by Paul Theroux
He was seated at a dark desk in a hot room in the rectory, and I thought how miserable it was to have to be inside shuffling papers on such a lovely day. It was bad enough having to wear socks and shoes! I associated hot airless rooms and dusty carpets with the tyranny of old unhappy men.
“Sit down,” the Pastor said, and just the tone of these two words told me I was in for it.
There were no papers on his desk, nothing in the room but a skinny Christ writhing on a wooden cross on one wall, and a vigil light in a red glass cup under an oval picture of the Virgin Mary. The Pastor was staring hard at me, and he put his fingertips together and worked his big clean hands apart and studied me with his mouth gaping like a fish.
“Where is your book?”
“Dante’s Inferno? I finished reading it, Father.”
“What are you reading now?”
“Campcraft, by Horace Kephart.”
He squinted at me. “Did you say Campcraft?”
“Yes, Father.” He looked displeased. I said, “And also He Went With Marco Polo.”
I did not want to tell him that I had borrowed more Dantes from the library and that I had found Purgatory dull and Paradise unreadable. I had liked the noise and motion of the Inferno, and I could easily imagine the funnel full of people. It was not just the blood and gore—and the reptiles and the ice—but that the people in Hell seemed real; the ones in Purgatory and Paradise were wordy and unbelievable. The Inferno was like life, and some of it seemed familiar. Father Furty had laughed out loud when I told him that the Inferno was full of Italians, like Boston. The words “shit” and “vomit” did not thrill me anymore; secretly I held on to six lines that Ulysses spoke to Dante,
Neither fondness for my son, nor reverence
For my aged father, nor the debt of love
That should have cheered Penelope
Could conquer in me the lust
To experience the far-flung world
And human vice and bravery.
“Is that how you’re preparing yourself?”
“Yes, Father.” He blinked. I thought: What was the question? “No, Father.”
It was another trick of priests—not Father Furty—to say nothing, and for you to squirm until you guessed, somehow, what they meant.
“Well, what are you doing to prepare yourself?”
To prepare myself for what?
“Praying, Father.”
He stared: he knew I had just given him an all-purpose answer. And he knew I was lying. I wasn’t praying, I was only worrying whether I would ever experience the far-flung world. But wasn’t praying worrying out loud?
“And asking for God’s help.”
His smile was worse than his stare, his silence more terrible than anything he said. And I was trapped in the tick of his clock.
“And doing penance, Father.”
He pounced on this.
“What sort of penance?”
“Doing things and offering them up. Helping my folks. Drying the dishes. Working up at Wright’s Pond”—I was failing, and I knew it—“and going without things.”
He seemed bored, the air seeping out of him.
“Like candy, and—”
He glanced up.
“And camping equipment,” I said lamely, and added in desperation, “And bullets.”
This made him wince. He said, “So in fact you’re not doing anything to prepare yourself.”
“No, Father.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen, Father,” I said in a defeated voice.
“Got a girlfriend?”
“No, Father.” It was bad enough that I was telling a lie, but it seemed so much worse that I was denying Tina’s existence. My lie made her pretty face spring into my mind and made me sad.
He knew I was lying. He was smiling, watching my lies accumulate. I could hear the scrape of his breathing, like a comb in his throat.
Behind his head, a large tufty cloud moved past the window and made me wish I was outside. The cloud climbed, leaving blue sky, and I felt trapped down below.
“What makes you think you could be a priest?”
I said nothing at first. His eyes were perforating my soul. I said, “I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you something. You don’t simply say, ‘I’m going to be a priest’ the way you say, ‘I’m going to be a doctor or a lawyer.’ ”
Though it struck me that it was much harder to be a doctor or a lawyer, I said, “No, Father.”
“You don’t volunteer. ‘Here I am—might as well have a try!’ ” He made it sound thoroughly foolish. “You are chosen! You are called. To receive the sacrament. To perform the holy sacrifice of the mass.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Almighty God does the choosing!”
