by John Rechy
The priest heard his voice finish: “. . .—as if that way I would force her finally to leave me!” Had he truly uttered those words—not the words he had intended? The part of him that resisted this confession listened in astonishment, in shock, to the echo of the words wrenched from him by a force too powerful to overcome. Something made me speak those words! he told himself in disbelief. The drug— . . . La malaspina! Is it real then?
The demonic rattles! Again they trembled, seemed to exhale.
Now the priest breathed deeply again, defiantly. Suddenly he was two people—one listening, the other speaking; one resisting, the other anxious to surrender; confessor and confessee: one ripped apart from the other by the sundering confusion of accidental words. Then the resisting part of him whispered calmly to Richard, and to the part of himself that had spoken the unwelcome words: “You’ve tricked me into pronouncing those words—but that’s all.”
“Tell us!” Blue shouted at the priest. “Get out of your fucking dark confessional, man! Become human!”
Become human.
Become human!
Become human!
Human— . . . That?—Blue’s exhortation; an accusation?—a judgment? The incongruous, suddenly assaulting memory of their hands touching briefly in the grotto? Or was it the overwhelming, suddenly lovely scent, lulling him?—just that? Or would he offer the words to them willingly only so they would not pry them even more threateningly from him? Or to prove his mangled humanity? What made Jeremy at last form words long entombed in icy darkness?: “She clung to my hand, my mother,” the words had already Escaped, “and she cried, ‘Don’t let me die!—I love you!’—her bloodless, dying hand still clutched mine!” He touched his own hand, withdrawing one from the other swiftly; remembering: “I pushed it away—finally! I yelled, ‘Let me go!’ I remember: Blood! And then 1 flung her hand away! And I ran out!” The words hurtled against the blackness of the calm, apathetic glass dome. He waited as if the silence would pronounce an inevitable judgment. Then: “Is that what you wanted to hear?” he flung at Richard and Malissa. “Does that make me human?” he asked Blue.
Blue frowned, as if the question merited long, careful deliberation. Slowly, he shook his head: slowly: No.
“Then you meant what you said,” Karen sighed wearily at the priest. “You loathed her.” (“I hate you!” “No, no, baby, no!”)
“My love for her was real,” the priest still defended, “and it was love—crushed, mangled by her brutal demands for my life. She drained—like a vampire . . . But even then there were times when love shattered the hatred; times when hatred shattered the love. Love— . . .”
Stop there! Tarah’s mind exhorted him. She knew: Yes, she yearned for him. And it was his purity she desired. Is that what they sought to destroy with his confession? Stop there!
“The tumbling tower,” Malissa named the card of the Tarot that Mark had chosen for the priest earlier.
“Or is it still to crumble?” Mark asked casually.
“You have to pick up memories from the grave,” la Duquesa said sorrowfully. “Perhaps something miraculous will make them grow.”
The priest exhaled the perfumed air.
“And then?” Mark asked.
“Then I became a priest,” Jeremy said.
“The pure—grasping—love of a mother,” Malissa spat her evaluation of the priest’s confession. “The equally pure love of her son! Like a fake jewel!” she buried the words. “Like la Duquesa’s imaginary love—Rev’s courage! Tor’s inflated body! And Savapnah’s purity!”
“Purity,” Richard echoed. A clue to a profound mystery, the word hovered over them. Silence gathered as if by a conspiracy of sound and motion: a waiting, stark, demanding presence.
Then sound and motion resumed as if on direct order of Malissa’s commanding hands: as if a movie reel, merely stopped to capture a single frame—order within the tumbling anarchy—had begun again. “The game! Confessions!” Malissa said hungrily.
“Miss Malissa requests that the game continue!” Topaze announced like a page.
“And so you fled!” Malissa assaulted the priest.
“To insulate yourself against the roar of life,” Richard said.
Tarah stood near the priest, to convey her strength to him, to allow him to withstand them. He must resist them. An alliance with him? she wondered. Or did she merely feel drawn magnetically to his fierce, inviolate sensuality? (his naked body—the image lodged in her mind)—was she determined to keep the appearance of purity, even if it was not real?
