Every Secret Thing

by Marie Munkara

  Now while this was going on it just so happened that a flock of magpie geese were on their yearly pilgrimage to the billabongs to breed. And for the first time since their pea brains had been genetically imprinted hundreds of thousands of years ago with maps of the airways that were to be annually traversed, they deviated. No-one could really say if it was Josephus and Ignatius’s honking trombones that attracted them or Ezekiel’s phaarping tuba, but down they came in their hundreds to land among the startled audience, excitedly drowning out the concert with their own songs about the cycles of life and love as the changing seasons. And as more of their feathered friends continued to arrive and circle overhead the guano rained down and, thankful for a distraction, the startled audience fled. But nothing could stop the geese now and they sang on into the night until the bass resonance of a double-barrelled shotgun broke their chorus.

  There wasn’t a lot anyone could say to Brother Neil about the concert without being accused of trying to belittle him. So in the end everyone just kept their mouths shut and watched the once cocky brother slowly descend into a deep hole of depression and paranoia. Behind every innocent glance he saw a smirking face. No two boys could have their heads bent together in discussion without their being accused of making up more lies about him, and the black women who had once been beneath him (literally) now treated him like dirt. Even Father Macredie who had woozily staggered off in the wrong direction that disastrous night while under the influence of his ‘medication’, hadn’t escaped the wrath of Brother Neil’s injured ego and black moods. Brother Neil was in a bad way.

  Now Brother Neil had always had a musical bent although his ability to produce music, like Seth’s trumpet, was at times questionable. He had grown up in an unmusical family in a small railway town in rural New South Wales where his hen-pecked dad was a fettler and his dominating mum was a part-time cook for the local pub. A small, sickly child, he’d always been the object of unrelenting bullying and ridicule by his two older Sisters who had no greater pleasure than dressing him up in their clothes and locking him outside where the neighbours would laugh and point at him. His tears would bring no sympathy from his mother who would chastise him for his weakness and send him off to the wood shed until he shut up. His dad’s attempts to defend his only son were met with scorn from Mum and the girls, until in the end he abandoned his boy to the bullying and headed off down the pub each night where he considered himself to be in better company than what he could find at home.

  And so time passed and the natural progression of things came to be and the bullied became the bully, and the bully became the misogynist, and the misogynist became a Brother in a Catholic mission in a remote place in the Northern Territory. And it was like a marriage made in hell because the misogynist Brother Neil had no women to hate because you couldn’t really call the nuns women, could you, and as for the black women, well they weren’t anything more than a handy receptacle for men’s penises. And there were no other white women in this shit-hole to cause him grief like his mother and Sisters had. So there was no-one else to take his frustration out on but those who had been entrusted into his care – the boys of the mission. But the boys knew how to handle the despised bully, who loved to belittle them and beat them and then act all respectable in the eyes of those whose respect he desperately craved but never could get because they could see what a miserable grovelling sycophant he was. And as with all bullies whose façade of bravado blinds them to the realities of their own fragile beings, there were many fears that lurked inside the thuggish Brother Neil.

  And so it came to be that late one night Brother Neil was praying in the chapel when the generator decided to shit itself. It took a few moments for Brother Neil to realise that he was kneeling in the dark and the candle that one of the nuns was always supposed to make sure was alight in the chancel to represent the eternal flame of god was not burning. Now poor old Brother Neil knew full well that he was in the house of god and that if he called upon his faith and stayed calm no evil forces could harm him. But unfortunately Brother Neil wasn’t a rational thinker and he started to panic. No-one heard his screams above the drumming monsoonal rain as he stumbled blindly around in an attempt to find the door. No-one, that is, except for the two boys who had sought shelter in the narthex of the church when the storm started and who could now hear Brother Neil screeching and blundering around in the dark.

