“So that’s good.”
“How is it good? It seems to me that it gets you no further than you were before. We might as well stand in the rain and piss at each other.”
“Oh.” I’m quite surprised by his language. “So if we’re not arguing what are we doing?”
“Embarking on a voyage of discovery.”
This is the sort of thing Vicino writes.
“To undiscovered countries,” I quote, “on the far side of lost oceans.”
He nearly crashes the car.
“You read Vicino!”
“Yes. Some.”
“Then you understand! You and I, we are explorers. When I listen to you, I enter a new country where things are done in new ways. That is exciting. Why would I wish to take you prisoner and drag you back to my country and force you to live as I do?”
“Right.” Put like that I see his point. “Even so, we can’t both be right, can we? About God, I mean.”
“Of course we can! Look ahead. What do you see?”
“A road. Snow. Sky.”
“And me, I see the ditch that runs beside the road, and the ice in the ditch, and the sunlight on the ice.”
“I see all that too. I could have said that.”
“But you chose to see one thing, and I another. We’re both right. We invent nothing. We select. We each make our own world, out of the common store that is reality.”
I feel trapped. I’m sure he’s wrong but he keeps wriggling out of my grasp. I’m puzzling over some better way to corner him when he sets off on a new tack.
“Tell me about your parents. Do they believe in God?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know?” This surprises him. He takes his eyes off the road to check my expression, in case I’m teasing him. “How can you not know?”
“Well. The subject’s never really come up.”
“Amazing! You amaze me! Well, well.”
“It just isn’t a big deal back home.”
“Do you tell me so! What then is a big deal?”
He wags his head as he drives, clearly finding it hard to take in what I tell him. I for my part find it hard to answer his question. What is a big deal? Getting to be rich and famous? It sounds too crass. I play for time.
“Do you mean for people in general, or for me?”
“Oh, for you. There are no people in general.”
“If we’re talking about me, the answer has to be that nothing’s a big deal.”
“Nothing?”
I think back to my room, with the blind down and the mute television flickering away and the door locked. “Nothing.”
“You are telling me that nothing is important to you?”
“Well, I don’t want to get hurt and so on. But if we’re talking religion and philosophy and all that meaning-of-life shit—Sorry.”
I don’t want to give offence.
“No, please. You choose your words for a reason. That meaning-of-life shit. It makes you angry.”
“Not angry. I just can’t see it.”
But he’s right, it does make me angry. I hadn’t spotted that before.
“You would say you live a happy life?”
“No. I wouldn’t say that.”
“You would like to lead a happy life?”
“Sure. Who wouldn’t?”
“So what stands in your way?”
“The real world.”
“The real world makes you unhappy?”
“It doesn’t exactly make me unhappy. It just doesn’t make me happy. I’m kind of neutral.”
“Neutral.” He lingers on the word, like he’s feeling it for size. “So. What is the happiest moment of your life so far?”
“The happiest moment of my life.” I have to search. I’m reaching back into my childhood, which is embarrassing. “I’d have to go way back for that.”
“So go way back.”
It’s still there. A fully intact memory of a woodland path, one spring day when I was maybe nine years old.
“I’d just learned to ride a bike. My dad and I went on this bike ride. We went down a lane and into a wood and back again. I really liked it. First he went in front, then I went in front. It was good, biking with my dad.”
“Do you know why it was good?”
“Not really. I suppose I was proud that I could keep up with him. And I liked having him all to myself.”
As I’m talking I find what I really liked about it, and it seems almost too simple.
“I liked us both doing it together.”
In my memory he keeps turning to see I’m okay, my father I mean, and every time he turns his bike gives a great wobble and we both laugh. I like the way his friendly face keeps turning back to see that I’m okay.
“But it’s not like it gives my life meaning or anything.”
“No. I understand that.”
He says nothing more, which disappoints me. Our conversation is turning out to be interesting. I’d like more. Then he starts up again.
“This meaning-of-life shit.” I can’t help laughing, to hear the little old priest say that word. “It’s going to have to be very big shit indeed to do it for you, I think.”
“Well, life’s a big thing. I mean, like, existence and everything. You can’t make that meaningful with one bike ride.”
“I can,” he says. “It’s you who can’t.”
“That’s because you’re the one who believes in God.”
“How do you know that?”
I’m about to say he’s said so, but it strikes me that maybe he hasn’t. So I point out the obvious fact here.
“You’re a priest.”
“Can you imagine the possibility that there exists a priest who does not believe in God?”
This is even more interesting. I sit forward in my seat.
“Sure I can. Is that what’s happened to you?”
“You want to know about me?”
“Yes. I do.”
“At last. We make progress.”
Now this annoys me. His tone of voice reminds me of poor Marker in the cab of his truck, telling me I’m not curious by nature. I don’t like to be treated like some slow-witted student. So when he goes on to ask, “What would you like to know?” I reply:
“What do priests do for sex?”
