Thomas M. Disch - The Priest

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THE PRIEST
by Thomas M. Disch
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Copyright 1994 by Thomas M. Disch
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New
York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great
Britain by Millennium, an imprint of Orion Books Ltd., London, in 1994.
ISBN 0-679-41880-6
For Phil Marsh Hoopster, hipster, excellent role model
Kill them all. God will look after His own.
--ARNALD-AMALRIC, Abbot of Citeaux,
at the massacre of Beziers, 1209
Kill 'em all! Let God sort 'em out.
--a popular U.S. T-shirt, 1986
1
The grass was unnaturally green. Jelly-bean green or the green of golf
games on television, though come to think of it that was grass too, televised
grass but grass nevertheless. Golf was the only game she enjoyed watching
because there were no rules to keep track of. You only had to sink the ball in
the hole and count the number of times you'd hit it. People could have played
golf here except for the headstones. So many names and for the life of her she
couldn't remember which one she was looking for. This one was nice, all
speckledy gray-pink, ALPHONSE BURDETr, but imagine being married to someone
called Alphonse, and in any case Alphonse Burdett had died in 1951 at the age
of--? She did the arithmetic from his birthdate, 1878. Seventy-three, when he
died in 1951. She could be pretty sure that ruled out Alphonse Burdett.
And look, right here on the next stone, CECILIA BURDETT, BELOVED WIFE,
1904--85. She felt almost as though Cecilia had caught her flirting with
Alphonse at one of those awful senior socials with Kool-Aid and Oreos. She
could remember things like that, general things, but not particulars, the
names and faces of people who assumed she remembered them and when she
couldn't then assumed she was an imbecile. But there were places she could
remember with the clarity of a slide being flashed on a screen. Living rooms
with all their furniture, backyards, the enormous produce department of a
supennarket somewhere, a room in a basement with just one tiny window near the
ceiling and large rhubarb leaves screening the window. She only had to close
her eyes and they were there for the summoning.
It was like a detective story, in a way. If this is the bedroom I
remember, with this wallpaper with a tangle of pastel blue and pink roses, and
this maple chest of drawers, and this crucifix with a frond of dried palm bent
double and attached to it with a rubber band, and this rug that's faded to
match the greenish tan of the chenille bedspread-- then who am I, the person
who can remember it all so clearly? Was it my bedroom? For that matter, is it
still?She sat down on Cecilia Burdett's headstone with a sigh of gratitude and
looked at her poor tired feet and marveled at her shoes. A woman of her age
wearing tennis shoes. Though if she'd had to walk about all over this grass in
a proper pair of shoes it would not have been easy. The sunshine was nice. She
could feel it right through the sleeves of her sweater. A cloudless blue sky,
a friendly sun, the lawn yielding with each footstep, what could be nicer.
It occurred to her to wonder, what if she were Cecilia Burdett? How
could she be sure she wasn't? What if this was heaven? With the beautiful
weather and no one around, it was peaceful enough to qualify, and four
headstones off was a bouquet of her favorite flowers, daffodils. It might not
be the heaven she'd been led to expect, but probably no one really knew what
heaven would be like, or God for that matter. Once, perhaps, she'd had clearer
ideas on the subject, the way she'd known whom to vote for, once, or how to
sight-read a piece of music, but all those clear things had gone blurry.
Usually that blurriness didn't bother her. It could even be pleasant. She
could settle for a heaven without trumpets and angels and everyone speaking in
Latin, a heaven that was just an increasing, agreeable blurriness with
everything slowly darkening until the stars began to be visible.
But what presumption. To suppose she was in heaven, without so much as a
stopover in purgatory, not to mention the worst and likeliest possibility. She
might not be able to remember her name but she could remember her sins well
enough, and all the confessions that had been lies, because she _knew_ she'd
go right back to the same sin, like a Weight Watcher returning to sticky buns.
