Pandaemonium

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘I can’t begin to imagine what Con went through, and in my opinion, he never recovered. I think he joined the priesthood in the same way that men used to join the Foreign Legion.’

  Kane’s eyes fill, though he’s talking about things that must have happened well over a decade ago.

  ‘He would probably have described himself as agnostic before Gail died. We were both brought up Catholics, but the difference between us was that while I was happy to have extricated myself and given it up as a bad lot, Con was regretful that the Church couldn’t answer his questions. He hadn’t been to mass in years, but it was like he was always leaving the door open just in case the Church could improve its case. Then he suddenly finds himself trying to make sense of what had happened to Gail, contemplating the loss of this whole future that had been in front of him one minute and taken away forever the next. He needed to believe in something, needed to believe there was a reason or an order behind it, and a purpose for himself in the world after being cut adrift. That’s his “compelling but non-smart” reason for turning to religion.’

  ‘But whether you like it or not, it was religion that got him through it,’ Heather says. She speaks softly, trying to ensure it doesn’t sound like she’s telling him off or taking sides, but she’s already conscious of wanting to protect Blake. ‘You have to give credit where it’s due. Con is happy in what he does. He’s good at what he does. He could never get back what he lost, but what he’s got today, he’s got because of his faith. Maybe you should try to make peace with that.’

  Kane says nothing for a moment, but it’s like he’s struggling to suppress a response rather than contemplating her suggestion. He opens his mouth to speak, then holds off again, looking at her as if to say she really doesn’t understand.

  ‘Tell me this, Heather,’ he says, finally having collected himself. ‘Where’s the control group when people say faith got a person through something? How do we compare how that person would have got on in the same situation without their faith?’

  ‘But if you’re his best friend, the one who understands most what he’s been through, shouldn’t you of all people respect the decisions he’s made, the conclusions he’s reached? Even if you disagree with them, shouldn’t you accept how important to him Con’s beliefs are?’

  Kane nods like this is something he knows is true, even something that bothers his conscience, but then fixes her with a look of unapologetic sincerity.

  ‘If I believed he believed them, I would.’

  Heather feels her mouth open slightly but nothing emerges. She’s about to gently admonish him again for the inherent arrogance in Kane’s words, when she realises that they explain everything she’s never quite understood about Blake.

  ‘When we were debating tonight,’ Kane continues, ‘did you really hear what he said? He talks about “the God I have faith in”, not “the God I believe in”. Con has always had faith in the idea of faith. What he has is a meta-faith. Con isn’t a priest because he believes. He’s a priest because he wants to believe. Since Gail died, he’s spent his entire adult life searching for something that will make him believe. And he’s yet to find it.’

  VII

  November 12th 2002. Tullian remembers it more vividly than any other day of his life. It was, effectively, a second birthday: a day of being reborn, passing into a new world. A day when belief became fact and faith became reality. But not in a happy way.

  He stood in an antechamber, having been silently escorted there by an elderly curate so imbued with a solemnity of duty that it was possible to imagine him having performed his role for a thousand years. Then he waited, alone, for almost an hour, before hearing a single pair of footsteps descend the staircase into the vault. He knew merely from the lightness of their gait that they did not belong to the man he expected, Cardinal O’Hara. Instead, he found himself confronted by the slight, octogenarian but nonetheless daunting figure of Cardinal Carlo Parducci. Tullian was not ashamed to admit that he felt his pulse race, and briefly entertained the most paranoid fears that he had been lured down here for reasons better associated with the far south of Italy.

  The laity and the media had talked of Joseph Ratzinger as being ‘the Vatican’s Rottweiler’, but those truly in the know understood that it was Parducci who had long been the most feared man in Rome, the unseen power behind two of the preceding three papacies (John Paul I being the exception, with Luciani’s efforts to marginalise Parducci’s influence leading to the most squalid of rumours).

  ‘Cardinal Tullian, peace be with you,’ he said.

  ‘Peace be with you.’

  ‘I hope you breakfasted well, for it was your last meal on this Earth as you used to know it.’

