A Canticle for Leibowitz (36 page)

Abbot Zerchi caught a glimpse of a familiar face coining through the crowd.

“Lift the kid out while we hold this nut, will you?”

Doctor and priest exchanged a silent glance, and then the baby was lifted from the car. The officers released the abbot’s wrists. One of them turned and found himself hemmed in by novices with upraised signs. He interpreted the signs as potential weapons, and his hand dropped to his gun.

“Back up!” he snapped.

Bewildered, the novices moved back.

“Get out.”

The abbot climbed out of the car. He found himself facing the chubby court official. The latter tapped him on the arm with a folded paper. “You have just been served with a restraining order, which I am required by the court to read and explain to you. Here is your copy. The officers are witnesses that you have been confronted with it, so you cannot resist service-”

“Oh, give it here.”

“That’s the right attitude. Now you are directed by the court as follows: ‘Whereas the plaintiff alleges that a great public nuisance has been-’ “

“Throw the signs in the ash barrel over there,” Zerchi instructed his novices, “unless somebody objects. Then climb in the car and wait.” He paid no attention to the reading of the order, but approached the officers while the process server trailed behind, reading in monotonous staccato. “Am I under arrest?”

“We’re thinking about it.”

“‘-and to appear before this court on the aforesaid date to show cause why an injunction-’“

“Any particular charge?”

“We could make four or five charges stick, if you want it that way.”

Cors came back through the gate. The woman and her child had been escorted into the camp area. The doctor’s expression was grave, if not guilty.

“Listen, Father,” he said, “I know how you feel about all this, but-”

Abbot Zerchi’s fist shot out at the doctor’s face in a straight right jab. It caught Cors off balance, and he sat down hard in the driveway. He looked bewildered. He snuffled a few times. Suddenly his nose leaked blood. The police had the priest’s arms pinned behind him.

“ ‘-and herein fail not,’“ the process server jabbered on, “‘lest a decree pro confesso-’“

“Take him over to the car,” said one of the officers.

The car toward which the abbot was led was not his own but the police cruiser. “The judge will be a little disappointed in you,” the officer told him sourly. “Now stand still right there and be quiet. One move and you go in the locks.”

The abbot and the officer waited by the cruiser while the process server, the doctor, and the other officer conferred in the driveway. Cors was pressing a handkerchief to his nose.

They talked for five minutes. Thoroughly ashamed, Zerchi pressed his forehead against the metal of the car and tried to pray. It mattered little to him at the moment what they might decide to do. He could think only of the girl and the child. He was certain she had been ready to change her mind, had needed only the command,
I, a priest of God, adjure thee,
and the grace to hear it-if only they had not forced him to stop where she could witness “God’s priest” summarily overruled by “Caesar’s traffic cop.” Never to him had Christ’s Kingship seemed more distant.

“All right, mister. You’re a lucky nut, I’ll say that.”

Zerchi looked up. “What?”

“Doctor Cors refuses to file a complaint. He says he had one coming. Why did you hit him?”

“Ask him.”

“We did. I’m just trying to decide whether we take you in or just give you the summons. The court officer says you’re well known hereabouts. What do you do?”

Zerchi reddened. “Doesn’t this mean anything to you?” He touched his pectoral cross.

“Not when the guy wearing it punches somebody in the nose. What do you do?”

Zerchi swallowed the last trace of his pride. “I am the abbot of the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz at the abbey you see down the road.”

“That gives you a license to commit assault?”

“I’m sorry. If Doctor Cors will hear me, I’ll apologize. If you give me a summons, I promise to appear.”

“Fal?”

“The jail’s full of D.P.s.”

“Listen, if we just forget the whole thing, will you stay away from this place, and keep your gang out there where they belong?”

“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 sinning against charity and justice. And bringing disgrace and scandal upon my office.”

“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 sinned-”

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 pinned to the ground at the waist. He lay on his belly in the dirt and tried to move. One arm was free, but the other was caught under the weight that held him down. His free hand still clutched the ciborium, but he had tipped it in falling, and the top had come off, spilling several of the small Hosts.

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?

He could hear no voices above the terrible roaring.

A trickle of blood kept seeping into his eyes. He wiped at it with his forearm so as to avoid staining the wafers with gory fingers. Wrong blood, Lord, mine, not Yours.
Dealba me.

He returned most of the scattered Victim to the vessel, but a few fugitive flakes eluded his reach. He stretched for them, but blacked out again.

