The Natural Order of Things (25 page)

“This may seem like a distant episode until you realize that a legion of devils dwells in the minds and bodies of so many people today. Look no further than the high school classroom where some teachers have fallen prey to the insidious cult of secular humanism and the fanciful theory of natural selection. But I ask you: what is so natural about natural selection?

“Science tells us that Nature isn’t a
thing
but a
process
of infinite change, turmoil, boundless confusion. Nature abhors order, and as a result, the universe is in a continuous state of flux. Nothing is permanent. There is no ground of being, no definitive order to the cosmos, no guiding hand. There is no grace, no wholeness, no divinity, no fixed intent. Science goes even further and makes the wild and unsubstantiated claim that human beings are not separate from nature but are merely the end result of random processes. Indeed, we
are
the process, we
are
nature. Surely this accounts for the insidious belief that humans have evolved from clever chimpanzees with a penchant for sodomy.

“Why, no less a genius than Pierre Teilhard de Chardin satirized these dangerous ideas with his paleontological hoax Piltdown Man. He understood that we are fundamentally different than the beasts of the field, that we are more than ashes and dust with a primal urge. God created us in His image. He gave us the breath of life. But scientists, by rejecting God and the concept of original sin, gamble with the fate of their eternal souls and with the souls of their students. They commit the most egregious crimes upon their charges, turning them into materialists, religious skeptics, free-thinkers.

“And so we return to the man from Gadarenes, and we must ask ourselves an obvious question: do such demons lurk within the hallowed halls of our own institution,
can
they dwell among us, unnoticed, unseen, untouched? Have some of our teachers been infected with a sickness that is rapidly spreading through the entire society? Have they infiltrated our community through treachery and deceit?”

Devin’s heart begins to race. He desperately wants to look around the chapel to see if anyone is whispering and pointing in his direction, but he manages to keep his eyes focused on the principal. Someone has ratted him out, he’s sure of it. Someone has told the principal that he is an apostate, an unbeliever, a trespasser. But who could it be? Who would double-cross him? Batya? Tom? One of his students? And if so, why? What’s the
motive? Then again, perhaps a motive doesn’t matter all that much. In this world, there is no shortage of insidious plots, and behind each one there is a Judas willing to make a moral compromise for a short-term gain.

The principal grips the sides of the pulpit and cranes his neck past the microphone until his head seems to hover above his flock, and this time when he speaks, he sounds not like a man of learning but a crazed apothecary hawking his worthless elixirs to a hostile mob on the verge of tarring and feathering him unless he can produce some tangible results.

“The faculty members of this school are committed to the core values and teachings of the Church, I am convinced of this. But let me be clear. Should I find an impostor among us, I will not hesitate. Like Jesus I will fight the devil tooth and nail. I will banish him from this holy place. And believe me, believe me all of you, I will win the battle.

“But victory in one battle does not mean victory in war. And that is why I’ve come before you today. Students must take part in the struggle, too. It is up to you to keep your eyes and ears open and to spread the gospel by traveling to those places where the divine Logos has been distorted by this new religion called science. Missionary work, gentlemen, missionary work is required of you. Because a day of reckoning is coming, yes, it most surely is. For God is blind with purpose!”

For the rest of the day, Devin tries to unravel the meaning of this homily.

The need to personify evil is deeply ingrained in the imaginations of today’s congregants, but because modernity has forced them to abandon the old mythological symbols—Beelzebub sharpening his pitchfork and setting aside time in his busy schedule to pose for another Hieronymus Bosch triptych—they demand the Church provide them with a new and improved devil, one so clever and insidious that he might even be sitting beside them in the pew. Gone are those innocuous hymns of love and praise that once filled the chapel. In their place are the words of an ancient deity who speaks from out of a pillar of fire and cloud and who takes great delight in wreaking havoc on the minds of credulous churchgoers, drowning them like a heathen army in a sea of absurdities.

