The Case Against Satan (4 page)

She broke into a run and ran all the way home. “So fast,” in Garth's words, “I couldn't catch up with her. I'm not a well man; I can't run like that.”

“Listen, you,” he said, breathless and sweating, after they had gotten into the house, “I'm going to get on that phone and call a taxi. And we're going to get in that taxi and go to church if I have to hogtie you!”

“I'm not going.”

Garth hit her. (“You know,” as he explained it to Gregory, “a slap, a little slap across the mouth, that's all.”)

She held her hand to her stinging cheek and looked him straight in the eye. And in a voice not like her own—yet not angry and strident, but calm, weighing every word—she quietly said:

“I hope you rot in Hell for eternity, you lousy son of a bitch.”

 • • • 

Gregory got up and lit a cigarette.

Garth said, “You got to understand, Father—this is a girl who never talked like that before. Not once, ever, did I hear her say a thing like that. A very good girl, a clean-talking sweet little girl. So when she said that, I was
stunned
. Because they weren't just empty cuss words. I could tell she meant every word.”

“You don't know that,” said Gregory.

But the girl said, “I meant every word.”

And added, a moment later, “Well—when I said it, I meant it.”

“Why?” asked Gregory. “Because he hit you?”

“Yes . . . I think so . . . I don't know . . . it was as if somebody else said that, somebody who
meant
it.”

Schizophrenia was, of course, a word that at once burst upon Gregory's mind. And so it was the schizophrenia trail that Gregory followed for many minutes, with an image of Eve's famous three faces—or was it four?—strong before him. Questions and answers followed each other rapidly, but the questions could never be of the sort that would start Garth off again with his cry of
Filth!
—and though schizophrenia seemed, at times, almost tracked to its lair, Gregory still could not be sure, was in fact very far from sure, and he had to conclude the inquiry with a lame, and rather worn, joke. “Look, I have a deal with the local psychiatrists. I promise not to treat patients if they promise not to say Mass.”

Some polite questions followed (“How long has your wife been dead, Mr. Garth?” “About six years; yes, six years. Susie was only ten when she died; she's sixteen now”).

“Well,” Gregory said at last, “it's awfully late and we should be getting our rest . . .” He did not look forward to the day ahead: in the evening, dinner with the Barlows; in the afternoon,
a visit from Bishop Crimmings. A casual visit, His Excellency had implied, just dropping in for a few minutes on the way to other places in this area. But bishops are not in the habit of just dropping in—they are accustomed to having parish priests come to them—so Gregory was not anticipating a pleasant social afternoon. His Excellency, notwithstanding a thin veneer of
bonhomie
, was a man forged plutonically under extreme pressure out of some igneous, molten magma of the spirit. His faith and his attitude toward dogma were both as strong and imperishable as rock. And as rigid. The old fellow would chuckle and talk about old times, drop one or two nuggets of epigrammatic wisdom, and then slowly circle around to the subject Gregory wanted desperately to avoid. It would be a trying day; he would need his sleep.

He began to create the atmosphere for dismissal. “We can talk more about this later in the week,” he said. Then he rose. “For tonight, Susan, I want you to promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“That you will not, absolutely will
not
try to run away again. Promise?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Fine!” He started ushering them toward the door, saying to Garth, “Suppose I call you later in the week when I'm free? This unfortunate business has been going on for some time now, so a day or two more shouldn't make much difference. When was that, how long ago, the Sunday morning when Susan said that terrible thing to you?”

“Well, let's see,” mused Garth. “It was just a month or so before Father Halloran announced he was leaving. I remember because right after she said that I went to Father Halloran for some advice and he said he'd have a long talk with her. So the very next day we came here to the rectory to see him.”

“Then apparently,” Gregory said to Susan, “you don't have as much difficulty entering the rectory as the church itself?”

“No, Father.”

“Thanks for small mercies, eh? Perhaps you and I can have a little private talk here sometime, just the two of us.” And he laid a hand on her shoulder.

She drew away quickly.

“Yeah,” said Garth, shaking his head sadly, “that's what Father Halloran said when I brought her here to see him. Wanted to talk to her alone in his study, so I waited here in the parlor. I don't mind telling you I was pretty nervous. The way she'd been behaving was beginning to get me down. I guess I'd been waiting here for about, oh, twenty, thirty minutes, maybe not so long, when all of a sudden I heard a noise in there in the study . . .”

