Deus Irae (7 page)

Laughing, Pete said, “This was a little clay pot. Anyhow, as you say, I was tripping out on drugs. At first it said, ‘Oh Ho,’ and then it went, ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ and finally, ‘Ho On.’”

“But that is Greek.”

Pete asked, “Who was St. Sophia?”

“There never was any St. Sophia.”

At that, Pete started laughing in the fashion of a man joyfully flashing back to what had been a good drug trip. “No St. Sophia? A pot that calls itself God, and a revelation about a nonexistent saint—that was some mixture I took. Once in a lifetime. You’re right; it is black mass. A saint is going to be reborn—”

“I’ll look it up,” Dr. Abernathy said. “But I’m sure there was no such saint….” He departed for a time, then, abruptly, returned carrying a large old book with him, a reference book. “St. Sophia,” he declared loudly, “was a building.”

“A
building!
”

“A very famous building, destroyed of course during the smash. The emperor Justinian had it personally constructed. The name for it, Haggia Sophia, is Greek. Also Greek, like Ho On. It means ‘the Wisdom of God.’ She—it—is going to be reborn?”

“That’s what Ho On told me,” Pete said.

Seating himself, Dr. Abernathy said carefully, “What else did this Ho On, this ceramic pot, say to you?”

“Nothing important. It complained a lot. Oh yes: it said that St. Sophia hadn’t been acceptable before.”

“And you derived nothing more?”

“Well, nothing that—”

“‘Haggia Sophia,’” the priest said, “can also refer to the Word of God, and hence by extension is a cypher for Christ. It is a cypher within a cypher: Haggia Sophia; St. Sophia; the Wisdom of God; the Logos; Christ; and therefore, according to our Trinitarian beliefs, God. Read, ahem … ah: Proverbs 8: 22–31. Most fascinating.”

“A saint that never even existed,” Pete said. “The pot put me on. It was a gag. It was pulling my leg.”

“Are you still sleeping with Lurine Rae?” The priest’s voice had a sudden, hardly expected sharpness to it; he blinked.

“Um, yes,” Pete muttered.

“So this is the road our converts travel to reach us.”

Pete said, “When you’re losing you’re losing. I mean, you take them as they come.”

“I order you,” Dr. Abernathy said, “to stop sleeping with that girl, whom you are not married to.”

“If I do that she won’t join the Christian Church.”

There was silence. Each man regarded the other, heavily breathing; faces flushed, the two of them glared disapproval and masculine authority, with overtones of some deeper, higher mandate, obscurely articulated but nonetheless there.

“And the visions,” Dr. Abernathy said. “It is time you gave them up as well. You confessed the use of vision-inducing drugs. I am instructing you to turn all such drugs over to me.”

“Wh-wh-wh
at?
”

The priest nodded. “Right now.” He held out his hand.

“I never should have confessed.” His voice trembled and he could not, for the life of him, keep it steady. “Listen,” he said, “how about a deal? I’ll stop sleeping with Lurine, but you let me keep—”

Dr. Abernathy stated, “I am more concerned with the drugs. There is a satanic element involved, a vitiated but still-real black mass.”

“You’re”—Pete gestured—“out of your mind!”

The hand remained. Waiting.

“‘Black mass.’” Disgusted, he said, “Some deal. I can’t win; I either—” Too much, he thought gloomily. What a mistake it had been to slip over into the formal relationship with Abernathy; the priest had ceased to be a man, had assumed transcendent power. “Penance,” he said aloud. “You’ve got me. Okay; I have to give up my whole goddamn supply of medication. What a victory for you, tonight. What a reason for joining the Christian Church; you have to give away everything you like, even the search for God! You sure don’t want converts very bad—as a matter of fact, it strikes me as weird, the way you discouraged
McMasters; my god, you as much as told him right flat to his face that he ought to go back to Handy and do his job and
not
be a convert. Is that what you want? For him to stay there with the SOWers and go on his Pilg, which he’s trying so darn hard to get out of? What a way to run a church; no wonder you’re losing out, like I said.”

Dr. Abernathy continued to extend his open hand, waiting.

Just that one thing, Pete Sands reflected. Not picking up when the inc asked to join us so as not to go on the Pilg; why didn’t you pick up on that? It wasn’t that difficult a decision; normally, Dr. Abernathy would have conscripted Tibor into the Christian Church instantly: Pete Sands had witnessed such abrupt total conversions many times.