I say this to crumple his complacency. He takes it in his stride.
“Which priests? Priests in general?”
“Jesus! I don’t know. There are no priests in general, right?”
“Just so. I can only answer for myself. You may be surprised to learn I was married once. My wife and I met at college. I was very shy. It was she who did the courting. We went on reading holidays together. We read each other books aloud, many of your English classics among them. She had a fine reading voice. And yes, there was love. I was a clumsy lover. We learned together. But perhaps I am telling you more than you wish to hear?”
All this comes out in an even ruminative tone.
“No. No.”
“She fell ill when she was just forty years old. And so she died. There it is. We loved each other. She died. I am alone.”
I am silenced.
“Does that answer your question?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I was being childish. It’s obvious when you say it. No one’s born a priest.”
“Just so. We all lead many lives.”
“So your wife dying. Did that make you—?”
I stop, not wanting to produce another dumb question.
“Doubt the goodness of God?”
“Yes.”
“It did that, and a great deal more. I was very unhappy. Have you ever been deeply unhappy?”
This is a good question. But I don’t want to talk about me, I want to talk about how he got out from under his unhappiness. If he did.
“What did you do?”
“I became very fond of wine.”
“You drowned your sorrows?
”
“I learned to enjoy good wine.” He waves in the general direction of the back of the car. “I have some bottles of Bulgarian Mavrud with me that are vaut le detour, as the guides say. Wine is like a cat, isn’t it? You can’t guarantee its behaviour. It lives its own life. I always feel it’s something of a privilege when a good wine enters my glass and condescends to meet me. That is why I never complain when the odd bottle is corked. As wine lives, so it dies. What else is one to expect?”
Not this. I felt that for a moment we were trembling on the brink of something strong and true, something I would be glad to discover for myself. Instead, we have retreated into after-dinner prattle. My father goes in for this fine wine flim-flam. It’s just another kind of train-spotting. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy a glass of wine but spare me the reverence, it’s not like it’s the blood of Christ. Which reminds me of the time my friend Mac whose family is Irish Catholic stole a bottle of altar wine and we drank it and it was Z-class piss and Mac said he now knew the sacrament of transubstantiation was turning cheap wine into something you’d actually choose to drink. But I don’t insult my friend the priest by repeating this anecdote.
We’re slowing down. There’s a road block ahead. I remember road blocks. My palms go wet and my mouth goes dry but Cello seems unconcerned. Two policemen sitting looking cold in their car pulled up across the road. They get out as we approach.
The priest lets the Renault roll to a stop apparently of its own accord, and reaches behind him into the disorderly mass of luggage. Out comes a bottle of wine. He has a corkscrew in his pocket, the basic model known as the Waiter’s Friend, and with a couple of brisk shakes of the wrist he has drawn the cork. The man has done this before. Then he gets out to greet the policemen, and the next thing I know they’re all standing in the slush taking pulls of wine from the bottle.
Cello beckons me out and offers me the bottle, so I too drink. It’s rich stuff alright. I knock it back like it’s beer in one great swallow and the tastes go on exploding inside me for about five minutes afterwards. The priest and the policemen are yammering away, not at all like a security check. Actually it’s the policemen who do most of the talking while the priest tips his head on one side and listens and nods. Then the bottle is finished and Cello takes out a second bottle and gives it to them unopened, and the policemen get back in their car and we get back in our car and we drive on down the road.
“You liked the wine?”
“Yes. It was good.”
“Some think it rough. But I say, wait, wait for it, and you will find strength, maturity, character. You agree?”
“I guess so.”
What I really want to know is how come there were no awkward questions at the road block. I heard a deal of talking but none of it sounded like police stuff and no one seemed interested in me.
“Those policemen weren’t bothered about me?”
“No, not at all. They have troubles of their own.” He throws me a smile, and the car weaves all over the road. I find myself hoping the Bulgarian wine of which he has consumed his full share is bigger on the maturity than on the strength. “You want to know?”
Do I want to know the policemen’s troubles? Not really.
“Yes. Okay.”
“The thin one with the big ears, he’s going crazy because his wife won’t sleep in the same bed with him, she sleeps with the children, she tells him the children have nightmares, but he knows it’s because she doesn’t want to make love with him any more, and what can he do?”
That’s quite a road-block chat.
“What did you say?”
“I said maybe his wife has a pretty sister.”
“You didn’t!”
“And you know what? She has. And my friend the policeman is working on her. And the sister is not unwilling. But here is the tragedy. With the sister, he can’t do it. You understand?”
I do understand. My eyes are popping.
“So what did you say to that?”
“I gave him a bottle of the Mavrud and told him next time to drink two glasses of the wine, say three Hail Marys, and all will be well.”
