John McGahern - The Dark

“Did you take pleasure in it?”

“Yes, father,” it choked out.

“You excited yourself, brought them into your mind. You caused seed to spill in your excitement?”

“Yes, father.”

“How often did it happen?”

“Several times a week sometimes. More times not at all.”

“How many times a week?”

“Seven or eight sometimes, father.”

“Did you try to break it?”

“Yes. Always after Confession.”

“Did you succeed for long?”

“It’s six weeks since it happened last.”

“Did you bring one woman or many women into these pleasures?”

“Many women, father.”

“Were they real or imaginary?”

“Both, father.”

“You don’t think this vice has got a grip on you, you think you could break it?”

“Yes, father, I think I might.”

“This is the most reason why you’re not sure, why you think you’re not good enough, is it?”

“Yes, father. Do you think I might be good enough?”

You still felt a nothing and broken, cheap as dirt, but hope was rising, would the priest restore the wreckage, would he say — yes, yes, you’re good enough.

“I don’t see any reason why not if you fight that sin.”

Joy rose, the world was beautiful again, all was beautiful.

“Had you ever to fight that sin when you were my age, father?” you asked, everything was open, you could share your lives, both of you fellow-passengers in the same rocked boat.

There was such silence that you winced, you had committed an impertinence, you were by no means in the same boat, you were out there alone with your sins.

“The only thing I see wrong with you is that you take things far too serious, and bottle them up, and brood,” he completely ignored the question. “Most of those in my youth who became priests were gay. They kicked football, they went to dances in the holidays, flirted with girls, even sometimes saw them home from the dances. They made good normal priests.”

You barely listened this time, resentment risen close to hatred. He had broken down your life to the dirt, he’d reduced you to that, and no flesh was superior to other flesh. You’d wanted to share, rise on admittance together into joy, but he was different, he was above that, you were impertinent to ask. He must have committed sins the same as yours once too, if he was flesh.

What right had he to come and lie with you in bed, his body hot against yours, his arm about your shoulders. Almost as the cursed nights when your father used stroke your thighs. You remembered the blue scars on the stomach by your side.

“You must pray to God to give you Grace to avoid this sin, and be constantly on your guard. As you grow older you’ll find your passion easier to control. It weakens,” he was saying. “You can stay here long as you want, you’ll have time and quiet to think, you can bring any trouble or scruple to me. We can talk. And pray, as I will pray for you too, that God may well direct you.”

He paused. You’d listened with increasing irritation and hatred, you wished the night could happen again. You’d tell him nothing. You’d give him his own steel.

You felt him release his arm and get out on the floor and replace the bedclothes. Your hands clenched as he sprinkled holy water on your burning face, though the drops fell cool as sprigs of parsley.

“God guard you and bless you. Sleep if you can,” he said as he left the room noiselessly as he’d entered it.

ANGUISH STAYED AFTER THE PRIEST HAD GONE — RAGE, YOU’D been stripped down to the last squalor, and no one had right to do that to anybody: shame, what must the priest think of you every time he looked at you any more: and if it could happen again what you’d say and not say, what you’d want to happen, you’d give nothing away, you’d destroy him, but it was all over now, except for the feverish restlessness of the anguish. The moonlight was still in the room, the crack across the mirror. The clocks beat the half-hours, single quick chimes, but you couldn’t tell the hours, none of the clocks struck alone or together, just one broken medley. And it was impossible to sleep, the mind a preying whirl.

At last, restless and hot, you reached out and found a sock across your shoes on the floor, pulled your prick till it grew stiff, and you could push it into the sock. You were all turbed and it was something to do and it would draw off some of the fever. You turned and started to pump, rhythmically but without imagination till you heard the springs creaking. You moved out to the very edge of the bed, where the solid rail was under the mattress. You imagined nothing, neither edge of nylon nor pink nipple in your teeth, nor hands thrusting through your hair, but just pumped mechanical as a slow piston up and down, you got hot and you could press your mouth on the pillow, pumping madly, till you started to beat out into the sock. You turned at the last flutter, so that it wouldn’t have chance to seep through the wool and stain the sheet. Wet came on your hand as you removed the sock and let it fall over the shoes on the floor again. You were able to lie on your back and stare at the ceiling in more stupor than calm.

You’d broken the three weeks discipline since Confession, you’d not be able to go to Communion in the morning. You’d never be able to be a priest either, you’d drift on without being able to decide anything, it was easier to let it go. You shivered as the interrogation of an hour ago came back, the squalor, but it was better try and shut it out.

The clocks kept up their insane medley, the single strikes of the half-hours, the medley of the hours. The yellow of the moonlight faded as the day grew light. You stared at the ceiling, different number of boards than over the old bed with the broken brass bells at home, so much variation too in the grain and the knots.

“Will the morning ever come, ever come, ever come?” as you waited for the cursed clocks, until you could stand it no longer, and dressed and went down outside, holding the knocker as you closed the hall door so as to make no noise.

The white ground mist filled the morning, promise of a blazing day, the church vague in white twenty yards away. A spider netting of it lay on the laurels, on the cactus leaves above the iron bugle, it lay on the grass across the graves. Your hand left a gleaming black handtrack on the mudguard of the car, your feet left shining wet tracks on the grass between the graves.

Your cheeks burned with the fever of fatigue, you wished you could lie naked on all this wet coolness and suck and roll your face in the wet grass, press the hot pores of your body against the wetness.

You noticed nothing except these and the flitting of a wren low in the laurels. You ground your teeth, your hands clenched and unclenched, the mind bent on destruction of the night before, but only managing to circle and circle in its own futility.

You couldn’t be a priest, never now, that was all. You’d never raise anointed hands. You’d drift into the world, world of girls and women, company in gay evenings, exact opposite of the lonely dedication of the priesthood unto death. Your life seemed set, without knowing why, it was fixed, you had no choice. You were a drifter, you’d drift a whole life long after pleasure, but at the end there’d be the reckoning. If you could be a priest you’d be able to enter that choking moment without fear, you’d have already died to longing, you’d have already abandoned the world for that reality, there’d be no confusion. But the night and room and your father and even the hedge around the orchard at home were all confusion, there was no beginning nor end.

In the grappling the things of the morning lost their starkness, you were standing lost between the graves when the door opened, and the priest was there, in his soutane, a jug and heavy latchkey in his hand.