  That Parducci was speaking English, despite Tullian’s fluent Italian, played a large part in salving his fears about what might be about to happen in this hidden and unwitnessed place. Parducci was extending a generous courtesy, and his tone was one of regret.

  Parducci produced a key and pulled open the wide pair of wooden doors that dominated the antechamber. They revealed only a further door, this time of grey steel, its lock taking the form of an electronic keypad.

  ‘What is this place?’ Tullian asked.

  ‘To put it in the context of your home country, Cardinal, this place is the Church’s equivalent of what you may have heard referred to as Area 51.’

  Parducci opened the steel door and led him inside, into his rebirth.

  The specimens were enclosed in glass cases to prevent decaying contamination from the air, and kept in darkness to preserve them also from light; the vault being lit by ultraviolet lamps on the extremely rare occasions when anyone was permitted to view it.

  Parducci first showed him a skeleton, picked clean by the ravages of time but shocking enough in bearing a tail at one end of its spine, horns protruding from its skull at the other.

  ‘This one came into the Church’s possession in 1321, slain in the mountains of Bavaria. If you look closely, you can see the damage to its upper arm from a sword blow, though it was in fact killed by being run through. Little is known beyond that. It was sent here by Matthias, Bishop of Mainz, and its discovery precipitated a truly bloody period of witch-hunting throughout Germany.’

  He then led him to a desiccated and partially mummified specimen, dried-out skin still stretched across its frame, a look of snarling violence still legible on its grimacing face.

  ‘This one was entrusted to us by King James VI of Scotland - later James I of England - in 1590. Attempts were made to preserve it, but as you can see, the means available to our predecessors at the time were inadequate. This one was taken alive and observed personally by James, who eventually had it transported - under all secrecy - to the Vatican. James had seen the beast tortured but feared the consequences of killing it, in case this merely freed its soul to possess another.

  ‘The experience had a dramatic effect upon him and consequently upon his country. Witchcraft had been a criminal offence in Scotland before 1590 but very little action had been taken in the name of the law. However, having seen this demon live and breathe, James became both obsessed and paranoid. Within a year, three hundred alleged witches were tried for plotting to kill him, accused of feats such as summoning a storm to drown him at sea and attempting to conjure his death by melting a wax effigy of him. In 1597, he wrote his treatise on “Daemonologie”. Hundreds upon hundreds of people were executed as witches throughout his reign.’

  Parducci’s words barely registered as Tullian stared aghast at these revolting affronts and contemplated the hideousness of all that their existence implied - for the world and, indeed, for the cosmos.

  ‘Your letter to Cardinal O’Hara suggested that the shadow realm could be but an atom’s width away. Here lies proof that the border between it and our world has already been breached. Demons are not merely symbolic, Cardinal, not simple projections of our darkest thoughts and most fearful nightmares. They have been coming throu
gh into our world for centuries, most probably for millennia.’

  VIII

  ‘Caitlin,’ Rosemary whispers, as loudly as she dares. There’s been no sound or movement from Bernie or Maria for some time now, and she doesn’t want to waken them, but she’s sure Caitlin hasn’t fallen asleep yet.

  She’d been hoping she would be the first to flake out. There’s no temptation when there’s no option, and there’s no option while there are other people sharing your room. Even in the dark, they’re only feet away, sensing movement, hearing all sound. There’s no option. No temptation. No temptation means not lying there saying decades of the Rosary, partly as a distraction and partly in prayer to Mary for strength. How many Hail Marys, how many decades of the Rosary, since it began? How many hours awake? How many failures? And afterwards, how many tears?

  ‘Caitlin,’ she tries again.

  There’s no response.

  It’s Friday night; no, Saturday morning now, technically. Saturday night into Sunday morning will mark her little anniversary. Six weeks clean. Six weeks since she last succumbed. It was getting more all the time, but she couldn’t say it was getting easier. Some things required less and less effort the more you got used to them, but this was like holding your breath. The longer you held out, the harder it became.

