Chapter 14
This last case history is in many respects the most difficult to comprehend. It contains some of the most perplexing elements in our research. The woman involved personified the classic ambivalence between the erotic and religious drives, showing, in her person, how these drives often confront one another on the same level and then join to produce an offspring which is shocking to the civilized mind.
Her name was Carla and her husband was stationed in one of those Army bases manned by United States troops which dot. the countryside of post-war Germany and are only now beginning to slowly vanish. There was nothing in her background to give a clue that one day she would be involved in a lurid episode with a 16 year old German boy. There was nothing in her background to enable us to know that one day she would be "Called" in the religious sense.
As a wife, she was excellent. Carla and Dennis' marriage had been hallowed by over ten years of constant, mutual devotion. While there is no doubt that the early fire had diminished, as in most marriages, it was replaced by a firm ground of trust and deep love.
Her days at the base were satisfying. While her husband was on maneuvers, she busied herself about the house or played with their five year old son who was about to enter a school on the base. All seemed well. All seemed secure. The life she led was criticized by neither her husband nor herself nor her many friends on the base.
Let us try to construct the actual chain of events in a very precise way in order to understand what happened and why it happened. If we do not do this, the strange pathways of this case will lose the reader.
It was an hour before noon. Carla had just fed her son and then she went into the bedroom to lie down. It was a ritual she always followed. The brief nap seemed to refresh her. She lay down and watched the sun pour through the windows. Then she closed her eyes and a great outpouring of contentment seemed to flood her body.
This contentment, however, was suddenly shattered. Her body seemed to become cold. Here are Carla's words as to what happened:
"I felt my body become as cold as death. My skin lost its suppleness and hung on my bones like drapery. A hand seemed to stretch out of the heavens to me and in that hand was a feather. Yes, a long white feather. The hand came closer and closer and I began to tremble.
"Soon it was upon me. But the moment the feather touched my body all the cold left. I was warm and glowing. The feather moved along my body and every place it touched, a bright shining skin emerged. Then the hand began to pull back. I reached out to grab it but when I touched the flesh of that hand, an electrical shock raced through my body. The hand moved further and further away and I was almost hysterical because I could not reach it and pull it to me and feel that feather once again on my body. Then it was gone. I awoke. But was I sleeping during that vision? I do not know. All that I know was that my body was drenched with sweat. Something profound had happened. I lay back on the pillow, sobbing and quaking, a prey to forces beyond my control and comprehension."
We must accept the fact that Carla gave a true and faithful description of her "vision". In any event, it is the only description we have to work with.
It is Carla's view that she was the recipient of a divine visit and that the hand represented some aspect of the godhead. The feather, in her estimation, was the sign by which she was chosen to enter into a life of loving grace, a life which would be different from her past one by her wholehearted acceptance of the dictates of her Christian faith.
This is undoubtably a valid way of looking at that "vision". On the other hand, however, the vision can be looked at clinically, as a repressed woman's attempt to make the penis she desires transpose itself into a divine feather. Carla would consider such an interpretation absurd and point to her adequate sex life to show that she was not repressed.
Here we have one of the key problems in the strange and tortured relationship between spiritual and carnal appetites.
But the "vision" which Carla received is primarily important because it was the cause of her strange and perverted attachment to the young German boy, Franz.
Franz was sixteen years old and part of a religious sect whose creed was pacifism. They would neither fight nor use self-defense. They were opposed to all armies and weapons of war. Franz and the other members of the sect, not more than thirty in all, used to picket the military base on which her husband was stationed. The army men there greeted them with good humor, showing a great deal of friendliness to the group even though the soldiers realized their viewpoint was absurd in the modern world. During the cold winters, some soldiers would even bring coffee and blankets to the women members of the sect and provide them with chocolate and other food items.
Carla had seen the group many times but never thought about them until she had her vision.