On Monday morning, certain that he will find a pink slip pinned to his office door, Devin takes the unprecedented step of altering the content of his lectures and gives them a more faith-based tenor. After a brief talk on “primate spirituality,” he shows his students a documentary on how chimpanzees display grief at the passing of a loved one. He draws their attention to the look of sorrow and bewilderment in the eyes of these creatures and how they seem to kneel before the dead. “It’s almost as though they’re
praying
.” Convinced that his classroom is bugged and has probably been under surveillance for several weeks, Devin takes care to speak the words with great conviction.

At noon he joins Batya in the faculty lunchroom. Since he doesn’t have much of an appetite, he spends his time trying to read the faces of his colleagues. He observes their body language and makes a mental note of those who avoid eye contact with him. Which of them is the professional character assassin? It’s impossible to say. They all wear masks of total indifference, including Batya, who tosses his name into a hat for the “monthly drawing.” Everyone is eager for another night of reckless drinking, and as the
seasons wheel around, each faculty member takes a turn hosting a party—the obligatory Christmas celebration, the Saint Patrick’s Day bash, the Memorial Day cookout—and now, as luck would have it, Devin is picked to host this year’s Halloween masquerade.

Sensing his trepidation, Batya strokes his knee under the table and says, “Just remember, if it hadn’t been for the party at the beginning of the semester we never would have gotten involved.”

Devin gives his grudging consent because, he must admit, without Batya his social life would be very pitiful indeed.

He has plenty of time to berate himself afterward. On the day of the party, Batya is nowhere to be found, and Devin, a chronic procrastinator who has never hosted a formal gathering of any kind, is soon overwhelmed by the sheer volume of refuse in his house—old phone books stacked in corners, yellowed newspapers bundled beside the backdoor, piles of dead flies that have collected on windowsills and have turned into brittle, black shells. He vacuums the rugs, sweeps the hardwood floors, wipes the walls, brushes cobwebs from the ceiling. He can’t remember the last time he changed the sheets on his bed, a thought that troubles him greatly. What kind of woman would tolerate a man who lives in such spectacular squalor?

He considers asking his son for help but decides he doesn’t want to be left alone with the boy for an extended period of time, especially not today. It’s Tom’s eighteenth birthday, an important milestone, but Devin has never been the sentimental sort; he doesn’t believe in cake and candles and bright balloons. Small children celebrate birthdays, not grown men. But before he resumes scrubbing the toilets and sinks, Devin slinks along the hallway and slips an envelope with a ten-dollar bill under his son’s bedroom door.

With the approach of evening, several figures in black cloaks and Venetian masks knock on the door. Despite their obvious dismay at the deplorable conditions inside, Devin’s guests compliment him on the loveliness of his home and waste no time lining up at the folding table to load their paper plates with raw vegetables, spinach dip, and precooked cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon. By eight o’clock, thirty people jostle for space inside the tiny house, and at some point, Devin is not sure when, he’s far too busy opening cases of beer and mixing martinis, he smells cigarette smoke and hears shrill laughter.

From the way her eyes are spinning, it’s clear that Batya has already had quite a lot to drink. More of that damn medicinal tea, no doubt. She turns on the stereo and twists the dial until the house resounds with a trio of classical guitarists strumming a rhapsodic fado. Satisfied with the volume and the mournfulness of the tune, Batya walks into the living room and holds court near the fireplace. She has a way of attracting an audience, and before long a small group of men is listening intently to one of her stories, whether make-believe or true who can say?

“When I was a child of six or seven,” she tells them, “my aunt presented me with the gift of a doll. She felt sorry for me, I suppose—her skinny, oddball niece. I had few friends and avoided the company of children my own age. I spent bright summer afternoons in my bedroom, reading books and acting out plays. After she gave me the
doll, she told me to take good care of it. I murmured a quick thank you—my parents raised me to be polite—and then I rushed up to my room. I was so excited I almost tripped over my own feet.”

Batya went on to describe how, using a pair of scissors and a coat hanger, she methodically dissected the doll, taking it apart not in some haphazard fashion, cruelly and stupidly as a boy would, no, but with genuine curiosity, piece by piece, thread by thread, to see how it had been manufactured. She became so engrossed in these labors that she failed to notice her doddering aunt standing in the doorway. She was a snoop, didn’t believe in knocking, and when she saw the neat pile of arms and legs on the floor and the coat hanger in Batya’s hand, she cried out in horror.

