The price of pride in banning Flannery O'Connor: A Catholic school bows to black anger

December 17, 2000 | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR)

Author: BRET SCHULTE  

Page: J1 | Section: J1

OPELOUSAS, La. -- Opelousas Catholic High School lies flat and worn alongside this ragged town's tallest building, St. Landry's Catholic Church. Nearby, a cramped graveyard sits weighted with weather-stained tombs. The scene is given wing by stone angels and the outstretched arms of a dying Jesus, who beckons toward him the march of the holy and the dead--in this case, the Roman Catholics of the South.



In any such procession, some pride of place would fall to Flannery O'Connor, a Georgia-born disciple of deep religious and literary feeling. The much-sung O'Connor, dead at 39 of a wasting illness in 1964, led her tragicomic characters into absurd and often ugly snarls of moral conflict, where truth shines absolute but dimly through pride and ignorance.



Taught with reverence in high schools and colleges across the country, O'Connor's tales have proved aptly evocative of the recent goings-on in Opelousas, where her short stories were removed from the classroom before the start of the school year.



The edict descended from the bishop of the Lafayette diocese, Edward O'Donnell, who passed final judgment on the disputed writer after an uproar over her inclusion in Opelousas Catholic's curriculum. News of the action incited a clamor among literary devotees and watchdog Roman Catholics. The Catholic culture magazine Crisis expressed incredulity: "The only Catholic admitted by mainstream secular critics to the canon of 20th-century American authors--now excised by Catholics. A woman known in her own day for her anti-racism--now placed on the forbidden list on the grounds of racism."



The controversy broke in mid-August, when a gathering of angry black parents protested the assignment of O'Connor's short story "The Artificial Nigger" on a summer reading list for incoming 11th-grade English students.



The story had been assigned by Arsenio Orteza, a 13-year resident in this mostly black community 50 miles west of Baton Rouge. A newcomer to the school, Orteza had previously taught English at the school's cross-town rival, Westminster Christian Academy.



Orteza, 38 years old but so young-looking that only his tie separates him from the senior class, was preparing his classroom for the first day of school when he was called to the principal's office.



There, principal Karen Domengeaux confronted him with the news that his reading list, which included a second O'Connor story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," had enraged black parents with its inclusion of the word "nigger."



Among the most vocal parents was Patrick Fontenot, an insurance agent whose children are no longer enrolled at Opelousas Catholic. He pulled his two daughters out of the high school three years ago because they "didn't have a social life there."



He makes the point that the percentage of black students has declined steadily since Opelousas Catholic was born of the 1972 marriage between all-white Academy of the Immaculate Conception and all-black Holy Ghost.



Then evenly mixed, the Opelousas Catholic student body is now only 10 percent black. The principal attributes the decline to the high cost of Catholic education. Fontenot blames it on a "tense environment," which he asserts would be easily ignited by the epithets found throughout O'Connor's stories.



Fontenot, who didn't read "The Artificial Nigger" until well after the bishop's decision, says his revulsion at the title was substantiated by the text.



"That book showed no value of literary content," he says. "They tried to say that this book was being written to make fun of racism. Well when I read it, it was a grandfather teaching his son to hate blacks and Jews."



GRIEVANCE TO THE BISHOP



Amplifying the parents' complaint was the Rev. Malcolm O'Leary, the black former chancellor of Opelousas Catholic. He is also pastor of Holy Ghost church, which boasts the largest black congregation of any Catholic parish in the nation, and which has a black Jesus hanging above the altar.



Father O'Leary and several parents -- none of whom had read "The Artificial Nigger"--brought their grievance to Bishop O'Donnell, a white civil-rights veteran with an activist bent dating back to the 1960s.



Without contacting Orteza or principal Domengeaux, the bishop acceded to Father O'Leary's demands. "The Artificial Nigger" was not to be taught.



"But I was still thinking, 'Well I'm sure the bishop will do the right thing,' " Orteza says. "Just because, I figured, 'How could he do anything else?' "



Orteza's reaction was echoed by scores of letter-writing supporters: secular O'Connor fans, practicing Catholics, even clergy. One priest scripted an appeals process that would involve the Vatican--a notion that even the intense Orteza dismisses with a laugh.



It's a rare chuckle from O'Connor supporters, who remain rankled about Opelousas. At Baylor University, O'Connor scholar Ralph Wood labels Bishop O'Donnell's decision "an act of outrageous proportions."



Wood, a practicing Baptist, says O'Connor's value to the American canon is thoroughly demonstrated in the volumes of fiction issued by the Library of America. Founded in 1979, this ongoing publishing effort--funded by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew Mellon Foundation--is intended as an authoritative, official, preservation of American literature.



"After [William] Faulkner, she is the first 20th century writer to be included," says Wood. He cites her as the great Christian writer of the modern age: "She deepens, stretches, enlarges and above all toughens Christian faith by subjecting it to the most rigorous tests: the test of unbelief, of evil and pain and suffering, the huge social difficulties implied in racism and scientific reductionism, which is the idea that human behavior can be reduced to quantifiable terms."



Orteza never got to plead such a case to the bishop. After his initial visit to the principal's office, he was told to await further word.



"[Then] it was the second day of school and I was paged into the office," he recounts. "This time Mrs. Domengeaux and Father O'Leary were in there, and she wanted me to explain my purpose in assigning the work. I started going into a whole presentation on the importance of O'Connor, and he sat there poker-faced. I went on and on and on for a really long time, and I wasn't going to change a thing. It had already been done."



NO RACIAL INCIDENTS



Domengeaux says there is no record of racial incidents at Opelousas Catholic, a single-story facility ornamented with effigies of the Virgin Mary and the crucified Christ. She makes it a point to comment on the school's many black valedictorians, senior class presidents and homecoming court members in recent years.



