“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
Father Taylor then, continuing his forcefully whispered mode, discoursed upon chastity and marriage and think what his mother would say and letting down the good name of all Irish boys. With bleak dispassion Jim listened. He spoke of Our Lady and told how every impure thought, how every glance, was a thorn in Her sacred heart. Jim had had a narrow escape. He might have sinned deplorably had She not been watching over him. Accordingly, he gave penance of Rosaries and had already launched into his Latin, when Jim touched the grille and he said, “Father?”
“What is it?”
“Am I truly absolved?”
“Have you told all your sins?”
“I have. Save, it was, it was a soldier, Father, not a girl.”
“Will you forget about the soldier. Forget about the girl. Pray for them in all charity by all means. But most important pray for your own soul that is in peril. And keep clear of the pier. Even for fishing.”
The slide clicked closed. Jim breathed in and out. He sniffed, and passed his sleeve across his eyes. He stood up and held a while the handle of the door, before he turned it and came out. The smell in the chapel had not changed. This was not the odor of sanctity, only of candles doused. Had he confessed at all? Sacrilege on sacrilege: the phrase came back from the Dominican retreat. Even then he thought he might go back in the box, have one more try, but some person shoved past and took his place. He looked round the chapel, wondering had he been long. Were the people watching? He returned to the bench two rows from the altar, said his penance.
It glimmered upon him, over the days that followed, why the priest had not understood his sin. He had not understood—how could he?—for no sin had been named that covered his wickedness. What he had done was so sinful, so unspeakably so, of such aberrance, to such unnatural degree, that the Church, for all her far-seeing and deep-searching, her vision and penetration, had not thought to provide against its happening. It was an extraordinary thing that he should have found this chink: he, the son of a Glasthule huckster, of a quakebuttock, a quakebuttock himself, should in the majestic vault of Christendom a flaw have found. What had marked him for such villainy?
For the wickedness did not cease. Though he slept with his hands chained in his beads, nothing would bind him below, and often its throbbing woke him in the night. The cloudy shiny forms, which on his dreams attended, diffused in the shadows like ghosts themselves horrified. Or worse still, a pollution had wet his shirt. He would wash his shirt then, in the dark at the sink, and wear it clammy against his skin. He kept pebbles in his boots. If he walked anywhere and there were nettles, he was careful to pass his hand through the leaves. Not to be ostentatious, during the day he wore his beads as a bracelet, high up his right arm, under his sleeve. The crucifix drooped so he might finger it if needed.
He stopped eating, save bread, and drinking, save water. With the baby in the house all eyes were that way. It was a comfort to him for his mortifications might go unremarked. He pitied the infant whose birth he so had shamed. He dared not touch her. It was better after all she did not know him. The poor thing with no father, and now no uncle worth the name. Sacrilege on sacrilege: when he stood godfather to her.
One night Nancy came down for a drink of water from the sink. He had the Sacred Heart flame by his side and the light through the colored glass made her face blotched and blooded. “Still at it?” she asked. She sat down on the edge of his bed with her cup filled. He had to hide his rosaried hands under the covers.
“Is everything all right with you, Jim?” she asked. Oh sure everything was grand. Bobbing along nicely, thanks very much for asking but. He shifted his legs away from her under the covers. “Does she keep you awake above?” Not at all, sure he liked to hear the baby giving vent. “I suppose and they rag you at school?” Why would they rag him? “They wouldn’t be long looking for reasons.” He told her he paid no mind to coarse talk. “You’re fond of your niece though, aren’t you?” It shook him she should ask that, and he answered he was more than fond, how could she doubt him, he loved his niece, of course he did. He was proud of Gordie’s baby. “Only you might hold her sometimes. She won’t eat you.” He told her he was frightened of any harm coming. She smiled at him, sweetly, like a statue, full of grace. “You’re after growing thinner in the face,” she said, “if thinner was possible. Your appetite is none too bright these days.” He was offering it up, he told her. “Are you in practice for Lent?” He tried to smile for her, but his face wouldn’t change, like it had lost the knack. “I know what it is,” she said: “you’re missing your pal.”
No, she was wrong about that. He didn’t miss Doyler at all. Matter of fact he was only too glad if Doyler was away. “Do you tell me?” Yes, that’s what he told her.
She went to ruffle his hair but he shook his head out of the way. “Cheer up, old trooper,” she said.
And it was true. He was only too thankful that Doyler was away. Doyler had been his friend, and if he had any feelings for him at all, he must be sure they never again were friendly. He no longer went to the Forty Foot. He did not think of the island. At school they were playing rugby. The scrum was torturous for him, a torment to be touched. One day when he ran he felt his feet lifting from the grass like the grass was liquid and he swam with the ball.
And that day, while play carried on far into the opponents’ twenty-five, he saw walking the chalk on the field perimeter a familiar figure like an old crow. A black crow with a black umbrella, for the rain was sheeting down. He forgot about play entirely and he ran to greet him. “Brother Polycarp!” he called, “Brother Polycarp!”
He was out of his breath, hot and light-headed, when he caught the brother up. Brother Polycarp didn’t stop or turn in his walk. “It’s Jim, Brother. Jim Mack.”
