Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  In an instant, Father Elijah saw the exact contours of Count Smokrev’s life. He said nothing and looked into the not very great depths of the man’s soul.

  “Remove that insulting glance of pity from me, please!”

  “You are not a happy man, Count,” said Father Elijah gently.

  “I am a very happy man. I have had everything I wanted from life.”

  “Your life is drawing to a close. Have you not given a thought to eternity?”

  “I sold my soul a long time ago, dear fellow. The rest is all cosmetics and parlor games. Nothing that you say, you admirable, earnest apostle, will touch me in the slightest.”

  “Are you so sure? Isn’t every man a mystery to himself?”

  “I have plumbed every depth of depravity known to man. I have exhausted it all. You have no idea. Don’t waste your time.”

  “It wouldn’t be wasted time. You are a human soul. You were not created for this. . .”

  “Ooh, dear, dear, you came very close to saying something tasteless. You were about to say depravity, or corruption, or damnation, weren’t you?”

  “I was about to say that you were not created for this lovelessness.”

  “Love? What is love?”

  “To give one’s life away for another.”

  “I am a taker. Not a giver. No conversions are possible here.”

  “You seem adamant about that.”

  “Simply free from illusions. I know that there is no love in the world. We are all creatures of various kinds of desire. Even the idealist who talks of love, love, love all the day long will make a few sacrifices to convince himself of his fantasy. But I tell you, his fantasy is a pleasure to him; he desires it to be true, but he will abandon it at the very instant it becomes unmitigated suffering. I am a creature who cultivates a certain kind of desire, that’s all, merely a variation on your idealist who thinks he loves. I love in my own fashion, just as he does. But let neither of us call it pure, unsullied, unselfish love. There is no such thing. You think me a deformed creature. I admit it. But everyone is deformed. Not a soul on this planet escapes it. The idealist is deformed by his theological romance. I have been deformed by history and by your religion, and by my darling mother and by. . .”

  Here the count stopped and lit a second cigarette. He inhaled and precipitated another fit of coughing. He lay back and struggled to catch his breath.

  “In all your years of living,” said Elijah, “has no one told you that it is possible to be restored to what one was created to be?”

  “They have told me in a thousand ways. I have heard more sermons than you’ve ever given. I have listened to the exhortations of the zealous, the compassionate, and the strident, the saints, geniuses, and cretins, all in the employ of your beloved Church. And I tell you that nothing touches my unbelief.”

  “You cling to your unbelief like a Medici clings to his bottle of poison.”

  “Ah, touché! Formidable! A delightful turn of phrase. I’m warming up to you. You have a literary streak. Marvelous. Do go on.”

  “Life is short, eternity is long.”

  “If there is a God, let Him advise me that the end is near. I will repent on my deathbed.”

  “Did you know, Count Smokrev, that deathbed conversions are quite rare? Any priest will tell you that.”

  “As a matter of policy?”

  “As a simple fact. Many people think they can postpone repentance till the end. This is an illusion. Most men die as they have lived. If death is sudden, there is no time for it. If it comes gradually, there is usually little energy for the revision of an entire way of being.”

  “Tsk, tsk! You won’t frighten me with such dire warnings.”

  “Nothing I say touches you, does it?”

  “True. But don’t be discouraged, dear fellow. You are mildly entertaining. Quite a relief from my nurse, who wishes to preserve her job as long as possible, and my manservant, who labors with excruciating persistence in the cause of my damnation. They are dull characters interested in various kinds of profit.”

  “If I were to wrestle for your soul, would you wrestle with me against the things that entrap you?”

  “No. I would wrestle against you and call upon a legion of demons to assist me.”

  “Then what, precisely, is the purpose of this conversation?”

  “Entertainment.”

  “I see.”

  Father Elijah stood.

  “Ah, yes, well done. You will now leave with great dignity. Just as I choreographed it. This dialogue has been perfectly predictable, yet enjoyable.”

