To Blaise Meredith, the legalist — and even in this time of climax he could not lay aside the mental habit of a lifetime — the writings of Giacomo Nerone were, in many respects, a disappointment. They added nothing, except by inference, to the biography of his past, and little but glossary to the known details of his life, works and death in Gemello Minore.
What Aldo Meyer had found in them — a poignant recollection, a glimpse into the mind of a man once known, once hated, finally loved — presented itself under another aspect to the Devil’s Advocate. Blaise Meredith had read the writing of a hundred saints, and all their agonies, all their revelations, all their passionate outpourings had for him the familiarity of old acquaintance.
They conformed to the same belief, to a basic pattern of penance and devotion, to the same progression from purgation to illumination, from illumination to a direct union with the Almighty in the act of prayer. It was the conformity he was looking for now, as each of the examiners and assessors would look for it, in each of the processes that must follow the first presentation of evidence in the Bishop’s court.
To the biographer, to the dramatist, to the preacher, the personality of the man was important. His quirks and oddities and individual genius were the things that linked him to the commonalty of men and made them lean to him as patron and exemplar. But to the Church itself, to the delving theologians and inquisitors who represented it, the importance lay in his character as a Christian — his conformity to the prototype which was Christ.
So, in the slow hours of the night, Blaise Meredith bent himself to the scrutiny, coolly and analytically. But even he could not escape the personal impact — the living man thrusting himself out from the yellowed leaves and the strong, masculine hand-writing.
The writing was disjointed: the jottings of a man torn between contemplation and action, who still felt the need to clarify his thoughts and make his affirmations clear to himself. Meredith pictured him, sitting late at night in the small stone hut, cold, pinch-bellied, yet oddly content, writing a page or two before the time came to begin the long prayerful vigil which, more and more, became his substitute for sleep.
Yet, in spite of their random character, the writings had a rhythm and a unity of their own. They grew as the man grew. They ended as the man ended, in dignity and calm and a strange content.
. . . I write because of the common need of man to communicate himself, if only to a blank sheet of paper; because the knowledge of myself is a weight on me and I have no right to lay it all on the woman I love. She is simple and generous. She would bear it all and still be ready for more, but concealment is as much a part of love as surrender. A man must pay for his own sins and he cannot borrow another’s absolution. . . .
. . . To be born into the Church — and I can only speak of my own Church, knowing no other – is at once a burden and a comfort. The burden is felt first. The burden of ordinance and prohibition and, later of belief. The comfort comes afterwards, when one begins to ask questions; and when one is presented with a key to every problem of existence. Make the first conscious act of faith, accept the first premise, and the whole logic falls into place. One may sin, but one sins inside a cosmos. One is constrained to repentance by the sheer order of it. One is free within a system, and the system is secure and consoling, so long as the will is fixed in the first act of faith. . . .
. . . When Catholics become jealous of unbelievers, as they often do, it is because the burden of belief lies heavy and the constraints of the cosmos begin to chafe. They begin to feel cheated, as I did. They ask why an accident of birth should make fornication a sin for one, and a week-end recreation for another. Faced with the consequences of belief, they begin to regret the belief itself. Some of them end by rejecting it, as I did when I came down from Oxford. . . .
. . . To be a Catholic in England is to submit to a narrow conformity instead of a loose, but no less rigid, one. If one belongs to the old families as I did, to the last Elizabethans, the last Stuarts, it is possible to wear the Faith like a historic eccentricity — as some families sport the bar sinister, or a Regency rakehell, or a gambling dowager. But in the clash of conformities this is not enough. Sooner or later one is forced back on the first act of faith. If one rejects this, one is lost. . . .
. . . I was lost a long time, without knowing it. Without the Faith, one is free, and that is a pleasant feeling at first. There are no questions of conscience, no constraints, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law, and these are flexible enough for most purposes. It is only later that the terror comes. One is free — but free in chaos, in an unexplained and unexplainable world. One is free in a desert, from which there is no retreat but inward, towards the hollow core of oneself. There is nothing to build on but the small rock of one’s own pride, and this is a nothing, based on nothing. . . . I think, therefore I am. But what am I? An accident of disorder, going nowhere. . . .
