by John Kelly
Dickhead! somebody yells. But the red anorak just takes a wild look at the sky and wanders on, all traffic now completely stopped, warily watching the man and waiting for his next move. When he finally stumbles onto the opposite sidewalk and vanishes into the crowd Schroeder knows that there goes someone who won’t last the day. And Dublin gets going again. Cities are always full of unpleasantries. So many that they simply have to be ignored. If you don’t step over people you’ll never get where you’re going. America has known this for a very long time. And we’re no different here.
Schroeder still has half an hour to ready himself and he decides on College Green. If he can find a place which isn’t playing retro Austrian techno he’ll settle himself and rehearse his response to whatever confession Claude needs him to hear. And whatever it is, Schroeder tells himself, it will not become his problem. He angles towards Purcell’s and takes a seat at the bar to sip at a bowl of soup. But he can’t relax and soon he’s playing with the salt and pepper, clacking the wooden cellars against each other and all the time getting more and more uneasy. A thick Belgian beer goes down well enough – solid, treacly and strong – and with five minutes to spare he pays up and walks back into the chaos of College Green.
Some kind of ruction is happening at the main Trinity checkpoint. Voices are raised but everything ceases very suddenly when a shot is fired, presumably into the air. Probably some student late for an exam has just been too lippy with a corporal. Or perhaps some pap has tried to steal the soul of Princess King. Nobody hurt but gunshot even so. What a people we have become. So terminal now that we’re beyond even the salvage of poets. This is Ireland’s oldest university after all and there’s gunfire in the broad, blank middle of the day. It’s just as well Schroeder doesn’t work there any more. With so many soldiers around he’d probably be dead by now. These days, when he’s drunk he can draw far too much attention to himself and such public shows of emotion can have all sorts of consequences. The times demand, more than anything, that nobody ever makes a sudden move and barking at the wrong dog can get you arrested, sectioned or worse. All such flare-ups need to be firmly, as I like to put it, nipped in the buddleia.
Of course it was the drinking that lost him the job, although it was all done very politely under the cover of mass redundancies. Schroeder was by no means the biggest mess on the staff but his tutorials tended to attract too much comment and even complaint. Consistently attacking the very canon he was supposed to be teaching hardly seemed appropriate, and being a one-novel writer, and one failed novel writer at that, his remarks often seemed bitter and self-regarding. His superiors had their spies in situ and word got back on a daily basis. He was warned twice, then dismissed. A negative presence they said. Bad for student morale.
Anyway, he arrives at the hotel at three on the nose. A crawling dump this past twenty years, Redding’s still retains sad traces of when it was a much swankier joint, popular with actors and pop stars and always stuffed in the early evenings with young lawyers on the make. It’s a strange choice for Claude, although he probably imagines that it’s just Schroeder’s kind of place. As it happens, Schroeder hasn’t been here since it changed hands all those years ago and they started encouraging the soccer fans by putting TV screens in the bar.
There’s no such thing as a quiet room in Redding’s – it’s almost a boast in fact – but at this time of day, with the guests mostly unconscious, the place is empty but for a bartender who has one eye on Schroeder and the other on a screen where a poker game is being played out by virtual steamboat gamblers who don’t strike Schroeder as having very much to lose. There’s no sign of Claude and so Schroeder (taking a chance on the ice) orders a vodka on the rocks and sits in the corner with much on his mind and a clear view of the door.
Claude arrives fifteen minutes late, looking much the same as he always did, same red cheeks, dressed like some engineering student uncertain of any colour beyond grey. He’s wearing the same soft shoes he always wore in civilian life. Cream coloured. Standard-issue harmless. He might no longer be a priest but he’s still the essence of folk-mass dull – the whole ensemble indicating someone who has never heard of The Clash and wouldn’t like them even if he did. He walks towards Schroeder with uneasy speed, his hand already out and squeezing the air in front of him. He’s sweating heavily. Same mammy’s haircut now silvering at the sides.
– I’m very sorry I’m late, he says, there was a poor man in distress and I had to assist him.
– Wearing a red anorak, was he?
– How did you know?
Typical! Claude’s obsessive and insistent charity had always made Schroeder queasy and here again he finds his brain curling up at the very idea of it. Claude helping himself to the needy as ever. Claude of Assisi ladling soup, conversing with junkies, visiting sick people he doesn’t even know – all essential work experience on the CV of any aspiring priest. But because Schroeder has always regarded Claude’s priestly lark as no more than a giant sidestepping of life, he has always found these endless good works more than a little repellent. The nightly excursions with the steaming saucepans no more than an excuse not to deal with his own contemporaries – man, woman or beast – especially woman or beast.
– Poor man. Indeed. In a very bad way.