  “I leave with a great sadness in my heart. I see a gifted man who believed a lie.”

  “What do you mean? Ah, yes, your theology. Well, it doesn’t matter. Good-bye.”

  “I will pray for you.”

  “Don’t waste your effort. Good-day.”

  “Good-day.”

  His legs shook on the steps leading down to the street. His hands trembled and dismay filled his mind. He had heard the confessions of countless people. He had encountered many great sinners. He had met brutal men, corrupt men, liars and cheats and murderers and adulterers and seducers of the innocent. But he had never yet encountered one so completely without a hint of shame. This dying soul, this Count Smokrev, was one who appeared to know he was damned, who had chosen it, who delighted in it. Elijah, appalled and helpless, walked away from the apartment and went blindly up the street.

  At the end of the avenue, he happened upon the entrance to a convent. An order of contemplative nuns. He rang and explained to the portress that he felt unwell and wished to have a few moments of prayer. She let him in to the chapel, and he knelt in front of the Blessed Sacrament for close to an hour. He was at first agitated, beseeching help for himself and for Smokrev, for the President, and for the Church that was now bleeding copiously from more wounds than he had imagined. After some minutes he became calm but bereaved, then gradually fell into a state of interior recollection. Eventually, all sensation of time disappeared.

  A voice spoke within him:

  I ask of you an extraordinary immolation of your heart.

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  I ask you to love My enemy in My name.

  “I will try to do this, my Lord, but I beg You for the necessary grace.”

  Where everything is given, nothing is lacking. Fear nothing, my son.

  “I am afraid, Lord, I am afraid. Soon I must face the lion. I fear him greatly. This corrupt one, I fear him also. He exhausts my every resource, and he has weakened me for the meeting with the lion.”

  My strength is most effective in weakness.

  “It is impossible. I have nothing left. I wish to return to Mount Carmel. I beg You to send another messenger to him.”

  I have chosen you.

  “Have You given me two impossible tasks? Both are beyond my strength. I do not understand.”

  I have given you but one task and that is to trust Me as you go down into the darkness of men’s hearts. This depraved soul is My child. I see what he once was and may be again. He fights you fiercely because he longs for you to resist him. Resist him with love. The other, the man of power, is a foe of a different order.

  “Lead me, Lord, I am shaken.”

  I ask you to fear nothing. I have brought you forth like a brand from the burning in order to address the foe and for the good of many souls. I carry you always. You must trust in Me especially during times of desolation.

  “You are the heart of the world. I place my trust in You.”

  Cling to Me in everything that is about to happen. You will bear many more wounds for My sake..

  “You are my life.”

  You are My friend and disciple. Elijah.

  The interior light faded and time poured back into his consciousness. He got up and went out into the foyer and rang for the portress. His legs were still weak. He asked her to call a taxi to take him back to the Marriott. Upon his arrival there, he collapsed onto his bed and fell i
nstantly into a deep sleep.

  XI

  The Confession

  I wish to confess, said the note. Come quickly.

  The nurse let him into Smokrev’s apartment and led him down the hallway to the bedchamber. There, he found the count sitting up in his enormous bed, a stack of newspapers beside him, books, trays of medicines, and drinks spread across the brocaded coverlet. He was reading a theatre paper from New York and smoking his Russian cigarettes. The room smelled ghastly—a mixture of tobacco and the urinary incontinence of old men.

  The nurse cleared her throat, and Smokrev looked up, waved at the priest, and broke into a smile that resembled the leer of a delighted weasel.

  “You came! Well done, good and faithful servant!” he muttered and glanced to the heavens. “I can always spot a true disciple. They will go to the most degraded places on the planet in search of a single repentance. They will kiss tax collectors and prostitutes at any time, night or day.”

  A sarcastic note lingering just below the ironic tone did not ease Elijah’s tension.

  “You asked me to come. Is it true that you wish to confess?”

  “It is.”

  “I am glad. I am very glad.”