Even now, if she went to confession, could she make a sincere act of
contrition? Once the temptation was gone, could you claim any credit for
resisting it? Assuming it was gone. At least of the birth control that was a
safe assumption. But of him? When she reached for a memory of him it was
always of some cheap motel room or the backseat of a car. Or a booth in a bar
with neon beer signs and his long white fingers playing with a cardboard
coaster advertising Hamm's. She could remember the fingers but not the face.
She could remember the guilt but not the love that had made the guilt worth
bearing.
A black car, a very nice one, long and expensive-looking, glided into
view and moved toward her with a sound of crunching gravel. It came to a stop
like a boat butting up to a dock, and when the driver got out she could see,
even this far away, that he was a priest. It was almost as though her guilt
had summoned him here. The priest lifted his right hand, greeting her or
blessing her, she couldn't tell which. She waved back and then, lowering her
hand, felt the back of her head to be sure her hair was presentable.
When he'd come near enough not to have to raise his voice, he said, "I
thought I might find you here."
How to reply? He seemed to know who she was, but she couldn't return the
compliment, though there was something vaguely familiar about him. Perhaps he
just had that kind of averagely good-looking face, less than a movie star,
more than a nobody. Mousy brown hair with the part a little off center like
the younger sort of TV personality. Well dressed, of course, but what priest
isn't, really, in his uniform of black suit and Roman collar? The shoes,
however, struck a false note. They were sneakers disguised to look like proper
shoes by being all black. A priest shouldn't be wearing sneakers, even black
sneakers.
"Father," she said, "how nice to see you."
He stopped beside Alphonse Burdett's gravestone and gave her a peculiar
look, a mix of puzzled and peeved. "Mother," he said softly, "how nice to see
_you_."
She realized at once and with a keen sense of embarrassment that she'd
done it again, forgotten everything. But even with him there before her,
calling her his mother, she didn't recognize him. Her memory was as useless as
a dead lightbulb.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Oh yes, I'm fine. It's such lovely weather." Then, when he just stood
there with the same perplexed smile, she asked, "And how are you?"
"Worried, actually. They called from the Home right after breakfast when
they realized you were missing, but I was away from the rectory all morning.
So it wasn't until noon that I finally heard from them, and then there was a
parish business meeting I had to be at."
"I'm not _missing_," she insisted, a little resentfully. "I'm _here_."
"No one knew that, Mother."
"Well, I knew it."
For no good reason she began to cry. The warmth of the tears on her
cheek was an actual comfort. A luxury, like the sunlight and the smooth, mowed
lawn. Maybe in heaven you would also cry a lot.
The priest took a small package of Kleenex from the inside breast pocket
of his suit, removed a tissue, and offered it to her. It seemed unpriestlike
to be giving someone a Kleenex instead of a clean handkerchief. But she
accepted it and dabbed at each cheek, blotting up the tears, which,
obediently, ceased to flow.
"I don't know why I do that," she declared, forcing a smile.
The odd thing was that she did know that she was prone to such outbursts
but that she didn't know a basic fact like her own name. Couldn't remember,
even now, this man who'd addressed her as his mother. A priest!
Did she have other children as well? A husband somewhere? She'd no idea.
Yet she knew she was a Catholic, as surely as she knew her own sex. She knew
she was old, but not how old; poor, but not how poor; educated, but not how
well. She could remember being in churches and schoolrooms and even hospitals,
but only abstractly. Their names, like her own, had been erased, like names on
a blackboard, leaving just a smear of white chalk dust.
"Would you like to go visit Dad's grave?" her son the priest asked her.
She made a joke of her own unknowingness: "Your dad or mine?" He bowed
his head and lowered his eyes and offered not the glimmer of a smile. "My
own." "Sure, why not. Is it far? I mean, can we walk from here? I'd prefer to
walk.""It's not far," he said, and led the way among the markers, following no
path but as sure of his direction as if he were walking through the rooms of
his own house. They went by the graves of MARTIN 5WEIGER and his wife
GERALDINE; of SGT. JOHN KOSKINEN, who'd died in 1944 at the age of twenty-two;
of ED WARD and PATRICIA MANGAN; and of an entire SHEEHY family who'd all died
on the same day in the late seventies. She pointed out to the priest how each
of the markers had the same date of death.
