The Bride of Texas, page 51
“So they were right? All those rumours about you being a defrocked priest?”
“Rumours? I don’t know about rumours. Paidr spread the word among the Czechs, and not only in the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin. He also wrote to Bublina, the bugler with the Sixteenth, and Bublina blew my history all over the place, until even K Company of the Twenty-second Iowa heard about it, and they were all Czechs, right down to the fourteen-year-old drummer boy, Honzik Sala. Wait a minute.…” Shake rubbed his high forehead. “He was actually with D Company, and he couldn’t have spread the word there because he was the only Czech in the company. But after demobilization the others saw to it, unless of course they’d laid down their lives for the liberation of the slaves. So I was the most infamous ex-theology student in the whole Middle West of Bohemia. As a result, I got invited to Sunday dinner by every free-thinker with a marriageable daughter. Former seminarians have a reputation of being good and mainly hard-working husbands. The trouble was, the only girls who appealed to me were from Catholic families. Maybe they really were prettier, or maybe it was my bad conscience at work. Those were the houses I never got invited to.”
Shake sighed, and it seemed to the sergeant that his old friend was being serious for the first time since they had met.
“You know, sarge,” said Shake after a while, “I ran away from the only profession I would have been good at — if it hadn’t been for Rebecca. I would have been ideal. I was by far the best preacher in the seminary. Monsignor Kotrly, who taught us rhetoric, used to say that I was going to be a second Savonarola — and when he’d had a few too many, a second Master Jan Hus, and he only hoped I wouldn’t let the Church down like that damned heretic did, gifted by God though he was. And I did, neighbour. On account of a girl — what’s worse, one from the nation that has the Lord Jesus on its conscience. And I let down Monsignor Kotrly. He was such a good preacher that when he was preaching on a Sunday afternoon in the Church of the Templars, the nearby theatre was empty. He used to take the afternoon sermon deliberately, because he was a sworn enemy of the lascivious Muses. When he served Holy Communion, more wafers were consumed than during anyone else’s service.”
Shake fell silent while the trains, puffing smoke, came and went.
The sergeant said, “He must have been a good teacher, too.”
“The best. Still, I was weighed and found wanting. But with Rebecca — it was all so biblical. Even though, according to the Bible —”
Dusk was falling. The seminarian in the black robe — slender, good-looking, androgynous — strode the cobblestones of the town square, formulating an exemplum about Rebecca, the obedient one, Isaac’s happy wife, when suddenly she appeared to him. At first he felt that he was being blessed with a holy vision, that he had been chosen — the square with a stone fountain in the middle of it, a damsel with a pitcher on her shoulder, walking towards the fountain, and she was indeed very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her, and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher and came up.
The seminarian, however, was unlike Isaac’s servant. According to the Scriptures the servant was moved by the girl’s beauty but, true to his master and his mission, only ran to meet her. The seminarian, on the other hand, was not simply moved by her beauty, he was infatuated with it, with the inexplicable osmosis of feeling touched off by Cupid’s arrow. In his black robes he ran to meet her and he said, “Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water from thy pitcher.”
The girl stopped, thought a moment, and then said in German, “You can speak German if it comes easier to you.”
And the holy vision suddenly became a sturdy Jewish girl. The seminarian looked her over hungrily and the words that came to his mind — though unsuitable for a seminarian — were equally biblical: how fair and how pleasant art thou.
“Why German?” he asked, stunned.
“Because your Czech is so odd.”
“I beg your pardon.” He swallowed. “Allow me to introduce myself: Jan Amos Schweik.” Cupid’s arrow had dried his throat and he sounded hoarse.
“Would you like a drink of water, father? Here!” And she handed him her pitcher.
Embarrassed, he tipped it up and drank, spilling water over his robe.
“God bless you,” he said.
“I’m glad to be of help,” said the girl.
They were facing each other, both ill at ease — the seminarian in black, the girl in a grey skirt and a grey blouse of rough linen. Under it, like two young roes that are twins —
“I’m not ordained yet,” he said. “I’m only in my third year.”
She looked puzzled.
“That means I’m not a priest yet.”
“Oh, you’ll get there,” she said, and just then he had a different vision. He tried to drive it away but he couldn’t.
“I —” the girl said reluctantly, “I’m Rebecca Goldstein. My father is the cantor at the Old-New Synagogue.”
“May I — walk with you?” Then, firmly, “Here, I’ll help you with your pitcher.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“People will see us,” she whispered.
He looked around, glanced down at his robe. She was right. “So come to the park around the corner,” he said softly. “There are benches there in the bushes, so you can’t be seen in the dark.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is,” he said. “No one will see us.”
“You’re a priest.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, almost.”
At that moment he understood the story of Faust, which he had always found hard to believe. Faust had traded eternity for wisdom. He would have traded it too, though not just for wisdom.
He cleared his throat. “Please don’t think ill of me, Miss Rebecca. I only —” He realized how awkward it sounded, but he couldn’t think of anything more intelligent. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
“I can’t.” She looked around nervously. “I don’t know.” Then she said, “If you were a rabbi —”
“Come!”
