Chapter 1
Clarissa sat alone in the large, beautiful home that Ahmed had bought for her on Central Mountain Road in downtown Taipei. It was a lovely spring day and Meimei, the servant that Ahmed had also hired to satisfy all of Clarissa’s daily needs, dutifully brought Clarissa a pot of Oolong tea with some lovely afternoon dim sum, made of rice flour and bean paste. Of course, “Ahmed” wasn’t her husband’s real name. His real name was Chinese and it was something like “Ah-men”, which meant “Peace of the People”. Clarissa had given him the name “Ahmed” because, in her delusive obsession with him, she had imagined he was a romantic Arabian Prince, so startling was his dark beauty. Indeed, Ahmed was half-Japanese on his father’s side, his father being the notorious Japanese war criminal Hiro Matsui who had spent the war years in charge of Japanese army supply and services in Taiwan where he had taken Ahmed’s mother, “Clouds and Moon”, as a concubine. Hiro Matsui was now a leader of the Zaibatsu in Japan. Thus, Ahmed’s real name was really Itsu Matsui. Clarissa sipped the tea slowly as she once again contemplated her wedding with Ahmed and its aftermath. It had indeed been a beautiful wedding at the Tung Feng (East Wind) Restaurant on Lucky Forest Road in downtown Taipei. There had been more than thirty courses of delectable Chinese dishes and bottle upon bottle of Chinese Yellow Wines and savory liqueurs. All of Ahmed’s copious family had attended, there was his mother “Clouds and Moon” and his step-father, Hwa-Ming, and his lovely younger half-sister, “Precious Flower”. Cousins, aunts and uncles and all those who had been able to make the long journey north to Taipei from Kaohsiung, came for the wedding or in the case of Hwa-Ming’s family, those who had been able, due to the now looser restrictions on travel between Taiwan and Mainland China, to cross the Taiwan straits. Ahmed’s colleagues were there in force as well, Wei-Chun and all the other residents and doctors of the Taipei City Hospital, and many nurses too that had served with him in operating rooms.
On her part, Clarissa had no one except Arthur Pennington. Father Jack had found an excuse not to come, saying that he had a retreat that weekend that he could not get out of. Maybe it was true, she mused, but she really suspected that he hadn’t come because the wedding was not Catholic and not even Christian. In fact it hadn’t been of any religion, in the Taiwanese custom, although Ahmed had made sure a Buddhist priest was there to witness the wedding and give it his blessing. The bride and bridegroom merely exchanged glasses of yellow wine and white sorghum spirits in an elaborate ceremony with no one to preside over the exchange, the marriage being confirmed by the witnessing of Ahmed’s mother and step-father. Papers had of course been filed in city hall, declaring that Ahmed and Clarissa were now legally married according to Taiwan law, at least that was what Wei-Chun had told her as he brought the papers for her to sign and then accompanied her and her new husband to the City Hall Marriage Emporium to deliver the signed letters. And that had been it. Ahmed had bought her this house on Central Mountain Road, made of alabaster and topped with red tiles, and had acquired for her a reliable servant, but other than that she really had never seen Ahmed again. Wei-Chun had been their intermediary and had come to explain to Clarissa that Ahmed was just too busy at the hospital to stay at their home, and had, for convenience sake, bought a small apartment near the hospital where he stayed with Wei-Chun, when in fact he could, for often he would sleep in the hospital dormitory to save time, as had been his custom before marriage.
Indeed, the marriage had never been consummated.
Clarissa had tried to understand the kinds of pressure that Ahmed was under, with his difficult surgery and outpatient obligations. Of course, Clarissa was no longer his patient as Ahmed had forbidden her to come to the hospital to see him. Her osteoporosis was untreated now, at least at the City Hospital, though at times, when she was in great pain she would go one of the suburban hospitals and ask for therapy or medicines for her condition. She regrettably noted that she had seen more of Ahmed when she wasn’t married to him and was his patient than now that she was married to him. In actuality she almost never saw him. He had come to the house a few weeks ago accompanied by his ever-present companion Wei-Chun to present her with some gifts and her monthly, very generous, she had to admit, allowance. He had spoken to her only briefly and had not so much as even given her a peck on the cheek.
It was a marriage without love, sex or even companionship, she lamented, but she had gotten what she had never dared to hope for—the privilege of being the wife of the man she had adored beyond all else, beyond all reason. In lieu of his long absences from her, she had taken to writing love poetry to him, and although she would never think of sending it to him for fear of offending him or even angering him, she showed it regularly to Arthur, who came to see her every now and again, and to Jack, who had taken up his old habit of being her Confessor and listening to her foolish ramblings on as to how happy she was now that she was married to the man she loved, albeit lonely enough.
