At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [56]
Confess a sin, is it possible, before committed? Would it be a true confession, anyway, in the knowledge you intended to trespass later? What contrition would it involve, perfect or imperfect? And if imperfect, not contrition at all but merely attrition. What absolution could be given and what satisfaction performed for a sin not of commission, not of omission, but of intention only?
He yawned through these abstract considerations, enjoying very slightly the assonance of the words. It was ridiculous to suppose he might skip Mass tomorrow. It was ridiculous to suppose he might learn the crawl.
“Mr. Mack?”
“Yes, Brother?”
“Do we detain you?”
“No, Brother.”
“The phrase fidus Achates. You were asked to decline it.”
Effortlessly he did so. But he did not look at the brother. And he sat down afterwards before being told.
“Achates,” said the brother. “The friend of Aeneas. Virgil has given him the epithet fidus and the phrase has come down to us as the paradigm of friendship. A bosom companion, one might say. A friend of one’s heart even. Animae dimidium meae, says Horace of Virgil, meaning the half of his soul. Such a companion would lead not his friend astray. Teach not his friend the vulgar ways of the mob. He would not put corner-boy notions in the mouth of his socalled pal.”
The brother was watching him, but Jim would not look back. This was a jaw, a pi directed at him. It was mean of the brother to do this before the class. He had not been coarse. It was the brother who had used a coarse expression, not he. “Such friendships are rare, and it behooves us to guard against their counterfeit, which is a cheap and tawdry lie.”
Then somebody was asking a question and Brother Polycarp answered, “Where’s your Latin, boy? Can’t you work it out for yourself? Super-scilious. What does super mean?”
“Above, brother.”
“Scio, scire, scivi, scitum?”
“To know.”
“Put it together. Super-scire.”
“To know above?”
“To think oneself above the ordinary. To be insolent to one’s betters. In common parlance, to have side.”
The faces that turned were crinkled with glee. But Jim didn’t mind that. His eyebrows rose and he met the brother’s stare determined he would not flinch. What a fool the brother had made of himself. What an ignorant fool he was.
The bells came, and suddenly they were all standing and nodding their heads and signing the cross on bending knees.
“Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae.”
“Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.”
In his mind the bells were no longer the Angelus, but the tocsin calling for Mass. By the chapel wall he pauses where the lane leads astray, and all the people throng him by, and the sky is clear after the Saturday rains, and the pavement glistens under the sun. The lane leads to the sea, the beckoning, sparkling, reckless sea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jim stalled in the giddy wind of the Point. “Get a move on,” called Doyler. “Slow as a wet week, so y’are.”
Jim laughed out loud. Then he plunged down the steps into the gentlemen’s bathing-place. He certainly did feel giddy. They weren’t half-way undressed and he was laughing again and saying, “I suppose they insist on you wearing some manner of a costume here?”
“What’s that?” said Doyler.
“This manner of a place, there’d be rules here and regulations. Regarding what you might wear and all manner of a thing.”
“Are you right there?”
“Don’t you feel it a bit public?”
“You’ve took a right rare color.”
“Bit public all the same, wouldn’t you say?”
Doyler skitted and laughed. Jim’s towel had unrolled, showing his father’s cut-down drawers that Jim wore at the baths. “Put them away,” said Doyler, “and give us here your hand.”
“My hand?”
He took Jim’s hand and rubbed it between his palms. “Stay easy, old chap. There’s only the both of us. Didn’t I tell you we’d have the place to ourself?”
Jim nodded.
Doyler’s clothes dropped effortlessly in their pile. “Weren’t you never