A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence
It takes me less than a minute to get to the front hall and put on my coat and hood.
“Rachel – listen. Please. It was just that –”
I can’t listen. I won’t slam the door. I must shut it very quietly. Once I am outside I can begin running.
THREE
“Hurry up, dear, or we’ll be late.”
Her voice comes meadowlarking in through my bedroom door with such a lightness that I marvel at it, and she seems all at once marvellous, not letting on all that often about the frailty of her heart, although she had a slight attack two nights ago and the skin around her mouth was violet.
“Coming. I’ll be right there.”
Going to church is a social occasion for her. She hasn’t so many. It’s mean of me not to want to go.
I always do, though. When I came back to teach in Manawaka, I told Mother the first Sunday that I didn’t think I’d go. She said “Why not?” I didn’t say God hadn’t died recently, within the last few years, but a long time ago, longer than I could remember, for I could not actually recall a time when He was alive. No use to say that. I only told her I didn’t agree with everything. She said “I don’t think it would be very nice, not to go. I don’t think it would look very good.” But I didn’t go. I held out three weeks. She didn’t reproach me, not openly. She only relayed comments. “Reverend MacElfrish asked after you, dear. He said he hoped you were well. I suppose he thought you probably weren’t, as he hasn’t seen you.” I thought what was the point in upsetting her, so I went. And have done, ever since.
She hasn’t mentioned the Tabernacle. That was more than a week ago, and if anyone were going to tell her about it, they’d have done so by now, surely. I was in an agony for days, wondering if she would find out. I still can hardly believe she won’t.
“Rachel – aren’t you ready yet?”
“Yes, I’m just coming now.”
“Oh – are you going to wear that orange scarf, dear? Isn’t it a little bright, with your green coat?”
“Do you think so?”
“Well, perhaps not. I would have thought your pink one would’ve gone better, that’s all. But never mind. You wear whichever one you want.”
I won’t change. I don’t like the pink scarf. But now I won’t feel right about the orange one, either. If ever I said to her, “this is what you do,” she’d be hurt and astounded and would deny it. She believes absolutely that she never speaks ill of anyone or harmfully to a soul. Once when I was quite young, she said to me, “Whatever people may say of it, your father is a kind man – you must always believe that, Rachel.” Until that moment it had never occurred to me that he might not be thought a kind man. No wonder he never fought back. Her weapons are invisible, and she would never admit even to carrying them, much less putting them to use.
How can I think this way about her, when only a moment ago I was worrying about her heart?
Japonica Street is filled with morning light, and Mother in her new flowered-silk coat walks along like a butterfly released from winter. Really, she is amazing for her age. Am I walking stiffly? I always wonder if my height makes me appear to be striding. Mother takes quick, short steps, the kind I find impossible. She and Stacey look all right walking down the street together, for they’re much the same height. With her, I always feel like some lean greyhound being led out for a walk.
I can hear the church chimes. They used to have a solitary bell there, summoning the faithful in plain clarity, but recently they have acquired a carillon which tinkles The Church’s One Foundation.
Here we are. Mother flicks through the Hymnary to look up the hymns in advance. I wonder what she believes, if anything. She’s never said. It was not a subject for discussion. She loves coming to church because she sees everyone, and in spring the new hats are like a forest of tulips. But as for faith – I suppose she takes it for granted that she believes. Yet if the Reverend MacElfrish should suddenly lose his mind and speak of God with anguish or joy, or out of some need should pray with fierce humility as though God had to be there, Mother would be shocked to the core. Luckily, it will never happen.
Mr. MacElfrish’s voice is as smooth and mellifluous as always, and he is careful not to say anything which might be upsetting. His sermon deals with Gratitude. He says we are fortunate to be living here, in plenty, and we ought not to take our blessings for granted. Who is likely to quibble with that?
The wood in this church is beautifully finished. Nothing ornate – heaven forbid. The congregation has good taste. Simple furnishings, but the grain of the wood shows deeply brown-gold, and at the front, where the high altar would be if this had been a church which paid court to high altars, a stained-glass window shows a pretty and clean-cut Jesus expiring gently and with absolutely no inconvenience, no gore, no pain, just this nice and slightly effeminate insurance salesman who, somewhat incongruously, happens to be clad in a toga, holding his arms languidly up to something which might in other circumstances have been a cross.
Oh Rachel. Carp, carp. Is that all you know how to do? The Tabernacle has too much gaudiness and zeal, and this has too little.
My father would never go to church. She used to say, “It isn’t very nice, Niall, for a man in your position not to go.” Perhaps she thought his absence would imply that when he dressed the dead and combed their hair, he did it in the conviction that they’d found by now all there was – oblivion. Undoubtedly he did think so. Immortality would have appalled him, perhaps as much as it does me.
“Why on earth do they let him?” Mother hisses softly.
“What?”
“Tom Gillanders – he’s going to sing a solo. Honestly. I ask you.”
“Well, he’s been in the choir such a long time. Mr. MacElfrish doesn’t like to say no, I guess.”
