Aelred's Sin

by Lawrence Scott

  ‘Oh,’ Father Justin glanced at Aelred as if to say, what on earth are you doing here at this time, but directed what he said to Benedict. ‘I was just wanting to talk to you, Benedict, about Edward. I see he’s having trouble getting to Prime on time.’ Aelred slipped away and left the library for his cell. He could feel Father Justin’s disapproval by his look. Aelred felt that he should have continued looking at the library books. He felt that his slipping away was an admittance of guilt. He felt naughty. What had Father Justin realised? He expected that Father Justin would follow this up with a request for a talk. He might have seen them kissing and holding hands.

  It was a blue May. It was warm. Aelred spent the siesta back at the cemetery, on the same bench where he had spoken to Basil during the gravedigging. He had brought with him his De Spirituali Amicitia, and a book of Aelred of Rievaulx’s letters. He felt torn between the goodness that Basil had made him feel the night before coupled with the sense that he was now embarked on some deep adventure with Benedict, and conflicting feelings, sexual and spiritual, to go further with Benedict. These feelings thronged his mind with images that distracted his reading. As in a dream, the most unusual connections were made. It was like a strong force independent of his feelings for Benedict.

  Aelred read again where Aelred of Rievaulx wrote to his sister:

  ‘Remember if you like, that filthiness of mine for which you so often pitied and corrected me, the girl the boy, the woman the man. Recall now, as I said, my rottenness when a cloud of lust was emitted from my slimy concupiscence of flesh and from the gushing up of puberty, and there was no one to snatch me away and save me.’

  It was that hot Good Friday afternoon when he accompanied his mother to the Good Friday Mass of the pre-sanctified. They had to wait in the hot three-o’clock-in-the-afternoon sun on the gravel road for a taxi into the town, as there was no Mass in the village church.

  Holy Week had pulled a black curtain over his mind. There were purple shrouds over the statues and crucifixes. Since Palm Sunday, thoughts of the impending crucifixion of Jesus accompanied his play, his mealtimes and his inability to fall asleep. The family rosary was always the Five Sorrowful Mysteries, when he would have to meditate upon the agony in the garden, the scourging, St Peter’s betrayal, and Jesus being spat upon, crowned with thorns, having his face wiped by Veronica and his arms and legs nailed to the cross, pierced with a lance, being raised on high, crying out of severe thirst, being taken down by Nicodemus. This was a passion. He had to meditate on the fate of the two thieves who had been crucified with Jesus: the one who had asked for forgiveness and who had been promised heaven - ‘This day thou shall be with me in paradise.’ The other thief had jeered, and challenged Jesus that if he were the Son of God he could free himself and them. He would go to hell. All during Holy Week, he had had to meditate on the last seven words of Christ from the cross, and the profound loneliness of Jesus, who had felt abandoned by his father.

  ‘I thirst.’

  Now, on the gravel road in the hot afternoon sun, with the taxi not turning up, he panicked that they would not get to church on time for him to be able to go to confession. He and Ted had jocked together. The new sensation had entered their play, their boyhood love. They had slipped from play, climbing trees behind the house, eating pomme aracs, stripping off and bathing in the ravine. School had broken up for the Easter holidays. They dived. Then, scrambling up the muddy bank, they slipped into the pool. Their naked bodies fought in the water, in the mud, where their bodies first held, then slipped from each other, and became a pleasure they did not resist, till they fell back into the water released, pleasure satiated.

  ‘It is accomplished.’

  Ted had gone back home. J.M. had jocked on his own the next day after lunch, knowing that it was Good Friday, knowing that that act put nails into the hands of Jesus and crowned him with thorns. He knew that his sin was what made Jesus suffer. He was responsible for the crucifixion. He had been taught that the Jews had only been agents of history a long time ago, but Jesus, with sins like his, was continually being crucified. ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’

  Weighed down by the complications of this theology of guilt and remorse, it had not occurred to him how retrospectively he could be held personally responsible.

  ‘Mother, behold thy son. Son, behold thy mother.’

