A Grain of Wheat

by Joseph Jacobson

  “What we call ‘progress’ is exciting and inevitable. How can it not be of God? Or, as one of my mentors would have put it, how can progress not be in harmony with the Creative Force of the universe? Now, if God is good, if the Creative Force is orderly and constructive, who would not conclude that progress, that is, the gradual evolution of man’s knowledge and his ability to put it to use, must also be good and orderly and constructive? Who would not equate evil with ignorance and the obstruction of progress? Who would not be honored to devote himself to the cause of progress, to lose himself in the world of research and discovery? But with my own eyes I have seen highly educated and brilliant men seize the fruits of progress, the cream of our discoveries, and fashion them into weapons of mass destruction.

  “No! I unmask myself—I am … one of them!”

  Steve hunched over, collapsed, and covered his face with his trembling hands.

  Kay almost threw herself at him. She wrapped her arms around his chest and hung on, stroking his right cheek very gently with her soft hand. Slowly his trembling subsided.

  Steve pulled himself together and sat up straight. She released him, still facing him squarely. He turned to face her.

  “Now I put it to you. Progress is inevitable. Progress has been the cause of an evil more heinous than any evil created by men in the past. Tell me: Is progress of God? I cannot believe that it is not, yet how can I believe that it is?…”

  “But Steve, think of advances in medicine, in labor-saving machinery, in comforts that make life for so many people more than just bearable.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t begin to offset Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What do you make of what those two bombs did?”

  Kay’s tongue went hot and dry. She dreaded what a truthful answer might do to Steve, but she dreaded even more what a dishonest answer would do to him. She closed her eyes.

  “I try not to think of it, Steve. I try desperately not to think of it. I just want to dismiss that horrifying chapter of our recent past and move on into a better future. But I know that is not the right way to look at it…. Some of our Red Cross workers in Europe had spent time in those two vast crematoria after the war. Who was left? Human wrecks, crazed, crippled, gradually falling all apart from a creeping untreatable new disease created by us. Disbelief and despair were everywhere, they told us…. Steve, do you know why our leaders didn’t just drop those bombs over the ocean a little ways off the coast if they wanted to demonstrate their power, where a west wind would carry the fallout away from the people? Why, oh why did we have to match their treachery at Pearl Harbor with an act of even crueler treachery of our own?”

  Steve’s eyes turned to glass. His body crumpled together, as if pounded down by a jackhammer. He was trembling again, all over. Kay clasped her arms around his shuddering shoulders.

  “Steve! Steve! Forgive me! There are enough terrifying things in the world. I do not have to become one of them! O, forgive me!”

  She moved her hands down to his arms and gripped them tightly. He pressed his hands together in a vise, closed his eyes, and bit his lip to regain control of himself. Somehow he must tell her the whole truth about himself right here, now, in real life, not just in his mind. But first he must stop shaking. Then he must find a way to wipe the vision of horror from his thoughts long enough to formulate for her what he needed her to know.

  It took a long time, but eventually a measure of calm returned to him. Kay’s tight grip on him helped. As his tremors subsided, she relaxed her hold. Neither of them said a word, or even moved. At last he reached out for her hands, falteringly, and cupped them within his. He looked into her tear-stained eyes.

  “May I tell you why I am so crushed?”

  “Please.”

  Once more his head and shoulders slumped down almost to his knees. A tide of sorrow engulfed him. Then he sat up straight, took a deep breath, and said without looking at her, “I share with a small handful of colleagues the chief responsibility for creating those bombs. I was at the center of the Oak Ridge work from its inception. Only I know how much I contributed, how terribly much. And why? Why did I do it? To defend the good, to protect civilization, to halt the barbarians. And by what means? By creating a barbarous monster on the end of a paper leash and turning it over to our leaders who turned it loose on mankind. That’s how we did it, Kay! We brilliant scientists!”

  Kay gasped. “Was it that? O my poor, poor Steve….”

  He shook his head hopelessly, staring dumbly between his drawn-up knees.

  She stared at him and marveled. He was a little man. Just a kindly, harmless, sensitive little man. In his striped coveralls, he could have just come in from haying. Any farmer in the area might have borne his small head with its nondescript features and metallic hair. Only occasionally had his mannerisms betrayed to her anything noteworthy about him. To look at him, you would take him to be as common as a weed in the ditch.

  So it is thanks to men like him that the world is hovering on the brink of global holocaust, she gasped within herself, shaking her head.

  She leaned back on the bank right next to Steve, suddenly weak all over. He leaned back limply, too. His heart was still thumping.

  How can he be any guiltier than I am? she thought.

  And how guilty are you? came a voice from somewhere within her.

  XVI

  Those imposing clouds that had been standing guard in the eastern and southern skies were now silently dissipating. Their scattered remnants were catching the last flashing shafts of sunlight and diffusing them over the earth in a cool amber glow. Cowbells tinkled in the reigning stillness as herds wound down the mountain paths homeward from the upper pastures. A few dull sounds from town indicated comfortingly that the steady pulse of human life was beating on. Perched high in the maples in front of the schoolyard several robins were closing a busy day with torrents of cheerful music. Beneath the maples two people, so very dissimilar in appearance, were going through a silent confluence of spirit that he had not experienced for over twenty-five years and that she had never known.