  “I dressed for the occasion”, said Smokrev, pulling at the lapels of his crimson satin housecoat. “Red for the scarlet woman. Black lapels for true contrition. White shirt for restoration to my pristine purity.”

  “I am surprised by this sudden change of heart. When we parted yesterday you had convinced me that no such change would ever occur. May I ask what has brought it about?”

  “Something you said about nostalgia. That did it.”

  The simplicity of it puzzled Father Elijah. Even so, he removed a purple stole from his pocket and unrolled it. Smokrev watched him place it over his neck; he observed with a little smile as the priest drew a chair close to the bed and bent his head to listen.

  Smokrev erupted into high-pitched, hysterical giggles.

  “You misunderstand me. I wish to confess to you as one man to another. I didn’t mean your sacrament!”

  Elijah’s heart fell.

  “I see.”

  “Always on the lookout for someone to rehabilitate, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I suppose that is true, though you put it crudely. If by rehabilitate you mean restore a soul to a world of love, yes, it is true.”

  “Ach! There you go again. The preacher! Please, please, all I ask of you is that you listen. I would like to tell you some stories about my life.”

  “Why me, Count Smokrev? If you disagree so adamantly with the very thing that is my life, of what service could I possibly be to you?”

  “You have one redeeming quality, one very minuscule, but altogether rare quality, and that is that you are not ambitious. My servants listen to my babbling because they are paid to do so. My customers from abroad listen to my monologues because they think they will learn something useful for their businesses. You are the first person I have met in many years who doesn’t want something from me.”

  “I want to bring you back to life.”

  “Ah, I see. One more soul dragged into Paradise by the hands of holy Saint Elijah? Is that it?”

  “You are trapped within a cage. You think there is nothing beyond it. But there is something so great, so much better, that we can scarcely believe. There is life. In abundance. And joy.”

  “The brief, bright hopes that are conjured up by the small of the earth. They have no power to create their own reality, and so they spin their dreams; they live in their fairy tales. You are the servant of a myth.”

  “If I am so deluded, why do you wish to tell me a story?”

  “Because you are human, and because you have expressed an interest in a portion of my past. And, I suppose, because you are an honest, though deluded, man.”

  Elijah smiled.

  “Thank you for the compliment.”

  “I was flattering you. It’s a talent of mine.”

  “Do you not grow weary of playing with people?”

  “Sometimes. It can make one feel so alone when everyone you meet proves vulnerable to tactics. Everyone can be bent or bought, you know.”

  “That is untrue.”

  “You would think it untrue, of course. A perfectly predictable response. You haven’t yet been offered a large enough bribe.”

  Elijah shook his head. “I would like to hear your story.”

  “It’s not a pretty one.”

  “I have loved stories since my childhood.”

  “Comedies, tragedies?”

  “Yes, everything.”

  “Sleaze?”

  “Comedy and tragedy contain everything.”

  Smokrev snorted and coughed.

  “I have heard many thousands of sacramental confessions in my life. There is nothing I haven’t heard.”

  “You are beyond shock?”

  “I won’t say that. It is possible that man can devise new forms of violation. But the essential sin remains more or less the same, Each of us, including the best of men, is tempted to make himself into God. The murderer makes himself master over life and death; the thief over material goods, the tyrant over man’s freedom, the occultist over spiritual powers, the adulterer over love, and so on.”

  “And by implication, I too wish to divinize myself?”

  “All of us. None excepted.”

  “How very shocking. Your attitude seems to be a far more perverse and pessimistic view of human nature than mine!”

  “I saw many horrifying things during the War and later, during the wars in Israel. But nothing quite prepared me for the variety of human sin that I heard in the confessional.”

  “Tell me some.”

  “That is impossible.”

  “Ah, yes, your oath that you will never betray the secrets of the confessional. Charming. A most interesting part of the romance.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because of all the traffic in lusts and addictions that I have fostered and fed upon, none, I tell you, none has the power over the personality that information has. Scandal, slander, details, facts, and especially gossip.”

