Mr. Bridge_ A Novel - Evan S. Connell [132]
“Honestly, what gets into people,” she said with a helpless expression. “It just makes you sick.”
“Haw!” Douglas said, and reached for the biscuits. “Who started this war?”
“Oh, I suppose you’re right,” she answered. “I don’t even like to think about it. Everything is in such a state. You wonder why people can’t learn to get along together.”
“Ask Herr Schicklgruber, the Dummkopf.”
“You are absolutely right,” Mr. Bridge said. “Ask Hitler. And may the Lord help us if the Nazis win this war, because life will not be worth living. I don’t mind telling you, if any new weapons are invented I hope the United States invents them.”
141 Joy to the World
Every few months, acceding to the wishes of his wife, he found himself in church. Usually he agreed to go on Easter because that day seemed appropriate, once around Christmas, and once or twice more during the year whenever she became insistent. In church he behaved very nearly as she hoped he would. He waited inexpressively through the sermon, held the hymnal, and more or less pretended to sing along with her, contributed a dollar when the plate came down the pew, and lowered his head enough to remain inconspicuous when Dr. Foster summoned the congregation to prayer—although he refused to shut his eyes. And he often consulted his watch, as though by this he could bring forth the welcome notes of the recessional.
He attended church on these occasions partly because he had no wish to attract attention by abstaining completely, but principally because she wanted him to. She needed him there not merely to demonstrate for the benefit of the neighborhood that her husband was not atheistic, but as actual bodily insurance against possible recrimination by God for such sins as he may have committed. In her heart she did believe God existed—He was a bit larger than a normal man, perhaps seven feet tall with a shaggy white beard untainted by cigar smoke, who dressed in a sort of white nightgown similar to the one He wore on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
So it was that on a crisp, snowy, Sunday morning just before Christmas they were lodged in the first row of the balcony of the tidy little Congregational Church. Dr. Foster was hard at work and Mrs. Bridge listened attentively. Mr. Bridge was thinking about other things while he waited for the end of the service. The air in the balcony was stale and his head felt congested, but he did not like to sit on the main floor where he was obliged to look up at the minister. He scratched his ankle and thought of how much he would rather be at home in front of the fireplace with the Sunday paper.
He sighed, louder than he had intended. He blinked, yawned, and looked around. There was not much to look at. Everything about the church was passionless. He remembered Chartres—the chill, somberly echoing nave, the stone effigies, the ominous shadows and crude colored-glass windows. The Congregational Church was bland, as innocuous as the man in the pulpit. This was a different kind of religion. It was more comfortable, and the minister’s sermon was no doubt more comforting than the stark admonition of the Middle Ages. Here one never heard a warning from the man in the black robe. Here was no funereal sculpture in the niches, no blood-red windows. It was all quite pleasant.
He considered Dr. Foster discoursing on biblical events and wondered how a man could retain such innocence through the vicissitudes of life. It was as though the minister never worried or doubted. He resembled a stout, pompous little druggist, the sixty-year-old face as vacant as a melon—a trifle sleek and epicene, almost shiny. Time was not darkening or blemishing the surface of the man, nor had years disturbed the liquid flow of his faith. Imperturbably he stood in his pulpit and perpetuated a vision suitable for children. He stood so securely and lectured with such powerless conviction because he