People turn to watch, as a congregation watches a bride enter church for her wedding. I am sitting in the front row with Max. There is a stir and a murmuring at Father Smith’s appearance. But it is not his clothes I notice. Something else: a certain gleam in his eye, both knowing and rapt, which I’ve seen before, in him and on closed wards.
The chalice is held in one hand, properly, the other hand pressed on the square pall covering, but there is something at once solemn and unserious about him, theatrical, like my daughter, Meg, playing priest.
Oh my.
Well, at least he is going to say Mass, where it’s hard to get in trouble. Perhaps the friendly crowd will take his old clothes as a mark of humility, albeit eccentric — but you know what a character he is! — or maybe they’ll see him as a worker-priest or a guerrilla priest.
But instead of mounting the single step to the platform of the altar, he turns around in the aisle, not two feet from me, exactly between me and Max, and faces the little crowd, which is still well disposed if somewhat puzzled.
“Jesus Christ is Lord!” he says in a new, knowledgeable, even chipper voice. Then: “Praise be to God! Blessed be his Holy Name!” A pause and then, as he looks down at the upturned faces: “I wonder if you know what you are doing here!”
Well then, I’m thinking, what he’s doing is what Catholics call pious ejaculations, which are something like the Pentecostal’s exclamations — Glory! and suchlike — that plus a bit of obscure priestly humor.
But no. They are uttered not as pious ejaculations but more like a fitful commentary, like a talkative person watching a movie.
All is not yet lost. Sometimes priests say a few words before Mass, especially on a special occasion like this, by way of welcome.
No one is as yet seriously discomfited.
Father Smith begins to make short utterances separated by pauses but otherwise not apparently connected, all the while holding chalice and covering pall in front of him. They, the utterances, remind me of the harangues delivered by solitary persons standing in a New York subway or in the ward where I was committed by Max and later served as attending physician.
But his remarks, though desultory and disconnected, are uttered in a calm, serious voice. During the pauses he seems to sink into thought.
“The Great Prince Satan, the Depriver, is here.”
Pause.
“It is not your fault that he, the Great Prince, is here. But you must resist him.”
Pause.
“I hope you know what you are doing here,” he says.
Pause.
“The fellows at Fedville know what they were doing.”
Pause.
The audience is trying to figure out whether the pauses are calculated, as some preachers will pause, even for long pauses, for purposes of emphasis. They listen intently, heads inclined, with even a tentative nod or two.
“True, they were getting rid of people, but they were people nobody wanted to bother with.”
Pause.
“Old, young. Born, unborn.”
Pause.
“But they, the doctors, were good fellows and they had their reasons.
“The reasons were quite plausible.
“I observed some of you.
“But do you know what you are doing?
“I observe a benevolent feeling here.
“There is also tenderness.
“At the bedside of some children this morning I observed you shed tears. On television.
“Do you know where tenderness leads?”
Pause.
“Tenderness leads to the gas chamber.”
Pause.
“This is the feast day of my patron saint, Simeon the Stylite.
“Simeon lived atop a pillar forty feet high and six feet in diameter for twenty years.
“He mortified himself and prayed for the forgiveness of his sins and the sins of the world below him, which was particularly wicked, being mainly occupied by the Great Prince Satan.
“I don’t see any sinners here.
“Everyone looks justified. No guilt here!
“Simeon came down to perform good works when his bishop asked him to, but when the bishop saw he was willing, he let him go back up.
“I’d rather be back up in the tower, but I do know what I’m doing here.
“Do you think it is for the love of God, like Simeon? I am sorry to say it is not.
“I like to talk to the patients here.
“Children and dying people do not lie.
“One need not lie to them.
“Everyone else lies.
“Look at you. Not a sinner in sight.
“No guilt here!
“The Great Prince has pulled off his masterpiece.
“These are strange times. There are now two kinds of people.
“This has never happened before.
“One are decent, tenderhearted, unbelieving, philanthropic people.
“The other are some preachers who tell the truth about the Lord but are themselves often rascals if not thieves.”
During one of the pauses Chandra and the NewsTeam-7 crew turn off their lights, fold their cameras, and quietly creep out.
“What a generation! Believing thieves and decent unbelievers!
“The Great Depriver’s finest hour!
“Not a guilty face here!
“Everyone here is creaming in his drawers from tenderness!”
Long pause.
“But beware, tender hearts!
“Don’t you know where tenderness leads?” Silence. “To the gas chambers.
“Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized tenderhearted souls as have lived in this century.
“Never in the history of the world have so many people been killed.
“More people have been killed in this century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together.”
Pause.
“My brothers, let me tell you where tenderness leads.”
A longer pause.
“To the gas chambers! On with the jets!
“Listen to me, dear physicians, dear brothers, dear Qualitarians, abortionists, euthanasists! Do you know why you are going to listen to me? Because every last one of you is a better man than I and you know it! And yet you like me. Every last one of you knows me and what I am, a failed priest, an old drunk, who is only fit to do one thing and to tell you one thing. You are good, kind, hardworking doctors, but you like me nevertheless and I know that you will allow me to tell you one thing — no, ask one thing — no, beg one thing of you. Please do this one favor for me, dear doctors. If you have a patient, young or old, suffering, dying, afflicted, useless, born or unborn, whom you for the best of reasons wish to put out of his misery — I beg only one thing of you, dear doctors! Please send him to us. Don’t kill them! We’ll take them — all of them! Please send them to us! I swear to you you won’t be sorry. We will all be happy about it! I promise you, and I know that you believe me, that we will take care of him, her — we will even call on you to help us take care of them! — and you will not have to make such a decision. God will bless you for it and you will offend no one except the Great Prince Satan, who rules the world. That is all.”
Silence.
“Oh, there is something else of the utmost importance I must tell you—”
But suddenly he breaks off, frowns, touches his lip as if he has forgotten what he was going to say. Then, frowning all the harder, he appears to sink into thought. Seconds pass.
This time the pause does not end. Perhaps ten seconds pass. Already there is consternation, exchanged glances, murmurings, shifting about in the seats. Ten seconds is a long time. Then perhaps twenty seconds pass. Now there is anxiety.
When a speaker who is supposed to speak and then make an end to the speaking, stops speaking inadvertently, like an actor going up in his lines, or a young preacher who has a lapse, his audience at first grows restive, is embarrassed for him. Perhaps there are a few titters. Then the audience develops pure anxiety. The anxiety is worse than any offense the speaker may have given.