You’ll promise you won’t tell my folks I’m working for you? I begged.
Of course not, he said.
No, promise! Promise on your word of honor!
He looked at me strangely. Then slowly he repeated—I promise on my word of honor.
The next morning, Sunday, I waited outside the door of my friends’ home to catch them on their way to church. I had no trouble persuading them to let me go to mass with them. They were delighted, in fact.
When we left the church of St. Francis de Sales—a horrible place of worship—I explained to them what I had accomplished. I fished out the money—it amounted to almost three dollars—and handed it to Sadie’s brother. To my utter amazement he refused to accept it.
But I only took the job for your sake, I expostulated.
I know, Henry, but my mother would never hear of such a thing.
But you don’t need to tell her it’s from me. Tell her you got a raise.
She wouldn’t believe that, he said.
Then tell her you found it in the street. Look, I’ll dig up an old purse. Put it in the purse and say you found it in the gutter just outside the church. She’ll have to believe that.
Still he was reluctant to take the money.
I was at my wits’ end. If he was not going to accept the money all my efforts were in vain. I left him with the promise that he would think it over.
It was Sadie who came to my rescue. She was closer to her mother and she understood the situation in a more practical way. At any rate she thought her mother ought to know what I meant to do for them—in order to express her appreciation.
Before the week was up we had a talk together, Sadie and I. She ..was waiting for me outside the school gate one afternoon.
It’s settled, Henry, she said, all out of breath, my mother agrees to take the money, but only for a little while—until my brother gets a full time job. Then we’ll pay you back.
I protested that I didn’t want to be paid back, but that if her mother insisted on such an arrangement I would have to give in. I handed over the money which was wrapped in a piece of butcher’s paper.
Mother says the Virgin Mary will protect you and bless you for your kindness, said Sadie.
I didn’t know what to say to this. No one had ever used such language with me. Besides, the Virgin Mary meant absolutely nothing to me. I didn’t believe in that nonsense.
Do you really believe in all that … that Virgin Mary stuff? I asked.
Sadie looked shocked—or perhaps grieved. She nodded her head gravely.
Just what is the Virgin Mary? I asked.
You know as well as I do, she answered.
No I don’t. Why do they call her Virgin?
Sadie thought a moment, then replied most innocently:
Because she’s the mother of God.
Well, what is a Virgin anyway?
There’s only one Virgin, answered Sadie, and that’s the Blessed Virgin Mary.
That’s no answer, I countered. I asked you—what is a Virgin?
It means a mother who is holy, said Sadie, none too sure of herself.
Here I had a brilliant thought. Didn’t God create the world? I demanded.
Of course.
Then there’s no mother. God doesn’t need a mother.
That’s blasphemy, Sadie almost shrieked. You’d better speak to the priest.
I don’t believe in priests.
Henry, don’t talk that way! God will punish you.
Why?
Because.
All right, said I, you ask the priest! You’re a Catholic. I’m not.
You shouldn’t say things like that, said Sadie, deeply offended. You’re not old enough to be asking such questions. We don’t ask such questions. We believe. If you don’t believe you can’t be a good Catholic.
I’m willing to believe, I retorted, if he will answer my questions.
That’s not the way, said Sadie. First you have to believe. And then you must pray. Ask God to forgive your sins…
Sins? I don’t have any sins to confess.
Henry, Henry, don’t speak that way, it’s wicked. Everybody sins. That’s what the priest is for. That’s why we pray to the Blessed Mary.
I don’t pray to anybody, I said defiantly, a little weary of her moony talk.
That’s because you’re a Protestant.
I am not a Protestant. I’m nothing. I don’t believe in anything … there!
You’d better take that back, said Sadie, thoroughly alarmed. God could strike you dead for talking like that.
She was ‘so visibly appalled by my utterance that her fear imparted itself to me.
I mean, said I, endeavoring to backwater, that we don’t pray like you do. We only pray in church—when the minister prays.