“Is that who it is,” the brother said.
He didn’t sound very interested. “Are you better again, Brother?”
“Better at what?”
Jim shook his head. The rain on his face was like a sweat. He felt very strange inside. The world felt strange, and looked it too, as though curtained by rain. In and out of the curtain boys ran. One charged into him and nearly knocked him over. He made out hooped jerseys with strange colors like tropical bees. They were playing football. In lovely toil they scrimmaged, the lofty goal to reach.
“May I talk with you, Brother?”
“Aren’t you talking anyway?”
“Brother, I fear I made a mistake. About being a brother, Brother.”
“A brother Brother,” the brother mimicked. “How is your pal?”
He seemed genuinely to want to know. Jim tried to frame responses. But he was so hot inside. For all it rained he felt hot and giddy, under the collar, so that his tie would strangle him if he did not loosen it. But when he went to his collar he found he was wearing a jersey. Fellows were calling his name. The ball rolled in a roily puddle. The turmoil of the game shoved about him, toiling and moiling. He believed he had a headache. But his head and its ache seemed miles separated.
“He’s gone away, and he mustn’t come back.”
“And so you think to be a brother.”
“Brother”—Jim did not know why, but he believed he might tell Brother Polycarp. Brother Polycarp would—“Brother, I’ve done a terrible thing. Do you know what it is I’ve done? You do know, don’t you?”
But Brother Polycarp had no interest in that. “Publius Vergilius Maro,” he said: “how’s your Virgil these days?”
The brother was rambling; physically too, for his mouth moved in curious ways so that a dribble came out the corners, and his cheeks were caught in a crooked leer the way it was a stroke he had had. A stroke, as they said, of the hand of God.
Jim had to shake his head to clear the muzziness. For a moment he was running with a huge egg and his hands like balloons trying to hold it, then the ball was gone and he said, “Brother Matthew takes us for Latin now.”
“‘Sunt lacr
imae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt’: translate.”
Distantly Jim recalled the phrase. “You told us it could not be translated.”
“And I did, you could make a fist at it. Do you know when he died, Jim Mack, the Roman?” Jim didn’t know. “He died the first Christmas Day. Virgil and all his kind. The infant Jesus did that with the first pule out of his lungs. The infant Jesus wouldn’t care much that the Aeneid was left unfinished. It was enough if Virgil was what he was, and all his kind must die.”
“It was Christmas Day, Brother when I—” He was crying. “It was on Christmas Day, Brother,” he cried.
“Tears there are of our doing and all that is mortal moves the heart.”
“Whose heart?”
Brother Polycarp lifted a finger from the handle of his umbrella and pointed it upward, indicating beyond the tented canvas. “She’s there, Jim.”
“I pray to Her,” Jim said. “But She doesn’t hear. Will you pray to Her for me, Brother Polycarp?”
“She hears you well enough. All of us She hears. Our every cry moves Her heart to breaking.” It was true. She heard them all. “Think of Her pain, Jim, to hear our woes told and retold. It is the pain of a mother for her child that is sickening.”
“I am sick, Brother,” said Jim.
“You have a fever,” said Brother Polycarp mundanely.
“I think I most probably do.”
“But they’re gone, the others. Gone, or dead, or fast asleep. She alone remains, seeing and hearing and suffering our pain. Think of the anguish She must suffer, Jim, abandoned and powerless to help. Is it any wonder it rains so? She was made to be our intercessor, Jim, but there’s none remains with whom to intercede.”
It was true. It did rain so.
“She is the vessel of life with no water in it,” the brother said. “The bottle without the whiskey.”
The ball landed in Jim’s hands and he was running with it, running with all his legs, and his ten hearts thumped and his three heads swam. In a moment of brilliant lucidity he knew why he never had trusted Brother Polycarp. When other brothers had put their hands between his legs he had never really minded. Only Brother Polycarp had put his hand round his neck. The ambiguity of that gesture had involved him in it, where the groping had left him untouched.
In lovely toil he neared the lofty goal. Try, they called. But he had tried and failed. A whistle blew. Fellows were cheering.
He stood astride the chalk line while the angled rain him keenly struck. His lank hair glued to his forehead. His forehead was burning. He shivered, but he felt the shivers as an elsewhere. A brother, looking curiously small and thin without his soutane on, dug his heel in the turf. He blew his whistle again and pointed at the kerf he had made in the ground. How grey was everything. The sheeting rain was frosted glass through which he viewed the world. He made out the dual spires of St. Joseph’s, a solid rain where all else fell. So light he felt and dizzy. Waves washed over him. He heard the calls of gulls. Insufferably hot.
His hand came out of the rain. He felt the crawl of it round his neck. At last it yanked and the chain came free. It seemed to shine before him, the dangling thing, like half a sun.
“Brother, Brother! It’s Mack, Brother! He’s fallen!”
He woke briefly in a darkened room whose strange furniture was crooked and mournful. Then a tall sheeny figure came in and pulled the curtains and the sash window, and all the crooked mournfulness flew out. He heard his father say, “Is that the modern way?” and he felt the breeze from the window, before his eyes closed in sleep again.
