Rabid

by T K Kenyon

  When he had reached across the table for her, she recoiled like he had slapped her. Fear shimmered in her, and horror, and something more.

  Perhaps his first opinion, outside the church after that first Mass, when he had seen fragility and damage commensurate with an abuse survivor, perhaps that assessment had been correct.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he so wanted to be wrong.

  To help her, he had to gain her trust. That was always first. He could give her the information she had asked for, as far as he could. “What do you want to know about the Vatican?”

  She flicked the ash off her cigarette. “I don’t know.”

  The waitress brought the pitcher of dark Guinness. He poured. “The Vatican has within it several Congregations, or divisions, like the State Department.”

  Joe removed his hand from Leila’s shoulder to drink his beer. “You don’t think of a church as needing that kind of thing.”

  “It’s a semi-elected, theocratic, oligarchic dictatorship and an independent state.” His beer tasted of yeast. “I’m a consultor for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

  “Thought you were a Jesuit,” she said around her cigarette.

  Dante half-smiled and laid his palms around his glass of beer. “Divided loyalties.”

  “And a scientist.”

  He acknowledged, “Further divided.”

  “Bloody schizophrenic, aren’t you?” She flicked her glass with her large, green-stoned ring, and a ping tolled.

  He sipped the beer and his alcohol buzz swarmed. He had to concentrate, even though he was far too drunk, but he might never see this girl again. If he helped her, as a priest, as a religious, then maybe he wasn’t reverting back to his old, bad habits. Maybe he could help this young woman. “It is difficult, sometimes, to keep track of whom I am with and where I am.”

  Leila lifted an eyebrow and resumed studying her beer.

  “It sounds hypocritical,” Dante said. “It feels hypocritical to monitor everything you say because people’s world-views are so easily challenged.”

  Leila exhaled cool, blue smoke. “You didn’t challenge my world-view.”

  Another blunder. “I meant other people. My English, it’s-ah not so good.”

  Leila’s shoulders twitched, a suppressed chuckle.

  He continued, “I meant within the Vatican and the University. Even in Roma, people are sensitive. Both sides assume I’m a spy.”

  “Oh?”

  He smiled at her casual conversational punctuation. Maybe they could talk. Maybe he could help her. “Every Congregation guards its own territory. When the IEA returned to the CDF, the Secretariat of State had-ah, how do you call it, puppies.”

  Leila smiled and toyed with the foam on her beer.

  He had amused her again. Good. Her champagne-colored lipstick was fading, and a half-ring of it marked her beer glass above the foam line.

  “So this Congregation of yours,” she said.

  She was listening. Alcohol relaxed the neural connections from his brain to his tongue. “According to Article 48 of the Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia, the ‘Pastor Bonus,’ which was promulgated by John Paul the Second in 1988,” Dante recited, “‘The duty proper to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to promote and safeguard the doctrine of the faith and morals throughout the Catholic world: for this reason everything which in any way touches such matters falls within its competence.’ And after His Holiness ascended to sit with God, and then Benedict had his short papacy, and then the current Pope was elected, and he is one of us. The CDF controls the Vatican now. John Paul the Second started to reform the morals of his priests, and Pope Benedict tried to continue his work, and His current Holiness will finish that work with an iron staff.”

  “So you’re the morals police. How Orwellian.” Leila wiped her foamy finger on an unadorned cocktail napkin. “I thought only Islamic theocracies had morals police.”

  “But, again,” he waggled an unsteady finger, “we are a theocratic dictatorship.”

  She inhaled smoke from her cigarette. “So what do you do for this thing?”

  Dante shrugged. “I used to read books to determine if they contained heresy. I met with priests who were accused of heresy to distinguish the mentally ill from those committing apostasy. Occasionally, I stripped a priest of his Holy Orders and excommunicated him if he was expounding heresy. Mostly, I did research and studied neuroscience at the university.”

  Leila shifted in her seat. “You determine what is heresy. You excommunicate heretics.” She said offhandedly, a throwaway remark, “Sounds like you’re in the Inquisition.”

  She had guessed it, and it wasn’t a secret per se, so Dante nodded. “There were several name changes over the years, but yes.” He sipped his beer and watched her disbelieving eyes. “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the Roman Inquisition.”

  “The Inquisition doesn’t exist anymore,” she said and turned to Joe. “The Inquisition does not exist anymore.”

  Joe shrugged and sipped his beer.

  Leila swiveled back to face Dante. “Oh, come on.”

  Later, he blamed the alcohol for his indiscretion, but he wanted to tell her. He wanted her trust. He wanted to have a secret with her.

  The whisky and beer lined up his thoughts and conveyed them to his mouth. “In 1542, Pope Paul the Third formed the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, which was renamed the Congregation of the Holy Office in 1908 by Pope St. Pius the Tenth. It became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965 under Pope Paul the Sixth. John Paul the Second clarified our mission in 1988 with that Pastor Bonus. The current Pope gave us more authority and power and resources.”

  She looked at her beer and laughed. “So you’re in the Inquisition.”

  “Yes.” His lips didn’t close.

