Thomas M. Disch

by The Priest

  Then it came back to him: the woman who’d entered the back room of the tattoo parlor after Wolf had begun his work. She’d worn a tank top that exposed both her breasts, which were elaborately tattooed. Her arms were tattooed as well, and her shoulders. She had ridiculously long, cherry-red fingernails. She had touched his penis. She’d asked Wolf if she could take over his tattooing. That’s when he’d fainted. That was why he’d come here.

  “Will you dine now, Your Grace?” the fat priest asked.

  “I guess there’s nothing else I can do at this point, is there?” He smiled oddly.

  The priest gestured toward the clothes that had been laid out for him atop one of the coffinshaped wardrobes. “Then I will tell the Legate that you are dressing and will join him shortly.”

  17

  Silvanus knew almost as soon as he opened his eyes that he was in hell.

  One minute he had been witnessing the interrogation of the heretic Aielot de Gaillac in the crypt of Notre Dame de Gevaudon, and the next he found himself strapped down to a pallet, much as Madame de Gaillac had been, while she, by a kind of infernal symmetry, had been transformed into a succubus or a female demon and was using an instrument of torture upon the exposed and anguished flesh of his male member. Her unbound breasts, which the interrogator had been about to cut from her body, remained intact, and now were covered with Satanic embroideries—images of serpents and flowers twined together, illuminating her flesh as if it were a living parchment. Her very flesh had become an emblem of an Eden fallen into the power of hell, where the serpent might live among the roses without the fear of God.

  To his amazement, when he had seen the knife pressed against the heretic’s flesh, he had fallen into a swoon. It had not been the thought of the butchery that had unmanned him, nor yet his animal response, which had been one of arousal—an arousal he had not encouraged by any act of self-stimulation and which was therefore guiltless. His distress had sprung, rather, from an intense, unreasoning pity for the heretic and, correlative to that, a doubt as to the necessity, even the justice, of her being put to the question in this manner. That doubt had passed beyond a scruple to a conviction that the interrogation was a sinful act and that his motive for having Madame de Gaillac examined by the Inquisition was not a godly abhorrence of heresy but, rather, a carnal pleasure in witnessing her tortures and a further satisfaction in thinking that the Church would soon attach her properties, which were among the most considerable in Montpellier-le-Vieux. It was just as he had formulated these misgivings that he had swooned, and been transported to this chamber of hell. But had he been brought here in the flesh, as the pain of his torture seemed to suggest, or was this a vision?

  He had had one such vision before, on the feast day of Saint Macanus, following the accident in the sacristy when Abbé St-Loup had bled onto the white wool of the pallium, and he had found himself in this same chamber with his flesh being covered with the heraldry of hell. The man, or demon, whom he’d seen then and who so much resembled St-Loup, was present again, standing behind the succubus who was torturing him. The man’s hands played with silver rings that hung from the pierced nipples of her painted breasts, like the rings placed in the snout of the pig, an animal symbolizing female lust. Her snout was beringed, as well, and each ear was a little marketplace of finely crafted silver. The Bishop almost forgot the pain he was suffering in the amazement of seeing Madame de Gaillac so bizarrely transfigured.

  “Hey,” said the hellish version of St-Loup, “better ease up. He’s awake.”

  “Yeah, but I think he’s like me, I think he grooves on it. His dick is sure as hell hard as a rock.”

  Madame de Gaillac laid down the instrument of torture while continuing to grasp his male member in her other hand. Both hands had bright red claws instead of fingernails. She smiled at him. “Hi. We were never formally introduced, but I know you’re Damon. I’m Delilah.”

  It seemed to make much more sense that one would meet the Philistine whore Delilah here in hell than an Aveyronaise heretic who had yet to be dispatched to her reward. Did that mean that the succubus was not Madame de Gaillac, despite the strong resemblance? Or could she somehow be both women, Delilah and Aielot de Gaillac? He remembered that St-Loup, in the earlier vision, had addressed him then too as Damon. Perhaps in hell one’s Christian name is forfeited and one assumes a new name reflecting the fact of one’s damnation. Thus, Madame de Gaillac had become Delilah, as he was now Damon.