  It took a few seconds for the little fiends to realise that Brother Neil had an irrational terror of the dark. A crucial opportunity to get some of their own back on the arsehole was staring them right in the face. Pinpointing his location in the dark was no problem; he was making enough noise to wake the dead. Besides, fear-stricken Brother Neil, whose imagination was getting wilder by the minute, had absolutely no way of knowing that it was the hand of young Ishmael and not old Nick that seized him by the hair and yanked it painfully by the roots, or that it was Aloysius’s bare foot and not the cloven hoof of the devil that kicked him soundly up the arse. As he sought to escape the diabolical hands that poked and pinched and grabbed him, he stumbled, colliding with pews and screaming even louder for help from his god who obviously had better things to do than rescue this nincompoop from himself.

  It was a good two hours before the power came back on and Brother Neil was discovered cowering and whimpering on the floor of the central nave by Sister Jerome who’d remembered it was her turn to check the flame. His ramblings about demons and evil cackling and forked tails was nothing short of frightening as he sat quaking in Father Macredie’s office while Father and Sister Jerome and Brother John looked on in astonishment. The notion that Brother Neil had been possessed by some demonic force flickered briefly through their thoughts, but being the drama queen that he was they dismissed it as just another one of his little episodes. What was it about this damned place, wondered Father Macredie as Brother Neil was escorted to the infirmary and given a strong sedative. It was like the old man Jerrekepai had cursed them or something.

  The young rascals, who would later be hailed as heroes by the other boys, had fled well before the lights came back on and were now back at the boys’ dormitory, sleeping contentedly. Oblivious to the damage that had been inflicted on Brother Neil’s delicate psyche, they had laughed all the way to bed. But for poor Brother Neil it was no laughing matter. Even though he had now lost the capacity to comprehend his situation, his greatest fear of all had been realised. He had lost his mind.

  Brother Neil was not a pretty sight as he dribbled onto his cardigan. His mother and Sisters looked on in dismay. He had been in the nursing home for six months now and there had been no improvement, except that he’d started asking where his Dick was. Unfortunately the nursing home staff, not knowing that Dick had been Brother Neil’s childhood pet, had somewhat sinister thoughts about what the poor man might have been referring to and would soundly scold him whenever his ramblings headed in that direction. It was obvious to all that he was missing his Dick very much but no-one could help him, not even his mother and Sisters who had long forgotten about the little tabby cat who had sat with Brother Neil in the wood shed while he’d shed his endless boyhood tears. And fearing that his lurid ravings would incite the other unfortunate residents of Lakeview Mental Hospital to air their more intimate grievances, the decision to keep poor Brother Neil in solitary confinement for the better good was arrived at very promptly.

  Brother Neil hadn’t entirely lost the plot and he knew it. His little episode at the mission had only been a temporary lapse, but unfortunately these temporary lapses were destined to return unannounced and plague him for the rest of his life. And the more he emerged from his black hole into lucidity and protested his sanity the more they drugged him to keep him quiet, and this was how his mother and Sisters had found him that day. He hadn’t changed much, but there was something in his eyes and the way he looked at you that was different. This wasn’t the same boy they had bullied all those years ago. This was somebody who, despit
e his madness and his meanness and his arseholery, had known that he’d always deserved better than what they’d dished out to him. This was someone that they didn’t know anymore. He was safe from them now.

  Mira

  There had been a time, long ago, when Sister Annunciata hadn’t been Sister Annunciata. She had been Mira Finkelstein and she had been happy, and the grumpy bitter woman who now existed belonged to another time and place called the future. The youngest from a well-heeled Jewish family of eight children she was as indulged as only the youngest can be. But fate always has a habit of rearing its ugly head when you least expect it, and fate paid an unexpected visit one warm summer’s day in the form of Frederick McFadden Esquire, the family lawyer. Unexpected only in that Frederick, being a lesser associate of the family law firm, was not usually privy to such excursions to the Finkelstein residence unaccompanied.

