A prayer for Owen Meany (47 page)

It was a problem: how my in-class writing, my quizzes and
examinations, were not at all as good as the work Owen helped me with. But we
studied for all announced tests together, and I was-gradually-improving as a
student. Because of my weak spelling I was enrolled in an extra, remedial
course, which was marginally insulting, and-also because of my spelling, and my
often erratic performance when I was called upon in the classroom-I was asked
to see the school psychiatrist once a week. Gravesend Academy was used to good
students; when someone struggled, academically-even when one simply couldn't
spell properly!-it was assumed to be a matter for a shrink. The Voice had
something to say about that, too. "IT SEEMS TO ME THAT PEOPLE WHO DON'T
LEARN AS EASILY AS OTHERS SUFFER FROM A KIND OF LEARNING DISABILITY-THERE IS
SOMETHING THAT INTERFERES WITH THE WAY THEY PERCEIVE NUMBERS AND LETTERS, THERE
IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT ABOUT THE WAY THEY COMPREHEND UNFAMILIAR MATERIAL-BUT I
FAIL TO SEE HOW THIS DISABILITY IS IMPROVED BY PSYCHIATRIC CONSULTATION. WHAT
SEEMS TO BE LACKING IS A TECHNICAL ABILITY THAT THOSE OF US CALLED 'GOOD
STUDENTS' ARE BORN WITH. SOMEONE SHOULD CONCRETELY STUDY THESE SKILLS AND TEACH
THEM. WHAT DOES A SHRINK HAVE TO DO WITH THE PROCESS?"

These were the days before we'd heard about dyslexia and other
"learning disabilities"; students like me were simply thought to be
stupid, or slow. It was Owen who isolated my problem. "YOU'RE MAINLY
SLOW," he said. "YOU'RE ALMOST AS SMART AS I AM, BUT YOU NEED TWICE
THE TIME." The school psychiatrist-a retired Swiss gentleman who returned,
every summer, to Zurich-was convinced that my difficulties as a student were
the result of my best friend's "murder" of my mother, and the
"tensions and conflicts" that he saw as the "inevitable
result" of my dividing my life between my grandmother and my stepfather.

"At times, you must hate him-yes?" Dr. Dolder mused.

"Hate who?" I asked. "My stepfather? No-I love
Dan!"

"Your best friend-at times, you hate him. Yes?" Dr.
Dolder asked.

"No!" I said. "I love Owen-it was an
accident."

"Yes, I know," Dr. Dolder said. "But nonetheless .
. . your grandmother, perhaps, she is a most difficult reminder- yes?"

"A 'reminder'?" I said. "I love my
grandmother!"

"Yes, I know," Dr. Dolder said. "But this
baseball business-it's most difficult, I imagine ..."

"Yes!" I said. "I hate baseball."

"Yes, for sure," Dr. Dolder said. "I've never
seen a game, so it's hard for me to imagine exactly . . . perhaps we should
take in a game together?"

"No," I said. "I don't play baseball, I don't
even watch it!"

"Yes, I see," Dr. Dolder said. "You hate it that
much-I see!"

"I can't spell," I said. "I'm a slow reader, I
get tired-I have to keep my finger on the particular sentence, or I'll lose my
place . . ."

"It must be rather hard-a baseball," Dr. Dolder said
"Yes?"

"Yes, it's very hard," I said; I sighed.

"Yes, I see," Dr. Dolder said. "Are you tired
now? Are you getting tired?"

"It's the spelling," I told him. "The spelling
and the reading."

There were photographs on the wall of his office in the Hubbard
Infirmary-they were old black-and-white photographs of the clockfaces on the
church spires in Zurich; and photographs of the water birds in the Limmat, and
of the people feeding the birds from those funny, arched footbridges. Many of
the people wore hats; you could almost hear those cathedral clocks sounding the
hour. Dr. Dolder had a quizzical expression on his long, goat-shaped face; his
silver-white Vandyke beard was neatly trimmed, but the doctor often tugged its
point.

"A baseball," he said thoughtfully. "Next time,
you will bring a baseball-yes?"

"Yes, of course," I said.

"And this little baseball-hitter-The Voice, yes?-I would
very much like to talk to him, too," said Dr. Dolder.

"I'll ask Owen if he's free," I said.

"NOT A CHANCE," said Owen Meany, when I asked him.
"THERE'S NOTHING THE MATTER WITH MY SPELLING!"

Toronto: May , -I regret that I had the right change to get The
Globe and Mail out of the street-corner box; I had three dimes in my pocket,
and a sentence in a front-page article proved irresistible. "It was
unclear how Mr. Reagan intended to have his Administration maintain support for
the contras while remaining within the law."

