Punish the Sinners (21 page)

Balsam took Marilyn’s hand and held it gently. “It’s all right,” be said soothingly. “It’s all over now. You fell asleep and dreamed. That’s all.”

“No,” Marilyn objected, pulling her hand out of his. “I know I wasn’t asleep. I heard everything you were saying. You were talking about safety valves, and releases, and what happens when the safety valves don’t work. And that’s when she came to me. But I still heard you. You went on talking, and the priests of the Sanhedrin were here, listening to you, and watching the Sorrowful Mother, and then they went away. And then you talked about Judy Nelson, and the Virgin went away too. I know I wasn’t asleep, Mr. Balsam. I
know
it” Marilyn stood up and began putting the room in order, and Balsam realized that whatever had happened, it was over now. But what had happened? Marilyn, at least, had been aware of the six priests’ presence. He decided to probe a little further.

“You saw the priests?” he asked her. Marilyn nodded emphatically.

‘The priests of the Sanhedrin. The Jews who condemned our Lord. They were here, six of them, and they were watching the Sorrowful Mother. But she wasn’t paying any attention to them. She wanted to talk to me. But I don’t know why.”

Balsam wondered if he should tell Marilyn that the priests she had seen were very real. No, it would probably only upset the girl more. Instead, he decided to try to convince her that it was nothing but a dream.

“There was no one here, Marilyn,” he assured her. “What happened was simply a mixture of a dream and
reality. It isn’t uncommon. With part of your mind you’re aware of what’s going on around you, but part of your mind is drifting. And things start to get mixed up. The real world gets mixed into your dream, and your dream seems all the more real.”

“But it wasn’t a dream,” Marilyn insisted. “I know it wasn’t a dream. I saw the Blessed Virgin, and her hands were bleeding!” Then, seeing the disbelief in Peter Balsam’s face, she ran from the room, as if leaving his skepticism would confirm the reality of what she had seen.

Alone in Room 16, a deeply disturbed Peter Balsam sat thinking. A few minutes later he reluctantly concluded that he must discuss the incident with Monsignor Vernon.

   Balsam wasn’t surprised when he found the Society of St. Peter Martyr gathered in Monsignor Vernon’s office. It was as if they had expected him, and when he entered the office they rose as one to greet him. As usual, the Monsignor acted the spokesman.

“Well, Peter,” he said, smiling almost warmly. “We are pleased with the way you handled your class today.”

Balsam smiled wryly. It was odd indeed that he was finally receiving praise for the one class that had gone totally wrong.

“Pm afraid I handled it very badly,” he said. Monsignor Vernon looked at him questioningly, and Balsam related as well as he could what had happened to Marilyn Crane. The priests listened in silence. When Balsam finished they looked to Monsignor Vernon. The priest frowned as he thought over the implications of the odd incident.

“It would appear that Marilyn thinks she’s had a religious experience,” he said carefully.

Balsam nodded. “I tried to explain to her that it was much more likely that she simply fell asleep, but she wouldn’t listen. And the more I think about it, the more worried I get”

“Worried?”

“I’ve been thinking about Marilyn and her entire personality structure,” Balsam began. But before he could finish his thoughts, the Monsignor interrupted him.

“Marilyn’s always been one of our best students, and one of our most religious ones, too.”

“I’m sure she has,” Balsam said dryly. “But I wonder how much of it is real.”

“Real?” Vernon repeated. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Marilyn doesn’t seem to be a very well-balanced child. She has practically no friends, and the other kids shun her. It’s almost as if they take a malicious pleasure in making her feel bad.” He told them what had happened at the party the previous Saturday night They listened, again in silence. “If you want my opinion,” Balsam finished, “Marilyn uses her studies and her religion as an escape. Since she isn’t particularly well accepted by her peers, she chooses to get her acceptance from her teachers and the Church.”

“Is that so bad?” Father Bryant asked. “There are worse ways to compensate.”

Balsam shrugged. “There are all kinds of ways to compensate, and I’m certainly not about to suggest that Marilyn has picked unhealthy ones. But any compensation, carried to an extreme, is unhealthy.”