  Now, despite the twenty-year age difference, Frederick, a dashing debonair man-about-town, was the object of sixteen-year-old Mira’s desire and had been for some time. A situation that was not lost on the worldly Frederick who eyed off the young woman’s shapely breasts as she ushered him into her father’s office to wait. But daddy Finkelstein was inexplicably delayed that day with other business and mummy Finkelstein was off tending to some charity or other and so it was left to the sweet Mira to entertain the suave Frederick until the old man came home. And entertain him she did, only to have granny Finkelstein waltz in, alerted by the crashing of the desk lamp being accidentally kicked over, and discover them lustily indulging themselves on father Finkelstein’s massive leather-topped desk.

  After the yelling and screaming had died down and mummy Finkelstein’s tears had subsided Mira was bundled off to Great Aunt Ofra’s to live. It had been reputed that Great Aunt had been involved with the Gestapo during the war so it was with some trepidation that poor Mira packed her bags and accepted her fate. And it was during the three years that the once-defiant girl waited in vain for Frederick, who by then had run off with his secretary and was living in Hobart, that she decided to eliminate the human male factor from her life and save her energy instead for the divine.

  It hadn’t been a difficult decision for Mira to convert from Judaism to Catholicism. In fact, the decision to defect had been surprisingly easy. As far as she could tell there wasn’t much difference anyway. Both faiths were controlled by men who wore dresses and who had an aversion to homosexuals, but who loved a man called Jesus so much that they would die for him. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but she understood she was only a mere woman in the greater scheme of things and you didn’t protest too loudly to these men of the cloth who once had a habit of burning troublesome women at the stake. Yes, if institutionalised pyromania was considered to be the norm for these people then she’d best just keep her protesting mouth tightly shut.

  Working with physically challenged children at Saint Thomas More’s Special School for ten years had been punishment enough, Mira had rationalised, and so her move to the tropics and the mission was greeted with a rarely seen enthusiasm. It was also the perfect place to hide from the world. Mira was slowly consigned to the past and Sister Annunciata took over. She could hide inside her habit and go about her holy business until it was time to die. Then, no longer would she have to share the same planet with that scoundrel Frederick McFadden because there was no way he’d be going to heaven after what he’d done. The thought that she’d finally be rid of the arsehole and find some peace in the afterlife was the only thing that kept her going some days.

  And poor Sister Annunciata really had believed that her faith would grow with a bit of practice and that in time she would feel the same religious zeal that the other nuns did. But somehow this didn’t happen. God always seemed to be floating somewhere beyond her grasp no matter how hard she prayed. Ever since her conversion there had been niggling doubts in her mind about the veracity of the teachings and the gospels no matter how hard she tried to interpret their meanings and accept them as true. Noah’s Ark was a classic example and Sister always felt enormous sympathy for Sister de Pores who had to pass these fabrications on to the kids and act like she really believed in them. But no-one else could see this doubt as Sister Annunciata scowled and whinged her way through life. Her grumpiness provided the perfect foil as her youthful enthusiasm slowly turned into an all-consuming torpor and the years of sadness silently ate into every day of her unforgiving life.

  And on that particular day perhaps Sister Annunciata should have stayed in bed instead of going to Father Macredie’s office to discuss the contents of a bank account belonging to the dearly departed Brother Brian. And it wasn’t so much the dispute over the legacy Brother Brian had left to the Communist Party rather than the church that caused her to purse her lips and furrow her once smooth brow. It was the sight of Father’s Most Learned legal visitor.

  It took him a bit longer to recognise Sister Annunciata. His eyesight was failing a bit nowadays, and besides he had been busy admiring the deep amber hue of the Laphroaig his Most Generous had sent over for Father Macredie to share with him to take much notice of the nun who walked into the room. But Sister instantly recognised the lips that had kissed hers so many years ago in a frenzy of passion and the hands that had fondled her breasts so fervently. She closed her eyes and opened them again. But no, she hadn’t been dreaming. He was still there. She looked at the man who had caused her to bury her bitterness deep inside her own heart where it had slowly consumed her until there was nothing left but a cold hatred. She didn’t like being in the same room as this rotten piece of shit that now sat lounging in Father Macredie’s favourite winged-back chair, with a glass of whisky in his hand one bit.