  He and his mother had arrived late for the liturgy and there was no confession. He kept pondering whether a firm act of contrition would do, to cleanse him of his sin and so allow him to go to communion; or whether to take that chance with fate, and be damned even more for a double mortal sin that would condemn him to hell fire in a most dangerous and dire way. All this on Good Friday, the day of the Lord’s death!

  Father Gerard mounted the pulpit for the sermon. In the midst of lurid descriptions of sins and the suffering they caused Jesus, he came to speak of the dreadful betrayal of Judas, who had sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver; then he had gone out and hung himself. The church was stifling hot, smelling of cheap scent and the talcum powder of the women parishioners, and the mothballs of the men in their Sunday-best black suits. He was sweating through the back of his shirt and the sweat was running down the sides of his cheeks, and his hands were all clammy as he kept weighing up the state of his soul. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

  Then Father Gerard compared the betrayal of Judas to anyone who would come up to the communion table and who knew that they were in a state of mortal sin, and so, like Judas, would be damned for all eternity to the fires of hell.

  He was ashamed. He did not know where to put his eyes. He could not pray. He felt like a criminal in the dock, being condemned by the judge. He was sure that Father Gerard knew the state of his soul, because he had confessed the sin of impurity to him on many occasions before and received the penance of one decade of the rosary. But this time, on Good Friday, it was worse, much worse, and he was sure he was looking at him and speaking to him personally, to warn him not to contemplate any idea of approaching the communion rails. But even in the midst of his fear, the moment in the ravine came back to excite him, so that he moved between that excitement and guilt. Pleasure and sin: they lived side by side. He could not bear it any longer, and before he fainted, he got up in the mêlée of those approaching the communion rails and left the church. ‘Sweet Sacrament Divine …’ The congregation wailed. He ran out on to the promenade and sat down on a bench, letting the cool breeze blow over him. He was drenched with fear and sweat.

  He would have to confess before Easter Sunday. But at least he had been rescued from committing a second mortal sin. He just had his jocking and sin with Ted to be sorry about, not the betrayal which was like that of Judas.

  ‘Father into they hands I commend my spirit.’

  Aelred dipped back into his reading.

  ‘The chain of my worst habit bound me: the love of my blood overcame me, the bonds of social grace restricted me and especially the knot of a certain friendship, delightful to me above all the delights of my life. The gracious bond of friendship pleased me, but always I was afraid of my offence, and I was sure that it would be broken off at some time in the future. I thought about the joy with which it had begun, and I awaited what would follow, and I would foresee the end.’

  Benedict’s hands were in his hands, his lips on his lips, as he read on:

  ‘I realised that its beginning was reprehensible, the middle state offensive and the end would inevitably be damnation. The death I awaited terrified me because it was certain that punishment would await such a soul after death. And men said, looking at my circumstances, but not knowing what was going on within me, ‘Isn’t he doing well! Isn’t he, though!’

  Aelred stared at Sebastian’s grave.

  St Aelred’s sin, those vices? Could they be just what Aelred now was feeling? Were they the sins he had to confess and which he had committed with Ted? How could he have done so much, known so much, yet be still so innocent
and unknowing, be so guilty? But guilt did not enter how he felt for Benedict. Guilt entered about how he felt for Edward. He kept smelling the smell of his clothes and seeing him in his tight black shorts climbing the rock face. There were things which he wanted to do with Edward which he did not want to do with Benedict. They were now crowding his mind. He kept thinking of things in this way, this way of not actually naming what he wanted to do. It seemed now as if he had tasted something sweet with Ted and then Ted had been taken way from him in death as a punishment for that sweet thing, which was a sin. Father Basil said it was sweet, but not this kind of sweet.

