John McGahern - The Dark

“Yes, father. I did.”

“It comes out of French strangely enough. Most of us in Ireland will soon be that, fear of the poor-house is gone, even the life your father brought you up on won’t last hardly twenty years more. A priest who ministers to the bourgeoisie becomes more a builder of churches, bigger and more comfortable churches, and schools than a preacher of the Word of God. The Society influences the Word far more than the Word influences the Society. If you are a good priest you have to walk a dangerous plank between committees on one hand and Truth or Justice on the other. I often don’t know. I often don’t know.”

He paused on some futility or despair.

“There’s a notion that once you’ve taken your ordination vows that there’s no more trouble. People have the same charming illusion about marriage too. They’ll stay happily married by saying a few words one morning at an altar, but everything has to be struggled for. A priest has to do it utterly alone, alone with his life and his God, there are not any dramas of quarrel and reunion about that. It’s not easy, day after day.”

His words, so different to anything he’d ever shown you in his life before, changed the day by magic, though you didn’t fully understand what he said. It became one call to struggle and sacrifice.

“I thought I might be a priest after a few years, when I’d be more certain,” they moved you to say.

“It’s unlikely,” he brought that to a halt. “I’m not so sure of late vocations. Life is very short. There’s something not nice about making a gift of worn clothes. You can do good in any way of life, a person is always more important than any way. If a man chooses a way of life he should try and stick to it. Changing doesn’t matter. You’ll have yourself on your hands at the end of all change

“Would you care to walk outside? That’s if you’re not tired after the town. It’s very fine, the evening,” the priest’s voice was restless and excited.

“No. I’m not tired. I’d like to, father.”

The evening gave no shock of cold, it was so close and warm, midges were beginning to swarm.

Shoes crunched on the gravel as you walked between the laurels, from the car at the cactus to the bell-rope dangling before the church door, the first fading traces of the light, the moon a pale vapour above. On the gravel the shoes went back and forward.

“Don’t throw things in the ditch no matter what happens. You’ll be tempted. Your faith will weaken. Doubt will grow like cancel. You’ll be rebuked by other people doing better in the world than you, but do not mind. Remember your life is a great mystery in Christ and that nothing but your state of mind can change. And pray. It’s not merely repetition of words. It’s a simple silent act of turning the mind on God, the contemplation of the mystery, the Son of God going by way of Palm Sunday to Calvary and on to Easter.”

“Yes, father,” you answered, somewhere you’d felt or known that before though you couldn’t say how or when.

“Though remember I’d do Peter on this in public before I’d admit it. They’d think they’d a madman for curate, and that’d do no one good. I’d deny it in public. It’d only cause trouble for me and everyone.”

You’d never heard talk of this kind before. Everything seemed to grow more complicated.

“Thank you, father,” you said, mechanical.

“For what?” he reacted sharply.

“For telling me,” you fumbled, out of depth.

“No, don’t thank me. Someone told me much the same once, it doesn’t matter much who. The man’s dead. But it was one thing I never lost, it meant something. I’ve told you now. The debt is paid back in some way. It is a great mystery.

“Don’t think I’m a saint because I’m a priest and know things hundreds knew. I’d probably deny it before a crowd, to myself even on another night. I have some reason to believe that even the most stupid and mean are visited many times by consciousness of the mystery. You see it especially after the feasts of food and wine, around Christmas, in the dregs of a wedding day. That it’s safely killed doesn’t matter. We all want to enjoy ourselves in eternal day. Security, that’s what everyone’s after, security.”

What he said didn’t matter. He’d moved deeps within you that you could not follow. He was so changed: was this the same man that had showed you scars on his belly, the arm and voice of the night before, he who’d been resentful of you over the meal because you’d left the house to see Joan. Yet it must be. It must be that something had broken, a total generosity flowing.

“You can do me one favour.”

“What, father?”

“Remember me in your prayers, as I’ll remember you.”

“I will, father.”

“The midges, not even my cigarette smoke keeps them away, a sign of rain they say,” he was anxious to change.

“My father says that too.”

“Strange how uneasy people get when they’ve really spoken,” his own pace had quickened. “All the things we say. And how little of all the words even touch any reality. Or perhaps they all do if we knew it,” he changed to laugh lightly.

“None of what I said was meant to make you uneasy. Only because I was uneasy myself. I’m not usually like this, hardly ever, I don’t know what got into me,” his hand rested a split second on your shoulder in reassurance.

The summer night was there, the sense of damp or dew. The moon was pale but out, the smoke of rain about it. The shadows stretched lightly on the gravel. Sense of dusk was about the grass and growths of the graves, about the pale shining laurels. The pores of the cactus must be open to the cool and dampness.

“Perhaps we’d better go in. John may have something for us.”

Biscuits and glasses of cold milk waited inside on the table. The clocks chimed. The priest said he had to do some private things: you were free to stay up or go to bed. Tiredness and the burden of nothing to do drove you to bed. You fell immediately asleep.

It was late when you woke, past ten on the clocks downstairs.

Father Gerald had already said Mass. John had served.

“I looked in at eight but you were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you. You have the long journey before you today,” he said.

That you were going home today was a shock. With Joan, before evening, you’d face your father. Now that it was lost, this house with the priest and John seemed a world where you could have stayed. You wished you could tell Father Gerald that you wanted to stay here for the rest of the holidays. You wished you could tell him that you were on your way to be a priest. You’d stay here in the long summers from Maynooth. But that was changed, it was lost, and there was a horror of attraction about it now that it was lost, your dream had strayed about it now, and you felt the pain as you poured milk over the cornflakes and tried to eat.

The windows were bleared with a soft steady drizzle outside and after breakfast you sat with the priest and read newspapers and watched out on the laurels shining with wet and the fresh dark gravel and the wet roof of the church.

He drove you into town when it was time, almost far as Ryan’s door but not quite.

“You’re on your own now,” he said. “There’s going to be no pleasantness over Joan’s going like this and I can’t seem to get involved. I have to remain in the parish. I’m their priest.”

“It’s alright, father. I didn’t expect you. You were very kind to drive me in. Thank you, father.”

“Good-bye. God guard you.”

You watched the car away, the tyres swishing in the wet. A sickness rose as you faced for Ryan’s, what was the use of all this effort, you wanted not to have to.