“Come on, Jared. The gap is three inches wide.”
I shook my head.
“We’ll go through it again,” she said. “Christ’s ministry is …”
“Saving souls.”
“But saving souls isn’t B’s ministry, is it?”
“No,” I said.
“B’s ministry is saving the world.”
“No,” I said again stubbornly refusing to see the light.
“You mean yes, Jared. This is the inversion Fr. Lulfre sees. Not saving souls inverted to damning souls but rather saving souls inverted to saving the world. This is why you were sent. This is what makes B a candidate.”
“No!”
“Why do you say no? Charles told you again and again that you would eventually understand why people were calling him the Antichrist. This is what he was talking about.”
“I say no because, if trying to save the world makes you the Antichrist, then Greenpeace is the Antichrist, Earth First is the Antichrist, the Nature Conservancy is the Antichrist, the World Wildlife Fund is the Antichrist.”
“Jared, these organizations aren’t up to the same thing as B. They aren’t up to anything remotely like the same thing. You know that.”
“I don’t know that.”
She produced an exasperated little laugh. “You’re a wonder, Jared, you really are. For you, a three-inch gap might as well be the Grand Canyon.”
A hazardous walk
“I am B,” Shirin said, “but I’m not an experienced teacher. Having announced that I wasn’t going to follow Charles’s practice of trying
to goad you across gaps, I immediately set about trying to goad you across a gap.” She paused and looked around doubtfully at our strange, palatially seedy theatrical cavern. “I think we should get out of here, to begin with—break the pattern.”
I agreed, and we left.
“Do you mind walking?” she asked.
“Not at all, provided we’re not heading for Little Bohemia.”
She smiled. “That was Charles’s hangout, not mine. There’s a little park a couple miles away that might be helpful.”
I wondered why a park might be “helpful” but said that would be fine. We walked through the long twilight.
Back home, I never take long walks with beautiful women on pleasant spring evenings. That would not be thought well of, and I’m not exactly crazy.
It occurs to me to say that I’ve often wished someone would write a useful book about the real life of Roman Catholic priests. I wish for this not because such a book might include things I do know but because it might include things I don’ know. It’s my distinct impression that priests have more fucked-up love affairs than any other group of people on earth, including high-school kids and movie stars. And these are not great, soaring forbidden romances in the manner of The Thorn Birds. These are really dumb, incompetent, bruising debacles, because, by the very nature of things, priests have almost no chance to learn from experience in the normal way. (One thing the book would definitely have to cover is the utterly laughable idea that priests learn all about life in the confessional.)
Let me rush to note right here that I don’t speak of fucked-up love affairs from personal experience. If I’ve avoided romantic entanglements, it’s not because I’m noble and dedicated, it’s for exactly the same reasons I’ve avoided skydiving, hang gliding, and street luging. The invitations to entangle are plentiful, ranging from the open to the barely discernible, not just for me but for all priests. It’s partly that women imagine we’re safe (will not get all demanding and tiresome), partly that they perceive us as a sexual challenge, and partly that they confuse us with the role we play. We’re trained to be, expected to be, and even paid to be attentive, sensitive, understanding, wise, and authoritative, and this is a turn-on for a lot of women—what the hell, a lot of men too.
Another thing this book would point out is that vows are vows, and the priestly kind are neither more nor less serious than the marriage kind. Married folks don’t usually go all to pieces if they happen to break their vows, and to tell the naked truth, neither do priests—except in fiction. In fiction, having an affair presents a priest with a life-shattering crisis of conscience; in real life, having an affair usually just presents him with a hell of a mess. Again, I speak from observation of colleagues, not from personal experience. So far.
I thought about these things as I walked through the pleasant spring evening with a beautiful woman at my side. Far from home, where I would never dream of doing such a thing.
It was borne in on me: I’m not made of iron.
I said, “How do you happen to know sign language?”