Shannon Read online

  Had he been more aware, more astute about his own emotions, he would have identified the fact that the quality of his dreams had a connection to his level of exhaustion. Now, in this white castle by the river, tired but not fatigued, he dreamed safer dreams, brief and with pleasant comfort.

  In one fragment, his father sat at the table in Sharon, reading a newspaper— that was all. In another, a horse seemed to clomp along somewhere, a tawny docile animal. He dreamed something about the nurse at Belleau Wood, Nurse Kennedy; she had tied back her hair and he was asking her about it. In the same fragment, Robert sat in a deep peaceful armchair, safe and thoughtful, while Nurse Kennedy stood quiet and watchful nearby. And he dreamed about the archbishop; he often dreamed about the archbishop.

  Few of his own priests back in Poland liked Archbishop Anthony Sevovicz. They thought him too political, too self-seeking, too shrewd for the open face of priesthood. Also, they felt uncomfortable in his presence; at six feet five, he loomed over most of them, and they knew he used his physical size to intimidate them.

  More than that, he kept them at a distance. He never made confidants of his clergy; he shared no diocesan or other church secrets with them; for his own confession he went outside his own archdiocese to Lublin.

  Sevovicz had come to the United States in the summer of 1920 because Cardinal William “Bill” O'Connell, the controversial Archbishop of Boston, had his hand forced by the Vatican. Rome wanted an extra pair of eyes in the archdiocese, and they sent in Sevovicz as a coadjutor bishop. “This crazy Pole,” as O'Connell called him, spoke excellent English. He had been sold to the cardinal by Vatican contacts as an excellent fixer, a man who could troubleshoot all problems of a personal nature.

  And he would need to be all of these things, because nobody else in any American church of any denomination at that time wielded the power and influence of Bill O'Connell. A deal maker, a turner of the blind eye, a force of nature, he ran the Archdiocese of Boston with a rare and spectacular ruthlessness. He conducted his world like an emperor and wrapped his secular dealings, which were numerous and, to many, unbecoming, in the purple of the episcopacy.

  His Eminence lived richly, with obviously expensive tastes. He built a lavish house— not for nothing was this prelate's residence called a palace. He was as tough as teak and his flock loved him; with them he was unassailable, because the Catholics of Boston had long needed a religious hero. They still suffered from the long whip of anti-Catholicism, endemic all across North America since the Pilgrims, but now they had a warlord who took on the Protestant Brahmins.

  The Boston Catholics also loved O'Connell's force of personality.

  They loved his style. How could they not chuckle with delight at the fact that their own man, their Cardinal Bill, had held up a pope's election until he was there to vote?

  His clergy, however, saw him differently. Many condemned the way he managed his episcopacy. He made all his appointments with a view to total control. His bishops, administrators, diocesan committee members, senior clergy— they all knew they had been chosen for docility. Of the three holy vows that priests took, their archbishop most wanted obedience. As to poverty and chastity— those, he seemed to think, were their own business.

  All across the American Catholic hierarchy, he had numerous detractors. Some spoke their ferocity in private; others stood up, loud and vocal. And still O'Connell sailed on, visible, hard-minded, and aware, being an archbishop with his right hand and a profiteering manipulator with his left, stirring up strong emotions all around him, from the intense love of his relatives, friends, and flock to the wild fury of his opponents in the Church.

  He first came directly into Robert Shannon's life in 1914. In Boston on Pentecost Sunday, Robert had been one of the twelve young men in long white linen albs who prostrated themselves on the sanctuary floor of the cathedral for ordination to the priesthood. Their outstretched hands almost touched the two steps that led to the episcopal throne, where sat His Eminence in his scarlet and white.

  That was the name by which the ordinands and the entire See of New England knew him: His Eminence. Throughout Robert's studenthood, His Eminence had been mentioned in the seminary every day, spoken of with fascination. And although they wished he would visit them, the students had been content to know that one day he would lay his hands upon them and make them priests. Until that moment, Robert, in common with the other eleven young men, had never seen him.