I wanted to get out of that room.
“You must think you’re pretty darned important,” the Pastor said.
I looked down, to appear ashamed, and saw his thin socks of black silk and hated them.
“Did you ever think you might be motivated by pride?”
There was no point in saying no. I knew I was beaten.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said, and smiled his terrible smile. “The Church has no use for slackers. You don’t know how lucky you are!” He looked aside, then turned back to me and said, “A non-Catholic once said to a Catholic, ‘Do you believe that Christ is present in your church?’ The Catholic said yes. ‘Do you believe that, when you receive communion, God is in you?’ And the Catholic said yes. ‘Do you believe that when you die you have a chance to spend eternity in Heaven with Almighty God?’ ‘Yes,’ the Catholic said. And the non-Catholic said, ‘If I believed those things I would go to that church on my knees!’ ”
“Yes, Father.”
“I would go to that church on my knees!”
I thought: But he didn’t—didn’t believe, didn’t take communion, didn’t go to church. It was easy to say that, like saying, If I believed men could fly I would jump off the John Hancock Building. Or, If I believed what you believed I would die for it. It was only an if—and a selfish boasting if. All they were really saying was, “… If, and pass the mustard.”
“That’s a pretty powerful example of faith, don’t you think?”
I lied again, and I thought: Powerful example of a lack of faith, you mean!
“Let me ask you a question,” the Pastor said, making a fresh start, as if the conversation had just begun. “If you were chosen by God to be a priest, and if you had enough sanctifying grace—what sort of priest would you be?”
I was stumped. But he went on staring. His stare said: I’ve got all day to watch you squirm.
“I don’t know, Father,” I said in a pleading voice.
“Have a try.” He seemed friendlier saying this—it was the first kindly encouragement he had given me. I decided to tell him the truth.
I said, “I would try to model myself on Father Furty.”
The Pastor began slowly leaning back as if trying to get me into focus by making me small.
I said, “I was his altar boy. I used to watch him.”
But my words were dropping into a void—into the space that had opened up between us. I knew I had already failed. Nothing I said really mattered, and yet I could tell from the flick of his eyes that I had triggered something in the Pastor.
“Wouldn’t that be the easy way out?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Father Furty—God rest his soul—was alone when he died. He was alone physically. He was alone emotionally and spiritually. Weakness is a terrible thing—it’s a kind of cowardice. It can make you a very easy target for the devil. Father Furty abused his body. Do you think a person can abuse his body without abusing his soul?”
“No, Father.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
It was a cruel question; it was one that Father Furty hated. But I had already failed—and way back, lying about penance and prayer; so I lied again.
> “When evil gets a grip on you,” the Pastor said, with a kind of horrible energy, “it never lets go. Never! And you burn for all eternity.” It was what Father Feeney had said, ranting on the Common. The Pastor’s voice was quavering again and the scrape of his breathing began. “That’s why we have to pray for the repose of Father Furty’s soul.”
His chair creaked and he was facing me.
“You don’t want to model yourself on Father Furty.”
I lied once again.
“I think you can do better than that,” the Pastor said.
He meant Father Furty’s disgrace—much worse now that he was dead, because he wasn’t around to repent. He had died and left us with the mess to clean up, getting his stained soul out of Purgatory.
I said yes, I could do better than that; but it was the worst lie I had told all day—not only was it a denial of Father Furty, but it was a claim that I could do something I couldn’t. I was in despair: in belittling my dead friend I had destroyed my vocation. Then I thought: I don’t really have a vocation.
“I think you’re going to work out fine,” the Pastor said, for I had agreed to everything he said. He had me on his terms.
He ended by speaking of the Church. When he mentioned the Church I thought of a church building and saw it very clearly. It was a tiny boxlike thing with a stumpy steeple and very few pews; it was hard to enter and uncomfortable inside, which was why most of us were outside.
“I hope I’ve given you something to think about.”
“Yes, Father.”
He opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper with typing on it.