  The years hadn’t been too kind to the corpulent Frederick whose fleshy red nose betrayed his love affair with the bottle. Womanising had been relegated to the past when his once-periodic bouts of brewer’s droop became an irksome feature of his life. Over the years he might have suffered a few pangs of guilt over poor Mira, but not many. Besides, the cheque that Mr Ibrahim Finkelstein had written to keep his mouth shut about the whole sordid business had been more than enough to persuade him to move on from the Jewish girl and indulge in a lifetime of excess.

  It had been a long and tedious meeting for Sister Annunciata and Frederick McFadden. Neither offered any resistance as Father Macredie adroitly put forth reason after reason as to why the church should have the money and not the Communist Party. Sister, still in something of a state of shock over seeing the face of her tormentor, had been rendered speechless. All she could do was blindly nod whenever Father paused on and looked expectantly in her direction. Frederick McFadden was no better. He silently urged the meeting to be over so he could follow his cowardly instincts and bolt to safer quarters. But Father, blind to their torture, merrily prattled on. As far as he was concerned Brother Brian had always been a bit strange. It was obvious that he wasn’t compos mentis when he had written the will that had been discovered in his belongings. Besides, the legacy was tainted, the money having been left to him by his great aunt Amelia who was quite an unusual gambler in the fact that she actually won more than she lost. But since there were no kin except for a few distant cousins from his mother’s side who probably didn’t go to mass and didn’t deserve the fortune anyway, there was nothing to it except to give the lot to the church and that was that.

  But it wasn’t over yet. It was only during the sumptuous feast prepared by Sister Jerome and her helpers that Frederick could finally bring himself to steal another glance at the once-beautiful Mira. She looked worn and lined now, although the nun’s habit certainly didn’t do any woman justice, especially the damned wimple. If he hadn’t been too young to settle down, she would have made a fine wife, he thought grudgingly. She had possessed two of the most important qualities that he admired in a woman: she had oodles of money; and, even though it had only been once, she was no slouch when it came to sex.

  And so it was a troubled Fred
erick McFadden who went to bed that night in the visitors’ room of the presbytery. But Frederick was very experienced at not thinking too deeply about things that troubled him and so he tried to push the image of Mira Finkelstein out of his head and allow other more acceptable images to filter back in their place. But that didn’t help, and nor did another cool shower. And after another bout of tossing and turning he got up and rummaged around in his overnight bag for the other bottle of whisky he’d brought along and the sleeping pills that his doctor had prescribed recently when Frederick had realised that the grog wasn’t working as well as it used to. But the silly thing hadn’t really thought too much about the fact that his poor old liver just couldn’t process the copious amounts of alcohol that he had been pumping into his body for the last fifty-odd years any more. And his heart was getting a wee bit tired of all the extra effort it had to go to, and maybe his body was trying to tell him that it was getting to the end of its tether and that he should make the most of his waking hours as he would soon be asleep for a very long time. But Frederick being Frederick didn’t think about that at all, and even though he may have felt a tinge of sadness for what had happened to the now middle-aged Mira, he pushed that away too. And after glugging down a few mouthfuls of whisky and several sleeping pills for good measure, he quietly drifted off to sleep forever.

  As Frederick McFadden unwittingly left this mortal coil, a short distance away in the convent Sister Annunciata climbed into bed without saying her prayers for the first time in as many years as she could remember. Looking at the ugly specimen of humanity called Frederick McFadden seated at the other end of the table and chewing on Sister Jerome’s roast lamb, she’d finally come to realise that both the God she had tried so hard to find and the man she had tried so hard to forget should in reality have been nothing to her. It was what they represented that had caused her so much pain.