Страница 72 из 77
He glanced at the statue which the camp workers had erected near the gate. It caused a wince. He recognized it as one of the composite human images derived from mass psychological testing in which subjects were given sketches and photographs of unknown people and asked such questions as: “Which would you most like to meet?” and “Which do you think would make the best parent?” or “Which would yon want to avoid?” Or “Which do you think is the criminal?” From the photographs selected as the “most” or the “least” in terms of the questions, a series of “average faces,” each to evoke a first-glance personality judgment had been constructed by computer from the mass test results.
This statue, Zerchi was dismayed to notice, bore a marked similarity to some of the most effeminate images by which mediocre, or worse than mediocre, artists had traditionally misrepresented the personality of Christ. The sweet-sick face, blank eyes, simpering lips, and arms spread wide in a gesture of embrace. The hips were broad as a woman’s, and the chest hinted at breasts-unless those were only folds in the cloak. Dear Lord of Golgotha, Abbot Zerchi breathed, is that all the rabble imagine You to be? He could with effort imagine the statue saying: “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” but he could not imagine it saying: “Depart from me into everlasting fire, accursed ones,” or flogging the money-changers out of the Temple. What question, he wondered, had they asked their subjects that conjured in the rabble-mind this composite face? It was only anonymously a christus. The legend on the pedestal said: COMFORT. But surely the Green Star must have seen the resemblance to the traditional pretty christus of poor artists. But they stuck it in the back of a truck with a red flag tied to its great toe, and the intended resemblance would be hard to prove.
The girl had one hand on the door handle; she was eying the car’s controls. Zerchi swiftly dialed FAST LANE. The car shot ahead again. She took her hand from the door.
“Lots of buzzards today,” he said quietly, glancing at the sky out the window.
The girl sat expressionless. He studied her face for a moment. “Are you in pain, daughter?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Offer it to Heaven, child.”
She looked at him coldly. “You think it would please God?”
“If you offer it, yes.”
“I ca
The priest winced. “No, no! It is not the pain that is pleasing to God, child. It is the soul’s endurance in faith and hope and love in spite of bodily afflictions that pleases Heaven. Pain is like negative temptation. God is not pleased by temptations that afflict the flesh; He is pleased when the soul rises above the temptation and says, ‘Go, Satan.’ It’s the same with pain, which is often a temptation to despair, anger, loss of faith—”
“Save your breath, Father. I’m not complaining. The baby is. But the baby doesn’t understand your sermon. She can hurt, though. She can hurt, but she can’t understand.”
What can I say to that? the priest wondered numbly. Tell her again that Man was given preternatural impassibility once, but threw it away in Eden? That the child was a cell of Adam, and therefore — It was true, but she had a sick baby, and she was sick herself, and she wouldn’t listen.
“Don’t do it, daughter. Just don’t do it.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said coldly.
“I had a cat once, when I was a boy,” the abbot murmured slowly. “He was a big gray tomcat with shoulders like a small bulldog and a head and neck to match, and that sort of slouchy insolence that makes some of them look like the Devil’s own. He was pure cat. Do you know cats?”
“A little.”
“Cat lovers don’t know cats. You can’t love all cats if you know cats, and the ones you can love if you know them are the ones the cat lovers don’t even like. Zeke was that kind of cat.”
“This has a moral, of course?” She was watching him suspiciously.
“Only that I killed him.”
“Stop. Whatever you’re about to say, stop.”
“A truck hit him, crushed his back legs. He dragged himself under the house. Once in a while he’d make a noise like a cat fight and thrash around a little, but mostly he just lay quietly and waited. “He ought to be destroyed,” they kept telling me. After a few hours he dragged himself from under the house. Crying for help. ‘He ought to be destroyed,’ they said. I wouldn’t let them do it. They said it was cruel to let him live. So finally I said I’d do it myself, if it had to be done. I got a gun and a shovel and took him out to the edge of the woods. I stretched him out on the ground while I dug a hole. Then I shot him through the head. It was a small-bore rifle. Zeke thrashed a couple of times, then got up and started dragging himself toward some bushes. I shot him again. It knocked him flat, so I thought he was dead, and put him in the hole. After a couple of shovels of dirt, Zeke got up and pulled himself out of the hole and started for the bushes again. I was crying louder than the cat. I had to kill him with the shovel. I had to put him back in the hole and use the blade of the shovel like a cleaver, and while I was chopping with it, Zeke was still thrashing around. They told me later it was just spinal reflex, but I didn’t believe it. I knew that cat. He wanted to get to those bushes and just lie there and wait. I wished to God that I had only lot him get to those bushes, and die the way a cat would if you just let it alone — with dignity. I never felt right about it. Zeke was only a cat, but—”
“Shut up!” she whispered.
“ — but even the ancient pagans noticed that Nature imposes nothing on you that Nature doesn’t prepare you to bear. If that is true even of a cat, then is it not more perfectly true of a creature with rational intellect and will — whatever you may believe of Heaven?”
“Shut up, damn you shut up!” she hissed.
“If I am being a little brutal,” said the priest, “then it is to you, not to the baby. The baby, as you say, can’t understand. And you, as you say, are not complaining. Therefore—”
“Therefore you’re asking me to let her die slowly and—”
“No! I’m not asking you. As a priest of Christ I am commanding you by the authority of Almighty God not to lay hands on your child, not to offer her life in sacrifice to a false god of expedient mercy. I do not advise you, I adjure and command you in the name of Christ the King. Is that clear?”
Dom Zerchi had never spoken with such a voice before, and the ease with which the words came to his lips surprised even the priest. As he continued to look at her, her eyes fell. For an instant he had feared that the girl would laugh in his face. When Holy Church occasionally hinted that she still considered her authority to be supreme over all nations and superior to the authority of states, men in these times tended to snicker. And yet the authenticity of the command could still be sensed by a bitter girl with a dying child. It had been brutal to try to reason with her, and he regretted it. A simple direct command might accomplish what persuasion could not. She needed the voice of authority now, more than she needed persuasion. He could see it by the way she had wilted, although he had spoken the command as gently as his voice could manage.
They drove into the city. Zerchi stopped to post a letter, stopped at Saint Michael’s to speak for a few minutes with Father Selo about the refugee problem, stopped again at ZDI for a copy of the latest civil delouse directive. Each time he returned to the car, he half expected the girl to be gone, but she sat quietly holding the baby and absently stared toward infinity.
“Are you going to tell me where you wanted to go, child?” he asked at last.
“Nowhere. I’ve changed my mind.”