Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [443]
It was neither right nor fair. He could not see why these troubles must all come to him. What had he done? He wanted to know. Here he was, a man who had always done his duties. Hadn’t he earned his place in the world by hard work? Hadn’t he always provided for his family to the best of his abilities, tried to be a good husband and a good father, a true Catholic, and a real American? Hadn’t he always made his Easter duty, contributed to the support of his pastor? And hadn’t he done all in his power to bring his children up the right way? He had wanted them to be a comfort to himself and Mary in their old age. And now, Bill, his favorite, was dying. And he and Mary, after all their work and struggle, must come to such misery in their old age, be reduced almost to the state of paupers. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. He had done nothing to merit this punishment. Why, why was it?
Anger flared in him. He silently heaped a curse on the Jew international bankers. They were the causes, he assured himself. They did not want America to collect its just debts from Europe. If America did, they wouldn’t make enough greedy profit. That was why there was a depression. The bankers. And hadn’t that radio priest, Father Moylan from the Shrine of The Little Rose of Jesus Christ, told the bankers where to get off at?
But why was he, and not others, being ruined? Old man O’Brien who ran the coal yards was still above water. So were his two son-inlaws, and Judge Joe O’Reilly, and Dinny Gorman. And Paddy Lonigan wasn’t. With his back against the wall, he had to make the grimmest fight of his life, and he didn’t have the heart to fight any more. Those dirty Jew international bankers.
It was the Jew all over again, he told himself with grumbling, morbid pleasure. The Jews queered everything they put their hands on. This neighborhood, for instance, had been a good neighborhood, with decent, good people in it. The Jews had come in, and then that meant that the Irish and the other white people had had to clear out. Because the Jews hadn’t been satisfied by themselves, but they had sold their property to the niggers. Trickery, Jew trickery, had ruined this neighborhood. And the trickery of the Jew bankers was causing the depression and ruining him.
He knelt again, and commenced to mutter an Our Father, but his mind slid into a daze and he was like a man half asleep. He found himself remembering that Sunday morning, now it seemed like many, many years ago, when with dirty shovelled snow along the edges of the sidewalk, and a winter sun melting it, he had come to the first mass to be celebrated in this very church. All the old parishioners had come and knelt in these deserted pews, and in that marble pulpit to the left of the altar the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago had preached. On that day he had been filled with the confidence that things were going to go on getting better and better. He and Mary had both felt that they would coast on Easy Street into a long and happy old age, and die in this parish, respected, leaving something behind for their children. And now Bill was home, sick, thin, suffering, dying. God, Christ Almighty, if on that winter Sunday he had only seen ahead to what would happen to him and his family. Again he listlessly mumbled Our Father, his mind a fatigued blank. Unaware of what he was doing, he again sat in the pew, and began to feel convinced that it was only the day after that Sunday morning when the new Saint Patrick’s church had been opened. He saw himself going home to the building on Michigan Avenue, thinking of how he would take Bill into the parlor and talk to him in such a way that Bill would see eye to eye with him and would take care of his health. And then he would sit down and calculate his money and his investments and see that the money was put into sound investments. But his money had been soundly invested in real estate and a building. What could have seemed safer? The trouble had been that too much money had gone into construction and real estate. The Jews again. If less Jews had rushed