  He wanted to know of that. He wanted to break through the form of medieval hagiography that hid what he really wanted to know, to move from the implicit and the metaphorical into the explicit and literal. He needed the details, to know that his desires had some precedent. He had not found it elsewhere. Aelred’s sanctity was clearly described, but he wanted Aelred’s sin to be described. He wanted to know what kisses were like for him, what touch felt like, where he touched. He did. He wanted to hear his voice saying, touch me where it is forbidden, where the ancients have put up a gate. He wanted to know what he did. He wanted it described: what fantasies were unleashed in his mind when he looked at a boy, at a young man, at Simon, Ivo, Bernard. Aelred of Rievaulx felt these things, did these things. They were recorded for all time. Buried in metaphors. Aelred read between the lines with his own desire as guide. In time, he came to know that the nature of a twelfth-century boy and the nature of a twentieth-century boy were essentially the same.

  From across the cemetery in the eaves of the chapel Aelred heard and saw the swallows darting in and out. They must have a nest below the eave, inside the roof, he thought, as he had first seen them in the barn on the farm. ‘They’ve flown all the way back from Africa. They summer here, leaving us in the winter,’ Brother Theodore had told him one evening after milking. All the way back from Africa. They swooped and arced and then Aelred heard a voice, another young boy’s voice: Jordan’s voice.

  I is eleven years old when they tear me from my village and from my twin brother. I lose half of myself. They flog me for not eating their nasty food. I see a white seaman flogged and then they throw him into the waves. I see black bodies like meat fling into the swelling waters. Red water. Blue water.

  I is the property of a Mr Newton then. I belong with his other chattels. He has me on a list in a ledger.

  On the coast they sell me for two yards of tartan. Then I hear rattling chains and the crack of whips. They take me by the hand, like a pet. Some of them nice. Then like a mangey dog, some nasty. They strike me. They call me little nigger. Other words sting me like cayenne. I get licks. A good flogging is what I deserve, say Mr Newton. He pinch me. Night was like day, all waking. And the sea, groaning beneath.

  There is a preacher man on the ship. He does fling words about. I baptise you, he say, throwing water over my head, Jordan.

  How I come to this house? It was in Antigua that Mr Newton sell me to Master Walter Dewey. I nearly get take by another who run into the arena and grab me, and want me for hardly any price at all because I is small. He haggle with Mr Newton and Master Walter Dewey. I remember well the morning he inspecting me like some cattle he want to buy. Some other man bring me from the port. My lips swell, my arms and legs ache.

  I homesick for my village.

  Then the time come that they have to lay the bit on my tongue. They muzzle my mouth. I starve. I want to tell the others I meet there about the voyage. But is the boot on the back, whip, rope, cow-skin. Salt on the lips, sun like fire, blisters.

  Then there is the time when I dive beneath the sea for rocks for my master’s wall in Antigua, for the house at Ashtown. That is the time when the dogs pursue me. One hound get me by the ankle and the master cry off, off. Though I sure he set it on me. Is the same hound lick my wounds, the same hound which look up obediently to the tall master.

  Is here in Ashton Park I tell them the story of where I come from and the voyage I make. She say, suck your thumb and sleep. That woman is called Miss Amy from Somerset, and she nice nice. My thumb crack.

  The Lodge:

  3 November 1984

  I take up my pen. I put down my pen. I make my book for him. In memoriam? Yesterday was All Souls’, the day before, All Saints’. Is that it? Is this what it’s come to?

  I see now that my story is of that first year. Lovers in May. That’s what it is, really. I feel happy that he had this falling in love. Yes, there was the Ted relationship, but that was so fraught. This is fraught too, but there’s something like falling in love here, like me falling in love with Annette - what we all know about falling in love. We often used to talk among ourselves at home about what happened to sexual feelings among nuns and priests. It didn’t seem possible that everything could be as neatly dealt with as the official descriptions indicated. The vow of chastity couldn’t keep it all under wraps. Not that we wanted to think about all that, I know.

  Benedict talked in his letter about the unreliability of the journal. I must say that the first time I read it I was really taken aback. In the light of everything that subsequently took place I saw it as the slippery slope; not surprising really, given what then happened. That is what I first thought. But now I’m seeing it differently. Yes, there are Joe and Miriam and how they talk about things, but it’s also me: I find myself getting angry on his behalf, wanting him to have the right to his life.