  She met his stare, and he didn’t smile.

  “The Inquisition?” She held her beer near her delicate chin but didn’t drink. “The one that set people on fire for being witches?”

  “In our own defense, the Roman Inquisition had only casual ties to the Spanish Inquisition, though we did have words with Galileo.”

  She set her beer down on the table and leaned in, unsmiling. “So are you a spy?”

  “That is the IEA, Institute for External Affairs. I am with heresy and priests.”

  “Why is the Inquisition in New Hamilton? Looking for witches to burn at the stake?”

  Maybe he could amuse her again. “It has been snowing too much. The wood is too wet.”

  “This is unbelievable.” She shook her head.

  Dante shrugged again.

  “I don’t get you.” Leila looked mad. “I don’t get you at all. You’re a scientist and a Jesuit, and that I can almost see. Jesuits are less irrational than most priests.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and he almost meant it.

  “But getting mixed up with the Inquisition.”

  “Please keep your voice down.”

  “How in the hell did that happen?” She tapped her beer mug on the table like a gavel, and the beer clapped inside the mug but didn’t slosh over the rim.

  Beer sloshed in Dante’s skull, but he had at least interested her. If he could keep her interested, maybe they could continue to talk. “It started just after the seminary. I was working on exorcism.”

  She coughed in her beer. “And now it all makes sense.”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “A Franciscan priest in India wrote a book correlating liberation theology with the Marian movement and the Eucharist and some polytheistic, Hindu-like notions. The book was heresy. It contradicted dogma on many levels.” He rubbed his forehead and suspected a slight fever. “But there was a question whether he was insane or possessed.”

  Leila rolled her lovely, dark eyes.

  Ah, if I were a single man in Roma again, but he dispelled that thought.

  He said, “And we went to Calcutta, to his church, and interviewed him.”<
br />
  “We?” Joe had turned and was listening to the monologue with more interest.

  “Monsignor Gaetan Silvano of the CDF, an expert on heresy, and I, a psychiatrist studying mental illness and possession. I could not reconcile the Indian priest’s actions with mental illness, even paranoid schizophrenia, even multiple personality disorder.” Dante’s thick beer was as black as the bile that had bled from the old priest’s eyes. “He was eighty-three. He broke ropes that bound him. He broke chains. It was my first exorcism.”

  “Have I fallen into fairyland?” Leila asked. “Exorcisms?”

  Leila glanced at Joe, who shrugged. “I’m a Mason. I see weird stuff all the time.”

  “It’s like there’s a whole magical world hidden around here. Exorcisms. Freemasons.” She turned back. One limber eyebrow cocked down. “Have you done many exorcisms, Monsignor?”

  “Not as many as some. Monsignor Silvano and I worked as consultors for the Congregation, to determine whether a heresy was due to illness or possession.”

  “So there’s a mass outbreak of demon possession in New Hamilton?” Leila turned to Joe. “Isn’t there a television show where a blonde chick slays demons?”

  Joe said, “Was.”

  Dante shook his head. “It is not possession. I cannot say more because it violates patient confidentiality, but I am here as a psychiatrist. When the Congregation took over the current project, they recruited every priest and ex-priest with counseling credentials. I could not say no.”

  “Sounds sinister.” Leila sipped her beer.

  Here was his chance. “It is not supernatural, but it is a terrible problem.” Dante looked at her over his glass. He took a chance. “I think you know the problem that I mean.”

  Leila settled her mug on the table and stared directly back at him, too steadily, rehearsed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  In his peripheral vision, Dante just saw Joe’s head swiveling from Dante to Leila and back again, but Leila didn’t look away from Dante’s eyes so neither did he. Dante maintained a calm, neutral expression softened by compassion. No smile. That would be knowing or gleeful. Just a softening of frown muscles, a widening of the brow, an invitation to speak.

  She had beautiful eyes, so dark, so sad.

  Her expression was studied neutral, but the outer corners of her eyes expanded, and adrenaline dilated her pupils. Her eyes spread open. Fear swarmed inside.

  Joe said, “What?” and broke the charm.

  Leila looked over at Joe. “Nothing.”

  Dante nodded, wishing vehemently that he had been wrong about Leila, but he didn’t think he was. She tolerated his presence admirably well, for a child who had been abused by a priest.

  He wanted to help her.

  ~~~~~

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday morning, at Conroy’s funeral, Bev shied at the font of holy water where she was supposed to bless herself before entering the church.

  The water in the smooth marble font enticed her, as if she could plunge in and it would engulf all of her, sucking her sordid body into itself and extracting the horrors, and she might emerge rebaptized, but she couldn’t. That little dish, rippling from the footsteps of her friends and neighbors entering the church behind her, couldn’t hold her terrible soul.

  Nothing could.

  A Baptist full-immersion baptismal tank would redden like a plague of Egypt had descended on it. Her sin would kill all the fish in a river and poison the land.

  Her fingers brushed the air above the water and traced a dry cross over her face and torso.

  ~~~~~

  After the processional, Dante stood before the gathered mourners and in front of Conroy’s white pall-draped casket.