  At first they lay there exhausted, as if they had just crossed the finish line of a strenuous race. The last lap had left them gasping and panting and limp as rags. In a motion of pure weariness Kay’s hands tugged slightly at the cupped palms in which Steve had them enclosed, but they did not come free. This caused a strange ripple of relief to pass through her. She let her head fall onto the rough fabric covering his shoulder and arm.

  They lay there in silence. What might have looked awkward to an onlooker felt smooth and soothing to them. The longer they lay there, the more their shock and sorrow melted away, as though a skillful surgeon was removing sharp fragments of shrapnel from their wounded spirits, one by one. Each of them could sense that this little miracle was happening to both of them at the same time, and there was comfort in that knowledge.

  The guilt was still there, and the issues around progress and evil were still unresolved, especially for Steve. But a “higher force” was now bathing them in the balm of forgiveness and respite. What was this force? Was it love?

  As calmness slowly replaced anguish, they got back in touch with their immediate situation. There they were, lying in the deepening twilight of this warm spring evening with her head on his chest and her hands locked in his. The last glimmer of sunlight was playing on the edge of the vanishing clouds, streaking the sky gloriously through the dense crowns of the maples.

  “The little birds are hushed now,” murmured Steve as he often did at the onset of darkness. His throat tightened at those words, as it always did. Tonight it was as if nothing that had happened in the last twenty-five years had dulled his memory of Cecilia in the slightest, and nothing had even begun to fill the aching loneliness that never went away.

  What was this soft warmth he felt enclosed in his hands? After so many years of empty hands? Was this really a pretty little head on his shoulder? Were these satiny strands of dark brown hair really brushing gently on his cheek? Wa
s he—old, gray-haired, worn out—really basking in the aura of a lovely young woman who was also now a trusted friend?

  He did not know what to make of it. All he wanted was to stay there forever, absolved in the forgiveness of one who insisted on sharing his guilt though she was innocent. The very thought of going back into the world that had claimed his soul for the past six-and-a-half years sent a shiver through him. In response to this dreadful thought, he slid his free arm under Kay’s shoulders and drew her closer.

  Meanwhile, Kay had also returned to the present moment, marveling first at the strangeness and then at the ease of their nearness. In her mind’s eye she envisioned the inside of the schoolroom and all thirty-two of her precious charges gawking at her. If they could see her now, most of them would react with glee, a few with horror, a very few with malice, and a few with that same blank expression they always wore. But she would not really care what they thought. In fact, she wouldn’t care what anyone thought. She’d just close her eyes and think of, well … she’d think of Steve, of course! What else had she been thinking of lately?

  A dearly puzzling, tragic man. So great and so miserable, so high-minded and so crushed, so brilliant and so taken advantage of, so kind and so treacherous. Treacherous? No! Not Steve. Out of the fruits of his genius others had wrought treachery, but still he claimed the guilt. He was only as guilty as any other American who had believed in the cause of the war and supported it with all his strength. The nobility of his character, the impunity of his motives, were they not self-evident in all he said and did? Just take a look into his eyes! All you can see in them is depth and honesty.

  Presently a thought crossed her mind. It had flitted across it before, but now it strode across it.

  I have to marry this man! I could never be happy with anyone else. All I care about now is his happiness, helping him put his life back together. He needs me. I can’t imagine life without him. I have to marry him.

  This led her to reflect on the various GI’s and others she had dated in Europe, and a few back in America. All the decent ones had been insipid, and all the rest thought that every woman they ran into was starving for sex. Any girl who resisted their advances was subjected to verbal humiliations such as, “So you’re saving yourself for Mr. Right, are you!” How often she’d heard some version of that line! She’d always reply, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.” It was so demeaning!

  But Steve was altogether different. She had had to pull herself away from the clutches of the others, but she had clung to Steve and sunk into his arms. She had had to spurn the others, sometimes aggressively, but she encouraged Steve. She had cringed at the thought of a future with any of the others, but was excited at the thought of a future with Steve. As she turned it over in her mind, she realized that she was just as saddened by the thought of his future without her as she was by the thought of her future without him. She had invited him into her heart, and now he was about to leave. How could she let him go?

  That was the moment when his arm slid under her shoulders.

  “How comes it,” Steve said in a whisper, “that such a wonderful and lovely young woman like you is not married?”

  The question didn’t come as a surprise to her at all, given where her thoughts had just been.

  “I guess it’s because the right man has never asked me.”

  She was satisfied with the way that sounded.

  Almost at once, a grimace bit into her face.

  “What is it, Kay?”

  She balked and, withdrawing momentarily into herself, she replied haltingly, “That’s not the only reason. You see … I’m very diabetic. The doctors tell me I have to give up any idea of having children. When some men discover that, they don’t want me.”

