Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

“Oropax” lent Beatrice peace of mind, a peace that the Mediterranean had denied to these two pilgrims who were so thoroughly sick of the island. Peace for one night. But this one night lasted half an eternity.

It was Sunday. We lay there for quite a while with open eyes, gazing up at the vaults of our cathedral, each of us aware that the other was awake. But neither of us moved. It was Sunday.

As a child I suffered from a condition that someone once referred to as Sunday melancholy. Later this affliction extended to the remaining days of the week, and then it was no longer anything special, considering that I had been able to summon a certain amount of energy to counter it. I recall Sunday mornings when the sun shone through the slits in the venetian blind into my room, turning everything into a celebration. Every flower on the wallpaper looked different, even though the pattern replicated them a thousand times. I knew each and every exemplar by heart, and discovered more and more new transformations. On the street outside there was no rattle of trucks passing by: on Sundays commercial traffic was prohibited. Sunday! Gradually my not quite wide-awake brain registered the truth: no school, no humiliation, no teasing, no punishment, no homework, nothing — just Sunday, the most comforting day. But then I burst awake and remembered: You have to go to church! Gone was my summery meadow of a thousand blossoms. All the roses looked alike and crummy and cheap, fifty cents a yard and pasted up at all the wrong angles.

Going to church was a twofold coercion. My parents and my school insisted on it, and the school even took attendance at Mass. Young nitwit that I was, I couldn’t make this kind of weekend surveillance jibe with the omniscience attributed to the Good Lord. I also had trouble with the fact that one of our classmates was allowed to absent himself from all church services on the basis of a medical certification. This kid Wilhelm was as healthy as a lumberjack, but his father was the richest taxpayer in town, a millionaire who could afford his own concordat with the church. Our family used the same devout Catholic doctor, but we wouldn’t dream of requesting a similar dispensation. My father was not in a salary range that would have permitted him to enter negotiations with God’s representatives. When he finally worked his way up to the point where he could have greased the Lord’s palm, I had long since sprung free of the whole dishonest mess. It didn’t cost me a dime, but it cost me many a sleepless night and threw the course of my education out of balance. For years, Sundays remained poisoned days for me, and for years I nursed a strong mistrust of a Church that I was unable to square with the God who was said to reside within its walls. Then came the day of my First Communion, a climactic moment in the life of any Christian, the most wondrous day in his life.

I gazed up at the vaults of our Mallorcan church, saw the beams of sunlight streaming through the cracks in the roof, the prismatic light of my Sunday melancholy. “Most wondrous day,” indeed! I was nine years old and still believed in God, in the same way that I believed in fairy tales. But fairy tales don’t impose obligations on a believer. God, however, commanded us to “come forth” into His service with shouldered prayerbook. This most wondrous day: it was preceded then, and presumably still is, by a course of instruction that was supposed to initiate us into the mystery of “transubstantiation,” a concept more difficult to comprehend than it is to pronounce. I myself probably didn’t comprehend anything at all, but that didn’t make any difference. Our pastor gave me the necessary box on the ears, and others got it too. This baleful procedure took place two or three days before the Most Wondrous Day. We were required to stand in rank and file at the altar rail — our food dispensary, as it were— for a “rehearsal.” We had to memorize each and every step, each and every segment of the liturgy. The instruction placed particular stress on our behavior when receiving the Blessed Sacrament: bow your head in sincere humility, kneel down gingerly without banging the shins of the kid behind you, fold your hands under the linen cloth at the rail, and then stick out your tongue so as to swallow the Host while avoiding the slightest desecration, such as causing it to drop to the floor. Do not chew it! The Savior will melt on your tongue all by Himself. Our ancient pastor had trained generations before ours, every year the same maneuvers, and he had just as little patience as a humorless drill sergeant. I was guileless, and believed firmly in the miracle that was about to take place. My mother had given me fuller explanations than the pastor did. I would feel a shiver at the moment when I received Our Savior; I would undergo a metamorphosis, I would become a different child — a “better” one, she no doubt said — maybe even an angel.

I was quivering with expectation. All this seemed even more promising than Christmas Eve, which up to then was the Most Wondrous thing I knew. I pitied the poor negro kids in the “Steyl Missionary Messenger” who, instead of receiving the Savior, ate each other up. But if we saved up enough tinfoil and rolled it up in balls and delivered them to the pastor, the kids in Africa could receive Holy Communion too. I collected a lot. I felt truly sorry for the pagan children. Today I feel more truly sorry for Christianized children. In catechism instruction I didn’t do very well. God had not granted me enough intelligence to grasp the bounty of knowledge required to receive Him, and on rehearsal day it turned out that I was physically awkward besides. I was a pagan child black as the ace of spades, a kid that the white folks would have to collect truckloads of tinfoil for, before he could approach Our Lord’s table.

We approached the altar rail two abreast, as what was called “Communion partners,” and knelt down. I folded my hands in the prescribed manner under the cloth, bowed my head, peeked to one side to see when it would be my turn, lifted it again, and extended my tongue. Not very far, it’s true, because the pastor might have got the wrong idea — some of the kids stuck out their tongues at him during the communion instruction, just for fun. My own Communion partner was one of the most active in this regard. I was amazed at this kid, my cousin Karl, who was now kneeling next to me and somehow still found the time to pinch me, whereas I was already sweating from anticipation.

The old man walked along the rail checking everyone’s posture, everyone’s tongue. When he came opposite me he began to fume. What, this rascal doesn’t even know how far to stick out his tongue? Farther out! Farther out! And when “farther out” was simply no longer possible — after all, a human being is not a woodpecker — he took his big key and whacked that part of me that was to receive the Savior on Whitsunday morning. My teeth crunched painfully into my lingual artery, and my mouth filled with blood. With the practiced gait that was meant to signify contemplation and inner bliss, I staggered back to the pew, next to me my Communion partner Karl. Karl had observed everything very carefully, and he hissed at me, “Man oh man, why didn’t you spit at him? Just let him try that with me. I’ll puke out all the blood on his pretty vestments. Just wait, that old bushman’s gonna pay for this…” Our pastor’s name was Busch.

My cousin Karl died while still young. When he was seven, he claimed to know where babies came from. Nobody believed him, but he didn’t care, and it turned out he was right. He never avenged me — how could he have? A kick in the shins? A spritzer of stink juice on the pastor’s cassock, the one he said every dog in town should piss on? Was it truly the old man’s fault? As one of the Good Lord’s legion of accomplices, our pastor was respected in the community, and when he died they put up a nice gravestone for him. He had grown old and grey in the service of God, and was no less brain-dead than a sexton who genuflects before the altar dozens of times every day while thinking of nothing at all. What he succeeded in doing was to single out one of the nameless victims of his pious drill methods during his final season in office, give that boy a well-aimed smack on the tongue with his house key, and with this single blow destroy the mystical edifice of a childlike faith.