Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [434]
Could she talk with the father? She was afraid to, and he was a man. The idea of telling them made her shudder, and the very thought of it made her feel muddy. Tell them of such a beautiful, intimate thing, so that they could scorn her, call her names, blame her, make it all dirty when it was so clean. She couldn’t do it. But could she sit here forever? If only the telephone would ring, if only someone would come, if only Mrs. Lonigan would be called away. The woman looked to Catherine more and more like a witch.
“The priest is coming. I had better prepare things for him,” Mrs. Lonigan said, suddenly arising.
“May I help?” Catherine asked.
“I can do it myself, thank you,” Mrs. Lonigan said, curtly shaking her head.
VI
Weakness and lassitude flowed through Studs. He fixed his half-opened eyes on a burning candle which seemed to be high above him on a dresser. A tall, dark priest entered the room, and Studs saw him with wavering sight, heard him speak in a strange muttering which he could not understand.
“Pax huic domui.”
When he wanted to sleep, why didn’t they let him? Only to sleep, to close his eyes and sleep and sleep, and forget everything until he was rested and strong again, forget the parched dryness of his mouth, the feeling that there was something coated and dirty on his tongue, the aches that seemed to worm themselves through his bones, all this. His eyes closed, and he wanted to sleep, and thought what a joke it was on them all. They thought that he was going to die, and were having the priest for him when he wasn’t going to die at all. They thought that he was unconscious, and dying, and did not know all this. And here he was able to see and hear it all, the priest saying something to his mother. What a joke it was! He would tell them when he woke up. And now he was going to sleep and lose all sense of pain and these aches, and all this hotness that was like fire in his body. His eyes opened, and he could see them all, his mother, the priest, the nurse, Catherine, and Lucy Scanlan kneeling in a corner. They did not know it. Sleep. That was all. He was going to sleep this minute. What a joke on them, when he was only going to sleep and would wake up and say I fooled you that time. His lips opened in the effort to tell them he wanted to sleep.
“Yes, son,” his mother said anxiously, bending over him, hearing only a weak, grunting sound.
They wanted to torture him. They put him on a bed on the floor, with a hard mattress and heavy quilts over him and they wanted to torture him because they thought he was dying. Again he tried to tell them. It was a big joke. Thought he was dying, did they?
The priest laid a small vessel of holy oil on the table near the bed, where there were two holy candles burning in holders, a cut-glass bowl of water, a small saucer of bread crumbs, a saucer of small cotton balls and an empty saucer, and two clean linen napkins. Doffing his coat, the priest vested himself in his surplice and purple stole. Bending down, he placed a small crucifix on Studs’ lips, and Studs made the gesture of kissing it. Straightening up, the priest dipped his right hand in holy water, and gesturing with it in the sign of the cross, sprayed Studs, the bystanders, the room, sing-songing simultaneously:
“Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.
“Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.
“Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorem. Amen.”
Studs looked up glassy-eyed when the priest asked if he could talk to confess. It was a joke, and he wasn’t dying, and why was he on the floor? Sleep. A joke. The priest heard only an inaudible sound.
The bystanders knelt after the priest, Mrs. Lonigan and Catherine looking into the white-covered prayer book which Studs had carried the day he had, long ago, made his first Holy Communion.
“Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.”
“Qui fecit cælum et terram,” Mrs. Lonigan and Catherine read from the prayer book