  “They are very silly,” Steve asserted, squeezing her hand.

  Once again they lapsed into silence. An owl was hooting in the top branches of one of the trees. The air was still warm.

  “Steve?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why is it that a man as kind and brilliant as you are is not married?”

  He was half-expecting the question and had no idea how to answer it.

  “Someday I will tell you the whole story.”

  Kay’s heart stopped. “Someday? Does that mean?…”

  “Twenty-five years ago I had a very great love … and then a very great sorrow, of my own making. She died in an accident. And I have never tried too hard to recover. I’ve just wanted to make her happy with what I was doing with my life, to know that she didn’t die for nothing. That’s why.”

  Kay held her peace for a long minute and then asked, “Wouldn’t she be happy to see you recover?”

  Steve looked at Kay and blinked hard.

  “Yes, I know she would. I have never really wanted to ‘get over her’ for all these years. But my misery and loneliness can’t be making her happy, any more than my work on the bomb made her happy. I know she wants me to accept forgiveness for my guilt and to get over my despair. I just know it. But I can’t do that at the institute. Everything I’m asked to do there is making matters worse for the world.”

  Kay’s brain was in high gear. Steve had so much hanging in the balance at this very moment. Whatever he was being asked to do at the “institute” was eating away at his soul. Surely that’s why he had taken a leave-of-absence and fled to the hills of Vermont. If he went back to the “institute” now, it would kill him. But what could she do about it?

  Well, he must not return to the “institute,” and that’s that! But what else could he do? After all those years in the front lines of research, who could use him outside of that field? She had never known anyone who was so brilliant and yet so gentle, so wounded himself and yet so considerate of others. To her, he represented at heart the noblest in man. His sharply analytical mind, his sensitive soul, the natural way in which he combined his dedication to science and his relationship to God, his way of integrating the rational and the spiritual—this must fit him for something more fulfilling for him to do than what he was doing now. Whatever it would be, it would have to combine the coldness of pure science with a warm concern for the well-being of people. The absence of that combination is what has been killing him. He would also need to be in an environment in which he would have a chance to figure out how God relates to all of this, and how he relates to God.

  Now, where might he find a workplace that would satisfy all these requirements?

  “Come on, little brain,” she urged herself. “Show me what Steve can do next?”

  As she pressed all these factors together in her mind, a recognizable shape came together. She smiled to herself, first broadly, then a little anxiously. Her heart was fluttering with excitement. What would he make of it? Would he go for it? Oh, just maybe he would!

  She lifted her head and whispered eagerly, “Steve?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you ever thought about switching into teaching? At a college in a little town somewhere?”

  This idea took Steve squarely aback.

  Teaching? A few of the men he had worked with during the war had gone into teaching, but he along with a few others had been swept by Uncle Sam from Oak Ridge straight to Pittsburg. “We must keep our superior minds working for us,” was what they had been told. He shuddered to think of what they might be planning to do with his research of the past eighteen months. “We must maintain our decisive lead to preserve peace and guard our freedoms.” They had left him no time to think about anything other than the government’s program to develop the next generation of bombs.

  Teaching…. How could anyone pervert and twist that? In teaching you could speak your convictions and shape young minds into pursuing only beneficial uses for developments in science. You would have the time and leisure to give serious thought to the emerging problems of the postwar world. You could probe the heart of modern society and your own heart, too. You would certainly not have the latest equipment to work with, as you do at the institute, but yo
u would be marvelously free!

  “Mmmmmm,” Steve responded. “Did you ask that of yourself, Kay, or did a great good Spirit prompt you?”

  “I think it must have been a great good Spirit,” she replied, giving him a squeeze.

  She could tell the idea was already taking root in him and germinating. She knew that what was going on inside him right now would probably affect the course of her own life forever. Limp with relief, she buried her head deeper into his rejuvenated breast.

  “I will try to return to Christiania,” he announced at length.

  “Christiania? That sounds exactly right,” murmured Kay. “Isn’t that somewhere in Minnesota? What made you think of that college?”

  “That’s where many years ago it all happened. It won’t be easy to go back there and relive everything. But that’s also where I was sent off on my life of research with such enthusiasm. And I have a feeling that that’s where I’ll discover where and how I went off track. Not to mention all the eager young minds I’d have to work with in a place like that.”

  “Steve, I’m so happy for you, so very happy.”

  The joy of her relief was almost too much for her. She brushed back some stubbornly persistent tears and buried her head once again in Steve’s chest. Feeling her warm little body rise and fall with an irregularity that betrayed its secret, Steve realized how deeply she must care about him. Was he filling an emptiness in her life the way she was filling an emptiness in his? Clearly his future was also hers, and his fulfillment could only happen in her. Without her the darkness would swallow him up again. He held her close. She was warm, she was life, and she was sniffling with happiness. She was caring, she was sparkling, and she was lovely to behold. She was a little treasure of untold worth.