. . . I have examined myself a long time on the nature of my act of desertion. At the time, it had no moral significance. The oath of service ends with invocation of the Deity. But for me there was no Deity. If I chose to risk liberty and reputation and suffer the sanctions of the State, this was my business. If I escaped the sanctions, so much the better. But I did not reason like this at the time. My action was instinctive — an unreasoning reaction from something that did violence to my nature. But, by what I then believed, I had nothing that could be called a nature. I was cast in a common form, like a spark out of a furnace, but if one spark sputtered out, what did it matter? I was lost already . . . I could only plunge a little deeper into darkness. . . .
. . . Then there was Nina. I woke to her as one wakes to the first light of morning. The act of love is, like the act of faith, a surrender; and I believe that the one conditions the other. In my case, at least, it has done so. I cannot regret that I loved her, because love is independent of its expression — and it was only my expression of it that was contrary to the moral law. This I regret and have confessed and prayed to be forgiven. But even in sin the act of love — done with love — is shadowed with divinity. Its conformity may be at fault, but its nature is not altered, and its nature is creative, communicative, splendid in surrender. . . .
. . . It was in the splendour of my surrender to Nina, and hers to me, that I first understood how a man might surrender himself to God — if a God existed. The moment of love is a moment of union — of body and spirit — and the act of faith is mutual and implicit. . . .
. . . Nina has a God, but I had none. She was in sin, but within the cosmos. I was beyond in sin, in chaos. . . . But in her I saw all that I had rejected, all that I needed, and yet had thrown away. Our union was flawed because of it, and one day she would understand and might come to hate me. . . .
. . . How does one come back to belief, out of unbelief? Out of sin, it is easy; an act of repentance. An errant child returns to a Father because the Father is still there, the relationship is unbroken. But in unbelief there is no Father, no relationship. One comes from nowhere, goes nowhere. One’s noblest acts are robbed of meaning. I tried to serve the people. I did serve them. But who were the people? Who was I? . . .
. . . I tried to reason myself back to a first cause and first motion, as a foundling might reason himself back to the existence of his father. He must have existed, all children have fathers. But who was he? What was his name? What did he look like? Did he love me — or had he forgotten me for ever? This was the real terror, and, as I look back on it now, from the security I have reached, I tremble and sweat and pray desperately: “Hold me close. Never let me go again. Never hide Your face from me. It is terrible in the dark!” . . .
. . . How did I come to Him? He alone knows. I groped for Him and could not find Him. I prayed to Him unknown and He did not answer. I wept at night for the loss of Him. Lost tears and fruitless grief. Then, one day, He was there again. . . .
. . . It should be an occasion, I knew. One should be able to say: “This was the time, the place, the manner of it. This was my conversion to religion. A good man spoke to me and I became good. I saw creation in the face of a child and I believed.” It was not like that at all. He was there. I knew He was there, and that He made me and that He still loved me. There are no words to record, no stones scored with a fiery finger, no thunders on Tabor. I had a Father and He knew me and the world was a house He had built for me. I was born a Catholic, but I had never understood till this moment the meaning of the words “The gift of faith”. After that, what else could I do, but say: “Here am I, lead me, do what you want with me. But please stay with me, always. . . .”
. . . I am afraid for Aldo. There is much merit in his sceptic honesty, but when the others get hold of him, I do not know what will happen. This is the difference between the two absolutes — the Church and Communism. The Church under stands doubt and teaches that faith is a gift, not to be acquired by either reason or merit. Communism permits no doubt and says that belief can be implanted like a conditioned reflex. . . . To a point, it is right, but the conditioned reflex answers no questions — and the questions are always there — Whence? Where? Why? . . .
. . . The question of reparation worries me greatly at times. I am changed. I have changed. But I cannot change any of the things I have done. The hurts, the injustices, the lies, the fornications, the loves taken and tossed away. These things have changed and are still changing other people’s lives. I am sorry for them now, but sorrow is not enough. I am bound to repair them as far as I can. But how? It is winter. The paths are closed before me and behind. I am a prisoner in this small world I have found. I can only say: When the way is clear, I will do what is asked of me. But the way is never clear. There is only the present moment in which one can live with certainty. Why do I fear so much? Because repentance is only the beginning. There is still a debt to pay. I ask for light, pray for submission, but the answer is unclear. I can only go on in the present. . . .
. . . Meyer laughs at me about good works. He points out that they have no continuity. The sick die and the hungry are hungry tomorrow. Yet Meyer himself does the same things instinctively. Why? Men like Meyer doubt the existence of God and therefore doubt any but a pragmatic relationship between man and man. Yet I have seen Meyer spend himself more freely than I have ever done. The man who does good in doubt must have so much more merit than one who does it in the bright certainty of belief. “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold. . . .” A warning against the smugness of inherited Faith. . . .