“JesusMaryJoseph! Help!”

Faintly he heard an answer, distant and scarcely audible under the howling sky. It was the soft strange voice he had heard in the confessional, and again it echoed his words:

“jesus mary joseph help”

“What?” he cried.

He called out several times, but no further answer came. The dust had begun sprinkling down. He replaced the lid of the ciborium to keep the dust from mingling with the Wafers. He lay still for a time with his eyes closed.

The trouble with being a priest was that you eventually had to take the advice you gave to others.
Nature imposes nothing that Nature hasn’t prepared you to bear.
That’s what I get for telling her what the Stoic said before I told her what God said, he thought.

There was little pain, but only a ferocious itching that came from the captive part of him. He tried to scratch; his fingers encountered only bare rock. He clawed at it for a moment, shuddered, and took his hand away. The itch was maddening. Bruised nerves flashed foolish demands for scratching. He felt very undignified.

Well, Doctor Cors, how do you know that the itch is not the more basic evil than the pain?

He laughed a little at that one. The laugh caused a sudden blackout. He clawed his way out of the blackness to the accompaniment of someone screaming. Suddenly the priest knew that the screaming was his own. Zerchi was suddenly afraid. The itch had been transmuted into agony, but the screams had been those of raw terror, not of pain. There was agony now even in breathing. The agony persisted, but he could bear that. The dread had arisen from that last taste of inky blackness. The blackness seemed to brood over him, covet him, await him hungrily-a big black appetite with a yen for souls. Pain he could bear, but not that Awful Dark. Either there was something in it that should not be there, or there was something here that remained to be done. Once he surrendered to that darkness, there would be nothing he could do or undo.

Ashamed of his fright, he tried to pray, but the prayers seemed somehow unprayerful-like apologies, but not petitions-as if the last prayer had already been said, the last canticle already sung. The fear persisted.
Why?
He tried to reason with it. You’ve seen people die, Jeth. Seen many people die. It looks easy. They taper off, and then there’s a little spasm, and it’s over. That inky Dark-gulf between
aham
and
Asti-
blackest Styx, abyss between Lord and Man. Listen, Jeth, you really believe there’s Something on the other side of it, don’t you? Then why are you shaking so?

A verse from the Dies lrae drifted into mind, and it nagged at him:

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?

Quem patronum rogaturus,

Cum vix justus sit securus?

“What am I, who am wretched, then to say? Whom shall I ask to be my protector, since even the
just
man is scarcely safe?”
Vix securus?
Why “scarcely safe”? Surely He would not damn the just? Then why are you shaking so?

Really, Doctor Cors, the evil to which even you should have referred was not suffering, but the unreasoning fear of suffering.
Metus doloris.
Take it together with its positive equivalent, the craving for worldly security, for Eden, and you might have your “root of evil,” Doctor Cors. To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law-a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.

The trouble with the world is me. Try that on yourself, my dear Cors. Thee me Adam Man we. No “worldly evil” except that which is introduced into the world by Man-me thee Adam us-with a little help from the father of lies. Blame anything, blame God even, but oh don’t blame me. Doctor Cors? The only evil in the world now, Doctor, is the fact that the world no longer is. What pain hath wrought?

He laughed weakly again, and it brought the ink.

“Me us Adam, but Christ, Man me; Me us Adam, but Christ, Man me,” he said aloud. “You know what, Pat?-they’d… together… rather get nailed on it, but not alone… when they bleed… want company. Because... because why it is. Because why it is the same as Satan wants Man full of Hell. I mean the same as Satan wants Hell full of Man. Because Adam… And yet Christ… But still me…Listen, Pat-”

This time it took longer to drive the inky Dark away, but he had to make it dear to Pat before he went into it all the way. “Listen, Pat, because… why it is I told her the baby had to… is why I. I mean. I mean Jesus never asked a man to do a damn thing that Jesus didn’t do. Same as why I. Why I can’t let go. Pat?”

He blinked several times. Pat vanished. The world congealed again and the blackness was gone. Somehow he had discovered what he was afraid of. There was something he had yet to fulfill before that Dark closed over him forever.
Dear God, let me live long enough to fulfill it.
He was afraid to die before he had accepted as much suffering as that which came to the child who could not comprehend it, the child he had tried to save for further suffering-no, not [or it, but in spite of it. He had commanded the mother in the name of Christ. He had not been wrong. But now he was afraid to slide away into that blackness before he had endured as much as God might help him endure.