She sat at the table. Mrs. This. Uncle That. Still in immigrant accents. He avoided those eyes that were wells of sorrow, eyes that spent days staring out of a window.
He should never have left her.
He wrote a few letters for her later. She could neither read nor write any English Then he spent time repairing the tuner on a crackling, plastic radio. Her world. The news. Mayor Lindsay.
He went to the bathroom. Yellowing newspaper spread on the tile. Stains of rust in the tub and the sink. On the floor, an old corset. Seeds of vocation. From these he had fled into love. Now the love had grown cold. In the night, he heard it whistling through the chambers of his heart like a lost, crying wind.
At a quarter to eleven, he kissed her good-bye; promised to return jest as soon as he could. He left with the radio tuned to the news.
**********
Once back in his room in Weigel Hall, he gave some thought to writing a letter to the Jesuit head of the Maryland province. He'd covered the ground with him once before: request for a transfer to the New York province in order to be loser to his mother; request for a teaching post and relief from his duties. In requesting the latter, he'd cited as a reason "unfitness" for the work.
The Maryland Provincial had taken it up with him during the course of his annual inspection tour of Georgetown University, a function that closely paralleled that of an army inspector general in the granting of confidential hearings to those who had grievances or complaints. On the point of Damien Karras' mother, the Provicial had nodded and expressed his symphathy; but the question of the priest's "unfitness" he thought contradictory on its face. But Karras had pursued it:
"Well, it's more than psychiatry, Torn. You know that. Some of their problems come down to vocation, to the meaning of their lives. Hell, it isn't always sex that's involved, it's their faith, and I just can't cut it, Tom, it's too much. I need out. I'm having problems of my own. l mean, doubts"
"What thinking man doesn't, Damien?"
A harried man with many appointments, the Provincial had not pressed him for the reasons for his doubt. For which Karras was grateful. He knew that his answers would have sounded insane: The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. My mother's nine First Fridays.
Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in the paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop; set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. No. Too emotional.
Vague. Existential. More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil.
And much of the evil resulted from doubt; from an honest confusion among men of good will.
Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not reveal Himself? Not speak?"
"Lord, give us a sign...."
The raising of Lazarus was dim in the distant past. No one now living had heard his laughter.
Why not a sign?
At various times the priest would long to have lived with Christ: to have sin; to have touched; to have probed His eyes. Ah, my God, let me see You! Let me know! Come in dreams!
The yearning consumed him.
He sat at the desk now with pen above paper. Perhaps it wasn't time that had silenced the Provincial. Perhaps he understood that faith was finally a matter of love.
The Provincial had promised to consider the requests, but thus far nothing had bees done.
Karras wrote the letter and went to bed.
He sluggishly awakened at 5 A.M. and went to the chapel in Weigel Hall, secured a Host, then returned to his room and said Mass.
" 'Et clamor meus ad te veniat,' " he prayed with murmured anguish. " 'Let my cry come unto Thee...' "
He lifted the Host in consecration with an aching remembrance of the joy it once gave him; felt once again, as he did each morning, the pang of an unexpected glimpse from afar and unnoticed of a longlost love.
He broke the Host above the chalice.
" 'Peace I leave you. My peace I give you....' "
He tucked the Host inside his mouth and swallowed the papery taste of despair.
When the Mass was over, he polished the chalice and carefully placed it in his bag. He rushed for the seven-ten train back to Washington, carrying pain in a black valise.
CHAPTER THREE
Early on the morning of April 11, Chris made a telephone call to her doctor in Los Angeles and asked him for a referral to a local psychiatrist for Regan.
"Oh? What's wrong?"
Chris explained. Beginning on the day after Regan's birthday--- and following Howard's failure to call--- she had noticed a sudden and dramatic change in her daughter's behavior and disposition. Insomnia. Quarrelsome. Fits of temper. Kicked things. Threw things. Screamed.
Wouldn't eat. In addition, her energy seemed abnormal. She was constantly moving, touching, turning; tapping; running and jumping about. Doing poorly with schoolwork. Fantasy playmate. Eccentric attention-getting tactics.
"Such as what?" the physician inquired.
She started with the rappings. Since the night she'd investigated the attic, she'd heard them again on two occasions. In both of these instances, she'd noticed, Regan was present in the room; and the rappings would tease at the moment Chris entered. Secondly, she told him,
Regan would "lose" things in the room: a dress; her toothbrush; books; her shoes. She complained about "somebody moving" her furniture. Finally, on the morning following the dinner at the White House, Chris saw Karl in Regan's bedroom pulling a bureau back into place from a spot that was halfway across the room. When Chris had inquired what he was doing, he repeated his former "Someone is funny," and refused to elaborate any further, but shortly thereafter Chris had found Regan in the kitchen complaining that someone had moved all her furniture during the night when she was sleeping.
This was the incident, Chris explained, that had finally crystallized her suspicions. It was clearly her daughter who was doing it all.
"You mean somnambulism? She's doing it in her sleep?"
