Karras made no answer. His breathing was regular and deep. Dyer moved quietly to the door and flicked out the light.
'Stealing is a sin,' muttered Karras in the darkness.
'Mea culpa,' Dyer said softly.
For a time he waited, then at last decided that Karras was asleep. He left the cottage.
In the middle of the night, Karras awakened in tears. He had dreamed of his mother. Standing at a window high in Manhattan, he'd seen her emerging from a subway kiosk across the street. She stood at the curb with a brown paper shopping bag, searching for him. He waved. She didn't see him. She wandered the street. Buses. Trucks. Unfriendly crowds. She was growing frightened. She returned to the subway and began to descend. Karras grew frantic; ran to the street and began to weep as he called her name; as he could not find her; as he pictured her helpless and bewildered in the maze of tunnels beneath the ground.
He waited for his sobbing to subside, and then fumbled for the Scotch. He sat on the cot and drank in darkness. Wet came the tears. They would not cease. This was like childhood, this grief.
He remembered a telephone call from his uncle: 'Dimmy, da edema's affected her brain. She won't let a doctor come anywhere near her. Jus' keeps screamin' things. Even talks ta da goddam radio. I figure she's got ta go to Bellevue, Dimmy. A regular hospital won't put up wit' dat. I jus' figure a coupla months an' she's good as new; den we take her out again. Okay? Lissen, Dimmy, I tell you: we awready done it. Dey give her a shot an' den take her in da ambulance dis mornin'. We didn' wanna bodda you, excep' dere is a hearin' and you gotta sign da papers. Now... What?... Private hospital? Who's got da money, Dimmy? You?'
He didn't remember falling asleep.
He awakened in torpor, with memory of loss draining blood from his stomach. He reeled to the bathroom; showered; shaved; dressed in a cassock. It was five-thirty-five. He unlocked the door to Holy Trinity, put on his vestments, and offered up Mass at the left side altar.
'Memento etiam...' he prayed with bleak despair. 'Remember thy servant, Mary Karras....'
In the tabernacle door he saw the face of the nurse at Bellevue Receiving; heard again the screams from the isolation room.
'You her son?'
'Yes, I'm Damien Karras'
'Well, I wouldn't go in there. She's pitchin' a fit.'
He'd looked through the port at the windowless room with the naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling; padded walls; stark; no furniture save for the cot on which she raved.
'... grant her, we pray Thee, a place of refreshment, light and peace....'
As she met his gaze, she'd grown suddenly silent; moved to the port with a baffled look.
'Why you do this, Dimmy? Why?'
The eyes had been meeker than a lamb's.
'Agnus Dei...' he murmured as he bowed and struck his breast. 'Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant her rest....'
As he closed his eyes and held the Host, he saw his mother in the hearing room, her hands clasped gentle in her lap, her expression docile and confused as the judge explained to her the Bellevue psychiatrist's report.
'Do you understand that, Mary?'
She'd nodded; wouldn't open her mouth; they had taken her dentures.
'Well, what do you say about that, Mary?'
'
She'd proudly answered him: 'My boy, he speak for me.'
An anguished moan escaped from Karras as he bowed his head above the Host. He struck his breast as if it were time and murmured, 'Domine, no sum dignus.... I am not worthy... say but the word and my soul shall be healed.'
Against all reason, against all knowledge, he prayed there was Someone to hear his prayer.
He did not think so.
After the Mass, he returned to the cottage and tried to sleep. Without success.
Later in the morning, a youngish priest that he'd never seen came by unexpectedly. He knocked and looked in the door.
'You busy? Can I see you for a while?'
In the eyes, the restless burden; in the voice, the tugging plea.
For a moment, Karras hated him.
'Come in,' he said gently. And inwardly raged at this portion of his being that rendered him helpless; that he could not control; that lay coiled within him like a length of rope, always ready to fling itself unbidden at the cry of someone else's need. It gave him -no peace. Not even in sleep. At the edge of his dreams, there was often a sound like a faint, brief cry of someone in distress. It was almost inaudible in the distance. Always the same. And for minutes after waking, he would feel the anxiety of some duty unfulfilled.
The young priest fumbled; faltered; seemed shy. Karras led him patiently. Offered cigarettes. Instant coffee. Then forced a look of interest as the moody young visitor gradually unfolded a familiar problem: the terrible loneliness of priests.
