by Неизвестный
The following days, there was no change in Richard/Rita's general condition. They then decided to call on the local Roman Catholic pastor. The three of them walked over to see Father Byrnes, who already knew Richard/Rita by name and sight. He listened to them, but threw cold water on any expectations of concrete help. It wasn't because they were non-Catholics, he explained apologetically, and he sounded sincere to them. But he didn't know what to do. Sure, he would include Richard/Rita in his prayers. But, they shouldn't forget, so had the others. And what good had all that done? It didn't seem enough, Father Byrnes concluded. Bert took Father Byrnes aside and pleaded with him: his brother was ill in some peculiar way. Doctors and psychiatrists had given up on him. Didn't Father Byrnes know some Catholic priest who might help?
“Call me tomorrow, after midday,” Father Byrnes answered. He had just remembered Father Gerald and his great common sense.
The morning of the exorcism Richard/Rita rose early, bathed, washed his hair, carefully sprayed himself with deodorant, and applied his favorite perfume to neck, breasts, wrists, and behind his ears. He put on a pair of dark blue slacks, a red turtleneck sweater, and loose sandals. His long black hair was brushed and combed in a simple manner. He wore no makeup or jewelry. When he was dressed, he went out and fed the ducks in the pond, walked around for a while, then returned in time to greet Gerald's assistants at the door.
Partly because his two brothers were assistants, it was almost like a group of intimate friends gathering for a reunion or for the celebration of a very private event. Richard/Rita collaborated laughingly and pleasantly, making coffee, arranging the room for the rite of Exorcism, and in general was very apologetic and apparently appreciative of the “inconvenience being given,” as he said repeatedly. For the exorcism, Richard/Rita's bedroom had been chosen by Gerald after some discussion, and mainly because it seemed to be the place Richard/Rita wanted most to avoid.
When all was ready, Richard/Rita sat down with the assistants and waited, sometimes chatting, sometimes praying with them, until Gerald's car was heard in the driveway. Bert went out, reported to Gerald, then came back and told Richard/Rita to sit or lie down on the couch. But Richard/Rita insisted on waiting for Gerald.
Gerald entered the bedroom with Father John. Both wore their ceremonial robes. All, including Richard/Rita, knelt down as they recited a prayer to the Holy Spirit. Then, with Richard/Rita still kneeling, the assistants arranged themselves around Gerald. He opened the exorcism with a prayer from the official ritual.
Richard/Rita interrupted gently and boyishly. “Father Gerald, don't you think we could hurry all this up? What I really need now is a blessing and everybody's prayers and good-will wishes.”
He stood up and shot a radiant, embarrassed smile of charm and gratitude at each one present. Bert's heart was torn at the sight of his baby brother. Most of them felt embarrassed, much as if—it was Jasper, Richard/Rita's older brother, who made the remark later—as if they had come to arrest someone for murder and found the supposed murderer and his victim making love instead. Richard/Rita looked very feminine that morning.
Gerald too was taken aback. His mind raced. Had he made a mistake? Either they had made fools of themselves and of Richard/Rita, or they were victims of a deeper deceit than he had anticipated. But there was no time for reflection or pause. He had to make a decision. The police captain and the teacher were looking at him as if to say: “Let's get out of here, Father. Let's leave well enough alone.” But Gerald knew he had to make certain.
“Fine, Rita,” he said, surprised at his own acting, but smiling nonchalantly. “Let's do just that. Here, John, give me the holy-water flask. Jasper! Take my prayer book and put it in my briefcase. Bert, please make more coffee. Someone go and telephone the rectory and tell them I shall be back for lunch. Rita, hand me the crucifix from the table beside you, and let's get on with the blessing.”
Afterward, when discussing the events of that morning, all agreed that the moment Gerald finished his request to Richard/Rita some sharp change took place in the room. It was a qualitative change, as effective and as abrupt as a complete, instantaneous change in the perfume of the air or in the room temperature. Some of them, not guessing Gerald's ulterior motive, had started automatically to do what he had asked them before he made his request to Richard/Rita. But the mysterious change in the room as Gerald spoke to Richard/Rita brought them all up sharply. “Like red lights all around me,” said one. “Like a warning bell,” commented another. “An eerie feeling in the nape of my neck,” was the teacher's description.