Inwardly, though, I’m as much on edge as Mother. Tom Gillanders used to have a good voice, but that was years ago. He must be eighty now. He rises in the choir loft and stands alone, his black choir gown making him look like an emaciated crow.
Jerusalem the golden,
with milk and honey blest –
His voice is like the grating of sandpaper on rough wood. Sometimes it trembles and he loses the tune entirely. How can he do it? Doesn’t he know how he sounds and how it makes him look?
Did I, in the Tabernacle? Did I know? I knew, and still I couldn’t help it. Maybe the old man knows, too, and still cannot help it. If I believed, I would have to detest God for the brutal joker He would be if He existed.
I know not, O I know not
What joys await us there –
He’s wandered away from the accompaniment, and the organist is fumbling madly to find him again. Beside me, Mother squirms. I can’t blame her. Surely one might reasonably expect not to have to be embarrassed in this church, at least.
When I was a child, some people called Dukes had a mongoloid son. I remember him as a huge creature, but possibly because I was small. He must have been about sixteen then, his face puffy and his eyes, seeing but blind, almost buried within that unhealthy-looking flesh. They used to bring him to church sometimes, and those Sundays were a torment as pure as anything I’ve known since. He would talk aloud, in a high slurred voice, all through the service, but still they’d stay, on and on, and wouldn’t leave unless he started saying swear words. Or even worse. I got to pee, Mama. And everyone would sit with burning faces, pretending they hadn’t heard.
Well, thank God, the old man has finished, and at last the benediction is pronounced, and we are allowed to go.
“They shouldn’t let him,” Mother says, as we walk. “It’s a disgrace. Don’t you think so, yourself, Rachel?”
“Yes. Yes, I certainly do.”
And yet with some part of myself I am inexplicably angry at this agreement.
Willard did not come to my classroom today, as he usually does when he has something to say. Instead he sent a note, saying would I please go to his office. I feel I’m being summoned like a naughty child. What righ
Willard is sitting behind his desk. He has his glasses off and is rubbing his eyes as though they were sore or sleepy. This gives him, momentarily, a look of such vulnerability that I feel almost affectionate towards him, and want to draw back swiftly so he won’t know and be troubled by the intrusion of my seeing him this way. He guards and cherishes his dignity so much. And now I remember his telling me once that he had to start wearing glasses when he first went to college, and he detested them. That’s the only personal thing he has ever told me about himself. For some reason it touched me, and I could imagine him, straight from the small town where he grew up, and made gauche as well by his shortness, just as I was by my height, and then having spectacles to add to his misery.
He puts his glasses back on, and the heavy navy-blue frames define and strengthen his face. Now I remember the point of his telling me that about himself. He said he decided the only thing to do was to emphasize the glasses rather than trying to hide them, so he got the thickest and darkest frames he could find. Thus a natural disadvantage can always be turned to gain, he said. And I wondered uneasily what he was hinting I ought to do.
“Oh, Rachel. Come in. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
He does not ask me to sit down, so I have to remain standing while he fusses officiously with papers on his desk, not really doing anything, just applying a few paper-clips. Kept purposely waiting like this, I may soon blurt out something unpardonable, only to unbind the tension.
Once again, his hands on the desk seem to be drawing my eyes. With them he touches his wife, and holds the strap to strike a child, and –
My own stare repulses me, and yet I’m reassured by it. However unacceptable it may be, to want to brush my fingertips across the furred knuckles of someone I don’t even like, at least they’re a man’s hands.
Has he noticed my looking? That I could not endure. Quick, look at something else. The calendar on his wall says Bank Of Montreal in gold on a royal-blue background and is not so frivolous as to display any picture.
“Now then,” Willard says, glancing up. “Have you seen that boy’s mother yet, Rachel?”
“Oh. You mean – James Doherty’s mother?”
“Yes,” he says, with a slight air of impatience. “That’s the one. The boy who comes to school only when he feels like it.”
“He hasn’t missed a day, recently.”
“Have you seen her, though?”
“Well, not yet, I thought –”
And now I see, startled, that I have been putting it off. The days seem to have gone by so quickly. I can’t explain this negligence, because there is no explanation.
“It would be advisable to see her without delay, Rachel. Summer holidays are coming up, and after two months running wild, he is not likely to be improved. It would be just as well to make the situation eminently clear to the boy’s mother right now. Whatever our shortcomings here, I would not want it said that we were a slack school, would you?”
“No – of course not. I’m sorry I haven’t seen her, Willard. Honestly. I’ve been meaning to, and –”
I can hear my own voice, eagerly abject. Probably I would get down on my knees if this weren’t frowned upon. I hate all this. I hate speaking in this way. But I go on doing it.
“Well, never mind.” He cuts me short, as though bored, which he probably is. “You’ll see to it, then?”
“Yes. Certainly. I’ll send a note home with James tomorrow.”
“I would have thought,” Willard says, “that a phone call might be somewhat more reliable. More likely to reach its destination, as it were.”
I want to say – that’s not fair – you’ve no right to imply that about James – he would never do a thing like that. But why should Willard believe me? And when it comes to it, am I certain James wouldn’t? Looking now at Willard’s face, I’m certain only of what he says, as though his eyes have the reptilian gift. It is said that a person cannot be hypnotized against their will, but that can’t be true.