“I see,” Monsignor Vernon said slowly. “You believe Marilyn’s faith is questionable. You believe that what she thinks she saw this afternoon stemmed from—what?—hysteria?”

“I think it’s possible,” Balsam said, glad that the
priest seemed to understand it so well. But then the Monsignor’s expression changed, and the cold light that Balsam had come to recognize shone in his eyes—the cold light of his religious fanaticism.

“I disagree,” he said flatly. “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. She’s clever, you know. A very bright child. This is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate us. All of us. You, me, her friends, the sisters, everyone. Mark my words, an investigation of this matter will prove me right. You may call it hysteria if you wish. To me it is nothing more than a very clever kind of manipulation. It is out of wariness born of experience that the Church has set up machinery to investigate just sudi phenomena as Marilyn Crane claims to have experienced.” And then, as quickly as the light of fanaticism had come into the Monsignor’s eyes, it was gone. Suddenly he was smiling genially at a horrified Peter Balsam.

“It really isn’t anything to worry about,” he said now, the hardness in his voice gone. “Things like this happen all the time. I imagine that Marilyn will forget all about it by the end of the day. And if she doesn’t, I’ll have a talk with her.” Then he paused for a moment, as if a thought had occurred to him. “And we mustn’t forget,” he said softly, “there’s always the chance that the Blessed Virgin did visit Marilyn.”

Peter Balsam heard his front door open, and called from the kitchen. “I’m in here, throwing together something that I hope won’t poison us. Come in and fix us some drinks, will you?”

“I’m already here,” Margo Henderson replied from the doorway. She surveyed the suit he was still wearing with distaste. “One of these days we’re going to Seattle again, just to get you a new suit. Why don’t you change? Just looking at you makes me feel uncomfortable.”

“Can’t,” Peter said, grinning at her. Now that she was there, he was beginning to feel a little better. But not much; the grin faded. “I have to go to a meeting tonight, and it isn’t the kind of meeting where you show up in jeans and a tee-shirt”

“As if you owned such things in the first place,” Margo commented as she pried a tray of ice loose from the freezer. “What’s the big meeting?”

“You won’t approve,” Peter said. He wrestled with a can opener, then helplessly handed the mangled soup can, together with the opener, to Margo. “It’s the Society of St Peter Martyr,”

Margo glanced at him briefly as she took the can and completed the job Peter had botched. “I thought you were all through with them,” she said levelly.

“I didn’t say that,” Peter hedged.

“No?” Margo’s eyebrows arched. “Strange. That’s the distinct impression I got last night.”

Peter looked at her sharply. “Last night? I didn’t talk to you last night.”

“Of course you did,” Margo said. “All right, so it was early this morning, if you want to get technical. But I call anything before dawn ‘last night’ “ Then, seeing the look on Peter’s face, she frowned. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“There’s nothing to remember,” Peter declared. ‘I came home from the meeting, went to bed around eleven, and slept all night I thought about calling you, but decided not to; it was too late.”

Margo finished with the can, then mixed drinks for both of them before she spoke again. As she handed Peter his scotch-and-water, she looked at him carefully, trying to decide if he was playing some kind of a joke on her. She decided he wasn’t

“Well then,” she said, biting her lower lip speculatively, “you’ve taken up some rather odd habits. Do you always make phone calls in your sleep? Because you
did
call me last night.”

Peter searched his memory, but could find no recollection of any such thing the previous night. He felt a slight knot of fear in his stomach, but fought it down. “What did I say?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light. “Was I interesting?”

“No,” Margo said shortly, “you weren’t. All you said was that you’d gone to the meeting of that silly society of Monsignor’s and that you weren’t going back.”

“Did I call it ‘that silly society,’ or are you editorializing?”

The smile crept back to Margo’s face. “All right, so I didn’t quote you exactly. If you want to know, I don’t
recall your exact words, I mean, it was late, and I was asleep and, well, you know how groggy people can get in the middle of the night Anyway, I got the definite impression that you were not impressed with Monsignor and his funny friends.”

“Funny friends?” Peter repeated. “I don’t suppose those were my exact words either, were they?”

“No,” Margo said again, beginning to feel exasperated, “they weren’t. But if you ask me, any friends of Monsignor’s have to be funny.”

