THE PRIEST A Gothic Romance

by Thomas M. Disch

  “I’ll look at it myself once Father Pat is out of our hair.”

  “I’ve looked at it, Gerhardt. It’s bruised dark purple. I need a doctor to look at it.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Of course it hurts.” But there was an affectionate note in her impatience. “But when has that ever stopped me?”

  Gerhardt smiled his approbation. They might have their disagreements from time to time, but when it came right down to it, they were both Obers. He stood up and took her afflicted hand in his, and, as she winced, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it. “There. Now it will be all better.”

  “You’re impossible,” she told him, but he knew she’d been won round. Finally his sister always recognized his authority, and that was why he loved her so.

  32

  “Mary, my dear, are you awake? Mary?”

  It was the voice of Hedwig Ober. Mary Tyler kept her eyes closed.

  “I know she’s not asleep, Father. Perhaps if you were to say something to her…”

  “Mary?” It was a stranger’s voice, not Gerhardt’s. The way he spoke her name was almost a caress, and when he spoke again, he placed his hand on her shoulder with the same gentleness. “Mary, I’d like to talk with you.”

  The moment she opened her eyes, the tears welled up and began to roll down the sides of her face. The man whose touch had summoned the tears was standing at the side of the bed, and Mary found herself looking up into the familiar wrinkled face of Hedwig Ober, who was bent over her, attentive.

  “You see, I knew it, she is awake,” Hedwig said with a little squint of vindication. “And already she’s begun to cry.”

  Mary tried to lift her hand to wipe away the tears, but she could raise it only a few inches from the bed before the canvas restraint prevented further movement.

  “I should explain,” said Hedwig, backing away from the bed. “It’s not that Mary’s ever shown any tendency to violence. Unlike the Peck girl, in Cell Four, who cannot be trusted at all. It’s rather that she has developed an unfortunate nervous habit. She pulls out her hair. One after another, hair by hair. She understands that she mustn’t do it, but she sometimes has no control over herself. The way some children can’t be kept from biting their nails. Isn’t that so, Mary?”

  Mary could see the arm of the man touching her and, turning her head sideways, his shoulder and the front of his black suit, but unless she pushed her head back against the pillow she could not see his face. But she knew that he was a priest, for he had a white collar around his neck instead of a necktie. And there was a kind of comfort in having a priest beside her, touching her.

  “Am I dying?” she asked the priest.

  “Mary!” Hedwig scolded. “Such a question! As though one never saw a priest except on one’s deathbed. For heaven’s sake!”

  The priest’s fingers closed a little more tightly about the girl’s shoulder. “We are all dying, Mary,” he said in a gentle voice. “Each day that we live we are a little closer to our death, but we can never know when that day will be. The healthiest of us may die tomorrow, struck by the plague. Only God knows the hour that has been set. That is why we must always be prepared. Are you prepared?”

  There was something strangely comforting in having her fears dealt with so directly instead of being told that she must buck up and smile and be more positive. It was like spinning the dial of the radio when you’re very sad and finding a song as sad as you are. She closed her eyes and, without really knowing why, she said, “Thank you.”

  “I think,” said the priest, letting loose her shoulder, “that Mary wants to go to confession.”

  “Naturally,” said Hedwig. She moved farther away from the bed but showed no intention of leaving Mary’s cell.

  “So we must be alone,” the priest insisted.

  “Of course, Father. What am I thinking? When you’re done, just press that buzzer there on the wall by the head of the bed, and I’ll know you want me back.”

  “And if there is any way to extinguish the light…?”

  “You want to be in the dark?”

  “Yes, since we can’t use a proper confessional.”

  “Whatever you say, Father. It will take me a moment.”

  Hedwig left the cell without locking it behind her. Mary counted her footsteps, as she had so often before at bedtime. Twelve steps, and then a pause, and the light went out.

  The priest wriggled his fingers under her head, pushing the pillow aside so that his hand bore the weight of her head. “Your name is Mary,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Mary Tyler.”

  “And you’ve been brought here, to this Shrine, because of your sins?”

  If Hedwig or Gerhardt or almost anyone else had asked such a question of her, she would have become indignant, but here in the dark, with the priest whose face she’d never seen, she was able to accept that bitter truth.

  “Yes, Father. I meant to get an abortion. I would have if my parents hadn’t sent me here.”

  “That was an intended sin. But there must have been a sin committed first. A sin of the flesh.”

  Part of her still wanted to cry out that it had not been a sin—not, at least, on her part. The sin had been done to her. Instead, she surrendered to his authority and agreed. “Yes, Father. A sin of the flesh.”

  “You must tell me. What acts were performed? With whom? And how often?”

  “It was only the once. And I don’t even know his name. It was at a party, and things got out of control, I guess. I was drinking. I’m not used to alcohol. I don’t remember many of the details.”

  “Were you tied down, my child, as you are now, or did you have the free use of your limbs?”

  “No, I don’t think I was tied down. It wasn’t that kind of situation.”

  “That kind of situation?”

  The tone of his voice seemed one of ordinary curiosity rather than scolding or disapproval. Suddenly she wanted to go to confession, though that had not been her intention at first. She wanted to stand naked before him and let her sins be washed away.