Both Arthur and Jack of course felt deep remorse and even pity for Clarissa over what they both had always considered would be a disastrous marriage and had now turned out to be just that. While Jack had always lamented what he had viewed as Clarissa’s pointless obsession with a man of another race and another religion, Arthur felt pangs of guilt for having abandoned Clarissa when she had called out to him in her need and he was too busy with bar girls in Tokyo and Taipei, satisfying his despicable lust. To be sure these girls were younger, and yes, prettier than Clarissa, who was definitely beginning to show her age, but they definitely lacked Clarissa’s depth, social class, and intelligence, and above all, he felt deep guilt for having let Roger, his dearest friend and Clarissa’s first husband, who had been classified as MIA in Vietnam, down. Roger would have depended on him to look after Clarissa no matter what happened and had asked him specifically to do just that just before his last fateful mission to Vietnam. Arthur had promised him. Oh, how he loathed himself for his faithlessness!
Arthur came several times a week to call on Clarissa and he had learned that she saw her husband far less and for a far shorter time than she saw him. He saw the marriage as a case of spousal neglect but he wouldn’t have been so crass as to spell it out to Clarissa, who in her usual dreamy state of mind, still appeared to hopelessly in love with the loathsome creature. He had seen him at the wedding, cuddling up to that resident colleague of his, obvious to Arthur, the man was as gay as a goose. He swore he saw him holding that Wei Chan or Wei-Chang or Wei-Chun’s hand and fiddling with his knee under the marriage table. The doctor’s entire family were there, to be sure, they couldn’t believe he was really getting married, and to a woman yet. But they knew, yes, they knew, but they weren’t talking. Never. Arthur sighed. It would be quite a campaign to save Clarissa now, but he was determined to do so. It had to be done and he was the one to do it. Not that he planned to break up her happy marriage or anything like that. Far from it. But he would be there for her, and he would find a way to extricate herself from the terrible situation she would eventually come to realize on her own that she was in. And he would be there for her when she came to that realization. Not that he himself planned to marry her of course. It was too late for that. Too much water under the bridge for that. Anyhow he wasn’t physically attracted to her anymore and would be unable to fulfill the necessary duties to satisfy her, Roger notwithstanding.
He had a better idea. Roger had a lot more friends and some of them were returning to Taiwan now that there was a friendlier regime in Washington towards the island. They could take her out, entertain her, relieve her loneliness, and who knows what might come of it.
This afternoon was Arthur’s time with Clarissa. He drove to her house in his BMW, parked the car and rang the bell. The servant, Meimei, whom Arthur surreptitiously thought to himself was very attractive, answered the door. She hardly spoke any English but Arthur was always able to make himself understood in Taiwan with the medium amount of Mandarin at this command, as well as using hand signals, body language and commonly understood English words and phrases.
Meimei showed Arthur into the spacious parlor where Clarissa was sitting sipping on a cup of Chinese tea. She looked so lonely, he felt sorry for her immediately and again all his guilty thoughts of neglect and abandonment of her, his own obsessive lusts, came back to haunt him.
“My dear”, he said, as effusively as he could, “How are you?”
“Oh, I am fine, Arthur”, she replied. “How good of you to come, it’s always so nice to see you.”
“You look so lovely today, as always, my dear. And tell me, what have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last?”
Clarissa went on to tell Arthur about her poetry, and her deep love for Ahmed. Should she show the poetry to Ahmed or not? They both agreed she should not. On being asked, she had to admit that she had not seen Ahmed for several weeks now, all on account of his being so busy. Arthur nodded in indulgent agreement.
“And how about you, dear Arthur? What have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last?” In fact, Arthur was very busy with new business. He had given up trying to crack the computer market in Japan ever since that awful incident where Nathan Lovencraft had tried to introduce him to a Brother Hubert who lived in the Hwa-Lien Mountains with Aboriginal peoples he had converted to Christianity, and whom Lovencraft had claimed would act for an intermediary for him in Japan. Then he had discovered that Brother Hubert wasn’t any “Brother” after all, but had instead butchered all the Aboriginal peoples and other priests he was staying with in the mountains and then fled for parts unknown. It had been a dismal experience and he had been trying to locate Lovencraft ever since just to let him know that he had cruelly deceived him and gotten him into a God awful mess, never mind not helping him to crack the computer market in Japan. Of course, Arthur knew now that, in his attempt to “crack” the Japanese market, he was up against the MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry), whose moto was “state in, foreigners out” and that Lovencraft would have had precious little influence on their state of mind or hard-line policies anyhow. Even his contact in Japan, Nagasoni Sendai, who had promised him so much, was obviously powerless in the face of a bureaucracy that lived for closing Japanese markets to all foreign trade.
