Punish the Sinners

by John Saul

  “And you agree with her?” he asked carefully.

  ‘I’m not certain,” the priest said pensively. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you this evening. I’ve been thinking about the talk we had the other day, about your thesis. It occurred to me that I’m still not sure where you stand.”

  “Where I stand?” Balsam repeated, trying to fathom the Monsignor’s meaning.

  “I suppose this will sound strange to you,” Vernon said, trying to smile, with very little success. “But I must know exactly where you stand with reference to the teachings of the Church.”

  “Well, I haven’t left it,” Balsam said.

  “No, you haven’t, have you?” Monsignor said speculatively. “But then, there are various ways of leaving the Church, aren’t there? And it seems to me that your thesis was certainly a step, however tentative, in that direction.”

  He paused then, as if waiting for a response from Balsam. When none was forthcoming he continued. “Well,” he said abruptly, “there’s no point in beating around the bush. We’re here to determine whether you do, or whether you do not, accept the Doctrines of the Church. Since you seem to be particularly well versed in at least one of them, we might as well begin with that one.”

  Balsam’s first instinct was to simply stand up, walk from the room, proceed down the hill, pack his things, and catch the first train out of Neilsville. Then he thought about it, and decided that there was no point in evasion. If the issue was so important to the priest, he would face it.

  ‘Fine,” he said at last. “Where do you want to begin?”

  “I thought I just made that clear,” the Monsignor said. “Do you accept the Church’s Doctrine that suicide is a mortal and irredeemable sin?”

  “I thought I told you the other day that I don’t think I’m qualified to make any judgments at all about that.”

  “Are you qualified to have faith?” the priest countered.

  “I don’t think it’s a question of faith,” Balsam replied quietly.

  “Then let me put it in purely intellectual terms,” Monsignor Vernon said. Unexpectedly, he stood and took Balsam’s glass. “More?” he asked. Surprised, Balsam nodded. The priest refilled the glasses, handed one to Peter, and regained his chair.

  “There are reasons why we have the Doctrines, you know,” he said, and Peter could tell from his tone that he was about to receive a lecture. He nodded anyway, on the off chance that it might cut the lecture short. It didn’t.

  “The Doctrine against suicide exists for many rear sons,” the priest said. “Most important, of course, suicide is in obvious conflict with natural law, since it involves the destruction of natural order.” Balsam was tempted to bring up the phenomenon of lemmings hurling themselves periodically into the sea. He decided against it. The Monsignor would merely say there could be no comparison between human self-destruction and subhuman self-destruction. During this sequence of thoughts Balsam had lost track of the priest’s line of reasoning. He seemed to have shifted from the subject of natural order to the subject of absolution.

  “You realize,” Vernon was saying, “that one of the greatest problems a suicide presents to the Church is the problem of absolution …”

  Not to mention the problems the suicide is causing for himself, Balsam thought. He went on listening.

  “… The very act of suicide, if it is successful, precludes the possibility of confession and absolution for the sin. There can’t be any question but that the suicide has separated himself from the Mother Church, and, therefore, from God.”

  “Extra ecclesium nulla solus,” Balsam muttered.

  “Pardon me?” the priest said.

  “Outside the Church there is no salvation,” Balsam translated for him.

  “I know the Latin,” Monsignor Vernon said dryly. “I simply didn’t hear the words clearly.” Then he paused, and stared hard at Balsam. “Do you have ‘problems’ with that Doctrine as well?”

  Balsam shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he said wearily. He leaned forward in his chair, and decided to try to explain his thinking to the priest.

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t know what’s been going on here in Neilsville, but everywhere else, at least everywhere I’ve been, a lot of people are raising questions. And these aren’t people who have left the Church, or are contemplating leaving it They’re simply some thoughtful people who would like to see the Church bring itself a little closer to the twentieth century.”

  “And that includes challenging the Doctrines?” Vernon asked darkly.

