There was silence. Each man regarded the other, heavily breathing; faces flushed, the two of them glared disapproval and masculine authority, with overtones of some deeper, higher mandate, obscurely articulated but nonetheless there.
“And the visions,” Dr. Abernathy said. “It is time you gave them up as well. You confessed the use of vision-inducing drugs. I am instructing you to turn all such drugs over to me.”
“Wh-wh-what?”
The priest nodded. “Right now.” He held out his hand.
“I never should have confessed.” His voice trembled and he could not, for the life of him, keep it steady. “Listen,” he said, “how about a deal? I’ll stop sleeping with Lurine, but you let me keep—”
Dr. Abernathy stated, “I am more concerned with the drugs. There is a satanic element involved, a vitiated but still-real black mass.”
“You’re”—Pete gestured—”out of your mind!”
The hand remained. Waiting.
“ ‘Black mass.’ “ Disgusted, he said, “Some deal. I can’t win; I either—” Too much, he thought gloomily. What a mistake it had been to slip over into the formal relationship with Abernathy; the priest had ceased to be a man, had assumed transcendent power. “Penance,” he said aloud. “You’ve got me. Okay; I have to give up my whole goddamn supply of medication. What a victory for you, tonight. What a reason for joining the Christian Church; you have to give away everything you like, even the search for God! You sure don’t want converts very bad—as a matter of fact, it strikes me as weird, the way you discouraged McMasters; my god, you as much as told him right flat to his face that he ought to go back to Handy and do his job and not be a convert. Is that what you want? For him to stay there with the SOWers and go on his Pilg, which he’s trying so darn hard to get out of? What a way to run a church; no wonder you’re losing out, like I said.”
Dr. Abernathy continued to extend his open hand, waiting.
Just that one thing, Pete Sands reflected. Not picking up when the inc asked to join us so as not to go on the Pilg; why didn’t you pick up on that? It wasn’t that difficult a decision; normally, Dr. Abernathy would have conscripted Tibor into the Christian Church instantly: Pete Sands had witnessed such abrupt total conversions many times.
“I’ll tell you what,” Pete said aloud. “I’ll turn over my supply of medication to you if you’ll tell me why you blocked McMasters when he tried to duck in here. Okay? A deal?”
“He should have courage. He should stand up to the duties imposed on him. Even by a false and profane mimic-church.”
“Aw, you must be kidding.” It still rang wrong; in fact even more so, now. Asked outright for his reason, Dr. Abernathy revealed that he had no reason. Or rather, Pete realized musingly, he isn’t telling.
“The drugs,” Dr. Abernathy said. “I told you why I abstained from the temptation of enticing one of the finest murch painters in the Rocky Mountain area into the Church of Christ; now give me—”
“Anything,” Pete Sands said quietly.
“Pardon?” Blinking, Dr. Abernathy cupped his ear. “Oh, I see. Anything else instead of the—medication.”
“Lurine and anything else,” Pete said in a voice that almost refused to be heard; he was in fact unsure whether the priest had caught all the words or only the tone. But the tone by itself; that would convey everything. In all his life, even during the war, he had never sounded quite like that. At least so he hoped.
“Hmm,” Dr. Abernathy said. “ ‘Lurine and anything else.’ Rather a grandiose offer. You must have become habituated to one or more of your drugs; correct?” He eyed Pete keenly.
“Not the drugs,” Pete said, “but that which the drugs show me.”
“Let me think.” Dr. Abernathy pondered. “Well, nothing enters my mind tonight… possibly it would be worth shelving for now; I can perhaps stipulate some alternative tomorrow or the day after.”
And not only this, Pete thought, but you also won all the silver I had on me when we began the game tonight. Jeez.
“By the way,” Dr. Abernathy said. “How is Lurine in bed? Are her breasts, for example, as firm as they appear?”
“She’s like the tides of the sea,” Pete said gloomily. “Or the wind that sweeps across the plain. Her breasts are like mounds of chicken fat. Her loins—”
Grinning, Dr. Abernathy said, “In any case, it’s been a pleasure for you to have known her. In the biblical sense.”