A few days after her strange experience she walked by the group. Franz immediately caught her eye. His obvious innocence, his piety, his burning religiosity and desire to change the world, drew her to him. The group was walking around in a circle, slowly, carrying placards and often singing hymns. Carla waited off to one side for the group to disband so that she could speak to the youth. While waiting, her eyes followed the motion of his body and rested on the golden hair of the boy and his strange profile which seemed to remind her of some ascetic Saint who had been tortured to death by barbarians.
Finally, the group began to leave one at a time. They s id f rewell to each other and left, knowing that the next day they would continue their vigil at some other military base.
Carla fell in step behind Franz. It was a long while before the boy knew that she was behind him, so deep in thought was he. Finally, noticing her, he turned around and faced her. Smiling, he asked her if he could be of service.
"Perhaps you can," she replied, "perhaps you can. I must speak to someone who understands the ways of God."
Franz blushed. She had paid him a wonderful compliment and he was too modest a child to be able to accept it with equanimity.
"No," he replied, "I do not understand the ways of God. I only know what God requires of me; Peace and Love. And these two commands I try to fulfill."
They looked at each other for a long while and in that silent gaze, some strange pieces were falling together in both of their souls. Franz knew that the woman in front of him was going through the throes of a religious agony and he understood and sympathized with her dilemma.
"Would you care to come home with me? We can talk there and I have some hot soup and coffee." The boy was very self-conscious in making his offer and he stammered slightly, his hands jammed deep into his pockets.
Carla jumped at the chance. She knew in her heart that this boy had the answers to her most perplexing questions. She knew in die deepest recesses of her being, that this young boy had a firmer grip on the realities of the spiritual world than any book.
"It would be a great honor," she said and she fell in step beside him.
They walked side by side. We cannot know if the events which were about to take place were already forming in Carla's mind but we have to take her word that they were not. We have to believe her that on that walk to Franz' house, no thought of erotic or sensual activities were in her mind. All she was thinking of was the boy and the answers he could provide.
Finally arriving at a small modest shack, the boy walked through the unlocked door and helped her off with her coat. Carla sat on a small, ripped easy chair that had obviously been salvaged from some garbage heap.
Franz began to heat the soup and making a pot of coffee, also laying out some biscuits and a spoonful of strawberry jam on a plate. There was no conversation between the two while this activity was taking place.
The events that followed were described to me by Carla during our interview:
"We drank the soup and the coffee and ate the biscuits. Then I told him what had happened to me and why I thought it was a sign to me to enter a holy life. Franz agreed with me and he told me of a similar vision which he had received as a much younger child.
"It was so lovely and quiet in that small, shabby apartment, speaking with Franz about the world and love and the divine source. Never have I felt so fulfilled in a brief conversation and never have I learned so much about myself.
"Sitting there, I could see Franz' eyelids began to droop and I realized that he had spent a whole day walking in a circle carrying a heavy placard. But I could not leave.
"Then it happened. I will try to be precise so as not to elicit amusement from you. He was in a chair with one arm hung over the side. He picked his arm up and brought it to his lap. That sudden smooth motion of his arm sent a chill down my body.
"I cannot explain it. All I can say was that motion tapped some hidden longing within me, some hidden longing which was so powerful I could not control it. I walked to him and touched the arm. He looked up at me. His face was shining with trust. Franz did not know that the longing which he had elicited was not one of spirituality but one of extreme bodily lust, a force so intense that I was a child in the clutch of its power.
"I bent over and kissed the child full on the lips, biting passionately into the sweet flesh.
"He pushed me away, shocked, his face flushed and his body trembling.
"But I could not be stopped. I could not be kept from my goal. A flame was eating away the spirituality of my soul and replacing it with the lust of a woman, the spirituality was emptying into my body and there it was thoroughly changed.
"I disregarded his chagrin. My hands went to his closed trousers and like a woman crazed I peeled away the fabric, until, before my very eyes, the boy's flesh was exposed.
"My mouth was dry and parched as I contemplated that dormant maleness, that maleness which I knew would and could flower beneath my willing hands and mouth. His eyes were now silently and dumbly pleading with me to stop. But how could I stop? I no longer had control of my actions. I no longer had power over my body.