White students say race is a non-issue at "OC." Black students say they sometimes feel disenfranchised, though far from discriminated against. One black junior football player shakes his head over the question.
"There's no racist thing here," he says.



But Bishop O'Donnell, a veteran of 1965/s historic Selma-to-Montgomery protest march, isn't buckling. He maintains that nothing is banned at Opelousas Catholic, including O'Connor's short-story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find , which includes the inflammatory title "The Artificial Nigger."



"I would suggest that anybody who says that needs to get their facts straight," the bishop says. "It was not banned. It's still on the [library] shelves and students can read it if they wish. The question was if it should be on the required list."



Bishop O'Donnell does acknowledge that an unrequired text is going to be an untaught text--thus failing to expose students to an anthology generally regarded as the finest work among O'Connor's two novels and two short-story collections.



An addendum to the decree, which the bishop says was written by Father O'Leary without his knowledge, states that "no similar book" to the contested O'Connor volume can be required reading at Opelousas Catholic. Even with this postscript, the bishop supports his priest's effort to regulate the school's reading material.



What's in dispute here is not O'Connor. It's the use of the word "nigger," which appears in innumerable literary works. If the bishop's decree were executed to its fullest extent, the blacklist would include the Gospel writers of the Second Greatest Story Ever Told: America's.

William Faulkner, Mark Twain and Eudora Welty all used the N-word while unfolding the drama of this country's racial coming-of-age. Black writers as well--among them such luminaries as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Toni Morrison--have employed such epithets in their renditions of a pained history. Poet Langston Hughes referred to black children as "pickaninnies" in his Harlem-inspired work.



O'Connor unfurls these terms to bring body and soul to her morality tales--which are set in the Jim Crow-era South, often a native land to Biblical righteousness, and paradoxically, racism.

O'Connor's fiction has been hailed as a call to any in need of a forgiving God, white as well as black. In her Catholic vision, all of mankind shoulders the yoke of original sin. Pride, greed, slothfulness--the whole litany of fallen human behavior qualifies. So does racism. But sin is the issue, not the details.



This surprisingly theological approach to the human condition inspired an essay by black novelist Alice Walker, who wrote: "... essential O'Connor is not about race at all, which is why it is so refreshing, coming as it does, out of such a racial culture. If it can be said to be 'about' anything, then it is 'about' prophets and prophecy, 'about' revelation, and 'about' the impact of supernatural grace on human beings who don't have a chance of spiritual growth at all."

Orteza quoted Walker's essay at a school board meeting held in the aftermath of the bishop's decree. He argued that O'Connor's message is one of grace, not race--and that now it will be lost to his Catholic students.



The banning, says the teacher, "is going to further racism among black people, because black people will never know there was a white author who wrote with passionate disapproval about the very sins they suffered from the most. Who knows what these kids must be thinking of the name Flannery O'Connor?"



INDIGNATION AND SHOCK



While the bishop professes to understand full well O'Connor's place in the literary canon as well as the Catholic Church, Father O'Leary admits to no direct familiarity with the acclaimed Catholic writer. He has declined to read the story in question, saying, "That woman can't teach me anything about racism."



Bishop O'Donnell acknowledges initial shock at the indignation of the black priest and parents: "They presented me with one thought, and that was that they objected violently to the inclusion on a required reading list of a short story by Flannery O'Connor titled 'Artificial Nigger.' The reason for their problem was not anything in the short story itself, but simply the word in the title."



This being the case, a deeper theological issue comes into play.



The Catholic Church has always claimed to be the bearer of profound truth, which it bestows upon its adherents through Catholic instruction. Not the least of those conduits is a vast network of parochial grade schools, high schools and colleges that make it America's largest provider of private education.



The Catholic concept of profound truth defines itself as an anti-fundamentalist approach to the understanding of Scripture. It encourages readers to see beyond the details of the Bible, beyond the historical and social influences that may have flavored its rendering--and to peer directly into the core of its message.



The story of Genesis, for example, is not considered a literal record of the first six days of darkness and light. Yes, Earth's inchoate form was shaped by an omnipotent and benevolent God. But whether it happened in six days or 6 billion years is a matter of little importance. Catholics who read the Creation Story should unearth from it God's love for us, and in turn, our inclination to sin against Him.



This in mind, it could be concluded that these aggrieved parents of Opelousas have been failed by their Catholic instruction. The "profound truth" of Flannery O'Connor's stories, evident in "The Artificial Nigger," is that pride and ignorance can coalesce into paralyzing fear and the occurrence of sin.



In the story, the rural Mr. Head, an impoverished white man, takes his orphaned grandson Nelson to big-city Atlanta on the boy's first trip from home. The purpose is clear: to scare the lad into staying a backwater boy for good. Mr. Head tells him before they depart, "You may not like it [Atlanta] a bit. It'll be full of niggers."



O'Connor's narrative continues: "The boy made a face as if he could handle a nigger." The grandfather asserts: "You ain't ever seen a nigger. There hasn't been a nigger in this county since we run that one out 12 years ago."



On the train to Atlanta, Mr. Head explains Nelson's situation to a stranger: "Ignorant as the day he was born, but I mean for him to get his fill once and for all."



Once arrived, the two get lost in the black part of town. Choking with panic, they are finally forced to ask a bystander for directions back to the rail depot. Soon after, the 10 year old collides with an elderly woman and breaks her ankle. In a biblical moment, the righteous Mr. Head denies knowing his grandson. They both flee, disgraced. Soon they come to what O'Connor describes as "the plaster figure of a Negro sitting bent over a low brick fence that curved around a wide lawn. The Negro was about Nelson's size and he was pitched forward at an unsteady angle because the putty that held him to the wall had cracked. One of his eyes was entirely white and he held a piece of brown watermelon."



