Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “I’m afraid we’ve had rather a long day of it”, explained Billy, “We’ll turn in early if that’s all right.”

  “But of course. I will show you to your rooms, and then, if you wish you may select from a number of entertainments. There is a swimming pool and sauna, if the gentlemen so desire. A whirlpool? No? The films from the Cannes festival on video?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “My master will be disappointed in me. My reputation for entertaining guests will decline. No, I cannot convince you? Well, so be it”, he concluded with a charming smile.

  “Look, Roberto,” said Billy, squeezing his arm, and exercising a tone of voice that Elijah recognised as romanità, “I’d hate for you to lose your job. Why don’t you bring me some cognac and cake if you have any?”

  “We have cake, we have biscuits, we have chocolates, we have. . .”

  “Wonderful. Anything at all, Roberto, just a nightcap to keep our tummies from rumbling unpleasantly. There’s the fellow.”

  The guestmaster went out and returned shortly, looking well pleased, carrying a covered tray. He led them up a circular staircase to a wing of bedrooms that opened to a private parlor overlooking the sea. The roaring of wind in the pines could be heard through the thick panes of the floor-to-ceiling windows. A fire blazed in the hearth of each bedroom.

  “It’s magnificent, Roberto. I should hope to be inconvenienced like this quite often!”

  “Signore Stangsby, how you say it, pulls my leg, no?”

  “That’s right. We’re terrific leg-pullers where I come from. It’s a rotten habit!”

  The guestmaster laughed outright.

  “There is your room. And Signore Schäfer sleeps across the hall, here. Also, my master would scold me if he thought I had neglected to invite you to see his art collection. There are many significant works scattered throughout the house. Please, be at home; wander at your leisure. My wife and I are the only staff here, and I am leaving in a moment or two. We live across the garden in that cottage over there. Ring on the house phone if you need anything. I bid you a restful evening and shall return in the morning. My wife will come to make a breakfast for you.”

  “Thank you so much”, said Billy, reaching out his hand for a shake. “You’ve been delightful. I’ll put in a good word for you on Capri.”

  Roberto laughed again.

  “You English. Always, how do you say it, joshing! Buona notte, gentlemen. Please, use this house as if it were your own. A domani!”

  They wished him good night and he left.

  “Gee, Davy, a mansion all to ourselves.”

  “Aren’t you accustomed to big buildings, Billy?”

  “The Vatican’s smaller than you think, especially when you’re an old hand. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that. Oh, I like this! First class.”

  “First class.”

  “Do you think his master spends much time here?”

  “I suspect not. As beautiful as it is, it seems rather sterile, as if no one ever really lives here. This is a transit house between Capri and Brussels.”

  “If this is the boathouse, I can hardly wait to see the boat!”

  “Do you feel uneasy?”

  “No.”

  “I do.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Not really. A feeling.”

  “That Roberto chap seemed quite friendly. More like a faithful family retainer than a hired hand. I suppose when you live at this level even the servants inspire reverence.”

  “I wouldn’t have chosen that word.”

  “You’re tired and that always colors how you feel. You need a good night’s sleep, lad.”

  “Let’s sit up and talk. I feel suddenly very alone. There is a strange chill in this building.”

  “It’s quite toasty as a matter of fact. A lovely place. Whoever designed it has superb taste. Look, there’s an early Picasso on that wall, and here’s a Modigliani! A Giacometti bronze by the fireplace. I bet when we check out the bedrooms we’ll find that somebody put up religious stuff just for us.”

  “Look, there at the end of the corridor—that marble statue. Is it a religious piece? I think it’s a Saint Sebastian.”

  “Whoever he is, he’s stuck full of arrows like a pincushion. Now, tell me the truth, is that a look of death agony on the lad’s face, or an orgasm?”

  “The collector’s tastes are eclectic”, said Elijah, looking distractedly here and there.

  “Davy! Keep your eyes off those Aphrodites!”

  His mind had grown vulnerable to the power of imagery. The monastery had strengthened him for certain battles, and lowered his defenses for others—especially the visual. Monasticism was built on the assumption that one went away forever into the silence of God. The monastery walls were designed to protect the eye and the heart, to shut a few of the many doors through which temptation came. One did not look back. There was no television set at Carmel, and the journals that reached them contained few photographs. Women became an image in the mind.

  “The Aphrodites are somewhat disturbing,” he explained to Billy, “but they are not a serious threat.”

  “Are you made of sterner stuff than I am? Eyes to the right, lad. Just you ignore those ladies without no clothes on.”

  “I’m doing just that.”

  “Our invisible host must be quite a fellow. What does all this exquisite taste tell you about him?”

  “I’m not sure. On the surface, it’s a beautiful place. One couldn’t ask for a more comfortable, more welcoming environment. Yet I feel quite odd. What has occurred in these rooms, I wonder?”

  “If it will make you feel better, let’s pray for spiritual protection.”

  Billy took a purple stole from his jacket pocket, unrolled it, and put it around his neck.

  Slowly, as if fighting some overpowering reluctance, Elijah did the same.