Since when did Mr. Reagan care about "remaining within the
law"? I wish the president would spend a weekend with a Miami model; he
could do a lot less harm that way. Think how relieved the Nicaraguans would be,
if only for a weekend! We ought to find a model for the president to spend
every weekend with! If we could tire the old geezer out, he wouldn't be capable
of more damaging mischief. Oh, what a nation of moralists the Americans are!
With what fervor do they relish bringing their sexual misconduct to light! A
pity that they do not bring their moral outrage to bear on their president's
arrogance above the law; a pity that they do not unleash their moral zest on an
administration that runs guns to terrorists. But, of course, boudoir morality
takes less imagination, and can be indulged in without the effort of keeping up
with world affairs-or even bothering to know "the whole story" behind
the sexual adventure. It's sunny again in Toronto today; the fruit trees are
blossoming-especially the pears and apples and crab apples. There's a chance of
showers. Owen liked the rain. In the summer, in the bottom of a quarry, it
could be brutally hot, and the dust was always a factor; the rain cooled the
rock slabs, the rain held the dust down. "ALL QUARRYMEN LIKE RAIN,"
said Owen Meany. I told my Grade  English class that they should reread
what Hardy called the first ' 'phase'' of Tess of the d' Urber-villes, the part
called "The Maiden"; although I had drawn their attention to Hardy's
fondness for foreshadowing, the class was especially sleepyheaded at spotting
these devices. How could they have read over the death of the horse so
carelessly? "Nobody blamed Tess as she blamed herself," Hardy writes;
he even says, "Her face was dry and pale, as though she regarded herself
in the light of a murderess.'' And what did the class make of Tess's physical
appearance? ' 'It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fullness of growth, which made her
appear more of a woman than she really was." They made nothing of it.

"Don't some of you look like that-to yourselves?" I
asked the class. "What do you think about when you see one of yourselves
who looks like that?"

Silence. And what did they think happened at the end of the
first "phase"-was Tess seduced, or was she raped? "She was
sleeping soundly," Hardy writes. Does he mean that d'Urber-ville "did
it" to her when she was asleep? Silence.

Before they trouble themselves to read the second
"phase" of Tess, called "Maiden No More," I suggested that
they trouble themselves to reread "The Maiden"-or, perhaps, read it
for the first time, as the case may be!

"Pay attention," I warned them. "When Tess says,
'Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says some women may
feel?'-pay attention! Pay attention to where Tess's child is buried-'in that
shabby corner of God's allotment where he lets the nettles grow, and where all
unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally
damned are laid.' Ask yourself what Hardy thinks of 'God's allotment'-and what
does he think of bad

        
 
luck, of coincidence, of so-called
circumstances beyond our control? And does he imagine that being a virtuous
character exposes you to greater or fewer liabilities as you roam the
world?"

"Sir?" said Leslie Ann Grew. That was very
old-fashioned of her; it's been years since anyone called me "Sir" at
Bishop Strachan-unless it was a new kid. Leslie Ann Grew has been here for
years. "If it's another nice day tomorrow," saidLeslie Ann, "can
we have class outside?"

"No," I said; but I'm so slow-I feel so dull. I know
what The Voice would have told her.

"ONLY IF IT RAINS," Owen would have said. "IF IT
POURS, THEN WE CAN HAVE CLASS OUTSIDE."

At the start of the winter term of our tenth-grade year at
Gravesend Academy, the school's gouty minister-the Rev. Mr. Scammon, the
officiant of the academy's nondenomina-tional faith and the lackluster teacher
of our Religion and Scripture classes-cracked his head on the icy steps of
Kurd's Church and failed to regain consciousness. Owen was of the opinion that
the Rev. Mr. Scammon never was fully conscious. For weeks after his demise, his
vestments and his cane hung from the coat tree in the vestry office-as if old
Mr. Scammon had journeyed no farther from this world than to the adjacent
toilet. The Rev. Lewis Merrill was hired as his temporary replacement in our
Religion and Scripture classes, and a Search Committee was formed to find a new
school minister. Owen and I had suffered through Religion One together in our
ninth-grade year: old Mr. Scammon's sweeping, Caesar-to-Eisenhower approach to
the major religions of the world. We had been suffering Scammon's Scripture
course-and his Religion Two-when the icy steps of Kurd's Church rose to meet
him. The Rev. Mr. Merrill brought his familiar stutter and his
almost-as-familiar doubts to both courses. In Scripture, he set us to work in
our Bibles-to find plentiful examples of Isaiah :: "Woe unto them that
call evil good and good evil." In Religion Two-a heavy-reading course in
"religion and literature"-we were instructed to divine Tolstoy's
meaning: "There was no solution," Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina,
"but the universal solution that life gives to all questions, even the
most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the
day-that is forget oneself."

In both classes, Pastor Merrill preached his
doubt-is-the-essence-of-and-not-the-opposite-of-faith philosophy; it was a
point of view that interested Owen more than it had once interested him. The
apparent secret was "belief without miracles"; a faith that needed a
miracle was not a faith at all. Don't ask for proof-that was Mr. Merrill's
routine message.