  “Hail, Delilah!” the Bishop said, speaking the language of hell with an uncanny fluency, as though it were indeed his native tongue. And then, from a conviction that it was always politic to render obeisance to one’s liege, he declared: “All praise to the power and glory of Satan!”

  This provoked the mirth of both the succubus and the demonic St-Loup, who, even so, added his own oath of fealty. “Yeah, right on, man—hail fuckin’

  Satan.”

  “You’re really into that devil shit, aren’t you?” Delilah asked respectfully.

  There was no help for it. Hell set the terms here. So he followed her prompting and said, “Yes, praise to Satan’s shit. Praise to his piss as well.”

  “Hey,” Delilah said with a snaggletoothed smile, “you are one weird motherfucker.”

  The Bishop was too shocked to respond at once. Needless to say, he had never committed incest with his mother. That was an outright lie—but then in hell lies would be the order of the day. Moreover, to be accused of incest would be a compliment. So, after thinking this through, he said in a tone of modest pride, “Thank you.”

  “Well, Satan can be real proud of you tonight, Damon,” St-Loup said with a chuckle. “Here, I’ll show you.”

  As in the earlier vision, St-Loup held up a silvery speculum large enough that Silvanus could see his entire torso in it. The horned face of Satan was now inscribed there with a clarity and precision surpassing the best illuminations the Bishop had ever seen. The leering face itself, with its hollow eye sockets and snarling mouth, was formed from roiling clouds of smoke, but the smoke had thickened, darkening and becoming more convoluted, and colored flames now shot up all about the face like fiery hair. There had also been added, on his abdomen (or else he’d not noticed it during the earlier, more fleeting vision), the figure of a Norman horseman carrying a flaming brand, whence issued the smoke forming the Satanic face. Interpreting this allegorically, the Bishop took it to mean that it was the Crusaders at war against the Albigensians (who had been summoned from Normandy and the Ile de France, and ultimately from the far north of Europe) who were the true vassals of Satan, just as the Albigensians maintained. Could it be that in assisting in the extermination of their heresy he had actually been assisting in the work of Satan? Unthinkable—but how else to interpret this allegory branded on his very flesh?

  “Well,” St-Loup insisted, “whadaya think?”

  “It is”—he had almost said “very good,” before he remembered he was in hell—”evil. It is truly evil.”

  “Another satisfied customer,” St-Loup said, putting aside the speculum, and beginning to loosen the knots of the ropes by which the Bishop’s arms were bound to the pallet. “Sorry we had to tie you down like this, but a couple times your muscles started spasming. Nothing serious, but it made it hard to work. You was Out a long time, so I was able to get a lot done. One more session like this and we’ll be through. Unless, of course, you’ve got some other ideas for more shit you want done. Like, why not a full bodysuit? If you dig that idea, I’d be happy to lower the rate, if that would make it easier for you financially. When I first set the price over the phone, I figured we’d need more sittings, but your blanking out the way you do makes it a whole lot easier for me to concentrate on the needlework. So think about it, okay?”

  “Okay,” said the Bishop. Unbound, he was able to look at his own hands, which were as he remembered them. He’d thought that his fingernails might have been turned into claws, like Delilah’s.

  “I’m sorry I can’t of
fer you any more booze. Delilah killed the bottle that was here. But I know an after-hours place that’s still open. It’s a little late to get polluted, but a couple brews would hit the spot right now.

  Whadaya think?”

  “Okay,” said the Bishop. Okay seemed to be the most acceptable form of obeisance. It was strange how St-Loup dealt with him—not as a new arrival in hell but as one of its regular denizens, familiar with its customs and leal to its liege. Undoubtedly it behooved the Bishop to continue to act as though this were the case, as though he were the willing companion of these demons.

  In that way, disguised as a demon himself, he might be spared the worst of hell’s tortures. Why he had been assigned the role of one of hell’s familiars he could not imagine, unless it was that in the afterlife our worst punishment will be to commit in a perfected form those sins that earned us our damnation, that hell’s cruelest punishment is just to be ourselves, the selves our sins have formed. He had heard theologians maintain this, but he’d felt only contempt for such doctrines, which seemed designed to minimize the terrors of hell. Who would cease sinning if the only punishment threatened were to reenact one’s sins throughout eternity? The heaven promised to Mussulmen was precisely that—a harem where the lustful might gratify their lust forever.