“I’ll phone, then.”
I want only to get away. I would agree to anything. What does it matter?
“Fine. That’s settled, then,” Willard says, and I see I’m dismissed, permitted to go, let out of school.
Calla is in the Teachers’ Room, making tea. I had a feeling she would be. She must have seen my cardigan hanging there, and known I hadn’t gone yet.
“Hi,” she says. “Like a cup of the brew that cheers but does not inebriate?”
Another of her favourite sayings. She has dozens. They get on my nerves. But I suppose they always provide her with something to say.
“Oh – thanks. I mustn’t be long, though. I have to pick up some meat before the butcher’s closes.”
“Sure,” she says, quite gently, hardly a trace of irony. “Okay.”
Only now do I see how obvious I’ve been, saying something like that, without thinking, merely out of nervousness, a warning. An unnecessary one – is that what she is trying to tell me? That I needn’t worry? That she won’t attempt? But what in God’s name do I think she’s likely to attempt, anyway? I know very well I don’t need to be afraid. She’s the same Calla I’ve known for years. I’ve told myself this, over and over. And yet some portion of myself wants to avoid her for evermore. She knows it – she must know – and when I think she realizes, I feel ashamed at my unenlightenment. I’m a reasonably intelligent person. I’m not a fool. I’ve done a certain amount of reading. But it doesn’t make much difference. I hold myself very carefully when she’s near, like a clay figurine, easily broken, unmendable. We’ve talked with each other in an excessively cheerful way ever since that evening. I suppose this is as good a way as any to camouflage the awkwardness we both feel and cannot admit or ever speak about.
“Been seeing the boss, Rachel?”
She pushes the tea cup towards me, across the table. She used to put the sugar and cream in my tea, for me, but she does not do that now. Another thing – she does not say child any more. Only Rachel. As though formality or great care had been forced upon her. I’ve wanted her to stop saying child or kid for a long time, yet now I feel unreasonably bereft.
No, I don’t. That’s senseless.
“What?” What did she ask me? “Oh – yes. I don’t see why he’s making such an issue of James. Remember – I told you? You’d think the reputation of the whole school was at stake.”
“He likes playing games with people, that’s all. If you once said to him, ‘Now listen here, Willard, quit making a mountain out of a molehill –’”
“You could do it. But not me.”
“Why not?”
“I –” I have to search for an adequate reason. “I can’t bear scenes. They make me ill.”
But this is too serious, and I want to change to something undangerous.
“Did you see Sapphire Travis’s shoes, Calla?”
“Sure. You could see them a block away. She painted them herself.”
“Really?”
“Yeh,” Calla says. “Some gloop she bought, a do-it-yourself shoe-painting kit. But why that screeching pink, I ask myself.”
“It’s a little bright, I agree.”
“It’s explosive. All her kids were staring like mad. With admiration, she thought. Well, this is uncharitable and lousy-minded of me. What harm does it do, after all? Brighten the corner where you are, and so on. Maybe I’ll get around to doing my old brogues a pale lilac.”
“Polka-dotted with silver.”
“Sure. Just the job.” And she chuckles throatily. She would probably do it, too, and find it more amusing than anyone. I envy this quality, but it appals me as well. She is gathering up the tea cups, whistling She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.
“Did I tell you I got a canary?” she says.
“No. Did you?”
“Yeh. Moronic little thing, actually. Not even a cheep out of it. I don’t think it’s scared of me. My guess is it is just simply anti-social and unmusica
“What a shame. Maybe it’ll change, though.”
“The other possibility,” Calla says, “is that it isn’t a canary at all. It is a bleached sparrow which has been fobbed off on me.”
She’s trying so valiantly, as she has done whenever she thought I was depressed, and so I do laugh, not to disappoint her. Then it occurs to me that she never speaks of the Tabernacle any more. I want to ask her how it is there, these days, just to show I can speak of it. I want to ask her in a perfectly ordinary voice, if she’s yet received the gift of tongues. I ought at least to enquire politely.
But as soon as I think of that place at all, I’m back there in that indefensible moment, trapped in my own alien voice, and the eyes all around have swollen to giants’ eyes. How will I ever be able to forget?
“I must go now.”
Before I’ve even quite realized it, I’ve snatched my cardigan off the hook and I’m halfway down the wide grey cement stairs outside. Calla will think it’s peculiar, that I should rush off like this. But I can’t go back. The knowledge of having to go back tomorrow morning is difficult enough.
Grace Doherty is plump and neat. She wears a white straw hat with veiling, and a light-blue spring suit, new, and high-heeled shoes. Why has she found it necessary to get dressed up like this? An interview with the teacher? But the teacher is Rachel Cameron, whom she’s known all her life. Is it possible she doesn’t think of it like this, and is edgy herself, wondering what I will have to say about James? I can’t believe it. She was always self-assured, a girl who never bothered about schoolwork and managed to convey the impression that those who did were laughable or else had nothing better to do.