The black effigy, in O'Connor's words, expresses "a wild look of misery." Mr. Head and Nelson gaze at the figure "as if they were faced with some great mystery." Mr. Head perceives that "Nelson's eyes seemed to implore him to explain for once and for all the mystery of existence."

Still shamed and embarrassed, "Mr. Head opened his lips to make a lofty statement and heard himself say: 'They ain't got enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one.' "



Like much of O'Connor's writing, "The Artificial Nigger" is only obliquely concerned with racism. A firm integrationist by 1950s' standards and an admirer of Martin Luther King, as evident in the published volumes of her letters, O'Connor left it to her readers to recognize that blacks and whites are equal partners in the human race.



This short story, one of her personal favorites, moralizes in its conclusion on the damning effects of pride.



On the train home, Mr. Head is gripped in a moment of grace and assesses his deeds with a divine judgment. Clutched with agony, the aging man despairs--and for the first time in his hypocritical existence is awash in the consolation of celestial mercy.



"He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own," the narrative concludes, "and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise."



For his part, Nelson's face lightens and he mutters: "I'm glad I've went once, but I'll never go again."



In contrast to the assertion of Opelousas' black parents, O'Connor scholar Wood sees "The Artificial Nigger" as "an embodied narrative expression of some human reality or truth, which if it could be expressed in other terms it would. It's a story about the ways in which black people in the American South can serve as signs of grace to a white world."



The image of the sorrowful black statue "becomes a crucifix," Wood says. "It was an emblem of Christ's own suffering. That it has been banned by a Catholic bishop is a sign of either immense ignorance or immense cowardice. Maybe both."



IRONY IN REAL LIFE



It doesn't take a literary scholar to grasp the irony of the O'Connor controversy at Opelousas Catholic. A group of fearful parents, admittedly ignorant of the author they're protesting, have succeeded in shelving a story about the perils of ignorance.



It seems that these parents, like the story's Mr. Head, want to halt their children's worldly education--preferring that they stay willful and uneducated, forever banished to the fate of their elders. It's the very story O'Connor wrote two generations ago.



"Does this event prove the accuracy of her vision?" says Orteza. "Oh yeah."



As the teacher sees it, "Obviously these students can never be introduced to 20th century Southern writing, which is only arguably the most important strain of American writing. So the most I can do is tell them, 'I am not allowed to teach you these things. Here are some critical writings explaining why they are really important. Please read them on your own.'"



Father O'Leary, who served six years as chancellor of Opelousas Catholic, pleads his case on the virtue of charity. If a word offends, he says, it's a sin.



"They don't consider how a black man feels," proclaims the priest, a popular church leader with a master's degree in education.



Whites "feel they can do anything they want to black people," says Father O'Leary. "Not too many people see this, but the main objection is that it's directly opposed to charity. Charity says, 'I have no right to offend another person.' If I know I'm hurting your feelings, then I commit a serious sin."



The priest also expresses concern that vocalizing racial epithets in the classroom, even in a work of literature, will add fuel to what he views as a volatile situation. In his years as chancellor, he says, there were frequent brawls between white and black students (an assertion denied by the principal and current students).



The priest also makes the point that blacks live in a racially charged atmosphere in Louisiana, which nearly elected avowed segregationist David Duke as its governor just five years ago. "Duke carried this part of Louisiana, and these are Catholics," says Father O'Leary, who believes that if the purpose of teaching O'Connor is to teach the evils of racism "then do it directly. There's no sense in embarrassing black kids just for the opportunity to teach white kids that racism is wrong."



Orteza refutes the notion that the purpose of an English class is to teach morals--as if, he says, it were Sunday school: "I would never deliberately try to reduce fiction or poetry to a [moral] lesson. And that's why when the bishop says there are other books you can use to teach anti-racism, to me he has just no understanding of what an English class should be."



Defending his decision, Bishop O'Donnell says the recent events at Opelousas Catholic shouldn't have "any impact at all" in other schools, private or public, across the United States.



But Orteza, along with a host of others, fret for the future of literary instruction. Expelling a writer of O'Connor's stature from the classroom leaves her colleagues, such as the all-American Twain or the gothically abstract Faulkner, exposed to the winds of political correctness.



"If the bishop of Lafayette, La., could be so easily cowed into such a ridiculous decision, it would seem to me that he's not the only one," Orteza says. "I'm not convinced that a generation from now we couldn't have the index of forbidden books b

FATHER MALACHY'S MIRACLE by Bruce Marsall: Table of Contents

                             

TABLE OF CONTENTS                              

FOREWORD

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

FATHER MALACHY'S MIRACLE by Bruce Marshall: Foreword

I SHOULD like to be clearly understood that none of the characters appearing in this novel are portraits of persons living or dead.  It is, of course, true that some of their follies, philosophies, and foibles have been compiled from my observation of actual people and that my personal knowledge of the subject and the district about which I have written has made the dead bones of my imagining rise up and live; but it is the peculiar privilege of the novelist to piece together the patterns of life which he finds thrown at his feet, and unless he were to take advantage of the material thus afforded him no good books would ever, I am afraid, get written.  (For life is good literature escaping just as surely as good literature is life held fast.)  I admit, then, that I have grafted onto my puppets the human ambitions, decencies, and weaknesses without which they would not have walked or talked; but I would stress, for the information of the scandal-mongering and the uncharitable, the fact that I have brought them to print by combining different characteristics which I have observed in different human beings and not by using a camera.

