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The Fabulous Wink
"Happy reading for all who prefer the delayed-reaction chuckle to the hearty roar ... for all who can appreciate eternal problems handled with reverent mirth."
The scene: A watering place on the cliffy coast of Normandy, one of the smaller, cheaper beaches which foreigners delight in discovering as typically French. To this place comes
The Rev. William Henry Thoroughgood Anker in search of an unwonted and unwanted holiday. For him vacations were always "a purgatory of idleness and anxiety, during which he never ceased to worry whether his curate was going about things the right way to fill the empty pews." As added thorns to his flesh were
Mrs. Esther Biddlesome Hackett of Hartford, Connecticut, a rich American lady interested in things of the spirit and given to such leading remarks as "Any friend of God is a friend of mine," and her companion
Hector Muckerji an Indian mystic under a vow of perpetual silence. (For a mute, Mr. Anker decided, he was almost garrulous.) He is a saint. He knows God and is superlatively comfortable as a result. He competes with nobody because he does not need to. He doesn't even compete with himself and therefore has no need to beat himself to a pulp or wear a hair shirt or sit on a pillar.
One hot afternoon, to escape Mrs. Hackett's interminable questions on reincarnation, transubstantiation, and the magical erection of the Pyramids, Mr. Anker ducked into the village's Roman Catholic church. There, while praying for the Pope's conversion to a more logical theology, a miracle occurred that was to transform the sleepy hamlet into a beehive of activity and the English clergyman from a glum sergeant-major of a parson into a joyous and compassionate servant of God.
What happens from here on is too mad and wonderful a secret to reveal, for this story turns out to be a treasure hunt, and to take the treasure without the hunt is to rob oneself of two-thirds of its delight.
The scene: A watering place on the cliffy coast of Normandy, one of the smaller, cheaper beaches which foreigners delight in discovering as typically French. To this place comes
The Rev. William Henry Thoroughgood Anker in search of an unwonted and unwanted holiday. For him vacations were always "a purgatory of idleness and anxiety, during which he never ceased to worry whether his curate was going about things the right way to fill the empty pews." As added thorns to his flesh were
Mrs. Esther Biddlesome Hackett of Hartford, Connecticut, a rich American lady interested in things of the spirit and given to such leading remarks as "Any friend of God is a friend of mine," and her companion
Hector Muckerji an Indian mystic under a vow of perpetual silence. (For a mute, Mr. Anker decided, he was almost garrulous.) He is a saint. He knows God and is superlatively comfortable as a result. He competes with nobody because he does not need to. He doesn't even compete with himself and therefore has no need to beat himself to a pulp or wear a hair shirt or sit on a pillar.
One hot afternoon, to escape Mrs. Hackett's interminable questions on reincarnation, transubstantiation, and the magical erection of the Pyramids, Mr. Anker ducked into the village's Roman Catholic church. There, while praying for the Pope's conversion to a more logical theology, a miracle occurred that was to transform the sleepy hamlet into a beehive of activity and the English clergyman from a glum sergeant-major of a parson into a joyous and compassionate servant of God.
What happens from here on is too mad and wonderful a secret to reveal, for this story turns out to be a treasure hunt, and to take the treasure without the hunt is to rob oneself of two-thirds of its delight.
244 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1951
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