The Last Gentleman (48 page)

The priest hung fire, vague and fond, until he saw the resident had finished. “Now, ah,” he said, touching the engineer's elbow with just the hint of interrogatory pressure, as if he meant to ask the time. But the touch was skillful. The engineer found himself guided into the solarium.

“Let me see if I understand you,” said the priest, putting his head down and taking hold of a water pipe in his thick freckled hand. He watched intently as his perfect thumbnail creased a blister of paint. “This young man you say has never been baptized, and though he is unconscious now and perhaps will not regain consciousness, you have reason to believe he desires baptism?”

“No sir. His sister desires the baptism.”

“But he has a Catholic background?”

“If you mean Roman Catholic, no. I'm an Episcopalian,” said the engineer stiffly. Where in the world did these ready-made polemics come from? Never in his entire lifetime had he given such matters a single thought and now all at once he was a stout Anglican, a defender of the faith.

“Of course, of course. And the young man in there, is he also from a Protestant, that is, an Episcopal background?”

“No sir. His background was originally Baptist, though his family later became Episcopalian—which accounts for the delay.” The engineer, who could not quite remember the explanation, fell silent. “Delay in baptism, that is,” he added after a moment.

The priest examined another blister on the water pipe. “I don't quite see why I have been summoned,” he said softly. “Perhaps you'd better call the Protestant chaplain.”

“Oh, no, sir,” said the engineer hastily, breaking out in a sweat lest the priest leave and he, the engineer, should have to go careening around the walls again. “Jamie professed no faith, so it is all the same which of you ministers, ah, ministers to him.” For some reason he laughed nervously. He didn't want this fellow to get away—for one thing, he liked it that the other didn't intone in a religious voice. He was more like a baseball umpire in his serviceable serge, which was swelled out by his muscular body. “As I told you, his sister, who is a nun, made me promise to send for you. She is on her way out here. She is a religious of a modern type. Her habit is short, to about here.” Then, realizing that he was not helping his case, he added nervously: “I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't found her own order. She is doing wonderful work among the Negroes. Aren't foundresses quite often saints?” He groaned.

“I see,” said the priest, and actually stole a glance at the other to see, as the engineer clearly perceived, whether he was quite mad. But the engineer was past minding, as long as the priest got on with it. Evidently this was an unusual case. The priest tried again.

“Now you. Are you a friend of the family?”

“Yes, a close friend and traveling companion of the patient.”

“And the other gentleman—he is the patient's brother?”

“Sutter? Is he here?” For the second time in his life the engineer was astonished.

“There is a visitor with the patient who I gather, from his conversation with Dr. Bice, is a doctor.”

“That must be Sutter.”

“The only thing is, I don't yet quite understand why it is you and not he who is taking the initiative here.”

“He was not here when Jamie had his attack. But he told me—he must have just come.”

The priest took off his glasses, exposing naked eyes and a naked nosebridge, and carefully polished the lenses with a clean handkerchief. Making a bracket of his hand, he put the glasses back on, settling the stems onto his healthy temples.

“It would help if we had some indication from the patient or at least from the immediate family. Otherwise I don't want to intrude. In fact, I would say it is a ‘must.'”

“Yes sir.” Unhinged as he was, the engineer was still sentient. He perceived that the priest had a certain style of talking which he no doubt shared with other priests. It was a good bet that quite a few priests liked to say such things as “It is a ‘must'” or perhaps “Now that is the sixty-four-dollar question.”

“Sir, could we go in and speak to the patient's brother?”

“Well, let's see what we shall see.”

The resident had left. Sutter was leaning against the window in Jamie's room, his foot propped on the radiator.

“Dr. Vaught,” said the engineer, handing the priest along ahead of him—the goods to be delivered at last. “This is Father—”

“Boomer,” said the priest.

“Father Boomer,” said Sutter, shaking hands but not taking his foot from the radiator.

