THE PRIEST A Gothic Romance

by Thomas M. Disch

  Still, this was Bing’s party, and Father Mabbley was certain Bing would have been pleased. Certainly, he’d have preferred the ambience here at Schinder’s Memorial Gardens to the institutional blandness of McCarron’s. This was Minnesota’s answer to L.A.’s funereal Disneyland at Forest Lawn, a necropolis in the grand manner and a genuine tourist attraction, with its own restaurant and coffee shop. For all its glitz, Schinder’s was not that much more expensive than McCarron’s, since the place was selling its atmosphere, not caskets gussied up to look like catafalques. Admittedly, Father Mabbley had opted for one of the less costly chapels, which was decorated with reproductions of art masterpieces rather than the genuine articles. Was that cheeseparing? Or a sensible economy, in view of the fact that he was not anticipating a large turnout? Aside from inserting a notice on the obituary page of the two Twin Cities newspapers, Father Mabbley had not known how to contact Bing’s friends and relations. He might be the only mourner, and that would be a sad thing, but not that unusual for Father Mabbley. People were always coming to Las Vegas to die in solitude, which, after all, is one of the basic facts of death. At the end, every man is an island, and there’s no one there to talk to but God.

  Meanwhile, it was four o’clock, and Wiley’s secretary was still conveying his regrets at hourly intervals. Father Mabbley had yet to book a hotel room, since the secretary had thought he might be given the keys to Bing’s house, though she wasn’t certain. Father Mabbley found the notion that he had become, at this late date, a home owner disconcerting in a pleasant way. As a priest, Father Mabbley had always been comfortably domiciled, but the homes he’d lived in had never been his, and in that sense they hadn’t been homes at all. He felt as he had when, at the ripe age of thirty-four, he’d got his first driver’s license: an authentic citizen and a grown-up at last. He would have his own backyard, with his own trees, which he would own. He would have a lawn mower. A garage. A basement and an attic!

  It was as he was counting these chickens that the first mourner arrived—a young man with a pencil-line mustache and a haircut that ventured in the direction of hip-hop without finally daring to go the whole way. Very Minnesotan.

  “This is the Fra Angelico Chapel?” the young man asked.

  Father Mabbley winced. They weren’t Botticellis at all! They were Fra Angelicos! It was written right on the plaque over the door, and he hadn’t even made the connection.

  “I think so,” he said. “Are you a friend of Mr. Anker’s?”

  “A relative,” the young man said. “You’re not Reese Wiley, are you?”

  Father Mabbley shook his head. “No, I’ve been waiting for him myself.” He offered his hand. “I’m Mark Mabbley.”

  The young man took his hand tentatively. “You’re a priest?”

  “Yes, though I’m not here in that capacity. I’m a friend of Bing Anker’s. Did you need a priest?”

  The young man laughed. “No, no, I said that because you said your name was Mark. I thought priests always said they were Father somebody-or-other.”

  “I must be the exception to that rule. Priests do come in many varieties. For all I know, you could be a priest.”

  The young man gave him a sideways look. “Do I look like a priest?”

  “Yes, in fact. You look a good deal like someone I went to the seminary with, years ago. He didn’t have a mustache. We weren’t allowed any facial hair in that century. But aside from that, you look a good deal like him. I’ve forgotten his name, isn’t that terrible. But I remember his face, and it’s very nearly yours. As for your not wearing a Roman collar, most younger priests tend to dispense with that formality when they’re not serving in some official capacity.”

  “So you were a friend of my cousin’s?” asked the young man. There was something in the way he put the question that made it clear to Father Mabbley that what he was really asking was whether he was, like Bing, a faggot. The hostility was uncalculated and perhaps unconscious, but it was there.

  “Oh, more than just a friend.” He paused, and then added, in a professionally unctuous tone, “A brother in Christ.”

  “I didn’t know he was that religious.”