. . . Nina tells me I am getting thin. I don’t eat enough or sleep enough and pray too long at night. I try to explain how the need for food and sleep seems to get less, when one is absorbed in this new wonder of God. She seems to understand it better when I point out that she does not feel the need of me, physically, because of the child filling her womb. . . . I ask myself what must be done about this question of marriage. We are apart in body now, but close in heart and spirit. I have the feeling that things are being prepared for me over which I have no control and that, for this reason, marriage might be a greater injustice than those I have already done. I am ready to do what seems right. I have told her that she has the first claim to decide, but that I believe it wise to wait. . . . I have had so much these last months — of love, of happiness, of spiritual consolation. I must pay for it sometime. I do not know how the payment will be asked. I pray and try to make myself ready. . . .
. . . Father Anselmo worries me. I have quarrelled with him and I regret it. There is nothing solved by anger. I must understand that a priest is just a man with sacramental faculties. The faculties are independent of his personal worth. Anselmo is carrying his own cross, the load of one lapse, multiplied by its consequences. But even in the sin there is an element of love, and this, I know, is a goodness not to be despised. Celibacy of the clergy is an ancient discipline, but not an article of faith. One sees its value, but one must not judge too harshly when men stumble under the weight of it. Poverty is a state which some men accept to make themselves holy. It can be for others conducive to damnation. If there were a way to talk to Anselmo, as a friend . . . but this is another problem for a priest. He is trained to direct the faithful, but never to accept counsel from them. This is a defect in the system. . . .
. . . Today I met the man who calls himself Il Lupo. Strange how quickly and easily we understood each other. I believe in God. He believes in no-God. Yet the consequences of each belief are equally rigid and inescapable. He is honest in what he believes. He does not expect me to be less honest in my own faith. He knows that there can be no coexistence between us. One must destroy the other. He is the prince of this world and he has the power of life and death. What power have I against him? “My kingom is not of this world.” I could rally the people. I could make them follow me to resist Il Lupo’s band. But to what end? Fratricide is not Christianity. Bullets breed no love. . . . Il Lupo would like me to argue and act. I must not argue. I must only accept. But I fear for Meyer. He is too gentle a man for this embroilment. I must try to make him see that I understand. Later, he will have much to suffer. The weight of doubt is heavy on honest men. . . .
. . . I have a son and the boy is blind. Nina’s grief is harsh on me. I understand now how faith can stagger on the mystery of pain. I understand how the old Manichees could fall easily into their heresy — since it is hard to see how pain and evil come into a creation of which an omnipotent Goodness is the sole author. A black time for me. It seems I am back in darkness and I pray desperately and cling to the first act of faith and say: “I cannot understand; but I believe. Help me to hold to it!” . . .
. . . If faith can move mountains, faith can open blind eyes. If God wills it. How do I know what He wills? Speak to me, O God, for Your Son’s sake. . . . Amen. . . .
There was more, much more, and Blaise Meredith scanned it meticulously as a good advocate should, but he had found the core of it, and the core was sound and solid. The conformity was there, the conformity of mind and heart and will. And the surrender had been made by which a man cuts loose from every material support to rest in faith, hope and charity, in the hands that framed him.
On the last page of all, Giacomo Nerone had written his own obit.
. . . If there be any, after my death, to read what I have written let them know this of me:
I was born in the Faith; I lost it; I was led back to it by the hand of God.
What service I have done was prompted by Him. There is no merit in it of my own.
I have loved a woman and begotten a son, and I love them still in God and to all eternity.
Those I have injured, I beg to forgive me.
Those who will kill me, I commend to God, as brothers whom I love.
Those who forget me will do well. Those who remember me, I beg to pray for the soul of
Giacomo Nerone,
Who died in the Faith.
Blaise Meredith laid down the yellowed sheet on the counterpane, leaned back on the pillows and closed his eyes. He knew now with certainty that he had come to the end of his search. He had looked into the life of a man and seen the pattern of it — a long river winding slowly, but with certainty, homeward to the sea. He had looked into the soul of a man and seen it grow, like a tree, from the darkness of the earth, upward into the sun.
He had seen the fruit of the tree: the wisdom and the love of Nina Sanduzzi, the struggling humanity of Aldo Meyer, the reluctant repentance of Father Anselmo. It was good fruit, and in the bloom of it he saw the mark of the nurturing finger of God. But all the fruit was not yet mature. Some of it might wither on the branch, some of it might fall unripe and rot into extinction, because the gardener was careless. And he, Blaise Meredith, was the gardener.