  Perhaps this was the heaven of the infidels! Perhaps the infidel heaven and the Christian hell were the same place, like cities whose peoples speak two languages and which are called sometimes by one name and sometimes by another.

  “We can take my Jeep,” St-Loup said, “if you don’t mind Delilah sitting on your lap. Come to think of it, you must be a little sore down there.”

  “I like the pain,” the Bishop assured him. “The pain is evil.” He had noticed, observing the interrogations of heretics, that any expression of fear of the torture continuing, any visible trepidation, would excite the torturers to inflict new pains. Ergo: To avoid pain, he must accept and even praise it.

  His calculation seemed correct, for Delilah gave a final pinch of her talons to his male member, and said, “Hey, you’re my kind of guy.”

  The Bishop pushed himself up into a sitting position and then got off the pallet and stood upon the actual floor of hell. Where he had been tortured, his flesh was sore, but the customary pains of his body had been intermitted. He could twist his back freely, and flex his knees. His toothache was gone. How long had it been since he’d been without his toothache?

  “Well,” said St-Loup, opening a finely carpentered door, “shall we go?”

  “Okay,” said the Bishop. He walked through the opened door and entered another larger, and noticeably hotter, chamber of hell, lighted, like the room where he’d been tortured, with long cones of unwavering brightness, candles that burned without flame or smoke.

  Ahead of him was another door, and he walked toward it, feeling something almost like eagerness to see more of hell.

  Behind him, Delilah and St-Loup laughed in a gleeful way, not maliciously as one would expect of devils, but as parents laugh at the antics of a favored child. He turned around to know the source of their merriment.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” St-Loup asked.

  “Am I?”

  “Your clothes?”

  “Oh.

  Even though his two companions were wearing clothes, it had not occurred to him that he must dress to promenade through hell. Admittedly, their tailoring was quite indecent—each of them in breeches of black cloth that was molded to the contours of their legs and loins and each wearing, above their waists, doublets imprinted, like their flesh, with heraldries of hell. On St-Loup’s doublet, a snarling wolf, punning on his name, as heraldic devices so often do; on hers, a single word declaring her shame, BITCH.

  St-Loup pointed him to where his clothes lay in a heap atop a chair wrought (it seemed) from armor plate. Hell was better furnished than the episcopal palace in Montpellier-le-Vieux. Indeed, even this torture chamber boasted a superfluity of furniture, with several steel chairs (not stools), other chairs of wood, and two thronelike chairs built of cushions, as though meant for sleep. There were shelves and cupboards to house the instruments of torture, and even a small library of thin illuminated manuscripts. Two of these were placed on a low table, and by the same occult gift that enabled him to understand the demons’ speech, he could read their titles: Outlaw Biker Tattoos and Tattoo Digest. The illuminated binding showed other succubi like Delilah, painted with such artistry that one might think them alive.

  There was no time to examine these manuscripts. He must dress in order to accompany St-Loup and Delilah to their infernal revels. First, he pulled on the breeches, which were made of a blue fabric as sturdy as drugget yet as yielding as the softest muslin. There were shoes that bore some charm or demon’s name unknown to him: ADIDA5. When he sat upon the chair to put the shoes on, he noticed that his feet had been scrubbed as clean as the skin of a suckling infant, the nails trimmed and calluses removed. Indeed, all his skin had been similarly cleansed and softened, no doubt to make it more receptive to torture. With each movement of his body as he fit his feet into the shoes, he could feel the fabric of the breeches caressing his legs.

  Now the doublet. He studied it, uncertain if it was to be put on so that it opened to expose the chest or the back. He decided that he would be expected to display the torture that had been done to him, and when he wore the doublet so, St-Loup gave him a nod of approval.

  “Gonna fly your colors tonight, huh?” Delilah said.

  The Bishop nodded, and then, just to be on the safe side, repeated the oath of fealty that St-Loup had spoken earlier: “Hail fucking Satan.”

