The breviary dropped from Gregory’s hands when he heard the scream of pain. He shot from his chair and ran from the parlor, quickly unlocked the study door and threw it open.
“What happened?”
“Susan’s been hurt,” the Bishop said hoarsely. “Perhaps your housekeeper can put some unguent on her arm . . .”
The girl whimpered, her hand over the burn.
“I know it hurts,” said the Bishop, “but the pain will go away. Forgive me, my dear. Go with the Father and he will take you to the housekeeper. She’ll make it feel better. Then sit in the parlor and wait for us. You can read a magazine or something.”
Gregory took the girl away. Alone, the Bishop bowed his head and clasped his hands together. When Gregory returned, the Bishop said, “Shut the door.”
Gregory did so. “What’s wrong with her arm?”
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
“Gregory,” said the Bishop, “I’m frightened. They say there was a case like this in Bavaria, back in the 1890’s. A little boy. And in Africa a few years after that. In China, too, in the twenties. And in this country, too: in Iowa and in Illinois.” Adopting a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You know more than I of such matters—give me the psychiatric explanation why a good, devout young girl should suddenly be incapable of stepping inside a church.”
“It’s hard to say,” shrugged Gregory. “I suppose it might have something to do with an unpleasant childhood experience connected in her mind with the Church, or something she has done that makes her feel unclean, unworthy . . .”
“And cursing her father—how might that be explained?”
“He insisted on her attending Mass, which had become abhorrent to her.”
“And her advances toward Father Halloran?”
“Well,” ventured Gregory, scratching his head and moving about the room, “priests—despite the vow of chastity—can’t help being a little glamorous, I guess. We’re symbols of authority, of power. I suppose this might be attractive in a way. And in an already disturbed mind, this could perhaps take the form of—the kind of thing Susan felt toward Father Halloran. As for trying to strangle him, it could be nothing more than the old story: a woman scorned.”
“Yes,” said the Bishop. “Yes, that’s all very interesting, Gregory. Very plausible.” He stroked his chin, reflectively. “Now tell me why just now, in this room, while her eyes were closed, I pressed a series of coins to her bare skin but when unbeknownst to her I substituted the crucifix from my rosary and pressed it to her skin, she cried out in pain.”
Gregory sat down. “That’s what it was?”
“Yes.”
“But I see nothing in that. If she reacts violently to the church, why not to the cross? And to a girl in her mental condition—hysterical—it’s not unbelievable that her mind should play a trick on her and make her think the cross had burned her.”
“When she didn’t know it was a cross?” countered the Bishop. “Her eyes were closed, remember!”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure!”
“But,” groped Gregory, “even with her eyes closed she surely could tell the difference between a round coin and a cross. The sense of touch—”
“There medical science will refute you,” interrupted the Bishop. “Ask that psychologist brother-in-law of yours. He will tell you that the fingertips, yes, are clusters of nerve ends that are extremely sensitive and capable of distinguishing subtle differences in the shapes of objects. But not the arms. Try it some time.”
Gregory rubbed his forehead. “I admit I’m stumped for the moment,” he said, “but you told me she was really hurt, you wanted unguent applied to her arm. Were you just humoring her or—”
“Never mind that now,” said the Bishop. “One thing at a time.” He seemed to drift away, began talking half to himself. “St. Michael’s Church . . . there’s a kind of fitness to this happening here, and with the Feast of St. Michael almost upon us . . .” He turned abruptly to Gregory. “Let’s see how much you remember from the seminary. Who is St. Michael?”
“Why,” said Gregory, “the Archangel who led the rout of Lucifer and cast Lucifer and his legions into Hell.”
“There is a prayer,” said the Bishop, “which is recited at the end of low Mass. You say it almost every day. How does it go?”
Gregory, bewildered, recited the familiar prayer:
“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our safe-guard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. Restrain him, O God, we humbly beseech Thee, and do Thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God cast him into Hell with the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin and destruction of souls.”
“Thank you,” said the Bishop. “Can you tell me who composed that prayer? Do you remember the story?”
“Was it Pius X?” Gregory hazarded. “Or, no—”
“His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII,” said the Bishop. “One day after Mass, they say, His Holiness was in conference with the Cardinals, and was mysteriously stricken. He fell to the floor. They called a doctor. The doctor examined His Holiness. The pulse was not beating. He was given up for dead, when just as mysteriously he awakened and spoke of a terrifying vision he had been permitted to see: a vision of a future world dominated by the legions of Satan. St. Michael appeared, however, and routed those legions as he did long ago when he first cast them into the Abyss. That was the end of the vision, and when it was over, the Pope’s pulse began beating again and he returned to the living. It was then that he composed the prayer in honor of St. Michael, the prayer that is recited at the end of the Mass the world over.”