"Don't you wonder what happened?" she asked, to which he only nodded.
"Probably a car accident," she theorized.
"Probably," he agreed.
She wondered if he knew what actually had happened to the Sheehys and if
he thought that she ought to, too. He must be irked by her forgetfulness.
After all, what people said about someone who had gone through some enormous
change was that his own mother wouldn't recognize him.
"Well, here we are," he said, taking up a semiprayerful position in
front of a wide, white, knee-high marker not far from where the Sheehys were
buried. It was set up like a double bed with the husband's name on the left,
PAUL BRYCE, and his dates beneath:
FEB. 9, 1902
*
NOV. 23, 1949
On the left side of the marker the name of MARGARET BRYCE had already
been incised in the marble, and a birthdate as well, MAY 14, 1919. Apparently
Margaret Bryce was not yet dead.
Apparently, _she_ was Margaret Bryce.
"A little premature, isn't it?" she remarked caustically.
The priest raised a questioning eyebrow.
"My name on the stone," she explained. "It seems a little overeager to
me." "Well, Mother, it was your decision. Maybe it was a way of economizing.
I wouldn't know. You didn't consult Petey or me at the time."
"How _is_ Petey?" she asked, in a tone that dared him to doubt she knew
who Petey was. "What's he up to?"
The priest made a little grimacing frown and then a glance that showed
that he knew what she was up to. "Petey's fine, I imagine. We're not that
closely in touch, you know."
Of course she _didn't_ know, and he must know she didn't, and so his
vagueness was deliberate. He was being mean.
Well, she could be just as mean.
"Father," she said, "I have to go to confession."
Already he looked embarrassed, and she'd just got started. "Here?" he
said. "We could scarcely have more privacy, could we?"
"But don't you think. . . another priest. . . ?"
"It came to me just now. The memory."
He sighed. "As you please." He made a sign of the cross at her, and she
did the same, kneeling down on the grass. "There's no need to kneel," he told
her, but she stayed where she was, looking down at the fingernails of her
folded hands. They were painted the pink nearest their natural color. "Bless
me, Father, for I have sinned. I don't know when my last confession was, but
this sin goes back to long before whenever that would have been."
"It's probably something you've confessed before now, Mother. So there's
really no need--"
"No, I'm sure I never spoke of it. It would have been too embarrassing.
It has to do with him." She nodded curtly toward the white stone with the name
of Paul Bryce on it. "You see, he's not your father. Not your real father."
"Mother, really, this is not appropriate behavior."
"Neither was his. That's what I'm trying to explain."
"Mother, get up off the ground."
"From the first we never needed birth control. But you know what I used
to do? I used to confess that we did. 'Cause everyone else did. They
complained about how it shouldn't be a sin, and they wouldn't have complained
unless they were doing it, would they? So I complained, too. So they wouldn't
suspect the real situation. So, he was not your father. Your father was
someone else. That's my _true_ confession. I can't tell you _his_ name. I
promised I never would. And what good would it do you to know now?"
"Will you get up, Mother?"
"Have you absolved me?"
"You'll have to confess that sin to someone else. I simply don't believe
you. I think you made the whole thing up on the spot, out of spite. Forgive me
if I've misjudged you."
"It's true that I forget a lot of things. And the fact is, I couldn't
tell you your real father's name if you asked. But the man buried under that
stone is _not_ your father. _Mea maxima culpa_."
He got his hand under her elbow and lifted her up off her knees. "Well,
thank you for that, Mother. And Happy Mother's Day."
"Is it Mother's Day?" she asked, astonished.
"No," he said, pursing his lips. "And it's not April Fools' Day either.
Now, let's go home, shall we?"
