God's Spy: A Novel by Juan Gomez-Jurado

Author:Juan Gomez-Jurado
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 0452289122
Publisher: Plume
Published: 2006-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE SAINT MATTHEW INSTITUTE

SACHEM PIKE, MARYLAND

May 1998

Transcript of Interview Number 14 between Patient Number 3643 and Doctor Fowler

DR FOWLER: Good afternoon, Father Karosky. May I enter?

NO. 3643: Come in, Father Fowler.

DR FOWLER: Did you enjoy the book I lent you?

NO. 3643: Yes, of course. The Confessions of Saint Augustine. I’ve already finished it. A very interesting book. It’s unbelievable just how far innate optimism can take you.

DR FOWLER: I don’t understand.

NO. 3643: But you’re the only person in this whole place who is capable of understanding me. The only person who doesn’t call me by my first name in an attempt to achieve a vulgar, unnecessary familiarity that denigrates the dignity of both parties.

DR FOWLER: You are speaking of Father Conroy.

NO. 3643: Yes, that man. The one who maintains, time after time, that I am a normal patient in need of a cure. I am a priest just as he is, yet he seems to forget this constantly, when he insists I call him doctor.

DR FOWLER: I believe that point was already clarified for you last week, Father Karosky. It’s better that your relationship with Conroy remains that of doctor and patient, and nothing else. You need help in overcoming a number of psychological problems that stem from the suffering you endured in the past.

NO. 3643: I suffered? I suffered at whose hands? Perhaps you too want to put my love for my saintly mother to the test? I beg you not to follow the same route as Father Conroy. He even announced that he would make me listen to some recordings that would leave me in no doubt.

DR FOWLER: Some recordings.

NO. 3643: That’s what he said.

DR FOWLER: I don’t think you should hear those tapes, Father Karosky. It wouldn’t be good for you. I’ll speak to Father Conroy about it.

NO. 3643: As you see fit. But I’m not afraid.

DR FOWLER: Listen, father: I want us to get as much out of this session as possible, and there’s something you said a little earlier that interests me very much. About Saint Augustine’s optimism in The Confessions. What were you referring to?

NO. 3643: ‘And even if I appear laughable in your sight, you will come back to me full of mercy.’

DR FOWLER: I don’t understand what strikes you as optimistic in that passage. Don’t you believe in the goodness and infinite mercy of God?

NO. 3643: The merciful God is an invention of the twentieth century, Father Fowler.

DR FOWLER: Saint Augustine lived in the fourth century.

NO. 3643: Saint Augustine was horrified by his own sinful past, and set out to write a string of optimistic lies.

DR FOWLER: But father, it’s the basis of our faith! - that God pardons us.

NO. 3643: Not always. Some people go to confession like they go to wash their cars . . . Pah! They make me sick.

DR FOWLER: That’s what you feel when you administer confession? - nauseated?

NO. 3643: I feel repugnance. Many times I vomited inside the confessional, from the bile the person on the other side of the screen stirred up in me.

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