Golgotha Falls

by Frank De Felitta

  and hast put to shame those that hated us.

  In God we exult all the day and

  praise His name forever.”

  It was as though the Psalm itself, written over two thousand years ago by David, were now present at the altar. It worked its will through the obedience of the living Jesuit.

  On the altar linen, Father Malcolm chrismed five spots. Then he burned the resin grains of incense on the altar. He chrismed the four points where the altar stone was in contact with its base. Only when he had done that did he relax. Slowly, he turned.

  Anita wore a dark green hat and waited, accusingly, like a Rembrandt in the chiaroscuro of the edge of the church.

  “So,” Father Malcolm murmured despondently. “He is still here. He wishes to work through you. So be it. I am prepared.”

  Father Malcolm did not turn, but began to prepare the altar for the Eucharist.

  “I waited for you, Eamon,” the soft voice said. “I wrote to you twice. You never answered.”

  From the tabernacle, he laid out the chalice with its white wine mixed with a drop of water, and the silver dish for the Host. He lit the five golden candles in the short candelabrum, and the reflections off the lavabo and silver chalice and plate reassured him.

  He raised the silver wick to light the red lamp hanging overhead.

  “I needed you,” came the vulnerable voice. “You needed me. Where was the harm in that?”

  He drew down the long-handled wick, trembling.

  “Why are you so afraid of yourself?” said the uncannily accurate voice. “Eamon, is it love that you’re afraid of?”

  The answer he knew too well. Scarcely a day had gone by without that final scene appearing in some form to his conscious mind. He caught himself framing that answer, and reached again for the red glass of the brass lamp.

  “And yet, it would be the seal of our souls,” she said. “And where would be the shame in that?”

  The Jesuit now knew the correct answer. It had been worked out in seven months of prayer, guidance, and stern discipline. The temptation to respond was so overwhelming he closed his eyes. He called on Christ and the scene of the hotel evaporated and he was acutely aware of the glittering instruments of the Eucharist before him. A third time, he raised the silver wick.

  “Eamon—”

  He did not know if the sound were real or hallucinated. He quickly reasoned that Anita would not call him by his first name.

  “In denying me, you deny yourself.”

  The words had a hideous second meaning. It was the Serpent’s potent insight. It was the accusation that imperfection remained, that the Jesuit belonged to the base order of his own nature.

  Father Malcolm withdrew the silver wick from the unlit altar lamp and began the litany of the saints; the strong voice filled the church, and his face was flushed in the heat of the candles.

  A sensuous, dreamy atmosphere began circulating over the Eucha­rist utensils. Father Malcolm resisted, took off the biretta in two fingers and laid it on the altar. He knelt, kissed the altar, crossed himself, and rose.

  He unfolded the heavy linen called the corporal, exposing the Host. As he did so, he glanced at Anita. The real Anita, standing solicitously by at the thermovision.

  Their eyes met. A kind of strength flowed between them. It was inexpressible and the Jesuit turned away. He dipped his thumb and forefinger into a tiny trickle of water he was obliged to pour for himself and the runoff collected in the reflective lavabo.

  A great sadness came over the Jesuit, the sadness of his loneliness, the long suffering of comfortless living.

  Father Malcolm understood where the emotion originated. He recited the Psalms following the ablution and it went away. Once again, there was a clarity of logic in the celebration of the sacrament.

  Then, as he reached the point of consecration, the invocation that turned the wafer and wine into the actual and abiding presence of Christ, he felt the dreamy, sensual warmth come back to the altar.

  He felt the pressure of Elizabeth’s breasts against his chest and the intoxication of her perfume, felt the urgent, hesitant pressure of her fingers against the back of his neck.

  He repeated the Psalms.

  Suddenly, to his surprise, he saw Anita beyond the altar. There was concern in her eyes and she seemed afraid, yet determined to speak.

  “What— What is it?—” he stammered.

  “Father Malcolm—” she said gently. “Are you hallucinating?”

  “He has so many tricks, Anita.”

  The Jesuit mopped the sweat in the circles of his eyes. The church was extraordinarily warm.