Don’t you pray before you go to sleep?
No, I replied, I don’t. I guess I don’t know much about praying.
We’ll teach you then, said Sadie. You must pray every day, three times a day at least. Otherwise you’ll burn in Hell.
We parted on these words. I gave her my solemn promise that I would make an effort to pray, at least before going to sleep. As I walked away, however, I suddenly asked myself what it was I was supposed to pray for. I was almost on the point of running back to ask her. The word sins stuck in my crop. What sins? I kept asking myself. What had I been doing that was so sinful? I rarely lied, except to my mother. I never stole, except from my mother. What had I to confess? It never occurred to me that I had committed a sin in lying to my mother or stealing from her. I had to behave thus because she didn’t know any better. Once she saw things in my light she would understand my behavior. That’s how I viewed that situation.
Mulling over my conversation with Sadie, reflecting on the sombre gloom which pervaded their household, I began to think that perhaps my mother was right in distrusting Catholics. We didn’t do any praying in our house yet everything went smoothly. Nobody ever mentioned God in our family. Yet God hadn’t punished any of us. I came to the conclusion that Catholics were by nature superstitious, just like savages. Ignorant idol-worshipers. Cautious, timid folk who hadn’t the guts to think for themselves. I decided I would never again go to mass. What a dungeon their Church was! Suddenly—a random flash—it dawned on me that maybe they wouldn’t be so poor, Sadie’s family, if they didn’t think about God so much. Everything went to the Church, to the priests, that is, who were always begging for money. I had never liked the sight of a priest. Too oily and smirky for me. No, the hell with them! And to hell with their candles, their rosaries, their crucifixes—and their Virgin Mary’s!
At last I’m face to face with that man of mystery, Alan Cromwell, handing him another drink, slapping him on the back, having a grand time with him, in short. And right in our own little love nest!
It was Mona who had arranged the meeting—with the connivance of Doc Kronski. Kronski is drinking too, and shouting and gesticulating. And so is his mousey little wife who is posing for the occasion as my wife. I am no longer Henry Miller. I have been given a new monniker for the evening: Dr. Harry Marx.
Only Mona is absent. She is supposed to arrive later.
Things have progressed fantastically since that moment earlier in the evening when I shook hands with Cromwell. I have to admit to myself, speaking of the devil, that he is indeed a handsome chap. And not only handsome (in a Southern way) but fair-spoken and gullible as a child. I wouldn’t’ say that he was stupid, no. Trusting, rather. Not cultured either, but intelligent. Not shrewd but capable. A man with a good heart, an outgoing man. Bubbling over with good-will.
It seemed a shame to be taking him in, to be making sport of him. I could see that the idea was Kronski’s, not Mona’s. Feeling guilty because we had neglected him, Kronski, so long, she had probably acquiesced without thought. That’s how it looked to me.
Anyway, we were all in fine fettle. The confusion was enormous. Fortunately, Cromwell had arrived lit up like a Zeppelin. By nature unsuspecting, the drinks made him more so. He seemed not to realize that Kronski was Jewish, though it was obvious he was even to a child. Cromwell took him for a Russian. As for me, with that name Marx, he didn’t know what to think. (Kronski had conceived the brilliant idea of palming me off as a Jew.) The disclosure of this startling fact—that I was Jewish—made no impression whatever on Cromwell. We might as well have told him I was a Sioux or an Eskimo. He was curious, however, to know what I did for a living. In accordance with our preconceived plan I informed Cromwell that I was a surgeon, that Dr. Kronski and I shared offices together. He looked at my hands and nodded his head gravely.
For me the difficult thing was to remember, during the course of an endless evening, that Kronski’s wife was my wife. This, of course, was another invention of Kronski’s fertile brain—a way of diverting suspicion, he thought. Every time I looked at that mouse of his I felt like swatting her. We did our best to ply her with drinks; all she would do, however, was to take a little sip and push the