“I have to go home.” She picked up the pitcher and put it on her shoulder, turned, and set out resolutely towards the lights of the houses down the street that looked like Mephisto winking at him.
“Come! I’ll wait for you there!” he called to her softly.
It was the time of May masses and he could get out in the evening. He skipped mass, but she didn’t show up.
A few days later, though, when he managed to slip away from the seminary again, there she was, drawing water at the well.
“Come with me!”
“I don’t know.”
“What if I were a rabbi?”
She didn’t answer. For quite a while. Then she said, “I won’t meet you there because people can see. I went to look. People can see from both sides.”
He became Faust; the agreement was signed and sealed. He went to see an old schoolmate, a prosperous farmer’s son who owned a bachelor’s apartment on the Lesser Town Square.
“I need to borrow —” He hesitated.
“Well, well!” smiled his schoolmate. “They even gamble in the seminary, do they? Of course, Reverend Father, for you I’ll do anything. How much do you need? A hundred? Two hundred? Any more than that will be a problem. Lady Luck hasn’t been very good to me either these days.”
“No. I need to borrow your apartment. Just for an hour or two —”
His buddy gave a whistle. “Well, what do you know!” But he gave him the key. “I’m going away tomorrow for a week. The place is yours. It’s right around the corner from the Church of St. Kliment. Confession there, as I recall, is from five to seven.”
Rebecca also sold her soul. And they were one.
He left the seminary. Monsignor Kotrly wept. “Oh, lad, you’ve disappointed me! Really disappointed me.”
“But Reverend Father, it’s just that I — I —”
“I know, I know.” The monsignor wiped away a tear with a fleshy thumb. “You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. But you’ve still disappointed me. Well, what’s to be done? Go with God. But remember, even as a layman you’re still a Catholic, and that binds you.”
He kissed the old priest’s hand. “I swear to you, by the Mother of God —”
“Better not swear. Pray. Like every seminarian, you’ve surely read Saint Paul. As long as you don’t end up burning in hell, Amos, my lad!”
He didn’t burn in hell, but he didn’t follow Saint Paul’s advice to marry either — nor could he have, because in the end Rebecca did what her biblical namesake did.
Cantor Goldstein was a stone wall. It wasn’t because the former seminarian was now working as a clerk in a textile warehouse, and a Jewish-owned one at that — a job his classmate the rich farmer’s son had obtained for him through friends. Even the fact that he had quit the seminary might not have mattered if — but Papa Goldstein was a stone wall. Rebecca was an only child. There was no one else. And like the vision in the First Book of Moses, she was an obedient daughter. Sinful, but obedient. The loss of her virginity was a secret she carried with her into her marriage with Isaac Karpeles, a shy, decent, and equally obedient young partner in the ironmongers’ firm of Abraham Karpeles und Sohn in Olomouc. The secret remained a secret.
“You’re not of our faith, young man.”
“I could —” Schweik, the Gentile, tried to say, but he turned red when he looked into the deep-set eyes of the righteous old man. He couldn’t even say the words to the old man’s face. So the pact with Mephisto was never ratified. And that was that. He left for America.
“Oh yes, Rebecca has children. Six of them,” said Shake, “each one prettier than the last. They all have her eyes.”
“How do you know?” asked the sergeant.
“Well, I was there, you know. After the war.”
It wasn’t difficult to find Karpeles’s shop in Olomouc. Besides, Rebecca had just leaned out of a third-storey window. Either she hadn’t changed, or he was being revisited by the vision from the stone fountain on the square.
She opened the door and saw a man whipped by the wild winds of war who removed his foreign-looking hat and said, “It’s me, Rebi. Remember?”
She was still sturdy but she almost fainted.
She too was a sinner — not in deeds anymore, only in words — for she introduced Shake to Isaac Karpeles as the cousin of the husband of her distant cousin Rachel, the one whose marriage had caused such a stir. Isaac couldn’t recall any stir or any distant cousin, but even at forty he was a gullible nebbish. He invited Shake to stay for supper.
There he saw Rebecca’s four sons and twin black-eyed daughters. When Isaac said the prayers, Shake almost forgot himself and made the sign of the cross; then he folded his hands on the table in front of him.
Isaac even suggested he stay the night. The house was roomy, with a small guest chamber upstairs, but that was impossible. The pact might not have been ratified but he still felt desire for her. The vision remained. It was there at the table with the flickering candles, with the children smacking their lips over the gefilte fish. A vision come to life. He suddenly wished for it to remain with him, just as it was, for ever. He thanked them for the offer, told them he was staying with friends in Olomouc, then returned to the inn and carried the vision back to America.
Just the vision. Not so much as a photograph of her and her six children.
“Is that why you never married?” asked the sergeant. “After all, it’s water under the bridge.”
“Old love never fades,” said Shake. “Besides, I still have a bad conscience. On account of the Holy Church, but mainly because of Monsignor Kotrly, may he rest in peace.”
“You never took your vows. And anyway, why didn’t you study for the priesthood in America? A confession would have put things right.”
“It was too late. I should have gone back to the seminary in Prague when the thing with Rebecca was over. It would have delivered me from temptation.”
“Hardly,” said the sergeant. “You aren’t the deliverable kind.”
