Living Witness(22)

Did swans eat flowers?

There was an old phrase from the Catholic churches that he remembered from when he was a kid: washed in the blood of the lamb. People who were cleansed of their sins were said to have been washed in the blood of the lamb. He had a distinct memory of trying to explain that reference to Leda Arkmanian—the bit about sins, the bit about sacrificial animals slaughtered on altars—and having her break down in tears at the thought of the poor little lambs with their throats cut and their blood running down, poor little things that should have been kept as pets. They’d both been eight years old at the time, and even then he’d had sense enough not to point out that somebody must have killed a lamb if she was having lamb for dinner.

If he was going to be washed clean of his sins, what sins would he be washed clean of? Sin wasn’t a category he had thought of much in his adult life. It seemed to be something beyond crime and yet worse than crime, somehow, something there didn’t have to be a law against to be wrong. Most of the things Gregor felt guilty of were things he had failed to do, not things he had done wrong. There had been an old woman on a street corner in D.C. when he was working in the area. She was homeless and she stood every day near the bus stop where he got off to go into the Justice Department and do paperwork that first year he’d been assigned to a desk. It was cold and getting colder, and every time he saw her he thought he should get her a pair of gloves for Christmas. He should just buy a big, heavy men’s pair, thick and lined with wool, and drop them off beside her one morning as he passed. He thought about it and thought about it, but he never did it. Then, one morning, she was gone.

That incident must have happened thirty years ago, but Gregor could remember it. There were, in his past, a couple of incidents like that that were still completely clear in his mind. If he had believed in God, this was the kind of thing that would have made him believe. All that verbiage about “proofs,” and the frantic scrambling about what did and did not constitute science and what did and did not explain the universe, was lost on him. No, it was this kind of thing—that young woman at the grocery store the first week he’d been in Philadelphia, trying to buy a turkey breast and a little package of raw carrots, obviously borderline mentally retarded, obviously hungry, with a food stamp card that wouldn’t work. He’d thought of passing over a twenty and taking care of it for her, and then she was gone, and he was left to think about it. That had been at Christmas, too. If he ever decided to believe in God, it would definitely be because of things like this, things that sometimes made him wonder if somebody was trying to tell him something. What would God be like, if He existed?

Gregor got out of the shower and found a towel. Ever since Bennis had started spending more time here than she did in her own apartment, the place was full of towels. She liked good towels, too, thick and soft. He dried himself off and looked at his face in the mirror. He needed to shave. He had the kind of beard that needed to be shaved at least twice a day. He was not a postmodernist, and he was not a moral relativist. He knew there was real evil in the world. He had seen it. He just couldn’t put that knowledge together with all the other things people wanted him to believe, and he knew that if he couldn’t believe, Father Tibor was not going to officiate a wedding for him in Holy Trinity Church. And the odd thing was, that wasn’t actually the problem. Neither Gregor nor Bennis had expected to be married in the local church, and Father Tibor had not expected them to want to be. It was everybody else on Cavanaugh Street who was causing a problem, and they didn’t look like they were going to back off any time soon.

The only time people should think about religion is when they’re dead, Gregor thought. Then he thought had if anybody heard him say that, even Bennis, they would think he was crazy. Still, he knew what he meant. He also knew it wasn’t what it sounded like he meant. He wondered what people were like, inside their heads, when they knew they were going to die. He had been with Elizabeth at the very end, but she had not been up to communicating, and she might not even have wanted to. Surely there had to be some reason, somewhere, that explained all of this.

He got a robe and went into the bedroom. He got a clean pair of boxer shorts out of the drawer and put them on. It was never safe for him to go into his living room without boxer shorts these days. The place was always full of women planning things.

He went out into the hall and listened. There was no sound at all. Either Bennis had left the apartment, or she was off the phone for the first time in six days. He went into the living room and looked around. The swinging door to the kitchen was open, and Bennis was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea the size of a serving bowl, with papers stretched out everywhere in front of her.