The Assassini by Thomas Gifford

somehow I found myself among the Jesuits again, like an out-of-body experience.…
    The black-uniformed army among whom I’d once made my life swarmed out of the night toward me, as if they were fuzzy-wuzzies hell-bent on overrunning my positions, reclaiming me for themselves. Which was not necessarily the way it had been, at least not most days. The fact was I had enjoyed much of life as a novice. From the first day I’d found a place among the smart-ass contingent which always seemed to form the core of the Society of Jesus. Professional smart-asses, valued more for their rebellious intelligence than for their piety. Those first weeks of basic training quickly took on the quality of a challenge—a challenge to our sharp-edged smart-ass individuality which we were supposed to submerge in humility, prayer, the tedium of routine, the constant busyness, the sounds and smells of a religious dorm.
    Then came the day Brother Fulton, only a couple of years further into the process than we were, called us in for a chat.
    “You will have been wondering about some of the more exotic aspects of our happy little order,” he began. Brother Fulton was a classic Jesuit smart-ass: lank blond hair, pointy, foxlike features, pale brown eyes that seemed to deny the possibility of treating anything
too
seriously. “We think of them as penitential practices, nothing to fear, because we are all brave fellows and the Society has our best interests at heart. We are primarily concerned with the strength of the spirit, the vitality and determination and growth of the inner man. However …”
    He smiled at the group of intent young men waiting for the other shoe to drop. “However, we must not altogether ignore our physical selves. It is our experience here at Castle Skull—just a little Jesuit humor, men—that a whiff of mortification of the flesh never really hurt anyone. It may even occasionally do some good. Pain, Iassure you, tends to concentrate the mind most wonderfully. But the pain is merely to remind us of our real purpose—you guys all on the right page here?—good, good. Suffice it to say that you will feel pain and your minds—if this thing works like it’s supposed to—will turn to such fit subjects for meditation as your love of God. Are you with me?”
    His lively brown eyes danced from one dutifully nodding face to another. “Gentlemen, take a look at these little doodads.” From the drawer in his desk he took out two items and placed them casually on the blotter. “Go ahead, pick them up. Get the feel. Get to know them.”
    I took the braided white rope, watched it dangling like a valuable necklace from my fingers. Touching the chain was oddly exciting, almost shameful. I held it gingerly, as if it might come to life and lash out at me, while Brother Fulton went on.
    “These little devices, a whip and a leg chain, will aid you. They will make it easier for you to reflect on your devotion to God. And your obedience. The rope or whip is largely symbolic. On Monday and Wednesday evenings you will strip to the waist and kneel beside your beds. The lights will be out. You will hear the tolling of the bell. You will then begin flogging your backs with an over-the-shoulder flicking motion. You keep at it for the length of one Our Father. No big deal.”
    “And how about this?” I swung the chain.
    “Aha,” Brother Fulton said. “You will notice the little signs on the bulletin boards when you return to your rooms. ‘Whips tonight, chains tomorrow morning.’ An old Jesuit maxim. Benjamin, do you notice anything unusual about the chain?”
    “The links,” I said. “One side is filed down so it’s very sharp. The other side is just blunt, rounded off.”
    Brother Fulton nodded again. “Which side would you say, just off the top of your head, is supposed to be pressed against the flesh? Blunt or sharp?”
    “You bring out the Iron Maiden next,” Vinnie Halloran said, “and I’m going through that