He began to pray, slowly and desperately, for Anne de Sanctis and Paolo Sanduzzi and Nicholas Black, who had chosen the same desert to walk in as Giacomo Nerone. But before the prayer was finished, the old sickness took him, griping and wrenching so that he cried out in the agony of it, till the blood welled up, hot and choking in his throat.
A long time later, weak and dizzy, he dragged himself to the writing desk and, in a shaky hand, began to write. . . .
My Lord Bishop,
I am very ill, and I believe that I may die before I have time to record fully the results of my investigations here. In spite of all the medical predictions, I feel that I am being hurried out of life and I am oppressed by the thought of the little time left to me. I want Your Lordship to know, however, that I have made my surrender, as you promised I would, and that I rest content, if not courageous, in the outcome.
First, let me tell you what I have found. I believe most firmly, on the evidence of those who knew him and on the writings which I have found, that Giacomo Nerone was a man of God, who died in the Faith and in the attitude of martyrdom. What the Court will decide is another matter — a legality, based on the canonical rules of evidence, and irrelevant, it seems to me, to the fundamental facts, that the finger of God is here and that the leaven of goodness in this man is still working in the lives of his people.
Your Lordship’s best witnesses will be Doctor Aldo Meyer and Nina Sanduzzi. This latter has produced evidence of a cure that may well be miraculous, though I doubt seriously whether it will pass the assessors. The writings of Nerone which I shall send you with this letter are authentic and definitive, and, in my view, sound corroboration of his claim to heroic sanctity.
I confess to you, My Lord, in friendship, that I am less concerned at this moment for the Cause of Beatification than for the welfare of certain souls here in Gemello Minore. I have spoken to Father Anselmo and presumed to suggest that if he separates physically from Rosa Benzoni, even while lodging her still in his house, and if he makes a sincere confession, Your Lordship will accept these as evidence of reform. I’m sorry for him. It is a question of money and security for a poverty-stricken and rather ignorant man. I have promised him a lump sum of a hundred thousand lire from my estate as well as money enough to buy bedding and other needs for a separate sleeping room for Rosa Benzoni. It seems now that I may not have time to arrange these things. May I count on Your Lordship to do them for me, and use this letter for a claim on my executors? To fail Anselmo now would be an intolerable thought.
The other matter touches the Contessa de Sanctis, Paolo Sanduzzi, who is the son of Giacomo Nerone, and an English painter, who is house-guest at the villa. It is too sordid to detail in this letter; and I fear there is little Your Lordship could do about it. I have commended them all to God and asked Him to accept my surrender as the price of their salvation. I hope tomorrow to be able to plan more active measures; but I am so weak and ill, I dare not count on anything.
I have two favours to ask, which I trust Your Lordship will not find burdensome. The first is that you write to His Eminence, Cardinal Marotta, explaining my position and making my apologies for what I count as a failure in my mission. Give him my greetings and beg him to remember me in his Mass. The second is that you will permit me to be buried here in Gemello Minore. I had once asked to be buried in His Eminences’s church, but Rome is very far — and here, for the first time, I have found myself as a man and a priest.
It is very late, my Lord, and I am tired. I can write no more. Forgive me and, in your charity, pray for me.
I am Your Lordship’s most obedient servant in Christ,
Blaise Meredith.
He folded the letter, sealed it in an envelope and tossed it on the desk. Then he crawled back to bed and slept till the sun was high over the green lawns of the villa.
Paolo Sanduzzi was working on the rock garden at the back of the villa. The terraces had been breached in places where the mortar had weathered out, and the soil was spilling. When it rained, the soil would be lost and, in this rocky land, it was too precious for that. The old gardener had shown him how to mix lime with the black volcanic sand from the river, and how to work it into the crevices with a trowel, then trim and surface it.
It was a new thing learned, a new skill to be proud of, and he knelt there with the sun shining on his back, whistling contentedly. The lime burned his fingers and made his hands feel rough and sandy, but this was another small pride — his hands were hardening like a man’s. The gardener was pleased with him, too. Sometimes he would stop and talk in his gruff chewing fashion, and tell him the names of the plants, and how they grew and why the grubs would eat one and not another.
