The Programme

CHAPTER NINE-3

Now Caleb. Anthony sees the bowl of oil; Caleb has used oil on him before; the fear returns, but he is instructed to kneel facing Caleb. This is not about s*x. He sees it in Caleb’s eyes. Caleb has been his torturer yet his tutor, even in some ways his mentor. There is affection in Caleb’s eyes, the older man leans forward to talk to him privately, their mouths inches away from each other.

“Anthony, it’s time to shut the door on the past. What you are being offered - this love - is not to be turned away; you have to allow it into your soul, to take over your soul; it has gone on too long for you; you are my friend, you are my son, I need you to come out, come away, I want you beside me where I don’t have to watch my back for your anger, nor push you sullenly forward every day Do you understand me?”

Anthony whispers hoarsely:

“I think so, Caleb.”

“Everyone here loves you, Anthony. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. Go and stand in the middle of the room: you have to learn to accept love, let it in, let it drown out all the anger you’ve ever felt, let the good that you and I both know is within you float to the surface.”

Anthony cannot speak; he is moved by Caleb’s love, and the prospect of love to come. He lets Christopher draw him to his feet, lead him to stand beneath the gong. Paimon is also standing there, at the ready. As Christopher embraces him, Paimon begins to strike the gong, slowly, firmly, ringing loud in Anthony’s ears, silencing his thoughts, he returns the embrace, the assurance of love, the familiar exchange:

“I am one.”

“We are many”

“Together we shall be whole.”

Singly, they come to embrace him, even Reuben, Lemuel and Ehud who have tormented him. Christopher has returned to his place, his humming. Anthony sees more than hears it over the roar of the gong above his head. He sees others, as they sit down, join in with Christopher. They hold him tightly in turn. Naked Diana goes last. He blushes as he thinks of the times he had studied her from a distance, fantasised about her, he realises he has an erection. She does not pull away, but touches him lightly, kisses him on the lips, whispers in his ear:

“Not me.”

Paimon nods towards the cell door:

“Go back inside.”

Anthony does as he is told. He has no mind left with which to complain or to resist. He crouches against the far wall. Leah enters, pulls him away from the wall, crouches down beside him, hugs him, strokes his face, his back, his erection returns, she lowers him to the floor, straddles him and takes him into her as Diana did with Christopher, rocking over him as the members gather in the doorway to watch. He is aware that more of them have disrobed, they are holding each other, touching, fondling, he is floating on a salt-lake of sexuality, he is barely aware of it when he comes, not at all aware when she steps off him, strides to the door, someone thrusts the door shut and twists the key in the lock.

All he is left with is the stock-whip, dangling from the air-brick.

Now he sees what it is for.

Outside, the gong starts over: not slowly, but not frenzied; hard and firm; boom, boom, boom, boom, boom - it goes on and on and on - it goes on and on until it fills his head, it goes on and on until it fills his head and he can bear the sound of it no more.

“I asked Father Nahum to give it to The Teacher,” Amanda said.

Carey let out her breath. As they had entered the court on the first day, Amanda had grabbed her arm. When she had turned to see what was wrong, Amanda was white as a sheet. She had hissed:

“I can’t go in; I can’t do this,” staring beyond Carey at someone inside the courtroom.

“What is it?” Carey had quickly hustled her back out of the door. “Was it your sister?” There had been sharp words as soon as they set eyes on one another. At the time, Amanda had seemed unaffected.

“He’s here,” Amanda said, shaking.

“Who?”

“At the front; the man in the check jacket.”

Carey had been vaguely aware of him: a big man, loud red check jacket, nearly bald.

“Who is he?” she had asked.

“His name is Berlinger; they brought him to the hospital; they let him talk to me. He kept coming to see me. Kept talking about The Programme as if he knew all about it.”

This was ’the man’ she had told Matthew about while she was still in the cell; it was the man Phillipe Lamarque had talked about, and to whom he had talked in exchange for money.

“Was he a member?”

“It’s his job; it’s what he does; gets people out of groups, back to their families.”

Amanda was visibly weakened by the sight of him.

“Don’t be scared of him. He’s not in charge now. Matthew is.”

A day later, in cross-examination:

“This man - Nahum you call him - he was in charge of the - what did you call it? - the mission to America,” Kennedy sneered. “That’s right, isn’t it?” “No one was in charge of it; he and Jemima were the most senior, that’s all. The Programme is The Teacher.”

“And is that right - was he your teacher? Is he?”

“Yes,” Amanda answered firmly.

State Troopers responded to the call. They were still waiting for the ambulance from Binghamton.

Christopher and Paimon met them at the gate.

“Cab you tell us what we’ve got here, sir?” the senior trooper asked as he emerged from the car. He was dark, about five ten, thin, with a hooked nose and a wart on the side of his neck, in the grey uniform of the New York State Police.

His partner hung up the radio inside the car and climbed out. He was overweight, wearing sunglasses.

“Yes. I’m sorry. One of our members has hanged himself.”

The two cops exchanged a glance.

“Can you explain that, sir?”

“Hanged himself?” Paimon was unable to suppress the sarcasm.

“You said ’one of our members’, sir,” the senior cop said, blinking semaphorically to tell Paimon the insult hadn’t escaped him. “Members of what would that be, sir?” he asked Christopher.

“We’re a religious community, officer.” Christopher met the gaze head on. “The Programme. We’ll be quite happy to provide you with some of our literature. We have Chapters in New York, Boston and Europe: this is, well, a sort of retreat for members.”

They could relate to retreat: that was what priests did.

“You’re Catholics?” The partner asked incredulously.

Cassandra chose that moment to emerge from the house.

“This is Cassandra; she’s the most senior member present; she is our Teacher’s wife,” Christopher introduced.