                                                BRUCE MARSHALL

FATHER MALACHY'S MIRACLE by Bruce Marshall: Chapter Thirteen

Table of Contents

CHAPTER XIII

THE papers made as great a howl over the second miracle as they had over the first.  The same theories were advanced and the words “trickery,” “mumbo-jumbo,” “black magic” were on everybody’s lips.  Indeed, it was not until the metropolitan dean mounted a special pulpit erected in the middle of the rugby field at Twickenham and loud-speakered to a crowd of eighty thousand that the British public knew exactly what to think.  But from that moment all was plain.  For, as the dean so clearly pointed out, the fact of the Garden of Eden appearing to have come back to the very place from which it appeared to have disappeared indicated that the Garden of Eden had never been moved at all and that the general public illusion to the contrary had been produced by some hypnotic rote which only served further to establish the Mithraic origins of traditional Christianity.  In other words, the so-called miracle might be ascribed to Mithraism masquerading as mediævalism itself masquerading as modernism.  To the majority of the readers of the great dailies the explanation sounded intellectual enough to be true.

So once more the earth went bowling, bowling, bowling.  People were as little in Amsterdam as they were in Southsea.  Canon Geoghegan, annoyed that the Garden of Eden had come back to Edinburgh instead of going on to Timbuctoo, returned once more to his hebdomadal denunciations of crêpe-de-chine and Aldous Huxley.  Poor Father Malachy went back to his monastery and the life of a choir monk which is, perhaps, so useful because it is so useless.  Mr. J. Shyman Bell had to refund a good few thirty shillingses to disgruntled miracle dancers who swore that he had obtained money from them on false pretenses, and Miss Gertie de la Muette and her song were forgotten as quickly as they had been famed.  And when, on the Feast of the Epiphany, the naked body (alive) of a famous musical comedy actress was found in the bedroom of a Cambridge professor of applied mathematics, the world heaved a sigh of relief and continued to be, as it has always been, a very muddled sort of place. 

Table of Contents    

FATHER MALACHY'S MIRACLE by Bruce Marshall: Chapter Twelve

Table of Contents

CHAPTER XII

“Et puis,” Mr. J. Shyman Bell was explaining in his astoundingly flawless French to three of the ootchy-looking actressy sort of girls for whom he had telegraphed to Paris, “et puis vous vous mettrez dans les petits coins, n’est-ce pas?  tout-à-fait comme si vous étiez au Rat Mort.  Et sí le bonheur veut qu’un bel agent de bourse se mette avec vous, tant mieux pour vous et tant mieux pour la maison.  Mais pas de galanteries sur place, hein?  Après, si vous voulez; dans une chambre d’hôtel, sur la plage même, sur le golf course si ça vous fait envie.  Alors, c’est entendu comme ça? ” 

The three girls smiled among themselves.  They were pretty, frivolous and had chosen their profession as much as it had chosen them.

“Oui, monsieur le patron,” assured a small girl with auburn hair, roving pale blue eyes and a slim body which looked as though it had been poured into her frock.  “Oui, monsieur le patron, nous comprenons parfaitement.  D’ailleurs dans toutes les meilleures boîtes de nuit montmartroises il faut toujours se tenir comme à la messe.”

“C’est cela, Yvette.  Comme à la messe.  Et après.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell scratched his scar and made an exterior boulevard gesture.  “Après, mes petites chattes, débrouillezvous; c’est votre affaire et Papa Jimmy s’en fiche pas mal.” 

Yes, he thought, as he walked away on a final tour of inspection, a Garden of Eden on the Bass Rock was worth two in the street.  One thousand tickets at thirty shillings each had been issued and snapped up within twelve hours.  Since then some of them had changed hands for as many pounds as they had cost shillings.  And to-morrow night the place was booked up and the next and the next again.  Americans were already cabling to reserve tables for the Great Good Friday Novelty Night.  Yes, he had done well to listen to Alastair and not to allow himself to be bamboozled by the crafty priest.

And what a première it was going to be.  Deauville, Long Island, or the Lido had never seen anything like it.  Talk about up-to-dateness.  As the Americans would say, it was right up to God’s last minute and then some.  To begin with, the whole chorus of the Whose Baby Are You? company were going to present and Miss Gertie de la Muette, the principal girl, was going to pop out of a large mince pie at midnight and sing “Malachy, your miracle.”  Damned decent of that sporting peer fellow, Lord Stitcham, to have offered to bring them over from Newcastle in his private fleet of monoplanes.  Damned decent, but then Stitcham was one of the old brigade and no mistake.  Anybody who’d ever seen him at Le Touquet with a bunch of pretty actresses sitting on the bonnet of his Rolls could be pretty certain that miracles would have nothing on Stitcham.  And that dean fellow.  Of course it was kind of him to have offered to broadcast at eleven fort-five on on “There Lives More Faith in Honest Doubt…”; but it was just possible that some of the more skittish Writers to the Signet might find the theme a little highbrow.  Still, there had been no refusing the fellow; one couldn’t do anything when one came up against a parson who was three times as worldly as oneself.  And in any case Miss Gertie de la Muette, who was going to sign and raffle the silk stockings which she had worn during the flight of the Garden of Eden, would cheer up the lowbrows.  Yes, yes, it promised to be a first-class do all right.  

He went down to the basement, which was welded into the Bass Rock as though socketed by man and not by God and, after telephoning unnecessarily to Edinburgh, Dunbar, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Liverpool, had a few wee hoots to himself for the sake of Auld Lang Syne and Mr. J. Shyman Bell.

2

As early as half-past nine the motor launches began to put out from the shore and to speed, like inspirations flashing through a tired brain, across the rippling dark sea towards the Bass Rock.