  St-Loup chuckled. “A week ago,” he said, “I wouldn’t of believed this, Damon. You’re a changed man. I guess it’s like I said about how the tattoo’s like a door. Except I never seen anyone come out of that door at quite the speed you’re going. Maybe a bull at the rodeo coming out of the chute. But hey, that’s okay. I like it. I think Delilah likes it, too.” He winked at the succubus. “Am I right?”

  “Fuck you, Wolf,” she said amiably. “And you,” turning to the Bishop,

  “should zip your fly. Here, let me.” She came up to the Bishop and reached inside the front opening of his breeches to nip his male member one last time, then sealed the cloth together by a quick motion of her talons.

  St-Loup–-or Wolf, to call him by his hellish name—touched an ivory plaque on the wall, and at once the flameless candle overhead was extinguished. The Bishop followed the two demons through the door and beheld, above the quivering silhouettes of windblown trees, a sky full of stars. He could even recognize the constellations—Lyra, Cygnus, Cassiopeia. They shone but dimly, as though obscured by smoke or mist, but that they shone at all astonished him. Was he, then, not in hell? Could hell have a sky with constellations identical to those of the earth?

  “They’re bright out here, ain’t they?” Wolf said. “Closer in to the city, you almost forget there’s stars up there.”

  A brighter light than the stars appeared suddenly at the horizon— not singly, but paired with another of equal brightness—and swooped forward like a double comet, threatening destruction. Wolf and Delilah gave it no heed, and as it sped by, the Bishop realized that what he’d thought an aerial phenomenon was in fact a very small armored house much like the one that Wolf was entering now. It moved on wheels by its own power, or else by the power of the demons within. The Bishop had always supposed demons were winged, but then he’d supposed that hell was beneath the earth and had no view of the stars.

  Wolf bade the Bishop take the seat beside him within the armored house, opening a second door that he might enter. Delilah followed him into the house and seated herself on his lap, which was a source of excruciating pain to his tortured flesh. Pleased to inflict new pain, Delilah smiled and pressed her mouth against the Bishop’s in an obscene kiss, her tongue acting as only lips may be allowed, even between spouses. Yet, just as his tongue had pronounced Satan to be its liege, an
d would speak any other words that hell required, so now it shared in Delilah’s carnal transgression. He received her tongue in his mouth and protruded his into hers, tasting her spit. Was it only minutes ago that he had seen the Inquisition’s servitors begin to amputate this woman’s breasts?

  As though he’d spoken this question aloud, the succubus took his left hand and guided it beneath her doublet to grasp the pliant tissues of her right breast. Hesitantly at first, and then greedily, like a suckling babe, he palpated the complex flesh, aware of structures beneath the skin that eluded his touch and his understanding. The Bishop was not without all carnal knowledge, but such times as he had taken women in his arms, their breasts had not been unbound, nor had he placed his hands directly upon them. The experience was arousing, in an animal sense, but also physically distressing, a sensation that combined a sense of famishing hunger with a wrenching disgust and nausea.

  Delilah pulled her tongue from his mouth and whispered in his ear, “Hey, come on, twist it!” Her talons guided his fingers to the pierced, beringed nipple as her tongue pressed into his otic orifice. He groaned with a pleasure that expressed, in a language that dogs or cattle would have understood, his complete surrender to the requirements of hell. Just as Esau traded away his father’s estates for a bowl of porridge, so the Bishop for the sigh and the shudder of this single ravished moment was ready to cede an eternity of heavenly bliss. He had no desire beyond the pleasure of this instant.

  Even as his flesh gloried in its own damnation, the armored house flew forward through space with inconceivable velocity. Had he doubted, seeing the stars above his head, that he was in hell, he could have doubted no longer, for only supernatural forces could have propelled a house and inhabitants at such speeds. And now, as Delilah’s tongue resumed its first indecency, the lights of other such houses as theirs flared up in front of them and then were swept away. They joined a river of such houses (two rivers, in fact, flowing on a parallel course but in opposite directions), some as large as the Bishop’s stables. The beauty of that double river of lights hurtling through space, combined with the carnal pleasure of Delilah’s embrace, was such that the Bishop wished he could sing hell’s praises aloud. He was in ecstasy.