by John Saul
The last to come in were Karen Morton and Marilyn Crane. Though they entered the room together, it was obvious to Balsam that it was only a matter of coincidence. Marilyn seemed almost unaware that anyone else was in the room. And Karen completely ignored Marilyn as she walked slowly toward the front row of desks. This morning she didn’t seat herself immediately; instead, she piled her books on top of the desk, and approached Balsam, a little smile playing around the corners of her mouth. Balsam had a distinct feeling that she was about to play some kind of a game with him, and decided to end it before it got started.
“Take your seat, please, Karen,” he said shortly, not seeing the hurt look that came over her at his rebuff. “We’re already late getting started, and there’s a lot I want to accomplish today.” Then he turned his attention back to the class, and particularly to Marilyn Crane, who had moved lifelessly to her usual place at the back of the room.
As he finished setting up the sound system, Balsam began explaining what relaxation technique was all about, without telling them what he hoped to accomplish with it. He was afraid that if they knew he was planning more for them than a simple experiment, their guard would be up, and they wouldn’t be responsive to the technique. A hand went up in the front row, Janet Connally’s.
“Janet?”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Janet said slowly. Then she grinned mischievously. “I mean, it sounds like I might fall asleep.”
Balsam returned her grin. “You might,” he agreed. “But don’t worry about it Today marks a momentous event at St Francis Xavier’s. Sleeping in class is permitted. In fact, a lot of you might wind up snoring through this whole thing, so let’s get rid of the desks. Let’s push them all over against the walls, and make enough room so everybody can lie down on the floor. If we’re going to relax, we might as well go all the way.”
The class exchanged looks, startled, then quickly began moving the furniture. When the job was half-complete, the door suddenly opened, and Monsignor Vernon appeared, his eyes quickly taking in the activity in the room. The activity stopped. It was almost as if someone had suddenly thrown a switch, and the motion had frozen. But instead of asking what was going on, the priest simply stared at Balsam, smiled briefly, and disappeared again.
When the door was safely shut, the clearing of the furniture continued.
There was a lot of giggling and whispering as the class settled itself on the floor, and Balsam didn’t try to stop it He wanted them to be relaxed, and if giggling and whispering would help, that was fine with him.
“All right,” he said when they seemed as settled as they were going to be, “let’s begin. I’m going to put on some music, and I want you to let yourselves float with it. As I said earlier, don’t worry about falling asleep. There’s no better relaxation than sleep, and that’s what this is all about”
He set the needle on the record, and the music began. At the first notes, another wave of giggling went over the class, but it soon subsided. Slowly, one by one, each of the students succumbed to the persistent rhythm and monotony of the chanting. Balsam walked among them and saw that their eyes were closed. One or two of them were displaying that odd flutter of the eyelids that comes with light sleep. He began talking to them, telling them to become aware of their breathing, to imagine with each breath that they were sinking into the floor. Deeper and deeper into the floor. Breathe evenly. Listen to the music. Sink into the floor. Deeper. Deeper.….
He went back to the front of the room and was about to continue when once more the door opened, and Monsignor Vernon came silently into the room. This time he was not alone. Behind him, the Society of St. Peter Martyr filed into Room 16. Almost before Balsam was aware of what was happening, the six priests ranged along the back wall, silent observers of whatever was about to happen.
Balsam looked quickly at the class; none of them had noticed the intrusion of the elderly clerics and their young leader. Their breathing remained even and deep, their eyes closed. Balsam began turning the volume of the music down, until it was an almost imperceptible background. And then, trying to keep his voice on an even tone that wouldn’t interrupt the state of near-trance that had come over the class, he began to speak.
“Relaxation,” he began, “is a technique designed to relieve internal pressures through the release of physical pressures. Basically, it helps us the way sleep does. But in simple relaxation, we try to put our bodies in a state almost resembling sleep while we let our conscious minds roam about, sorting out our anxieties and dissipating them harmlessly. What we are doing today is a little like lying in a hammock on a sunny afternoon, day-dreaming. Daydreams, which we may think are just idle fantasies, are really much more. They’re a means of bolstering our own identities, or reinforcing ourselves against the everyday pressures of life.” He glanced quickly over the class, noting that so far nothing had disturbed any of the students. Jim Mulvey was snoring gently. Vaguely amused, Balsam wondered if any of the students were hearing him. He glanced at the back wall, where the Society stood impassively listening. Then he continued his lecture.
“Though we may sometimes feel that daydreaming is a waste of time, psychologists have known for years that it’s a very important means of releasing pressures. It’s a sort of safety valve. The human mind, of course, has developed many safety valves. One you’re all familiar with is dreaming. Dreaming is really the unconscious mind clearing up the debris it has been otherwise unable to cope with. Daydreaming is similar, except that it occurs on the conscious level.”
The class was still quiet, but the Society had shifted its attention. Their interest had moved to the class. They seemed particularly intent on two of the girls: Karen Morton and Marilyn Crane.
Feeling strangely uneasy, Balsam stepped up the pace of his talk.