Every hotel in North Berwick was filled with guests desirous of assisting at what an assertive popular periodical had described as “the most startling epoch-making thrill of the century.”  From Edinburgh had come everybody who was anybody: the chartered accountants who were able to live in the West End because they ran their offices on the labour of apprentices to whom they repaid as salary the sums which the apprentices’ fathers had advanced to them as indenture fees; the solicitors, more widely read than the chartered accountants and, when earning more than two thousand a year, Anglican to the last ditch, by God; the barristers, called advocates, the most cultured of the lot and disbelieving, as the cultured must do, in all religions from Buddhism to Holy Rollerism; the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick-makers whose shops were large enough not to be noticed; and the wives, as young as they felt, of the chartered accountants, stockbrokers, barristers, butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, and their daughters, with eyes like Icelandic saints and knees like light ladies from Cadiz, and their sons, clean, healthy British lads every man jack of them.  Glasgow, too, had Daimlrered through her ship-builders and colliery-owners and Dundee had yielded up her jute merchants and Aberdeen and Inverness had sent the more wealthy and internationally minded of their young married sets.  From London, too, had come a magnate or two and from New York a divorced Russian princess who had said, as she walked out of her million-dollar home, to her husband and every newspaper in the world: “S’long, Billie boy; come around soon,” and who had, as they said, the cutest lil private bar you ever saw in her luxurious marble bathroom.  And from Paris, to show his faith in the cause of unfaith, had flown a prominent Freemason who earned his living by swallowing live goldfish and spewing them up, still alive, into a pre-Reformation chamber pot.  So that the bon ton was very much there although everybody regretted that the Aga Khan had been unavoidably prevented from attending. 

At half-past nine, then, the launches began to put out and the daughters of Murrayfield and Morningside and Kelvinside and Tennessee, hugging themselves inside their cloaks, told one another that it was cold but, my dear, the experience was just too thrilling for words.

In one of the launches Jean Moorbotham, pret-ty, twenty-two, and about to be married at the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, turned to her hefty mother whose husband had made a few hundred thousands out of pre-war whisky.

“Mums,” she troodled, “why can’t our clergy-man perform a miracle?”

“Eh?” said Mrs. Moorbotham, who had been wondering if the installation of a private cinema on their Perthshire estate would attract guests who had hitherto refused her invitations.  

“Why can’t our clergyman perform a miracle, Mums?” her daughter repeated.  “I’m sure he could bring off a pretty nifty one if he tried.”

Theology was not Mrs. Moorbotham’s strong suit.  Still, she did her best.

“Only Roman Catholics believe in Miracles, Jean,” she reprimanded.  “Only uneducated people who are deceived by their deceitful priests into believing that—that they can get their sins forgiven for five shillings and that the Virgin Mary will judge the quick and the dead.  A well-read man like dear Canon Ingot would simply never dream of doing any such thing.”

“I see,” said Jean as she turned once more to look across the water to where the Garden of Eden splashed ruby and gold upon the merging indigo sky and sea.

In another launch three prominent fornicators conversed together in manly tones.

“Bloody good idea of Bimmy Bell’s, rigging this show up like this.  And they say that there’s no end of booze on the premises.”  The speaker, a red-headed stockbroker, picked meditatively at the lobe of his ear.  “And Archie MacGuff was telling me that Bimmy’s laid in a plentiful supply of jaunty Janes.  Real hot stuff, you know.  None of your Stockbridge blancmanges.”

“French tarts,” said a solicitor to the Supreme Court.  “Well, you can bet your bottom dollar that old Charlie’s going to do some parley-voo to-night.”

“And,” said a cooper from Leith, “they say that the chorus of Whose Baby Are You? are going to be there.  Me for that little bunch of cuties.  I never was any good at getting into bed in French.”

“Anyway,” said the red-haired stockbroker, “Bimmy’s certainly shown the jolly old Pope that Scotland’s not standing for any foreign interference.”

“He has that,” echoed the solicitor to the Su-preme Court and the cooper from Leith.

3

Mr. J. Shyman Bell, all white and pink and shining, stood at the top of the four steps in the vestibule and shook hands personally with every guest.   

“Good evening, Mrs. Barton-Smythe.  This is indeed a great pleasure.  And Miss Barton-Smythe.  How very charming.  Ah, Sir James!  This is a great honour, Sir James.  Yes, as I said only half an hour ago to the representatives of the press, we are opening to-night, not from any desire to offend the prejudices of the unenlightened, but in order to make a gesture for British freedom which shall be understood throughout the length and breadth of this glorious empire upon which the sun never sets.  Hullo, Tommy.  Yes, you’ll find a dash of the doings in my office.  I hope, Mrs. Greig, that the little ones are quite well.  Yes, I am glad to say that the dean has definitely promised to explain how no modern-minded man who respects himself can possibly believe in miracles.  Yes, I think, quite a success.  Is the colonel keeping well?  Fine.  Mind, Charlie, no rough stuff on the premises.  And if it isn’t dear Mrs. McLintock.  I quite agree.  An insult to the memory of those dear ones in whose fast-fading footmarks we unworthily tread.  Naughty little twinkle you’ve got to-night, Ethel.  If you can’t be good, be careful.  As you say, Major, in a one-horse country like Spain…The same to you and many of them.”

The brilliant torrent poured itself into the ball-room and split up into little waves of gold and green and scarlet which splashed their way to the small tables set, like snow-capped islands, round the polished floor.  There was a great deal of chattering and a great deal of craning to see who was who and in what and with whom was who and a great deal of formal bowings across the gulf which separated ego from ego and immortality from immortality.  Of course, there were noisier and less mincing rencontres, but these took place for the most part in the newly installed bar on the first floor where three of Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s ootchy-looking actressy sort of girls, disregarding Papa Jimmy’s instructions about corners, sat on high stools and allowed a very prominent Edinburgh advocate to pay for their drinks.  For it was firstly and foremost a social affair; and in Scotland society affairs are always a little grim until drink and music have had sufficient time to make the ladies ignore the ladies.

Amid a burst of applause Mr. J. Shyman Bell, his face falling in rich, crimson folds over his collar and shirt front, appeared on the platform from which the Ohio Octette were to dispense the Katie-I’m-a-kiddin’ music favoured by those who find the Psalms of David nonsensical.