  I feel that when Benedict writes he is expressing a shyness, or embarrassment, understandably, at seeing himself represented. He would’ve been afraid of his superiors reading the entries. He must’ve felt acutely embarrassed about me revealing that I had access to them. He must’ve wanted to defend himself. I understand that. How much of the journals does he know? When would he have read them? He may have done at the time of the breakdown. He may even have thought of getting them out of the reach of the novice master or the Abbot. There are large absences at the time of the breakdown, torn out pages even. I don’t expect Aelred wrote much then. There is what he called ‘the Night of the Rain’.

  So extraordinary that Benedict should die at this time. I haven’t quite got to the bottom of that. Too much of a coincidence.

  In my reconstruction I attempt chronology, but in here, at the end of the day, it is all fragments, dust, residue, bits I’d rather not be reminded about.

  Another Ted fragment surfaced in my readings today, retold on its own, out of context. Not sure what prompted it. Strange to have it told when I can judge it against my own experience.

  The study hall: it was some nights after the refectory incident. Ted was the prefect in charge. He began the prayers before study: ‘Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful …’ We were made to pray for wisdom. Then as we sat down, the banging of desks. A note was being passed from desk to desk, and boys scribbled additions. It said: ‘MEET THE BULLERS BEHIND THE LAVATORIES TONIGHT. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO TO THEM?’ It was to the question that boys were scribbling their answers. I was in such a hurry to write my addition, so as not to seem to not be doing what the others did. I scribbled, ‘KISS THEM!’ Even then I had felt the irony of my words, I think. Not sure what I was saying. It was a tender word next to ‘KICK, HIT, SMASH, CUT OFF THEIR PRICKS, FUCK THEIR ARSE HOLES WITH A KNIFE, KILL THE BULLERS.’

  Then it started at the back with the seniors. Their heads inside their desks and chanting, BULLER MAN, BULLER MAN, BULLER MAN. J.M. was struggling with the prayer. I stuck my head under my desk and shouted and banged. Ted walked out. Then I saw J.M. follow him out. There was an uproar, till Father Julius came in and restored order.

  I have so many mixed feelings: shame and anger and sadness. I couldn’t go out. I wanted to run out.

  On my way to the dormitory, a boy kicked me. Two boys held my head between their legs while others kicked me repeatedly. Let’s put his head in the lavatory bowl. Your brother stinks.

  My words and actions hadn’t redeemed me. My bet
rayal had not paid off. Then I heard them planning. Something else was afoot.

  Phrases plait themselves through time; Aelred of Rievaulx’s: ‘cleanse the leper, carnal darkness’.

  The Abbot mentioned at coffee in the parlour after lunch that he would like to talk to me. I’m going to try to stay a little longer than I originally planned, despite a call from Krishna that he really needed me back and that he had to return full time to university. I begged him to stay on. They were in the middle of Petit Careme and the weather in the cocoa hills was lovely. I can hear the river. Sometimes I can’t combine the me of there and what I’m doing here. I write to Chantal, but I don’t tell her what I’ve found. It ’ll take a long time to go through all this with the rest of the family.

  I’ve asked to do some manual work. I need to get away from my desk. Sometimes, I feel I can’t go on: ravelling, unravelling, ravelling up again. I scratch and find his story written beneath mine. At last, our lives blend. Was he writing his story for himself, or for me? And me, am I writing for him or for myself? I’ll never get his forgiveness, but hopefully, because words were important to him, this will make a difference.

  The swallows have left the barn for Africa. That I should read and write that stuff! It shows what’s happening to me. I’ll be like one of those professors at UWI.

  Where history will lead you, eh, man? What a voyage!

  Krishna say, I go have a nice dalpouri for you when you reach back. He looking after the mango trees in the back. Good.

  Pink anthuriums, blue skies, yellow keskidees perched with their questions on the electric wire. Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? I miss home.

  Stolen Time

  My beloved thrust his hand

  through the hole in the door;

  I trembled to the core of my being…