  “Then you did not know him well. Were you close, Mr.…? I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Greg. Greg Romero, and no, you couldn’t say we were close. In fact, we only met the once. He came to my sister’s wedding a few months back and gave her this incredible tree in a ceramic pot. It was huge. At the time she was a bit ticked off. Like, if he was going to spend so much money—and it must have cost a lot—why not get something useful? But she’s got so that she likes the thing. It’s been growing like crazy in the backyard. Anyhow, at the wedding I remember the guy sitting off in the corner of the hall by himself, so I went over and started talking, basically just doing my family duty, and what happened, we started trading jokes. He’d tell one, and that one would remind me of another, and it went on like that for quite a while. We were both pretty lubricated, so I can’t remember that much more about him.”

  “That sounds like Bing, all right,” said Father Mabbley. “Do you remember any of the jokes he told?”

  Greg Romero smiled. “None I could tell in mixed company.”

  “Oh, don’t think because I’m wearing a collar, I don’t enjoy dirty jokes. The vow of celibacy doesn’t stop us from laughing about sex. For that matter, it doesn’t necessarily stop us from having sex, but that’s another matter, though in that connection, here’s one I heard just last week. How do you get a nun pregnant?”

  Greg lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. How?”

  “Dress her up as an altar boy.”

  Greg did a long double take, not because he didn’t get the joke but because he didn’t believe he’d heard it from a priest. Father Mabbley was used to that reaction and to the way, at last, Greg cracked up, laughing twice what the joke was worth.

  The ice having been broken, they proceeded to swap stories, beginning with some fairly old chestnuts on Greg’s part, but escalating quickly to those of more recent vintage. Why is it that new jokes always seem racier than those of only three or four years ago? Father Mabbley’s favorite was: What’s a gay’s favorite come-on in a bar? The answer: Can I push your stool in for you? That led to a short string of gross-outs revolving around the use of a bar stool as a sexual prosthesis. (How do you get four gays on a bar stool? Turn it upside down. Etc.) Father Mabbley told some jokes relating to the confessional, and that took them to hillbillies, incest, and bestiality. At one point they got to laughing so hard that the young woman from the reception desk appeared in the doorway to ask them, ever so sweetly, to pipe down or else to continue their conversation in the coffee shop.

  “Jesus,” said Greg when the young lady had left, with one last cautionary adjustment of her eyeglasses, “I’d forgotten where we were.”

  “Yes,” said Father Mabbley, settling back in an understuffed armchair, “we really mustn’t go on. But jokes are such a relief in the face of death, aren’t they? I remember when my father died, almost twenty years ago. I flew to Pittsburgh, where my family lives, on a Saturday, and after I’d made a call at the funeral parlor, which was nothing so swank as this, I went home with my older brother, and my two other brothers and two sisters were there, and we all got roaring drunk and watched Saturday Night Live. Those were its glory days, but you must have seen some of the reruns. They had Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray, and Steve Martin. And laugh? My Lord, we laughed. And I like to think my father would have been laughing just as hard if he’d been with us, though in fact Dad’s sense of humor was more in the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby vein. But I’m sure he wouldn’t have disapproved of our hilarity. Next to booze, comedy was his favorite indulgence.”

  “Jesus,” said Greg, “I can’t get over this. I keep thinking, This guy’s a priest, he can’t be saying these things.”

  “What that translates to is: Priests aren’t people. We are, however.”

  “Well, perhaps. But I’ll tel
l you, my last experience with a priest wasn’t anything like this.”

  Then, without much prodding, Greg did tell him about his last experience with a priest—none other than the same Father Wilfrid Cogling who’d told the man at McCarron’s that Bing couldn’t be buried from St. Bernardine’s. The story began amusingly enough, with an account of Greg and his fiancée going to the counseling sessions required of couples contemplating “mixed marriages.” Conducting such sessions had been the bane of Father Mabbley’s existence at St. Jude’s, since the non-Catholic spouse-to-be was inevitably resentful. But Father Cogling, by the sound of it, had gloried in the opportunity to rub the noses of his catechists in the Church’s most medieval doctrines. He’d certainly made a vivid impression on Greg, who was able to replay enough of Cogling’s gonzo theology to have been admitted to Holy Orders. But there was an unhappy denouement. As a result of Cogling’s counseling, Greg and his fiancée had broken up. As salt in the wound, Greg had learned just today, from his fiancée’s mother, that Father Cogling had spirited the fiancée off to some kind of retreat for reluctantly expectant mothers.