“I’ll tell you what,” Pete said aloud. “I’ll turn over my supply of medication to you if you’ll tell me why you blocked McMasters when he tried to duck in here. Okay? A deal?”

“He should have courage. He should stand up to the duties imposed on him. Even by a false and profane mimic-church.”

“Aw, you must be kidding.” It still rang wrong; in fact even more so, now. Asked outright for his reason, Dr. Abernathy revealed that he had no reason. Or rather, Pete realized musingly, he isn’t telling.

“The drugs,” Dr. Abernathy said. “I told you why I abstained from the temptation of enticing one of the finest murch painters in the Rocky Mountain area into the Church of Christ; now give me—”

“Anything,” Pete Sands said quietly.

“Pardon?” Blinking, Dr. Abernathy cupped his ear. “Oh, I see. Anything else instead of the—medication.”

“Lurine and anything else,” Pete said in a voice that almost refused to be heard; he was in fact unsure whether the priest had caught all the words or only the tone. But the tone by itself; that would convey everything. In all his life, even during the war, he had never sounded quite like that. At least so he hoped.

“Hmm,” Dr. Abernathy said. “‘Lurine and anything else,’ Rather a grandiose offer. You must have become habituated to one or more of your drugs; correct?” He eyed Pete keenly.

“Not the drugs,” Pete said, “but that which the drugs show me.”

“Let me think.” Dr. Abernathy pondered. “Well, nothing enters my mind tonight … possibly it would be worth shelving for now; I can perhaps stipulate some alternative tomorrow or the day after.”

And not only this, Pete thought, but you also won all the silver I had on me when we began the game tonight. Jeez.

“By the way,” Dr. Abernathy said. “How is Lurine in bed? Are her breasts, for example, as firm as they appear?”

“She’s like the tides of the sea,” Pete said gloomily. “Or the wind that sweeps across the plain. Her breasts are like mounds of chicken fat. Her loins—”

Grinning, Dr. Abernathy said, “In any case, it’s been a pleasure for you to have known her. In the biblical sense.”

“You really want to know how she is? Average. And after all, I’ve had plenty of women. Lots of them were better lays, and lots of them worse,” Pete said. “That’s all.”

Dr. Abernathy continued to grin.

“What’s funny?” Pete demanded.

“Perhaps it’s the way hungry men speak of smorgasbords,” Dr. Abernathy replied.

Pete reddened, knowing the flush would reach the crown of his head, all visible.

He shrugged and turned away. “What’s it to you?”

“Curiosity,” said Dr. Abernathy, scratching his chin and pulling his smile straight. “I’m a curious man, and even secondhand carnal knowledge
is
knowledge.”

“And perhaps too many years in the confessional promote a certain voyeurism,” Pete observed.

“If so, this in no way vitiates the sacrament,” said Dr. Abernathy.

“I know about the Waldensians,” said Pete. “What I said was—”

“—That I’m a peeping Tom.” Dr. Abernathy sighed and rose, adjusting his cassock as he stood. “Okay, I’ll be going now.”

Pete accompanied him to the door, letting Tom Swift And His Electric Magic Carpet out at the same time, for his usual evening business.

The dust fought the dew and the former settled to the ground, save for that raised by the cow and kicked back into his face.
Tibor turned his head to the side and regarded the colors of morning.

The colors … Christ! the colors! he thought. In the morning everything lives in a special way—the wetgreen leaves and the oily grayblue of the jay’s feathers—the brownwetblack of the road-apple—everything! Everything is special until about eleven o’clock. Then the color is still there, but a certain magic is gone out of the word, a wet magic. There was a faint haze in the western corner of the nine-thirty world. He thought of all the shadows in all the Rembrandt repros he had seen. So easy to fake, that man, he thought. They talk of the Rembrandt eyes. What ever do they see? Whatever they want. Because there is nothing there but shadows. He was not a morning painter, so he would be easy to fake. But all those wetmorning people, the impressionists—lumped together perhaps only because they sat in the same corner of the Cafe Gaibois—they would be harder to emulate. They saw something like this and drew perfect circles about it.

He watched the birds and digested their flight. It was
too
good a morning. He etched it within his mind. He did it in watercolors. He did it in oils, the hard way, layer by painful layer.

