At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [156]
“What is it?”
“Am I truly absolved?”
“Have you told all your sins?”
“I have. Save, it was, it was a soldier, Father, not a girl.”
“Will you forget about the soldier. Forget about the girl. Pray for them in all charity by all means. But most important pray for your own soul that is in peril. And keep clear of the pier. Even for fishing.”
The slide clicked closed. Jim breathed in and out. He sniffed, and passed his sleeve across his eyes. He stood up and held a while the handle of the door, before he turned it and came out. The smell in the chapel had not changed. This was not the odor of sanctity, only of candles doused. Had he confessed at all? Sacrilege on sacrilege: the phrase came back from the Dominican retreat. Even then he thought he might go back in the box, have one more try, but some person shoved past and took his place. He looked round the chapel, wondering had he been long. Were the people watching? He returned to the bench two rows from the altar, said his penance.
It glimmered upon him, over the days that followed, why the priest had not understood his sin. He had not understood—how could he?—for no sin had been named that covered his wickedness. What he had done was so sinful, so unspeakably so, of such aberrance, to such unnatural degree, that the Church, for all her far-seeing and deep-searching, her vision and penetration, had not thought to provide against its happening. It was an extraordinary thing that he should have found this chink: he, the son of a Glasthule huckster, of a quakebuttock, a quakebuttock himself, should in the majestic vault of Christendom a flaw have found. What had marked him for such villainy?
For the wickedness did not cease. Though he slept with his hands chained in his beads, nothing would bind him below, and often its throbbing woke him in the night. The cloudy shiny forms, which on his dreams attended, diffused in the shadows like ghosts themselves horrified. Or worse still, a pollution had wet his shirt. He would wash his shirt then, in the dark at the sink, and wear it clammy against his skin. He kept pebbles in his boots. If he walked anywhere and there were nettles, he was careful to pass his hand through the leaves. Not to be ostentatious, during the day he wore his beads as a bracelet, high up his right arm, under his sleeve. The crucifix drooped so he might finger it if needed.
He stopped eating, save bread, and drinking, save water. With the baby in the house all eyes were that way. It was a comfort to him for his mortifications might go unremarked. He pitied the infant whose birth he so had shamed. He dared not touch her. It was better after all she did not know him. The poor thing with no father, and now no uncle worth the name. Sacrilege on sacrilege: when he stood godfather to her.
One night Nancy came down for a drink of water from the sink. He had the Sacred Heart flame by his side and the light through the colored glass made her face blotched and blooded. “Still at it?” she asked. She sat down on the edge of his bed with her cup filled. He had to hide his rosaried hands under the covers.
“Is everything all right with you, Jim?” she asked. Oh sure everything was grand. Bobbing along nicely, thanks very much for asking but. He shifted his legs away from her under the covers. “Does she keep you awake above?” Not at all, sure he liked to hear the baby giving vent. “I suppose and they rag you at school?” Why would they rag him? “They wouldn’t be long looking for reasons.” He told her he paid no mind to coarse talk. “You’re fond of your niece though, aren’t you?” It shook him she should ask that, and he answered he was more