  “I think there may have been more than one of them, Father,” she whispered. She’d never told this to anyone before—not to the woman at the crisis center; not to her own confessor, when she’d finally gone to him; not even to the other girls here at Birth-Right. It had seemed too shameful to be spoken of.

  The priest placed his other hand at the base of the great swelling that was to be her child. “How many, exactly?” he insisted.

  “I don’t know. Three. Possibly four.”

  “Where did they touch you, my child?” His voice seemed closer. She was certain she could feel his breath upon her face, and when she turned her head away, his lips brushed the lobe of her ear.

  The fingers cradling her head tightened in her hair and forced her head back until, when he whispered again, she could feel his lips brushing hers. His other hand moved from her abdomen to her breast, at first in an exploratory way; then, when he had found the nipple, gripping it through the thin cotton of her nightgown between thumb and knuckle. “Here?” he insisted. “Did they touch you here? Were all their hands on you at once?”

  When she opened her mouth to scream, he came down on her with his entire weight, his mouth on hers, so that the scream became a kiss. His free hand tugged her nightgown up to her waist and felt between her thighs to find her private parts.

  She lacked the strength to struggle, and in any case all she could do was twist her pelvis from one side to the other. Even so, he could not penetrate her—not so much because she resisted him but because of the advanced state of her pregnancy. While his mouth was pressed against hers, her pregnant belly prevented her rape.

  When he came to understand this, he spoke again, in the same tone of benign authority. “You must lie still, my child. You must be very quiet, and then you won’t be hurt. Do you understand me?”

  “But you’re a priest!”

  “And what are you? A whore! By your own admissi
on, you cannot even name the father of your child. Now, if you want that child to live, lie still and be quiet.”

  She obeyed him. He still had some difficulty achieving penetration, because of the way her restraints positioned her on the bed, but once he was inside her, he spent himself quickly. At once he withdrew, and she waited, listening to his heavy breathing and her own, to know what he intended next.

  In the darkness she could hear him fumbling with his clothing, then felt him drawing the damp cotton of her nightgown down to her knees. The pillow was plumped and placed beneath her head.

  “You must say nothing of what has passed between us to the old woman when she returns. Do you understand that, Mary?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “And are you truly sorry for the sins you have committed?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You should be, my child. Each time you sin you are driving a nail into the flesh of our Savior. Imagine what pain you must be causing Him. Yet His mercy is infinite, and He forgives you. Ego te absolvo.”

  He pressed the buzzer, and a moment later the light went on.

  He was looking down at her and smiling.

  “You are a very beautiful girl, Mary. A very beautiful girl.”

  She was afraid to make any kind of reply, and when Hedwig returned to the cell, Mary was actually grateful for the old woman’s presence.

  “I think we should leave Mary alone now for a while,” the priest told Hedwig.

  “Whatever you say, Father.” Hedwig glanced down at Mary with a questioning look, as she might have looked at a room in which someone had altered the ordained position of the furniture.

  The priest, in leaving, pressed Mary’s hand. “God be with you, my child.”

  She knew that he must be mad, but when she looked at him, he seemed like any other priest she’d ever known, anytime, anywhere. And that was the scariest thing about him.

  XXXIII

  He was huddled in the far corner of the cell in which Crispo had ordered him to be held, clutching the filthy woolen cloth that was the only garment allowed him, stupid with fear but too hungry to sleep, when the Legate, Durand du Fuaga, appeared, unannounced, and spoke his name. Only that. “Father Bryce,” he said.

  Then, after allowing some time for that to sink in, he continued, in English: “At last we can speak candidly.”

  There was just enough light in the corridor that Father Bryce could see the Legate’s silhouette in the open doorway.

  “Is he bound?” the Legate asked, and Crispo replied, “Fettered hand and foot, Your Holiness.”

  “Your Holiness?” Father Bryce repeated.

  “You question my right to be addressed by that title, Father? Such punctilio, even in chains, is commendable. In fact, as Legate, I may be so addressed, not in proprio persona but as one who speaks with the Pope’s voice. A borrowed authority, but then what authority is not?” He paused and continued in a more intimate tone: “Crispo says that you were present at the passion of our mutual friend, Mr. Boscage.”

  “His passion! Is that how Your Holiness speaks of murder?”

  “Would not that diminish the significance of the man’s suffering, Father Bryce? To be scourged and crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross; to die a lingering and inconceivably painful death: could there be a more perfect imitation of Christ’s Passion than this?”

  “It is sadism, nothing more.”

  “O ye of little faith,” said Durand du Fuaga, stepping into the cell to become a part of the enveloping darkness. “Do you think, then, that the Roman soldiers who crucified Christ acted for nobler motives than Crispo? Christ died at the hands of men trained to be institutional sadists. What else are soldiers, Father? What have they ever been? And how else is power to be exercised except by the threat of terror? Cut off their heads or burn them at the stake or crucify them. One way or another, it’s a job that has to be done.”

  Father Bryce fell silent, as an animal caught in a trap will sometimes leave off its struggling and give way to brute despair.