  “Please go back,” he said. “I cannot interrupt the Eucharist.”

  Anita looked back and the Jesuit saw that she was getting some kind of signal from Mario. She approached the altar.

  “I beg you not to be angry with me, Father Malcolm,” she said. “But I know why you are hallucinating.”

  “Why?”

  “The contradictions of your sexual nature,” she said. “They assert themselves in this kind of tension.”

  The Jesuit stared at her, studied her. Once again, her image was in Satan’s grip. He longed for assistance. The body and mind were ravaged by the sensual storms, and yet he felt himself slipping away from the Eucharist.

  “The Church has made you obsessed,” she said gently. “It has corrupted the natural desire to worship and serve.”

  Father Malcolm realized he had been tricked into dialogue with the Evil One. Once in, it would be like pulling oneself from the quicksand to break it off. The ancient Serpent had words whose logic bore in with an unfathomable charisma, and were unanswerable.

  “What is the Church so jealous of?” she spat angrily.

  “Please, I—”

  “It has turned your own nature into a viper’s nest of forbidden and perverted thoughts!”

  “Not true— I beg you—”

  The wine and the host, unconsecrated, remained on the altar, untouched.

  “Of course it’s true!” she said, eyes blazing. “And you fell for it, hook, line, and sinker!”

  Fumbling, the Jesuit turned and tried to begin the O Salutaris Hosta, the beginning of the consecration.

  “And why?” she demanded. “So you can hurl your sublimated demands into praise of the Church? Is that what you gave up happiness for, Eamon?”

  Father Malcolm vigorously shook his head, but the image of Anita did not go away. The rain-wet blouse shone as she came forward. With one hand, she cupped a breast.

  “Look! It’s nothing!” she said. “It’s a piece of flesh!”

  Stuttering through the O Salutaris Hosta, the Jesuit felt himself growing faint in the warm, red heat.

  “Now look at you,” she said contemptuously. “You want it more than salvation itself.”

  He began again the O Salutaris Hosta, focusing, the brain picking out the Latin by rote, and tried to project himself into the flavor and meaning of each word. He slowed, then stumbled badly.

  Anita smiled. She was moving rhythmically, pumping against the base of the altar. Her eyes closed, but before they did, the pupils rolled in pleasure.

  “Stop it— Stop it— I beg you—”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “By the power of the Archangel Michael who sent you to—”

  Anita laughed, showing the clean, white, perfect teeth.

  “Watch,” she said. “Watch my face.”

  The angular, lovely, pale face smoothed, grew taut, then the brows furrowed and the eyes stuttered shut as her whole body shook and shook again. Gradually, the nostrils ceased to flare. The perspiration beaded her forehead. She caught her breath and the torment evaporated from her features. In its place was a satisfied relaxation.

  “See?” she said, her voice quavering from the orgasm. “That’s all it is.”

  Father Malcolm launched into the Tantum Ergo. By the mystery of the Eucharist, the wafer and wine were undergoing transubstanti-ation into the body
and blood of Christ.

  There was a kind of visual snap. Anita was gone. The Jesuit turned. She was monitoring the sound recording system, looking at him, very worried.

  “Should I get a doctor?” she whispered.

  “No. I think he’s come out of it,” Mario replied.

  The Jesuit studied Anita’s face and form in the shadowy area of the wall. He seemed to recognize her, as though coming out of a trance.

  “It’s all right, my friends,” he whispered hoarsely. “It was quite bad, but—everything is all right now—Thank you—”

  Mario sat down again at the thermovision screen. The concern on their faces had been painful to see. The Jesuit continued the Tantum Ergo. The disturbing heat was gone and he clearly heard, behind him, the drip-dripping of the rain.

  “I think it was just too warm for him,” he heard Mario whisper.

  “Perhaps you should help him.”

  “Good idea.”

  The Jesuit, as he intoned the Latin, heard Mario’s chair scrape and the heavy boots walk along the wall behind him. He heard a hissing sound. The Tantum Ergo faded into silence.

  Mario was urinating on the candles set on the floor.