  Among the pews cordoned off with purple ropes for the families, Robert's parents watched. Ordination Day crowned lives. Every Irish tribe in Boston wanted its own priest and revered him when he got there. Many boys used this as a pathway to the family's pride of place— or, often, to evade the attentions of a brutal father, whose behavior toward his son now had to change. No one dared strike a man of God.

  Many who were less crucially invested still found the ordination ceremony moving unto tears. All present thought it impressive; liturgy as theater hallmarks the Church.

  After his ordination, the day when he first looked into the cardinal's eyes, Robert Shannon found His Eminence appearing in his dreams. They were not sweet dreams; they had shadows in them, and heavy footsteps. They had edge to them, and garish colors. They seethed with unease, and they took Robert to the edge of despair, with feelings that he couldn't explain when he woke up.

  For long months at a time those dreams did not recur, and he went about his parish and community work. But then, when he had first come under the care of Anthony Sevovicz, he had begun to dream of the cardinal again. He told Archbishop Sevovicz so— told him hesitantly, with care. Sevovicz looked at him with astonishment.

  “This is bad, very bad, too bad, because as Dr. Greenberg and I have both seen, Robert, you only dream about things that truly scare you. Guns. Shells exploding. Wounds— big, wide, red wounds. Pieces of bodies. And now His Eminence, the cardinal. We must not tell him. What do you dream of him?”

  Robert could never coherently recall entire dreams; he could pluck an image here, repeat a scene there, a face from somewhere else.

  “A very large automobile,” he had said. “He is sitting in the back.” Or, another time: “A feast. He is eating. At the head of the table.”

  “Naturally,” Sevovicz had said. “Are there other people there, Robert? Are you there?”

  Robert had nodded.

  “And am I there?”

  Robert had frowned and shaken his head, and Sevovicz had jumped up and swung his arms.

  “Yes, yes, I can see that His Eminence might have a feast to which I might not be invited. You dream very truly, Robert, you dream very truly.”

  Now, in a strange château on the banks of the Shannon River—his river— Robert had been dreaming of the cardinal again, and of the archbishop too, and he heard the archbishop calling him, answered, “Yes, Your Grace!” and awoke with a jump— to a knock on the door.

  Miranda marched in, leading a woman who carried a tray.

  “Hallo, sir,” said the woman, the housekeeper, and inspected the stranger top to toe in a single glance. “You're very welcome here, sir. Bacon and cabbage, sir, for lunch today. And a glass of our own milk.”

  Heavy footsteps lumbered along the corridor outside.

  “Oh, here's the boss now,” said the woman.

  The man of the bathing suit and subsequent nakedness had changed into a tweed jacket, check shirt, striped tie, and twill pants; he stood in the doorway and looked all around.

  “Hah, you've met Mrs. Harty” he said. “She'll look after you, won't you, Mrs. Harty?” Turning to face Robert directly, he said, “So you're another of Miranda's pals. Don't do what the last one did.”

  He winked, turned, and walked away.

  “Drank all the boss's drink,” whispered Mrs. Harty. “A fella from Roscommon. A cattle dealer, he said he was.”

  Miranda ran after her father and didn't come back for some moments. Mrs. Harty took the opportunity to come out with fast whispered words.

  “Si
r, the child. She's six years old, she don't talk since her mother drownded in the river. Out there in front of our faces, she went down like a stone and we all watching her. And the father. The poor man goes out every day of his life winter and summer to try and find her ‘cause they never found the body. And the child hasn't talked since that day ‘twas last summer. The poor woman was only thirty. And lovely too.”

  Miranda came back and rearranged the items on Robert's tray.

  “Now, sir, you're an American, are you?” said Mrs. Harty, louder again.

  Robert nodded.

  Miranda and Mrs. Harty stood there, hands folded, and stared while Robert ate lunch. He felt no distress at this— the archbishop did it all the time. Mrs. Harty took away the tray and Miranda took Robert by the hand again.