Claude perches on the edge of the seat, his back straight and his hands clasped in his lap like some principal of a girls’ school. Again, here is a signal that he’s not like the other boys. Not for him any interest in cool posturings or the boorish sexual energies of men with their instinctive sense of shape and relaxation. I am utterly sexless, he is saying on repeat. I am quite beyond it. My dear people, I don’t live in your world. I am merely here to minister to it. Have some warm soup and let me give you my coat. I don’t need it anyway. I have another one and it too is grey and cheap and out of date. Nobody will ever admire you in a garment like this, but that’s not what life’s about, my poor impoverished son. True happiness is only to be found in blah, blah, blah. Drink up, there’s a good fellow. It’ll do you good. God Bless. God Willing. God Spares Us.
– An unfortunate man, he says. I suspect he had been hit by a car. Didn’t speak English. Didn’t seem to know where he lived. Didn’t seem to know who he was or even where he was. Anything. He was very lost, the poor man.
Only just arrived in Dublin and Claude is already at the old schtick. The crazy in the red anorak. In a city of millions Claude zooms in on the anorak man, the same man who for Schroeder had provided little more than a sad diversion. And wouldn’t you just know that Claude the Good would be the one to risk knife and syringe to help him out? Sickening. The inevitability of it. The consistency of his apparently selfless ways. And of course the shame he likes to heap on those who consistently fail to act.
– Thank you very much for meeting me, he says. It has been so long. You look well.
And Schroeder is thinking to himself, get it over with, Claude. Just tell me what’s on your mind. Confess it all. Do your worst and let me go again. Release me back into the wild. Back to my hedonistic disaster of a life. Shallow and empty, yes, but at least it’s shot through with the actual pleasures and pains of this Earth. Which is, after all, even if you refuse to accept it, the actual place where we all live and die.
– So Claude, what can I do for you?
Claude holds his knees. Lines web out from his eyes. He seems exhausted. Spent. Pig-eyed. Eyebrows brittle as twigs.
I have imagined this conversation many times, he says. So let me see. Perhaps I should begin with when I left Meath and went to Peru. I said that I wanted to make a difference and you said, if you remember, that I might as well because I had made no difference in Meath. Except of course you used a profanity. Well I have to say that wounded me very much. It hurt me for my friend to say such a thing.
Schroeder nods.
– OK. I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have said it. I didn’t mean anything by it.
– Well, I forgive you.
– Anythin
g else?
– You have always thought little of me. And I know that you still do. I’m not like you. You think I’m an inferior man.
– Claude, I never said that.
– Well, in any case, perhaps I’m more of a man than you think. The reason I left the priesthood is because I fell in love.
– Well, that’s your business, Claude. Nothing to do with me.
– I failed in my duty as a priest. My order is still a celibate one and when love entered the room it was my duty to flee and I didn’t. I stayed there in love’s ambience. And the young lady in question, she fell in love with me too. We met and we talked and we met again and soon I was deeply in love with her and I had crossed into a place forbidden to me. I had fallen in love with her and she had fallen in love with me. What do you make of that for a turn-up for the books?
Schroeder shifts in his seat. The caring bog-soft voice that only priests can perfect is making him seasick. Love’s ambience, wherever he got that from.
– Well that’s all great, Schroeder says. Congratulations.
But then Claude suddenly grips the underside of his seat, turning instantly snappy and hard.
– No congratulation! None! I let her down. I withdrew from the love. Finally I did flee, in accordance with my vows, and I hurt her very badly. She was distraught and she plunged into a terrible grief. I might have helped her but, as I was the cause of it, I had to keep away.
– Yes of course.
– She had given me her heart. As they say. And I tried to hand it back as gently as I could but there is no good way to do such a thing. It’s terrible. It makes you want to die. A terrible thing to wish for.
– These things happen.
Two hookers take a seat at the bar. They’re smiling like weasels and Schroeder doesn’t want to be there when they make their offer.
– I’ll have to head soon, Claude. Would you like a quick drink or something?
– Tea please.
– I don’t think they could manage drinkable tea in here. You want juice of some kind. Or a soda?
Claude shakes his head as if trying to loose some obstruction in his throat.
– Monica. A primary school teacher. She never recovered. Her family wrote to me. Her brother actually threatened me with physical violence. But there was nothing I could do for her. As a man or as a priest there was nothing I could do but remove myself yet further.
– That’s the way it goes, Claude. Water perhaps?
Claude isn’t listening.
– Some time later I left the priesthood. If I could do nothing for poor Monica I would do something for the world in which we both lived. There was much prayer and meditation. Do you forgive me? God has forgiven me but do you? Do you forgive me my sin?
Schroeder rolls the vodka around in his mouth and swallows hard.
– I’m not sure what your sin is exactly.
– Do you forgive me?
– For what?
– I need you to absolve me.
– You don’t need me to absolve you. This is entirely your business. This has nothing to do with me whatsoever.
Claude’s eyes narrow and Schroeder recognises that words are needed urgently. A formula however fraudulent is required. He must give Claude what he needs.
– Yes. Of course I forgive you. For all of it.
And Claude smiles.
– Really? You do?
– Yes. Of course. Ego te absolvo and all that.
Claude assumes a lopsided, lemon juice expression.
– I’m glad. So glad. So happy about that. Thank you. A friend’s forgiveness. It must surely be the greatest.