2
Of the four couples whom Father Cogling was preparing for the sacrament
of matrimony, one had telephoned to the rectory an hour beforehand to announce
that they'd be unable to come ("Darryl is tied up at work," Darryl's fiancée
had explained), and another simply hadn't shown up. So here he was in the
little meeting room partitioned off from the parish hall, facing half the
number he'd addressed last week, when he'd instructed them on the subject of
birth control. It was no surprise to him that Darryl, who was half Jewish,
should have chosen to be absent, for Darryl had been more inclined to score
debating points than to receive instruction, pleading for the use of
prophylaxis in various hypothetical situations and unable to grasp the simple
idea that the only morally acceptable form of birth control is self-control,
period. Darryl and his fiancée were college graduates. -
When Father Cogling had been a seminarian at Etoile du Nord Seminary on
Leech Lake in the forties, Archbishop Cushing of Boston had made an address to
the CIO in which he'd observed that not a single bishop or archbishop of the
American hierarchy was the son of a college graduate. It was a source of
regret to Father Cogling that this could no longer be said to be the case.
College education was one of those insidious features of modern life that
seemed to betoken progress but led, more often than not, to doubt, the decay
of authority, and sin. This was so, sad to say, even of those who attended
Catholic universities. Even the seminaries, those that had survived, were not
proof against the corruptive tendency of a so-called liberal education. Their
present condition was a sword in the side of the Virgin Mary.
Father Cogling had a particular veneration for the Holy Mother and
recited the rosary in her honor thrice daily. It was Mary who, by her mercy
and chaste example, would restore the Church to spiritual health. Revelations
had been made by the Virgin through the Blessed Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer,
both warnings and promises, which were not generally known and which Father
Cogling was not at liberty to share, except with some few other initiated
souls. Extraordinary things were to happen--miracles, catastrophes, terrible
judgments from which there could be no reprieve without the Virgin's
intercession. Meanwhile, until those prophecies came to be fulfilled, the rot
would go on, the fabric of the Faith would decay, heresy and indecency would
flourish, and the Madonna herself would be made an object of ridicule.
Though not in this parish, not here at St. Bernardine's, not while
Wilfrid Cogling could help it. He might not be the pastor any longer, those
days were past, and perhaps it was just as well. As Father Pat kept pointing
out, he was entitled to enjoy the rewards of retirement. And it wasn't as
though he were idle. He still said two Masses on Sunday, still heard
confessions, still attended as many parish events as Father Pat himself, if
not more. The hard part had been surrendering the habit of authority and
deferring to judgments he knew to be mistaken or illconsidered. He often
wondered if it would have been easier spending these years of semiretirement
in another parish than St. Bernardine's, but when he considered the other
priests he might have had to deal with, he knew that God had been merciful to
him. Father Pat might be lax in some doctrinal matters; he might err on the
side of novelty in his approach to the liturgy (altar girls, indeed!); but he
was sound in the things that counted. He didn't equivocate about abortion or
sins of unchastity or other matters. Father Cogling had no patience with those
priests--and they were no longer exceptions to the rule, they had become the
rule--who sided with opinion poils against the Holy Father. Were there opinion
polls in hell? Probably! And probably one hundred percent of the damned were
of the opinion that they should be in heaven, and the results of the polls
were published every morning in hell's own newspaper and broadcast on TV, and
there were protest rallies organized by demons, and long processions of the
damned wailing and singing "We Shall Overcome."
The two couples in attendance had arrived together, five minutes late.
The younger girl, whose name was Alison Sanders, explained, "We waited outside
for the others, but then. . ." She smiled an apologetic smile and glanced
sideways at her boyfriend.
He finished Alison's sentence for her. "They didn't come. We figure they
must've got scared off."
"Sometimes," Father Cogling observed, taking the joke in earnest, "our
second thoughts are wiser than our first impulses." He remembered now that
this one, with the Clark Gable mustache and the Spanish-sounding surname
(which he'd forgotten), was the smart aleck. Not an arguer, like the Jew who
hadn't come back, but a scoffer, a smiler, a know-it-all.