  She used to read about drug abusers and, despite the Church’s message of compassion towards the afflicted - hate the sin but love the sinner - she couldn’t help but feel they were weak and self-indulgent. That was before she found her own heroin. Closer to the mark, she used to think the same thing about homosexuals, who were ‘called to chastity’ according to the Church. ‘This inclination constitutes for most of them a trial,’ the Catechism said. ‘These persons are called to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.’

  Why couldn’t they just call on God’s strength and simply restrain themselves? she used to wonder. Now she knows.

  This desire, it feels like a curse. She who has been so faithful, so devout, in every way that has been in her power; she who has never missed mass, said her prayers every night since she was three, given up most of her free time to church activities: she has committed a mortal sin. Knowingly, wantonly and repeatedly committed a mortal sin.

  ‘Both the Magisterium of the Church - in the course of a constant tradition - and the moral sense of the faithful have declared without hesitation that masturbation is an intrinsically and seriously disordered act.’ So said Pope Paul VI in Persona Humana 1975. She had searched for any update on the Church’s position, or even a more liberal-minded interpretation of the previous, but as recently as 2000, the Scottish Catholic Education Commission’s consultation document ‘Relationships and Moral Education’ reiterated that it was ‘a very serious disorder that cannot be morally justified’, while Pope Benedict had called it ‘a debasement of the human body’.

  She wishes she was still a child, wishes she was back in what that same document reminded her, longingly, was a ‘period of tranquillity and serenity’, undisturbed by ‘unnecessary knowledge’. She barely talks to boys now. She sometimes tells herself that she finds them disgusting, with their crudeness and base obsessions, but she knows that she’s merely deflecting the blame. What disgusts her about them is only what she sees reflected of herself: what they make her want; what they make her do.

  She has to make her sacrifice to the Lord’s cross, and accept that she has a condition that, like homosexuality, must be seen as a call to chastity. Thus she has to limit her interactions, keep her dealings with boys as stilted and functionary as possible. She can’t let them give her imagination anything to feed upon, because that’s how it starts. A moment of flirtation, a lewd comment, a stolen look: the slightest thing can be the seed, the germ. That’s how temptation works.

  It is a relief to be here, to be on retreat. Perhaps God knew she needed respite. Three nights in a room with three other girls. Three nights with no option. She’s been looking forward to it, knowing it will ease her over the six-week mark and beyond.

  So why can’t she sleep?

  Because a retreat is not enough. Three nights’ respite is not enough. She needs to talk to somebody, but there is nobody she can talk to: not about this. She can’t confess it either, can’t tell a priest. Not Father Blake, certainly, and not Canon Daly either. He’s known her since she was about five, spoken to her three times a week at choir practice and what have you.

  Bernie and Maria are not an option. Nor is she going to ask Caitlin: ‘Hey, do you touch yourself?’ But Caitlin does seem spiky on the subject of the Church these days, and Rosemary has a sudden interest in discovering why. She wants to hear a dissenting voice: not that of a person who was always ambivalent or even hostile to her faith, but a person who used to be as devout as she. If she could talk, just talk to someone who might have a different perspective, she’s sure that would help.

  But help how? Help because basically she wants someone to say what she’s done - what she wants to do again - is all right? Who could tell her that, with any authority, when the Catechism is so clear on the matter, and has been for centuries? Isn’t she like a drug addict wishing the authorities would just legalise heroin rather than dealing with her own problem?

  It’s not all right. That’s why she’s suffering. It’s not rocket science. Sin leads to suffering. She sinned, ergo she is suffering.

  So why, when she is not sinning, does it feel like she’s suffering more?

  ‘Caitlin,’ she whispers a third time. ‘Are you awake?’

  Jesus, take a hint, Caitlin thinks. Yes I’m awake, but hasn’t it occurred to you that, after three attempts, I’m either asleep and ought to be left alone, or pretending to be asleep, and thus attempting to convey the same message all the more strongly? Yes, Rosemary. I’m awake, but no, Rosemary, I don’t want to have an in-depth late-night conversation about the latest pronouncement by Pope Benedict, the Novus Ordo, the Tridentine Rite or whatever other tragic shit you are disturbing enough to even know about.