“You really want to know how she is? Average. And after all, I’ve had plenty of women. Lots of them were better lays, and lots of them worse,” Pete said. “That’s all.”
Dr. Abernathy continued to grin.
“What’s funny?” Pete demanded.
“Perhaps it’s the way hungry men speak of smorgasbords,” Dr. Abernathy replied.
Pete reddened, knowing the flush would reach the crown of his head, all visible.
He shrugged and turned away. “What’s it to you?”
“Curiosity,” said Dr. Abernathy, scratching his chin and pulling his smile straight. “I’m a curious man, and even secondhand carnal knowledge is knowledge.”
“And perhaps too many years in the confessional promote a certain voyeurism,” Pete observed.
“If so, this in no way vitiates the sacrament,” said Dr. Abernathy.
“I know about the Waldensians,” said Pete. “What I said was—”
“—That I’m a peeping Tom.” Dr. Abernathy sighed and rose, adjusting his cassock as he stood. “Okay, I’ll be going now.”
Pete accompanied him to the door, letting Tom Swift And His Electric Magic Carpet out at the same time, for his usual evening business.
The dust fought the dew and the former settled to the ground, save for that raised by the cow and kicked back into his face. Tibor turned his head to the side and regarded the colors of morning.
The colors… Christ! the colors! he thought. In the morning everything lives in a special way—the wet-green leaves and the oily grayblue of the jay’s feathers—the brownwetblack of the road-apple—everything! Everything is special until about eleven o’clock. Then the color is still there, but a certain magic is gone out of the world, a wet magic. There was a faint haze in the western corner of the nine-thirty world. He thought of all the shadows in all the Rembrandt repros he had seen. So easy to fake, that man, he thought. They talk of the Rembrandt eyes. What ever do they see? Whatever they want. Because there is nothing there but shadows. He was not a morning painter, so he would be easy to fake. But all those wetmorning people, the impressionists—lumped together perhaps only because they sat in the same corner of the Cafe Gaibois—they would be harder to emulate. They saw something like this and drew perfect circles about it.
He watched the birds and digested their flight. It was too good a morning. He etched it within his mind. He did it in watercolors. He did it in oils, the hard way, layer by painful layer.
To keep something else out, he did it.
What?
The cow made a soft, lowing noise and he murmured to her as softly.
God! how he hated to work by artificial light! It was sufficient for pieces, for corners and borders, for supporting material, but the final product—das Dinge selber—this must be a thing of Morgen.
And his mind came back, full circle, and the morning and the colors went away, for a time.
Dr. Abernathy’s place was over the hill and around the corner, and then about a mile. By ten o’clock, at this pace, he would be at the front door. What then? He tried to block the thought by sketching a tree, in his mind. But autumn came down upon it; the leaves withered and fell, were swept away. What then?
It was a thing that had taken him suddenly, the notion of a God of mercy and love. Only a few days ago, as a matter of fact. If they’d take him in and baptize him, he would not even have to be shrived, as he understood it. Not to be confused with the heretical notions of the Anabaptists, he realized with a certain pleasure that this would relieve him of the necessity of confessing to the thoughts he had held, of Helen, with the breasts like clouds, Lurine, with the skin like milk, Fay, with the mouth like honey, of the paint he had diverted to his own use, of the blocks of stone he had stolen to sculpt. What would Dr. Abernathy say? Oh, hell! He would counsel him, give him a catechism to study, test him later, baptize him, admit him as a communicant. What was it then that broke the morning? The night before, he had dreamed of his mural. Carl Lufteufel was a vacuum in the middle, crying out to be filled. The face in the repro which Dominus McComas had shown him always looked slightly past him. Not really at him. Not yet. Once he saw the man and captured the eyes—not hidden like those of a Rembrandt, no!—but the eyes of the God of Wrath, actually focused upon him, and all the slack/tightened/flaccid muscles of That Face, the bags or black smudges under the eyes, the parallelograms of the brow—all these things—once they were turned upon him, if only for a morning’s instant, then that vacuum would be filled. Once he saw it, all the world would see it—by his seeing and the six fingers of his steel hand.