At mealtimes, in the long nagged kitchen, the old man would protect him from the chaffing of the women, who made jokes about his young maleness and what the girls would do to him when they got hold of him. The only one who did not laugh at him was Agnese the cook, a waddling mountain of a woman, who fed him double portions of pasta and always had a lump of cheese or a piece of fruit to tuck in the pocket of his breeches.
He had no name to put to all this, but he understood that it was a good way to be. He had a place and work to do, and friendly people about him — and at the end of the month there would be lire to rustle in his pocket and take home to his mother. Even Rome was beginning to recede into a dimmer distance. The Contessa had not spoken to him again, and the painter had left him alone, except for a genial word or two in passing. His fear of them had begun to diminish and they wove themselves pleasantly into his daydream of fountains and girls with shoes, and streets full of shining automobiles.
He was dreaming now, to the rhythm of his own whistling and the scrape of his trowel on the grey stone, when suddenly the dream became a reality. The Contessa was standing behind him and saying in her gentlest voice:
“Paolo! I want to talk to you.”
He straightened immediately, dropped his trowel and scrambled down from the rockery to stand before her, acutely conscious of his sweating, naked torso and his grimy hands.
“Yes, signora. At your service.”
She looked around quickly as if to make sure they were alone. Then she told him:
“Tomorrow, Paolo, I’m going away to Rome. I’m not very well and I must see my doctor. I’m taking Zita and Pietro to look after my apartment and I thought of taking you, too.”
He gaped and stammered at the sudden wonder of it and the Contessa gave her high, tinkling laugh.
“Why are you so surprised? I promised you, didn’t I? And you have worked well.”
“But you didn’t believe me? Well, it’s true. The only thing is, you’ll have to ask your mother. You’ll tell her that you’ll be away for a couple of months and that part of your money will be paid to her here each month. Is that clear?”
“Yes, signora!” It was clear and bright as summer.
“You will tell her that Pietro is going and Zita, too, and that Pietro will be training you all the time.”
“Yes, signora. But . . .”
“But what, Paolo?”
He did not know how to say it, but finally he got it out in a swift stumble of words.
“My . . . my mother doesn’t like the Englishman, Signor Black. She may not let me go.”
Again she laughed and charmed all the fears out of him.
“You tell your mother, Paolo, that Signor Black is staying here to work. And that this is why I am taking you away, because it is better for you not to see him.”
“When — when can I tell her?”
“Now, if you like. Then come back and let me know what she says.”
“Thanks, signora. Thanks a thousand, thousand times.”
He snatched up his shirt, struggled into it so roughly that he tore it, and then went racing away down the gravelled path towards the iron gates. Anne Louise de Sanctis watched him go, smiling at the boyish eagerness of him. It was a good thing to see, a pleasantness to have near one in the house. This must be what other women found in their sons, in the autumn of marriage, when the sap of passion was drying out, and a husband was a companion perhaps, but no longer a youthful lover.
Suddenly, and quite clearly, she understood what she had done — the malice of it, the dirt of it, the stark damnation into which she had walked herself on the arm of Nicholas Black. Her blood ran cold at the thought. She shivered and turned away; and as she rounded the corner of the house, she walked almost into the arms of Blaise Meredith, who was stepping on to the lawn with a folder of papers in his hand.
When he greeted her, quietly, she was shocked by the look of him. His face seemed to have shrunken overnight. His eyes were like red coals set deep in his skull. His skin was the colour of old parchment and his lips were bloodless. His back was stooped as if he walked under a heavy load and his long hands were tremulous against the black fabric of his soutane.
For a moment she forgot her own thought and said:
“Monsignor! You’re ill!”
“Very ill, I’m afraid,” he told her. “I don’t think I have much more time. Would you walk with me a little?”
She wanted to refuse outright, to run from him and hide herself in her bedroom within reach of the small bottle of oblivion, but he took her arm gently and she found herself falling into step beside him, listening to his voice and answering him in a voice that seemed not to belong to her.
“I saw young Pablo running down the path. He seemed to be excited about something.”
“He was — very excited. I’m taking him to Rome with me tomorrow, if his mother will let him come.”
“Is Mr. Black going, too?”
“No. He’s staying on here.”
“But joining you later, is that it?”
“I — I don’t know what his plans are.”
“You do.” The voice was tired but gentle and it held her, hypnotically.
“You do, my dear Contessa, because you made the plans with him. Terrible plans. Terrible for you and him — and the boy. Why did you do it?”
Her feet were fixed to the treadmill rhythm of their pacing. In spite of herself, the words came out:
“I — I don’t know.”