After a glance at Jamie—the youth's head had fallen to the side and his eyes were closed—the engineer told Sutter: “Val asked me to call Father Boomer.”

“You spoke to Val just now?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She's flying out.”

“You called because I asked you?”

“Jamie also asked me.”

Sutter put both feet on the floor and gave him an odd look. “You say Jimmy asked you?”

“He asked me to call Val about a book she promised him. That was earlier.”

Sutter sank into thought. There was time for another look at Jamie. The bed had been freshly made, the seersucker counterpane drawn tightly across the youth's bony chest. It seemed to the engineer that Jamie's nose had grown sharper and that his skin clove closer to his cheekbones.

“He's developed a spruelike diarrhea and lost some fluid,” said Sutter from the radiator. Was this an explanation? Sutter turned to the priest. “I refused to allow intravenous fluid, Father,” he said in what struck the engineer as a challenging tone. “Even though it might prolong his life a few days. What do you think of that?”

“No objection,” said the priest, scratching his fist absently. “Unless he is unconscious and you want him conscious for some reason.”

Sutter's eye gleamed and he lifted an eyebrow toward the engineer.
How about this fellow?
Sutter asked him. But the engineer frowned and turned away. He wanted no humbug with Sutter.

“Of course, whether he is unconscious or not, I'll be glad to baptize him conditionally,” said the priest, settling the glasses with the bracket of his hand.

“Conditionally, Father,” said Sutter with a lively expression.

The priest shrugged. “I have no way of knowing whether he's been baptized before.”

“Is that what the canon prescribes, Father?” Sutter's eyes roamed the ceiling.

“I think, Father—” began the engineer sternly. He would have no part of Sutter's horsing around. At the same moment he glanced at Sutter's coat pocket: it still held the pistol.

“This young man asked me to come in here,” said the priest

“That's right,” said the engineer sternly.

‘Therefore I should like to ask you, sir,” said the priest straight to Sutter, “whether you concur in your sister's desire that I administer the sacrament of baptism to the patient. If you do not, then I shall be going about my business.”

“Yes,” said the engineer, nodding vigorously. He thought the priest expressed it very well in his umpire's way, taking no guff from Sutter.

“By all means stay, Father,” said Sutter somewhat elaborately.

“Well?” The priest waited.

“Why don't you ask him yourself, Father.” Sutter nodded to the bed behind the other two.

They turned. Jamie was getting out of bed! One hand had folded back the covers quite cogently, and the left knee had started across right leg, his eyes open and bulging slightly with seriousness of intent.

Later Sutter told the engineer that, contrary to popular notions, dying men often carry out complex actions in the last moments of life. One patient he recalled who was dying of tuberculosis had climbed out of bed, washed his pajamas in the sink, hung them out to dry, returned to the bed, pulled the covers up to his chin to hide his nakedness, and died.

“Hold it, son,” Sutter stopped Jamie fondly and almost jokingly, as if Jamie were a drunk, and motioned the engineer to the cabinet. “Jamie here wants to move his bowels and doesn't like the bedpan. I don't blame him.” The priest helped Sutter with Jamie. After a moment there arose to the engineer's nostrils first an intimation, like a new presence in the room, a somebody, then a foulness beyond the compass of smell. This could only be the dread ultimate rot of the molecules themselves, an abject surrender. It was the body's disgorgement of its most secret shame. Doesn't this ruin everything, wondered the engineer (if only the women were here, they wouldn't permit it, oh Jamie never should have left home). He stole a glance at the others. Sutter and the priest bent to their task as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. The priest supported Jamie's head on the frail stem of its neck. When a nurse came to service the cabinet, the engineer avoided her eye. The stench scandalized him. Shouldn't they all leave?

Sutter conducted Jamie back to bed fondly and even risibly. Suddenly the engineer remembered that this was the way Negro servants handle the dying, as if it were the oldest joke of all.

“Hold it now, son. Look out. There you go.” Leaning over the bed, Sutter took hold of Jamie's chin, almost chucked it. “Listen, Jimmy. This is Father Boomer. He wants to ask you something.”

