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“Yes.”
“All right. Get moving. But if you so much as drive past here and spit, that’ll be it.”
“Thank you.”
A calliope was playing somewhere in the park as they drove away; and looking back, Zerchi saw that the carousel was turning. One officer mopped his face, clapped the process server on the back, and they all went to their cars and drove away. Even with five novices in the car, Zerchi was alone with his shame.
29
“I believe you’ve been warned about that temper before?” Father Lehy demanded of the penitent.
“Yes, Father.”
“You realize that the intent was relatively murderous?”
“There was no intent to kill.”
“Are you trying to excuse yourself?” the confessor demanded.
“No, Father. The intent was to hurt. I accuse myself of violating the spirit of the Fifth Commandment in thought and deed, and of si
“You realize that you have broken a promise never to resort to violence?”
“Yes, Father. I deeply regret it.”
“And the only mitigating circumstance is that you just saw red and swung. Do you often let yourself abandon reason like that?”
The inquisition continued, with the ruler of the Abbey on his knees, and the prior fitting in judgment over his master.
“All right,” Father Lehy said at last, “now for your penance, promise to say—”
Zerchi was an hour and a half late getting to the chapel, but Mrs. Grales was still waiting. She was kneeling in a pew near the confessional, and she seemed half asleep. Embarrassed within himself, the abbot had hoped that she would not be there. He had his own penance to say before he could hear her. He knelt near the altar and spent twenty minutes finishing the prayers Father Lehy had assigned him as penance for that day, but when he moved back toward the confessional, Mrs. Grales was still there. He spoke to her twice before she heard him, and when she rose, she stumbled a little. She paused to feel at the Rachel face, exploring its eyelids and lips with withered fingers.
“Is something wrong, daughter?” he asked.
She looked up at the high windows. Her eyes wandered about the vaulted ceiling. “Ay, Father,” she whispered. “I feel the Dread One about, I do. The Dread One’s close, very close about us here. I feel need of shriv’ness Father — and something else as well.”
“Something else, Mrs. Grales?”
She leaned close to whisper behind her hand. “I need be giving shriv’ness to Him, as well.”
The priest recoiled slightly. “To whom? I don’t understand.”
“Shriv’ness — to Him who made me as I am,” she whimpered. But then a slow smile spread her mouth. “I — I never forgave Him for it.”
“Forgive God? How can you — ? He is just. He is Justice, He is Love. How can you say — ?”
Her eyes pleaded with him. “Mayn’t an old tumater woman forgive Him just a little for His Justice? Afor I be asking His shriv’ness on me?”
Dom Zerchi swallowed a dry place. He glanced down at her bicephalous shadow on the floor It hinted at a terrible Justice — this shadow shape. He could not bring himself to reprove her for choosing the word forgive. In her simple world, it was conceivable to forgive justice as well as to forgive injustice, for Man to pardon God as well as for God in pardon Man. So be it, then, and bear with her, Lord, he thought, adjusting his stole.
She genuflected toward the altar before they entered the confessional, and the priest noticed that when she crossed herself, her hand touched Rachel’s forehead as well as her own. He brushed back the heavy curtain, slipped into his half of the booth, and whispered through the grille, “What do you seek, daughter?”
“Blessings, Father, for I have si
She spoke haltingly. He could not see her through the mesh that covered the grille. There was only the low and rhythmic whimper of a voice of Eve. The same, the same, everlastingly the same, and even a woman with two heads could not contrive new ways of courting evil, but could only pursue a mindless mimicry of the Original. Still feeling the shame of his own behavior with the girl and the officers and Cors, he found it hard to concentrate. Still, his hands shook as he listened. The rhythm of the words came dull and muffled through the grille, like the rhythm of distant hammering. Spikes driven through palms, piercing timber. As alter Christus he sensed the weight of each burden for a moment before it passed on to the One who bore them all. There was the business about her mate. there were the murky and secret things, things to be wrapped in dirty newspaper and buried by night. That he could only make sense of a little of it, seemed to make the horror worse.
“If you are trying to say that you are guilty of abortion,” he whispered, “I must tell you that the absolution is reserved to the bishop and I can’t—”
He paused. There was a distant roaring, and the faint snort-growl of missiles being fired from the range.
“The Dread One! The Dread One!” whined the old woman.
His scalp prickled: a sudden chill of unreasonable alarm.
“Quickly! An act of contrition!” he muttered. “Ten Aves, ten Pater Nosters for your penance. You’ll have to repeat the confession again later, but now an Act of Contrition.”
He beard her murmuring from the other side of the grille. Swiftly he breathed an absolution: “Te absolvat Dominus Jesus Christus; ego autem eius auctoritate te absolvo ab omni vinculo…Denique, si absolvi potes, ex peccatis tuis ego te absolve in Nomine Patris…”
Before he had finished, a light was shining through the thick curtain of the confessional door. The light grew brighter and brighter until the booth was full of bright noon. The curtain began to smoke.
“Wait, wait!” he hissed. “Wait till it dies.”
“wait wait wait till it dies,” echoed a strange soft voice from beyond the grille. It was not the voice of Mrs. Grales.
“Mrs. Grales? Mrs. Grales?”
She answered him in a thick-tongued, sleepy murmur.
“I never meant to… I never meant to… never love .. . love…” it trailed away. It was not the same voice that had answered him a moment ago.
“Now, quickly, run!”
Not waiting to see that she heeded him, he bounded out of the confessional and ran down the aisle toward the altar of reservation. The light had dimmed, but it still roasted the skin with noon sunglare. How many seconds remained? The church was full of smoke.
He vaulted into the sanctuary, stumbled over the first step, called it a genuflection, and went to the altar. With frantic hands, he removed the Christ-filled ciborium from the tabernacle, genuflected again before the Presence, grabbed up the Body of his God and ran for it.
The building fell in on him.
When he awoke, there was nothing but dust. He was pi
The blast had swept him clean out of the church, he decided. He lay in sand, and saw the remains of a rose bush caught in a rockfall. A rose remained attached to a branch of it — one of the Salmon Armenians, he noticed. The petals were singed.
There was a great roaring of engines in the sky, and blue lights kept winking through the dust. He felt no pain at first. He tried to crane his neck so as to get a look at the behemoth that sat on him, but then things started hurting. His eyes filmed. He cried out softly. He would not look back again. Five tons of rock had tucked him in. It held whatever remained of him below the waist.
He began recovering the little Hosts. He moved his free arm gingerly. Cautiously he picked each of them out of the sand. The wind threatened to send the small flakes of Christ wandering. Anyway, Lord, I tried, he thought. Anyone needing the last rites? Viaticum? They’ll have to drag themselves to me, if they do. Or is anybody left?