"I mean to say," the priest went on, "that you may decide as a result of
these talks that marriage is _not_ the right path to take at this point in
your life. You may decide that it would be wiser to achieve more financial
security before you take on the responsibility of raising a family. You may
find that you haven't prepared yourself spiritually for what will be the most
important day in your life. These talks aren't like modern high schools that
have to graduate every student who manages to sit through four years of
classes whether they've learned anything in those classes or not."
The other couple nodded their heads in unison, assuming an expression of
submissive attentiveness. The man's name was Robert Howell, he'd been brought
up Catholic, and he was a rookie fireman in the suburb of Eden Prairie. The
woman's name was Denise, and she'd had no religious upbringing. "Though,"
she'd said at the last meeting, "I do believe in a Higher Power." She'd said
it in that confiding, sugary tone of voice that implied she was doing God and
Father Cogling a favor. Father Cogling didn't like her, but he thought she
could eventually be converted and would make a suitable wife for Robert
Howell.
"Before we begin," said Father Cogling, folding his hands and lowering
his eyes, "let us prepare our hearts with prayer." He waited until the four of
them had also assumed an attitude of prayer and then prompted: "Our Father. .
." Of the lot of them, only Alison Sanders articulated the phrases of the
prayer in a crisp and audible manner. She also, to her credit, dressed in a
manner both modest and becomingly feminine, in a flowery dress that showed her
figure to advantage without being in any way too bold.
The same could not be said of Denise, who had dressed for the occasion
in blue jeans, a Twins sweatshirt, and tennis shoes. Her fiancé, with his long
hair and the gold chain around his neck and an earring in his left earlobe,
was actually the more feminine of the two. Father Cogling had been reproved by
his pastor on more than one occasion for making disparaging remarks about the
fashions adopted by what Father Pat called "the youth culture." As though
young people lived in a separate world with its own norms and customs. As
though they were Ubangis or Hottentots! But it was true, as Father Pat had
many times pointed out, that there was nothing inherently immoral or indecent
in hair that touched one's collar or, for that matter, in an earring. Such
things were not declarations of degeneracy, at least not necessarily. So, as
reluctant as Father Cogling was to tolerate such fads and foibles, he held his
peace. If firemen wanted to look like fairies, so be it. His lips were sealed.
The prayer concluded, Father Cogling smiled a wise, priestly smile and
made eye contact with each of the four young people in turn. Then, his eyes
still focused on Alison, he said, "We all must be so grateful for our mothers.
I know I am. Not only for my earthly mother, who passed to her reward some
time ago, God bless her, but even more the mother I share with all of you
here, and with"--he dipped his head reverently--"Jesus. Our mother who is the
Queen of Heaven--the Virgin Mary."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Alison's fiancé making a
characteristic grimace, italicized by the thin line of his mustache. "That
presents you with some difficulty, Mr.. . . ? I'm sorry, my memory isn't what
it was."
"No problem," the boy said. "You can just call me Son."
"Son?"
"Yeah. I got to call you Father, right? So you can call me Son. Who
needs last names?"
"Well, Son," Father Cogling resumed imperturbably, "you seem to have
some difficulty with the idea of the Virgin Mary. Many Protestants do,
including some theologians. It is one of what they like to call the scandals
of our Faith."
"I'm happy to hear I'm not alone."
Alison whispered, "Greg, please."
Father Cogling raised his hand as though in benediction. "I prefer to
think of these matters as mysteries of the Faith. Mysteries in the sense of
puzzles that the rational mind, unassisted by Faith, can never solve. The
Virgin Birth, for instance, is in some ways a more mysterious, or challenging,
concept than Christ's conception in the Virgin's womb."
"Excuse me, Father," Denise interrupted, "but I don't see the
distinction."
"The distinction is that Mary _remained_ a Virgin _after_ the birth of
the Christ child. In the Latin phrase, she is _Mater inviolata_."