“I must have looked like some back alley abortionist.”

The men do spit-takes and laugh so hard that they nearly choke on their cocktail weenies. Laughing loudest of all, however, is Tom, who stands apart from the others. In the flickering firelight, he looks deranged, menacing, completely unhinged.

“I didn’t see you come in,” says Devin.

“Jews are condemned to burn for all eternity!” the boy shouts. “Doomed to the agonies of hellfire, every last one. Moses Maimonides and Karl Marx and Saul Bellow.”

Devin doesn’t know what to do; he isn’t very effective at diffusing confrontation and could use some help, but when he turns to Batya for support, he sees in her eyes something that alarms him, a look he recognizes from their first night together, the night when she initiated their affair and coaxed him from his clothes, but only now does he begin to understand that she possesses an extraordinary gift. Where another woman might simply see an emotionally distraught male, Batya envisions someone with enormous potential, a sad prattling homunculus, a half-formed and imperfect creature that, with patience and care, she can mold to her stringent specifications. Far from being angry with Tom, Batya in fact seems oddly moved by the boy’s hateful outburst and has an irresistible urge to mentor him as she has reputedly mentored so many boys before, the wayward athletes and those docile, delusional scribes who toil away on the school’s literary magazine long into the evening hours like children in a sweatshop, gangly and bespectacled copy editors who leaf through insurmountable piles of manuscripts and smirk at Devin, the ridiculous cuckold with the thinning hair and noticeable paunch, who occasionally shows up at the office to invite the revered editor to dinner.

Devin is about to object to his son’s words when Batya sets her drink down on the coffee table.

“So, Jews are going to burn, are they? You forgot to mention George Gershwin and Groucho Marx and Woody Allen.”

This generates more laughter from the guests.

“I’m simply giving you the facts,” Tom tells her, “and the fact is you’ll burn, you’ll
burn
.”

“My dear boy,” says Batya in a calm tone, “you’re not being reasonable.”

“It’s not me, it’s God. And you can’t
reason
with God. He does what He pleases. He makes the rules and enforces them. And
He
says that unbelievers will burn!”

Tom marches closer to the fireplace. In his hand he holds several copies of the literary magazine, the ones Batya has personalized for Devin with salacious notes and crude drawings. She is particularly adept at sketching phalluses, proudly erect, and beautiful women who caress them with their hands and loving lips. One by one Tom
tosses the magazines into the fire. The pages shrivel, curl and blacken. Devin gazes into the fire and is startled to find that the ashes of the journal look no different than the ashes of the newspaper he used earlier to kindle the flames. In some strange way, he feels like he has been duped, that despite what the experts say, genius and mediocrity meet the same fate and in the end are indistinguishable from one another.

Batya smirks. “Looks like we’re going to have us an old-fashioned book burning, folks!”

With a wavering voice, Devin says, “Tom, I think you should go to your room.”

“My
room
?” Now comes a dark, disgusted, incredulous laughter. “Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t disturb you. I’ll leave you two alone tonight so you can fuck each other silly. Fuck your brains out!”

The boy storms out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

To Devin’s surprise, the guests do not check their watches, make excuses, collect their coats; they keep on drinking just as before. They are used to unruly behavior from obnoxious boys and don’t seem in the least bit bothered by Tom’s antics.

“I’m so sorry …” Devin says.

Batya pats his hand. “Don’t worry. Attend to your guests. I’ll go check on him. He just needs to talk things over with someone.”

Devin is unsure if he should be grateful or suspicious, but he has no time to analyze the situation. The party rages on. His guests demand more beer, more wine, more whiskey. “An old-fashioned Roman saturnalia” is how he might describe the situation, and it isn’t until well after midnight, when the last few guests spill from the house, singing a bastardized version of the school’s alma mater, that he realizes Tom and Batya are nowhere to be found.