Kevin Powers - The Yellow Birds

I passed a large cathedral on my right, and there was a dull cold in the air so I slipped inside. The interior of the cathedral was lit in a fashion that reflected the pale light outside its doors. I found a pamphlet in the foyer that gave the history of the church in German and in English, and I spread it out as wide as I could in an attempt to hide behind it. I ducked into a pew in the back of the church’s transept. An after-school tour had started and although it was conducted in German, I tried to follow along as best I could from the pamphlet I held.

The cathedral was old. The sun had moved so that its light through the reds and blues of the high stained glass did not wash over the marble floor. It seemed to meet from both sides in the apse and in the nave, high up among the vaults and the old, carved capitals. The children’s feet kicked dust into the air with little shuffles, and the dust hung in the light the special way it sometimes does.

In the far end of the church, behind the altar, a priest prepared for some ceremony. I watched him as he gathered candles and incense and arranged the items neatly on a small table behind him.

The tour guide stopped her group of children. She gestured to her mouth, then to her ears, then to her eyes. It was as if she had kissed her voice, her hearing and then her sight. We were all very still, the tour guide, the children and me, and the priest seemed to notice us because of the stillness. The children began moving along the walls, most giggling and playing grab-ass while others oohed and aahed at the portraits of the saints. I read the names of the saints from the pamphlet as the children walked, and I tried to imagine myself as a small child being introduced to them.

There was beautiful Sebastian, the arrows dangling from his chest. The blood from his injuries appeared like spattered candle-wax, hardened and congealed in a way that might allow a man to hang from a church wall unchanged and perpetually dying for a thousand years. There was Theresa, moaning like a woman brought to climax by the fire of her wounds. And there was Saint John Vianney, the incorruptible, the soldier who ran from Napoleon’s army and heard confessions for twenty hours a day, whose heart rests separately in Rome, unadorned in a small glass case, undecayed and whole but for its absent beat.

In the cold interior of the cathedral the children oohed again. Their breath rose in one opaque breath, as it had risen in one small voice that hung above our heads briefly, obscuring the altar and the faint rose light that fell through the stained glass, and disappeared. I listened to the clicking of their small heels against the stone. I looked up toward the vaults, at the saint’s picture frames, at the fine filigree that seemed to run like untended ivy through the place and read, “All that you see that is gold is truly gold.” I said it to myself. I said it aloud. I looked down to read more, but there was nothing else. The pamphlet closed with those words.

As I read, the priest moved from his place behind the altar. I was surprised to see him standing over me when I folded the pamphlet down. He was small and wore wire-frame glasses and he looked at me and smiled with his mouth closed, the kind of smile that can be either empathetic or patronizing, depending on the person doing it. “You can’t smoke in here,” he said.

“What? Oh. Shit. Sorry.” I hadn’t even realized I’d lit up. The tip glowed red in the dim light until I snubbed it out on my boot and put it in my pocket.

“Can I help you with something?”

He must have thought my presence was an oddity. “No. I was just looking around. I’m on a pass,” I lied.

He pointed to the pamphlet. “An interesting history, no?”

“Yeah. Yes,” I stuttered, “it sure is.”

He put his hand out. “I’m Father Bernard.”

“Bartle. Private Bartle.”

He sat down at the end of the pew, chuckled a bit and smoothed out the front of his pants. “I’m sort of a private, too, in a way.”

I paused. “Oh, right,” I said.

“Can I be honest with you?”

“Of course.”

“You look troubled.”

“Troubled?”

“Yes. Burdened.”

“I don’t know. I think I’m all right, I guess.”

“I have some experience, you know. We could talk if you want.”

“About what?” I asked.

“I thought you could decide that. I could listen.”

I noticed I’d been cracking the knuckles on my left hand over and over again. “I don’t know, Father. I don’t really know how that stuff works. I’m not Catholic or anything.”

He laughed. “You don’t have to be Catholic. I made a promise that people could tell me things they didn’t want to tell other people, that’s all.”

I had scratched the lacquer off a thin strip of the pew next to me. “I guess that’s a good thing to do. What you do, I mean.”

“They have an old saying about situations like this.”

“What’s that?”

“You are only as sick as your secrets.”

“They got a saying about everything, don’t they?”

“It’s true.” He smiled again.

I thought about it awhile. “You mean, like, I should make a confession or something.”

“Well, not a, not a…just…talking.”

“I just made a mistake is all.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” he said.

“Nah,” I said. “They don’t. Not really.”

The children and the tour guide had filed out of the cathedral. Light no longer fell through the windows and they looked like dark holes below the ceiling of the church in the dim lamp and candlelight.

I sat back in the pew and he sat at the end of the pew a little away from me and I thought how strange it was to be here, with the lights flickering, cold and wet. I felt foreign, acutely and overwhelmingly foreign. I felt an urge to run but didn’t.

We both paused awkwardly. “I appreciate it, but I’d better be on my way. Thanks for your time, Father. If I’m not back soon I’ll catch hell. Well, you know what I mean.” I turned and began walking out of the transept and toward the large wooden doors at the front of the church. There was no noise other than my footsteps when the priest called out, “Do you want me to pray for you?”

I thought about what the priest asked and I looked around the cathedral. It was a beautiful place, the most beautiful I’d seen in a long time. But it was a sad kind of beauty, like all things created to cover the ugly reason they existed. I took the pamphlet out of my pocket. The entire history of the church was written there, three pages for a thousand years. Some poor fool had had to decide what was worth remembering, had had to lay it out neatly for whomever might come along to wonder. I had less and less control over my own history each day. I suppose I could have made some kind of effort. It should have been easy to trace: this happened, I was here, that happened next, all of which led inevitably to the present moment. I could have picked up a handful of dirt from the street outside, some wax from a candle on the altarpiece, ash from the incense as it swung past. I could have wrung it out, hoping I might find an essential thing that would give meaning to this place or that time. I did not. Certainty had surrendered all its territory in my mind. I’d have just been left with a mess in my hands anyway, no more. I realized, as I stood there in the church, that there was a sharp distinction between what was remembered, what was told, and what was true. And I didn’t think I’d ever figure out which was which.

“No, sir. That’s all right.” I appreciated the gesture, but it seemed obligatory and somehow therefore meaningless, as all gestures come to seem.

“A friend, perhaps?”

“I had a friend. I have a friend you can pray for.”