"No shit," Greg marveled. He had the decency at once to blush.
Father Cogling smiled benignly. "It is amazing, is it not? It defies
common sense. It is . . . miraculous!"
"You mean," Denise asked, "that it was like a cesarean section? He
wasn't delivered normally?"
"Indeed: He was delivered supernaturally."
"You're saying," Greg put it as bluntly as possible, "her hymen wasn't
broken. The baby came out _through_ the hymen."
Father Cogling nodded.
"That is weird. That is incredible."
"Hey, come on, lay off it, will ya?" Robert Howell counseled. "Give the
guy a chance."
"Ah, but Robert," Father Cogling insisted, "he's quite right. It _is_
incredible. Quite literally. Without faith it is something one _could not
believe_."
"And you're saying," Greg insisted, "that for me and Alison to get
married in the Church I got to believe that?"
"No," said Father Cogling. "I'm only explaining what most Catholics
believe concerning the Virgin Mary. Not even all Catholics. No pope has ever
declared Mary's postnatal virginity an infallible truth. I think Pope John
Paul may do so: That has been my prayer these many years. But there _are_ some
Catholics who are skeptical in that regard."
"So," Greg said, "it's like Ripley: Believe it or not."
Father Cogling glared at the young man in silent remonstration before
answering, "You might say that."
"Thanks. I appreciate your generosity."
"Greg," urged Alison, "please."
Father Cogling waved away Alison's distress with a motion of his hand.
"The reason that I called the matter to your attention was to emphasize the
importance that the Church places on the matter of chastity."
"Uh-huh," said Greg.
"Not only before marriage," Father Cogling went on, "but throughout
marriage." He paused, inviting an objection. When none was forthcoming, he
continued: "Chastity not in the sense that you are to remain virgins after you
have been married--that privilege was reserved for Mary and Joseph--but,
rather, in the sense that the pursuit of hedonistic or sensual pleasure should
never be the object of the conjugal act. Procreation, rather, is the goal of
marital love."
This time it was not Greg who intruded on the priest's discourse but
Denise, who, from sitting and staring expressionlessly at her clasped hands,
suddenly burst out laughing. A single convulsive snort of laughter that she at
once did her best to stifle, but then there was a second snort, and then
laughter outright. "I'm sorry. I'm reverting to high school or something.
Excuse me a minute--" She stood up from her chair. "Is there a lady's room
here?"Father Cogling smiled primly. "Outside and at the other end of the
hall."As soon as Denise had left the room, her fiancé got up and said, "Yeah,
excuse me, too."
"So," said Greg brightly, when there was only himself and Alison and the
priest left in the room, "you were telling us about the Virgin Mary and the
opportunity for chastity in marriage."
"I take it that chastity strikes you as somehow ridiculous," the priest
said, abandoning even a pretense of civility. It was clear to him that this
young man belonged to the new generation without any sexual compunctions
whatever. Father Cogling had encountered others like him in this very room. It
distressed the priest to think that such a young man might receive the
sacrament of matrimony before the altar of St. Bernardine's. It distressed
him, as well, to think that the boy would involve a decent Catholic girl in
his perdition. Indeed, it was likely that the process had already begun.
Father Cogling knew all too well from his experience in the confessional how
rarely these days young women entered into matrimony without having already
forfeited their virginity. What had once been the sinful exception was now the
damnable rule.
"Surely. Let us discuss chastity in marriage, as the subject interests
you. The patron saint of this parish, Saint Bernardine of Siena, actually had
some vivid things to say on just that topic. For instance, Saint Bernardine,
following the Decree of Gratian, declared that while it is wicked for a man to
have intercourse with his own mother, it is much worse to have _unnatural_
intercourse with his own wife. That's to say, any form of sex that leads to an
ejaculation outside the proper vessel."
"You mean, like a hand job?" Greg marveled.
"If by that you mean masturbation, yes, certainly."
