Sacre Coeur

APPENDIX CHETH: HAGBARD'S ABDICATION

Readers who do not understand the scene in which Hagbard abdicates in favor of Miss Portinari should take heart. 

Once they do understand it, they will understand most of the mysteries of all schools of mysticism.

The Rite of Shiva, as performed by Joe Malik during the SSS Black Mass, contains the central secret of all magick, very explicitly, yet most people can reread that section a dozen, or a hundred times, and never understand what the secret is. 

For instance, Miss Portinari was a typical Catholic girl in every way— except for an unusual tendency to take Catholicism seriously— until she began menstruating and performing spiritual meditations every day.* 

One morning, during her meditation period, she visualized the Sacred Heart of Jesus with unusual clarity; immediately another image, distinctly shocking to her, came to mind with equal vividness. She recounted this experience to her confessor the next Saturday, and he warned her, gravely, that meditation was not healthy for a young girl, unless she intended to take the oath of seclusion and enter a convent. She had no intention of doing that, but rebelliously (and guiltily) continued her meditations anyway. The disturbing second image persisted whenever she thought of the Sacred Heart; she began to suspect that this was sent by the Devil to distract her from meditation. 

* These two signs of growth often appear at the same time, being DNA-triggered openings of the fourth neural circuit. 

One weekend, when she was home from convent school on vacation, her parents decided she was the right age to be introduced to Roman society. (Actually, they, like most well-off Italian families, had already chosen which daughter would be given to the church— and it wasn't her. Hence, this early introduction to la dolce vita.) One of the outstanding ornaments of Rome at that time was the "eccentric international businessman" Mr. Hagbard Celine, and he was at the party to which Miss Portinari was taken that evening. 

It was around eleven, and she had consumed perhaps a little too much Piper Heidseck, when she happened to find herself standing near a small group who were listening raptly to a story the strange Celine was telling. Miss Portinari wondered what this creature might be saying—he was reputedly even more cynical and materialistic than other international money-grubbers, and Miss Portinari was, at that time, the kind of conservative Catholic idealist who finds capitalists even more dreadful than socialists. She idly tuned in on his words; he was talking English, but she understood that language adequately. 

" 'Son, son,'" Hagbbard recited, " 'with two beautiful women throwing themselves at you, why are you sitting alone in your room jacking off?'" 

Miss Portinari blushed furiously and drank some more champagne to conceal it. She hated the man already, knowing that she would surrender her virginity to him at the earliest opportunity; of such complexities are intellectual Catholic adolescents capable. 

"And the boy replied," Hagbard went on, " 'I guess you just answered your own question, Ma.' " 

There was a shocked silence. 

"The case is quite typical," Hagbard added blandly, obviously finished. "Professor Freud recounts even more startling family dramas." 

"I don't see ..." a celebrated French auto racer began, frowning. Then he smiled. "Oh," he said, "was the boy an American?" 

Miss Portinari left the group perhaps a bit too hurriedly (she felt a few eyes following her) and quickly refilled her champagne glass. 

A half-hour later she was standing on the veranda, trying to clear her head in the night air, when a shadow moved near her and Celine appeared amid a cloud of cigar smoke.

 "The moon has a fat jaw tonight," he said in Italian. "Looks like somebody punched her in the mouth." 

"Are you a poet in addition to your other accomplishments?" she asked coolly. "That sounds as if it might be American verse." 

He laughed— a clear peal, like a stallion whinnying. "Quite so," he said. "I just came from Rapallo, where I was talking to America's major poet of this century. How old are you?" he asked suddenly. 

"Almost sixteen," she said fumbling the words. 

"Almost fifteen," he corrected ungallantly. 

"If it's any affair of yours—" 

"It might be," he replied easily. "I need a girl your age for something I have in mind." 

"I can imagine. Something foul." 

He stepped further out of the shadows and closer. "Child," he said, "are you religious?" 

"I suppose you regard that as old-fashioned," she replied, imagining his mouth on her breast and thinking of paintings of Mary nursing the Infant. 

"At this point in history," he said simply, "it's the only thing that isn't old-fashioned. What was your birthdate? Never mind— you must be a Virgo." 

"I am," she said. (His teeth would bite her nipple, but very gently. He would know enough to do that.) "But that is superstition, not religion." 

"I wish I could draw a precise line between religion, superstition, and science." He smiled. "I find that they keep running together. You are Catholic, of course?" 

His persistence was maddening. "I am too proud to believe an absurdity, and therefore I am not a Protestant," she replied— immediately fearing that he would recognize the plagiarism. 

"What symbol means the most to you?" he asked, with the blandness of a prosecuting attorney setting a trap. 

"The cross," she said quickly. She didn't want him to know the truth. 

"No." He again corrected her ungallantly. "The Sacred Heart." 

Then she knew he was of Satan's party. "I must go," she said. 

"Meditate further on the Sacred Heart," he said, his eyes blazing like a hypnotist's (a cornball gimmick, he was thinking privately, but it might work). 

"Meditate on it deeply, child. You will find in it the essential of Catholicism — and the essential of all other religion." 

"I think you are mad," she responded, leaving the veranda with undignified haste. 

But two weeks later, during her morning meditation, she suddenly understood the Sacred Heart. At lunchtime she disappeared—leaving behind a note to the Mother Superior of the convent school and another note for her parents— and went in search of Hagbard. She had even more potential than he realized, and (as elsewhere recorded) within two years he abdicated in her favor. They never became lovers.* 

*They were quite good friends, though, and he did fuck her occasionally.