Authors: Francis Porretto
He slipped into prayer.
Dear God, thank You for giving me the care of this fairest of all Your children. Thank You for choosing me to protect her in her weakness and to nurture her into strength. Thank You for the love she has given me, a light unto the awful darkness in my soul. One thing more do I ask: may I be strong enough to bear parting from her, as I must soon do forever. For I knew not how much joy there could be in the world, until she came to me.
He started the truck and drove away.
***
Christine chose one of the leather armchairs and Schliemann seated himself upon the sofa, as usual.
"You look lovely today, child. Is that a new outfit?"
She looked down at her suit. "Well, sort of, Father. I got it a few days ago. It's a replacement for one I ruined a few weeks ago." She leaned forward and held out a sleeve for him to inspect. "Just a slightly different weave."
He admired it politely. "How did you ruin a beautiful outfit like that?"
"Trying to hide behind a furnace."
"What?"
She looked puzzled. "Hasn't Louis told you about that yet?"
"Ah, no."
He hasn't told me much of anything for quite some time, come to think of it. When was the last time I heard his confession?
"Should I wait for him to tell me, or would you like to?"
"Oh, I don't think he'd mind."
And Christine told Father Heinrich Schliemann, pastor of Onteora parish, all about how his parishioner Louis Redmond had killed two men on his front lawn and surrendered his virginity to her afterward.
***
"Father, are you okay? You look really pale."
The old priest pressed both hands to his chest. His heart fluttered and skipped in a way that presaged nothing good. "It's all right, child. I'm just old, that's all. But please, reassure me about just one thing: you haven't exaggerated any of this, have you?"
"Why would I do that?"
"Never mind."
Great God in Heaven, what do I do now? Three weeks and he hasn't breathed a word of it to me.
"Father, is this like when I told you that Helen hadn't been to church for a long time?"
"Somewhat, child."
A mouse and an elephant do have some things in common.
"Louis could be in a great deal of trouble."
"With you?"
"Ah, no. With the civil authorities."
She sneered. "You mean the police? The hell with them. Where were they when the shit hit the fan?"
"Christine!"
"Knock it off, Father. Louis got used to it. You can, too." She rose and paced the room for a few seconds. "You're not going to tell them, are you?"
The baldness of the question stopped Schliemann's mental processes dead. The idea hadn't occurred to him until she asked about it.
I have a duty, don't I?
To whom? The so-called justice authorities of this extremely corrupt county, who've done nothing for your parishioners but tax half of them out of their houses and harass the rest for parking on the streets around the church?
But murder!
Louis Redmond is not a murderer. If he killed two men, it was because it was right and necessary. You know it, Schliemann.
Still, he took the law into his own hands.
The law is always in someone's hands. Why not Louis Redmond's? Whose hands are more trustworthy than those?
There are procedures...
What procedure would have intervened to save their lives if Louis hadn't acted as he did? What procedure would have intervened to save this lovely young woman from being forced back into the hell she risked her life to escape?
I can't just keep silent over this!
Yes, you can. You must.
In that moment, Schliemann realized that only one of the voices in his head belonged to him. Already off balance from Christine's circumstantial narration of the assault on Louis's home, the new discovery made his sanity reel.
Who is it that speaks in my skull? Who is it that argues with me?
The old priest had a sudden sense of vast, inhuman amusement.
Ask Christine.
The alien presence faded. With difficulty, the priest returned his attention to the world around him. Christine was watching him with mounting anxiety.
"No, child, I'm not going to tell them, or anyone else."
She relaxed. "Thank you. Until a minute ago, I didn't even think that I might be getting him into trouble."
"Come sit by me, child." He waited for her to join him on the sofa. When he reached for her hands, she gave them to him, as always.
"Christine, you have a talent for shaking me up. Not one of our conversations has left me undisturbed. That's quite an accomplishment. You have no idea of the range of things a priest hears. I know it's a silly thing to ask, but do you look for ways to shock me, or does it just come naturally?"
"I don't try to do it, Father. Honestly."
"I believe you, child."
You've trained me to believe you.
"I'd like to ask you one more silly question, if you think you have the patience for it."
"Go ahead, Father." There was new tension in her hands.
Schliemann gathered himself. "Do you ever feel as if you're holding a conversation with someone else, but inside your head, where no one else can hear you?"
She relaxed again. "Oh, sure."
"You do?" He had difficulty believing she had answered him seriously.
"Well, yeah. It happens a lot, in fact. Why?"
"Who is it that you're talking to at those times? Do you have any idea?"
She shrugged. "I call him the Nag."
" 'Him'?"
"I guess it could be a woman. It's hard to tell from nothing but a voice you can't really hear."
"And you're sure your, ah, conversational partner is always the same?"
She smirked. "No doubt about it, Father. I can tell it's him, just like I can tell it's you talking with me now."
"What do you and the Nag talk about?"
"Well, they aren't really conversations. He tells me stuff."
"What kinds of stuff, child?"
"Mostly, he just tries to keep my backbone stiff."
"What do you mean?"
She looked uncomfortable. "You know. He tells me that I know what I ought to do, and that I have to do it even if it's going to hurt."