“Occasionally,” he went on, “the safety valves the mind builds for itself fail to operate. When this happens, we begin to see all kinds of things happen, as the mind attempts to cope with its problems. Things like nervous tics develop, or a person becomes unable to concentrate. Or irrational behavior can begin to occur. Some people, when their safety valves fail to relieve internal pressure, begin scratching themselves, almost uncontrollably.
Balsam heard a faint rustling sound in the room and tried to pinpoint where it had come from. Karen Morton seemed to be fumbling in her purse. Then she settled down again. The members of the Society of St Peter Martyr still stood impassively against the back wall. If they were listening to him as intently as Balsam suspected, they showed no outward signs of it. He tried to pick up his train of thought.
“Sometimes,” he continued, keeping his voice low, “all of our safety valves malfunction, and when this happens the results can be very serious indeed. The end result, of course, can be self-destructiveness.”
With a shock Balsam realized what he had just said, and stopped abruptly. His eyes went to the dour faces of the Society. Now, instead of the almost blank expressions they had been wearing, they were staring at him with an intensity that almost frightened him. He was getting too close to the sort of thing the Society would brand as heresy, and Peter Balsam ranged around in his mind for a way out He found it almost too easily.
“The Church,” he continued smoothly, “has recognized this for centuries, long before the social sciences began to study the mechanisms of the human mind. From its very inception, the Church has realized the importance of releasing the pressures and problems that can impair the functioning of the mind. To provide a mechanism for the release of pressure, the Church instituted the ritual of the confessional.” He glanced quickly at the six priests and was relieved to see that they had resumed their impassivity. Then, as Balsam continued his lecture on the function of the confessional in the psychological health of those who used it properly, Monsignor Vernon smiled encouragingly at him, and led the five elderly priests out of Room 16. When they were gone, Balsam felt a sudden surge of relief. He continued his lecture, only now he felt free to concentrate on what he felt
was the area of primary importance. He talked to them about Judy Nelson, and this time he was sure that his lecture would not be interrupted.
He told them that what had happened to Judy was simply a matter of too much pressure having been allowed to build up, with no release. When it had become too much for her to bear, she had behaved irrationally—she had become self-destructive. He tried to tell them that Judy was more to be pitied than blamed, and then, as he continued talking softly, he urged them to do their best to be kind to her when she returned to school, to try to understand and not to dwell on the details of what she had done.
He glanced at the clock, and saw that only ten minutes of the hour remained. He turned to the sound system, and quickly changed the record. The soft chanting was replaced by the discordant sounds of acid rock. Gradually, he began turning the volume up, until the room was filled with the vibrant sounds of the music. Soon a stirring was noticeable in the room, as the class began to come out of their almost stuporous state and become aware of their surroundings.
All of them, that is, except one.
Marilyn Crane, a strange look on her face, her eyes wide open and her mouth hanging slack, had risen to her knees. Her hands were clasped before her, and as the class stared, she began to pray.
Karen Morton noticed the blood on her hands while she was opening her locker. It was just a slight stickiness at first, and she would have ignored it except that when she removed her fingers from the lock, the brilliant redness of fresh blood remained. That was when she looked at the palms of her hands.
The odd part was that it didn’t hurt, and she didn’t know how she had done it. There, in the center of each palm, the skin was broken, and the flesh had a strange pulpy look as if she had been gouging at it. She glanced around to see if anybody had noticed her, but no one was near. She pulled a Kleenex out of her purse, and hastily wiped the stains off her locker. Iben she hurried toward the stairs, wanting to get downstairs to the restroom before anybody saw that she was bleeding and asked for an explanation.
Safe inside the restroom, Karen examined the wounds closely. She felt something hard in one of them, and washed her hands carefully. When the blood was gone, she held up the injured hand and found something stuck in the wound. She worked it carefully loose, and rinsed it off. It was the broken point of a pencil. She washed both hands once more, dried them, and searched her purse. There, at the bottom, was a pendi, covered with blood, its point broken off. Sometime during the hour, she realized, she had fished the pencil out of her purse, and begun gouging herself with it. But she had no memory of any of it; none whatsoever.
She burrowed further into her purse and found a couple of battered Band-Aids she had been carrying around with her for months. She stripped the wrappers off and began applying them to her injured hands. It was while she was applying the Band-Aids that the pain began. It was very slight, at first, but quickly searing sensations began to shoot up her arms. By the time she had finished with the makeshift bandaging, Karen had made up her mind. She was going home for the rest of the day. She told no one where she was going, or why. She simply left the restroom, walked up the stairs, and out of the building. For the rest of the afternoon she worried about what had happened to her. As the afternoon wore on, Karen Morton became increasingly frightened.
“Marilyn?” Peter Balsam asked when he saw that there was no one left in Room 16 but himself and the girl. She gave no sign that she had heard. “Marilyn?”
Slowly her head swung around, and she stared at him in silence for a long time; Then her lips began to move, but no words formed.
“I saw her,” she whispered finally, with a great deal of effort. “I saw her.”
“Saw her?” Balsam repeated, baffled. “Saw who?”