The next time he woke, his father was at the washstand. His braces hung down, his shoulders moved inside his vest. Jim could see his face in the mirror, comically white, and he watched fascinated the grins and grimaces he made, becoming and unbecoming himself. The room smelt of pomade. He was in his father’s bed. They must have brought him here to be out of the way. His father’s mouth formed a dark oval.
“Ho ho ho! Is that an eye I see? Is that two eyes I see?”
“Hello, Da,” said Jim.
“Ho ho ho!” said his father again. He was at the door calling to Aunt Sawney and dully he heard Aunt Sawney shishing him back and that the boy wasn’t out of it yet. His father came over to the bed, patting his leg in excitement. He made an effort to hush his voice. “Let me look at you. Are you bright again?” The big hand came over Jim’s face and landed on his forehead. The touch felt cool and enormously safe. “You’re fiery yet. But we’re on the mend. Ho ho ho!”
“I think I have a fever, Da.”
“Sure, you’ve had a fever these last four days.”
“What day is it?”
“Never you mind about that. You’ve only it broke in the night. Rest now.”
The hand came over his eyes, closing them.
Later his father held his head while he fed him broth, inconveniently really, from a huge wooden spoon into his mouth. It must have been that evening when they had their first real conversation. His father sat on a chair by the bed. He had been reading from a book, but Jim could not recall what. His jaw ached, as though it was worn out from speaking, and he still heard echoes of voices in his head. Those monotonous phrases and scenes that had repeated and repeated. It worried him now he had been talking through his fever.
“Oh sure ranting away you was.” His father swiped his nose significantly. “We have all your secrets out now. There’s no use hiding. We have you well taped, young man, so we have.”
But his father was laughing and Jim could see that he had no secrets told at all. He felt so happy looking at his father’s face, all round and honest and pleased to see him.
“Belting out the hic haec hoc, you was. I never heard such Latin, ’twas better than a priest on Sunday. If I didn’t know it before, I know it now, that I have a proper scriptuarian for a son.”
“I think I was dreaming of Brother Polycarp.” His eyes closed. “Is Brother Polycarp dead, Da?”
“Don’t you remember he was read out at Mass?”
“I remember something.”
“He died of a stroke, son. This was in Enniskillen. They say there’s to be a month’s mind at St. Joseph’s. We’ll go to that.”
“Yes.”
His father closed his book. “We oughtn’t be talking sad things at all. The doctor says you’ll be out of your strength a while yet.”
“You had a doctor in?”
“Half-crown doctor. White gloves, top hat, the works. Three-day fever, he calls it, which just goes to show.” Though what it showed he didn’t say. “A friend of yours was after recommending him.”
“Which friend was that?”
“I never knew you had such connections. Up there with the quality and you never let on.”
“Who was it, Da, tell me.”
“Mr. MacMurrough of course.”
Jim felt confused, but the confusion did not distress him. His father leant over and kissed his forehead. “Rest again now and I’ll be up in an hour or two. You know there’s the you-know under the bed. Well, you know that sure. Try to sleep now.”
It was the next morning before Jim had the story.
“What it was,” his father said, “you was after making an appointment with Mr. MacMurrough to swim with him. At the Forty Foot, this was.”
“Yes, I remember. He was to teach me a dive.”
“Then you never turned up.”
“I forgot all about it.”
“So he comes here looking for you. I was inside in the kitchen at the time. I heard the doorbell and I shouted, Presently, the way I do. Then, would you believe it, the bell on the counter gets a mighty wallop, and there’s some joker calling Shop! Would you credit that? And if you only saw it, the stupid faction on your Aunt Sawney’s face, when she tumbles who it is. I thought her gums would be sweeping the floor.”
Jim laughed, feebly, and it made him smile too, the wonderful way his father had with words he didn’t know. Stupid faction and palatable nonsense and poppy
lectric fits. “What did he say, Da?”
“The short of it is he wanted your nibs here. But we’ll come to that. What could we do only show him into the parlor, and he was after admiring that old brass tray of mine and your Aunt Sawney’s firescreen.”
Jim saw them, the parrots, red and green, on the screen his great-aunt had embroidered, which his father complained wasn’t embroidery at all but something he called Berlin-work and as such by rights ought not to be entertained during the current hostilities. And the brass tray from Benares that his father had kept by him all the way from India, which Aunt Sawney held was unfit for the parlor, such heathen ware, and she’d sneak it out for low use in the scullery where his father would have to be polishing it back up again. It near burst him with joy, thinking of his home, and the tangle of oddities that made it so special.
“Well, there was no holding Nancy and in she flounces with the baby and all. And Mr. MacMurrough, he looks down at the little face, and do you know what he says? I’m glad to see, says he, there was room at the inn this Christmas.”
His father leant back in his chair and his eyebrows lifted.
“Isn’t that the grand way of talking?”
“It’s true too.”
He shrugged his head. “Oh sure I wouldn’t know about that. But I have to say, it shows the quality. He shook my hand, he did. Mr. Mack, says he, you’re a gentleman.”