John McGahern - The Dark

“Good morning. I didn’t expect to find you afoot so early.”

“Good morning, father. I couldn’t sleep much.”

“The first night in a strange house is always bad. By the look of the mist the day’ll be another scorcher.”

‘It looks as if it’s going to be hot, father. It’s nearly always hot when the mist’s like that,” the pingball went, and did you wonder how much of your life would go on these courteous noises.

“Would you like to serve Mass for me?” the priest said, you’d joined each other on the gravel path.

“I’d be glad to, father.”

“Usually John serves it, but a break will do him no harm. He’ll have breakfast for us soon as it’s over.”

“That’s fine so, father.”

“We’re not very likely to have worshippers. No one comes on the weekdays except seldom. It’s the real country.”

With the latchkey he unlocked the sacristy door, then went out through the altar and down to the main door, where he lifted off the heavy iron bar, and opened both doors wide. The cruets had to be filled with water and wine, the bowl with water, the white cloth laid across. He gave you a soutane and surplice of his own to wear.

“We’re ready now, but it’s not eight yet,” he said when they stood robed before the crucifix on the sacristy wall. “A Miss Brady, a retired schoolmistress, used come but she hasn’t put in an appearance for over a week, I think she may be gone to the sea, but we’d better wait till eight just in case.”

There was silence in the sacristy, except for birds outside, waiting for eight, now as always tension of something strange about to happen, and then both of you bowing together to the crucifix at eight.

You had to concentrate too much to wander or think during the Mass, follow the words and movements to make the responses, pour wine and water, ring the small bell though no one was there to hear, and change the missal. The priest moved as in a dream, in the formality of the ritual and black vestments of the dead, nothing whatever to the priest of the night before.

You served too the rite as in a dream, the bread and wine were utterly changed without you knowing. Only at the Communion did any disturbance come, you could not receive, you had sinned. You watched the priest but he didn’t seem to notice or else it meant nothing to him. Then dumbly you went and poured the last water and wine and followed the Mass through to its end.

Breakfast was ready in the house. A boy of fifteen with blond hair, his face so pale that it seemed to belong more to the city than here, came with the tea, and the priest said, “John, this is Mr. Mahoney.”

“You’re welcome here, sir,” the boy smiled as he shook your hand, and you could get nothing out, you’d never been called Mr. Mahoney or sirred before, it was too unreal.

The newspaper had come. The priest commented on the headlines, and then as he folded it up towards the end of breakfast he said, “They’re such a waste of time, but strange the grip they get on you, it’s habit or curiosity, you feel there’s something important that you may miss. It’s some sort of illusion that you’re in contact with a greater world outside your own little corner.”

“I suppose so, father. I never thought of it like that.”

It went so, nothing was spoken of the night before. The priest said he had to go away for the day. He’d not be back till the late evening.

“You can amuse yourself in any way you wish. John will get you your lunch. There are books, the key’s in the bookcase, you can search and find for yourself. I used to spend a lot of my holidays with Uncle Michael, the Canon now, and I used read and read.

“You know you can stay as long as you wish: a week, or a fortnight. I’ll be away a good deal. You’ll have plenty of time to think and come to a decision. You can make yourself completely free and at home.”

“Thank you, father,” you bowed your head, there was nothing else to say.

The priest went and gave some instructions to John, then he left, offering no explanation for his going, nor could you ask. You watched the car turn round the pedestal, the tyres crunching on the gravel, and you answered the priest’s wave before he went out of sight on the circling drive of laurel and through the gates that no one seemed to ever close.

ONCE BACK IN THE ROOM YOU HAD THE PURE DAY ON YOUR hands, without distraction, except what you wished to be without, the fears and doubts and longings, coming and going.

The mahogany bookcase stood solid. Scott, Dickens, Canon Sheehan under glass: Wordsworth, Milton, volumes in brown leather, gold on the spines: staunch religious books, doctrine, histories of the church, books of sermons. One lone paperback, Tolstoy’s Resurrection in a red and white Penguin, and you turned the small key to get it out, though you’d never heard of it or Tolstoy. It didn’t look such a tomb as the others, there were more green leaves and living light of the day about it than the dust and memory of the others, it was too new for many dead hands to have turned the pages.

You took it outside, your feet on the ground. The sun was beating through the last shades of mist, the blazing day close. You watched the cactus, colour of ripe vegetable marrow, and wondered had it religious significance, the one place you’d seen it before was in front of the Convent of Mercy in Long¬ ford, in a bugled pedestal too, and surrounded too by white gravel, but that faded, to look at the yellow cactus long enough was to come to silence and fear.

But where were you to go? What were you to do with yourself and this book?

Round by the side was the apple garden. The white paint was new on the iron gate. Just inside was a green seat, fuchsia bushes overhanging it, their bells so brute red, and the purple tongues. You sat there, and looked at the row of cabbages beyond the apple trees, and then turned to the book, but not for long.

Why are you here? the questioning started.

To sit and read a book.

But no, beyond that, why did you come, why are you alone here?

To think about being a priest.

You’ll not be able. Even last night you had to sin again. You weren’t able to go to Communion this morning. The only reason you stopped abuse for the last weeks was to be able to put a face on it before the priest.

You want to go out into the world? You want girls and women, to touch their dresses, to kiss, to hold soft flesh, to be held in their caressing arms? To bury everything in one swoon into their savage darkness?

Dream of peace and loveliness, charm of security: picture of one woman, the sound of wife , a house with a garden and trees near the bend of a river. She your love waiting at a wooden gate in the evening, her black hair brushed high, a mustard-coloured dress of corduroy or whipcord low from the throat, a boy and a girl, the girl with a blue ribbon in her hair, playing on the grass. You’d lift and kiss them, girl and boy. Then softly kiss her, your wife and love, secrets in eyes. Picnics down the river Sunday afternoons, playing and laughing on the river-bank, a white cloth spread on the grass. Winter evenings with slippers and a book, in the firelight she is playing the piano. In the mirror you’d watch her comb her black hair, so long, the even brush strokes. The long nights together, making love so gently it lingered for hours, your lips kissing, “I love you. I love you, my darling. I am so happy.” A Christmas of rejoicing and feasting. You’d hear the thawing snow outside slip from the branches, the radio playing:

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas ,

Just like the ones I used to know .

World of happiness without end.

You’d have to give that up to be a priest, but it would come to nothing on its own anyhow, the moments couldn’t be for long escaped. Death would come. Everything riveted into that. Possession of neither a world nor a woman mattered then, whether you could go to the Judgment or not without flinching was all that would matter. I strove as fierce as I was able, would be a lot to be able to say. A priest could say that. He’d chosen God before life.