  The Jesuit, as in a nightmare, saw the heavy leather jacket, the slightly stooped knees, the heavily pink and uncircumcised penis and the stream of urine dousing the struggling flame.

  Horrified, he turned back and completed the Tantum Ergo.

  “I’ll show you a real trick,” he heard Mario say.

  A morbid repulsion shuddered through the Jesuit. What had happened to Lovell and to his uncle was happening to him.

  In order to snap back to reality, he looked for Mario and Anita at the instruments. They were not there. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Anita before him.

  Anita was on the floor on hands and knees. She was naked. So was Mario. Mario penetrated from behind, knees bent out along her flanks as he stood. In deep, rhythmic movement, he eased into her.

  Anita tensed, bit her lips, then relaxed and giggled.

  “Not at all easy,” Mario bragged, stepping away, the heavy penis soft and bouncing as he moved.

  “She’s all yours,” he invited.

  The Jesuit gasped and reached to place the Host in the lunette of the monstrance.

  “I hardly think this is the time or place for raising the Host,” Mario said angrily.

  Indeed, the pornography was so thick in the church, the Jesuit felt it like salt on his lips. It was precisely in the midst of such defilement that the Eucharist was needed to assert the domination of Christ. The Jesuit raised the monstrance and blessed the church.

  Anita spat on the church floor.

  “Here’s your Host,” she said.

  Anita stared directly into the Jesuit’s eyes. The bantering tone was gone. She spoke with an authority that chilled him, for it came out of his own deepest nature.

  “It’s the Host,” she said evenly, “for a man who hates God.”

  The Jesuit felt a galvanic current slither through him. He dared not think, dared not pause, but rushed into the holiest aspect of the Eucharist, the sacrificial offering, the Unde et memores of the Amamnesis.

  He was defenseless now. There was no strength anywhere. He felt darkness close over him. Christ did not answer and the bitterness of his frustrations, the agonizing breakdowns, the obdurate Church hierarchy that merited his anger floated in his mouth and ears and filled his throat with choking, oily liquid.

  He was sinking and he knew it. For he knew now what had really lain, untouchable, beneath the final barriers of the personality during the night vigil. It was unspeakably foul. He tasted it in all its annihilating poison, for it had existed secretly in his own nature.

  It was called the hatred against God who denies man his happiness on earth.

  His fingers felt as though they belonged to a distant, dying animal. The rage overpowered him, made the hands tremble in confusion and anguish. Father Malcolm groped for the Host to commingle it with the wine to complete the Eucharist.

  “Yes,” Mario’s voice commented bitterly. “You work now for us!”

  The fingers paused. Should he stop, and deny a mass celebrated by the Serpent? Or was that a trick, designed to prevent a sacred mass from its completion?

  The sweat poured down around the Jesuit’s eyes, bathing his vision in tears of sweet horror.

  He was forgetting the words. Christ was utterly absent. Still, from the depths of his heart, the Jesuit called on Christ for a clue, a signal of any kind.

  “I told you not to deny me, you bastard,” Anita hissed.

  Christ seemed closer, or was that, too, a trick? Was it a deceiving Presence?

  “You brought atheism into the church,” Mario said, leaning forward. “You know science is atheism.” Mario looked slyly at Father Malcolm. “You wanted to be tempted, didn’t you?”

  Feverishly, Father Malcolm groped for the wafer, but he could not find it in the glittering confusion on the altar linens.

  Father Malcolm turned away from the apse. Behind him, Mario stood, eyes closed in pleasure, pressing Anita’s obedient face into his moving pubic shadows. He moaned deliciously.

  “Watch my face, Father Malcolm.”

  “No— I forbid it—” he gasped, turning away.

  “Forbid it?” Mario laughed, behind the altar, holding a gentleman’s vest. “You’ve been imagining it for three days.”

  “What’s that— Where did you get that vest—”

  “A certain James Farrell Malcolm. Alas, he has no need of it where he is now.”

  Anita giggled. Mario used the vest to wipe the sweat from his legs, then his genitals. He tossed the vest contemptuously into the corner.

  Father Malcolm crossed himself, felt cramps cross through his legs, and his heart seemed ready to stop. With all his strength, he peered back at the consoles.

