The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (64 page)

“Who was that?” Joe asked.

“His mistress.”

Joe stared at Bill. “Say that again.”

Bill said it again.

“
That
what he calls her? How d’ya know
that
?”

“He told us.”

“He did, huh?” Joe was thinking if he had a mistress he wouldn’t tell everybody.

“He’s honest about it, Father. You have to give him credit for that.”

“I do, huh?”

Father Otto came in, looking much the same.

“You missed your bus,” Joe said, and then to Bill, “Why don’t they get married?”

“Complications.”

“Like what?”

“She’s already married.”

Joe sniffed. “Great.”

“Her husband won’t give her a divorce.
He’s
still a Catholic.”

“Say that again.”

Bill said it again.

Joe turned away. “And you wanna get back to your monastery—right?”

“How?” said Father Otto.

“I’ll drive you.”

“Eighty miles?” said Bill. “Can’t he stay overnight?”

“He wants to get back to his monastery. I need the air. Well, what d’ya say, Father?”

“All right,” said Father Otto.

IN JULY, about a month before he was to retire, the Bishop of Ostergothenburg (Minnesota), through a clerical error, received a letter from the Chancery, his own office, asking the clergy of the diocese to contribute—pastors twenty dollars, assistants ten dollars—toward buying him a car.

The Bishop was unhappy about the letter. Why set a goal that might not be attained? Why be so explicit about the nature of the proposed farewell gift? Wouldn’t men driving old clunks be put off? Why not just say “gift,” or “suitable gift”? And, since he’d still be there, living upstairs in the brownstone mansion that was also the Chancery office, why say farewell? Arguing with the letter in this fashion, and wondering about the response to it, and hearing nothing, the Bishop spent his last days on the throne in a state of apprehension.

The day before he retired—he’d still heard nothing—he gave the girl in the office his set of keys to the aging black Cadillac that belonged to the diocese and was what he’d driven when he drove, which had been seldom.

The day after he retired (he’d still heard nothing), he went out and bought himself a car, a Mercedes—a gray one, as there wasn’t a black one in stock. When his successor, Bishop Gau, saw it, he said, “Bishop,
we
were giving you a car. The clergy. I sent out a letter. I was just waiting until I heard from everybody.”

“You should live so long,” said the Bishop, embarrassed, certain that the response had been disappointing, if only because of the tone of the letter.

But when presented with what Bishop Gau smilingly called “the loot,” which included a check from him for a hundred dollars and one from his chum Father Rapp for fifty dollars, the Bishop reckoned that it was only a few hundred less than it might have been ideally, and that the clergy—they were a good bunch, by and large—
did
appreciate him.

In the following days, weeks, months—he was still at it in October—he wrote and thanked the contributors but returned their contributions, saying the money could be put to better use. Quite a job, writing a hundred and sixty-eight letters by hand, personalizing each without showing partiality and without repeating himself, except in promising to remember each man at the altar, asking to be so remembered himself, and signing his name, “=John Dullinger,” or, in a few instances, simply, “=John.”

Early in October, when all the contributors had been taken care of (except Bishop Gau and Father Rapp) and the weather was still fine, he got out the Mercedes and drove forty-six miles to see a church under construction, the last of many he’d laid cornerstones for—his administration, so rich in achievements, will be remembered not least for its churches (Ostergothenburg
Times
). He was home safely, before dark, very pleased with the car’s performance. He took two more trips. He was planning another—in October, with the trees a riot of color, the diocese was at its best. But then it rained and froze hard, and was winter.

At that point his retirement really began.

He still said the eight o’clock Mass at what was now the ex-cathedral (the new one was inconvenient), had breakfast at the rectory there, and lunch at home—prepared by the cleaning woman, though, since his housekeeper had retired. But between the time he got back in the morning and the time he left for his evening meal at the Hotel Webb, there was now a bad eight-hour period that hadn’t been there before. He read, tried to watch TV, or just sat, sometimes wishing he had an absorbing hobby or a scholarly mind. (But how many bishops did, nowadays?) If a car drove into the parking lot below, he went to the window to see who it was (too often only Bishop Gau or Father Rapp), then returned to his chair, to
Who’s Who in the Midwest
, which interested him more than
Who’s Who in America
(he was in both), or to the
Times
, or the diocesan paper, which he read these days with more care and less satisfaction: there was a difference between reading and being the news.