“My lords, ladies and gentlemen,” his belly rum-bled through the other belly that was his face, “I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart for turning out in such numbers to-night.  As I look around the hall and see the many distinguished persons who are honouring it with their presence, well, all that I can say is that I am deeply moved.  My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I am only a plain business man.  Jimmy Bell, that’s my name, Jimmy Shyman Bell without a handle to it; but I think that all my pals would tell you that if there’s one man who likes a square deal that man’s Jimmy Shyman Bell.”  He paused to allow for the clapping which he had foreseen.  “As I say, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, I’m a plain business man and, like other plain business men, I have to earn my living.  And that living, as you all know, I have earned for the past few years by running this Garden of Eden which was, until recently, one of the most popular and the best patronized dance halls in Edinburgh.  I’m not what is known as a religious man, but what religion I have is very dear to me and is summed up in the phrase: ‘Never do the dirty on a pal.’ “

This time the applause was a positive thunder of approval.  Stockbroker, chartered accountant, matron, and pretty daughter each in his or her own way felt that they had at least heard the eternal verities intelligibly and pleasantly propounded.

“Now, that’s a motto that Jimmy Bell’s done his best to live up to all his life.  Like the next fellow, I’ve often made mistakes; but I think that I can honestly say that I’ve never played any underhand trick on one of my fellow men.  And it has always been in this spirit of—this spirit of brotherliness and, I may say, affection that I have tried to play my part in the life of Scotland’s capital as manager and owner of the Garden of Eden.  Judge then of my surprise and consternation when, on the night of the tenth December, this dance hall, which is my sole means of livelihood, was wantonly removed by a Romish priest to this Bass Rock on which it still stands to-night.

“My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I should be the last person to utter any remarks which might cause offense to our Roman Catholic brethren.  Many of us have dear friends who profess that Roman Catholic religion—profess that Roman Catholic religion which Roman Catholics profess.  But I cannot forget that I am a stout Protestant and that our dear country Scotland has always made a bold stand for—for stout Protestantism and has ever refused to bend her proud knee before the panoply of Italy’s alien yoke.”  The reverberation of the words pleased Mr. J. Shyman Bell even more than they pleased the audience and he repeated the phrase which he had misquoted from the Pitlochry Protestant.  “Yes, I say, our dear country Scotland has always refused to bend her proud knee before the panoply of Italy’s alien yoke, and if the Pope were to stand before me now in all his jewelled purple and scarlet, I would tell him straight, as man to man, that it is not by stealing away honest men’s dance halls that the freeborn sons of Caledonia will be induced to be false to the glorious traditions of their history.

“My lords, ladies and gentlemen, at times dur-ing the past week I have been tempted to the vain thought that many a man might have chucked up the sponge when he found himself confronted by the fearful odds by which I have been confronted.  Imagine the plight of an honest brewer whose brewery was suddenly transferred by gross ignorance and superstition from its accustomed site to the top of the Bass Rock.  Or ask yourselves, if you will, what our good-living friends the Edinburgh stockbrokers would have done if their Exchange had been suddenly removed from St. Andrew Square to this same Bass Rock.  Ask yourselves these questions, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, and perhaps you will realize the deep despair of your humble servant Mr. J. Shyman Bell when he found himself and his dance hall perched here amidst the foaming billows of the Firth of Forth.  But fortunately I have always had a deep devotion to the works of the great poet Rudyard Kipling who has done more to further empire pluck than any other writer alive to-day.  I recalled in my sorrow the glorious lines of his poem ‘If’ and I resolved to be a man and to go out single-handed and fight the unseen foe.  And the result of that resolve is the reopening of the Garden of Eden on its new site as a protest against trickery and treachery the world over.

“My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I appear be-fore you to-night as a suppliant.  I want you to tell all your friends about the Garden of Eden on the Bass Rock and of how Jimmy Shyman is making a game fight of it.  At the present moment it is impossible to see whether my venture will be a success or a failure.  To-night you are here in your crowds; but unless you continue to come in your crowds I shall be compelled to shut down.  I ask you, therefore, to continue to give your old friend Jimmy Bell the support which you have always given him in the past and to believe that here off the coast of North Berwick you will continue to receive the same hearty welcome as you received in Edinburgh.”

He had to raise his hand for several minutes before he could continue.

“To-night, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, is our Grand Opening Night and we are going to be honoured with the presence of the entire chorus of the Whose Baby Are You? company who, as you are all aware, were present in this dance hall when it was so craftily removed.  At eleven forty-five the Very Reverend the Dean of St. Stephen’s, London, is going to broadcast a helpful little talk on miracles and at midnight Miss Gertie de la Muette, the principal girl of the Whose Baby Are You? company, will sing her miracle song which is now famous throughout the world and will raffle, in aid of the Rio de Janeiro Bible Society, the silk stockings which she wore during the flight of the Garden of Eden.  It is to the generosity of my personal friend Lord Stitcham that we owe the presence of both Miss Gertie de la Muette and her chorus girls.  Their performance in Newcastle does not terminate until ten o’clock, but Lord Stitcham, out of the kindness of his heart, has offered to transport them here in his famous fleet of monoplanes.

“My lords, ladies and gentlemen, once again I thank you for your gracious presence and for encouraging me to keep a stiff upper lip and to show those who do not know our ways that Britons never, never shall be slaves.  My lords, ladies and gentlemen, once again I thank you and I wish you, one and all, a very pleasant evening’s entertainment.”

The harvest moon bowed four times, to the im-mediate front, to the half-right, to the half-left, to the immediate front again and disappeared swiftly on the short, stout body which bore it.  Then the music started, gently, like a sensual girl whispering in her sleep, and everybody was in everybody else’s arms, dancing, dancing, dancing.