  Bev sat in the front pew with three friends nested around her, a patting, stroking cluster of support.

  Dante’s notes lay on the lectern. Hopefully, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas had been correct when they expounded that a sacrament performed by a priest, even if he was in a state of mortal sin, was as valid as if Christ Himself officiated at a sacrament, and the alter Christus ministering the sacrament meant nothing. Those whom Judas baptized, Christ baptized. So too, then, those whom a drunkard baptized, those whom a murderer baptized, those whom an adulterer baptized, if the Baptism was of Christ, Christ baptized.

  Dante placed his hope in his own insignificance.

  Dante raised his arms and said, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He genuflected in that exaggerated manner that Samual had used to prompt the holiday Catholics and non-Catholics in the church. “May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

  All responded as proscribed and written on the Order of the Mass furtively distributed to the Protestants, “And with your spirit.”

  Bev and her bevy sat in the first pew, Sloan’s professional acquaintances sat behind her, and their friends scattered over the rest of the church. Conroy’s lab was seated in a block near the back, with Leila hemmed in by Joe and Malcolm. Danna’s parents sat behind them, respectful and curious to see the pompous, splendorous idolatry of Catholicism.

  Bev saw Conroy’s lab sitting back there and saw Leila Faris in their midst. Dante had called Bev yesterday to warn her that Leila would attend the mass, lest people talk about her absence because she was his senior graduate student.

  If Bev had been tipsy before, she had gotten shnockered after that. The lumpy cocktail of pills and whisky made choosing a suit for Conroy difficult. At the back of his closet, there was a somber black suit he had bought a year and half ago for an extended conference in France with several scheduled fancy dinners. After all, things were more formal over in Europe.

  Bev turned back to the front of the church and watched Dante up there, in his full priest regalia.

  Mary, Lydia, and Laura’s hands slid off Bev’s shoulders as the Mass began. Bev had said her goodbyes earlier, though that preserved effigy of Conroy lying in the magnificent box had only partially resembled him. Father Dante walked down the aisle of the church holding the aspergillum and flicking holy water on the gathered people, and Morris, a tenor, sang an old hymn a capella.

  The whole Mass would be a capella because Bev couldn’t be in the loft playing the organ. How sad, that Conroy’s Mass was without instrumental music. Going up there to play a hymn for him would seem insensitive. She should be sitting with the rest of them in the church.

  Not that she could play the organ anyway with all these steel spikes sticking out of her arm.

  For an instant within a moment, Bev thought that Conroy was late for Mass again and she listened for his footfalls sneaking in and his reedy body whispering as he genuflected at the end of the pew, his grin sheepish, and yet he was already there, in that magnificent box.

  Lydia steadied Bev’s swaying arm and watched Father Dante walk the aisle. Yesterday when they had driven over to the florist’s, Mary had mentioned to Lydia that Bev looked stoned that morning and that she worried about the pills.

  Dante flicked vestigial drops of baptismal water on the congregation while he walked down the aisle toward the back of the church. Leila and her men sat back there.

  Droplets of holy water smacked Joe and the others where they were sitting in the second to the last pew.

  Joe whispered to Leila, “Are you going to take communion?”

  Leila asked back, “Why? Are you in the mood to dodge lighting bolts?”

  She turned away from Joe, crossed her ankles under her long, black skirt, and watched Dante resume his place at the altar.

  Dante said, “My brothers and sisters, to prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries, let us call to mind our sins.”

  The church fell into silence and Bev bowed her head. Conroy had needed to hear those words, but Bev sat in the hard pew instead. The church, despite being full of people, seemed all empty air, but she prayed for a mistake to have been made, for Con
roy to push up the lid and fight the white cloth draping his face and shoulders, but nothing moved except her breath.

  Father Dante recited, and everyone joined in, “I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.”

  Dante said, alone, “May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.”

  The church rumbled, “Amen.”

  Leila peeked over Joe’s arm at the notes, though after her recent Mass attendances she remembered all the new responses. Dante’s voice soared past the altar rail and echoed in the expanse above the pews, the four stories of air space under the wood-beamed ceiling.

  The swaying, shifting people in the pews seemed to have sprung up in the church rows as orderly as gardened rows of basil.

  Dante said, “Kýrie eléison.”

  Leila’s breath caught in her uppermost rib and she couldn’t speak when everyone responded, “Kýrie eléison.” Her face flushed. That priest shouldn’t be using the Greek incantation. Roman Catholics used the English translation, Lord, have mercy. The priest at her father’s Mass had used the Greek because the only Orthodox church in Florida was Greek Orthodox, when she had stood in the front row with her father’s friends, without her mother, in the baking, smothering, Floridian church.

  Dante said, “Christe eléison.”

  Leila clutched her purse and bowed her head. Her lips moved, but she couldn’t say “Christe eléison” with everyone else, either. Her throat was shut tight with grief. This was ridiculous. She had to hang on because she had to survive an hour more of the Mass. Her skin oozed cold sweat.

  Dante said, “Kýrie eléison.” and the congregation thundered back “Kýrie eléison.”