“I’d say he was depressed.”
“Hm. Yes. Depressed.”
I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t.
“Were you, are you, able to say Mass?”
“Mass,” he repeats, frowning mightily. “Yes,” he says at last in his musing voice. “Oh yes.”
“Could you preach?”
“Preach.” Again the cocked head, the sly near-smile. “No no.”
“No? Why not?”
“Why not? A good question. Because — it doesn’t signify.”
“What doesn’t signify?”
“The words.”
“The words of the sermon, of the Mass, don’t signify?”
“That’s well put, Tom,” he says, not ironically. “But the action does.”
“Why don’t the words signify?”
“Let me ask you a question as a scientist and a student of human nature,” he says, almost in his old priest-friend-colleague voice.
“Sure.”
“Do you think it is possible that words could be deprived of their meaning?”
“Deprived of their meaning. What words?”
“Name it! Any words. Tom, U.S.A., God, Simon, prayer, sin, heaven, world.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”
“Here’s the question,” he says in a brisk rehearsed voice. Again, for some reason, he reminds me of a caller calling in to a radio talk show. He almost raises his eyes. “If it is a fact that words are deprived of their meaning, does it not follow that there is a depriver?”
“A depriver. I’m afraid—”
“What other explanation is there?” he asks in a rush, as if he already knew what I would say.
I always answer patients honestly. “One explanation, if I understand you correctly, is that a person can stop believing in the things the words signify.”
“Ah ha,” he says at once, smiling as if I had taken the bait. “But that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“What’s the point?”
“Don’t you see?” he asks in a stronger voice, eyes still lowered, but hitching closer over the azimuth.
“Not quite.”
“It is not a question of belief or unbelief. Even if such things were all proved, if the existence of God, heaven, hell, sin were all proved as certainly as the distance to the sun is proved, it would make no difference, would it?”
“To whom?”
“To people! To unbelievers and to so-called believers.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because the words no longer signify.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the words have been deprived of their meaning.”
“By a depriver.”
“Right. Once, everyone admits, such signs signified. Now they do not.”
“How do you mean, once such signs signified?”
Again he smiles. Again it seems I have fallen into his trap. He rises, stands to one side, hands in pockets making fists. “I’ll show you. Do you see that?” He nods to the horizon.
I look. There is nothing but the shaggy sea of bluish pines. My nose has started running. The air is yellow with pollen.
“Right there.” He nods, hands still in pockets.
I look again. There is a straight wisp of smoke in the middle distance, as insignificant-looking as a pile of leaves burning in a gutter.
“Yes.”
“As a matter of fact, would you help me report it? My hands are a bit unsteady.”
Perhaps that is why he keeps his hands in his pockets, to hide a tremor.
“Sure. What do I do?”
“Line up the sights on the smoke.”
I rotate the azimuth and sight along the upright posts to the wisp of smoke. “I make it eighty-two degrees.”
“Very good. Wouldn’t you agree that there is no question, about what the smoke is a sign of?”
“Yes, I would.”
“What is it a sign of?”
“Fire.”
“Right!”—triumphantly. “Now would you hang up the reading?”
I turn to the wall map, which is encircled by pins like the Wheel of Fortune. I pick up a weighted string and hang it over pin number 82.
“Very good!” says the priest. He’s looking over my shoulder. “Now what do we have here?”
“We have the direction of—”
“Right! We have one coordinate, don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s not enough to locate the fire, is it?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“What else do we need?”
“We need another coordinate.”
“All right! And how do you suppose we get it?”
All at once I know what he reminds me of. He’s the patient priest-teacher teaching the dumb section at Holy Cross Prep.
I am willing to play dumb. “I don’t know. I don’t see how we can get a triangulation fix from here.”
“And you’re right! So we need a little help, don’t we? So—” He picks up the wall phone and dials a number. “Emmy,” he says in a different voice, “give me a reading on that brush job in 5–9. Okay, Blondie, I read. How goes it in Waldheim? All right. That’s a fiver-niner. You call it in. Over.”
He speaks easily, good-humoredly. No, he’s not a priest-teacher. He’s a ham operator, one of those fellows who are shy up close but chummy-technical with a stranger in Bangkok.
He turns to me. “Her reading is 2-9-2. She’s in the Waldheim tower.” He shows me a pin. “Here. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
I pick up the string and the Waldheim sinker and hang it over pin 292. The weighted strings intersect at a crossroad on the map. The priest, I can see, is pleased by the elegance of the tight intersected strings. So am I.
The priest is pushing one fist into the other hand, hard, taking turns. I realize he is doing isometric exercises. Now he is pulling against interlocked fingers.
“We know what the smoke is a sign of. We have located the sign,” he says between pushes and pulls. “Now we are going to act accordingly. That’s a sign for you. Unlike word signs.”
“Right.” I look at my watch. I’m afraid he’s going to get going on the Germans. “It’s good to see you, Father, but I have an appointment. Do you wish me to tell Father Placide or Dr. Comeaux anything?”
“Sure,” says the priest, who is back in his place across the azimuth. “Now here is the question.” There’s a lively light in his eye. He’s out to catch me again. He has the super-sane chipperness of the true nut.
“Can you name one word sign which has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived?”
“I don’t think I can. As a matter of fact, I’m afraid that—” Again I look at my watch.
Two things have become clear to me in the last few seconds.
One thing is that Father Smith has gone batty, but batty in a way I recognize. He belongs to that category of nut who can do his job competently enough, quite well in fact, but given one minute of free time latches on to an obsession like a tongue seeking a sore tooth. He called in the forest fire like a pro, but now he’s back at me with a mad chipper light in his eye.
The second thing is that I promised Father Placide to make an “evaluation” of Father Smith’s mental condition. Can he do priestly work?
No, three things.
The third thing is that all at once I want badly to get out of here and see Lucy Lipscomb.
“Can you name the one word sign,” Father Smith asks me, leaning close over the azimuth, “that has not been evacuated of meaning, that is, deprived by a depriver?”
“I’m not sure what the question means. Later perhaps—”