  The two priests raised their arms in supplication, invoked the blessing of Christ and the protection of the holy angels upon each other, and prayed the words of exorcism against the oppressing spirit of this house.

  “There, feel better?”

  “I do.”

  “It’s only eight o’clock. Want to take in a film? This year’s Cannes festival? Look at the size of that telly.”

  “I would rather visit with you. Billy, I feel. . .”

  “Not again! What do you feel?”

  “As if we are standing on the edge of a cliff.”

  “Well, we are on the edge of a cliff. The architect designed it that way. And if Vesuvius—which lurks only a few miles back yonder—decides to blow tonight, we’ll slide right into the Tyrrhenian Sea. We’re in terrible danger at this very moment. Let that be a consolation to you.”

  Elijah smiled.

  “Perhaps you are right. I’m overtired and imagining things.”

  “You need some divertimento. I’ll bet a monk like you doesn’t get too much fun in his life, do you?”

  “Billy, you are irrepressible. Much of what you consider fun is not fun for me. However, I do have an idea.”

  “Go ahead, amaze me.”

  “I suggest that we get into our pajamas and bathrobes, and each of us tell the other a story.”

  “That’s a fabulous suggestion”, shouted Billy, slapping his hands together. “Oh dear, how I wish I’d brought Andy along. He would have loved this! Well, never mind. I can tell it to him when I get home.”

  When Billy had tucked himself into the bed in his suite, he lay back on a mountain of pillows, sipping cognac and nibbling fruit cake.

  Elijah came in wearing an old bathrobe. He seated himself in a chair at the foot of the bed. The fireplace to his right cast a soft light across the room. Billy looked as if he would at any given moment whisk a panda bear from under the covers.

  “Did you find any Rembrandts in your room?” asked Billy.

  “Only a landscape by Watteau. And you?”

  “Something frightfully avante garde by a Rumanian. Surrealist. L
ook at it.”

  “It looks like a Madonna and Child from here. Why do you say it’s surrealist?”

  “Look closely.”

  Elijah went up to the painting, stopped, and took three steps backward.

  “See what he’s done? Fiendish, isn’t it?”

  “He has composed the portrait of our Lady and the Christ Child with miniatures of every sin known to man. This is diabolical.”

  “The product of a deranged id. Now, go across the room and look at it from a distance.”

  Elijah followed Billy’s instructions. He looked back toward the image and a scowl crossed his face.

  “You see it?”

  “I see it. He has once again produced an optical illusion. Here is a third level of the image, using shadows and light. Now it is the face of a huge demon opening its jaws to swallow the Christ Child and the Mother.”

  “Whoever painted this thing is Not a Nice Man, I’d say”, said Billy.

  Elijah took the painting off the wall and left the room.

  “Where did you go? What did you do?” said Billy when he returned.

  “I found a closet down the hall. It can stay in there for the night.”

  Elijah sat down on the chair by the fire and stared into the flames.

  “Now come on, Davy, tell me a story.”

  “Give me a few moments to collect myself.”

  “Don’t tell me that painting gave you the willies. It’s just paint on canvas.”

  “It’s a word. It speaks a message from the realm of darkness.”

  “Come on now, you’re just giving into that mood you had when we first got here. Shake it off!”

  Elijah looked away from the flames. He rubbed his face.

  “You are probably right.”

  “Your nerves are really on edge, old boy. Why don’t you tell me a story, then we’ll both feel better.”

  “You are right, Billy.”

  “Come on! Out with it. And make it a fairy tale while you’re at it. How about a Polish one!”

  “I do have a fairy story. A friend told it to me many years ago. Do you promise you won’t be frightened?”

  “I promise.”

  “Do you promise not to interrupt?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “It is about a dragon and a prince and a princess.”

  “Oh, lovely! Does it end happily?”

  “Happily for the humans. Not so well for the dragon.”

  “Just as it should be. Commence.”

  And thus, Elijah recounted the story Pawel Tarnowski first told him on a bitterly cold winter’s eve in 1943, in Warsaw, when they were starving.

  “There was a boy”, said Elijah. “He was the prince of a kingdom on the mountains. His father the King went away when the child was young, barely able to walk, for the Queen had died and the man could not bear to enter the house of his first and only love.”

  “Go on. Go on”, urged Billy in a soft voice. His eyes were large. He drew up his knees under the covers.

  Elijah cleared his throat and continued the tale of the prince who lost his heart, and the lark zabawa who gave it back to him, and the dragon smok, which the prince slew by the castle of the dead lands.

  When it was completed Elijah stared into the fire and remembered Warsaw. He saw the face of Pawel shaking with fever. He saw the stone that sat on Pawel’s heart.

  “That’s quite good”, said Billy.

  “Now. You tell me yours.”

  “Well, now that it comes down to it, I don’t have any stories. Just a head full of gossip and English Lit exams.”

  “I don’t believe you. Make one up.”

  Billy looked genuinely at a loss.

  “I don’t think I could. I’ve never tried.”

  “But you told me you had a story.”

  “I never.”

  “Last week, you said that you would tell me about a hitchhiker.”

  “Oh, that! It’s not a proper story, really.”

  “It will be good enough.”

  “It’s not a made up one. It really happened.”

