Anita looked from the church to the shelf that held the kerosene lamp. A photograph lay against the base of the lamp. It was Mrs. Wagner. Anita’s mother dressed in handsome country tweeds, a face youthful for its years, with crow’s feet from smiling and a gracious sense of propriety. The face seemed to look down on Anita with an edge of sadness, reflecting on the distance that had grown between her and her daughter.
Mrs. Wagner detested Mario. To her, he was boorish, unkempt, violent, and foreign. It was not that she did not see what Anita found in him. That was all too apparent. Liberty. Sexual liberty. There was something about Mario, even when he was trying to be intellectual, that reminded Mrs. Wagner of an animal. But Anita had drifted into Mario’s orbit, demanding her rights as a sexual being.
The gravitational pull toward Mario puzzled even Anita. She tried to recall her father, but all she remembered was a shadowy, sincere man who died before she was seven. Scenes came to her: after her father’s death, a series of men coming to visit her mother. Gracious men, wealthy men, discreet and ambitious men. Even Dean Harvey Osborne. But the child Anita detected in them not substance but a strange absence of virility.
Mrs. Wagner probably detected the same thing. In any event, she never remarried.
The memories flooded back, stimulated by the extraordinary events of the exorcism.
For the exorcism seemed to have broken Mario’s hold upon Anita. That gravitational field, that emotional drive of Mario’s, suddenly lost its intense hold. Oddly, Mario’s sexual liberation was repressive. It repressed the more intuitive, delicate dimension of Anita’s emotions.
She recalled the winters at Seven Oaks. Snowshoes down to an iced-over creek behind the stables. Autumn leaves frozen there from the previous autumn, embedded in the bubbles and crystalline outlines of the ice. In that loneliness she had found a tranquility.
It was a slow unfolding of life, a sensuality without sex. An intelligence without aggressive intellectuality. It was a kind of listening and sharing of a humble heart. Father Malcolm would have understood.
It was not innocence that was reborn in Anita. That had long since been left behind in an irretrievable girlhood. But something rare and permanent had happened: an awakening beyond the sexual. A kind of quickening of the spiritual imagination, that owes much to the sensual but soars above it as the dove soars above milk-white, moonlit clouds.
Anita raised herself on one elbow. The church still glowed, from the moonlight, and seemed to answer the birch woods above her. A new echo, a new system of rhythms was alive in Golgotha Valley, as different from what transpired before as the major key is from the minor.
Something had happened that day, something rare, even miraculous. Or was it all deception?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Something rustled at the crucifix. Slow at first, moving inward at the window, the apple petals moved in the sunlight, drifting down onto Father Malcolm’s mattress.
He threw the blanket from his body, then felt the pain of stiff muscles. Slowly he massaged them and rose from the bed. In the doorway he saw a rabbit regard him sagely, then hop back down the step.
From its hanger the red chasuble hung in the slanting sun. The mud at the hem had caked, dried, and finally fallen in the night as gray powder to the floor. The biretta was also cloaked in the gray powder. The alb, thrown onto a battered chair, was yellow with sweat and grit.
Father Malcolm carried the chasuble into the Oldsmobile. Then he took the biretta and the shoes. The sun was excessively bright outside the rectory. Not only was the apple tree in brilliant bloom, catching the morning, but two pear trees on the north side of the church had also bloomed after the hard rain.
The Church of Eternal Sorrows rose, bright now and undefiled, the brightest object in the valley. Inside, Mario could be seen keeping vigil over his instruments, haggard from lack of sleep.
As the Jesuit prepared his morning coffee, he looked through the window. Two small, dark birds hopped among the boughs. One of them carried twigs in its beak. Father Malcolm saw a rudimentary nest in the dark crotch among the petals. Father Malcolm slowly drank the coffee.
It had been, in Christian terminology, an ecstatic experience. Mario would call it a physical outbreak. In any case, it was gone now. There was only a sensation of immanence, of being on the threshold either of glory or annihilation.