  “You may be right. The trade in information is a way of having knowledge of good and evil, a way to have power over others.”

  “A subtle deification.”

  “That is why we so carefully protect the sacrament of penance. It is a moment of radical exposure. We guard it with our lives.”

  “Ah, such chivalry!”

  “Such realism.”

  “All right! All right! When are you going to cease your monkish prattle and let me confess?”

  “You may begin at any time.”

  Smokrev smoothed the coverlet, adjusted his crimson sleeping cap, took a long drink of carbonated water, and lit a cigarette.

  “Let us begin. I cannot tell you what a pleasure this is to have someone wrestle for my soul. You will lose, of course, but we will have a great deal of fun along the way. Ah, so serious, so serious. Smile, Father Elijah.”

  “Please, begin.”

  “I would like to tell you about my first great sin. It was my primeval choice. I’m sure you’ll hasten to add that it was my Garden of Eden. No? Nothing to say, Father? Well, I said it myself, didn’t I? Let us call it my original sin, my first conscious choice for evil. It set in motion a number of forces that have brought me to this bed loaded with delicious guilts. I have grown old in wickedness. But in the beginning I wasn’t like that. Oh, I was guilty of all the usual boyhood faults. I stole a cookie or two; I told harmless lies; I slapped my nanny and made her promise not to tell Mama, and she didn’t, for fear of losing her employment. My mother was a countess, you know, a vain, shallow woman, an extraordinary beauty, the usual pathetic little story from the gentry. A nobleman marries for beauty, ignores character. He pays the price for the rest of his life. A dreary tale that has been told a thousand times over. A real fairy tale. But I’m getting ahead of myself!

  “My father ran away
from the slow strangulation that, as it soon became obvious, would be his lot in life. He was always away ‘on business’. He helped Pilsudski stop the Red Army at the Vistula in 1920. He was well known and admired. A patriot. The Nazis killed him when they destroyed the aristocracy.”

  “Why didn’t they kill you?”

  “I was in Paris during the thirties. I became a fascist, and the Germans found me useful for cultural affairs after the occupation. But once again we are leaping all over the map. There is so much to tell you, I’m easily distracted by this crime or that one.”

  Smokrev peered at him with amusement and lit another cigarette. “Well done. You didn’t blink an eye at the Nazi connection. Bravo!”

  “Are you testing me, Count Smokrev?”

  “Precisely. You have passed, summa cum laude. Now, when was I?”

  “Your boyhood. Your first great sin.”

  “Ah, yes.” Smokrev stubbed his cigarette and lit a fresh one. He did not speak for several minutes and appeared to be thinking over the details of what he was about to disclose. His eyes lost their chronic look of sly humor.

  “It is not easy to tell. I will ask you to try to imagine an eleven-year-old boy, the son of aristocratic parents, screwed like a tiny jewel into the gold setting of his family estates. This is his world. He knows nothing else. His parents pay for every pastime, every distraction, toy, and pleasure.

  “He is a lonely child. His father, whom he admires, is not often at home. He has important matters to attend to at the capital. He is making a better country for the sake of his son’s future. For the sake of the blood line that will come from his heir. His one heir.

  “Try to imagine, if you will, a sensitive, imaginative boy, trained in the arts: he plays Mozart at age seven, he draws landscapes and clouds, writes poetry. He is given a white Arabian for his tenth birthday and rides it well. He loves to race with his borzoi across the lawn enclosed by the hedges of the estate. He is good at archery, fencing, swimming. He achieves exceptionally high marks in his studies—he is privately tutored—and is preoccupied by an ongoing correspondence with several literary scholars in Poland and Paris. Busy men of letters, they are well disposed to exercise a certain kindness to the child of their benefactors. The boy reads the novels they recommend, German and French works, and he understands few of them, learning only that the world is much more complex than the little stories he writes, composed for his own entertainment—stories full of sword-fights, camaraderie, wild beasts, ships, trains, and abandonment in exotic places.