“Sergeant Romero, how’d’you do, ma’am,” the senior trooper offered a hand. His partner was openly ogling her. Cassandra took the hand smiling, holding on for a moment longer than necessary.

“This is very sad, Sergeant,” Cassandra drew him aside. “The young man, Anthony, was very special to me. You may have heard of his father: Arthur Rockworth?”

“Nope.”

“He’s, er, a businessman; that is to say, a rather big businessman, here, in England, everywhere.”

“I’m getting the picture, ma’am. Ma’am, I need to see the body now.”

The Programme had lifted Anthony down and left the stock-whip lying on the floor beside him. He was still naked. As he had strangled to death, his bladder had emptied onto the ground. The stench rose from the basement, along with the first strains of decomposition. They covered their noses as Paimon led the way, the two policemen followed, Christopher brought up the rear: Cassandra told them she would meet them on the veranda with tea.

“She was never a happy girl, I agree,” Amanda’s sister said, “but she was always careful - especially about money.”

“There was plenty of money about, though?” Trask challenged.

“We were well off; not rich.”

“Not rich? How wealthy a man was your father at his death?”

“Your Honour,” Kennedy complained, “how can this be relevant?”

“Goes to just how big a gift it was, Your Honour; if Ms Kroger didn’t think it was that much money, it doesn’t call for any loss of free will - more like generosity.”

“It’s a jurisdiction hearing, Mr Trask,” the judge reminded him.

“And a motion on the farm,” Trask replied.

“All the same, Mr Trask, I think we’re straying a long way from the point. We don’t have a jury.” The judge looked steadily at Trask.

Carey leaned towards Trask, whispered to let it go. What Amanda had given Matthew was most of her worldly assets.

“You say she was happy, Mrs Gruenfeld?”

“I said she wasn’t happy,” Amanda’s sister corrected.

“But she was happy in The Programme, wasn’t she? You had letters from her, saw her during visits: she was happier than she’d ever been.”

“She appeared happy at times,” grudgingly conceded. “She ran away in the end.”

“Did she run away, Mrs Gruenfeld?”

“She left them; she came home.”

“Why do you call it running away?”

The sister flushed.

“It’s just words.”

“But you had her committed to a home, didn’t you?”

“She couldn’t settle down afterwards.”

“She didn’t want you to take this action, did she?”

“She didn’t know what she wanted; she wasn’t making any sense.”

“You mean, it wasn’t your idea of sense?”

“Argumentative, Your Honour.”

“She wanted to go back, didn’t she?” Trask did not await a ruling.

“That’s what she said.”

“That’s what she said?”

“She didn’t know what she was doing. I felt, perhaps she only wanted to go back as a way of getting her money away from those people.”

Trask raised his eyebrows in mock-amazement.

“She was going back in order to get her money out?”

“I don’t know.” The sister was flustered. “She wanted to go back; she wanted her money out. That was the way I saw it.”

“But she didn’t want the money out, Mrs Gruenfeld,” Trask insisted. “That’s what she’s told us yesterday, in this very courtroom.”

“She still doesn’t know what she’s doing. Look at her, look at the state of her; look into her eyes. That isn’t Amanda talking, it’s that man.” It could have sounded like hysteria; it sounded, instead, like the truth - concern, barely able to recognise her sister, certain in her heart that The Programme was up to no good. Unable to fix it on anything rational apart from the money, however, she ended up looking greedy.

“Tell me who that gentleman is, Mrs Gruenfeld?” Trask swung suddenly and pointed at Berlinger. “Will you stand up, sir? The gentleman in the check jacket.”

Defiantly, Amanda’s sister said: “He’s our friend. Mr Berlinger. He’s been trying to help us get Amanda back.”

“And tell me, Mrs Gruenfeld, just how much money have you paid Mr Berlinger so far to try and get your sister back?” Matthew too had turned: his eyes met Berlinger’s; the big man stared back.

While the coroner’s officers and the police forensic team worked downstairs, Cassandra confirmed the account which had already been given Romero by Christopher and Paimon.

“Our members come here for peace; they need peace in order to work something out in themselves, away from whatever’s troubling them.”

“Okay, so he came here in retreat. Retreat from what?”

“Anthony was,” Cassandra hesitated, as if she was still reluctant to expose his secrets, “he was a troubled boy. His father will tell you that Anthony had been a disturbed child more or less since he was first able to talk.”

Romero did not say anything, scribbling busily in his notebook.

“Look, no one wants to speak ill of the dead; and as far as we’re concerned, there’s no such thing as someone who’s evil or lost; that’s what we’re about here; helping people find themselves, live with themselves. But Anthony was troubled by any standards.”

“You’re saying the kid was some kind of a monster, right?”

“Right,” Cassandra met his eyes. “Your choice of word though, don’t put them down as mine.”

“Okay and?”

“And, well, my husband met Mr Rockworth and Mr Rockworth - Arthur - asked us to help; basically, he asked us to take Anthony in, see if we could do something with him. He was, I suppose, at the end of his tether.”

She crossed her legs, watched his eyes follow, leaned down to adjust her shoe. She had always enjoyed her sexuality, but never so much as since the Special Mass; she was walking around in a state of constant heat; she could have slept with this police-clown; she would use it to keep him under her control.

“Okay and?” Romero grudgingly returned to business.

“’Okay and’,” she repeated: “’Okay and’ we did so, we took him in, we worked with him, we meditated with him, we prayed with him, we tried to keep him occupied and we tried to keep him under control. ’Okay and’ it didn’t work. There was a problem in London, with a small boy, the son of one of our members.”

It all fit together: there was no jigsaw that could not be rearranged.

She recounted how they had brought him over to the States; how he seemed to be settling down; how they believed they were finally winning him over to the better side of himself; how he had asked permission to spend some time in isolation, complete retreat.