Now it was a matter of making a report to the bishop. Father Malcolm looked moodily into the grounds floating in his cup. A bee circled lazily around his hand.
It had come as a revelation to him that Christ might have chosen to work through him, even in a single rite. It was something he had never believed, not for one moment, in all the years of his preparation.
For a priest, he believed, especially a Jesuit, can achieve sophistication of intellect, even a sense of style, without ever confronting the final question: Am I worthy of Christ?
His family had placed its hopes on an eldest brother, Ian, meant for the priesthood. When Ian was killed Eamon took his place. Eamon was clever, he imitated well, and he was terrified of failing, so he won scholarships. But the family always knew that in Eamon there was a subtle lack. At the core a strange emptiness where there should have been vitality.
Elizabeth had stirred that emptiness to where it resembled the storms of manhood. But it was somehow a facsimile. Eamon always knew that he would survive in Christ and in Christ only, or perish in His absence.
Now, quite simply, and in all humility, Father Malcolm knew that by joining the Society of Jesus he had been ultimately, fabulously rewarded.
He put on his shoes, standing in the doorway. The cemetery had not escaped the effects of the rain. It blossomed with wild currants, strawberry and black raspberry. Monarch butterflies lingered on the rectory roof. Sweet lilacs hung down over the quick-flowing Siloam.
Eden again, he thought, marveling, and explored the tall grass, shielding his eyes from the morning sun.
Everywhere the valley floor was radiant in tall plants that caught the gold of the sunlight, and milkweed floating in the air bobbed like globes of brilliance. Even the town of Golgotha Falls, washed clean by the rain, was altered. Glittering white gingerbread and clapboard were dominated by bright red Victorian roofs.
A boot rustled in the apple boughs. Father Malcolm looked up. It belonged to a young, unshaven farmer, cradling a rifle. The man’s eyes were bloodshot, but he seemed happy.
“Good morning, Father,” he said bashfully.
“Well, good heavens, what are you doing up there?”
“We was protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From Satan.”
Father Malcolm grinned.
“I appreciate your thought. I truly do. But you know that Satan isn’t scared away by bullets.”
“Maybe not. But we was going to give him what noise we could.”
The young man, about twenty-five, slipped down to the ground. Two other farmers, older, in blue denim overalls and filthy caps, cradled rifles in their arms and came from behind the rectory.
“We want you to come with us now, Father,” said the oldest farmer.
“But I’m on my way to Boston.”
The older farmer, eyes deep brown with red in the corners, gently approached him.
“You’ll want to see what we’ve got to show you, Father.”
There was sincerity in the old man’s eyes, tinged with fright. Father Malcolm’s curiosity was piqued.
“All right,” he agreed. “Lead on.”
Together they trudged up the plowed hill. They came to a gray, weather-beaten shack adjacent to a barn. A fat woman in an apron and five children watched from the farmhouse.
The old farmer indicated for Father Malcolm to enter the barn. It was so dark the Jesuit saw only the dim red after-globe of the bright Golgotha Falls sun. Then, gradually, he made out horizontal boards, some straw, and, nestled deep in fetid straw, a newborn calf.
“Look on it, Father,” said the old farmer, pleading mo
re than commanding. Father Malcolm knelt down. The calf was only hours old, the hide still moist, the knees absurdly knobby and the eyes pink.
“She looks fine to me.”
The old farmer hunched down beside him, tipping back his grime-smeared hat.
“She’s perfect, Father,” he said.
Father Malcolm studied the bewildered men. They stood around him, their rifles loose in their hands. Now the fat woman and the children crowded into the shack.
“We ain’t had a natural calf since before my father was born,” the farmer confided. “We have to purchase our livestock from Dowson’s Repentance.”
“I see. And this one?”
“Born this morning. And just perfect.”
Father Malcolm stroked the tiny beast. The heavy red tongue lolled against its muzzle. He could not help but smile. The farmer stood up.
