The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [419]
He locked his office door and left.
II
Lonigan sat at the wheel of his battered, dusty Ford coupe. There was really no place to go, and it didn’t matter where he went or why. If there was ever a man plagued by the seven devils, he knew that man was himself.
He stepped on the starter. The engine turned, and the car lurched forward. Driving mechanically, Lonigan decided that he might pay a visit to St. Patrick’s. He parked his car before the broad and pillared facade of the church. Inside, he looked around in awe and wonder, rediscovering the stained-glass windows, the hollowed dome of colored glass, the marble altar, the statuesque stations of the Cross along the wall. He knelt in the last pew on the right of the center aisle, his eyes fastened on the candle burning with flickering steadiness inside a red glass hung above the altar.
A sense of mystery filled him, an awe of God, his God. He blessed himself a second time, palmed his hands together, looked from the altar light to the golden tabernacle door which housed the Lord in Whose honor the candle burned perpetually. He beseeched comfort and solace. Divine help, that his God would intervene, if it be His Will, and spare his son. His Our Father was interrupted by the remembrance of how Dr. O’Donnell had shaken his head and said that Nature would have to take its course in Bill’s case. His eyes shifted from the tabernacle door to rest on the hanging imprint of the bleeding and crucified Jesus set high in the hollowed half dome which curved above the altar. He begged it for hope, feeling that he was a weak and tired man, deserted, at the mercy of a world beyond his powers.
His knees tired, he sat back in the pew. Bewildered, he tried to force himself to understand what was happening to him, what was happening in the world, why so many things should be crushing down on the shoulders of Paddy Lonigan who had once been so confident, so well equipped to deal with his difficulties.
Vaguely, he remembered an afternoon in October, 1929, when he had come home around a quarter to five as usual. In the newspaper, delivered at his door, he had read the account of a break in the stock market. Now he saw that that was the beginning of this depression, this depression that was robbing him of everything he had acquired through the long years of work. And more clearly he remembered that New Year’s morning of 1929, when he had been awakened by a call from the Washington Park Hospital at Sixty-first and Vernon and told to come down and see about his son, who had been picked up on the street, in the gutter, drunk and unconscious. That day was one he could never forget. And both of these days had brought upon him troubles that now linked up in one whole series that was breaking him. And he was getting old himself. This all meant the ending of Paddy Lonigan.
It was neither right nor fair. He could not see why these troubles must all come to him. What had he done? He wanted to know. Here he was, a man who had always done his duties. Hadn’t he earned his place in the world by hard work? Hadn’t he always provided for his family to the best of his abilities, tried to be a good husband and a good father, a true Catholic, and a real American? Hadn’t he always made his Easter duty, contributed to the support of his pastor? And hadn’t he done all in his power to bring his children up the right way? He had wanted them to be a comfort to himself and Mary in their old age. And now, Bill, his favorite, was dying. And he and Mary, after all their work and struggle, must come to such misery in their old age, be reduced almost to the state of paupers. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. He had done nothing to merit this punishment. Why, why was it?
Anger flared in him. He silently heaped a curse on the Jew international bankers. They were the causes, he assured himself. They did not want America to collect its just debts from Europe. If America did, they wouldn’t make enough greedy profit. That was why there was a depression. The bankers. And hadn’t that radio priest, Father Moylan from the Shrine of The Little Rose of Jesus Christ, told the bankers where to get off at?