  This odd pair, the tall silent man and the little silent girl, spent the rest of the day roaming the estate— but always as far away from the river as Miranda could get. Inside the back door of the house, she collected her pet crow, Henry, in his cage. After some minutes walking, she handed the cage to Robert— and Henry spent the afternoon trying to reach out with his beak and peck Robert's hand through the bars of the cage. He had already pecked the edges of a postcard threaded between the bars a long time ago; the faded handwriting said To Miranda—Happy Birthday from Mama.

  They wandered all over the place. Robert had to inspect the new plow, he had to caress the ducklings, he had to stroke the foal. Then Miranda chose a place to rest, a strange little building out of sight of the house, down at the bottom of a steep field, a shed full of old benches. Henry cawed a lot and swayed to and fro on the carved silver fork that someone had stuck between the bars of his cage as a perch.

  With elaborate selection, Miranda chose a bench for them. She sat with her short legs swinging; then she leaned against Robert, put her thumb in her mouth, and dozed. The rain came in from the west, and a few specks touched Robert's face through the broken walls. He put an arm around the child's shoulder.

  After an hour or so, she walked him back to the house as the cows were being taken home for milking. In his room she made straight for his rucksack. He thought to stop her but held back. Miranda began to unpack the bag and arrange things in drawers and on shelves; it was clear that she wanted him to stay.

  Robert sat in a chair and watched. She respected each item and handled everything with care. He carried little: four light changes of underwear, four pairs of socks, a spare pair of pants, and three extra shirts. Miranda took his toiletries into the bathroom, smelled the soap, hung the facecloth on a hook. She found his letter of introduction but proved unable to read it and restored it to its pocket, having first caressed what remained of the wax seal on the envelope. When the bag was empty, she stowed it in the closet, dusted off her hands with an air of accomplishment, and winked at Robert.

  That evening, six people sat at the long dining table. One elderly man, never identified, kept falling asleep, to be awakened by the woman beside him— who might have been his daughter, judging by their matching mustaches. She wore a bright red and yellow bandanna around her head, with the ends trailing down her neck, and she hummed tunes under her breath. Now and then she raised a dizzy eyebrow and smiled at Robert.

  The father sat at one end, looking ahead like the captain of a lonely ship; Miranda, at the other end, perched on cushions and wielded a silver spoon much too large for her tiny hands. Robert sat beside a smiling woman in a cream dress, who whispered, “Humor us. This is an eccentric table. So— complete silence, eh?”

  A few minutes later she said, slightly louder than a whisper, “This house breaks my heart.”

  The father coughed loudly, and Miranda put a shushing finger to her lips.

  During dinner, two candles sputtered out, spraying flecks of blackened grease on the white lace tablecloth. Miranda's father reached forward and pinched the dead wicks. He sat peculiarly: head erect, looking into space.

  Since he was a very tall man, his height and straight posture made the food's journey from his plate to his mouth dangerously long. And he was largely unsuccessful; at each spillage and splash, Mrs. Harty summoned with a small bell rung by Miranda, came in from the kitchen with a damp cloth and murmured, “There we are now, sir, there we are,” as she wiped each surface, from waistcoat to table.

  Robert had not been in such unknown company since his last hospital stay. After he was discharged, he had lived in close domestic proximity only to Archbishop Sevovicz. His responses, therefore, had been coming from a more or less static vocabulary of emotions. Nor had he been seriously challenged in the O'Sullivans’ house. Their quietness and unfaltering amiability had bedded him down. As a first exposure, not only to Ireland but to the world at large, he could not have done better than the O'Sullivans for comfort and ease.

  Here, in this eccentric place, he faced a very different culture, beginning with the food. He looked down at his plate, course after course, and wondered if he had ever tasted anything so good. In fact he had, and quite recently—Sevovicz had the appetites of a bon vivant, and long before that Robert's own family household had always eaten well— but Robert's appetite had not then returned from the war. Indeed, for his first weeks with Sevovicz he came to almost no meals, and when dinner was served he was often to be found outside, jabbering to himself among the trees.