Gregory said, “I remember the story now, Your Excellency. But why are you telling it to me?”
“To prepare you,” said the Bishop. “To prepare you for what is to come. It will not be easy for you to believe.”
Gregory waited, not without impatience.
“I have come to the conclusion,” said the Bishop finally, “that the girl is—not in a manner of speaking, but literally and actually—possessed.”
• • •
Filtered through multiple walls, into the silent womb of the study penetrated dim tokens of the outside world—a brief single blare of a klaxon, a long shout of a playing child—the sounds reduced to fuzzy miniatures of themselves. A small electric clock on the study desk whirred discreetly.
Possessed. A short and simple word—but a word that, in a fragment of a second, made the shattered, scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fall together in Gregory’s mind. Possessed—by the Devil. “Not in a manner of speaking, but literally and actually . . .”
For the first time in his life, Gregory was forced to think of God’s Adversary—truly think of him, focus all of his mind upon him, all of his belief, all of his faith. The existence of God he had never doubted; the existence of Satan he had never doubted, either—but, on the other hand, Gregory now asked himself with creeping terror, had he ever really believed it? He felt cold. To disbelieve the existence of the Evil One was heresy—something infinitely more serious than an occasional drop too much of brandy. If God existed, logically his Adversary existed. Gregory believed in God—not only intellectually, but emotionally, possibly instinctively; he accepted Satan only with the surface of his mind, because it was logical to do so, because his acceptance had never been put to the test, because not to accept Satan was the act of a heretic.
He knew he had never been the best kind of priest. A priest needs a head on his shoulders, and Gregory undeniably had that, but more important he needs a heart. Gregory, like other cold men, had always equated “heart”—which a popular song insisted you gotta have—with sentimentality, trumped-up feelings, the thing that in actors is called ham. Ham; schmaltz; corn. Derogatory words all meaning similar things—but how odd, Gregory suddenly thought, that they should be words that also mean food, nourishment, sustenance.
Sustenance: that which sustains.
Gregory had entered the priesthood with much to offer: a strong desire to serve, a talent for efficiency and order, a love of the Church and its history and literature and romance, a lively interest in theology and scholarship, a quick mind and rich intellectual gifts—everything except a simple, all-consuming zeal. He had known this when he began, but had told himself: There is no perfect priest, no priest can have everything, some may have the zeal and nothing else; I will make a good servant of the Lord; what more can be expected of me?
It was never as if he lacked faith or doubted the existence of God. The idea of God sustained him. It is not difficult to believe in God. God is goodness, for which all men yearn; He is the fountainhead of life; He is Our Father Who Art in Heaven, a great concept, and there is nothing loftier, nothing nobler, nothing more dignified, nothing more awesome. “God is not mocked,” for such a figure is beyond mockery; but the Devil is and has been mocked down through the centuries—he has been a sideshow puppet, a mustache-twirling city slicker, a costume for stage magicians, a trademark for a laxative water. No, it is not difficult to believe in God—the very flesh reaches out for such belief—but for an intelligent man of the twentieth century to wipe from his mind the centuries of ridicule that have been heaped upon the Devil, for him to take the Devil seriously, as seriously as he takes God; that is difficult. And yet to fail is heresy.
Am I a heretic? Gregory thought with a stunning horror. Am I no longer a priest of God?
And—he asked himself—if this is true, how long have I known it? How long have I perhaps tried to wash away that knowledge with liquor?
Heretic. For a priest, it is the most terrifying word in all of language, the most horrifying thought the mind can conceive.
He became aware again of the electric clock’s steady whirr, of the Bishop’s presence, of the problem at hand. “Possessed,” he repeated.
“Yes, Gregory.”
Gregory nodded slowly, and absently fingered some papers on his desk. “I see.” Inside, he said, No I don’t see. Not here in this comfortable study, surrounded by my books. Not here in the middle of the twentieth century.
“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” said the Bishop. “And yet, a long time ago, when Christ was here among us, he cast out the Devil many times, didn’t he?”
Gregory nodded.
“And the Devil spoke to him in the desert, and Christ saw him and answered him.”