“This is the new altar boy roster,” he said. “You’ve had your three funerals. You’ve got a wedding on Saturday. Make sure your shoes are shined,” and put the paper down with his left hand and raised his right. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
10.
“Where are you going with your gun?” Tina said, as I passed her house.
“A wedding.” My Mossberg was over my shoulder, my cartridges in my pocket. I was on my way down Brookview Road.
“Who’s getting married?”
“I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t even know!”
Tina rose from the glider and walked to the rail of her piazza. She encircled the piazza post with her arm and lifted her leg to the banister. There was a lovely inch of lace showing at her knee. She was in the breeze now, her long hair blowing against the side of her face.
“Maybe we could go to the Sandpits later,” I said. “Do some shooting.”
“I’ve got to go shopping,” she said. “When my mother gets back. She’s out—so’s my father.”
It was a sort of invitation, I knew; but it meant now. And now I had to go to St. Ray’s—the wedding, the nuptial mass that everyone said I had earned.
She said, “If my mother knew I was talking to you, she’d kill me.”
I said, “Yeah,” and kept walking, glancing back to see her leaning against the rail. The slender poplar in front of her house blew and leaned, too, with masses of spinning leaves—the whole tree whirling madly.
The wedding cars had jammed the parking lot—crowded it worse than any funeral I had seen; and one of the cars, the largest, a Caddy, had white ribbons tied across its roof and its hood, with a bow on its trunk. I lingered, standing behind a tree on the Fellsway, watching the wedding party go in, all in suits, waving to one another, laughing loudly; the women wore corsages and hats and white gloves, and the men were smoking their last cigarettes before entering the church. Two little flower girls in tiny gowns were quarreling, and a small boy in a sailor suit was crying under the statue of St. Raphael.
I tucked my Mossberg under my arm and crossed the Fellsway to the church lawn, and I hid near the grotto that the Pastor had built in May—it was the Blessed Virgin in a cave, because May was Mary’s month. Watching from the edge of the cave, I saw Chicky DePalma run into the sacristy. He would be first, he would grab the cassock with the snaps, and have a swig of mass wine.
Chicky looks around, and seeing no one takes another swig of wine and thinks: I’ll tell him about Magoo, how she let me do something or other, and he begins fastening his cassock.
I’ve got the bells, he thinks. I’ll do the biretta. I’m moving the book.
Father Skerrit or the Pastor enters and says, “Let us pray,” and Chicky tumbles to his knees and stuffs the bottle under his surplice and prays for the conversion of Russia. The priest kisses his vestments under the stained-glass window of Saint Raphael—the saint has swan’s wings and a halo like a crown and a slender cross.
“Can I come in?”
It is the best man, in a new suit, a carnation in his buttonhole, new shoes, smelling of after-shave lotion, red-faced from nervousness and heat.
“Hope I’m not intruding!”
“Not at all.”
Envelopes are produced. “A little something. I didn’t think I’d have time after the mass.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
“Hey, thanks,” Chicky says.
There is a moment of awkward hesitation when the best man looks around and says, “Where’s the other altar boy?”
“Not here yet,” Chicky says.
And the priest tugs his chasuble aside and claws at his alb to see his wristwatch, and says, “It’s Andy Parent, and he’d better get a move on, if he knows what’s good for him.”
Motionless, attentive, listening, I stayed where I was. Then I walked away and was aware in those seconds that my life had just begun—like a wheel slipping off an axle and rolling alone, and already it was spinning faster. I thought: A wedding is just a happy funeral.
* * *
The old heavy Mossberg was propped against a tree. In the course of the bus ride with Tina I had outgrown the gun, and now it seemed a silly thing, noisy and dangerous, something for a kid or an immature man.
We lay in the shade, on a bank of grass that was like an altar, rectangular, with a stump in the middle like a tabernacle. Beyond us were the cliffs and ledges of the Sandpits. The wind spun some dust up and it traveled in tall hobbling cones through the quarry. We were talking about some gulls we saw, did they ever land here, and about the clouds through the branches, about nothing, and I was glad when we stopped talking, so that my nervousness was less apparent to her.