And suddenly Marilyn was smiling, her face taking on a look of radiance that almost transformed her homeliness into beauty.
“The Virgin,” she whispered. “I saw the Blessed Virgin. She came to me!”
“It’s all right,” Balsam said soothingly. He tried to keep his voice steady, but he felt his stomach lurch. Something had gone wrong; Marilyn had not come out of the semi-trance along with the rest of the class, and there was no one to turn to for help. Telling himself to stay calm, he decided to try to talk her back into reality.
“What did you see?” he asked quietly.
“She was beautiful,” Marilyn said dreamily. “Only she wasn’t smiling at me. It was as if she was in pain. And then, while I was watching her, she showed me her hands. They were bleeding. It—it was as if she had been—as if she had been—” She trailed off, unable to say the word.
“Crucified?” Peter Balsam asked softly. Marilyn nodded mutely. “What does it mean?” she asked him, and for the first time Balsam was sure she was aware of his presence. “She was trying to tell me something, I know she was, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. What was she trying to tell me?”
Balsam took Marilyn’s hand and held it gently. “It’s all right,” be said soothingly. “It’s all over now. You fell asleep and dreamed. That’s all.”
“No,” Marilyn objected, pulling her hand out of his. “I know I wasn’t asleep. I heard everything you were saying. You were talking about safety valves, and releases, and what happens when the safety valves don’t work. And that’s when she came to me. But I still heard you. You went on talking, and the priests of the Sanhedrin were here, listening to you, and watching the Sorrowful Mother, and then they went away. And then you talked about Judy Nelson, and the Virgin went away too. I know I wasn’t asleep, Mr. Balsam. I know it” Marilyn stood up and began putting the room in order, and Balsam realized that whatever had happened, it was over now. But what had happened? Marilyn, at least, had been aware of the six priests’ presence. He decided to probe a little further.
“You saw the priests?” he asked her. Marilyn nodded emphatically.
‘The priests of the Sanhedrin. The Jews who condemned our Lord. They were here, six of them, and they were watching the Sorrowful Mother. But she wasn’t paying any attention to them. She wanted to talk to me. But I don’t know why.”
Balsam wondered if he should tell Marilyn that the priests she had seen were very real. No, it would probably only upset the girl more. Instead, he decided to try to convince her that it was nothing but a dream.
“There was no one here, Marilyn,” he assured her. “What happened was simply a mixture of a dream and reality. It isn’t uncommon. With part of your mind you’re aware of what’s going on around you, but part of your mind is drifting. And things start to get mixed up. The real world gets mixed into your dream, and your dream seems all the more real.”
“But it wasn’t a dream,” Marilyn insisted. “I know it wasn’t a dream. I saw the Blessed Virgin, and her hands were bleeding!” Then, seeing the disbelief in Peter Balsam’s face, she ran from the room, as if leaving his skepticism would confirm the reality of what she had seen.
Alone in Room 16, a deeply disturbed Peter Balsam sat thinking. A few minutes later he reluctantly concluded that he must discuss the incident with Monsignor Vernon.
Balsam wasn’t surprised when he found the Society of St. Peter Martyr gathered in Monsignor Vernon’s office. It was as if they had expected him, and when he entered the office they rose as one to greet him. As usual, the Monsignor acted the spokesman.
“Well, Peter,” he said, smiling almost warmly. “We are pleased with the way you handled your class today.”
Balsam smiled wryly. It was odd indeed that he was finally receiving praise for the one class that had gone totally wrong.
“Pm afraid I handled it very badly,” he said. Monsignor Vernon looked at him questioningly, and Balsam related as well as he could what had happened to Marilyn Crane. The priests listened in silence. When Balsam finished they looked to Monsignor Vernon. The priest frowned as he thought over the implications of the odd incident.
“It would appear that Marilyn thinks she’s had a religious experience,” he said carefully.
Balsam nodded. “I tried to explain to her that it was much more likely that she simply fell asleep, but she wouldn’t listen. And the more I think about it, the more worried I get”
“Worried?”
“I’ve been thinking about Marilyn and her entire personality structure,” Balsam began. But before he could finish his thoughts, the Monsignor interrupted him.
“Marilyn’s always been one of our best students, and one of our most religious ones, too.”
“I’m sure she has,” Balsam said dryly. “But I wonder how much of it is real.”
“Real?” Vernon repeated. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Marilyn doesn’t seem to be a very well-balanced child. She has practically no friends, and the other kids shun her. It’s almost as if they take a malicious pleasure in making her feel bad.” He told them what had happened at the party the previous Saturday night They listened, again in silence. “If you want my opinion,” Balsam finished, “Marilyn uses her studies and her religion as an escape. Since she isn’t particularly well accepted by her peers, she chooses to get her acceptance from her teachers and the Church.”
“Is that so bad?” Father Bryant asked. “There are worse ways to compensate.”
Balsam shrugged. “There are all kinds of ways to compensate, and I’m certainly not about to suggest that Marilyn has picked unhealthy ones. But any compensation, carried to an extreme, is unhealthy.”