“Yes. But as you say—that was a long time ago.”
“Have things changed that much?” the Bishop wondered.
“Things can change a lot in almost two thousand years.”
“Oh, little things, yes,” the Bishop agreed. “The way people talk, the way they dress, the houses they live in, the weapons they use, the way they get from place to place—these things change. But the important things, the basic things, do you really think they change? Love? Hate? Fear? Pity? Right and wrong? Good and evil? God and the Devil?” Taken with a random thought, he added, “Yes, what about that? Has God changed? Truthfully now, Gregory, no evasion, just a straight yes or no—do you believe in God?”
Momentarily caught off guard, Gregory said, “Why . . .”
“Do you believe He exists? Or don’t you know?”
“I know,” said Gregory, his equilibrium regained. “God exists.”
“As an entity? A being?”
“Yes.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Absolutely,” answered Gregory, a bit louder than he wished.
The Bishop seemed satisfied. Then he asked, “And Diabolus?”
The Latin name for the Devil, familiar as it was to Gregory in Latin contexts, seemed odd in a vernacular context—the sound of the word was cold, disturbing. “What about Diabolus?”
“I’m asking you what you believe about him.”
A floodgate of potential replies opened in Gregory’s mind: information, theories, dogma, a deluge of remembered reading and reflection. But he could only say, gropingly, “Diabolus, the Devil, is evil—I mean the force of evil in the world, everything that is negative, bad, corrupt—”
“Yes, yes,” the Bishop cut in, “but does he exist?”
“Of course he exists,” said Gregory quickly, “but—”
“But!” The syllable was like an arrow. “Gregory, this word but seems to be a favorite of yours. And how strange, how frightening that it crops up in your speech again and again only when you are talking about accepted articles of faith. I fear that word on your lips.”
“I fear it myself,” said Gregory quietly, “although I was only going to say ‘But is the Devil as real as God?’”
“That’s only what you were going to say? Only that? Do you mean—but no, of course you don’t—you don’t mean that perhaps the Devil is only a symbol?”
“You know better than that, Your Excellency. Of course I don’t mean that. We have no symbols. The wafer and the wine we use in the Mass—they don’t simply represent the flesh and the blood of Christ, they are his flesh and blood, his literal, corporeal flesh and blood. So I can’t say the Devil is only a symbol. Not to you. You would tell me it was—heresy.”
“Yes, Gregory,” said the Bishop. “I would indeed.”
“But is it heresy,” asked Gregory, “to shrink from accepting a mustachioed villain out of grand opera? Do you want me to believe in a flamboyant red fool with horns and a tail, holding a trident?”
The Bishop said, “Yes. If that would make Diabolus real to you, as real as this floor, as real as that chair, if it would stop this talk of symbols—”
“You brought up symbols.”
“Only,” said the Bishop, “because I could hear the unspoken word in your voice. Gregory, a symbol can be a fog that obscures the truth and hides the bitterness of reality. Perhaps some people need that. But you and I—are we fools, are we children? We are men, and we are men of God.”
“I want to believe!” said Gregory. “Do you think I like tottering on the brink of heresy? I want to believe—believe totally—more than anything else in the world. But I have a logical mind—”
“Logical!” The Bishop’s eyes were like drills; his voice was quietly but intensely angry. “Oh, please. Please. You tell me you believe in God. He exists, you say, He is real. But the reality of God’s Adversary you cannot believe in with the same conviction. All right—but when you have one set of beliefs for God and another for the Devil, when you cannot recognize a parallel when it stares you in the face, then please don’t try to pretend you’re using logic.”
“All right then!” Gregory almost shouted. “Call it instinct, or intuition, or faith.”
“Oh, now it’s faith, is it?”
“That’s right—faith.” Damping his temper, he said in a lowered voice, “There are plenty of logical reasons, plenty of perfect arguments for the existence of God, and I’ve heard most of them, used them myself. But it’s not because of them, not because of reason or logic that I accept God. I accept Him because I just know, in my nerves, that He exists. Faith. But my faith in the Devil is—weak. Shaky. I am as sure of God as I am sure I am standing here, on this floor, grasping this chair. I’m sure, I tell you!”
“Good,” said the Bishop almost in a whisper. “I believe you. Tell me. Why are you sure?”
“I don’t know,” Gregory said flatly.
Slowly, the Bishop suggested, “Would you say you are sure God exists because, perhaps, God wants you to be sure?”