“He sheltered himself within the confessional,” Mark said as if reciting an anecdote. “Easy to listen to life, there. His world was peopled by cold statues in a church. Statues without eyes.”
Jeremy remembered: The statues in the dark alcove. Among the lush embracing trees, the glorious star-shattered flowers, they had seemed to listen, to watch raptly.
“All filtered by stained-glass windows!” Malissa stood near the priest, separating him and Tarah, to sever the current of strength she detected between them.
“He didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything except his own beautiful salvation,” Bravo joined the interrogators.
“He was afraid of the world.” Valerie heard Paul’s words without shock this time.
Now Blue’s eyes were like dark fire on the priest: “You ran away,” he said in judgment. “You lived only with shadows and whispers, and those belonged to others. Man, you tried to Escape all righteous human contact.”
Raided furiously by their words, “It’s not true!” the priest said finally.
“Then tell us,” said Blue. The smile lingered incongruously on his lips. “You said you wouldn’t run away again—not ever—and that means from your head too, man. Face your memories! Become human!” he repeated the powerful, accusatory words.
Jeremy knew: Now he would allow himself, and them, to listen to other voices long stifled in the past. “It’s not possible to Escape,” he said. “Life attacks. It comes roaring at you.”
“The game is confession,” Malissa’s voice was solemn.
The rattles hissed.
And again the priest breathed very deeply. “Even within what you call the shadows of the church— . . .” he began: Not a confession, no; he would not confess to them, he insisted to himself: What he had already verbalized—and what he would now say: that was his bid to join the savage humanity he stood accused of fleeing only in self-protection. And perhaps too—suddenly!—was there something of cunning? Had his stance indeed been too rarefied, too distant? In revealing himself as vulnerable, might he then be able to enlist the others to move against the gathering tide of evil in this house? Indeed, he glanced at Tor, Savannah, Rev—still restive—la Duquesa: Was there in them something to be resurrected to avenge the slaughter?—and in those who might follow. The priest said: “There was a youngman—I saw him often, always sitting in the front pew when I said Mass, always watching me— . . .”
“And you were aware of him.” Blue stared into his hand, directing the priest’s eyes there; a reminder of a silent promise witnessed by shadows and blind statues?
“Not until later—in retrospect—when he came to the rectory, one night, late; it was raining,” the priest said. “‘I need you!—we need you!’ he told me. A woman was dying, his friend, he said.”
Tarah felt a sense of premature defeat.
“We sped in his car. To an old house. Up dark steps, along a maze of hallways, yellow lights, yellow shadows—the youngman with me.” Specters locked in the prison of the priest’s mind sprang forth starkly now: “Doors opened, seminude women—black-strapped leather corsets cutting into the white flesh—they stood in the hall, terrible leering painted faces staring at me— . . .” He thrust the images at Blue as Blue had thrust the images of his private hell at him.
“You were in a brothel,” Tarah understood, and her heart felt smothered.
“Yes! And through the open doors,” the priest rushed, as if, once sp
oken, the words and the images would die forever, “I could see: Bodies laid out like aroused corpses.” Now he addressed la Duquesa, forcing himself to face her: “We entered a room, semidarkness like gray velvet, some of the women I had seen in the hall crowded in, like a tattered army. A woman was lying on a bed, moaning, in labor.”
Tarah said: “She was bearing your child?” She felt afraid of the answer.
“And the youngman?” Blue asked the priest.
“He just stood there and watched me as intently as he did at Mass. His eyes were like scalpels.” Jeremy went on: “The face on the bed was soft, childlike, as if a very small girl had painted herself, her hair was bleached, her lips an orange heart. Her painted fingernails clutched at her swollen stomach. I touched her—in fascination. Something was wrapped about her waist! Bandages! I unwound them. And I knew then that the . . . creature . . . in labor was . . . was— . . . !”
“A man!” la Duquesa hurled the word at him.