  For heaven’s sake, girl, someone needs to remind you that you’re seventeen, and you don’t get to do this twice. Do you think an ‘ever-loving God’ would want you spending your adolescence alternating between anger and misery as a bunch of joyless old men in silly outfits tell you what to disapprove of and what to feel guilty about? Yep, good thing all the big issues Jesus cared about, such as poverty, tyranny, inequality and oppression, had been eradicated: that left the Church free to concentrate on piddly little issues that they personally had hang-ups about, like homosexuality and birth control.

  At this most difficult age, feeling awkward, misshapen, spotty, graceless, uncool and confused, all of it ultimately down to sex, it transpired that the only guidance an all-powerful super-being from a higher plane could offer on that baffling subject was: ‘Try not to think about it. Put it out of your head until you’re married.’

  Why, thank you, Father, thank you, your Eminence, thank you, your Holiness. Thank you, Lord. That really saves us from the maelstrom of post-pubescent female emotions. Caitlin could picture a cross instead of a Nike swoosh: ‘Just don’t do it.’ And what with them all being guys, they would be a lot of help dealing with what she has been going through of late. But then, it wasn’t just religion that was useless when it came to this kind of thing. Who do you talk to about having this weird mix of fear and fascination with the male member?

  It’s been haunting her for ages: stalking her fantasies, killing them stone dead. She’s seventeen years old and in no hurry to have sex; let’s face it, she would be grateful enough for the chance to walk, never mind fly. But even her thoughts and daydreams (not to mention her last-thing-at-night dreams) in which she plays out soft-focus and strictly soft-core scenarios about meeting the right boy, are being increasingly derailed. She envisions kind words, solicitous acts, soft lips, tender arms, and even, sometimes, delicate hands in delicate places - then up it rears, the serpent from the depths, the i
nescapable reality that lies in the extrapolations of even the most idealised imaginings.

  That thing’s got to hurt. It’s got to do damage, and not just some rite-of-passage, largely symbolic damage in breaking the hymen. She’s never been able to use tampons, and they’re the size of cocktail sausages. There is no way that is ever fitting. And yet . . .

  She lies there some nights simply wondering what it must feel like; and not only what it feels like to the touch, but what it must feel like to be male, to have that appendage. How can it be flesh and yet supposedly so rigid? Is it like muscle that’s become calcified? Surely that can’t be pleasant. And how can the softness of a kiss, the softness of an embrace, the tenderness of caressing, give way, give a willing place to this brutal, unyielding thing?

  Maybe when it doesn’t seem scary any more is when you know you’re ready to do it. It’s difficult to imagine ever feeling that way, but then right now it’s hard enough to imagine just having a boyfriend. She got off with her cousin’s next-door neighbour Carl last Christmas down in Southampton, and apart from officially ‘going with’ Radar in Primary Five, that’s been the sum of her love life. In the movies, Christ, in bloody Hollyoaks, they’re always having parties or hanging out in places where they can meet each other. How is she meant to find the time or the opportunity here in reality: studying for all these exams every night, working all day Saturday for a little cash she seldom even has the chance to spend?

  Then, of course, there is Sunday, a valuable chunk of which is sacrificed every week still going to mass because she is too chicken to tell her mum and dad what she really believes (and in particular what she really, really doesn’t).

  Yeah, quite the rebel. Quite the fearless heretic. Maybe the reason she is so sore on poor Rosemary for her ongoing assumptions is because she is too cowardly to tell anyone the truth. It’s difficult, though. She’s not good at confrontations, and she doesn’t want to hurt her parents’ feelings or in any way let them down. On the other hand, it’s increasingly starting to burn that she is written off as a shiny-haloed goody-two-shoes. Yes, she’s quiet and polite and she works hard: it’s who she is, but it’s not all she is. It especially pisses her off that people think because she’s well behaved that she must also be dutifully religious. However, that doesn’t piss her off as much as the fact that, in the Church’s sin-seeking and ever disapproving eyes, she is far better behaved than she’d sincerely like to be.