“I wish they were,” Peter replied in a tone Margo found suddenly disturbing. “But I’m not sure there’s anything funny about them at all.” Briefly, he told her about the meeting of the Society the previous night, and the events of the afternoon. Margo listened to him carefully, and when he was finished she shook her head.

“But why do you want to go back again tonight?” she asked. “It seems to me you’d want to stay out of the whole thing.”

“I don’t know,” Peter mused, as if trying to explain his feelings to himself as well as to her. “I can’t figure out what they’re up to. But I know they’re up to something. Last night, just before I left their meeting, Monsignor Vernon told me I had been invited for a reason—to have my faith reinforced. And he was right When I woke up this morning, I felt much better than I did last night.”

“Better about what?” Margo asked.

Peter shrugged. “The Church. Until this morning I was almost ready to throw the towel in on the whole thing. But this morning I felt different. I felt Pd missed something, that there was something, somewhere, that would make everything clear to me. And I think that something may just be in the Society. Anyway, I decided I have to give it a chance.” He smiled at Margo,
hoping to erase the look of concern that had come over her face. “I don’t see what harm it can do, and it might answer a lot of my questions.”

Margo looked doubtful. When she spoke, skepticism edged her voice. “A miraculous transformation, Peter? Something happened to you last night, because you’ve certainly changed your tune.”

“A man can change his mind,” Peter said, trying to keep his voice light.

“Or have it changed for him,” Margo pointed out. Silently, she decided to be waiting for Peter when he returned home that night.

   He was let into the study, as the previous night, by one of the old priests—Father Martinelli, if he remembered correctly—and once again found Monsignor Vernon deep in prayer. But the room looked different to Peter Balsam, and he soon realized why. Tonight no lights were on. The curtains had been drawn tightly shut. The only illumination was provided by a fire glowing in the fireplace and tall red candles placed around the room. Seven chairs had been carefully arranged in a semicircle around the fireplace—the two large comfortable chairs and five others. Monsignor Vernon was kneeling at one of the chairs, using it as a makeshift prie-dieu. The other chair, opposite the one Monsignor Vernon knelt at, was waiting for Peter Balsam. He took the chair silently, steeling himself for another inquisition.

But tonight it was different. There was no discussion before the ritual got under way. Instead, as soon as Monsignor Vernon finished the silent prayers, the chanting began. The Monsignor led it, and with each phrase one of the other old priests joined in, the sound
swelling until all the andient clerics were chanting out the cadences.

At first Peter Balsam wondered if he was expected to join the chanting, but as he listened he realized that he couldn’t participate: the phrases were unfamiliar. As he tried to follow the words, he discovered that it was not the thinness of the voices that made the chanting unintelligible; it was the language, a tongue sufficiently like Latin to sound familiar, but different enough—twisted enough, Peter thought with a shiver—to remain beyond his grasp.

As the cadences mounted, surrounding him, invading him, Peter Balsam felt his mind begin to wander. The fire flickering on the hearth almost seemed to recede into the distance, and tibie dancing shadows of the shimmering candles cast strange images on the walls. He began to feel as if he was being transported back in time to another age, an age where faith alone could transport a man into raptures.

Images began flitting through his head. His eyes, almost closed, drifted from one face to another, but instead of the five elderly priests and the youthful Monsignor, Peter Balsam saw the faces of ancient saints come suddenly to life. They were smiling on him. and beckoning to him. A feeling of camaraderie came over him, and Peter Balsam happily gave himself over to the companionship of the small group.

Some time later, he became vaguely aware that the chanting had stopped, and that the Society was now involved in responsive prayers. He was dimly aware of Monsignor Vernon’s voice, resonating softly through the room, and the thin, reedy voices of the five elderly priests as they made the responses. He tried to concentrate on the words, but, like the chanting, they were in a not-quite-Latin that he was unable to translate. Yet,
like the chanting, the prayers held an insistent rhythm, a rhythm that grew, bearing a spiritual message that was very clear: Peter Balsam, the steady intonations seemed to whisper, you are in the presence of God. Be humbled, Peter. And be comforted.

And he was. As the rhythms overcame him once more, Peter Balsam uttered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to be part of this wondrous ceremony.