“We knew that suddenly another presence had become palpable to us. We knew it was bad, bad, bad,” declared Bert afterwards.
They all turned around and looked at Gerald and Richard/Rita. Gerald was standing almost on tiptoe, his request had been so barbed with intent and its impact on Richard/Rita so tangible for him. Richard/Rita had sat down on the couch, a picture of puzzlement. His forehead was a field of furrows. His eyebrows were almost touching in quizzical expression. His mouth was tightly closed, the lower lip clamped over the upper one. All color had drained from his cheeks. They couldn't see his eyes. He was looking at his lap, where both his hands closed and opened, from fist to open palm, then from open palm to fist, continually, jerkingly, and slowly. Gerald held his own hand up for silence and attention.
“Rita,” he said softly, “hand me the crucifix.” Tears started to glitter on Richard/Rita's eyelashes and then ran silently down his face.
“I want to be left alone. Please”—the voice was feminine and husky and agonizing. Another burst of tears. He sobbed. “It's all too much—I know none of you understand what has happened to me. Moira does—ask her. But this is all a charade—I need only to be left alone.” More sobbing.
Gerald looked at Bert. Bert shrugged as if to say: Your decision! Gerald opened his ritual: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we are here today to pray and ask that in the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, whatever evil spirit may have entered and possessed this creature of Almighty God's, Rita O., will obey. . .”
The rest was drowned in Richard/Rita's sobbing. He had turned gently as if wounded or struck, and lay down on the couch, his back to Gerald. They all listened to Richard/Rita, not hearing any more the words Gerald was reading. They could only hear that sobbing, crying voice, wailing and groaning with uncontrollable sorrow, his whole body shaking with each sob, every sound of his voice filtering through his throat and mouth as a terrible reproach to all present.
“. . . and that whatever ill-effects the evil spirit has caused in Rita,” Gerald wound up, “may be cleansed and purified by the Grace of the Lord, Jesus.” Gerald concluded the first prayer.
At this mention of the name of Jesus, Richard/Rita stiffened and turned flat on his back. His face was not a picture of tears and sorrow as they all had expected, but a writhing mass of hate, fear, and disgust.
“Take your Jesus and his filthy crucifix and his stinking holy water and his withered priest and get out of my house.” Both his arms were stretched out at this point, the palms toward Gerald, warding off his stare. “Take 'em out of here. I want to be alone.”
Gerald saw Bert starting to go forward. “Bert!” he said sharply, “stay where you are-just one moment.” Bert stopped.
“Bert, save me from this lousy Catholic priest and his hocus-pocus. Bert! Bert! Help me!” Bert started forward again. This time, John, the younger priest, touched Bert on the arm: “Give Gerald one more moment, Bert,” he whispered, “just one more moment. We've got to be sure.”
“Bert!” continued Richard/Rita sobbingly, “I was supremely happy until he started at me. It's all a mistake. I'm a woman, Bert. I'm a woman. Like your Marcia [Bert's wife]. Like Moira. Like Mummy. Like Julie [Bert's secretary]. See!”—and Richard/Rita tore down the zipper of his slacks and opened the top button: “See! I've got pubic hair and a cunt just like Marcia. Look, Bert! Come and feel it! It's hot and wet. I
can hold you, Bert, I can hold you now better than Julie. Remember we used to masturbate together in bed as kids? Now you can enter me. Help me, Bert. I'll be yours if you do!”
Bert fell back ashen-faced. Gerald reached forward, took the crucifix, held it up in front of Richard/Rita.
“Rita, all will be well. We will leave you alone. Only now you have to do what you did a few days ago in the rectory.” When Richard/Rita had come with Bert and Jasper to see him, he had laid his right hand on a crucifix Gerald always kept on his desk and said: “By this, I swear, Father Gerald: I want to be whole and entire and right with God.” All the time this ability of Richard/Rita to touch the crucifix had given great encouragement to Gerald. It meant that the possession of Richard/Rita was an incomplete process as yet. Except in its advanced stages, possession varies in its effects and characteristics.
