The Book of Skulls

We have a long way to go. These are still the preliminary stages of the series of training routines that the Brothers term the Trial. What lies ahead, I suspect, is largely psychological or even psychoanalytic: a purging of excess baggage from the soul. The ugly business of the Ninth Mystery is part of that. I still don’t know whether to interpret that passage of the Book of Skulls literally or metaphorically, but in either event I’m sure it deals with the banishing of bad vibes from the Receptacle; we kill one scapegoat, actually or otherwise, and the other scapegoat removes himself, actually or otherwise, and the net effect of this is to leave two fledgling fraters who are without the jangling death-jitters bome by the defective duo. Besides purging the group as a whole, we must purge our individual i

I gather that the purpose of this unburdening will be to simplify our souls through a yielding up of — what term shall I use? — neuroses, sins, mental blocks, hangups, en-grams, deposits of bad karma? We must pare ourselves down, pare ourselves down. Bone and flesh, these we retain, but the spirit must be whittled. We must strive toward a kind of quietism, in which there are no conflicts, in which there is no stress. Avoid everything that goes against the grain, and, if necessary, redirect the grain. Effortless action, that’s the key. No energy rip-offs allowed; struggles shorten lives. Well, we’ll see. I’m carrying plenty of i

What shall I tell you, Frater Javier?

chapter thirty-two

Ned

Review your life, declares the mysterious and vaguely reptilian Frater Javier, entering my monastic cell una

Ned is obedient. Ned is a good little fairy. Frater Javier gives him The Word, and Ned instantly commences reviewing his misspent past, so that he can gush it all forth at the appropriate occasion. What have been my sins? Where have I transgressed? Tell me, Neddy-boy, have you had any other gods before Him? No, sir, in truth I can’t say that I have. Have you made unto yourself any graven images? Well, I’ve doodled a bit, I admit, but we don’t apply that commandment so rigorously, do we, sir? We’re not bloody Moslems, eh, sir? Thank you, sir. Next: have you taken the name of the Lord in vain? God help me, Father, would I do a thing like that? Very well, Ned, and have you remembered the Sabbath Day and kept it holy? Abashed, the honest boy replies that he has occasionally been guilty of dishonoring the Sabbath. Occasionally? Shit, he’s polluted more Sundays than a Turk! A venial sin, though, a venial sin. Ego absolvo te, iny child. And have you honored thy father and thy mother? I have indeed, sir, honored them in my way. Hast thou killed? I have not killed. Hast thou committed adultery? To the best of my knowledge, Father, I have not. Hast thou stolen? I have not stolen, at least, nothing important, sir. Nor have I borne false witness against my neighbor. And hast thou coveted thy neighbor’s house, or thy neighbor’s wife, or thy neighbor’s manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor’s? Well, sir, there’s that part about my neighbor’s ass; I admit I’m on shaky grounds there, but otherwise — but otherwise — I do my best, sir, considering that I came into this world tainted, considering the odds against us all from the start, bearing in mind that in Adam’s fall we si

And so, at Frater Javier’s behest, I plumbed my degenerate past and dredged up much mucky detritus, the better to shine at the sessions of confessions that I assumed would be commencing. But the fraters are less linear-minded than that. A variation in our daily routine was about to be introduced, yes, but it involved neither Frater Javier nor any confessional aspects. That must lie still further in the future. The new rite is a sexual one, Buddha save me, a hieterosexual one. These fraters, I now realize, are Chinamen of some sort beneath their deceptive Caucasian skins, for they are instructing us now in nothing less than the tao of sex.

They don’t call it that. They don’t speak of yin and yang, either. But I know my Oriental erotica, and I know the ancient spiritual significances of these sexual exercises, which are close kin to the various gymnastic and contem-platory exercises we’ve been practicing. Control, control, control over every bodily function, that’s the aim here.