  “Not necessarily,” Balsam said. Was there no getting through to this man? Pete Vernon had always seemed so reasonable in school. What had happened? He made one more try. “It’s not really a matter of challenging the Doctrines,” he said. “It’s simply a matter of bringing the Church more in touch with the needs of people.”

  “The Church is concerned with the needs of God,” Monsignor Vernon said stiffly, his voice taking on a coldness that almost frightened Peter.

  “There are those of us who don’t think the needs of God and the needs of man are any different And we would like to see the Doctrines reflect that.” After he spoke he realized that he had taken a stand. The Monsignor was glaring his disapproval

  “The Doctrines are infallible,” Monsignor Vernon declared. “They do not need modification. Or do you also challenge the Doctrine of Infallibility?”

  Balsam found himself suddenly angry. The man sounded like a medieval Inquisitor. “The Doctrine of Infallibility itself is only about one hundred years old,” he pointed out, trying to contain himself. “And, unless my memory is way off, I don’t think there was any kind of unanimity when that particular Doctrine was adopted.”

  Suddenly the priest was on his feet, glaring down at Balsam with an intensity that frightened him.

  “Peter Balsam,” the priest hissed, his eyes glinting, “it is exactly the sort of thinking I have heard from you tonight that is destroying the Church. We will not tolerate it at St Francis Xavier’s. I do not know, and do not particularly care, what your private thoughts may be—obviously you are very dose to falling from grace—but I will not stand for your contaminating the children of this parish with your ideas. It has been my duty and privilege to protect my flock from ideas such as those you’ve expressed, and I will not fail in my duty now. Do I make myself clear?”

  Now Balsam stood up, and gazed at the priest levelly. “You do,” he said tightly. “And I have to tell you that what I’m hearing sounds as if it came straight out of the thirteenth century.”

  Suddenly the priest relaxed a little, and moved away from Balsam. When he turned to face Peter again, there was a slight smile on his lips that could have been genuine. Peter doubted it was.

  “H you’ve studied your history, you know that there were a lot more saints in that century than in this. Maybe we should consider that fact before we talk with such self-satisfaction about our ‘modern times.’ “

  “We know a bit more about human beings now,” Balsam said.

  “Perhaps,” Monsignor replied. “But they certainly knew something we’ve forgotten—how to deal with heresy and sin.” He paused, and when he continued it was more to himself than to Peter. “Or at least some of us have. Not all of us.”

  Ten minutes later, as he walked back down the hill, Balsam was still trying to figure out what had happened to his old friend, Pete Vernon. Though a definite physical resemblance remained, Monsignor Vernon had nothing else in common with the Pete Vernon with whom Peter Balsam had grown up.

  As he was leaving, the Monsignor had urged him once more to attend a meeting of the study group he led. Perhaps he should, Balsam decided. Perhaps it was the study group that had affected Monsignor Vernon so strongly, and made his religion so rigid. What was it the priest had said they called the group? The Society of St. Peter Martyr. The same saint whose statue stood in the alcove of Room 16, keeping tabs on him. Peter Balsam decided to attend the next meeting of the Society. If he wa
s still in Neilsville.

  After Balsam left the rectory, and he bad carefully locked the front door for the night, Monsignor Vernon returned to the den, carefully locked that door as well, and lit the fire that was already laid in the fireplace. Then, unaware of the uncomfortably high temperature that was turning the small room into an oven, he began to pray. He prayed for a long time, and by the time he was finished, the flames had died. AU that remained in the fireplace was a bed of coals, glowing hotly in the darkness. A bed of coals, he thought, that glowed for the heretics and sinners. Smiling contentedly, Monsignor Vernon took himself to bed. He would sleep peacefully tonight. Tomorrow he would begin his work.

  6

  The next day, a subtle shift had taken place in the seating pattern of the psychology class. Though the same five people still ranged across the front row, Judy Nelson was not sitting next to Karen Morton. Today she had moved herself to the end of the row, and Penny and Janet had each moved in a seat. Balsam had wondered, when he first noticed this, if something had happened between Karen and Judy, or whether the four girls were in the habit of changing places, and sharing each other. That, he knew, was unlikely—in many ways adolescents tended to be much more rigid than adults.

