At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [154]
Then his brother came home on his embarkation leave. He spoke about Nancy. He spoke about—fetching off, he called it. Jim had never encountered the expression and for a moment he couldn’t think why his blood was rising. Then it hit him what his brother meant. It was worse, far worse, than confession. He felt his cheeks like coals.
“Or have you given that up for Lent?” said his brother.
“Shut up, you blackguard,” Jim told him.
“Ah, shut up yourself, young ’un. Did you think I never catched on what kept you in the privy? I only wanted to say it’s all right, and don’t mind what they says. There isn’t much the army don’t learn you. ’Tis going without will drive you doolally.”
“It’s a sin.”
“Suit yourself. It does no harm. Better with a girl is all.”
Whatever about its sinfulness and harmfulness, this last was transpicuously absurd. Jim couldn’t imagine doing it if a dog was in the room, let alone a girl. But living with a thing so long and so intimately could not but blunt the fear of its consequence. Besides, he was only half so wicked as he might be. His hand moved in actual sin, but his mind dwelt far away, far away from the efficacious sins of desire, perhaps on the sea, or on swimming there, or rocking amiably on the Forty Foot raft.
Sophistry! Cruel deluded casuistry! The Crock’s Garden had been the end of that. He did not remember coming home, only lying in the dark later, in his settle-bed on his own. Even then he was not sufficiently steeped in the mire, but his hand must go below to the throb that was there, and moment by moment, touch by touch, he relived the scene, delighting in every strangeness, and the queer freedom he had felt in his submission, the relishing of his exposure, his bending to the seat and willing his vulnerableness, even of the pain savoring the memory, and hearing still the grunts of pleasure and his own compliant moans. And in his mind’s touch when he reached behind, it was not a soldier’s khaki he found, but a blue-gone shiny trousers.
A holy draught had come in then under the window to shake the holy Sacred Heart flame. And in that flicker he saw it, the fiend that was his soul. His monstrous heart, his vicious flesh, nothing escaped that searing flash. Flickered the flame like the kitchen walls had gaped and before him blazed the fires of hell, to which his bed was inching, dragging its length along, ever and downward, to tip him finally in the pit of damnation.
He leapt from the bed, giddy in flight, like he’d scut off a moving carriage. He found his Rosary beads. Quickly he prayed. So abandoned was he, the words would not come. He wound the beads round his hands. Let his beads now be the chains that bound him. Hindered in this way he dressed: he could not bear to be unclothed. He dug his fingernails into his palms. All night he prayed. On his knees by his bed, his elbows propped on the mattress, eyes held by the holy flame, smarting, stinging, watering, closing. And when they closed, his elbows slipped, shocking him awake, for he felt the bed itself had lurched. He had not thought a night could endure so long. While above strange noises he heard, a baby crying, a mother’s voice, the boards creaking with untimely passage.
Next day was Sunday: there were no confessions to be had. Three Masses he heard, but without his receiving, there could be no solace. He thought to try St. Michael’s in Kingstown. It was St. Stephen’s day. He had never known the town so full with soldiers. He feared to look them in the face, yet hunted their profiles, as foundlings are said to, seeking their parents, though it was stray glances he sought, and feared to find them, cringing to think that any might know him. There were no confessions at St. Michael’s of course. He thought to stop a priest in the street. Father, I have sinned. But he dared not speak in the broad day. Another night he passed without sleep. The Monday, confessions were not till ten. He walked the streets while the shutters came down from the shops and the