But now Richard/Rita lay down on the couch, legs spread, hands resting on his groin. They waited. His chest rose and fell as if he were sleeping. Outside, the weather had turned dark. The wind was rising, shaking the trees around the house with an irregular whining sound.
Then Richard/Rita's mouth opened and after what seemed minutes they heard him speak, but with another voice. It was throaty, rasping, slow, indistinguishable as to sex—it could have been female or male. It was like the voice of some very elderly people—a hint of falsetto, a trace of bass, but weary and ponderous, requiring effort.
“I know you're supposed to be a virgin, Father Gerald. What would you know of woman—or of man, for that matter?”
Gerald decided to break in. “Tell us who you are.”
Richard/Rita was silent a moment; then he spoke as if in a joke. “Who I am? Why, Rita, of course. Who else? Stupid!”
“If you are Rita whom we know, sit up, and take this crucifix.”
“Rita doesn't want to. Nah!”
“Why then, are you sulking, Rita? Why not sit up and talk like an ordinary human being with us?”
“Because. . . because. . . because I am not ordinary. Listen!” Richard/Rita's head turned toward the shuttered windows. His eyes fluttered as if looking at a passing scene. His head turned back. “I am not ordinary.”
Gerald had his ritual book opened again and was about to start the next part of the exorcism when a new thought suddenly occurred to him: if he was merely speaking to Richard/Rita, wouldn't he be missing the point of the exorcism? And couldn't Richard/Rita, or whatever evil spirit possessed him at that moment, carry off a magnificent deception—pretend, in fact, to cooperate? No! He had to break down the façade, if façade there was. Gerald was groping blindly to the truth of Father Conor's analysis without having had the benefit of Conor's instruction. Cold experience was his hard teacher that day.
He closed the book slowly, grasped the crucifix between his palms, and started to question Richard/Rita. Now the exchange between them settled down to a rather calm question-and-answer exchange. And it lasted that whole day. At one stage Rita fell silent. After fruitless attempts to get answers from him, Gerald went outside, washed, took some food, and returned. The day was already advanced. The doctor had monitored Richard/Rita's breathing and pulse. All was normal. As Gerald returned, they all began to feel the biting cold in the room. James attended to the radiator, even went down to the boiler in the cellar. The cold still persisted.
Gerald started again to question Richard/Rita. This time Richard/Rita started to answer. Gerald probed, provoked, queried, objected, interrupted, set traps, and tried in every way to break down the resistance he felt in Richard/Rita. But whatever he did, Richard/Rita turned it aside with long, rambling answers, descriptions of sexual acts, analysis of the male and female, small insults and jeers, an occasional snide remark. So it went through the night and the small hours of the morning.
We will never know now, but that procedure might have lasted indefinitely until common sense and the limits of endurance indicated to all that the exorcism was a failure-or, alternatively, that Richard/Rita had never been possessed, but was just very abnormal in quite an ordinary sense of the word. After many hours, however, Gerald began to sense that at times he almost touched something, then it would escape his grasp. At times, also, the others in the room would have a strong sense of something alien, pressing on them. Then it would lighten and disappear. All were becoming fidgety. All were tired.
The end of their waiting came unexpectedly with one blanket statement of Gerald's in answer to a protest of Richard/Rita.
“But any ordinary woman wants to be held and cherished by her man,” Gerald was saying, “and, after that, to lead him where he could not otherwise go. Hand in hand. And in truth. And in love. Not in power or in superiority. They walk in God's smile. They reproduce his beauty.” Gerald was touching the very chord that had obsessed Richard/Rita since his operation.
Richard/Rita stiffened. “Why the hell don't you leave me alone? You and your God! Who needs his smile or his beauty?”
Gerald was alerted by a new note in Richard/Rita's voice. He could not recognize it, but he knew it as a new note. And he had an idea.
“Why? Because I know you are not Rita. I know you are not Richard. I know that Rita—Richard—loves God, his smile and his beauty. But you—whatever or whoever you are—why don't you come out from your lies and your deceptions and face us?”