“A noise?”

“Just a sort of a thump or something, like if something had been knocked over maybe. And then I heard a voice—for a second I didn't recognize it, then I could tell it was Father Halloran. He seemed to be saying
Stop
or
No
or something like that. And then I got scared because he yelled out real loud . . .”

“Yelled what?”

“Just—
Help!
Like that.
God help me!
”

A fierce sob was ripped from Susan's throat. Gregory wheeled around to find her placid face distorted with weeping. When his arms reached out to comfort her, she only sobbed louder and shook him off. He turned, puzzled and helpless, to Garth, and then all thought of ending the audience fled his mind. He sat down on a hard wooden chair.

“Please go on, Mr. Garth,” he said.

“Lies. Half truths. Propaganda. Censorship. Book burning. Thought control.” John Talbot paused over his coffee. The sounds of the little short-order restaurant clanked in the background. They were Saturday sounds, a touch forlorn and lonely after the rush of weekday business. Talbot's eyes had not left Robert Garth's face for the past five minutes. “What do those words remind you of?” he asked.

“Well . . .” Garth hesitated. “Russia? Communism?”

“That's right. And the Church.”

Garth made a movement of scorn. “Come on now, Talbot, that's pushing it kind of far, isn't it? I mean, I don't swallow everything the Church hands out, I got a mind of my own, but you can't say the Church is like Communism! Why, they hate each other!”

“Of course they do,” said Talbot eagerly. “Because they're so much alike! Exactly alike. They're both totalitarian. You know what that means?”

Garth was not sure.

“Total,
that's what it means. Total power, total control. Control over everything—over the body, over the mind. The Communists tell you what books you should read and what books you shouldn't. So does the Church. They write history to please themselves. So does the Church. Ideally, they'd rather you didn't read at all. So does the Church—why, they not only have their own distorted version of the Bible, but they
actually discourage
laymen from reading it! It's up to them to—‘interpret' it for you! And the torture chambers of the Soviet secret police?” Talbot shrugged. “Remember the Inquisition?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Garth, “but that was way back in the old days. They don't pull that sort of stuff now.”

“Of course they don't. They're more subtle now, more foxy. But underneath they're the same, Garth. The
same
.
”
He sipped at his coffee. “That's why I don't understand you. I will never understand why you took your daughter to Halloran. And I'll never understand why you've taken her to this new one, this Sargent.”

“I needed help, like I told you. I was afraid I'd lose her. Who could I go to? I don't know anybody who could talk to her and make it stick. I didn't
want
to get mixed up with priests, but damn it, Talbot, once a Catholic, always a Catholic, and—”

“And so you naturally went to the only source of authority and solace you knew. Yes. I understand—I guess. But it was dumb, Garth. She'll be destroyed.”

Garth frowned into his cup. “Aw—you make too much out of it, Talbot. You got some good points, I'll say that for you, but . . . What do you mean, destroyed? How?”

“I don't know how. Oh, I don't imagine he'll crush her feet in the Spanish boot,” he said, smiling grimly. “I didn't mean that. But he'll badger her with questions, frighten her with threats of eternal torment, fill her already confused mind with twisted, dangerous, useless ideas . . .” Talbot was an accomplished performer: his voice dropped to near-inaudibility and he said, quite simply, “He'll drive her mad.”

“But why? What'll he gain by driving a little girl nuts?”

“Look, my friend. What did they gain by burning Joan of Arc? The Church is
afraid
of the nonconformist, the renegade, afraid of anything it can't understand. It's afraid of your little girl. So she has to be hammered into shape. By fair means or foul. Most likely foul. Because, Garth: these priests play dirty.”

“I gotta go,” said Garth.

“Stick for a minute,” Talbot urged. “I'll tell you something that will warm the cockles of your heart . . .”

“I
need
something to warm the cockles of my heart, all right. A drink. Want to drop across the street to the bar?”