4

“…and in these days of general scientific en-lightenment no educated man can be expected to believe that matter can transport itself through the ether of its own volition or at the volition of an anthropomorphized hypothesis.”  The dean’s voice came, all wrapped in crackles, out of the invisibility that was London and the more unashamed lowbrows edged on tiptoes towards the bar.  “The most elementary acquaintance with the principles of physics will be…ack…iss…ack…oke…vrmp…mediæval theory of intermittent polytheistic magic is finally untenable…ack…rrtel prr…nk.”  Some of the sweeter and younger things looked frankly bored and leaned back felinely and puffed at their cigarettes with a neo-Babylonian expression in their eyes.  “To put it bluntly only an illiterate Spanish or Irish peasant, nurtured in the Roman system of transcendent celestial magic, could accept without reservation the suspension of normal natural laws that is alleged to have taken place fifteen days ago in a country ordinarily famed for the soundness of porridge and its philosophy…ook…tunk…trek…kwz…suiz…”  By this time the bar was filled with stockbrokers and chartered accountants and the sweeter and younger things, more neo-Babylonian than ever about the eyes, were wishing that they could go there too.

By the white sea wall at North Berwick two figures in clothes more black than the night were pacing solemnly.

“The only thing to do, Father, is to ask Almighty God to transfer the whole caboodle to the top of Mount Everest.”  Canon Geoghegan’s voice sounded like rancid pickles being poured into sour milk.  “The blasphemy of the whole proceedings astounds me who am accustomed enough to the facile follies of a generation of syncopated adulterers and sons of Belial.  To dance wantonly in a place so evidently hallowed by Almighty God!  The dog is indeed fond of his vomit.  But what beats me is that Plus Bobbie should have yielded without a struggle to that lynx-eyed Italian cardinal, who is incapable through nationality and upbringing of understanding the adjustments of God’s economy to local Scottish conditions.  If I had been bishop of the diocese I should have bundled the rascal out of my house and have gone to Rome to present in person my case to the Holy Father.  But then, as I think I have told you before, you cannot expect much from these consecrated converts.  In my opinion, no English-speaking priest is fit to be a bishop unless he is descended from at least three generations of pious Celtic washerwomen.”

Father Malachy, who was his companion, tried to stop the sizzling of pickles and milk.  

“No, Canon, I do not blame the bishop.  As he himself pointed out, it has always been the policy of Rome to matter-of-fact before she miracled, if I may express myself.  Nor do I blame the cardinal who, after all, was deputed by the Holy Father to examine into the miracle and must therefore presumably have been guided by the Holy Ghost.  Indeed I blame nobody but myself who was presumptuous enough to imagine that I could cure by one burst of celestial fireworks what twenty centuries of saintly Catholic lives have failed to remedy.  We must obey, Canon; there is no other way out of it.  Obedience, as you know, is the supreme rule which the Catholic Church imposes upon all her children.  And if we are to place any supernatural interpretation upon the miracle we must interpret it in the light of a rebuke on the part of Almighty God to myself.  ‘A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh a sign,’ Canon, and it is perhaps a wicked and adulterous priest who tries, however pure may be his motives, to upset God’s natural laws in order to perform what is ordinarily effected through the Sacraments.”

But Canon Geoghegan would have none of it.  He protested angrily across the rippling baby waves.

“But, Father, Almighty God Himself permitted you to perform the miracle.  You can’t get away from that, Father.  Why did He allow you to translate the Garden of Eden if it wasn’t to further His own supernatural ends?”

“Perhaps he allowed me to do it in order to show me that His ordinary means were best after all.”  Father Malachy’s voiced seemed to lull the sea into a shining dark blue pond.  “It is certainly a miracle that the Garden of Eden should be on the Bass Rock; but it is equally another miracle that the majority of people should refuse to believe that it is a miracle.  No, Canon, Almighty God intended to teach me a lesson and I must say that He’s done it pretty thoroughly.”

“In that case,” said the canon, “faith seems to me to be an unnecessarily hazardous game of supernatural golf in which bunker and hole are liable to become mixed.  Upon my word, I can’t altogether blame the laity for preferring the cinema to the Summa Theologica.”

They walked for a few moments without speak-ing, up and down, up and down on the vague beat which they had still more vaguely chosen.

“I must admit that all this is very hard.”  Father Malachy waved an indefinite hand in the direction of the cluster of lights on the Bass Rock.  “It is not pleasant to see the work of God perverted by the folly of man even when one knows that it is God’s will that it should be so perverted.  But I must not again give way to spiritual pride or to the feeling that, if I were Almighty God, I would have ordered things differently.  No, Canon, I shall go back to my monastery and be conspicuous only when I sing High Mass in scarlet vestments on the Feast of Saint Blasius of Cappadocia.  After all, it is not a Benedictine monk’s job to convert modernist clergymen; a monk’s job is to sing the Divine Office in choir and so preserve some of the immemorial decencies which the modern world lost when she preferred Hollywood to Rome.  And it’s a good job, a monk’s; for only those are happy who ignore the world and are ignored by it.”

Canon Geoghegan waited until Father Mala-chy’s words had gone swinging out to sea like invisible birds which would find no home this side of Australia.

“Father,” he said, “I did not bring you down here to discuss generalities which we could have considered more competently and more comfortably in front of the presbytery fire.  I brought you down here so that you might see with your own eyes the terrible desecration which was being wrought to your miracle and to persuade you to ask Almighty God to transfer this unhappy dance hall and its revellers to the back of beyond.”

Father Malachy laughed softly.

“My dear Canon, I have already told you that I consider that it is God’s will that things should have happened so; and I am afraid that I should be still less popular than I am in Rome if I were to bring off another miracle for everybody to disbelieve in.  No, Canon, in the interests of the general welfare of the Catholic Church, I am afraid that I must refrain from meddling.”

But the canon, who loathed the Garden of Eden and actresses with a mighty hatred, was not to be dissuaded from persuading.