But the youth goggled and closed his eyes, giving no sign of having heard. Sutter took his pulse and stepped back.

“If you have any business with him, Father,” he said dryly, “I think you'd better conduct it now.”

The priest nodded and leaned on the bed, supporting himself on his heavy freckled fists. He looked not at Jamie but sideways at the wall.

“Son, can you hear me?”—addressing the wall. The engineer perceived that at last the priest had found familiar territory. He knew what he was doing.

But Jamie made no reply.

“Son, can you hear me?” the priest repeated without embarrassment, examining a brown stain on the wall and not troubling to give his voice a different inflection.

Jamie nodded and appeared to say something. The engineer moved a step closer, cocking his good ear but keeping his arms folded as the sign of his discretion.

“Son, I am a Catholic priest,” said Father Boomer, studying the yellow hairs on his fist. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said Jamie aloud. He nodded rapidly.

“I have been asked by your sister to administer to you the sacrament of baptism. Do you wish to receive it?”

The engineer frowned. Wasn't the priest putting it a bit formally?

“Val,” whispered Jamie, goggling at the engineer.

“That's right,” said the engineer, nodding. “I called her as you asked me to.”

Jamie looked at the priest.

“Son,” said the priest. “Do you accept the truths of religion?”

Jamie moved his lips.

“What?” asked the priest, bending lower.

“Excuse me, Father,” said the sentient engineer. “He said ‘what.'”

“Oh,” said the priest and turned both fists out and opened the palms. “Do you accept the truth that God exists and that He made you and loves you and that He made the world so that you might enjoy its beauty and that He himself is your final end and happiness, that He loved you so much that He sent His only Son to die for you and to found His Holy Catholic Church so that you may enter heaven and there see God face to face and be happy with Him forever.”

Without raising his eyes, the engineer could see the curled-up toe of Sutter's ThomMcAn shoe turning to and fro on the radiator trademark.

“Is that true?” said Jamie clearly, opening his eyes and goggling. To the engineer's dismay, the youth turned to him.

The engineer cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something when, fortunately for him, Jamie's bruised eyes went weaving around to the priest. He said something to the priest which the latter did not understand.

The priest looked up to the engineer.

“He wants to know, ah, why,” said the engineer.

“Why what?”

“Why should he believe that.”

The priest leaned hard on his fists. “It is true because God Himself revealed it as the truth.”

Again the youth's lips moved and again the priest turned to the interpreter.

“He asked how, meaning how does he know that?”

The priest sighed. “If it were not true,” he said to Jamie, “then I would not be here. That is why I am here, to tell you.”

Jamie, who had looked across to the engineer (Christ, don't look at me!), pulled down the corners of his mouth in what the engineer perceived unerringly to be a sort of ironic acknowledgment.

“Do you understand me, son?” said the priest in the same voice.

There was no answer. Outside in the night the engineer saw a Holsum bread truck pass under the street light

“Do you accept these truths?”

After a silence the priest, who was still propped on his fists and looking sideways like a storekeeper, said, “If you do not now believe these truths, it is for me to ask you whether you wish to believe them and whether you now ask for the faith to believe them.”

Jamie's eyes were fixed on the engineer, but the irony was shot through with the first glint of delirium. He nodded to the engineer.

The engineer sighed and, feeling freer, looked up. Sutter hung fire, his chin on his knuckles, his eyes half-closed and gleaming like a Buddha's.

Jamie opened his mouth, it seemed, to say something bright and audible, but his tongue thickened and came out. He shuddered violently. Sutter came to the bedside. He held the youth's wrist and, unbuttoning the pajamas, laid an ear to the bony chest. He straightened and made a sign to the priest, who took from his pocket a folded purple ribbon which he slung around his neck in a gesture that struck the engineer as oddly graceless and perfunctory.

“What's his name?” the priest asked no one in particular.