“I don't drink,” said Talbot flatly. “Listen, Garth. Before I opened my own print shop, I used to work as night clerk in a hotel.
You learn a lot in a job like that. People come and go—good people and bad, most of them bad. And you get to know everything about them, every mean little nasty vice. The old sugar daddies come in with their eighteen-year-old girls. Eighteen? Seventeen, sixteen, younger! Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Ha! The faggots come in: the boys with pancake makeup on their faces, their hair dyed and marcelled. And the priests come in. Oh yes. With their coat collars turned up, thinking they're fooling everybody. But they never fooled me. Yes, the priests come in, Garth. With their frightened little girls. And little boys.”

“I really gotta go,” said Garth.

“Listen to a joke first,” Talbot insisted, suddenly turning on the casual camaraderie. “It's a good joke. This girl—of good family, you see—gets herself pregnant. Her parents are shocked, horrified. What can they do? They phone the family doctor and start hinting around. He says, ‘If you expect me to perform an abortion, you can stop right there. I won't. But I'll tell you what: you take the girl up to my country home and when the time comes, I'll be on hand to deliver the child. Now, right near my country home is a sanatorium where I often perform surgery. There's always some old girl who needs a gall bladder removed. I'll perform such an operation—then I'll bring her your daughter's child. I'll tell her there's been a mistake all along—she was pregnant, it wasn't gall bladder at all. Simple.' So: everything goes as planned, but after the doctor delivers the baby, he discovers there
is
no gall bladder patient in the sanatorium—except a priest. He's thrown by this at first, of course, but he decides to stick to his guns. Takes the baby into the priest and says, ‘Father, the Lord has seen fit to make you the instrument of a miracle. You have just been delivered of a fine baby boy.' The priest is overjoyed—what evidence of A Divine Hand! what an honor! and all that . . .”

“Look, Talbot, I gotta shove off.”

“All right, all right, I'll wind it up. The kid is raised as a miracle child. Members of the parish contribute to his education, he goes to the finest schools, and so on and so on. When he's in college, he gets word that his father, the priest, is dying. He rushes home to his bedside. Kid says, ‘You've been so good
to me, Dad, how can I repay you?' Priest says, ‘By forgiving me for a terrible deception. All these years I told you I was your father. But it's not true'—and he tells him the whole story. ‘So you see, my son, I'm not your father at all. I'm your mother.
The Archbishop is your father
.
'”
Talbot laughed. “Get it?”

“Yeah,” said Garth, smiling weakly, “pretty funny.”

“It's more than funny. There's truth there. They're dirty, all of them. Believe me. And if you want more proof—”

“I'm going.”

“Sure. But take this magazine with you.”

“I got it at home, I think. Got a subscription.”

“That's all right. Take this copy. I've marked off a paragraph on page 34. Pretty sexy stuff. And pretty surprising—considering who the author is.”

Garth rolled up the fat issue of the popular magazine and put it under his arm. “So long, Talbot. See you around. Maybe you'll be here tomorrow?”

“No, I'll be working tomorrow.”

“On Sunday?”

“Why not on Sunday? If I have a sabbath, it's today.”

“Saturday? You're not a Jew, Talbot, are you?”

Talbot wrinkled his nose. “You know better than that. No, I like Saturday because it's named for Saturn, a Roman god. He ate his own children, all but three of them. How do you like that! In ancient Rome they used to hold festivals in his honor, big orgies. Saturnalia, they called them. ‘The children of Saturn shall be great jugglers and chiders, and they will never forgive till they be revenged of their quarrel.' I like the sound of that. No, I make a point of working on Sundays.”

“Well then, maybe you'll be around here later on today, this evening?”

“Maybe.”

“I like talking to you.”

“I like talking to you, Garth.”

Garth left the eating-place, the coffee sour in his stomach, his spirit equally sour with worry and fear and doubt. Talbot was a good talker; he seemed to have an answer for everything. Garth could not accept much of what Talbot said, and yet . . . where
there's smoke, there's fire. Perhaps, just as Talbot insisted, it had been a bad idea to bring Susie to the Fathers for her trouble. The Church was old-fashioned, full of antiquated notions. Maybe one of those psychiatrists would have been better. More modern. More scientific.

But what good would it do Susie to spill her guts to a psychiatrist? Why not let her forget the bad things? Why bring them up again? Why talk about them?

Still, there was no assurance Father Sargent wouldn't make her talk about them. And that she must not do.

