The Infant of Prague

Wally had few yearnings but one of them was an ordinary man’s desire for fame, however fleeting. He always listened to radio call-in shows in his unofficial “office” in the basement of the church, and he frequently tried to call his favorite programs when they proposed some provocative question. His best moment had come one November when he expressed the opinion that Ronald Reagan was the best President since Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had held the airwaves for a full forty-five seconds that time.

Now, recovering from the miracle, he went to his office in the basement and began to make the calls that would lead him to fame. He called the Tribune and the Sun-Times, and at both places the response was unenthusiastic. They took his name and telephone number and said “someone” would check it out. The news radio station said much the same thing in different terms and so did the woman who answered the telephone at Wally’s favorite television news station. By chance, he was connected with Kay Davis at a second television station on his sixth try.

Kay Davis did not believe him either, but it was Monday morning after a gloomy, arid weekend and she sat at her desk in the newsroom and saw Hal Newt glaring across at her as she listened to Wally.

Hal Newt did not like Kay Davis very much anymore. It was nothing personal. Kay Davis was a mistake and they both knew it now. That’s what he had told her in different terms at lunch Friday and she had chewed on the words all weekend.

She had come to the Chicago station with promise two years before. She had been a success in Des Moines, and when she left the Des Moines station for Chicago, they had written about her in the local paper. Hal Newt had brought her in and sold her to the station manager, who, in turn, oversold her success story to the director of the owned-and-operated stations of the network. As it turned out, Hal Newt had been too optimistic and the station manager, Al Buck, held it against him because his enthusiasm had made Buck lose face in New York.

Whatever sold margarine on the local news in Des Moines did not do the same thing in Chicago. Kay Davis, like the other starring faces on the local news, had a “book” that outlined her acceptability rating by the faceless public. Her book was a failure. Her book said men liked her but not in a sexy way — she came across as too cold and calculating. Women, on the other hand, found her too sexy for her own good. “If it was just reversed, we’d be looking at a whole different book,” Hal Newt had said over lunch Friday. And Kay Davis had spent the weekend after that terrible lunch thinking bad thoughts.

Wally told her that a statue in the church was crying. She half-listened to him and stared across at Hal Newt and thought she would start screaming if she had to sit in the newsroom all morning.

And so she went to the church.

Two of the vans used by the news department — and dubbed “Actionmobiles”—were in the repair shop and a third had been dispatched to the Chicago Bears training camp in Lake Forest. So Kay Davis took a ride to the church in an ordinary car with Dick Lester, the technician with the camera and sound box. Dick Lester asked what kind of a story it was and Kay Davis said it probably wasn’t a story at all. She just had to go someplace.

By the time they got to the church, Wally had gotten around to telling Father Hogan about the weeping statue. Frank Hogan had crossed the same courtyard from the rectory to the church and beheld the water stains on the plaster face of the Christ Child. When Wally told him about the lady from the television station coming to St. Margaret of Scotland, Frank Hogan was horrified.

He barred Dick Lester’s camera from the church. “We can’t have a circus going on here,” he explained on the church steps, and when Dick Lester seemed intent on pushing the priest aside, Kay Davis intervened. She told Dick to wait and said she wanted to see the statue for herself. The priest, smiling at the pretty, familiar face of the TV reporter, asked her if she was a Catholic.

“Yes, Father,” she lied and he let her into the church.

“You know the statue, of course,” he said as he led her up the left-hand aisle to the side altar.

“Yes,” she said.

“The Infant of Prague,” he said. He looked worried.

“The representation of the Christ Child as ruler of the world.”

Wally stayed at the church door, instructed to keep Dick Lester out.

Kay Davis stared at the little plaster statue and saw the stains on the face. The Infant of Prague was a child dressed with lace cuffs and collar, holding an orb surmounted by a cross. The Child wore an ornate, bulbous, Eastern-style crown on his head. She stared at the statue and saw what she did not expect to see. She thought she saw tears at the eyes.

She blinked and did not speak.

“I thought it was the steam pipe, myself,” Father Hogan said. “There doesn’t appear to be a leak. But you have to be suspicious about these things. You know, something like this can reflect badly on the Church.”

And on the priest who calls it a miracle, he thought.

A miracle, Kay Davis thought, thinking of Hal Newt and her bad book and the endless lunch last Friday at Arnie’s. She had wanted to get drunk when Hal Newt explained about the book and about how it was probably his fault and that he had “rushed” her instead of “grooming” her acceptance by the public. As it was, she had polished off three very dry vodka martinis.