“My mother’s going to kill me,” she said eagerly.
“What about me?” I said. “Missing the wedding!”
I had no choice but to sound brave and reckless, because I knew I was lost. We both were, and were thinking: What now?
I put my arm around her, and when she didn’t object I hugged her. After a while, I got to my knees, so that I could see her better. She lay crouched on the grassy mound, very quietly and a little fearful, like a sacrifice. I touched her arm and she got smaller—sort of shrank, without a sound, like a snail. Her eyes were wide open, watching me and making everything difficult. Then she shut them and I took this to mean that she trusted me and was giving me permission. I could see her bra and panties outlined beneath her blouse and her skirt. My hand went to her knee. I moved it higher, to where it was warmer, on her thigh.
She said, “No, don’t,” but made no move to stop me.
Leaning over, I kissed her, and as soon as our lips touched she opened hers and began sucking on my tongue. I was too happy to think of anything but my happiness. We had gone there alone and ignorant, and lay stupidly under the trees; but now we knew a little more. I could not tell where my flesh ended and hers began.
Wickedness entered me. My soul darkened and I felt a shameful thrill as it tottered and began to fall. It caught fire, and Tina was crying softly but holding me, and then we were both burning.
TWO
WHALE STEAKS
1.
With a name like the Maldwyn Country Club I knew it had to be one of these fake-English places with a look that said Keep Out. I was right, and the reason for the Englishn
ess was that it was all Armenians. And it took over an hour to get there from Medford Square. But I needed the job.
Walking up the long driveway to my lifeguard interview, I thought: No girlfriend, no car, no money, no job—nothing except funerals dragging past in a procession in my soul, and sorrowing hopes, and the tyrant Pain planting his black flag in my skull. I had been reading Baudelaire on the bus.
Big cars went past me. It was not the Nixon stickers in the windows, and not the speed; what made me feel small was the way they swished by, missing me by an inch, as if I didn’t exist or didn’t matter. They didn’t see me, or else they figured a pedestrian had to be a bum. Their business sense was: Money talks, bullshit walks. They didn’t know that I was in college, and that I was plotting their downfall, putting a curse on them. They had everything. Pretty soon they might even have me.
On my left was the ninth hole—one man hunched over his putt, the other golfers watching. I hated them for being fat, for being happy; hated the look of them, the breeze blowing their plaid pants, the way they were doing just as they pleased. I gave the putt the evil eye and the ball slid past the cup. When the foursome moved off they seemed to be browbeating the caddies—two kids carrying doubles in this heat. I thought: Why not kill them?
“I’m a communist,” I told my brother Louie, when he said he had joined Students for Kennedy.
“You don’t like him because he’s a Catholic,” Louie said.
“I don’t like him because he’s a bad Catholic,” I said. “I’m voting for Gus Hall. American Communist Party. It’s legal!”
It was wonderful to see how this little pronouncement shocked him. I tried it again with Mimi Hardwick at Kappa Phi. She had said she couldn’t go out with me. She made excuses, and when I badgered her she said, “I’m afraid of you.” It was simply that she didn’t want to sleep with me.
I said, “I’m a communist,” because I knew I would probably never see her again, and I wanted to leave her with a worry.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “What do you mean?”
I was looking at her and thinking: Girls get up in the morning and wash themselves carefully and put on four different types of underwear, not including a girdle, and choose a certain color sweater and clean socks and a matching skirt. They take the rollers out of their hair. They put in ribbons, they do their eyes, they rouge their cheeks, put on perfume and lipstick, earrings, beads, a bracelet on one wrist, a tiny watch on the other, and all day they go on checking themselves in mirrors. It was an amazing amount of trouble, but it worked. Why were they so surprised when we wanted to squeeze them and feel them up? Mimi Hardwick smelled of lavender and I wanted to push my nose against her.