  Now his palate woke up with a cheer. Dinner began with spicy potato and parsnip soup, accompanied by soda bread hot from the oven. Next came lamb with thrilling flat beans and new potatoes glistening with butter. For dessert, Mrs. Harty served a broad deep wedge of apple pie, on which she poured half a pitcher of thick cream. Robert concentrated on his food like a scholar translating a text.

  The room that evening heard little sound other than the smacked lips of eating. Miranda attacked her dessert more vigorously than she had approached the other food. The guests made appreciative gurgles, and the old man snored on. Miranda's father failed to bring a single spoonful intact to his lips. Mrs. Harty fetched yet another damp cloth and mopped him over and over.

  When they finished dinner, the day had almost left the sky. Seen through the windows, the river's surface glowed like a sheet of light. Inside the room, silent except for Mrs. Harty's footsteps creaking across the floor, darkness fell to accompany the quiet. The old man with the mustache woke briefly, blinked many times, and again fell asleep.

  As Robert ate his last mouthful, he sat back and bowed his head a little.

  “Habit. Pure habit, grace at meals,” said Miranda's father, misinterpreting Robert's bowed head. “Unsavory stuff, prayer.”

  Silence fell again.

  By now in his life, Robert Shannon understood silence— it was perhaps his clearest understanding. He grasped that it had as much to do with hearing nothing as with saying nothing. Those who assessed him after his second collapse tested him with readings full of emotional content. They read him the most moving passages from Charles Dickens; they read him humor; they read him stirring poems by Longfellow and Tennyson; they read him Mark Twain. Others watched to see whether he responded.

  They found him uneven at first; he never quite laughed, he never quite cried, but he did respond a little. As time passed these responses dwindled, and they concluded that he had begun to close down. Dr. Greenberg believed his lack of response would prove the harbinger to another great emotional upheaval, and he told his colleagues to anticipate a total speech loss— or, as he put it, speech denial. He told Archbishop Sevovicz that Father Shannon was probably refusing to speak.

  “By which I do not mean, Your Grace, that he has decided he will not speak. His mind— you might call it his spirit— has said that he will not speak, and the man is simply following his own dark orders. Unusually so. Most catatonics that we've seen are in a stupor. No energy. No initiative. No action. Not with this man; this seems to be a conviction. But who can tell, since he won't? Perhaps the things he might wish to say would prove too terrible for him to utter.”

  Now Robert found himself in th
e company of a child whose own speechless state came from a different root. He watched Miranda as often as he could and began to glimpse that he might be learning something. That insight, however, stayed in the nest, its wings not yet fledged.

  Of a sudden at the head of the table, Miranda's father began to cough. The fit empurpled not only his face but the bald spot on his head. He waved away all efforts to help him and left the room, still coughing and holding on to pieces of furniture as he lurched his way out.

  Miranda stood up and then sat down, and the old man with the mustache began a deep and bellowing snoring, of tectonic power. No legend could ever have held a creature large or dark enough to produce such a sound; it came from the bowels of the earth. The child flounced from the room as the old gentleman continued to rock the building, and his daughter sat humming some distant, lonely tune. Beside Robert, the sweet-faced lady whispered, “Every dinner here ends like this. You can smell the grief in this house.”

  That night, Robert slept like a drunken man, and if he had dreams he didn't recall them. Having forgotten to close his curtains, he was called from the depths by the sun. He had fallen asleep in his clothes and shook his head in distaste. As he undressed and found towels for a bath, he glanced out the window. In the middle of the river, Miranda's father, in his black bathing togs, was diving again and again. He looked like a man bobbing for Halloween apples, but his dives lasted longer than that.

  Down he went, up he came, down he went again. Eventually he came up one last time and with feeble and untutored strokes clambered and splashed his way— empty-handed—to the riverbank.

  Nobody appeared at breakfast; from a sideboard Robert helped himself to oatmeal, soda bread, tea. As he sat at the empty table, Miranda's father appeared, wearing leather gauntlets.