"BUT EVERYONE NEEDS A LITTLE PROOF," said Owen Meany.

"Faith itself is a miracle, Owen," said Pastor
Merrill. "The first miracle that I believe in is my own faith
itself."

Owen looked doubtful, but he didn't speak. Our Religion Two
class-and our Scripture class, too-was an atheistic mob; except for Owen Meany,
we were such a negative, anti-everything bunch of morons that we thought Jack
Kerouac and Alien Ginsberg were more interesting writers than Tolstoy. And so
the Rev. Lewis Merrill, with his stutter and his well-worn case of doubt, had
his hands full with us. He made us read Greene's The Power and the Glory-Owen
wrote his term paper on "THE WHISKEY PRIEST: A SEEDY SAINT." We also
read Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Lagerkvist's Barabbas
and Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov-Owen wrote my term paper on "SIN
AND SMERDYAKOV: A LETHAL COMBINATION." Poor Pastor Merrill! My old
Congregationalist minister was suddenly cast in the role of Christianity's
defender-and even Owen argued with the terms of Mr. Merrill's defense. The
class loved Sartre and Camus-the concept of "the unyielding evidence of a
life without consolation" was thrilling to us teenagers. The Rev. Mr.
Merrill countered humbly with Kierkegaard:' 'What no person has a right to is
to delude others into the belief that faith is something of no great
significance, or that it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and most
difficult of all things."

Owen, who'd had his doubts about Pastor Merrill, found himself
in the role of the minister's defender. "JUST BECAUSE A BUNCH OF ATHEISTS
ARE BETTER WRITERS THAN THE GUYS WHO WROTE THE BIBLE DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE
THEM RIGHT!" he said crossly. "LOOK AT THOSE WEIRDO TV
MIRACLE-WORKERS- THEY'RE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC! BUT THE REAL
MIRACLES AREN'T ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE-THEY'RE THINGS YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE WITHOUT
SEEING. IF SOME PREACHER'S AN

        
 
ASSHOLE, THAT'S NOT PROOF THAT GOD DOESN'T
EXIST!"

"Yes, but let's not say 'asshole' in class, Owen,"
Pastor Merrill said. And in our Scripture class, Owen said, "IT'S TRUE
THAT THE DISCIPLES ARE STUPID-THEY NEVER UNDERSTAND WHAT JESUS MEANS, THEY'RE A
BUNCH OF BUNGLERS, THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD AS MUCH AS THEY WANT TO BELIEVE,
AND THEY EVEN BETRAY JESUS. THE POINT IS, GOD DOESN'T LOVE US BECAUSE WE'RE SMART
OR BECAUSE WE'RE GOOD. WE'RE STUPID AND WE'RE BAD AND GOD LOVES US ANYWAY-JESUS
ALREADY TOLD THE DUMB-SHIT DISCIPLES WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. 'THE SON OF MAN
WILL BE DELIVERED INTO THE HANDS OF MEN, AND THEY WILL KILL HIM . . .'
REMEMBER? THAT WAS IN MARK-RIGHT?"

"Yes, but let's not say 'dumb-shit disciples' in class,
Owen," Mr. Merrill said; but although he struggled to defend God's Holy
Word, Lewis Merrill-for the first time, in my memory-appeared to be enjoying
himself. To have his faith assailed perked him up; he was livelier and less
meek.

"I DON'T THINK THE CQNGREGATIONALISTS EVER TALK TO
HIM," Owen suggested. "I THINK HE'S LONELY FOR CONVERSATION; EVEN IF
ALL HE GETS IS AN ARGUMENT, AT LEAST WE'RE TALKING TO HIM."

"I see no evidence that his wife ever talks to him,"
Dan Needham observed. And the monosyllabic utterances of Pastor MerriU's surly
children were not of the engaging tones that invited conversation.

"WHY DOES THE SCHOOL WASTE ITS TIME WITH TWO SEARCH
COMMITTEES?" asked The Voice in The Grave. "FIND A HEADMASTER-WE NEED
A HEADMASTER-BUT WE DON'T NEED A SCHOOL MINISTER. WITH NO DISRESPECT FOR THE
DEAD, THE REV. LEWIS MERRILL IS A MORE-THAN-ADEQUATE REPLACEMENT FOR THE LATE
MR. SCAMMON: FRANKLY, MR. MERRILL IS AN IMPROVEMENT IN THE CLASSROOM. AND THE
SCHOOL THINKS WELL ENOUGH OF HIS POWERS IN THE PULPIT TO HAVE ALREADY INVITED
HIM TO BE THE GUEST PREACHER AT KURD'S CHURCH-ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. THE REV.
MR. MERRILL WOULD BE A GOOD SCHOOL MINISTER. WE SHOULD FIND OUT WHAT THE
CON-GREGATIONALISTS ARE PAYING HIM AND OFFER HIM MORE."