Still, he didn’t exactly envy Bishop Gau, with things as they were in the country and the Church, and becoming more so every day, though the diocese was still in pretty good shape, still heavily rural and Catholic. Bishop Gau was better suited to the times, more tolerant of the chumps coming out of the seminary, and of the older, suddenly unstable men, than the Bishop had been—running into one of them dressed in civvies, he’d say, “What’s the matter, Father? Drunk, or ashamed of the priesthood?”

He could easily get carried away, which was bad even when the cause was good, and for this weakness he’d sometimes paid. Carried away, he’d written checks for a couple of hard-up dioceses behind the Iron Curtain whose bishops he’d met in Rome and liked, entertaining them and others at the Grand, where he always stayed, and then, returning home, had been humiliated by his pussyfooting consultors—thereafter all such checks had to be countersigned by the Auxiliary (as he was then). Bishop Gau, who had risen swiftly, helped by the Bishop at first, by himself and Rome later, understood finance, both high and low, better than the Bishop ever had. Bishop Gau and Father Rapp were now driving fast new Fords, identical silver ones, and the aging black Cadillac had vanished, presumably in a three-for-two deal. Bishop Gau handled such matters very well. Most matters, in fact. But he hadn’t handled the Bishop’s farewell gift very well.

The Bishop had been compelled, in the circumstances, to invest in an expensive car for which he had little use and then to take another loss by returning the contributions, the loot. That word, as he interpreted it, had left him no choice. But many who’d had their contributions returned to them would mention that awesome little fact, and that was where the Bishop had them, those two, Bishop Gau and Father Rapp, for he still had their checks. He often wondered what they must be thinking, and enjoyed the prospect of their hearing of his philanthropy from other contributors—a growing number. That was about all the Bishop had going for him these days.

His evening meal at the Hotel Webb had become more important to him these days, not that his appetite had increased. No, he just liked it at the Webb, where he’d always liked it,
more
: the good food there and the lighting (not dim), the tables and chairs (no booths), the background music, and, in December, the tasteful decorations and the big tree—a real one, green (un-whitewashed) and grown in the diocese. When people, other diners, paused at his table to pay their respects—they still did—he appreciated it more than he had in the past, and he wasn’t so wary of those in the selling line, or of the clergy. And when told how sorry people were that he was retired he was happy to hear it, even when it reflected on his successor, as it sometimes did, at which times he praised his successor, or acted as if he hadn’t heard.

That was how he acted one evening early in December when Monsignor Holstein—once rector of the Cathedral, Vicar-General of the diocese, and the Bishop’s right-hand man, now only pastor of St John Nepomuk’s, New Pilsen—said, “
Wie geht’s
? You’re sorely missed these days, John.”

The Bishop invited Monsignor Holstein to sit down, which he did, in his white socks, saying, “Like old times, John.”

Again the Bishop acted as if he hadn’t heard, for, while agreeing it was like old times—the two of them together again at the Webb at the corner table, where they’d so often gone into the problems of the diocese and planned the campaigns—he was also regretting his later treatment of Monsignor Holstein, who had taken it so well at the time and recently had contributed his full pastor’s share toward the farewell gift. Not vindictive, a good man in his way, Monsignor Holstein, but an idealist. Life had certainly been less difficult for the Bishop and others, including, unfortunately, the humanists at the normal school and the management of the Orpheum, after the man left town. Never content to leave well enough alone, always after the Bishop to do something—always something—Monsignor Holstein might have risen even higher, or stayed where he was, but for that weakness. And it came out again that evening at the Webb, with the cigars, when he spoke of this woman, a Mrs Nagel, in the country who thought she’d seen an apparition of Our Lady in a tree on several likely occasions. Always something, yes.

Oh, the Bishop agreed that it would take something sensational to get people thinking along more spiritual lines these days, and that this
could
be it, and, if so, that it would be a great thing for the diocese. But this woman’s pastor, a reliable man, and this woman’s husband, also reliable, a school-bus driver—they weren’t too sympathetic, the Bishop understood, and that, while not unheard of in such cases (“Those closest to the scene are often the last to believe, John”), settled it for the Bishop. “See the Auxiliary,” he said—he still thought of Bishop Gau as the Auxiliary—and let it stand.

