The Peripatetic Philosopher shares a moving piece from his novel:

Another Excerpt from

DEVLIN, the novel

James Raymond Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© December 2, 2016

REFERENCE:

Devlin in driving around Johannesburg to clear his head wanders to the Johannesburg Train 

Station just as thousands of Bantu are heading home to SOWETO.  The experience is so shattering that he makes a visit to his parish church.  This is what takes place.  

THE CHURCH VISIT

As Devlin got in the flow of afternoon traffic winding through downtown Johannesburg past the apartment complexes and law offices, the rolling hills, and the manicured traffic islands along the way, he was glad Daniel was not driving him home today, glad, too, that he had the suspended pleasure of letting his vehicle take him where it would. 

He entered Rosebank and its small business district passing the food market, liquor store, clothing store, movie theatre, and the Rosebank Hotel all architecturally splendid, making a common declaration of uplifting dignity.  He then took a side street rolling through a venue of overarching trees, exquisite gardens and luxurious homes, only to find himself approaching his parish church, the Immaculate Conception. 

The surprise to him was not as daunting as the train station.  The church was a familiar sanctuary for him throughout the world.  To seek relief from fatigue, countervailing circumstances, ambiguous conflicts, and ambivalent strategies, he would find breathing space in the quiet of a church, where he could unburden his soul in the same manner as he did as a child at St. Patrick’s, St. Boniface’s or The Sacred Heart in Crescent City.  He would always leave with the heavy weight of the day surprisingly gone replaced by a sense of peace and tranquility that would shoot adrenaline through his body and quiet the agitation in his soul.  He rolled to a stop at the curb in front of the church, got out and entered the vestibule.

It was now past five o’clock and the church was empty, dark with the aroma of incense with the creaking sound of the timbers that held its majestic ceiling arched towards heaven.  Offertory candles flickered at the altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph on opposite sides of the main central altar where the red light of the candle beside the tabernacle door burned brightly to register the presence of the monstrance with the Sacred Host housed inside. 

He moved down the side aisle to the Virgin Mary’s altar and dropped to his knees on the cushioned kneeler and bowed his head in prayer.  He was home. 

After several minutes, he lit a candle and then wondered what specifically he wished to pray to the Virgin for, other than keeping his composure.  He found himself saying an ancient prayer he learned as a child, Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, Our Life Our Sweetness and Our Hope to thee do we cry poor banished children of Eve …” 

Sometime later, Devlin felt a gentle tap on his shoulder.  “Are you all right, my son?”

He looked up and it was his parish priest, Father Vincent O’Malley, a man about sixty.  His face was like a beatific vision, handsome, round, with silver hair, deep-set eyes beneath heavy black brows, a high forehead, and a jutting jaw.  

“Yes, Father,” he replied seeing the priest was even more distinguished looking in his black cassock and Roman collar than in the full colorful robes, the alb of precious lace and the golden Roman chasuble for saying Sunday Mass.

“I’ve been in and out of here several times,” the priest said in a melodious voice.  “Do you know you’ve been asleep on the kneeler?”

“No, Father.”  Devlin looked at his watch in disbelief.  “Is this actually the correct time, 6:17?”

“It is indeed.  Do you remember when you entered the church?”

“I believe shortly after five.”

The priest took Devlin’s arm, guided him up from the kneeler and across the red carpeted floor to the first pew.  Young as Devlin was, he moved stiffly but willingly as if an old man not sure of his muscles responding to the demand.  Once seated in the pew, the priest sat down beside him looking at him thoughtfully.  “Are you troubled, my son?”

“Am I troubled?” Devlin repeated.  He then brushed back his short blond hair, rolled his shoulders to expand his breathing, and said, “In the short time I’ve been in this country what I construed as reality has shaken my foundation.  If that qualifies to be troubled, I believe you could say I am.”

“What pains you, my son?”

“Reality pains me, Father.”

“Such as?”

“I’ve just come from the train station during the Bantu rush hour to SOWETO.”

“What in the world were you doing there?”

“I honestly don’t know.  I was out driving and I just wandered there accidentally.”

The priest grabbed Devlin’s shoulders gently but firmly.  “That is not where you should be.”

“I’ve already been told that.  Then where should I be, Father?  Should I return to utopia where there are no such train stations?”

“Well, stay away from there.”  The priest’s voice lost its melodious calm and became quite stern almost strident.  The color in his Irish face now took on the appearance of a drinker; his white hair seemed to gleam.  He was a little overweight but handsome nonetheless in that Irish way that always made Devlin nostalgic for home.  He could now sense a trace of Dublin in his voice, a place Devlin had only been once, but remembered fondly.  He found himself going to the Irish pubs nursing a dark Guinness beer while drinking in the conversation around the bar against a fiddler playing in a corner.  The dancing voices in the Irish brogue and the knee slapping music were like nothing else on earth. 

Father O’Malley was obviously a missionary from Ireland because the brogue was too thick to have arisen from this culture.  The brogue had tenacity.  He could hear it in his da’s railroad buddies who had never stepped foot on Irish soil, but lived their whole lives hugging the shores of the Mississippi River.  The Irish intonation was always most apparent when the speaker was on the defensive.  He wondered if this was now the case with the priest.

