“Culture shock.”
“Exactly,” he said. “These feelings you have toward this girl are certainly real, but they’re nowhere near as specific as you seem to think. It could have been any girl, any flesh-and-blood girl that you would meet and talk to in the middle of a brand-new environment. We already know from your television watching, Brother Benedict, that celibacy has not entirely quieted your sexual nature.”
“Mm.”
“In the grip of culture shock,” he went on, “you struggled for something familiar, toward which you could give a familiar reaction. The girl was it. You reacted to her as though she were something seen on a television set.”
Hardly. But you don’t argue with your priest in confession. “That’s very interesting,” I said. Which wasn’t a lie. He might have been as wrong as Martin Luther, but he was interesting.
“You asked, a moment ago,” he said, “whether your dreams could be considered sinful. Normally I would answer that the dream itself must be regarded as neutral, but that your reaction to the dream might constitute a sin. If, for instance, you dreamed of committing a murder, the dream would not be sinful, but if on awakening you relished the thought of having murdered that particular person, the reaction would be a definite sin.”
“Well, it wasn’t murder,” I said, “but I guess it was a sin.”
“You’re rushing ahead,” he cautioned me. “I said normally I would answer that way. But in truth, Brother Benedict, I believe in this case everything has been a dream to you, from the moment you started Traveling. A victim of culture shock is no more guilty of his thoughts and actions than is a victim of schizophrenia. In fact, I did an article once on moral culpability as it is affected by mental disorder. I could bring you the tear sheets, if you like.”
“I’d like that very much,” I said. I was utterly astounded: the depths one finds in the unlikeliest people!
“I’ll bring it next time,” he said. “As to your current problem, I think you should ask Brother Oliver not to take you along on any more expeditions he might make.”
I surprised myself with my reaction to that. I should have been delighted; I should have been relieved to have at last a legitimate excuse to stop all this Traveling. But I wasn’t delighted, and I wasn’t relieved. Quite the reverse — a sinking feeling filled me, a sudden great sense of loss, as though something important, vital, had been taken away from me.
So I really was suffering from culture shock. And it was being nipped just in the nick of time. “Yes, Father,” I said. “I definitely will.” One or two more excursions outside, and I might very well have lost my Call.
Father Banzolini said, “And until the effects of your recent Traveling wear off, I don’t think you should worry too much about any stray thoughts that might meander through your head. At this point, you aren’t entirely responsible.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Father,” I said.
One Our Father and one Hail Mary! I felt almost guilty as I scampered through my penance, as though I had somehow sneakily put one over on Father Banzolini and were now wallowing in the rewards of that slyness.
But I guess I’m too shallow to be depressed for long. By the time I’d rapidly recited my prayers and was heading up the aisle and out of the chapel I was no longer bowed down by either of my guilts. (I did have two to dwell on, had I the character to do so. First, there was my shameless toadying of Father Banzolini, resulting in the lightest penance of my penitential career. And second, there was the sense of loss I’d experienced and kept secret to myself when he’d told me I should Travel no more.) Not only was I unbowed by this double evidence of my own worthlessness, I actually gloried in them both. The penny-ante penance, it seemed to me, made up for a lot of heavyweight penances I hadn’t deserved. And there was a kind of exhilaration in the thought that Travel was not only philosophically wrong for me but was actually dangerous to my mental health. There was a titillation in the idea of Travel now that was probably very like the heroin addict’s view of his drug. Dangerous, but exciting, and finally exciting because it is dangerous.
Ah, well; my fling with Travel was over. I was to be reduced again to a bearable level of addiction, being my weekly sojourn for the Sunday Times.
Meaning now. Off I went to the office for the necessary sixty cents and permission to leave the monastery. Brother Eli was on duty at the desk, surrounded by the shavings from his whittling. Brother Eli, a brooding slender long-necked young man in his late twenties, had after an apparently normal California childhood deserted from the United States Army in Vietnam. He had Traveled extensively incognito through Asia, and along the way had picked up a skill in woodcarving with which he claimed to have supported himself for three years in southeast Asia. Returning unofficially to this country he had presented himself at our gates two years ago, saying he had heard of us in a lamasery and that his own experience of Travel agreed with our philosophical stance. He had asked us if we had any objection to a wanted fugitive joining our number. Brother Oliver had assured him the laws of Man, being transitory, contradictory and invariably in error, meant much less to us than the laws of God, and so this young man had given up the name under which his government thought of him as a felon and had become Brother Eli, a woodcarver.
Oh, yes, a woodcarver. Lean Josephs striding next to plump mules bearing plumper Marys, androgynous angels rolling massive boulders from allusive cave entrances, wise men on camels, saints on their knees, martyrs on their last legs, all were discovered by his busy knife lurking in this or that stray piece of wood. And Christs, how many Christs: Christ blessing, Christ fasting, Christ preaching, Christ rising from the dead, Christ permitting the washing of His feet, Christ carrying His cross, Christ attached to His cross, Christ being taken down from His cross.
If Brother Eli were ever to become Abbot, none of us would be safe.
Our business now was quickly transacted. Brother Eli gave me a quick greeting, a quick sixty cents, and a quick farewell, before returning to the Madonna and Child emerging from this latest block of wood. (Shades of Brother Oliver!) And out I went.
Was it my imagination, or was the world different tonight from the normal Saturday evening? The usual glitter seemed harsher somehow, the gaiety more frantic. Danger and lunacy seemed to lurk behind every facade and every face on Lexington Avenue. I strode more rapidly than is my wont, I took less pleasure in this excursion, and even the newsie who sold me my paper seemed less familiar and less friendly tonight. “Evening, Father,” he said, as usual, but somehow the tone was different.
On the way back, I paused at my regular trash basket to rid myself of the unwanted sections of the paper. Classified, Travel, Business, the advertising supplements. But then I paused at Real Estate. Might it be a good idea to keep that section? Perhaps a greater familiarity with the world of real estate would be useful to us in the weeks ahead. I returned it to the bundle of saved sections, and hurried homeward.
She must have been lying in wait for me. I was coming along 51st Street, barely half a block from home, when Eileen Bone stepped out of an automobile parked some distance ahead, walked around the hood of the car, and stopped on the sidewalk to wait for me.
She was perhaps twelve paces away, close enough for me to see her clearly in the streetlight glow, but far enough so that I could have taken evasive action. I could have turned about, for instance, walked back to Lexington, left to 52nd Street, left to Park Avenue, left past the Buttock Boutique, and thence half a block home. All in all, that’s probably exactly what I should have done.