"You're telling me, Father, that if I jerk off, that's worse than if I
fuck my mother."
"Greg! Please!"
"Sorry, honey. But I don't know the theological terms for this sort of
stuff. And the Father here doesn't seem to mind my language. The important
thing is we should understand each other, right, Father?"
Father Cogling nodded. "And to answer your question: Yes, masturbation
would be a more heinous offense than incest, so long as that is conducted in a
natural manner."
"By natural you mean without using birth control?"
Father Cogling nodded.
"But if I used birth control while I had incest, _that_ would be a whole
lot worse?"
Father Cogling nodded. He had used the teachings of Saint Bernardine
before to similar effect. Bernardine of Siena confounded and scandalized
unbelievers. Non-Catholics were unaccustomed to the rigorous exercise of logic
in matters of morality. "Well," Greg drawled, "I'd better be sure my mother
knows about this."
But Denise had left the room, and with her went the only audience for
his obscene humor. Father Cogling lowered his eyes with conspicuous modesty
but not before he'd noticed, with satisfaction, that the young man's fiancée
looked stricken. Mixed marriages were almost always a mistake. Perhaps this
young woman might come to realize that, even at this late date, two weeks
short of the day appointed for her wedding. The gift of grace is unpredictable
and sometimes even inconvenient. Caterers must be paid even when a wedding is
canceled. But it's a small price to pay when one's soul is at stake.
"The reason I bring up the teachings of Saint Bernardine," Father
Cogling resumed, after a suitable interval, "despite the fact that his message
is so. . . unfashionable, is because I know of no better way to impress on
non-Catholics the importance we attach to the matter of birth control. It is
not a foible, or a pious fable, or a moral option that might be changed in the
course of time, the way Catholics once had to abstain from eating meat on
Friday but now are under no such obligation. We are absolutely opposed to
artificial methods of birth control, and as the husband of a Catholic woman,
you must make a solemn and unconditional commitment to observe that
prohibition in the conduct of your own married life."
"You got it, Father," Greg said. "As solemn as you like." He stared at
the priest with naked hostility.
At that moment there was a providential knock on the door. It was
Robert, announcing a phone call for Father Cogling on the pay phone in the
main hall. Father Cogling excused himself to Greg and Alison and went to the
phone."Hello," he said into the receiver.
"Wilfrid, I'm glad you're there." It was Father Pat, the pastor of St.
Bernardine's.
"Pat--how is your mother? Did you _find_ her?"
"She was out at the cemetery, as we thought she might be. She was in
fine spirits, considering."
"And.. . mentally?"
"Alzheimer's is a one-way street, Wilfrid. Her memory always gets worse,
there's no improvement to be expected in that area."
"But we can pray."
"And that's about all we can do. In any case, that's not why I called.
Why I called is two separate things. First, I wish you would speak to your
friend, Mr. Ober. He's got hold of a list of the members of Agnus Dei and has
been phoning them systematically in a tone that was described to me as
menacing. I realize some people think Gerhardt sounds menacing when he says
hello. I've spoken to him before, but he doesn't seem to listen to me. He nods
his head and says 'Yes, Father,' and then he's right back to the same tricks.
Maybe he'll listen to you. I know he's zealous, but isn't it enough for him to
be involved in setting up the maternity center? He must learn discretion."
"I'll talk to him," Father Cogling promised. "Though I doubt it will do
much good. Gerhardt's a little like your mother. As you point out, he nods his
head and then goes off and does just what he wants to anyhow. What's the other
thing?"
"I'd like you to be on duty for me tonight. Something came up that I
have to tend to."
"Tonight is the Rosary Society?" He didn't wait for an answer. It was
Wednesday, which was when the Rosary Society met. "Fine, I'll be there."
"You don't need to be at the whole meeting. Just show your face and eat
a cookie or two."
"Anything else? I should be getting back to my couples before they start
the Reformation all over again."
"They're being difficult?"
"Nothing I can't handle."