  “Well, I don’t wonder at your feeling some ill will toward the Church,” Father Mabbley said in a placatory tone when Greg had wound down. “Lord knows, I do myself, for all sorts of reasons. But then what employee doesn’t bear some grudges against his employer? But I’m sure it’s not too late for you and Alice—excuse me, it’s Alison, isn’t it?—to get back together. It sounds like you should. That’s to say, it sounds like you love each other. And that’s what counts. In my opinion.”

  “Jesus,” said Greg. “You keep on like this, you’re going to turn me into a fucking Catholic.”

  Father Mabbley laughed. “Believe me,” he said, “that has not been my hidden agenda. Though, who knows, God works in mysterious ways.”

  Perhaps it was God, at that moment, working in one of his mysterious ways, who prompted the young woman with the eyeglasses to reappear and inform them that Mr. Wiley’s secretary had left a message for Father Mabbley, to the effect that Mr. Wiley was very sorry, but he would not, after all, be able to get to Schinder’s that afternoon, and please excuse him. He promised, absolutely, to be there tomorrow morning.

  “Are you, by chance, Gregory Romero?” the young woman asked, turning to Greg.

  “Uh-huh,” Greg said, startled.

  “Mr. Wiley also asked me to apologize to you, and to say that he hoped you might be able to be here tomorrow morning as well. The chapel will reopen at ten o’clock.”

  “And may we expect the deceased to be here as well?” Father Mabbley asked.

  The young lady gave him a dirty look. “You may,” she said.

  Father Mabbley fetched his suitcase from behind the love seat where he’d hidden it. “And could you call a taxi for me?” he asked the young woman before she’d quite disappeared.

  “No, no,” said Greg. “I’ve got my car here. There’s no need for you to get a taxi.” He waved the young woman away, and then asked, “Where are you headed?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Father Mabbley. “A hotel.”

  “You can stay at my place if you want to. I’ve got a couch that folds out into a bed.”

  “That would be very nice. Would you let me take you to dinner first?”

  “Sure.” Greg wrinkled his mustache misgivingly. “But there’s one thing I should say first.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I’m not gay.”

  Father Mabbley laughed. “For goodness’ sake, I know that. But there’s something you should know as well.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I need a drink. Desperately.”

  Greg laughed.

  They were friends. It’s always weird how such things happen.

  XXIII

  Three weeks had passed.

  It was as though the past were a pit into which he’d fallen and from which he could not escape. A pit dug by hunters, and himself the beast trapped within it, unable to comprehend the design of those who’d snared him and then left him to his brutish sufferings. His toothache had been cured, at last, by the desperate remedy of extraction. Four molars had been taken out, an operation performed by the Legate’s chief torturer, Bertrand Crispo, who had been accounted (so the Legate had assured him) the ablest dentist in all Lombardy before he’d been recruited to his new profession. Crispo had grinned, toothlessly, as he performed his work. As a child, Father Bryce had been taken to a harelipped dentist, and even then, at the age of ten or eleven, he had sensed a congruence between the harelip’s affliction and his profession, as though in becoming a dentist he could revenge himself, on each of his patients, for his disfigurement.

  The aftermath of that crude dental surgery had been almost worse than the suffering that had preceded it, and Father Bryce still could only tolerate foods that had been reduced to paps and mushes. But the worst pain had abated. His kidney stones were another matter. There was no remedy for their pain, and so he suffered it, trying as best he could to modify his diet to avoid whatever seemed to trigger the spasms.