“Father,” he said, “nobody will make me believe that it is in the general interests of the Catholic Church that these unbelieving barbarians should be allowed to make a musical brothel out of a successful miracle.  And, as you can’t perform the miracle without Almighty God’s help, I do not see any harm in asking Him, if it be His holy will, to transfer all these ruffians and harlots to the back of beyond.  All you’ve got to do, my dear Father, is to pray and to leave the rest to Almighty God.”

Father Malachy shook his head.

“No go, Canon,” he said ruefully.  “I simply daren’t suggest anything to Almighty God.  The way that He has let this miracle be regarded as a fraud is sufficient indication of the value which He puts upon my suggestions.”

“You needn’t make any suggestions,” persisted Canon Geoghegan.  “All you’ve got to do is to recite the Confiteor, make an act of contrition for what you call your sin of pride, and humbly ask Almighty God, if it be His will, to transfer the Garden of Eden away from the Bass Rock.  You needn’t say where; you could leave the choice to Almighty God.”  The canon edged closer to his companion.  “Go on, Father; be a sport.  It’s our only chance of showing these blasphemers that God is not mocked.”

Father Malachy hesitated.  After all, it was ter-rible that the Garden of Eden, so honoured by God, should be used as a centre for all the imbecilities of the hour.  And there would be that fat Mr. Shyman Bell, with a sleek grin on his red, worldly face, strutting about like a pouter pigeon.  And that dreadful song was going to be sung and that famous dean was going to broadcast another wound into the Sacred Heart.  Perhaps the canon was right.  Perhaps if he were to ask forgiveness God, satisfied that His priest had learned humility, would hear his request.

“The bishop,” he began.  “He’d be very an-noyed if—”

“Damn the bishop,” said Canon Geoghegan roundly.  “Make your act of contrition like a man and leave the rest to Almighty God.”

“And the cardinal.  He’d be annoyed, too.  And the Pope might deprive me.  And my abbot would say that I was getting too much of the limelight and might make me serve in the refectory for the rest of my days.  No, Canon, I simply dare not do what you ask me to do.”

“Then,” said the canon impatiently, “if you’re as afraid as all that, just make an act of contrition, ask nothing, and leave everything to Almighty God.”

“But—“ began Father Malachy.

“There are no buts,” said Canon Geoghegan.  “There is only God and that pernicious dancing hall perched like a jade upon the Bass Rock.”

Father Malachy yielded.

“All right,” he said.  “But you must help me to stand the racket if Rome turns nasty.”

And with these words Father Malachy took off his hat and handed it to Canon Geoghegan and bowed his grey head in great and silent prayer.  He did not know that at that moment Miss Gertie de la Muette was adjusting her short frilly frock in front of her dressing-room mirror and was trying to decide which were the silk stockings she had not worn during the flight of the Garden of Eden.  He did not know that at that moment the disembodied voice of the dean was croaking: “Roman Catholic clergymen are rarely English gentlemen and never competent scientists.”  He did not know that at that moment Mr. J. Shyman Bell, ruddy and round and rollicking, was standing drinks in the bar to the more select retired Indian Army colonels present and was telling them a story which he had heard that morning from a well-known Caledonian hotel lounge lizard.  He did not know that the Bee Bee Bee, safely hidden in a corner of the balcony with his Bubbles, was telling her that she was his own wee apple dumpling.  He did not know these things because he could not know them and because his mind was shut to God and because he was praying that He would, of His infinite mercy, forgive the pride of a priest who had sought to effect in a day what his Saviour had failed to do in two thousand years.  To Jesus, to Mary, to Michael, to John the Baptist, to Peter and Paul he confessed, through them and by them and round them and over them to God; and, as sorrow sped from his heart and crossed the seas and the hierarchies of angels, the Garden of Eden stirred on its foundations, rose slowly and surely into the air, and was absorbed by the night into a cluster of coloured lights which disappeared rapidly in the direction of Edinburgh.

“In conclusion,” groaned the voice of the dean as the Garden of Eden came soundlessly and bumplessly to earth opposite the presbytery of the Church of Saint Margaret of Scotland, “if an œcumenical council were to decide to-morrow that the dance hall in question had flown through the air, I should not have the slightest difficulty in believing that it had done nothing of the sort…zk…oke…rrp…tsnk…” 

Father Malachy's Miracle: Chapter Thirteen
Father Malachy's Miracle: Chapter Eleven 

Notes

Et puis vous vous mettrez dans les petits coins, n’est-ce pas?  tout-à-fait comme si vous étiez au Rat Mort.  Et sí le bonheur veut qu’un bel agent de bourse se mette avec vous, tant mieux pour vous et tant mieux pour la maison.  Mais pas de galanteries sur place, hein?  Après, si vous voulez; dans une chambre d’hôtel, sur la plage même, sur le golf course si ça vous fait envie.  Alors, c’est entendu comme ça?: And then you’ll put yourself in the little corners, right? completely as if you were at the Rat Mort. And if happiness means that a good stockbroker will come with you, all the better for you and all the better for the house. But no gallantries on the spot, eh? Next, if you want; in a hotel room, on the beach itself, on the golf course if you want. So, is it understood like that?

Oui, monsieur le patron, nous comprenons parfaitement.  D’ailleurs dans toutes les meilleures boîtes de nuit montmartroises il faut toujours se tenir comme à la messe.: Yes, sir, we understand perfectly. Besides, in all the best Montmartre nightclubs, you always have to be at Mass.

C’est cela, Yvette.  Comme à la messe.  Et après.: That’s it, Yvette. Like at Mass. And after.

Après, mes petites chattes, débrouillezvous; c’est votre affaire et Papa Jimmy s’en fiche pas mal.: Afterwards, my kittens, get by; It's your business and Papa Jimmy doesn't care.

Writers to the Signet: Chic Edinburgh lawyers.

Aga Khan: Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah (1877–1957), 48th Imam of Nizari Ismailis. 

rencontres: encounters