“I don’t mean Rebecca, or women in general. I mean the American war.”
“How was the war a temptation?”
“It shook my faith,” said Shake. “After I was discharged, I could never have become a priest anymore.”
Train whistles hooted. A young Negro couple walked by arm in arm. By their fruits ye shall know them, the sergeant thought to himself. He said, “You may still change your mind. I agree with Monsignor Kotrly, you’d be good in the pulpit. Sure your beliefs were shaken by what you saw, but you could still bring others to the faith.”
A week later, in Iowa City, Shake was run over by a train.
“No,” said the general. “My order is: withdraw to your initial positions. And that is an order, captain; that applies to General Mower as well.”
The sun filled the glade with yellow-green light, and shone through the smoke of the battlefield till it seemed to be pouring molten gold on it. Rain was still falling in some places and a rainbow arched across the countryside.
“Yes sir!” said the captain. “Of course, the bridge has really been —”
“I said that’s an order!” the general interrupted. “Now, ride!”
“Yes, sir!” The captain strode over to the horse on the edge of the clearing, jumped into the saddle, and disappeared in the woods.
The general turned to Captain Foster. “And Howard will stop Blair’s corps. Mower will withdraw to his initial positions. He won’t need help from Blair’s two remaining divisions to do that.”
The second courier rode off among the trees.
The general pulled a cigar out of his pocket and looked around. Logan stepped over to his commander and held what was left of his burning cigar butt to the general’s. “All right, Billy,” he said. “You’re commander-in-chief. But why did you do it?”
The general raised his creased, weather-beaten face to the sky and the sun. “Hardee attacked from the flank and thrust at Mower’s rear. If he’d managed to cut the division off, he might have destroyed it, the way Johnston tried to destroy Morgan.”
“Yes, but Hardee could only have succeeded if Mower didn’t retreat and didn’t get reinforcements.” Logan looked towards the sun too. It was going behind a cloud. “I don’t understand you, Billy,” he went on. “Let’s say Hardee did have a chance to destroy Mower’s division. But you had a chance to destroy Johnston’s whole army. You know that. That single bridge was the only way out of a trap and Mower was just about to take it.”
The general said nothing. He just stood there, his head enveloped in a dense cloud of cigar smoke.
“You could have won a great battle, Billy. You never won one like that before, and now you probably never will. This was your last chance.”
“Precisely,” said the general. “The thing is this, Johnny: we don’t need to win battles any more. We’re winning the war.”
The sun emerged, molten gold, from behind the cloud and illuminated the puff of tobacco smoke, so it looked as if the general were standing with his head in a bluish lantern.
Looking over the hedge, Houska saw Shake jump from the crown of the pine tree, grab the Rebel rider around the neck, and pull him off his horse. After that, Houska had to turn his attention to the cavalry bearing down on Mower’s line of riflemen, and it was only the concentrated fire, with Houska’s generous contribution, that forced the riders to turn and, in a broad arc, disappear into the other side of the forest. A dead horse lay on the meadow in front of Houska, surrounded by fallen soldiers. Then he saw Shake again, running towards the hedge, stooped under the weight of a rider he was carrying on his back. He pushed through the hedge and Houska rose and went over to his buddy.
“Amos,” he said to Shake, “you’ve got guts. Jumping on him out of the tree like that!”
“What?” said Shake. He was breathless. The wounded rider was not a small man.
“Jumping on him from up in that pine tree and pulling him off his horse!”
“Oh, that,” said Shake.
The captain stepped over to them. “A prisoner?”
Shake dumped the wounded man onto the ground. The cavalryman swore fiercely. He turned out to be a major.
“Captain,” said Houska, “Private Shake jump out of tree and pull him off horse to ground!” His moon-face radiated admiration, even if his English left something to be desired.
“What?” asked the captain.
Houska pointed to Shake. “He shoot. From top of tree. Then jump. Pull major off horse. Take prisoner.”
The captain turned to Shake. “Is that true, private?”
“Well —” Shake cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said, and then he added, “more or less.”
A new assault by Hardee’s cavalry interrupted them, and after that no one pursued the details of Shake’s actions.
Each of them got a goose leg; the rest they cut up and shared, stuffing themselves to bursting. Now they were passing around a gallon of confiscated bourbon.
“If Shake were telling it,” said Paidr, “I’d know it was a tall tale. But you, Vojta, you tell things straight, don’t you?”
“Is that your way of saying I’m lying through my teeth?” snarled Houska. “I saw it with my own two eyes.”
“You’re going to have to get a pair of spectacles when you go home, my friend,” said Paidr. “From what I saw” — he glanced at Shake — “the branch busted under you, right? And the major more or less broke your fall.”
“I swear that you are more or less mistaken,” said Shake, and took a swig of bourbon.
“Swearing falsely is a sin,” said Paidr. “A fellow who goes to war in armour, and wears it backwards so he can urge the rest on with his back to the enemy, can’t possibly be much of a hero.”
“Well,” said Shake, taking his meerschaum out of his knapsack and screwing it together, “as far as heroism goes, it’s like Hegel says: everything turns into its opposite.”