  Today, Balsam hadn’t bothered to cover the Skinner box. As he talked to the class, he occasionally glanced down at the rat, which sat calmly gazing back up at him, almost as if it knew it was going to be called upon to perform, and was awaiting its cue.

  Balsam was talking to the class about frustration, and he had tried to put a capital “F” on the word when he had first used it.

  “Frustration,” he had said, “might be defined as the feeling one gets when one has to sit and listen to a psychology lecture when one would rather be doing almost anything else.”

  The class had chuckled nervously, as if they were a little embarrassed at being caught out. But at least they were all paying attention; all that is, except Judy Nelson, who seemed lost in her own world. From what Balsam could observe of tibe sullen expression on her face, it was not a pleasant world.

  He was right. Judy was still sulking about the scene she had had with her mother the night before. She had spent most of an hour locked in the bathroom, waiting for the slight tap at the door, and her mother’s plaintive tone asking her if she was all right—the signal that she had won, that her mother had given in. But it didn’t come. Finally, Judy had given up the bathroom in favor of a frontal assault. She had gone downstairs to play backgammon with her father. But he had only looked at her coldly and announced that he had changed his mind—there would be no backgammon that night Judy, bursting into tears, had fled back to the bathroom. There she had waited. And waited. Eventually she had heard her parents come upstairs, and heard them call her a cheerful good-night Then she had heard their door close as they retired for the night Judy had considered throwing another tantrum, but had discarded the idea. Instead, she had taken her anger to bed with her, where she had no trouble at all in transferring it to Karen Morton.

  The “if onlies” had begun: If only Karen hadn’t called her. If only Karen hadn’t begun talking about the party. If only Karen hadn’t mentioned the dress. Ignoring the fact that she, too, had talked about the party, bragged about the dress, Judy had quickly decided that the whole thing was Karen’s fault. So, today, she had snubbed Karen in the morning, then carefully seated herself two seats away when they had arrived at Room 16. Now, as Mr. Balsam droned on, she glanced across at Karen, and mentally criticized everything about her, from her bleached hair and plucked brows to the too-tight dress that was stretched across her too-large bust It was all Karen’s fault, Judy told herself again. And then she saw all the students standing up and moving to the front of the room, and realized she hadn’t heard a word Mr. Balsam had said. Coming out of her reverie, Judy got up and joined the group clustered around the strange box with the rat in it

  “Now,” Peter Balsam was saying, “watch carefully. As you can see, I’ve arranged a maze in the box. A simple one. Two correct choices, and it’s easy to get through. For you and me, anyway. But it looks different to the rat, since he can’t see the whole thing, and wouldn’t know what to think of it, even if he could see it. Now, watch what happens.”

  He dropped a pellet of food at one end of the maze, and placed the rat at the other. Then he replaced the glass top on the box. The rat sniffed a couple of times, caught the scent of food, and began snuffling around. It started through the maze, came to a dead end, snuffled some more, retraced its steps, and got back on the right track. Then it missed the second turn, and came up against another dead end. Unfazed, it backtracked again. This time its efforts were rewarded.

  “Let’s try it again, and see what happens,” Balsam said. He opened the box, lifted the rat out, and put in another food pellet The rat made it to the food with only one wrong turn. The third time he repeated the experiment, the rat went directly to the food. It had learned the route.

  “Okay,” Balsam said. “I’m sure everyone understands what’s been happening. I’ve encouraged the rat to learn by rewarding him with food. So far, so good. Now let’s try something else. He picked up a small piece of wood from the desktop, and held it up for the class to see.

  “Let’s add a new element,” he said. “Let’s put this into the maze right here.” He carefully added the new barrier to the maze.

  “But if you put it there,” Janet Connally pointed out, “he won’t be able to get through at all.”