“Better come with us, Father,” he said.
Father Malcolm followed the men through the side door. One of the farmers closed it so the woman and the children could not see. The others grabbed long-poled shovels and manure forks and began digging at the shady earth.
Father Malcolm blanched.
As the earth was scraped away by the forks, grinning, knob-headed, mutant calves appeared. The forelegs were knotted up, some had mouths where the ears should have been. One had no legs at all but a series of flippers along the matted hide.
“We know who done this to us,” the oldest farmer said. “But what happened this morning?”
Father Malcolm swallowed, watching the men shove earth back over the partially decomposed cadavers.
“I am not empowered to answer that,” he admitted. “That is why I must go to Boston.”
The farmers exchanged glances.
“You going to come back?”
“Most certainly. I belong now to Golgotha Falls.”
The oldest farmer nodded. They went back into the gray shack. Father Malcolm noted that, although their clothes were filthy and their hands grimy since dawn, they now washed their hands under a cold tap.
Silent, they escorted him back to the rectory. As they got halfway down the slope the young farmer stopped him with a hand against the chest.
“You don’t understand, Father,” he said. “There was no sign that she was carrying a calf.”
“Oh, well. These things are not always—”
“We talked to everybody in this here valley. And nobody knows what to make of it.”
The old farmer stepped closer.
“Who is it done this?” he asked. “If it’s Satan’s work I’ll slit this animal’s throat . . . !”
“Please. Wait until I return from Boston.”
Sullenly, they watched him descend, tracking mud, toward the church. His forehead was furrowed, thinking of the meaning of the healthy newborn calf. Was this, like the flourishing valley, a further sign of God’s immanence, or was it an event inspired by the darker powers? Had the exorcism truly been successful? What was the significance of these signs? Father Malcolm had secretly hoped to have left behind the universe of symbols, portents, and secretly whispered hopes and fears. Now he was not so certain. Like the farmer, he too would have to wait for the answer.
Beside the Volkswagen stood an orange minibus. On its side, in black stenciled letters, were the words Haverford County Medical Services. Anita was speaking intently with two men, holding a clipboard in her arm. Father Malcolm went to the church door. Then he stopped, watching.
The men were particularly interested in the cemetery. They pointed, argued, then listened. After some more discussion, they shook hands with Anita, pointed again at the tombstones, got into the minibus and drove slowly out of the valley.
Father Malcolm looked at the cemetery. Among the rich currants and strawberries bloomed the single rose on the fifth grave.
Anita came down the path. She wore a yellow cotton blouse that showed the pale shoulders underneath. She was some kind of sister to him, absurdly, undeniably, Father Malcolm thought. Anita handed him her clipboard.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Reports,” she said. “Reactions to the exorcism.”
Father Malcolm squinted down at her neat, tiny handwriting, organized carefully on single sheets of paper.
Miss Kenny had died, peacefully, at 4:38. She had stretched out her arms on the bed, and she began to sing. Her eyes were suddenly mild, as though she had glimpsed something extraordinarily beautiful. Her sister stopped the clock at 4:38, the family custom. She noted only that at the moment of death the sun had broken out, traveling like a swath of golden light down Canaan Street toward the church.
Father Malcolm looked at Anita.
“Read the next one,” she said.
At that moment, Fred Waller, the mechanic, heard his name being called by Miss Kenny’s sister. He had been awakened by the traveling swath of sunlight. So just as his name was called he saw, before the receding thunderclouds, the sun hit the Church of the Eternal Sorrows with full force. Then he heard the Jesuit scream.
It was the opposite of the day he had seen his father die, Waller asserted carefully. On that day, at the hospital, he had sensed something, maybe the soul, leave his father, and even before the doctor came into the room he knew the man was dead. This time something had come into the valley and it had hit the church.