“Saw him this afternoon, John.”

Yes, the Bishop from his window had watched Monsignor Holstein arrive at the Chancery that afternoon. “What’d he say?”

“Can’t give credence to this woman. Too many fakes.”

Yes, but if the Bishop were to visit this woman mightn’t
he
give credence to her? Monsignor Holstein seemed to think not. A slap in the face, wasn’t it? Yes, but wasn’t that what being retired was? So far, there had been—and, yes, there would be—fewer Christmas cards for him this year. It was the office that mattered, and nowhere more than in the Church—which otherwise would be just another institution and the gates of Hell would prevail against it. “The Auxiliary’s right.”

“
John, what if he’s wrong?
”

“
He’d
still be right.” The Bishop knew what he meant. “
He’s
the Bishop now.”

Monsignor Holstein said, “History hasn’t been kind to the hierarchy in these cases, John.”

Late that night, on his knees in his pajamas in the hallway, the Bishop pushed two envelopes under the door of the Chancery office, each envelope containing a Christmas card and a check, each check annotated some months earlier (in case he died unexpectedly): “Much obliged but can be put to better use, =J.D.” And then he went to bed again, and this time he slept.

Traveling north the next afternoon in the Mercedes, he had no trouble until, a mile past Fahrenheit, turning off U.S. 52, he was fiercely honked at by a truck. He activated his turn signal to make amends, and drove, flashing and drumming, down a crushed-rock road a half-mile or so, coming then to a white farmhouse with an orange school bus in the driveway and, parked behind the bus, a car, the color of which was reassuring. With his signal still flashing, right, he turned in, left, and came to rest behind the black car.

Monsignor Holstein materialized alongside the Mercedes—so it seemed to the Bishop, who’d been having trouble again with his seat belt. They went around to the back of the house, Monsignor Holstein saying the front door wasn’t used in cold weather, the Bishop assessing the Nagel property, noting the windbreak of blue spruce, the only sizable trees, though there were many seedlings.

Lest Mrs Nagel, perhaps put up to it by Monsignor Holstein, attempt to kiss the episcopal ring, which was a practice best confined to the clergy these days, the Bishop kept his gloves on—a needless precaution. Mrs Nagel was more concerned with Monsignor Holstein and his glasses, which had misted over in the warm kitchen, and which she polished with a linen towel while he stood blindly by, the Bishop enjoying the scene as one who, though older, wore glasses only for reading. In Mrs Nagel, who was blond, fairly young, fifty or so, he thought he saw the perky, useful, down-to-earth type of woman, a type he associated with hospital nuns and airline stewardesses, and liked, but he wondered that he didn’t see something else in
her
.

“Now, shoo!” she said when she’d finished with the glasses, and returned to the cake she was frosting.

So the Bishop and Monsignor Holstein, both smiling—both firm believers in the supremacy of women in certain areas—left the kitchen and passed through the dining room, where, as in the kitchen, there were numerous plants, and on into the living room, where there were many more. Yes, all kinds of green, growing things (some, in tubs, were immense), and so thick that the Bishop, settling down on the settee, and Monsignor Holstein, over by the TV, which was crawling with vines, had to look through a gap in order to see each other face to face.

“What’d I tell you, John?”

“What?”

“She’s a real homemaker.”

“Yes.” Yes, that was in Mrs Nagel’s favor, from the human standpoint. But when the Bishop thought of spiritual phenomena (of which he had no firsthand experience) he thought of way-out types. And that Mrs Nagel wasn’t one of them, that she wasn’t, according to Monsignor Holstein, unusually devout—only went to Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation, to confession once a month—that she was to all appearances just a good, average Catholic, and not some kind of nut, was not in her favor, in the Bishop’s view. That, though, was what was so wonderful about this case, according to Monsignor Holstein, who, though—in interpreting it as he did, as a sign from Heaven that the traditional precepts and practices of the Church were still O.K.—might have a vested interest, the Bishop feared. Monsignor Holstein, like many pastors in re-cent years, had been under considerable pressure from curates, parishioners, and media, all crying change, change, change. The Bishop had been under similar pressure but could be more objective now, being retired, and the truth was he couldn’t see this woman, though he’d liked her in the kitchen, as one specially chosen by Heaven.