  Balsam smiled at her. “Exactly,” he said. “Now let’s see how the rat reacts.” He put the rat back in the box, and quickly replaced the glass top. The rat hurried through the maze until it suddenly bumped into the new barrier. It sniffed at the barrier a couple of times, and tried to prod its way past. The barrier held. Then the rat began moving more rapidly, poking in every comer, frantically searching for a way past the barrier. When it found none, it leaped against the barrier a couple of times, then strained upward and clawed at the glass. Finally, it sat very still, trembling, immobile.

  “What happened?” a voice asked softly.

  “I frustrated it,” Balsam said. “And when it couldn’t find any outlet for its frustration, it threw in the towel.”

  “You mean it just stopped trying?” Balsam recognized the voice now. It was Marilyn Crane. He glanced up at her, and saw an expression of compassion on her face.

  “That’s right,” he said. “It stopped trying. It will probably try again in a few minutes, since it can still smell the food. But it will stop again, and unless I take the barrier away it will just give up completely.”

  “But I still don’t understand what happened.” Penny Anderson looked worried.

  Balsam smiled at her. “I led it to expect something,” he said. “I taught it that if it went through the maze in a certain way it could expect a reward at the end. And then, just as it had gotten used to the game, I changed the rules. All of a sudden it doesn’t know what to expect, and finds that it isn’t even in control of the situation.

  So it’s frustrated Unless I relieve the frustration, it will get neurotic. In fact, if I tried, I could drive that rat completely crazy. All I’d have to do is keep changing the rules on it, let it learn the new rules, then change them again. Mainly, it’s a matter of being inconsistent As long as the rat knows what to expect, he’s all right It doesn’t bother him that he can’t get food when the light is out He just waits for the light to come back on. I set the rule long ago, and never varied it With the maze, I did something different I was inconsistent”

  “I think I see,” Janet said carefully. “It’s like with my parents. As long as they do what I expect them to do, I feel safe. But every now and then they do something unexpected, and it upsets me.”

  “That’s it” Balsam said. “If’s all a matter of consistency. Lack of consistency leads to frustration, and from there on it’s a downhill slide.”

  Just then the bell rang, and the class, without thinking, began moving to their desks. One or two l
aughed self-consciously.

  “Conditioned response,” Balsam heard Janet Connally whisper to Penny Anderson. Then the two girls were gone, disappearing into the hall with the rest of the class. When he turned back to the rat, Judy Nelson was staring blankly down into the box. Balsam watched her in silence for a moment, wondering if she was aware that the room had emptied. She seemed to be lost somewhere in the depths of the maze, as she had been lost somewhere in another world during his lecture. When. he finally spoke, she looked up in surprise.

  “Has he moved yet?” Balsam asked her.

  “No,” she said uncertainly, “He just sits there. It’s too bad, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” Balsam inquired.

  “Pm not sure. I mean, it just seems like it’s too bad the rat doesn’t have more control over his surroundings. It’s like he wants to do something, but just can’t do it.”

  “Exactly,” Balsam said, moving closer to her and looking down at the rat. The rat, still trembling, stared balefully back at him, almost as if it were reproaching him.

  “That’s one of the things that make rats nice for experimentation,” he explained. “Because they don’t have much control over their environment, it’s much easier to get dependable results. Or magnified results.”

  Judy peered at him now, a puzzled expression on her face.

  Balsam began again. “If the rat were human it wouldn’t be nearly so easy to reduce it to a point of total frustration. For instance, if the rat were a person, it would have first gone over the entire maze, making sure it hadn’t taken any wrong turns. Then it would have investigated the barrier, trying to figure a way to get through. And then, if that failed, it would have started figuring a way to break the glass, so it could go over.”

  Judy nodded her head. “And if that didn’t work?” she asked quietly.

  “Who knows?” Balsam shrugged. “If I were that rat, I suppose I’d be busy tearing that cage apart, or I’d kill myself trying.” His attention had wandered back to the rat again, but as he finished what he was saying he glanced once more at Judy. There was an odd look on her face.