To keep something else out, he did it.

What?

The cow made a soft, lowing noise and he murmured to her as softly.

God! how he hated to work by artificial light! It was sufficient for pieces, for corners and borders, for supporting material, but the final product—
das Dinge selber
—this must be a thing of
Morgen
.

And his mind came back, full circle, and the morning and the colors went away, for a time.

Dr. Abernathy’s place was over the hill and around the corner, and then about a mile. By ten o’clock, at this pace, he would be at the front door. What then? He tried to block the thought by sketching a tree, in his mind. But autumn came down upon it, the leaves withered and fell, were swept away. What then?

It was a thing that had taken him suddenly, the notion of a God of mercy and love. Only a few days ago, as a matter of fact. If they’d take him in and baptize him, he would not even have to
be shrived, as he understood it. Not to be confused with the heretical notions of the Anabaptists, he realized with a certain pleasure that this would relieve him of the necessity of confessing to the thoughts he had held, of Helen, with the breasts like clouds, Lurine, with the skin like milk, Fay, with the mouth like honey, of the paint he had diverted to his own use, of the blocks of stone he had stolen to sculpt.

What would Dr. Abernathy say? Oh, hell! He would counsel him, give him a catechism to study, test him later, baptize him, admit him as a communicant.

What was it then that broke the morning?

The night before, he had dreamed of his mural. Carl Lufteufel was a vacuum in the middle, crying out to be filled. The face in the repro which Dominus McComas had shown him always looked slightly past him. Not really at him. Not yet. Once he saw the man and captured the eyes—not hidden like those of a Rembrandt, no!—but the eyes of the God of Wrath, actually focused upon him, and all the slack/tightened/flaccid muscles of That Face, the bags or black smudges under the eyes, the parallelograms of the brow—all these things—once they were turned upon him, if only for a morning’s instant, then that vacuum would be filled. Once he saw it, all the world would see it—by his seeing and the six fingers of his steel hand.

He spat, licked his lips, and coughed. The morning was too much with him.

The Holstein—Darlin’ Corey—turned the corner, and then about a mile remained.

  He moved slowly into the study and regarded the priest.

“Thank you,” Tibor said, accepting a cup of coffee and manipulating it slowly into a position allowing two quick, scalding sips.

Dr. Abernathy added cream and sugar to his own and stirred noisily.

They sat awhile in silence, then Dr. Abernathy said, “You want to become a Christian.” Whatever question mark may have followed the sentence was a thing implied only, by a slight raising of the eyebrows.

“I am—interested. Yes. As I said last night—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Dr. Abernathy. “Needless to say, I am pleased that our example has impressed you in this fashion.” He turned away then and stared out his window and said, “Can you believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and in his only begotten son Jesus Christ our Lord, born of the virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day rose again?”

“I think so,” said Tibor. “Yes, I think so.”

“Do you believe He will come to judge the living and the dead?”

“I can, if I try,” Tibor said.

“You’re an honest man, anyhow,” Dr. Abernathy said. “Now, despite the rumor that we’re looking for business, we’re not. I’d love to welcome you to the fold, but only if you’re sure that you know what you’re doing. For one thing, we’re poorer than the Servants of Wrath. So, if you’re looking for business here, forget it We can’t afford murals or even illuminated manuscripts.”

“That was the farthest thing from my mind, Father,” said Tibor.

“All right,” said Dr. Abernathy. “I just wanted to be sure that we were meeting on the same ground.”

“I’m certain that we are,” said Tibor.

“You’re in the employ of the SOWs,” said Dr. Abernathy, pronouncing each letter.

“I’ve taken their money,” said Tibor. “I’ve a job to do for them.”

“What do you think of Lufteufel, really?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“A difficult subject,” said Tibor, “since I’ve never seen him. I have a need to paint from experience. A photograph—such as the one they furnished me—it would do only if I could also lay eyes on the man himself, if but for an instant.”

“What do you think of him as God?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“I don’t know,” said Tibor.

“… As man?” asked Dr. Abernathy.

“I don’t know.”

“If you have doubts, then why do you wish to switch at this
point in the game?” Dr. Abernathy asked. “Perhaps it would be better to resolve them within the context where they arose.”

“Your religion has something more to offer,” said Tibor.