“There’s more,” Anita said. “George Finster, the tavern keeper, arose to close the window from the storm. Then the sun came down Canaan Street. At that moment a bottle of wine exploded.”
Father Malcolm studied the obviously sincere face. He flipped through the rest of the reports. Most of them recorded a reaction to the traveling light, a sense of well-being, a sudden lifting of a burden out of the atmosphere.
“In parapsychology, things like this have occurred,” she added. “But never so quickly, never so strongly around a single event.”
Instead of offering the Church’s explanation, which he felt Anita was probing for, something to lend cohesion to the collective reaction to the exorcism, Father Malcolm looked back at the dust where the orange minibus had been.
“Who were those men?” he asked.
“From the home for the elderly. At the west end of Golgotha Valley.”
“What did they want?”
Anita gestured to the cemetery and the single heavy rose. The rose glistened, silky in the summer light. The graveyard was a profusion of tiny berries and wildflowers, but the rose now dominated, like the altar lamp in the church.
“There were two separate remissions of disease,” Anita said. “Leukemia and tuberculosis. Both patients had hallucinated the rose in our cemetery.”
The Jesuit’s eyes moved to the cemetery.
The rose bobbed, hung, and bobbed again in the warm breeze.
“What does it mean, Father?” she asked. “In Catholic terminology, what would be your explanation?”
“God’s love performs miracles so that man’s despair may be turned to faith. There can be no other possibility, Anita.”
For an instant he felt loath to leave her side, to go into the church, feeling a residue of the pain that had assailed him yesterday. But when he did it was even more radiant than the exterior valley.
The vestibule bore the footprints in dried clay, sediment from the storm. But the ceiling shimmered with circles of light, like silvery auroras, reflected from the holy water.
Father Malcolm dipped his fingers into the font, genuflected, and murmured a short, silent prayer.
When he went into the main church interior he was overcome by the brilliance within. The sun shining down through the peach blossoms transmitted the brightness of the morning over the entire floor. The walls glowed from the grace of morning.
Father Malcolm turned and saw Mario for the first time. A coffee can of cigarette butts bore mute testament to his fanatical night-long labor. Wires, note cards, pliers, soldering spool, pencils, and all manner of screws and bolts surrounded the viewing screen of the thermovision.
&
nbsp; Father Malcolm turned away.
The altar was immaculate. The walls bore no evidence of stain. Even the St. Andrew’s Cross on the floor, its ash and sand, had not been disturbed by Mario’s heavy boots. Above, the gentle light of the altar lamp cast tiny points of reflection everywhere.
Father Malcolm knelt again, made the sign of the cross, and kissed the altar as he rose.
Whatever had come to the valley, he thought, had invaded them all. Nothing could be the same again. Faith worked through its sentient beings, even the aggressive parapsychologists and their sophisticated instruments.
Father Malcolm gazed deeply at the image generated by the tape cassette fluctuations of random ions.
“I understand that you’re going to Boston to make a full report to the bishop,” Mario said, smiling. “Lots of luck. I think you’ll find that he keeps a strict monopoly on miraculous doings.”
For a while Father Malcolm could not respond. It had not occurred to him that Bishop Lyons might not respond wholeheartedly to the revelation at Golgotha Falls.
“Tell me something, Mario,” he said, sadly. “Why did you choose parapsychology?”
“It was the ultimate challenge. Also, I was particularly good at it.”
“Parapsychology deals in absolute natures, does it not? In realities beyond our normal modes of perception, beyond our habitual cognitive frameworks?”
“Yes.”
“It embraces all phenomena in a field of theory. Its nature permeates every aspect of physical and intelligent reality. Does it not?”
“Spit it out, Father.”
“Tell me, Mario. What is parapsychology for you but a substitute for the Church? An all-embracing, absolute, mysterious—”
“Oh, Christ,” Mario sighed. “You make me sick.”
“You’ve made it your mistress, Mario . . . a mistress who will never reveal her nature to you—deliberately.”
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