“Did you still want revenge on Giacomo Nerone?”
“So you know that, too?”
It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. He could ask what he liked and she would answer, and when it was finished she would go upstairs and take a bath, and lie down to sleep and never wake again. This was the last terror. It would soon be over.
His next words shocked her back into reality. Meyer might have said them but not this priest with the mark of death on him. In Meyer’s mouth, they would have lacked something – an intimacy, a gentleness, a love, perhaps? It was hard to say.
“You know, my dear Contessa, Italy is a bad country for a woman like you. It is a country of the sun, aggressive in its worship of the processes of generation. It is primitive and passionate. The male symbol is paramount. The woman unloved, unbedded, childless, is a sign of mockery to others and of torment to herself. You’re a passionate woman. You have a great need of love — a need, too, of the sexual commerce that goes with it. The need has become a frenzy with you — and the frenzy betrays you into viciousness while it inhibits your own satisfaction. You’re ashamed of it and you do worse things, because you don’t know how to do better. . . . Is that right?”
“Yes.”
It was all she said — but she wanted to add: I know all this, know it more terribly than you. But knowing isn’t enough. Where do I go? What do I do? How do I find what I need?
Meredith went on, his dry voice warming as he talked.
“I could tell you to pray about this — and that wouldn’t be a bad thing, because the hand of God reaches down even into the private hells we make for ourselves. I could tell you to make a general confession — and that would be a better thing, because it would give you a free conscience, and set you in peace with your God and yourself. But it wouldn’t be the whole answer. You would still be afraid, still unsatisfied, still lonely.”
“What do I do then? Tell me! For God’s sake, tell me!”
The plea was wrung out of her at last. Meredith answered her, calmly.
“Leave this place for a while. Go away. Not to Rome, which is a small city and can be a vicious one. Go back to London and establish yourself there for a while. I’ll give you a note to a friend of mine at Westminister, who will put you in touch with a specialist who deals with problems like yours — problems of the body and of the mind. Put yourself in his care. Don’t expect too much too soon. Go to theatres, make some new friends, find yourself a charity that interests you. . . . Maybe, too, you will find a man, not to sleep with only, but to marry you and love you. You’re still attractive — particularly when you smile.”
“But if I don’t find him?” There was a note of panic in her voice.
“Let me tell you something very important,” said Meredith patiently. “It is no new thing to be lonely. It comes to all of us sooner or later. Friends die, families die. Lovers and husbands, too. We get old, we get sick. And the last and greatest loneliness is death, which I am facing now. There are no pills to cure that. No formulas to charm it away. It’s a condition of men that we can’t escape. If we try to retreat from it, we end in a darker hell — ourselves. But if we face it, if we remember that there are a million others like us, if we try to reach out to comfort them and not ourselves, we find in the end that we are lonely no longer. We are in a new family, the family of man, whose Father is God Almighty. Do you mind if we sit down now? I’m — I’m very tired.”
Now it was her turn to take his arm and help him to the small stone seat under the honeysuckle. Meredith sat down but she remained standing, looking down at him with slow wonder and a pity she had never felt for any but herself. After a moment, she asked him:
“How do you understand all this? I’ve never heard a priest talk like that before.”
His bloodless mouth twitched into a tired smile.
“People ask too much of us, my dear Contessa. We’re human too. Some of us are very stupid, and it takes us a lifetime to learn the simplest lessons.”
“You’re the first man in my life who’s ever helped me.”
“You’ve been meeting the wrong men,” said Meredith, with dry irony.
She smiled at him then, and he saw, as if for the first time, how beautiful she had been.
“Would you — would you hear my confession, Father?”
Meredith shook his head.
“Not yet. I don’t think you’re ready for it.”
She stared at him, frowning, more than a little afraid. He went on, gravely:
“Confession is not the psychiatrist’s couch, a device to encourage self-revelation, to promote well-being by a purge of memory. It is a judicial sacrament, in which pardon is given on an admission of guilt and a promise of repentance and reform. For you the first part is easy — it is already half-done. For the second, you must prepare yourself, by prayer and self-discipline — and by beginning to repair the evil you have already done.”
She looked at him with troubled eyes.
“You mean Nicki — Mr. Black?”
“I mean you, my dear Contessa — your own desires, your jealousy of Nina Sanduzzi and her son. As for Mr. Black . . .” He hesitated a moment; then his eyes clouded and his mouth set into a grim line. “I’ll talk to him myself. But I’m very much afraid he won’t listen.”