"I'm sure of that, Wilfrid. Well, thank you." He hung up.
"You're welcome," Father Cogling replied dryly. "And enjoy your night
out."
3
After he'd exited 694, Father Bryce drove to the far corner of the first
large parking lot he came to. The lot served a mini-mall that housed a liquor
store, a gun shop, a Chinese takeout, a carpet factory outlet, and two
bankrupt businesses, one that still featured a sign in its window:
WATERBEDS
50% OFF
LAST DAYS!
It was already dark at seven-thirty, and only the liquor store and the
Chinese takeout were still open.
He'd left the rectory in mufti--tan dress slacks, a plaid sport shirt,
sneakers--but even so he felt exposed and identifiable. If not as a priest,
then as someone belonging to that part of the world where priests and what
they stand for are a consideration. He found himself wishing the basic wish of
his adolescence: that he could inhabit another body entirely, one that was
larger and stronger and hairier, a body in which he could feel authentically
masculine. The kind of body he had all through his life lusted to possess--not
as a lover would possess his beloved in his embrace, but as a demon possesses,
inhabiting another body, taking it over and evicting the prior tenant. Could
there be a more hopeless desire? a more misguided paraphilia, or any sillier?
And yet how many others there were stuck in the same daydream, flies in honey.
It seemed at times the essence of homosexuality. Please, sir, would you be my
mirror?
But no, that side of his character was more likely the result of having
grown up as a twin, rather than of his being queer. Petey and Paddy, they make
our hearts go pitty-patty. Karen Olsen had made up that jingle in the third
grade, and it had followed the Bryce twins all the way through sophomore year
at Ramsay High, at which point Patrick and Peter had escaped the daily psychic
torsion of twindom by taking diverging paths to their disparate
futures--Patrick to Etoile du Nord Seminary, Petey to a juvenile correction
facility in Anoka. If they couldn't be identical, then they'd be opposites.
Still the same symmetry.
Out of the Adidas bag on the seat beside him, Father Bryce took a small
jewelry case covered with synthetic velvet, which had contained, some
Christmases ago, a silver crucifix and chain. Now it held his mustache and a
bottle of gum arabic. Twisting the rearview mirror aside to help, he dabbed
the stickum onto his upper lip and deftly positioned the false mustache. Then
he waited for the gum arabic to dry. In the mirror the mustache looked full
and fierce and not quite his own, a mustache someone else had grown (Petey
perhaps?) and he'd adopted, without making allowance for the contours of his
upper lip (smiles were dangerous, grins impossible) or the more meager
character of his other visible hair. Yet that was often the way with real
mustaches, he'd been assured by the barber in Chicago from whom he'd bought
the thing. And it was only natural that _he_ would think it looked bogus,
since he knew it was. But strangers who didn't know him wouldn't think to
question the authenticity of his mustache. They would only think, what a
show-offy mustache, and, with the addition of sunglasses and a baseball cap,
the mustache would be all they would notice. He would be invisible behind it.
At least that was the theory, and his hope.
He debated whether he should allow himself a drink. Not now, certainly,
with the further drive ahead of him. Alcohol had begun to affect him
erratically. Twice he'd escaped DWT citations by virtue of his Roman collar.
Tonight of all nights he dare not take that risk.
So, with a sense of steely resolution, he ignored the delectable orange
neon of LIQUORS and returned to 694, then followed it east through Fridley and
New Brighton until it swung south proper and metamorphosed into 35E. Just
before the highway crossed into St. Paul proper, he exited again onto Little
摘要：

THEPRIESTbyThomasM.DischFIRSTAMERICANEDITIONTHISISABORZOIBOOKPUBLISHEDBYALFREDA.KNOPF,INC.Copyright1994byThomasM.DischAllrightsreservedunderInternationalandPan-AmericanCopyrightConventions.PublishedintheUnitedStatesbyAlfredA.Knopf,Inc.,NewYork,anddistributedinCanadabyRandomHouseofCanadaLimited,Toron...

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