"On the priest."
At the fringe of his awareness drifted a warning about women with neurotic attractions to priest who desired, unconsciously and under the guise of some other problem, to seduce the unattainable.
"Look, I mean like confession. You're not allowed to talk about it, right?"
"Yes, that's right."
"And outside of confession?" she asked him. "I mean, what if some..." Her hands were now agitated; fluttering. "I'm curious. I... No, No, I'd really like to know. I mean, what if a person, let's say, was a criminal, like maybe a murderer or something, you know? If he came to you for help, would you have to turn him in?"
Was she seeking instruction? Was she clearing off doubts in the way of conversion? There were people, Karras knew, who approached salvation as if it were an unreliable bridge overhanging an abyss. "If he came to me for spiritual help, I'd say, no;" he replied.
"You wouldn't."
"No. No, I wouldn't. But I'd try to persuade him to turn himself in."
"And how do you go about getting an exorcism?"
"Beg pardon?"
"If a person's possessed by some kind of demon, how do you go about getting an exorcism?"
"Well, first you'd have to put him in a time machine and get him back to the sixteenth century."
She was puzzled. "What do you mean by that? Didn't get you."
"Well, it just doesn't happen anymore, Miss MacNeil."
"Since when?"
"Since we learned about mental illness; about paranoia; split personality; all those things that they taught me at Harvard."
'You kidding?"
Her voice wavered helpless, confused, and Karras regretted his flipness. Where had it come from? he wondered. It had leaped to his tongue unbidden.
"Many educated Catholics, Miss MacNeil," he told her in a gentler tone, "don't believe in the devil anymore, and as far as possession is concerned, since the day I joined the Jesuits I've never met a priest who's ever in his life performed an exorcism. Not one."
"Are you really a priest,"she demanded with a bitter, disappointed sharpness, "or from Central Casting? I mean, what about all those stories in the Bible about Christ driving out all those demons?"
Again, he was answering crisply, unthinking: "Look, if Christ had said those people who were supposedly possessed had schizophrenia, which I imagine they did, they would probably have crucified him three years earlier."
"Oh, really?" Chris put a shaking hand to her sunglasses, deepening her voice in an effort at control. "Well, it happens, Father Karras, that someone very close to me is probably possessed.
She needs an exorcism. Will you do it?"
To Karras, it suddenly seemed unreal: Key Bridge; across the river, the Hot Shoppe; traffic; Chris MacNeil, the movie star. As he stared at her, groping for an answer, she slipped off the
glasses and Karras felt momentary, wincing shock at the redness, at the desperate pleading in those haggard eyes. The woman was serious, he realized.
"Father Karras; it's my daughter," she told him huskily, "my daughter!"
"Then all the more reason," he at last said gently, "to forget about exorcism and---"
"Why? God, I don't understand!" she burst out in a voice that was cracking and distraught.
He took her wrist in a comforting hand. "In the first place," he told her in soothing tones, "it could make things worse."
"But how?"
"The ritual of exorcism is dangerously suggestive. It could plant the notion of possession, you see, where it didn't exist before, or if it did, it could tend to fortify it. And secondly, Miss MacNeil, before the Church approves an exorcism, it conducts an investigation to see if it's warranted. That takes time. In the meantime, your---"
"Couldn't you do the exorcism yourself?" she pleaded, her lower lip starting to tremble. Her eyes were filling up with tears.
"Look, every priest has the power to exorcise, but he has to have Church approval, and frankly, it's rarely ever given, so---"
"Can't you even look at her?"
"Well, as a psychiatrist, yes, I could, but---"
"She needs a priest!" Chris suddenly cried out, her features contorted with anger and fear. "I've taken her to every goddam, fucking doctor, psychiatrist in the world and they sent me to you; now you send me to them!"
"But your---"
"Jesus Christ won't somebody help me?" The heart-stopping shriek bolted raw above the river.
Startled birds shot up screeching from its banks. "Oh, my God, someone help me!" Chris moaned as she crumpled to Karras' chest with convulsive sobs. "Please help me! Help me!
Please! Please, help!..."