  “Aren’t you curious, Father, to know why this is being done? Have you no questions to ask me?”

  “I’m sure you’ll say it’s all for the greater glory of the Church.”

  “How little you know me. What if I were to tell you it was for just the opposite reason? What if our object here—our very long-term object—were to destroy the Church? What if I told you that you are essential to that object, Father Bryce? That you are to be the evangel of a new Savior? One who suffered just as Christ did, but at the hands of the very Church His sufferings created?”

  Despite himself, Father Bryce felt a stirring of hope. “Are you saying it is possible for me to… return?”

  “Would you want to resume your old life, Father Bryce? Does the idea stir your blood? Is that how you’ve passed the time here in the darkness, imagining another Teddy Hamburg? Another Gabriel? How many were there altogether? Were you the sort to keep a record?”

  Father Bryce made no reply. How could this man know these things? No one but Father Bryce himself knew the names of those boys.

  “Let me read your mind, Father Bryce,” the Inquisitor said. “You wonder how I can catalog your secret guilts so precisely. A little thought should solve the puzzle. Boscage and you and I all hail from a later time, but not the same later time. Boscage’s transmentation, as he called it, took place in 1981. Yours more than a decade later. If you’d read the Prolegomenon when you had the opportunity, you would not be quite so mystified at what has been happening to you. I have the advantage of still wider hindsight, for I have been able, in my own time, to read all the news stories publishing your guilt, naming your victims, and execrating your crimes. You will be infamous, Father Bryce, a few centuries from now. More than all the other priestly pedophiles of your day and age, whose names are legion, you will come to signify the Church’s deepest shame.”

  “I would rather die,” said Father Bryce, “here in the dungeons of the Inquisition.”

  “And so you shall, Father. Crispo is already making the preparations. But as Paul remarks, ‘Except a man die, he cannot be born again.’ There is no other way to return to your own time and your own flesh. And I shall unfold a further secret, Father. It is your image that will be printed on the Shroud of Turin—not Boscage’s, as the man supposed. He made rather a poor impression, if I may be forgiven a bad pun. We expect to do better with you. Your beard’s grown out, while you’ve been our guest, to just the right length, and you’ve slimmed down, too. The likeness is quite uncanny.”

  “Cheap blasphemies,” said Father Bryce with sincere scorn.

  “There, that’s what I like to see—a show of spirit! But really, Father, it’s already been established that the cloth of the Shroud dates to the thirteenth century, at the earliest. And so it must have been a forgery. But it was not forgery within the skill of any painter of the time. It must have been created by another kind of artistry. And Crispo is that artist, with, of course, such latter-day technical advice as I’ve been able to provide concerning the best placement of the nails and the shape of the metal pellets attached to the scourge and all those other little details that have given the Shroud its peculiar, if limited, authenticity. Even now—that is to say, the ‘now’ you will soon return to—there are those who reverence the Shroud while knowing it cannot be authentic. Cardinal Ballestrero of Turin (who admittedly has a vested interest in the matter) is on record as saying that the Church ‘reiterates her respect and her veneration for the Shroud.’”

  “Forged relics are an old scandal. The Church has survived many such scandals. It will survive this one.”

  “If it were only the scandal, I agree. But what if the Shroud is proven to be not the image of Christ but of A.D. Boscage? Who was crucified, died, and resurrected centuries afterward—the Messiah of the Aquarian Age? That would put Receptivist Science on an entirely different footing than any other crackpot religion ever known.”

  “Messiah? Why not the Antichris
t?”

  “Why not, indeed, if that’s your preference? He’s been called that often enough.”

  Finally the question had to be asked, though Father Bryce knew better than to expect a truthful answer. “Who are you? And why are you doing this?”

  “Whom do you suppose, Father?”

  “You look like a younger version of an elderly parishioner from St. Bernardine’s, Gerhardt Ober. But I can’t suppose that’s who you are.”

  “Resemblances—yes, they can be deceiving. Undoubtedly, when you look about you here, the people you see seem to be versions of people you knew in your own time. It was the same for Boscage, and for myself. In you I seem to recognize a priest I knew when I was a boy of fourteen. He tried to seduce me, and I tried to murder him. Now, at last, that karmic debt will be paid. What seems to be the case is that in our transmentated state we perceive spiritual resemblances as physical. In some way that I don’t understand, I am the moral equivalent of this Gerhardt Ober, as you are the equivalent of my would-be seducer. Does that mean that this whole medieval mise-en-scène is a phantasmagoria? No, I think the truth is somewhere in between. We are here, in these borrowed bodies, like sleepwalkers, only half aware of the real world we stumble through. And for all you or I know, the same may be true of the lives we’ve left behind. But that is all philosophy. You have yet to answer my question.”

  “Who do I think you are? I think you may be the devil.”

  “I’m flattered, Father. Truly I am. The devil always cuts such a dashing figure. The ultimate scene-stealer. Of course, if I were the devil, I would have to deny it, wouldn’t I? The Father of Lies, and all that. Allowing for that paradox, let me assure you I am not the devil. Would you like to try again?”

  “This is madness.”