Father?
Henry was the last Emperor I talked to, although of course Manchukuo was only a mythical country. Henry wouldn’t admit that naturally, Henry was a very naughty man. But admit it or not, the truth was still the same. There’s no escaping the fact that Henry was out in the streets like the rest of us.
It took Quin many hours and many trips to the Victorian parlor to gather even a few facts from the old priest, so accustomed had he become to dwelling in the familiar terrain of some faraway kingdom that had long ago become a private domain. But even a few facts were enough to make it clear that Geraty had lied when he claimed he had learned about the espionage network from Father Lamereaux.
The Jesuit had never described the famous picnic on the beach in Kamakura to Geraty, never mentioned Adzhar’s name, never told Geraty about the dead-drop device he had invented, never said anything to Geraty about any aspect of the clandestine work in which he was involved.
Yet other parts of Geraty’s account were accurate. In fact, there had been a meeting in a Tokyo cemetery one night between Father Lamereaux and a young Japanese army corporal, little more than a boy, who was working for the spy ring as a courier. And the corporal was the same young boy whom Geraty had met earlier in the cemetery, the boy to whom he had given a packet of stolen money in exchange for what he thought would be a valuable cache of pornographic films waiting for him in Mukden. The boy had passed on the money to Father Lamereaux before dropping his trousers and bending over a tombstone to receive the bamboo microfilm device, subsequently traveling to Manchuria where he was caught soon after his arrival in Mukden and beaten to death by the Kempeitai, an incident that had produced the one vague report on the ring to be found in the files of the Kempeitai after the war.
But Father Lamereaux didn’t know Geraty had witnessed that scene in the cemetery. He didn’t know the source of the money given to him by the corporal. He didn’t know Geraty had watched him accept the packet and watched him insert the bamboo device with a deft flickering motion, that he had then fallen asleep listening to Father Lamereaux sing the Litany of the Saints to himself on his knees in the darkness.
On the contrary, it was Geraty who had confessed his secrets over two bottles of Irish whiskey the following day.
The two men first became acquainted when Geraty began attending the Legion meetings the priest held in his home on Friday evenings. Geraty affected the manner and clothes of a successful salesman, but Lamereaux suspected this bluff appearance had nothing to do with his true nature. He soon discovered Geraty was a sensitive man who tormented himself with obscure spiritual concerns that even to a Jesuit seemed remote. Obviously there was a contradiction in his gloomy approach to life. Geraty would never admit it, but the priest felt it had to do with religion. For some reason he sensed that Geraty yearned for a religious vocation yet at the same time could not bring himself to accept his natural inclinations.
Geraty had a great interest in No although Lamereaux didn’t discover this until the very last time they were together. Lamereaux was the spiritual director of the Tokyo presidium of the Legion of Mary, Geraty became its treasurer. While Lamereaux delivered an exhortation at the Friday night meetings, Geraty passed around under the table the secret-bag for the members’ contributions. He then left the house immediately after the meeting, claiming he had work to do. Thus he always missed the discussions on No led by Lamereaux.
A regional senatus of the various Asian presidia of the Legion was to be held in Shanghai. Geraty, who said he was due to make a business trip to Shanghai at about that time, was elected to be the Tokyo Legion’s delegate to the senatus.
The day before he was scheduled to leave for the mainland he turned up at Lamereaux’s house early in the morning. He seemed very agitated. Under his arm was the valise he used to carry his samples. Lamereaux wasn’t feeling at all well that day, but when Geraty begged to be allowed to stay for a few hours, to be near a friend as he said, the priest put aside his own concerns to make him welcome.
Geraty drank tea and chewed fistfuls of aspirins. The pain in his face was evident, but it was just as evident that his suffering was more than physical. He was severely troubled.
Lamereaux invited him into the parlor. The moment Geraty laid eyes on the long table at the end of the room, the table where it was his duty to pass the secret-bag to the legionaries on Friday evenings, he buried his head in his hands and began to cry. Lamereaux gently bade him sit down and unburden himself. After sobbing helplessly for ten or fifteen minutes Geraty finally began to whisper.
He spoke first of an inconsequential matter. For some time he had been in the habit of going directly from the Friday night meetings of the Legion to Yoshiwara, the licensed quarter, to proselytize the harlots there. He would stand in the middle of the street facing a row of brothels and deliver a long sermon in a voice loud enough to be heard in every room.
Because he was such a large man, not only a giant but a foreign giant who spoke fluent Japanese, there was considerable curiosity over this spectacle. Often there would be hundreds of faces gazing down at him from the windows. Geraty began his preaching at midnight, when there was more chance the customers would be sleeping and the prostitutes would have time to listen.
Father Lamereaux knew that this was what Geraty had been doing after he left the Friday night meetings of the Legion. Such an activity was too flagrant not to be noticed at once and brought to his attention by his Japanese acquaintances. He had heard about it several years before and he didn’t like it. He found it overzealous and unseemly and not at all consonant with Japanese sensibilities. But because it obviously lifted Geraty’s spirits he allowed it to continue.
Hesitantly Geraty introduced his subject. He talked about girls from poor families who had to prostitute themselves for money during the first half of the evening and then spend the rest of the night lying beside a snoring man whom they had never seen before and would probably never see again. They were defiled and they knew it. They wanted to be cleansed, but they didn’t know how to go about it.
Father Lamereaux listened, fairly certain what would follow. Yet he said nothing. He smiled gently and made no effort to interrupt.
The confession was a long time in coming out. From midnight until three in the morning Geraty preached to the prostitutes from the street, but as soon as the hour of three was sounded he sneaked around to the back entrances to the brothels, let himself in, and knocked on one door after another, desperately searching for a prostitute whose affections or sympathies he might have aroused with his oratory.
His aims were limited and abject. He wanted to perform cunnilingus on a prostitute, free of charge, at the foot of the bed where her paid customer for the night lay asleep. Geraty could probably have performed this service, without paying, on almost any prostitute in the brothel who was unengaged. Conversely, if he had paid, he could probably have performed it with most of those prostitutes who where engaged but whose partners were already asleep. But Geraty had to have it his own way. The girl’s immediate sin had to be evident, and he had to earn her redemption with his eloquence and his apparent conviction.
In the alleys behind the brothels Geraty shuffled his feet, stated his case, and begged for forgiveness. He had spoken forcefully during his three hours in the street, and more than once he was accepted.