  The one element of his diet he could not and would not modify was the wine. He subsisted, for the most part, on a priestly diet of bread and wine, elixir vitae and the staff of life, which he consecrated before each meal—perversely, ironically, blasphemously, and yet, for all that, reverently. For the strangest thing was that this experience, which was so much at odds with any doctrine known to him, had made him devout, a true believer. In what exactly, he was not sure. Nothing in Holy Scripture or in the writings of the Fathers of the Church could account for what had happened to him. But whatever was happening, of one thing he was sure: It was supernatural in its nature.

  He prayed a great deal. He recited rosaries and meditated—on the sorrowful mysteries especially. He tried to recall the counsels of Thomas à Kempis, whom he had not read since his seminary days, and whose Imitation of Christ would not be written for another two hundred years. He became obsessed with suffering—not simply his own, often acute, physical suffering, but the idea of suffering, as an agent of transformation and redemption.

  And so it was, not from any morbid or erotic interest, that he became curious about the Legate’s ongoing work in the cellars and catacombs of the cathedral. Durand du Fuaga himself had been called away by his inquisitorial duties to Toulouse, which was the unofficial capital of the Albigensians. In the Legate’s absence, Father Bryce, in his capacity as Bishop of Montpellier-le-Vieux, enjoyed an unquestioned access to the workshops of the Inquisition, where suffering was the order of the day. He was spared direct witness of the heretics’ ordeals, since du Fuaga’s underlings intermitted their work during such times as Father Bryce appeared on the scene. Even so, he witnessed a sufficiency of suffering.

  What he found most disconcerting was the apathy of those who had been put to the question. He’d feared that his appearance among them might awaken hopes, as the souls of those in limbo would have been quickened by the sight of Christ when he had descended into hell in the hours between his Crucifixion and Resurrection. But these sorry creatures seemed to have no souls left to awaken. They scarcely lifted their eyes when he entered their cells. They expected no reprieve from their torments, as Father Bryce had come to expect none from his. In that they were equals. Some had been cruelly disfigured; many more were wasted by fever and starvation; one or two had already died when the light of the torch discovered them. But none complained or thought to ask for mercy or forgiveness.

  It was, in the end, a disheartening experiment. What had he hoped for from it? Did he suppose that he would find them transfigured by their tortures? If anything, they had been reduced to the condition of beasts—apathetic, dull-eyed, speechless.

  There was one cell to which Father Bryce was at first denied access. The man who barred his entry was his dentist, and he insisted, with another of his toothless grins, that the Bishop… And then he simply shook his head, for lack, perhaps, of those auxiliary verbs that serve as euphemisms
for the ultimate requirements of arbitrary authority: He must not, could not, should not, might not trespass within.

  Father Bryce almost submitted to the man’s insistence, but then he heard, within, a song he knew, a song that could not conceivably be sung in this century. Indeed, it was not sung; it was whistled, softly and so slowly that it was difficult to place. Then the lyrics stirred in his memory, only the first three words: “Michelle, ma belle…” A Beatles song, again. He still held to the memory of the moment he’d heard someone whistle “Yesterday” as a kind of talisman, as though that simple anachronism were the key that might unlock him from this nightmare.

  “Open the door,” he demanded with an authority that was not, this time, contradicted.

  When the door had been unbarred, he signaled the two torchbearers to precede him, and then he followed them into a fetid cell not much wider than the corridor without. And there, as in a vision from Dante, was every boy he’d ever seduced—though they were not the children Father Bryce had known and caressed. Here were the men who might have grown from those boys, the warped issue of his love. Here was Teddy Hamburg, who’d been an altar boy at Our Lady of Mercy, the very first of them—not thirteen now, but closer to thirty-three and already quite ruined, a cadaver, his hair and beard matted with filth, his pale skin mottled with scabs. There, hugging his scant abdomen, was Johnny Kruger, and beside him, inert and skeletal, Gabriel Owens. Johnny was in his fifties now, Gabriel even older, but Father Bryce knew them, and knew that somehow he was responsible for their presence here, for the chains about their ankles, for the welts and running sores that covered their almost naked bodies.