  “So much the better. Now commence!”

  “Do you promise not to be frightened?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you promise not to interrupt?”

  “I will try.”

  “No, I won’t tell it. You’d never believe me.”

  “I will. I promise I will. If you promise that it is a true story, I will believe it.”

  He saw that Billy was not joking.

  “It is true”, he said in a low voice. “It happened to me, and I swear it happened exactly the way I’m going to tell it.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Eight months ago I was driving north on M40 to Birmingham. I wanted to see some people I know up there who are faithful to the Magisterium. They run a catechetical institute that spreads the Church’s teaching. They publish a lot of stuff that’s true-blue, mostly for kids. I was praying the Rosary at a hundred and forty klicks on the dial, when I heard a voice.

  “I was alone in the car. The radio was off. So where did the voice come from? Who knows? Now don’t look so worried. I’m not the kind of lad who hears voices, if you know what I mean.”

  “I am not worried.”

  “My cousin Winnie hears voices too, but she’s in the schizo ward at Netherne. Now, you and I know I’m not a schizo or a mystic, so don’t ask me to explain what I’m going to tell you. I’m just saying I heard a voice.”

  “With your own ears?”

  “That’s the part that’s hard to describe. It was someone or something speaking to me. But it wasn’t exactly exterior. It wasn’t sound waves hitting the ear drum. I heard it inside of me, but it came from outside.”

  “What did the voice say?”

  “It said—you’ll laugh, I know you’ll laugh—it said that I should stop and pick up the next hitchhiker I see on the road. At first I shook it off. No bloody way, I said. That’s crazy. I never pick up hitchhikers. Not only is it dangerous in these times, I’m always going too fast. I chalked it up to imagination. So I kept saying my beads like the good lad I am, and the voice came a second time.

  “ ‘You must stop and pick up the next hitchhiker’, it said.

  “I was starting to get nervous, wondering what I’d eaten for breakfast, asking myself if I’d been having enough fun lately, the usual checklist for neurosis. Then the voice came a third time, just as I was going over a rise in the road, and there at the bottom, half a mile ahead, was a fellow with his thumb out.

  “So I said, all right, but I gave that voice a big groan!

  “I pulled over to the curb and this nice-looking lad jumped in. Nothing unusual about him except he had a really decent face.

  “We made small talk for about thirty seconds, and I was tearing up to 140 again when he turned to me and said, The first trumpet has sounded.

  “Oh-oh, I said to myself, I’ve picked up a loony.

  “I eased back on the accelerator and looked for an exit from the motorway that might have a copper station at the end of it. I was down to eighty klicks when he said it again: The first trumpet has sounded.

  “ ‘What’s this about a trumpet? You’re a musician, are you?’ I said.

  “He just repeated for the third time, The first trumpet has sounded.

  “ ‘Who are you?’ I asked him.

  “ ‘My name is Gabriel’, he answered.

  “By this point I was really scared. I just stared straight ahead at the pavement, and we kept going at eighty. Then it dawned on me that he must be putting me on. He had to be.”

  Billy’s voice trembled and he looked Elijah full in the eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Billy? What happened?”

  “I looked over to the passenger side and he wasn’t there.”

  “Not there?”

  “He was there. And then he wasn’t there.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I couldn’t be more serious.”

  “Was
he perhaps a spiritual meditation in your mind?”

  “It wasn’t like that. He was real. You could have reached out and touched his arm. His jacket rustled. You could hear him breathe. His voice hit my ear drums the way the first voice didn’t. It was solid.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I was so shaken my hands weren’t controlling the wheel too well. I slowed the car and pulled over onto the shoulder. I just sat there. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything. I just sat there playing it and replaying it in my mind. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Then a constable pulled in behind me and walked up to the window.

  “ ‘Having trouble?’ he said.

  “ ‘Nope’, I said.

  “But you know coppers; they can read minds. He said, ‘Are you sure, sir? You look like you’ve had a spot of trouble.’

  “ ‘Constable,’ I said, ‘if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.’

  ” ‘Why don’t you try me?’ he said. So I told him what happened.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He just pushed back his cap and scratched his head. Then he said, ‘Sir, if you’d told me this yesterday, I would have thought you were mad as a hatter, but you’re the fourth person to tell me that very story this morning.’ ”

  “Astounding.”

  “Believe me, Davy. I’ve made nothing of this up.”

  “I do believe you.”

  “I’ve not exaggerated any of it either.”

  “I believe you. How many people have you told?”

  “How badly do you think I want to lose credibility? Think of it, in my position.”

  “Have you told anyone?”

  “I told Stato. He’s got eyes like a hawk. He dug it out of me. He believes me. I think he told the Holy Father, but what he makes of it I couldn’t begin to guess.”

  “This is very meaningful.”

  “It is? Why?”

  “My life seems to be haunted by the Book of Revelation lately. Your experience is of a piece with some things that have been happening.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “I will tell you in the morning. If we get started on this subject we’ll never stop. We both need a good night’s sleep if we’re going to put our heads in the lion’s mouth tomorrow. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. God bless you, Davy.”

  “God bless you, Billy.”