"The erotic urge overpowered my mouth and tongue and filled them with a flowing saliva which had to be expended upon some object. I had sunken to the very depths a woman can sink, I was about to taste the fruits of Hell. Bending over, I approached that now quivering object, its strength and size increasing in remarkable leaps and bounds. Then I was upon it. I was frenzied and brutal. It sprang to me like some powerful spring suddenly released. I grasped it. I tasted the most forbidden fruits. I gave my love to it, using that vehicle of speech, using the most fragrant of the sense organs to reflect my lust. He moaned, and he shivered under the assault. It grew and thrust and then, in one great spasm, his maleness released itself, sending me back on the floor filled with his essence.
"For almost twenty minutes not a word passed between us. Franz was recovering from his shock and I was attempting to calm my body, which was still in the grip of its erotic absolute.
"I wanted to apologize to him but I could not find the words. I want to tell that beautiful child that I was sorry but I could not in all honesty do that.
"Once more, that terrible passion came upon me. He saw it and left his chair moving along the wall like a fugitive from some Amazon's revenge.
"I followed him. I had to have his maleness once again, this time piercing my body and shooting his goodness and his mercy into me. I reached him and my lips and hands turned his body into a questing object in spite of himself. He could not control his emotions, once they had become so involved.
"We fell together on the floor and our clothes melted from our bodies as if some miracle was happening. Soon the golden child was without pretense or materials covering his beautiful flesh. Just touching the thin line of his thigh was enough to set my body gyrating in a whirlpool of passion.
"I spread for him. He would not come to me. I wrapped my fevered fingers around the back of his straining neck and summoning all the strength of my body, threw the innocent child over me.
"An instant later, his maleness, powerful and pure, entered its rightful place. I was swept up in a feeling unique in my experience. Thrown backward against the floor, it was like transcending Time and Space and the normal human range of feelings.
"We came together, two bodies joined in a common cause. Deeper and deeper his shaft plunged, searching, ever searching for the end, for the final mystery. We began to move together, in unison, in that beautiful movement which is a concert of the body. I cried, I screamed, I moaned, my lips pressed to the flesh I could reach, my legs were powerful buttresses to my buttocks and they screeched upwards to meet his unsohpisticated but potent thrusts.
"Then I heard his yell. It came from the depths of his body. It came from an area of his soul which he had never explored until now. A second later that weapon tossed its seed full into me, laying me back and leaving me on the floor, used and spent."
That is the brief but lucid description of Carla's seduction of Franz.
Their relationship continued for only a few days longer and then Franz left the area, leaving a bitter note to the older woman.
His note accused Carla of using a mystical experience to trap him into the loss of his innocence, which, he said, was extremely important to him. Franz told her that he hoped God would forgive her for he could never find it in his heart to do so. The note closed with the statement that Franz was leaving Germany for Africa where he hoped to work among the natives who were suffereing from severe tropical diseases like Leprosy and Sleeping Sickness.
Carla was horrified by the note and tried to justify her actions to herself. But she realized she could not do this. She had done a terrible thing. She had seduced a child who was pure.
After Franz left, Carla proceeded with her life as if nothing had happened. Neither her friends nor her husband knew of the strange episode nor did any of them know about her vision.
She never attempted to explore her vision further after the incident with Franz. She accepted it as a strange unexplained part of her life and she knew she would treasure it forever.
The most remarkable part of this case is that, even after her seduction of the young German boy, Carla never would admit to herself that the vision had been other than religious. In spite of the overwhelming evidence, gained from her actions, that vision must not, she thought, be sullied by an erotic interpretation.
This case is a unique one but there are many reasons to believe similar unreported cases are quite common, specially oh the military bases in Europe which are constantly being picketed by religious, pacifist groups. Further research in this area would undoubtably untangle some of the twisted threads between the erotic and the spiritual as the reflect themselves in human life.