She would probably be sitting at home now, perhaps doing her homework, watching television, reading. She was a great one for reading. Smart as a whip, and only sixteen.
The old sugar daddies with their sixteen-year-old girls
 . . . Garth's hands clenched. The thought disturbed him deeply.

Wordless images crowded his mind: bald old men from whom the thrust of youth had fled, men who needed the dewy skin, the heart-melting innocence of extreme youth to kindle the fire in them again. Bug-eyed and gape-mouthed over the smooth bodies of young girls, the spittle hanging in strings from their lecherous lips, dripping upon clean flesh, loathsomely festooning the buds of breasts and round little bellies . . .

Garth gritted his teeth.

He was home now. He walked up the two flights of stairs, his heart pounding from the effort, and with his key let himself into the flat.

Silence met him, and the staleness of closed windows. “Susie,” he called softly. He opened a window, but the weather was clogged and fetid. He called his daughter's name again, casually looking through the rooms. She was not home.

Well, it was Saturday . . . maybe one of her little girl friends had come by and they had gone window shopping. Maybe a boy . . . but no, Susie seldom dated, seemed to draw away from boys. He looked on the kitchen table for any note she might have left, but there was none.

Could she have gone, on her own, to Father Sargent?

And the priests come in with their frightened little girls
 . . .

Garth reached for the phone, dialed a half-dozen digits of
the rectory number, then hesitated and did not dial the seventh and last. He hung up.

In the pantry there was a half bottle of bourbon. Garth sloshed an inch or so into a glass and swallowed a large gulp of it. It went down his throat smooth as oil but became a little knot of cold in his belly, a knot that slowly unfurled and grew warm and spread and filled him. He drained the glass and poured another, stiffer, shot.

Talbot. Only a weird guy like that would work on Sunday and take a shine to Saturday because of that Saturn business. Talbot was full of oddball stuff like that.

He now felt overwarm from the whiskey. He opened another window, but still the air hung outside, unmoving and clammy. He heard the metallic whisper of a key in the lock, and his daughter entered.

“Where you been, Susie?”

“Hello, Dad.”

“Where you been?”

“To a movie.”

“Who with?”

“Nobody. Alone.”

“What movie?”

“That one at the Midtown, all about ancient Rome and gladiators and things.”

“You didn't leave no note.”

“I'm sorry, Dad, I forgot.”

“I was worried about you.”

“I'm sorry. But I'm home now.”

“Yeah.” Garth finished his drink and put away the bottle. “Ancient Rome. You know today, Saturday, is named after one of them ancient Roman gods?”

“Saturn? Yes, I know.” She had opened the refrigerator and was now selecting food for a sandwich: luncheon meat, cheese, lettuce, mayonnaise, butter.

“Yeah, you would know. Great little reader.”

He watched her build and then bite into the sandwich. “I thought maybe you went back to the Father.”

Her mouth was full, and she only shook her head.

Garth said, “I've been thinking about that.” The girl raised her eyes. “Yeah, been doing a lot of thinking. And I don't know if it's such a good idea, you going to him for help.”

“It was your idea, Dad.”

“I know, but . . . well, we don't know this fellow, he's new, we don't know anything about him, the way he thinks, anything like that . . .”

“Does that matter?”

“I don't know. I just mean—well, how can
he
help?”

“Maybe he can't. But he can try.”

Garth looked at her with curiosity. “You were dead set against it last night. How come you're all for it now?”

“I'm not all for it . . .”

“Yes you are. What's so great about Father Sargent all of a sudden?”

“I didn't say he was so great, just—”

“Remember what happened when you went to see Father Halloran.”

The girl put down her sandwich. She stared at it, beyond it, not seeing it. “I remember,” she said.

“You'd better. Would you want that to happen again?” She did not reply. “Well, would you?”

“No. No.” She closed her eyes. “Mama,” she said.

“What about her?”

“If only she were here.”

“I know, I know, but your mother's been dead for six years now.
I'm
here.”

“You're glad she's not here, aren't you?”

“What a lousy thing to say . . .”

“Glad she's dead.”

“Susie, don't start that stuff again . . .”

“You never loved her.”

“You're too young to understand things like that, honey.”

“You never loved her so you let her die.”

“That isn't
true
, Susie.”