“You are a bad priest.” I can’t help laughing. “You are a wicked priest. God will punish you.”
“But there is no God. Or so you tell me.”
“I have no God. But you have a God.”
“True enough. I stand corrected.”
This brings us back to our discussion on the existence of God. Now made more expansive by wine, we trade concepts of the divine as we rattle west towards our next contact with reality.
“My God who exists may not be the same as your God who does not exist,” he says. “So maybe if you show me your God I will agree he doesn’t exist, and if I show you my God you will agree he does exist. And so we will both have been right.”
“That would be cosy.”
“So you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
“My god,” I offer, “is like the Great Examiner, and the life he gives us is like one long exam.”
“Then I most decidedly do not believe in him.”
“So who’s your God?”
“My God is you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“So what does that mean? I created the universe? You worship me?”
“All that, and a great deal more. You see, my friend, your mistake if you will allow me to say so lies in thinking of God as an individual. A moment’s reflection will tell you that can be no more than a picture for children. God in the image of the father. True divinity can’t be limited in this way. In fact, true divinity can’t be limited at all. God can be no less than everything that exists. Which includes you.”
“So I’m not really God at all. I’m just a tiny piece of God.”
“There! Again, the child’s picture of God. You see an individual, an entity, shall we say, that possesses the attribute of size. Very big, no doubt, but limited and divisible. My God is not that kind of giant. Think instead of, say, fire. Suppose God is fire. And I am fire. And the road down which we go is a road of fire. And the clouds in the sky are clouds of fire. All things are made of fire. Now I say to you, You are fire. Do you reply, I’m not really fire at all, I’m just a tiny piece of fire?”
“But I’m not fire.”
“Not fire. But life.”
“I’m life?”
He nods, his eyes on the road ahead. “You are life.”
“I am life.” This seems to me to be an odd formulation. “Don’t we usually say, I am alive?”
He shrugs, not interested in my semantics.
“You are life. You live. You contain all existence within yourself. You are God.”
“So if I’m God, I can have what I want.”
“Of course. If you know what you want.”
There’s a question. I want the envy of men and the love of women, as they say. But it’s not going to happen.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? It’s happened before.”
“When?”
“When you went on that bike ride with your father.”
This is something of a let-down after being told I’m God.
“Was that it?”
“Don’t you see?” He bangs the steering wheel in his exasperation. “Life! Joy! Adventures! Wonders! All to be found right where you live, among your family and friends!”
“The society of others.”
“Yes! YES!” He’s going to snap the steering wheel right off if he hits it one more time. “What is the Mass? It is a meal we share. It is our Last Supper. We celebrate the life that rises from the dead. Of course it rises from the dead! If we are all, each of us, life itself, then we are all living and dying, all the time. What then should we fear?”
“Next you’ll be telling me we’re all Jesus.”
“Of course! Every one of us! Ask yourself why the story of Jesus has such power. The baby in the manger. The dying figure on the cross. His birth is our birth, his de
ath is our death—but he is also God. In theology, the word is ‘incarnation,’ the divine made flesh. Et incarnatus est. So we pray in the Credo. ‘And he was made flesh by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.’”
He fields my blank look.
“The words are unimportant. Think of the revelation! Look at Jesus Christ, God in man, and see yourself. See what you too can be. That is the power! That is the glory!”
He’s getting quite excited.
“So we all get to be crucified?”
“How can it be otherwise? Now the vinegar, now the wine. The suffering is also the celebration.”
“I’d just as soon have the celebration without the suffering.”
“Ah. You are young. ‘Joys impregnate, sorrows bring forth.’ That is your own poet, William Blake.”
More poetry. You can’t argue with it, so I say nothing.
“But you and I,” he says after a pause, “we are at different stages of the journey. You at the beginning, I at the end.”
“The end? Are you planning on dying soon?”
I mean this lightly, but he nods his bald head.
“Yes. Very soon. This evening, I think.”
“What!”
“If I have understood correctly.”
“You’re going to kill yourself?”
“No, no. But I think I will die even so.”
“Why? How?”
“Oh, that is all too difficult to explain.”
He seems almost uninterested in the prospect of his own death.
“Do you want to die?”
“Do I want to die?” He thinks about that. “The answer must be no. But I miss my wife. I would like to be with her again.”
“And you think you will be, after death?”
“Let us say, I hope it. I look forward, with eager interest.”
As he says this I recall the poem I read to the old man in the little back room with Eckhard and the whores. Somehow I have retained whole lines in my memory. I recite them aloud.
But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And slow howe’er my marches be
I shall at last sit down by thee.
The little priest starts to weep.
“Maybe you should stop the car.”
So he stops the car and sits there sobbing to himself and I’m wishing I knew what to say or do to make him feel better.