John McGahern - The Dark

You had come. You were in the priest’s house, you could draw back the linen sheet and get into bed. A picture of your father’s house in your mind, all the others sleeping there miles away, and you here. Joan in bed in the town four miles away, all the world you knew mostly in bed in the night as you now too, Joan’s voice, “It’s even worse than home,” in your ears, a moment passing, she must not be happy, you must find out more, you had no chance or you were too involved in your own affairs to make any effort, though what could be wrong.

Through the window the stones of the graveyard stood out beyond the laurels in the moon, all the dead about, lives as much filled with themselves and their importance once as you this night, indecision and trouble and yearning put down equal with laughing into that area of clay, and they lay calm as you would one eternal night while someone full of problems and uncertainties would lie as awake as you in a room.

At night they left their graves to walk in search of forgiveness, driven by remorse, you’d heard many times. They came most to the house of the priest to beg: the flesh same as their own and able to understand, but the unearthly power of God in his hands, power to pardon. But the house seemed still as the graveyard tonight.

The moment of death was the one real moment in life; everything took its proper position there, and was fixed for ever, whether to live in joy or hell for all eternity, or had your life been the haphazard flicker between nothingness and nothingness.

All pleasure was lost, whether you’d eaten flesh or worn roses, it was over, or whether you had gone bare and without. The wreaths and the Mass cards and the words meant nothing, these were for the living, to obscure the starkness with images of death, nothing got to do at all with the reality, just images of death for the living, images of life and love in black cloth.

The presence of the dead seemed all about, every stir of mouse or bird in the moonlit night, the crowded graves, the dead priest who’d collected the grandfather clocks. You grew frightened though you told yourself there was no reason for fear and still your fear increased, same in this bed as on the road in the country dark after people and cards, nothing about, till haunted by your own footsteps your feet go faster. You tell yourself that there’s nothing to be afraid of, you stand and listen and silence mocks you, but you cannot walk calm any more. The darkness brushes about your face and throat. You stand breathing, but you can stand for ever for all the darkness cares. Openness is everywhere about you, and at last you take to your heels and run shamelessly, driven by the one urge to get to where there are walls and lamps.

In this room and house there was no place to run though, only turn and turn, nothing but hooting silence and the hotness of your enfevered body when you held yourself rigid to listen.

Real noises came. A door opened down the landing, it was not shut. Feet padded on the boards, the whisper of clothes brushing. You raised yourself on your hands, the grip of terror close, for what could be moving at this hour of night?

A low knock came on the door. Before you could say, “Come in,” it opened. A figure stood in the darkness along the wall.

“You’re not asleep?”

It was the priest’s voice, some of the terror broke, you let yourself back on your arms again.

“No,” there was relief, but soon suspicion grew in place of the terror, what could the priest want in the room at this hour, the things that have to happen.

“I heard you restless. I couldn’t sleep either, so I thought it might be a good time for us to talk.”

He wore a striped shirt and pyjamas, blue stripes on grey flannel it seemed when he moved into the moonlight to draw back a corner of the bedclothes.

“You don’t mind, do you — it’s easier to talk this way, and even in the summer the middle of the night gets cold.”

“No, father. I don’t mind,” what else was there to say, and move far out to the other edge of the bed, even then his feet touching you as they went down. The bodies lay side by side in the single bed.

“You find it hard to sleep? I often do. It’s the worst of all, I often think, to be sleepless at night,” he said, and you stiffened when his arm went about your shoulder, was this to be another of the midnight horrors with your father. His hand closed on your arm. You wanted to curse or wrench yourself free but you had to lie stiff as a board, stare straight ahead at the wall, afraid before anything of meeting the eyes you knew were searching your face.

“Do you sleep well usually?”

“Alright, father. The first night in a strange house is hard.”

“It’s always hard in a strange house, if you’re not a traveller. I used never be able to sleep the first night home from college, or the first night in the college after the holidays, what you’re not used to I suppose, and the strange excitement.”

His hand was moving on your shoulder. You could think of nothing to say. The roving fingers touched your throat. You couldn’t do or say anything.

“You have a good idea why I invited you here?”

“Yes, father.”

“I was going to broach it in the sitting-room, but I thought you might be too fagged out after the journey. When I heard you restless I thought it might be a good time to talk, in fact I thought it might be the cause of the restlessness. It’s always better to talk no matter what. You’ve thought about the priesthood since? You know that that’s one of the main reasons I wanted you here?”

“Yes, father.”

“Have you come to any decision or any closer to one?” he moved his face closer to ask, his hand quiet, clasping tighter on the shoulder.

“No, father,” you couldn’t say any more, you had to fight back tears, it was too horrid and hopeless.

“You haven’t decided either one way or the other?”

“No, father, but I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

You felt cornered and desperate, wanting to struggle far more free by this of the questions than the body and en¬ circling arm.

“What troubles you most? Do you want to be a priest?”

“Yes, father.”

“What then troubles you most?”

“I’m not sure if I have a vocation. I don’t know.”

“You know that God won’t come down out of his heaven to call you. The Holy Father defined a vocation as three things: good moral character, at least average intelligence, a good state of health. If you have these and the desire to give your life to God, then you have a vocation, it’s as easily recognizable as that. Does that help you to see your way any more clearly?”

“I don’t think I’m good enough, father,” was what you said twisting away from it put so close and plain as this, tears started to flow down your face.

“How?”

“I can’t be certain. I thought maybe if I went out into the world for a few years to test myself, then I could be sure. It wouldn’t be too late to become a priest then. Don’t some become priests in that way?”

“It’d be unlikely. People get into ruts and habits and drift. Once you’ve got a taste of the world — it’s hard to settle down at any time to the daily habitual service of God — but it’s worse if you come late. It’d be unlikely you’d ever leave the world once you got its taste and if you did it would be harder than now. The excitement and novelty would soon go. And then and then and then.”

He stopped, the conversation against a wall, and as suddenly his whole voice changed.

“Have you ever kissed a girl?” it came with the shock of a blow.

“No, father. Never.”

“Have you ever wanted or desired to kiss?”

“Yes, father,” the tears flowed hopelessly, just broken, he was cutting through to the nothingness and squalor of your life, you were now as you were born, as low as the dirt.