Devlin resented being scolded by the good priest.  He felt like a little boy who had lost his way and wandered into the briar patch when he sought the sanctuary of the church.  This upset him but he felt too much respect for the cloth to express his anger.  Instead he said, “Father, I am one of your parishioners.”

“You are?”

“Yes.  I’m Seamus Devlin.”

“Devlin?”  The priest rubbed his chin with his big hand.  “Devlin, the American Devlin?”  Devlin nodded.  A big smile came on the face of the priest.  Devlin was sure the cash register was kicking in, as Devlin was a thither.  “Yes, I see.  You’ve been very generous to the parish in the short time you’ve been in South Africa.  Have we ever met?”

“No, Father.”

“Not in any of our church functions?”

“No, Father.”

“I’m surprised you don’t take an active role in the parish.”

“Father, I don’t have the time.  I barely have the time to do my own job.”

“And that is?”

“I’m facilitating the formation of a new specialty chemical company.”  Then Devlin told him the details.

“My, my, that is quite a responsibility for someone so young.”

“I’m thirty years old, Father!”  He knew he looked younger and was haunted with this assessment wherever he had worked.  “It was not my intention of going to the train station.  It is where I ended up.  It is my nature to discover the ambience of a place I find myself by wandering around.  It is helpful in my work, and in my decision making.”  He thought he was talking too much and giving out too much information, but he couldn’t seem to stop.  “I feel I have to learn what makes this country tick, and I must say, I’ve experienced some difficulty getting honest answers from otherwise honest people.  I come from the Midwest, Father, to be specific, and we don’t have much patience with pretense and posturing much less rhetoric.”

“I dare say I hear American in your voice but not regionalism. I’ve been to America several times and find people in the East speak differently than people in the West, and people in the Midwest speak differently than people in the South.  It is easier to understand middle westerners because they talk slowly and enunciate their words in that slow nasal drawl that somehow you have escaped.  I don’t know where I would put you.”

Devlin broke into a riotous laugh, forgetting he was in church.  It gave him instant relief.  The priest looked suspiciously at him for the outburst.  “I apologize, Father.  That has been a common complaint.  People have had trouble labeling me.  It is as if defining me is more important than seeing me as I am.  Perhaps I’m an enigma.”  He laughed again, but more quietly.

“Why would you say that?”  The priest was wondering if this young man was high strung or had some basic emotional issues.  Anticipating the priest, Devlin added,

“Why would I confess to that?  Well, I believe the times to be out of sync with reality.   Denial is the sickness of the times.”  He saw the priest was increasingly uneasy.  “Let me explain. 

“I’ve lived in the American South for a few years and was at university the year Brown versus The Board of Education.  This led to the stormy struggle to integrate American schools in the South.  The Voting Rights Act followed, which ensured black voters couldn’t be kept from the polls, yet they were.  Since I’ve left the United States, the Civil Rights Movement that changed the calculus of race relations has led to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

“My observation of the Negro’s struggle for equal rights has been largely from afar.  Iowa, where I grew up, has few blacks.  I didn’t go to school with blacks, didn’t play sports with them, didn’t see them at the municipal swimming pool, in the movie theaters, in the department stores downtown, or even in the baseball stadium.  I only saw a few Negroes at my university 

“Before coming here, I checked the demographics for my hometown and discovered there were about 300 blacks in my community in a population of 33,000.  They were invisible because my eyes had been trained to see past them.  There were 3,000 American Indians in my area, but they were primarily on an Indian Reservation near my home, and likewise invisible to me.  I don’t remember ever seeing an Indian, but I’m sure they were there.

”Now I am in a sea of black people and am in the minority, only here they are invisible as whites have the power. I should see them, acknowledge them, and treat them as equals, not because they are the majority but because they are fellow human beings.  You see, because of this I am disturbed.  Things are out of balance.”

Devlin shuddered as things welled up behind the words, and then he lost it.  He cried, his shoulders shook, his head throbbed, thinking – We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  “Father, I feel such a fraud.”

The priest stood, looked down at Devlin, speechless, totally captivated and troubled by the mood swings of his parishioner, not knowing what to make of this confession. 

“Father,” Devlin said his voice cracking with sobs, “I need help.  I need help to reconcile my mind to this place.  I cannot be myself, the self that has led to this assignment, a self that has never had to play games with its conscience.  I’m having trouble, real trouble.  I wonder if I’m losing my mind.”

“Have you thought of psychiatry?”

“I’m with my priest, Father, with my confessor.  Is a psychiatrist better than my confessor?”

“Well, he’s trained, too.”

“Father, may I ask you a question?” Devlin’s voice cracked.  “I’m an Irish Roman Catholic boy who has tried to live up to the tenets of his faith, but has not prepared himself for what he sees.”  Devlin’s voice choked off into babble, but his eyes spoke clearly.  The priest never looked him in the eye but bowed his head and touched the cross that dangled from the front of his cassock.  

