J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

Early the next morning Father Udovic was in touch with Monsignor Renton, beginning significantly with a glowing report on the Peter’s Pence collection, but the conversation languished, and finally he had to ask about the announcement.

“Nobody showed,” Monsignor Renton said in an annoyed voice. “What d’ya want to do about it?”

“Nothing right now,” said Father Udovic, and hung up. If there had been a failure in the line of communication, he thought he knew where it was.

The envelope had reposed on the Bishop’s desk over the weekend and through most of Monday. But that afternoon Father Udovic, on one of his appearances in the Bishop’s office, noticed that it was gone. As soon as the Bishop left for the day, Father Udovic rushed in, looking first in the wastebasket, then among the sealed outgoing letters, for a moment actually expecting to see a fat one addressed in the Bishop’s hand to the Apostolic Delegate. When he uncovered the envelope in the “Out” section of the file basket, he wondered at himself for looking in the other places first. The envelope had to be filed somewhere — a separate folder would be best — but Father Udovic didn’t file it. He carried it to his desk. There, sitting down to it in the gloom of the outer office, weighing, feeling, smelling the envelope, he succumbed entirely to his first fears. He remembered the parable of the cockle. “An enemy hath done this.” An enemy was plotting to disturb the peace of the diocese, to employ the Bishop as an agent against himself, or against some other innocent person, some unsuspecting priest or nun — yes, against Father Udovic. Why him? Why not? Only a diseased mind would contemplate such a scheme, Father Udovic thought, but that didn’t make it less likely. And the sender, whoever he was, doubtless anonymous and judging others by himself, would assume that the envelope had already been opened and that the announcement was calculated to catch him. Such a person would never come forward.

Father Udovic’s fingers tightened on the envelope. He could rip it open, but he wouldn’t. That evening, enjoying instant coffee in his room, he could steam it open. But he wouldn’t. In the beginning, the envelope might have been opened. It would have been so easy, pardonable then. Monsignor Renton’s housekeeper might have done it. With the Bishop honoring the name on the envelope and the intentions of whoever wrote it, up to a point anyway, there was now a principle operating that just couldn’t be bucked. Monsignor Renton could have it his way.

That evening Father Udovic called him and asked that the announcement appear in the bulletin.

“Okay. I’ll stick it in. It wouldn’t surprise me if we got some action now.”

“I hope so,” said Father Udovic, utterly convinced that Monsignor Renton had failed him before. “Do you mind taking it down verbatim this time?”

“Not at all.”

In the next bulletin, an advance copy of which came to Father Udovic through the courtesy of Monsignor Renton, the announcement appeared in an expanded, unauthorized version.

The result on Sunday was no different.

During the following week, Father Udovic considered the possibility that the sender was a floater and thought of having the announcement broadcast from every pulpit in the diocese. He would need the Bishop’s permission for that, though, and he didn’t dare to ask for something he probably wouldn’t get. The Bishop had instructed him not to make too much of the matter. The sender would have to be found at Cathedral, or not at all. If not at all, Father Udovic, having done his best, would understand that he wasn’t supposed to know anymore about the envelope than he did. He would file it away, and some other chancellor, some other bishop, perhaps, would inherit it. The envelope was most likely harmless anyway, but Father Udovic wasn’t so much relieved as bored by the probability that some poor soul was trusting the Bishop to put the envelope into the hands of the Holy Father, hoping for rosary beads blessed by him, or for his autographed picture, and enclosing a small offering, perhaps a spiritual bouquet. Toward the end of the week, Father Udovic told the Bishop that he liked to think that the envelope contained a spiritual bouquet from a little child, and that its contents had already been delivered, so to speak, its prayers and communions already credited to the Holy Father’s account in heaven.

“I must say I hadn’t thought of that,” said the Bishop.

Unfortunately for his peace of mind Father Udovic wasn’t always able to believe that the sender was a little child.

The most persistent of those coming to him in reverie was a middle-aged woman saying she hadn’t received a special Peter’s Pence envelope, had been out of town a few weeks, and so hadn’t heard or read the announcement. When Father Udovic tried her on the meaning of the Personal on the envelope, however, the woman just went away, and so did all the other suspects under questioning — except one. This was a rich old man suffering from scrupulosity. He wanted his alms to be in secret, as it said in Scripture, lest he be deprived of his eternal reward, but not entirely in secret. That was as far as Father Udovic could figure the old man. Who was he? An audacious old Protestant who hated communism, or could some future Knight of St Gregory be taking his first awkward step? The old man was pretty hard to believe in, and the handwriting on the envelope sometimes struck Father Udovic as that of a woman. This wasn’t necessarily bad. Women controlled the nation’s wealth. He’d seen the figures on it. The explanation was simple: widows. Perhaps they hadn’t taken the right tone in the announcement. Father Udovic’s version had been safe and cold, Monsignor Renton’s like a summons. It might have been emphasized that the Bishop, under certain circumstances, would gladly undertake to deliver the envelope. That might have made a difference. The sender would not only have to appreciate the difficulty of the Bishop’s position, but abandon his own. That wouldn’t be easy for the sort of person Father Udovic had in mind. He had a feeling that it wasn’t going to happen. The Bishop would leave for Rome on the following Tuesday. So time was running out. The envelope could contain a check — quite the cruelest thought — on which payment would be stopped after a limited time by the donor, whom Father Udovic persistently saw as an old person not to be dictated to, or it could be nullified even sooner by untimely death. God, what a shame! In Rome, where the needs of the world, temporal as well as spiritual, were so well known, the Bishop would’ve been welcome as the flowers in May.

And then, having come full circle, Father Udovic would be hard on himself for dreaming and see the envelope as a whited sepulcher concealing all manner of filth, spelled out in letters snipped from newsprint and calculated to shake Rome’s faith in him. It was then that he particularly liked to think of the sender as a little child. But soon the middle-aged woman would be back, and all the others, among whom the hottest suspect was a feeble-minded nun — devils all to pester him, and the last was always worse than the first. For he always ended up with the old man — and what if there was such an old man?

On Saturday, Father Udovic called Monsignor Renton and asked him to run the announcement again. It was all they could do, he said, and admitted that he had little hope of success.

“Don’t let it throw you, Bruno. It’s always darkest before dawn.”

Father Udovic said he no longer cared. He said he liked to think that the envelope contained a spiritual bouquet from a little child, that its contents had already been delivered, its prayers and communions already…

“You should’ve been a nun, Bruno.”