– Good.
– You really forgive me?
– Yes. I really forgive you.
– Fantastic.
– Well there it is.
Claude claps his hands.
– Do you remember that project we did? At school. The little egret and the shelduck?
The two girls make their move. The more appealing of the two does all the talking while the other one chews her thumb.
– You guys want company?
– No thanks, says Schroeder. We’re just having a private meeting.
– You sure about that?
– Quite sure.
– What about your friend?
Claude is staring hard at his own left shoulder.
– He’s OK, Schroeder says. But thanks anyway.
– My friend will blow him for twenty.
– No. Really. Thank you. He’s quite alright.
– He doesn’t look it.
– Thanks again but no thanks.
– Well if you change your mind …
The girls return to their perches and Schroeder tries to break the jangly spell they have left behind. He orders another drink.
– So how have you been otherwise?
– I had a little setback there. A scare. But everything is fine.
– Good.
– I have no fear of anything now. Not a thing.
Schroeder looks at Claude and wonders how he can be afraid of nothing when he himself is afraid of even the word scare. All those words terrify him. Bowel. Prostate. Oesophageal. Testicular, in particular, might, in other circumstances, be quite a beautiful word like funicular or crepuscular, but prostate is altogether ugly like apostate or prostrate. It reeks of evil, bad news and Holy Orders.
– But you’re OK now?
– Right as rain.
– Good.
It was Canon Boran who first explained to the class how a young man might be ordained a priest, demonstrating the procedure by lying on the floor between the desks just as the postulant would prostrate himself on the day – lying there in a gesture of submission. Prostrating oneself. It sounded obscene, especially in front of a bishop, cancerous black spots spreading for all to see on the soles of your shoes as you press your innocent nose to the marble.
Schroeder had been cruel about Claude’s ordination because, to him, it was all a big joke. Some kind of grim launch as a bottle of holy water was smashed against the side of Claude’s empty head and he was shoved off to his parish in Meath. With Schroeder it was always the bitter word because he could never forgive Claude his weakness. Forgive him that smile on his face in the toilets of St. Gavin’s. And now he can’t forgive him his sins, such as they are, even if he wanted to. And in any case, unlike with Claude, the forgiveness of sins has never been a personal boast.
– And you have no fear of anything?
– Not a thing.
– Nothing at all?
– No.
Claude presses his hands together as if he’s about to consecrate the table between them. Melchisedech Claude with his powers to say Mass, forgive sins, bless, preach and sanctify – all subject to the authority of a bishop who looked like Peter Lorre and to whom he promised canonical obedience on the flat of his face. Bishop Lorre beaming as if conducting the very power of Heaven through the point of his mitre and out through the porcelain tips of his fingernails.
– And what are you afraid of? he asks.
Schroeder is not getting into any of this. Not with Claude. He’s not about to tell Claude that sometimes it’s as if his very blood is on the boil and that the ingredients which are a-bubble within him, apart from the chemical components of old alcohol and drugs, are the very cells of fear itself. He feels them travel deep inside him, moving on the high-speed lines of his unknowable circulatory system, attacking him by the second, sometimes with tiny anxieties, sometimes with actual terror. No. Not with Claude. This is much too serious for that.
– I’m not here for counselling, Claude. You wanted to see me, remember.
– I’ve met a lot of damaged men.
– I’m not fucking damaged!
Claude blinks and inhales sharply. Schroeder downs the vodka and rattles the shrinking beads of ice in the glass.
– It was good to see you again Claude. I hope things work out.
– So am I forgiven?
– Yes! Yes! Forgiven. Absolutely.
– Good. All is forgiven.
– OK then.
– I have a job now. A most interesting job.
– Good.
Claude grabs his hand.
– I’m about God’s business.
Schroeder pictures Paddy Viera and wrings his hand loose again.
– You must know this. You must know what I’m doing. God wants me to continue to preach his Word.
– That’s all good, Claude. Now I really have to go. Sorry.
– This is very important.
– Important to you maybe but to be perfectly honest, Claude … Claude jumps to his feet and, pointing at the ceiling, he declares, But this involves God!
The bartender cocks his head. The hookers cross their legs again.
– Sit down, Claude, for fucksake and keep your voice down.
Claude sits down and leans in close.
– I’m an evangelist now. God has a purpose for me. He wants me to make contact with the powerful men and women of this world and bring them towards the path of His love. I’m an old-fashioned evangelist. I write letters. I write epistles. I write to all the great leaders of the world.
– That’s great Claude. That’ll keep you busy.
– Every day. Without fail. I write my letters.
– I don’t suppose you get many answers?
– You’d be surprised. On my wall I have many photographs which have been sent in reply. Some are signed. Best wishes, etc. In the person’s own actual handwriting. His Holiness Pope Michael sent a picture of the Holy Family.
– It must have been a slow day in the Holy See.
– I’m like an advisor. That’s my job. A spiritual advisor of course. I know nothing about economics or defence. Can you imagine? I’d have the place ruined.