“I suppose so . . .”
“Yes or no?”
After a pause, Gregory said, “Yes.”
And the Bishop nailed him: “Then—could it be you are sure Diabolus does not exist because Diabolus wants you to be sure of that?” Gregory threw up his hands. “It’s logical, isn’t it?”
Smiling faintly, Gregory said, “I thought we had abandoned logic.”
“That was you,” the Bishop smiled back. “I haven’t.”
Letting the argument mark time for a bit, the Bishop idly examined the books that lined the walls. The priest’s library was both Catholic and catholic. The great and near-great writers of his persuasion were represented: the works of Claudel, Mauriac and Bernanos in the original French; the Englishmen Chesterton, Waugh and Greene; Augustine and à Kempis, of course; Cardinal Newman; Farrow’s Damien the Leper was there, and Gerard’s Autobiography of a Hunted Priest; the complete Lives of the Saints and the Catholic Encyclopaedia . . . “All the Catholic intellects,” said the Bishop; and, spying other names such as Kafka and Baudelaire, he added, “and a few non-Catholics, too.”
“Do you think they’ve corrupted me?” Gregory asked, good-humoredly.
“We corrupt ourselves,” said the Bishop. “If a man can be corrupted by a few books, I doubt if there was anything there to begin with.” Casually, he asked, “Don’t you hate people who ask if you’ve read them all?”
“I have a standard reply,” said Gregory. “‘Yes, and some of them twice.’”
“Read much Kafka?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact; a good deal.”
Touching a book, the Bishop said, “I see you have the Prose Poems of Baudelaire. Remember the one in which he says, ‘The Devil’s cleverest wile is to convince us he does not exist’?”
“Not particularly. And if I did—he was a heretic writer, remember: you think it’s a good idea to enlist his aid in your argument?”
“Well,” chuckled the Bishop, “I wasn’t having much luck with dogma, was I?” He turned back to the bookcase and touched another book. “This Kafka chap, now. I can’t claim to have read much of him, but I do remember one little thing he wrote somewhere. He said, ‘One of the Devil’s most effective tricks to waylay us is to pick a fight with us. It is like a fight with a woman which ends in bed.’”
The Bishop turned to Gregory. “I’ve never had anything against your psychiatric dabbling, Gregory. You may think me an old fogy, but I try to keep up with the times. I’m aware of the work Father Devlin, the analyst, has been doing in Chicago. All of this is fine, but I wonder if you haven’t allowed yourself to be seduced by some of the more materialistic views of possession and exorcism? I know, for instance, that demonic possession is considered by many psychiatrists to be no more than an ancient way of saying mental illness. I know that the case in Luke of the woman bowed down by Satan for eighteen years is called hysterical paralysis, and that Christ, in an exorcism mentioned in Mark, is said to have cured a case of what would be called acute mania today. The concept of God and Diabolus struggling for the human soul is accepted only if it is translated into Freudian jargon—the superego and the id struggling for human reason. This is all very tempting, very clever. But clever people can explain anything their way—you know that. In fact, I can use this same sort of reasoning to explain psychoanalysis my way.”
“You can?”
“Certainly. If it is advanced that ancient exorcists who thought they were casting out demons were unwittingly practicing a kind of primitive psychotherapy—for that’s the way the argument goes—then why can’t the argument be turned inside out, with no strain on logic?”
“Inside out?” asked Gregory. “How?”
“Why couldn’t we say that today’s psychoanalysts, while believing they are curing their patients scientifically, are unwittingly practicing a kind of modern demon-exorcism and are in fact casting out the literal Devil from the bodies of their patients? They give their cure a different name, use a different ritual and a different vocabulary, and refuse to recognize Diabolus when they see him, yes, but this may be quite simply explained by going back to Baudelaire. Diabolus wants it that way. His cleverest wile is to convince us he does not exist.”
Gregory had to smile: it was an ingenious idea.
The Bishop went on. “Sir Thomas More, a Catholic martyr, and the Protestant, Martin Luther—whom I have as much business citing as I do Baudelaire and Kafka!—both held that ridicule was a potent weapon against Diabolus. Luther said he ‘cannot bear scorn.’ More said, ‘The Devil cannot endure to be mocked.’ Well, I’m afraid I quarrel with those gentlemen and go along with Baudelaire. I tell you Diabolus wishes us to mock him, wishes us to diminish his prestige and destroy his legend, wishes us—in order that he may go about his work unhampered—to think him dead. But reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated, Gregory. The mockers are the mocked. Diabolus is very much alive. He is in that girl. He has taken possession of her flesh and of her mind. You must stop him from taking possession of her soul.”
