lifted, held forward, strained to listening, suffering yet hearing, intense if agonized. The eager eyes were turned on Atino, listening. The crown of thorns stood on the heroic forehead, and drops of blood streamed from it. The hands bled, and the left side, and the twisted feet.

  The ardent, anxious, self-forgetting, loving, and listening eyes, the eyes which knew everything, saw everything, understood everything! The Sacrifice, offered up of Itself. For man. For evil, plotting, whispering, malicious, blackhearted man. Man, the murderer. Man, the thief. Man, the betrayer. Man, the destroyer.

  Pity and mercy beamed on the mighty features
, and forgiveness. The pity and mercy and forgiveness extended not only to man but to all the worlds He had created. To all the worlds He would create.

  The light glimmered on carved muscle and thigh and strained arm, on rib cage, on breast, on chin, on stretched leg, on bleeding foot, so that it was not an image there, but Life itself, suffering and flesh-forgetting and loving, and eternal.

  “Yes!” cried Atino. “Yes! I should have known! The Man who Listens. You have never stopped listening. You listen through eternity. Dear God. Dear God!”

  He was weak, almost fainting. He let himself down beside the cross and leaned his head against the feet. Instantly a powerful sense of ultimate protection came to him, and comfort and love and gentleness and comprehension. He knew he would not have to speak aloud. All his thoughts would be heard. The mighty cross and Figure stood over him, a Fortress, a Gate that hell itself could not force.