All hell—as the police captain said later—broke loose. Richard/Rita doubled up, his head resting on his feet, his body pumping spasmodically. The assistants held him and tried to straighten him out. They could not move him; he was as heavy as pig iron. The couch shook and trembled. The wallpaper above the bed peeled off, starting in one corner, as if invisible fingers had yanked it violently. The shutters shook and rattled. Richard/Rita started to break wind and scream at the same time. Everybody there began to feel a peculiar pressure of threat and fear. They started to perspire. Nothing had prepared them for this feeling of incalculable danger.
“Let everybody hold! Stay calm!” It was Gerald warning them. He was now aware that he had touched the essential core of their problem. But he was still in the dark. He drew near the couch and bent over Richard/Rita, who was quite still; but his body was doubled up as before, his head resting on his feet.
“Rita,” he said in a clear, loud voice. “I tell you: we will keep on struggling for you. So, you, you keep on fighting and resisting.”
Richard/Rita jerked and shook for a few seconds, then his teeth sank into the instep of one foot.
Gerald straightened up. He changed his tone to a sharp, inquisitorial, and imperious note: “You, Evil Spirit, you will obey our commands.”
Again, the rasping voice: “You do not know what you're getting into, priest. You cannot pay the price. It's not your virginity merely that you'll lose. And not merely your life. You'll lose it all—”
“As Jesus, Our Lord, bore sufferings, so I am willing to bear what it costs to expel you and send you back to where you came from.”
This was Gerald's first error. Without realizing it, and in what looked like heroism, he had fallen into an old trap. They were now on a personal plane: he versus the evil spirit. No exorcist can function in a personal way, in his own right, offering his strength or his will alone to counter and challenge the possessing spirit. He never should try to function in place of Jesus, but merely speak and act in concert with him as his representative.
For Gerald the cost of that mistake was high. He had never dreamed that physical punishment could be so intense. It was a full three weeks before he could get up and hobble around his room in great pain; that violent attack on him would eventually prove lethal for Gerald. But these were not his deepest sufferings. In those few seconds of storm when he was hurled across the room and slammed against the wall, it was a sense of violation that shook and tore him.
Only then did he realize that, up to that moment, indeed all his life, he had enjoyed an immunity. An inner bastion of his very self, the core of his person, had never been touched. Sorrow had never reached it. Regret had never
pained it. Nor had any twinge of weakness or guilt ever ached there.
The strength of that private self had been its immunity. His professional celibacy and physical virginity had been merely outward expressions of the ultimately carefree condition of spirit in which he had always existed. In a sense, sin or wrongdoing had never touched him there, not because he had so decided, but because the choice had never presented itself.
But, in a twist of egotism, that immune part of him had been the source of his pride as it was of his independence. And friends who marveled at his constancy as a priest and ascribed it to a genuine sort of holiness could never have known—no more than Gerald himself—that Gerald's ultimate strength was tainted with a great weakness: the self-reliance of pride. The physical pain and injury that afflicted his body during and after the attack was as much a symbol as it was tangible expression of an inescapable weakness and fragility to which he was heir merely by being human.
He recovered sufficiently from the attack, but he never again had that old sense of immunity. Instead, there was born in him a heightened feeling of helplessness. And, for the first time in his life, he acknowledged his total dependence on God. And his outlook was now permeated with that poignant sense which Christians traditionally had described by a much misunderstood word: humility. It was a grateful realization that love, not simply a great love, but love itself, had chosen him and loved him for no other reason but love. “Only love could love me” had been a saying of an ancient English saint, Juliana of Norwich.
In the meanwhile, Gerald had to make a decision: to proceed with the exorcism or declare it officially over. Richard/Rita was now in an abnormal stage even for him. He needed round-the-clock surveillance. Usually he lay on the couch awake or asleep, or he stood by the window apparently looking and listening. He was docile to any suggestions of his brothers, but no one else could influence him. He ate sparingly, had to be washed like a baby, lapsed periodically into a strange, babbling incoherence, and could not bear any mention of Gerald, of religion, or of Exorcism. Nor would he allow any religious object near him or in his house. He always seemed to know when any such object was brought in. His cleaning woman, for instance, used to wear a medal around her neck; she had to leave it at home. If his brothers had spoken to Gerald, Richard/Rita would know it when they entered his presence. A scene would ensue, never violent, always heart-rending and full of pleas to them that they save him from further bother.