"And you're quite certain you're not talking to yourself?"
"Quite certain, Father." She looked away, out through the sitting room window. Color had risen into her face. "I don't like hearing from the Nag."
"Why?"
"Because I only hear from him when I'm starting to get weak, when I'm getting close to giving in." She gave a small sigh. "I guess that's the only time I really need him. But you don't have to like all the things you need."
"When did you first hear from the Nag, Christine? Was it before or after you met Louis?"
"Oh, the Nag and I go back as far as I can remember, Father. If it weren't for the Nag, I'd probably have cut my own throat ten years ago."
Schliemann stared at his young guest in speechless amazement.
What business have I, trying to instruct this girl? She's being cared for and tutored by the finest man it's ever been my privilege to know. She has attained a degree of maturity that I myself have struggled to achieve. So what if she swears a little? Is my desire to instruct her based on anything more than personal presumption?
I shall call you child no more, Christine Marie.
"Weren't we supposed to be talking about religion, Father?"
"Eh?"
I hardly think we've talked about anything else!
"Well, yes. But I've decided that where I'd intended to start is, ah, inappropriate." He went to his bookshelf and pulled down an old leather-bound Bible. "May I read you something instead?"
"Oh, sure. Louis reads to me now and then."
"What kinds of things does he read you, dear?"
"Mostly poetry."
"Ah. This is poetry of a kind, too, but written very long ago. It deals with the beginning of things. Would you like to hear it?"
"Sure." She slumped back slightly against the arm of the sofa as he thumbed open the old Bible. He'd read the Gospel According to St. John so many times that he could probably have recited it to her from memory, but it wouldn't have felt right without the Book open before him, weighing down his hands.
"'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....'"
As it always did, the sonorous majesty of the story suffused and exalted him, and made his rheumy seventy-four-year-old voice once more an instrument of power and beauty.
Christine listened in fascination.
***
Louis knocked at the rectory door at two o'clock. There was no response. Finding the door unlocked, he let himself in. Father Schliemann's voice, deep into the Gospel According to St. John, reached him at once. He closed the door as quietly as he could and stood motionless in the hall, listening. No sound except the old priest's voice reached his ears.
I can't interrupt this. He's probably got her hypnotized by now.
He lowered himself to sit on the hallway floor, making himself as comfortable as he could against the wall.
It's going to be a while.
He leaned back and allowed the story to wash over him.
***
Schliemann closed the Bible and sat with bowed head. The shadows of evening had begun to extend across the room.
Christine spoke hesitantly.
"Is it true?"
He gave the tiniest of shrugs.
"No one knows, dear. If it happened, it was two thousand years ago. There are no records of it, except what I have here."
"But you believe it."
The priest nodded. "Yes, I do. Oh, some parts more than others. But this is the central story of my Church." He caressed the Bible's cover. "I've lived with it all my life. In a way, it is my life."
"So what's the point?"
Schliemann frowned. "What do you mean?"
"What's the moral of the story? A story has to have a moral, doesn't it?"
The old priest was aghast. "Christine, God sent His only begotten Son into the world to suffer and die horribly, because that was the only way the world could be freed from the burden of original sin. Does it need to have a moral beyond that?"
The young woman held up a hand. "Wait a minute, there. It didn't say any of that anywhere in the story."
Schliemann sputtered. "But...but of course it does!"
Christine fixed her eyes on his. "Find it."
The old priest drew himself up to his maximum dignity. "Very well. Which part?"
"What you just said about Jesus being the son of God. If he ever said he was any such thing, you skipped right over it."
Schliemann reopened the Bible and began to scan the text. He knew the Gospels better than he knew his own history, and he was certain he could find whatever he needed in them with a few seconds' search.
He was wrong.
Fifteen minutes of fruitless page-turning had elapsed before he looked up, pain and embarrassment mingled in his face. "I'm sorry, Christine, I can't put my finger on the passage. But I'm certain it's here somewhere."
She shook her head. "It isn't. Or that bit about original sin."
Schliemann rose from the couch in exasperation. "And what makes you so sure of that, young lady?"
She seemed to search his face for the source of his discomfiture. "You just read it to me. Didn't you think I was listening?"
The old priest was dumbstruck for the third time that day.
"She's right, Father."
Schliemann whirled to see Louis emerge from the hallway.
"Louis?"
He nodded. "Christ never claimed to be the Son of God. Other people called him that, never He himself. Nor does the part about original sin appear in any of the Gospels."
"But --"
The priest's knees began to buckle. Louis crossed the room quickly, put an arm around him and eased him back to the sofa.
"Remember your lessons from seminary, Father. It came later, as a teaching of the Church. Paul of Tarsus was the first to proclaim the divinity of Christ." Louis's eyes were deep wells of sorrow. "It was the Church that named Christ the Son of God and the Redeemer of Mankind, not Christ Himself."
Schliemann fainted.
***
"Will he be all right?"
"Of course, Chris. He just needs to rest." Louis tried to concentrate on the road. The cabin of the truck was warm and crowded.
He just heard me blast the foundation out from under his Church. In front of you.