Insufferable mess in Hua-Lien with “Brother” Hubert, he had had to contact the police and answer a lot of questions he did not know the answers to. He thought he would have a nervous breakdown, witnessing the horrible butchery of that fiendish “Brother”. He had always been meaning to tell Clarissa of his awful experience but the time just never seemed right, what with her suddenly up and marrying this awful Taiwanese doctor, just when he had thoughts of getting together with her again. Those thoughts had passed of course with her wedding which he had gone to, and good thing too, he was the only friend of hers that had come to support her, that cowardly priest Jack Mulroney having taken it on the lam. Anyhow, as there was so little for them to talk about now that she had gone and done the God awful for herself, he thought he might as well tell her of his own terrible experience in the Hua-Lien Mountains.
“And that was the way it happened, my dear Clarissa. I was alone with a gaggle of horribly murdered priests and aborigines and the murderer had all the time been posing as a Holy Man. I had that rascal Lovencraft to thank for all of that…”
“What did you say his name was, Arthur, and tell me how did you meet this man and what did he say to you? What did he look like?”
When Arthur had finished explaining his seemingly chance meeting with Lovencraft on the streets of Tokyo and described the seemingly lucrative deal he was going to set him up with by way of the “Brother”, Clarissa was agape.
“Is there something wrong, Clarissa? Don’t tell me you know this awful fellow? If you do, by God, tell me how I can get in touch with him, because I have a notion to give him a little of that what for…”
Clarissa sighed, “I am so sorry, Arthur, I really am.”
“What are you sorry for? Of course I know you’re sorry I had such a terrible experience, but is there something else you mean by that?”
“Yes, there is, Arthur, you see…I know Nathan Lovencraft, I know him quite well.”
“How do you know him? Tell me, and by God, tell me how I can get a hold of that scoundrel!”
Clarissa didn’t say anything for a few minutes and then she began to weep quietly.
“Oh, Good Heavens, Clarissa, what is the trouble? Tell me, please. I don’t mean to make you cry. What did I say?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, Arthur, it’s just that Nathan and I…”
“What is it, Clarissa? For the love of God, please tell me.”
“Well, you see, Arthur, it was Nathan, he was the reason, that is what happened, that was really why Ahmed finally agreed to marry me..”
Clarissa then began her long story of her seduction by the glamorous Lovencraft in the hospital garden, of Ahmed’s having them followed and then bugging their hotel room in the “Great Hotel”, followed by Ahmed’s desperate entreaties to make her his wife.
“Nathan left me in the ‘Great Hotel’. He was thoroughly humiliated, the poor man.”
“Poor man, indeed. Just like I said, the scoundrel!!”
“I haven’t seen him since,” Clarissa continued. “But I have heard from him.”
“How did you hear from him? Did he write you or call you? Did he leave you his address?”
“He wrote me a lovely letter, after Ahmed and I were married. I don’t know how he heard about it. He said he would be in touch. No, he didn’t leave any return address. But I know he is from Texas. He has several children back there. His wife died of cancer several years ago, you know. Left him with a huge responsibility.”
“Honestly, Clarissa, I don’t know how you can believe that pap. The man’s a scoundrel, I tell you, and now I know he doesn’t stop at raping innocent women.”
“Oh, Arthur, don’t be silly. He didn’t rape me. I was willing, you know.”
“A scoundrel, that’s what I say. Anyhow if you hear from him again, you can tell him that there’s a fellow that eagerly wants to talk to him, eagerly I tell you.”
As for Jack, he was in depths of despair, as he recited his votives religiously in the Church chapel. He was so miserable that he could hardly bring himself to go to see his dear dear friend, Clarissa. But he knew he would go and see her for he could hardly bare to be without her. For a long time he had suspected that his own feelings were inappropriate, if not out of hand, and he prayed fervently every day for Christ and God to lift her terrible burdens and lift the pale of sin off his priestly breast. He had been to his own Confessor many times at the Church in Taiwan and had even taken leave after Clarissa’s marriage to return to the States, ostensibly to see his own family, but in reality to have a chance to consult with his youthful Confessor, Tom Norton, now a Bishop in a large American city. Tom had advised him to accept his own sin and repent daily for it, as a sign of his love of Christ. His penance could include further retreats and weekly Confessions with an understanding colleague in his own Church in Taiwan. Jack had cried when his Confessor gave him absolution and he vowed to be a better Christian for the sins he himself was guilty of and would endeavor to successfully rectify. Reluctantly, but eagerly, he had returned to Taiwan where he could spend time with Clarissa, two guilty sinners in repentance together. When listening to Clarissa’s endless praises of Ahmed, Jack no longer attempted to dissuade her from her feelings, but, following the directives of Tom in the States, he tried to cajole her into sanctioning her marriage by having a Catholic wedding.
