Dimiter by William Peter Blatty Read Free Book Online Page B

unanswered prayers of his life.
“Meme, meme,”
he murmured, calling softly for his mother again and again until in time his quiet sobs and pleas had all dwindled, enfolded in the steady sure river of his breath.
    The Prisoner lifted his head and stared at him.
    And then slowly reached out his hand.
    Moments later, heavy steps in the hall were heard approaching. The priest bolted upright and gripping the Prisoner’s shoulders, he shook him, shouting frenziedly, “They’re coming! They’re coming to get us! For the love of Christ, give me absolution! I am sorry for all of my sins! Absolve me!” Then the door to the cell was thrown open and the lightbulb flared to a shocking brilliance as the priest, still screaming “Absolve me! Absolve me!” was dragged from the cell by cursing guards.
     
    N o, he isn’t a priest.”
    “Are you sure of that?”
    “Yes. Absolutely.”
    They were seated at a thirty-foot T-shaped table in a massive room with lofty ceilings, Vlora at the center and head of the T, the Muslim and the one-eyed priest at the bottom. Clean-shaven and wearing an eyepatch now, the one-eyed priest was neatly dressed in brown tweed pants and a bright green lamb’s wool turtleneck sweater. Dragging on a loosely packed cheap cigarette, he looked aside and then blew out a ragged cone of smoke.
    “Any priest,” he finished saying, “would have heard my confession.”
    He angled a disapproving glance to the Muslim.
    “You might have pulled your punches just a bit,” he said coolly.
    He picked a bitter shred of tobacco from his lip.
    The Muslim gave a diffident shrug and looked away.
    “It’s my method,” said the Muslim.
    “Some method.”
    It had all been staged. The cell had been populated by actors.
    “Don’t complain, you have your freedom for it,” Vlora told the priest. “Now what else? Any other impressions? Either one of you?”
    “My pain,” the priest uttered remotely.
    His faraway stare was fixed on a scratch mark vivid on the dark stained oak of the table. It resembled a tiny omega sign.
    Vlora frowned. “Your pain?”
    The priest looked up.
    “Well, after all of these powerful blows I’d received I had this terrible pain in my head. It was constant. I couldn’t shake it. The fellow put his hand on my forehead and it vanished.” For a moment Vlora’s stare was blank; and then a corner of his lip sickled up in derision. “Do you still believe in magic, priest?” he spat. “You’re exhausted. Go home to your wife.”
    Vlora’s words hid his bafflement, fear, and frustration. On the night before he’d thought of the ruse in the cell, he had dreamed once again of the banquet in Tirana, of Chi Minh and of a death, but now added to the scene was a spectral servant, a worker in the kitchen whose face was a blank. And then Vlora was back in the interrogation chamber, where the Prisoner was chained to a wall with his arms in the T of crucifixion, and “Angel,” the torturer, was in front of him, tilting a cup of cold water to his lips. “Elena,” the Interrogator called out to her, using her actual given name. She turned to him, smiled, and walked over to join him, and they quietly conversed, discussing the Prisoner in pleasant, easy tones. “Who is he?” the Interrogator askedher warmly, and she amiably answered, “Your rescuer.” The next instant Vlora found himself standing in the street staring down at the executed priest, his drenched and deluded oppressor in the rain, and when the dead man’s eyes opened wide to stare balefully back up at Vlora, he awakened with an inchoate new suspicion: Was the Prisoner another of those tiresome martyrs whose courage was inhuman enough to be hateful? Was the man who carried Selca Decani’s papers a priest who’d been trudging through the mountains of the north hawking Masses and forgiveness and a bread that was God while in the guise of a peddler of a crumbly white cheese? But then apart from the failure of the ruse in the cell, the