“Yes!” the priest whispered. “A . . . man! Then I saw a small bundle pressed against his stomach. It was a doll. A tiny grotesque little carnival celluloid doll; the man had tied it to his stomach. And the doll was painted pink, yellow, blue. It had green-dyed feathers and sequins I” He stopped, to contain the assault of memory. “The women in the room began to laugh, their mouths were red—as if they had been smeared with blood— . . .”
Valerie closed her eyes.
“Then the man on the bed,” the priest continued, “brought the doll to his chest, to feed it from his false breasts! And with a sigh ending the simulated labor, he fainted! . . . I turned angrily to question the youngman who had brought me there. He shouted at me, ‘This is where life is!’ ”
Gathered, the silence now flowed like a river.
“So you see,” Jeremy said, “you were wrong. I only tried to Escape.”
As terrible as the images evoked had been, nothing the young priest had said had violated his . . . purity—his sexual purity. And that was important to her: Tarah breathed easily.
Blue stood before the priest. “No, you couldn’t run away. Nor ever, man. And now here you are, like the rest of us.”
19
Savannah stood up, like a ghost in search of flesh.
“Now who, Richard?” Malissa would not allow a moment’s respite. It was all moving too excitingly, too perfectly; a pause would thwart the gathering momentum. She craved more.
As if in answer, Richard, the mamaloi, and the papaloi stood in a triangle, Richard at its head, like an arrow aimed between Valerie and Paul.
Swiftly Mark stood beside the twins—but apart: as if to juxtapose himself with them.
Valerie’s heart beat against the wall of her ears. Or was it her brother’s heartbeat she heard?
“Leave them alone!” It was Tarah.
The priest had stationed himself beside Valerie. “She has nothing for you to destroy!” He felt even stronger now: The revelation of vulnerability had called up all his power to resist.
Blue stood a distance from the priest, to observe him more totally.
Paul looked at his sister, then at Richard, as if ruled by two powerful currents. Now he met her imploring gaze—and he nodded: as if (or did she merely imagine this? she questioned herself, reality occurring suddenly in shifting waves)—as if exhorting her to look at Richard.
She met Richard’s look.
And he was smiling at her. And so was Paul now, a mirror-image of Richard.
She felt a violent implosion within her, a smashing. Behind closed eyes she tried to seal the shattered world. Blackness would restructure it.
Frantically Tarah turned to Karen: “It’s your turn, Karen!” she said quickly, to draw the attention from Paul and Valerie. “Your confesssion is next!” She was almost pleading. And her tactic had worked:
Richard faced his third wife.
Almost too willing to release Paul and Valerie from scrutiny, Malissa thought.
“I confess to the violation of purity!” Karen said suddenly.
“And to hatred for Richard!” Tarah tried to draw the essential words from her, her tactic reinforced now, against Richard.
“Yes, to that too!” Bravo spoke for Karen.
“Tell us!” Tarah insisted.
“I was pure when he married me,” Karen said.
“And what sullied that . . . purity, Karen?” Richard asked.
“You! When you led me to my mother—naked, in bed, groveling with another woman!” she yelled at him.
“He exposed it,” said Mark. He looked at Joja, to extract her allegiance again: a reminder of the extortion?
The actress stared coldly at the boy. She deliberately withheld her needed support against Karen’s assertion. Withheld it longer. Still longer. Mark’s lips parted; he drew his tongue over them, looking down at his body. And Joja responded: “And Richard’s action released you, Karen.”
“I loved my mother because she was pure,” Karen said. “And then Richard opened the door into the room where she and the other woman were, legs tangled, breasts— . . . ‘There is your purity!’ Richard said to me; and then I hated her, I wanted to kill her, I rushed at her— . . .”
“Your mother had made you frigid,” said Joja. Mark’s acknowledgment of her renewed allegiance: He touched his body. “And Richard freed you,” Joja continued.
Tarah glared fiercely at the actress. Still a witness for the defense of Richard. “And then he didn’t want you,” Tarah reminded Karen.
