Lenny Shore brings Cass and Auerbach over to make the introductions, and it is just as Cass has feared. The man sucking the energy out of the room is Felix Fidley, looking as if his manicured hands might be forming fists beneath his monogrammed shirt cuffs, a sense of menacing potency radiating out from the kind of man to have that kind of wife with that kind of cold beauty that ages so well, not so unlike Lucinda’s, whom Cass desperately wishes he had beside him to give him some ballast, but instead he has Sy Auerbach, who brings ballast enough for any man, though Cass has never felt it as particularly steadying, not when it’s this close, though he certainly appreciates it when it’s representing his interests, it’s made him rich, it’s made him famous, it’s brought him here, to this unlikely moment, about to face off with this man who is several times over more than his match.
Fidley extends his hand and shakes Cass’s, and the grip all but crushes three metacarpal bones, and nothing is said, Cass feels that Fidley is daring him to open his mouth and offer up some drivel that he can then subject to his impassive stare that will put any inanity that’s there-and there’s always inanity there-up on vivid display. But when it comes to saying nothing, Cass has never had a problem, and sly Sy, too, is keeping his own counsel, and only pastoral Lenny feels compelled to soften the brutal wordlessness with patter.
Now there’s an usher at the door, and Lenny rushes over, and gives a signal, and they file out of the chaplain’s office back into the nave, Fidley and his wife following after Lenny. Fidley, when he sees the packed church, turns his head to give Cass a measured smile, mutually shared congratulations for having drawn such a crowd, it’s a moment approaching almost warmth, or at least that flickering recognition of shared humanity that Lenny Shore had been desperately seeking.
There’s a respectful hush as they take their seats up on the dais, their nameplates set out on the table together with glasses and pitchers of water, Cass on the left, Fidley on the right, Lenny Shore in the middle. There’s a lectern on either side of the table, where each will stand when his turn comes.
Cass looks out at the filled pews, and he’s searching for the fan with the ponytail, whom he finds after a few moments, talking animatedly to a girl who looks familiar, though he can’t place her, and then he lets his eyes travel along the other rows, and he’s startled to see Mona sitting front and center. She must have gotten here early to have nabbed that seat. She gives him two thumbs-up, and her gesture is immediately duplicated by a tall young woman sitting next to her who resembles Roz, and Cass looks again, and it is Roz. They both blow him kisses, and he leans forward in his chair and squints to make sure that his eyes aren’t deceiving him, and Mona and Roz are laughing together, and how like them to have found each other.
Lenny Shore has risen and is at the lectern near Cass, welcoming the crowd for “this historic debate,” and Cass is still struggling to get his neurons to line up in a way commensurate to the task at hand, but he’s having trouble even paying attention to what Lenny is saying, as he launches into the history of the Agnostic Chaplaincy of Harvard, which was formed in the 1960s and whose intellectual roots go back to some of the most eminent minds of Harvard, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who urged us to “take the bandages of doctrine off of our eyes and live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind,” and William James, who observed that “rationality does not lie on one side or the other. It is a contest between our fears and our hopes, and both the scientist and the religious believer take a gamble,” and who authored a book he had presciently entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience, as if he could foresee that a century later another psychologist of religion would write a book he’d call The Varieties of Religious Illusion (big laugh), and Lenny is finally getting a reaction, and his bendable body is weaving with the excitement, and Cass remembers where he’s seen that girl before, she’s the one who had asked him whether he signs body parts.
“The Agnostic Chaplaincy is here to serve the spiritual needs of the questioners and doubters, those who enjoy the journey more than the arrival. Our only doctrine is the open mind, and our ethics stresses tolerance for all points of view, which we practice by trying to see things all possible ways.
“There’s an old Jewish joke about a quarreling couple that comes to the rabbi to get counseling. The rabbi listens to the wife’s complaints about how all the problems are caused by her no-good husband, and the rabbi says, ‘You know, you’re right.’ Then he listens to the husband’s complaints about how all the problems are caused by his shrewish wife, and he says, ‘You know, you’re right.’ The whole time, the rabbi’s wife has been listening in, and as soon as the couple leaves, she asks him, ‘What did you think you were doing in there? How can they both be right?’ The rabbi says, ‘You know, you’re right.’”
There’s a healthy laugh, and the chaplain is laughing along, and before it completely dies off, Lenny leans in too close to the mike, and his eagerness makes him lose control of his voice, so that it comes out as a squawk, “That rabbi is my role model!” and Cass finds he’s stopped worrying about himself long enough to worry about the chaplain.
“Of course, everything may change for us tonight. The resolution of tonight’s debate is: ‘God exists.’ We have on each side a masterful persuader, able to make the best case that can be made for his position, so perhaps the question of God’s existence can finally be answered, tonight and at Harvard.”