Marilynne Robinson - Gilead

I thought after that day we would sometime be able to talk. That did not prove to be the case. All the same, after that day I did feel pretty much at ease about the state of his soul. Though of course I am not competent to judge.

Here is what he said, standing there with his hair all plastered to his head and his mustache dripping.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is,

For brethren to dwell together in unity!

It is like the precious oil upon the head,

That ran down upon the beard;

Even Aaron’s beard;

That came down upon the skirt of his garments

Like the dew of Hermon,

That cometh down upon the mountains of Zion.

That is from Psalm 133. It meant he knew everything I knew, every single word. Perhaps he was telling me that he knew everything I knew and he was not persuaded by it. Still, I have often thought what a splendid thing that was for him to do. I wished my father had been there, because I knew it would have made him laugh. He still had a decent arm for a man his age. I, being very young at the time, believed they would never reconcile, and I was surprised that Edward could take the whole situation as calmly as he seemed to. I told him I had begun reading Feuerbach, and he wiggled his big eyebrows at me and said, “Don’t you let your mama catch you doing that!”

***

When I say that my reputation for piety and probity and so on may be a bit exaggerated, I would not wish you to believe therefore that I have taken my vocation lightly. It has been my whole life. I even kept up my Greek and Hebrew pretty well. Boughton and I used to go through the texts we were going to preach on, word by word. He’d come here, to my house, because his house was full of children. He’d bring a nice warm supper in a basket that his wife or his daughters would fix for us. I used to dread walking into his house, because it made mine seem so empty. And Boughton could tell that, he knew it.

Four girls and four boys he had, robustious little heathens, every one of them, as he said himself. But good fortune is not only good fortune, and over the years things happened in that family that caused some terrible regret. Still, for years it all seemed to me to be blindingly beautiful. And it was.

We had some very pleasant evenings here in my kitchen. Boughton is a staunch Presbyterian — as if there were another kind. So we have had our disagreements, though never grave enough to do any harm.

I don’t think it was resentment I felt then. It was some sort of loyalty to my own life, as if I wanted to say, I have a wife, too, I have a child, too. It was as if the price of having them was losing them, and I couldn’t bear the implication that even that price could be too high. They say an infant can’t see when it is as young as your sister was, but she opened her eyes, and she looked at me. She was such a little bit of a thing. But while I was holding her, she opened her eyes. I know she didn’t really study my face. Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something. And I’m glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. Boughton and I have talked about that, too. It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any. Boughton agrees.

I was so frightened of you when you were a little baby. I would sit in the rocking chair and your mother would put you in my arms and I would just rock and pray until she finished whatever it was she had to do. I used to sing, too, “Go to Dark Gethsemane,” until she asked me if I didn’t know a happier song. I wasn’t even aware of what I was singing.

***

This morning I have been trying to think about heaven, but without much success. I don’t know why I should expect to have any idea of heaven. I could never have imagined this world if I hadn’t spent almost eight decades walking around in it. People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that’s true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives. That’s clearer to me every day. Each morning I’m like Adam waking, up in Eden, amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind through my eyes — old hands, old eyes, old mind, a very diminished Adam altogether, and still it is just remarkable. What of me will I still have? Well, this old body has been a pretty good companion. Like Balaam’s ass, it’s seen the angel I haven’t seen yet, and it’s lying down in the path. And I must say, too, that my mind, with all its deficiencies, has certainly kept me interested. There’s quite a bit of poetry in it that I learned over the years, and a pretty decent vocabulary, much of it unused. And Scripture. I never knew it the way my father did, or his father. But I know it pretty well. I certainly should. When I was younger than you are now, my father would give me a penny every time I learned five verses so that I could repeat them without a mistake. And then he’d make a game of saying a verse, and I had to say the next one. We could go on and on like that, sometimes till we came to a genealogy, or we just got tired. Sometimes we’d take roles: he’d be Moses and I’d be Pharaoh, he’d be the Pharisees and I’d be the Lord. That’s how he was brought up, too, and it was a great help to me when I went to seminary. And through the whole of my life.

You know the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm and Psalm 100. And I heard your mother teaching you the Beatitudes last night. She seems to want me to know that she will bring you up in the faith, and that’s a wonderful effort for her to make, because frankly, I never knew anyone in my life with a smaller acquaintance with religion than she had when I first knew her. An excellent woman, but unschooled in Scripture, and in just about everything else, according to her, and that may be true. I say this with all respect.

And yet there always was that wonderful seriousness about her. When she first came to church she would sit in the corner at the back of the sanctuary, and still I would feel as if she were the only real listener. I had a dream once that I. was preaching to Jesus Himself, saying any foolish thing I could think of, and He was sitting there in His white, white robe looking patient and sad and amazed. That’s what it felt like. Afterward I would think, That did it, she’ll never come back^ and then the next Sunday there she’d be. And once again, the sermon I’d spent the week on would be ashes in my mouth. That happened before I even knew her name.

I had an interesting talk this morning with Mr. Schmidt, T.’s father. It seems he overheard some inappropriate language. I’d overheard it, too, in fact, since it has been the favorite joke between the two of you for the last week. I’ll admit I didn’t see the need to object. We said the same thing when we were children and emerged unscathed, I believe. One of you asks, in a naïve and fluting voice, AB, CD goldfish? And the other replies in the deepest voice he can muster, a voice full of worldliness and scorn, L, MNO goldfish! And then outrageous and extravagant laughter. (It is the L , need I say, that has disturbed Mr. Schmidt.) That young man was very earnest, and I had a terrible time keeping a straight face. I said gravely that, in my experience, it is better not to attempt too strict an isolation of children, that prohibition loses its force if it is invoked too generally. He finally deferred to my white hair and my vocation, though he did ask me twice if I was Unitarian.