“I?”
“By performing Adjuratio Solemnis. Gregory, how long has it been since I ordained you? Twenty years? Twenty-one years?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you remember the ceremony?”
“Well, not everything.”
“I do,” said the Bishop. “I have to. It’s my job to confer orders upon candidates all the time. The major orders and the minor orders. There are quite a lot of them. Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but one of the minor orders is the Order of Exorcist. And when I conferred that order upon you, I said certain words.” His voice became richer. “‘You receive the power to place your hand upon those possessed, and through the imposition of your hands, the grace of the Holy Ghost and the words of exorcism, you shall drive evil spirits out of the bodies of those so possessed.’ Do you remember?”
Gregory said, “Yes . . .”
“‘Impress upon your mind,’ I said, ‘that you receive the right.’ You can help that girl, Gregory. Not doctors, not psychiatrists. You. You have the power.”
“By—” Gregory was near to laughing. “By casting out the Devil?”
The Bishop nodded. “I am taking a terrible risk, Gregory. Adjuratio Solemnis should be performed by an exemplary priest, a priest of unflinching faith, a servant of the Lord whose state of grace is beyond question. If I were to ask the Cardinal’s advice, I know what he would say. He would say: ‘Father Sargent? You are out of your mind, Conrad!’ But I am not asking his advice. I am assuming full responsibility for an act I know to be filled with danger even in the hands of a perfect priest. If anything goes wrong, if something terrible happens—and it could—I will be punished, punished severely, so severely that my spirit may break and never mend. For I am old, Gregory. An old man’s spirit is like an old man’s bones. And yet, for you, I will take the risk. Will you not?”
Gregory frowned and shook his head. “No, no. Just on the practical level—exorcism is a full-time job that could take days, weeks. Who would say Mass?”
“That’s an excuse, not a reason,” said the Bishop. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll have Father Stefanski from the next parish send over his assistant. He can spare the boy for a few days.”
Gregory was still shaking his head. “I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned about exorcism.”
“I’ll teach you again.”
“I’ve never done it.”
“You do it all the time,” said the Bishop. “Every time you bless something, every time you sprinkle holy water, you do it. In a small way, you use this power every day of your life. And now you must use it to the full.”
“I can’t.”
“You must.”
“Drive out a medieval Devil I have trouble believing in?”
“That,” said the Bishop, “is exactly why you must. It is the only thing that can dispel your doubt, the only thing that can save you.”
“Save me from what?”
The Bishop was not sure he knew precisely what; he had been improvising; fragments of insight had been drawn to his words like iron filings to a magnet while he talked. Now, as Gregory asked “Save me from what?” the Bishop was tempted to say, From the brandy bottle, perhaps. But he did not. He was about to say all manner of things, but was prevented. He was about to remark upon how it all fitted together—the saint for whom the parish was named, the feast that was soon to be celebrated, the replacement of Father Halloran. Why had Father Halloran been orphaned in childhood? Why was an orphanage post so long in coming for him? Why, when it did come, was Gregory chosen to take Father Halloran’s place in the parish of the afflicted child? It was all a large design, so large that the Bishop could see only a little corner of it. Perhaps Father Halloran had been maneuvered out of position because he was a priest of simple faith, a priest who had no need to test his faith, whereas Gregory . . .
But the Bishop was prevented from saying any of these things by a dreadful scream and a crash from the parlor.
They were in the parlor without being conscious of running or opening doors.
Susan was standing in the center of the room, laughing. She stopped laughing and screamed, like an animal falling upon a spear. Then she laughed again.
A holy picture—a rather bad, cheap picture of the Virgin—hung crazily from the wall, swinging erratically, its frame disjointed, its glass smashed. The object that had been thrown at it lay on the floor some distance from the picture, a distance testifying to the violence of the ricochet and the force of the thrower. It was a black-bound book, Gregory’s breviary. The cover was bent, the spine broken. Odd things go through one’s mind in crucial moments: Gregory, looking at the violated book, remembered for the first time in years that a standard seminary joke had been to call the breviary The Priest’s Wife.
Susan yelled a series of obscenities at him. It took all the strength of both men to drag the screaming girl upstairs to a bedroom and lock her in.