Then Devlin went into a feverish litany of self-justification common to the guilty.  “Before South Africa, I’ve only known my wife, I’ve never drank or smoked or caroused, I’ve only worked.  I’ve studied.”  Then he started to cry again, “I don’t even swear.  I wish I could swear.  I wish I could let loose.  I’m wrapped so tight I feel mummified.  I don’t know whether I feel too deeply or I don’t feel at all.  I need help.” 

Then incongruously, as if totally in control, his voice became level, his shoulders no longer jagged, but were drawn back, as his head rose from his chest to see that the priest looked terrified as if trapped by a dangerous animal.  Disregarding the discomfiture of the priest, Devlin asked, “Father, can I come to see you, talk to you about apartheid?”

The priest looked down at Devlin, horrified.  “Absolutely not!”

“Pardon me?”

The priest’s composure totally regained, he said again, “Absolutely not!”

“And why is that?”

“That is political. I’m not political.”

“You mean apartheid.  You don’t mean ‘that.’  You mean apartheid.  Why can’t you say the word?”  Devlin got up from the pew to tower over the priest.  “As for political, Father, if I’ve learned nothing in my short life it is that no institution is more political than the Roman Catholic Church.” 

The priest ignored this declaration.  “I am a man of God,” he insisted.  “I am your spiritual leader.  I am not a politician.  I have nothing to do with that.”

“But are not Bantu God’s children?”

“Yes, of course they are.”

“Is it right for them to be treated less human, less free than I am treated?”

“Listen, young man, I’m very busy.  It is clear that you are quite disturbed and need help.  You’re babbling and crying and making all kinds of accusations like a spoiled child.  Then you tell me you have this huge assignment.  I frankly feel for your company.  How could you be so outrageously sensitive and do what you do?  That is the puzzle.”

“I see,” said Devlin standing tall and now completely himself once again.

“You see what?”

“I am the way you’re supposed to be, sensitive. I take that as a compliment.”  The priest moved to say something and thought better.  Devlin continued, “You imply insensitivity is a function of corporate success, and it is.  Are you suggesting you have a lot in common with that perverse perspective?”  Before the priest could answer, Devlin added.  “American author Allen Drury in his book A Very Strange Society implies South Africa is a very strange society, but it has been my experience that South Africa has no corner on that market when it comes to my own country. 

“I apologize for losing control.  My senses have been bombarded with more stimuli than apparently my capacity to absorb them.  Then, too, I’m not getting much sleep.  That said it may be of little interest to you but I’m going to share it nonetheless.  It is because of my sensitivity in the present business climate that I have had the success that I have had.  Sensitivity has been a two-edged blade that cuts two ways.  For me, it has cut through some potentially embarrassing problems but it is equally true.  It could just as readily open Pandora’s Box beyond my capacity to cope.  That is my issue. 

“My colleagues deal with people as if they are targets on a dartboard.  I deal with them as persons with immortal souls.  I sense people as I sense you now.  I have a good gauge of fear and doubt because I live with mine, and of complacency which I have no tolerance.  

“It remains to be seen whether my magic will work here as it has elsewhere, but I am certain it won’t if I ignore what I see.”  Devlin was thinking about his visit to the train station.  “If I ignore the draconian practices of apartheid and its detention policy, I cannot do my job consistent with my beliefs. 

“I didn’t come here to see you.  I came for solace.  It was you who came to me.  I came here quite by accident.  I’ve always found solace in visits to the church, always found comfort in prayer, and I like the quiet of the church.  Since you were here, I pleaded with you for help, and the help I sought appears outside your purview.  And so I apologize.”

“You don’t have to get sarcastic.”

“Father, believe it or not I don’t mean to be sarcastic.  I appreciate that you have listened to me.  You are a good listener, and that is a powerful counseling tool.  Where we part company is when you suggest a psychiatrist, when labeling is the quintessential nature of that profession.  By allowing me to penetrate my implacable façade by listening, I have come to better understand it and appreciate yours. 

“My wonder is if you realize in helping me you help yourself.  We shall see.  In any case, Father, I’m going to be back, and I’m going to lay out the things that I’ve experienced before you and have a discussion with you.”

“And if I refuse?”  Father O’Malley was thinking he would quit tithing.  “What will you do?”

“Father, Father!  I will do nothing.  For example, I will not stop tithing.  I will not stop going to Mass and receiving Communion.  I will come back again, and again.  Did I mention that I have a reputation for being intractably insistent?”

“Is that so?”  The priest was doing his level best to hold his temper.  God help me, he thought, I despise this arrogant bastard.  Yes, he is a generous parishioner, the highest thither in the parish, despite many affluent families.  Blackmail is the price of my control.

“Yes, it has been my history.  So, I will be back, more politely I might add, and I promise not to lose it next time.  I will be back because this assignment could be a long one.”

“How long?”

“Possibly a year or more.  I don’t think I could stand it if it were a matter of years.”  Nor I, the priest whispered to himself.

They shook hands and Devlin left in surprisingly good spirits having had his conflicting spirit confronted and exorcized for the moment.  It was a beginning.

*     *     *