Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

“Then I’m as much a sinner as you, Sarah” I said. “More of a sinner,” I declared, offering cold comfort, I knew. I told her that she wasn’t alone, for I could no more believe in the God of our fathers than she. Despite Father’s tireless wish for me to believe. Thanks to her family’s apostasy, she was blameless for her fall from religion. But my fall, I pointed out, had been my own doing, not my family’s. Then I told her of my “awakening” at the Negro church in Boston and how my lie had thrilled Father. “It wasn’t wholly an act!’ I said to her. “I did feel something. But it certainly was a lie to let Father believe that I had been touched by the wing of an angel.” I told her how my lie had sent the Old Man into a paroxysm of thanksgiving. I was guilty, of course, a sinner, but there was no God to punish me. So here I was, continuing with the charade and feeling guilty every moment, devouring my guilt as if it were delicious, nourishing food, but growing fat and sick with it, as if it were rancid. I told her that I felt like a man with a need for putrid meat.

She gently laid her small hand over mine. We were standing again by the rail where I had first seen her. “Oh, Owen Brown, be easy on yourself. Really. You don’t know, maybe that is how it feels to be touched by the wing of an angel.” Even so, she explained, I had only a little lie to live with, and besides, it was a lie that made someone I loved very happy. My father now believed that his son was a Christian. And that, therefore, he had himself a proper acolyte. “It’s a good lie, Owen. There are such things, you know. Good lies. Even for us lapsed Calvinists. Don’t abandon it. Keep it,” she said. “For me, I’m afraid, it’s different. Significantly different. My lie can’t be kept, and there’s no way for me to abandon it, or it me. And, worse, my lie makes no one happy.”

Then, to my amazement, she told me the truth about her condition. “I’m unmarried, Owen, and I’m with child. I’m pregnant. As you may have already guessed,” she said, but I denied it.

Another lie.

“What do you think of that?” she asked, looking into my face for the answer. “Really. Tell me the truth.”

I could not speak at first. Finally, I managed to stammer, “Well… well, yes. That’s… that isn’t right. I mean… I’m sorry, really, I’m sorry… ’ stammering not because of any shock or disapproval but because I had not the ready answer that shock and disapproval would have provided: the politely smiling lie. She saw that and seemed pleased.

For a moment, we stood there side by side at the rail, looking down at the black water in silence. Then I said, “Where I’m from, Sarah… actually, everywhere, a man is accountable to a woman and her family. But that… that seems not to be the case here.”

“No, it certainly isn’t. Seduced and abandoned. Is that how you describe it? I’m a young woman seduced by a cad and abandoned, Owen Brown. A fact soon to be visible to all.” She gave one of her small, bitter laughs. “But nothing’s that simple, of course. It never is. After all, I loved the man,” she said. Then she confessed that she still loved him. She confessed that she had been willingly seduced. He was in no way a cad, and he didn’t exactly abandon her. And in his own way, he was as trapped as she. Not by his body, of course, as she was, but by his circumstances. He couldn’t marry her. Not even if he wanted to. He was married to someone else. Married to a fine, loving woman, in fact, whom she very much admired, and he had three beautiful children by her. And he had been as foolish and reckless and cruel to that woman and their children as she.

“But you’re the one who has to pay the price.”

“Yes, I must pay the price. At least publicly. There’s your ‘shame,’ Owen. My shame. Although it must also be my child’s. But he pays another way. In secret. He knows everything that I know, naturally, but he can never say it, can never stand forth in public and accept responsibility for his sins. He can never be publically accountable, not without shaming his dear, innocent wife and children, which would only compound his sin. No, he will have to live with his guilt instead,” Sarah said. And because it was a secret guilt, it would be compounded for the rest of his life. His sin was like the pearl of great price purchased with borrowed money, which he would never be able to pay back. Sarah’s shame and her child’s reflected shame might actually fade in time — her sin was public, or soon would be, but sometimes people forget and eventually forgive. “Especially if we aren’t around to remind them with our physical presence,” she said. “But his guilt will grow and grow. No one can ever forgive him, not even he himself, and he can never forget me. For as long as he lives, whether I live or die, I’ll remain the emblem of his sin. I know him well, Owen Brown. He’s a brilliantly sensitive man, and he makes all the finest moral distinctions. He’s practically famous for it.” She suddenly laughed.

“Is he a pastor?” I asked. I could not imagine any ordinary man capable of seducing this woman. He would have to have been a man of powerful intellect, a man possessed of a great gift of language, and certainly someone highly respected in her society.

“Is he a pastor? A minister?” She smiled evenly. “That’s sweet. He might have been, I suppose. Born too late for that, though. But never mind who or what he is, Owen. Don’t ask any further. I shan’t tell, and it doesn’t matter anyhow.”

“I’m sorry;’ I said. “I didn’t mean to pry. But I think you’re way too kind to him. If I were your father or your brother, let me tell you, I’d deal with the fellow in a proper way. I’d make him ashamed, all right. A man like that.”

“Owen, no. You don’t understand. No one knows who he is, except me. No one. And the man himself. Oh, he knows! But I’ve told no one: not my family, not my aunt, no one. I’ve simply refused, and I never will reveal his name. Never. It’s the only power I have over him.” She laughed, then was serious again. “And remember, I love him, Owen. You must try to understand, I don’t want to bring him down. He’s a public man, and I don’t want to ruin his life or scandalize his marriage or taint the lives of his innocent children. I’ve done enough damage as it is. And luckily, except for what I’ve brought upon my poor mother and father and my dear aunts, most of the damage I’ve done only to myself. And to my poor unborn child,” she added, with immense sadness in her voice.

I said I supposed she was right. But I didn’t understand.

She gazed into my face and abruptly laughed. “Really, sometimes I do wish I were a man. Look at you! You’re in as much despair over your life as I, yet the most important question you have to deal with is how to be a man of action and a man of religion. How to be more like your beloved father. You feel like neither — you’re not a man of action and not a man of religion — and so you pine away, like a poor seduced and abandoned girl.”

“You make me feel foolish.”

But so much of a man’s life is merely a matter of choice, she declared — the right choice, the wrong choice. And even if a man makes the wrong choice, he can still change it. He simply has to change his mind. “You’re a man, Owen, aren’t you? And, really, when you have good health, you men are your minds. You can become a man of action, if you want. Or of religion. Or both. You may not end up famous for it, like your beloved father, but you can be it. Tell me, Owen, isn’t that how it is?” She stared grimly down at the black waves and clenched the rail with both hands.

“Well, no,” I said. “Or at least it never has seemed as easy as that. Not to me. But perhaps I should go in now” I said to her, for she seemed not to be listening anymore. I believed that I had been dismissed. “I must bid you good night,” I said.