“But he had freed you,” Joja uttered words; she still faced Mark.
“Now she’s free of him!” Bravo said.
“Is she, Richard?” Malissa questioned cunningly.
Karen moved slowly toward Richard, as if finally to confront him.
“How dare you bring us to this depraved place?” Valerie was able at last to form the accusation.
“I invited you,” Richard said.
“How dare you expose us to all this? Paul isn’t aware of what’s occurring here,” she said, avoiding looking at the stranger her brother was becoming.
“But you, Valerie, are you aware?” said Richard. The question was emphatic—the answer important.
“I do know, Valerie,” Paul’s voice filled the silence.
Richard turned away.
“This isn’t our world!” Valerie shouted.
Now Richard seemed to wait for words which perhaps only she could pronounce.
“Such moving love,” Malissa’s lips barely touched the last word. “This brother and his sister!”
“It is, yes, it is!” said la Duquesa. “Why don’t you leave it alone?”
Valerie said to Malissa: “You don’t understand it because it’s pure.”
“Pure,” Richard pronounced.
“If Daniel were here— . . .” Valerie tossed the unfinished threat at Richard.
“Daniel agreed to your coming,” he said.
“But he didn’t know what you’d expose us to!” Valerie protested.
“He knew,” Richard said. “He’s known all along.”
Tarah realized: He would reveal to Paul and Valerie in brutal moments the horror withheld from them for years. As if to render the inevitable less painful by shortening it—if only that—Tarah rushed words: “Your father made an arrangement with Richard.”
“Your father gave you to me,” Richard said.
The mamaloi and the papaloi became rigid. Erect, painted, black corpses.
Richard’s words released others in Valerie’s consciousness: Suicide! Murder! A trial!
Paul made no reaction of surprise.
“How can you give people?’’ Jeremy said.
“He sold them!” Malissa understood. “And later Daniel murdered Hester!” The wild jeweled gestures of her hands turned inward now, devoured themselves hungrily.
Mark’s face registered interest.
Even though her hands blocked her ears, Valerie had heard Malissa’s words. “He didn’t!” she shouted. And remembered: Whispered
voices quickly silenced by her presence. All a nightmare in reverse: as if she were wakening into it.
“He was tried for her murder!” Tarah once again attempted to rush the climax, to render it less cruel—and perhaps to propel them into leaving before— . . .
“No!” Valerie insisted.
“Your father gave you to me before you were conceived,” said Richard.
The words bolted out of Valerie: “If Daniel were here, he’d kill you, Richard!”
“Can this nightmare be possible? What are you trying to discover?” the priest blurted at Richard.
Mark awaited his father’s answer.
But there was none.
“No one buys anyone,” Valerie seized control.
“Your father had an expensive habit—his money was all gone. In drugs.” Richard’s calm voice belied the brutal words.
“Lies!” said Valerie.
“He’s telling the truth,” Paul accepted easily.
Eagerly? Did he already know? Since when? Had Richard told him only earlier? The blue moments— . . . Valerie looked at Richard with a rage which flooded over to her brother.
“I needed a child,” said Richard.
‘‘But I was going to have Gable—you knew I carried him,” Tarah said.
“I needed another,” Richard said. “At the same time.”
“What were you plotting even then?” Tarah asked. “What demonic experiment were you already preparing?”
The rarefied years. The beautiful seclusion. It was over. What was important now was to save Paul, Valerie knew.
Still calmly, almost gently, Richard went on pronouncing the terrible words: “Your father didn’t want to be sure, ever, that the child which would result from that night was really his. Or mine.”
‘‘Oh, God!” the priest understood.
“Both of them took her!” Tarah yelled. “They called it: Sexual roulette!”
Malissa glanced at Paul, then Mark.
“You may be their father, then—and still you allow— . . .” the priest started.
“It’s all a lie!” Valerie shouted. “None of this is happening!”
“I fled with Gable, to protect him from this hungry evil,” Tarah said. “But that’s what you counted on all along. . . . Is it, Richard!”