  To his inestimable relief and reassurance, Mario and Anita, fully clothed, concerned, adjusting the instruments, sat quietly in the darkness.

  Dreamlike, Father Malcolm groped for the Host. He found it. But his arms were as heavy as the altar lamp the previous night. The Jesuit felt the sick drug of hypnotic delusion.

  Suddenly, Anita approached the altar.

  “I need a towel. Do you mind?” she said, reaching for the altar appendium.

  “No— No—” he gasped, and moved back.

  At the last instant, he caught himself and remembered not to leave the lustrated area. Anita’s smile suddenly froze.

  “Almost,” she hissed hoarsely.

  Father Malcolm desperately held the wafer over the blessed wine. A piece crumbled, fell, twirling, and like a mouth’s breath, a furnace of red heat flared through him over the altar.

  “My God—” he cried.

  Vaguely, near-fainting, clutching his breast, he spied the long black pole with the silver wick. His arms were leaden weights as he grabbed the pole and tried to light the wick. But each time Anita’s sultry breath blew it out. Her tinkling laughter echoed through his brain. Finally, by shielding the wick with his body, he managed to ignite the small white flame.

  “You’ll never light the lamp,” taunted Anita from the periphery of the lustrated area.

  Struggling to his feet, the battered Jesuit held the pole up to the altar lamp. The pole swayed, snakelike, each time the white flame approached the lamp. Three times, he brought the wick to the altar lamp and three times he was repulsed by a tyrannical force.

  “Fuck off, priest!” screamed Mario.

  Suddenly, the pole flew from the Jesuit’s hand.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph—!” Father Malcolm cried as he grabbed his temples and pitched forward, crumpling to the ground. Fleet-ingly, he saw the silver chalice of the Blood of Christ topple and the wine stain the immaculate linen. The Host faltered against the tabernacle, the candelabrum tumbled down, and a black ocean of oblivion poured into him.

  Mario was lifting him, urging him to his feet. Anita daubed at the slit of blood trickl
ing from his forehead. He fought his way free of them.

  “Leave me!” he said hoarsely.

  “Father Malcolm,” Mario insisted. “Let me help you!”

  “I order you—to depart—!”

  “It’s us,” Anita said gently. “No more hallucinations.”

  Hesitantly, stiffly, he suffered her to daub again at the bruised forehead.

  Then he pushed her away.

  “Did I complete the mass?” he demanded.

  “Everything,” Mario assured him. “We got everything on tape.”

  The candles on the floor burned brightly at the stations of the chrismed anointment. Father Malcolm turned to examine the floor behind the altar. There was no evidence of anyone having acted improperly there.

  “I felt the most awful sensations—inside my body—”

  “Fear no evil,” Mario said, trying to joke, “for my instruments and logbooks shall comfort thee.”

  “Mario—” Anita shouted.

  The shout paralyzed both the Jesuit and Mario.

  “What is it?”

  “You’d better come here, Mario,” she said, looking at the thermo­vision screen.

  Mario quickly walked to the unit. The camera had been pointed toward the altar. There was something on the screen. The Jesuit fought his way between them. At the side of the altar, arms extended, the viridian figure of a crucified man hung suspended in the air. Adjusting the aperture and focus made a clearer picture of the fading figure. In addition to the arm extensions on both sides of the central torso, and the twin extensions leading downward, there was a gash in its right side.

  Mario stared. Psychic projection? It had to be. But why did he feel so sick, looking at it?

  Anita studied the figuration, unwilling to commit herself. Objectivity was everything. But surely it had been expelled out of the nervous volatility of the priest. Or summoned by him from the exterior.

  Mario, sweating badly, stared through his morbid distaste at the pure image of his most extraordinary success.

  The Jesuit looked up at the altar. There was only the soiled linen, the lavabo fallen to the floor, and paraffin faintly smoking on the appendium. In the air around, there was absolutely nothing else.

  The image faded very slowly. By adjusting the f-stop ring, Mario kept it visible for several more seconds. At the side of the camera, the recording tape ran smoothly. The Jesuit looked around the quiet church.