The Waterworks by E. L. Doctorow Read Free Book Online Page B

readership of imperfect believers. Did Grimshaw understand that looking for confirmation of the ancient claims could lead to disastrous, looming … error?
    I had nothing against the good doctor except that he had worn away, as we all do, and his religion no longer had any authority … other than as organizer of his daily life and conduct and as filing system for his perceptions. At this time, in the seventies, phrenology was all the rage, and of course it was nonsense, but as a system for organizing perceptions it was about as good. There were three basic Temperaments to be deduced from the configurations of skulls, Martin with his slight figure but high brainy brow being of the Mental Temperament—Grimshaw himself a weaker example of this—the other two being the Motive Temperament, which described the long bones and homely visage and reliably logical thought of the late president—and perhaps my own dour Scotch-Irish self as well—and the Vital, which described the fleshy, life-loving appetitiveness and vulgarity of someone like Harry Wheelwright. Of course these were the pure strains, whereas most people participated in more than one, impurely, and there was some question as to whether the race of women wouldn’t require their own special skull readings…. It was absolute nonsense, of no scientific value whatsoever, but a convenience of thought, like astrology, or the organization of time into the six days of the week and the Sabbath. I’ll give you more filler: In 1871 archaeologists found a sacred ossuary cave at Monte Circeo on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea and uncovered the skull of a Neanderthal buried in a circle of stones among the bones of deer, horse, hyena, and bear … with the craniumsevered from the jaw and brow and used for a drinking bowl. And so we knew at last how old God was—as old … as the mortuary cult of the people of the Middle Paleolithic before the last glaciation.
    After Martin stormed out of the rectory, Grimshaw took up his pen and wrote a letter to the widow Pemberton at her estate on the Hudson in Piermont, New York, informing her of his opinion of the tenuous state of her stepson’s mind, which, perhaps out of guilt, had summoned up a haunting delusion. He suggested that he could call on her at such time as she visited Manhattan, or, in turn, would be only too pleased to journey to Ravenwood … that was the name of the estate … but in any event she should be assured Christ’s ministry was available to the Pemberton family as it always had been. This was a reasonable course of action but apparently it was the only one he took. He had seen Martin the evening of the same rainy day I had seen him, and in more or less the same torn, bloodied condition. And he had made no effort to see him since. So what was the nature of his faith and the degree of his concern? Sarah Pemberton had not replied to his letter, which I might have thought puzzling, but which apparently did not surprise him into renewing his efforts. Was he only worn away … to the level of the laity? So that the rudeness and patronizing ironies of the offensive young man were finally too much to forgive? Or was there an impacting loyalty to the father, of what protectiveness I could not imagine, but which put the image in my mind of a dog baying for his lost master?
    It was dark when I left the rectory. Grimshaw saw me outside and stood with me in the churchyard. The old gravestones cast shadows in the light from the street. Around them the grass was high, untended.
    “Which is Mr. Pemberton’s grave?”
    “Oh, he is not here. And it wouldn’t have been the churchyard, it would have been the mausoleum reserved for the elders. I offered it, but he refused. He said he was not worthy.”
    “Augustus Pemberton said that?”
    Grimshaw smiled in satisfaction, the same fearful, ingratiating smile that took him through every manner of joy and suffering that rolled day and night through all the years of his pastorate.