Of course both Jack and Clarissa knew this was impossible. Ahmed would not even talk to Clarissa, let alone listen to her urgings to convert to Catholicism and have a Catholic wedding. There was virtually no communication between Clarissa and Ahmed. When Clarissa had something urgent to communicate to him, usually a household matter, she contacted Mr. Hui by phone and he would go and see Ahmed and convey Clarissa’s wishes or concerns to him directly. Ahmed would answer her via Mr. Hui, or if the matter were really serious, he would send Wei-Chun. When Clarissa implored Ahmed to come and see her himself, he always left a message with Mr. Hui or Wei-Chun that he was too busy. He promised he would come and see her when he had time and indeed he would come, Wei-Chun always by his side and doing all the talking to Clarissa for him.
Jack had quickly inferred the real situation that existed between Ahmed and Clarissa and while he could not allow himself to accept that he was there to fill in the void that Ahmed had created in Clarissa’s life, he did feel he could offer her the comfort of a fellow believer—and a fellow celibate. Indeed, theirs was the perfect Platonic relationship, cemented in their love for Christ and concretized by their mutual chastity. Needless to say, Clarissa did not envision her relationship with Jack in exactly these terms, believing as she did that somehow, someday, perhaps when Ahmed finished his residency and had more time, the status of a full doctor, maybe even a director at the hospital, their marriage would be consummated and Catholic consecration might be a possibility following that consummation.
As for Ludwig and “Brother” Hubert, they were running sores in Jack’s injured soul. Ludwig had originally been returned to Germany at Jack’s behest, in order to restudy his vows at the seminary there, but through some sort of Machiavellian plot had managed to convince someone in the Catholic hierarchy to allow him to return to Taiwan. Although this time, fortunately, he was sent to a different rectory, Jack knew he was here and had heard disturbing stories of overt political involvement on Ludwig’s part in the Taiwan Independence Movement, a political role forbidden to members of the Church in Taiwan. Word had it that he was in fact in cahoots with Ahmed’s boyfriend, Dr. Wei-Chun Huang, who was one of the known movers and shakers in the movement among the professionals and intelligentsia in Taiwan. Thus Ludwig had proved himself another canker in the sore of the Church’s troubles in Taiwan. Jack saw Ludwig infrequently himself, at large masses or inter-Church get togethers but the words were few between them. Ever since Ludwig had so wantonly sodomized Jack, indeed raped him, when Ludwig was still his student, and since after that Jack had had him recalled to Germany, there was little love lost between the two men. But Jack, as hard as he tried to forgive Ludwig for his carnal sins, could not get it out of his head that Ludwig was a threat, not just to the Church in Taiwan, but to Taiwan itself.
As for “Brother” Hubert, alias Igor Dementsyavich, that was an even more ominous story. How the Chechnyaian, educated in Communist Russia and trained as a member of the “Nai Kung”, School of Black Arts, in Mongolia, had been able to infiltrate the Church to the point where he was ordained as a “Brother” in Montreal in 1985, and transferred to Taiwan to work among the Aboriginal people, in order to proselytize among them, wean them from their Aboriginal religions and steer them away from the pervasive influence of Protestantism on the island, was a mystery even to Jack’s American Bishop Confessor, Tom Norton, who had confided “Brother” Hubert’s true identity to him while he was in the States. “Brother” Hubert’s final, nefarious act of murder in the Hua-Lien Mountains had served to further alienate the Aboriginal tribes from the Church and had caused a scandal which only the highest emissaries of the Vatican itself were able to cover up and hide from the general public and the press. There were so many unanswered questions. What had motivated Igor Dementsyavich to take out Catholic orders and have himself positioned in Taiwan among the Aboriginal tribes? What had induced him to commit his final heinous crime on the island, and how had he managed to escape when every policeman on Taiwan was looking for him? Tom had told Jack that Church authorities suspected Igor was back in Chechnya and that he had escaped via Malaysia to Indonesia where terrorist organizations there had ensured his safe return to his home country.
Then, of course there was the violation that “Brother” Hubert had committed against Jack personally when he had gone to see him for guidance on Clarissa in the Hua-Lien Mountains. He had lied to him about the Orientals having no souls; Tom had made that eminently clear to Jack, condemning such statements as a heresy against the Church’s teachings and a blemish on Jack’s vocation in the Orient. Then he had drugged him while Aboriginal women, themselves steeped in the sin that Igor had cursed them with, committed abominable acts upon him. He shuddered. It was a sin so heavy that only the sweet Christ himself could absolve him of it, and it was for that that he prayed every day, morning, noon, and night, as he prayed for the soul of Clarissa and vowed to go and see her that very afternoon.
