by Tom Keneally
The man was not clear-headed enough, or even strong enough, to say much. His protests were many, but they came in murmurs. One day two ragged soldiers with slouch hats and lean bellies came to Popondetta to visit him, and seemed depressed by what they saw. As Darragh changed a saline and sulfa bag, one of them said, ‘Look after him as well as you can, mate. He’s the bloody best platoon leader we ever saw.’
‘Complete bloody madman,’ said the other soldier with approval of the patient. ‘In the right way, I mean.’
One night a brief remission occurred, a phase of calm and clarity, or what resembled it. The lieutenant grabbed Darragh’s hand when he came with the thermometer, and declared, ‘Father …’
Darragh said, ‘I’m just a medical orderly, son.’
But the lieutenant said, ‘Father.’
‘I can recite the Act of Contrition for you,’ said Darragh.
‘The rites,’ said the young man. ‘Please. The rites.’
Though all fluid was voided from the young officer’s body, by way of hectic sweats, as soon as it entered his system, there were somehow compelling tears on his cheeks. Where did they come from? They were summoned by profound contrition, by urgency on a ferocious scale.
Darragh had been suspended, by archbishop’s decree and by becoming a soldier, from giving absolution. He was far removed from the holy oils. Some chaplain or other down towards Gona would have them, but would take a greater time to get here than the brother who had disgraced his order but honoured his uniform had left. Yet the urgency and distress in the man were compelling.
The distant cautionary stories recurred in his imagination. The drunken renegade priest who consecrated the contents of a bakery shop. Who anointed the prostitute, in ironic charity, with butter.
And yet, Christ, bending and writing in the dust as they taunted Him with the woman taken in adultery. Christ who sanctified the dust with His Aramaic hand. Who made a sacrament out of banal things.
In any case, Darragh absolved the young officer, and for lack of chrism, and depending on the spaciousness of Christ, got some lard from the cookhouse and anointed all the lieutenant’s organs of sin behind the pulled mosquito nets of a night-time military hospital.
Men perished suddenly of such diseases. You visited once, and there was some way to go. You visited them an hour later and some sort of quiet paroxysm had run through them and left them vacant. It proved to be the case now. As he cleansed the body, he thought of the lard and wondered, how can I get back to what I was from here? Later, he would need to go to Shit Hill, and look out in the clear dawn for signs and indications.