Paul Theroux: My Secret History

I was more likely to laugh at a funeral than in an empty church — the people screaming and sobbing only made me laugh harder. But I resisted. I was thinking about what he had told me — bare tit, hand-jobs, three fingers. “Her hole gets bigger.”

The casket was closed, but I knew what was inside: in the center of white ruffles, like a clown’s collar, was a dead old man — the pale powdered face with sunken cheeks and eyes bulging under the lids, and farther down, in more ruffles, a rosary twisted around knuckly fingers; like Walter Hogan’s Uncle Pat, whom I had seen at Gaffey’s.

We started the requiem mass. I had learned my Latin from a pamphlet that had set it out in easy-to-say spelling.

Intro-eebo ad-ahltaree-dayee ah-dayum-kwee-lah-teefeekat yoo-ven too-tem mayum .

That was how we began. It made no sense at all to me, though I knew it by heart and I could win races reciting certain prayers.

It was a sung mass — a fat lady and an organist in the choir loft— Dies Irae, dies illa! — and Father Furty intoning the Latin in a falsetto, as if he knew exactly what he was saying. Then he gave a sermon — it was about football and life and being a team player even though you knew you were alone. He said “frannick” and “sem-eye professional” and instead of aunty, “anny.” He said, “yooman beings.” I was thrilled by this. He was like a man from a foreign land.

He finished and the mass continued. The “Confee-teeyor” turned into a race between Chicky and me. Normally we tried to say it very fast, like the “Soo-ship-eeyat,” but when I saw Chicky bent over and hammering his chest at the “mayah koolpah” I decided to beat him and, swiveling and muttering, I finished first.

“I beat you,” I said, just before the consecration. We were at the side table to the far right of the altar, picking up the cruets of wine and water.

“You skipped the middle part,” he whispered.

“Your ass I did,” I hissed at him.

But he wasn’t listening. He whispered, “I’m going to prove he’s an alkie,” and tossed his head.

I looked back at Father Furty, who was coming towards us with the chalice.

Normally a priest held out the chalice to receive a little wine and water, and returned to the stand in front of the tabernacle to drink it. It was a simple operation. But today Chicky did something I had never seen before. When Father Furty extended the chalice for the wine, Chicky emptied the cruet into it — tipped it upside down until all the wine dribbled out.

The chalice trembled, Father Furty seemed to object, but too late; he let out a noisy breath of resignation, considered the full chalice, then moved it sideways for me to add the water. But he lifted the chalice before I could pour more than a few drops in. He returned to the tabernacle, and we studied him.

He straightened up, and then leaned forward and rested his elbows on the altar and glanced into the chalice, tipping it towards him like a big glass. He pushed out his lips, seeming to savor it in anticipation, and then he grasped the chalice more affectionately, shifted his weight onto his back leg, raised the cup, drank it all, and let out a little gasp of satisfaction.

He staggered a bit after that, just catching the toe of his loafer on the altar carpet, and when he was supposed to sprinkle holy water, clanged the gold rod into the holy water bucket and tossed it at the casket. By then his prayers had become growly and incoherent. There were blobs and beads of holy water on the shiny wooden lid.

Men gathered near the casket. There was a shout of pain from the congregation, and more sobbing. Then we stood at the foot of the altar and watched the casket rolled nicely on silent rubber tires towards the doorway, where summer was blazing, and there were trees and traffic.

Back in the sacristy, Chicky doused the incense and took his cassock and surplice off quickly. He said he had to run an errand for his mother. He knew he had done something wrong, and yet his last glance at me said, “What did I tell you?”

Father Furty seemed bewildered, as if he were having difficulty phrasing a question. Finally he said, “This cabinet is empty. That’s very strange.”

It was the cabinet where the mass wine was kept; but Chicky had hidden the only other bottle — before mass, when he was sneaking a drink.

“There’s a bottle in here,” I said, reaching into the cassock closet, where Chicky had put the bottle he had been fooling with.

“Ah, yes. I thought I was going mental for a minute there.”

As he took it from me he saw the Mossberg.

“The hell’s that?”

“Mossberg. Bolt action. Repeater.”

He hoisted the bottle to see how much wine was in it.

“It’s mine,” I said. “It’s not loaded.”

He smiled and poured the wine into a glass — the wine went in with a flapping sound, bloop-bloop-bloop, purply blue with the light passing through it as if it were stained glass. And with a similar sort of sound, Father Furty drank it, emptying the glass and gasping as he had on the altar.

All this time he was smiling at my Mossberg but he said nothing more. I felt stronger — I was strengthened by his understanding; and from that moment, the period of time it took him to drink the wine, I trusted him.

As I pulled my surplice over my head I heard the sighs of Father Furty still digesting the wine. He was at the sideboard, among the vestments, in his suspenders, leaning on his elbows and belching softly.

Then he staggered back and sat down and sighed again — more satisfied gasps — and said, “Don’t go, sonny.”

I was trying to think how to get my Mossberg out of the sacristy.

Father Furty was still smiling, though his eyes were not quite focused on me. He looked very tired, sitting there with his hands on his knees. Then he grunted and started to get up.

“I’m going to need a hand,” he said. “Now put that gun down and point me in the right direction.” He was mumbling so softly he was hardly moving his lips. “Funerals are no fun,” he said.

Father Furty limped beside me, steadying himself by holding on to my shoulder with his right hand and sort of paddling with his left hand. I kept my mouth shut; I was his cane. His face was redder and it was as swollen as it had been when he had knelt in the sacristy and prayed for the conversion of Russia. I had set off worrying about my Mossberg in the cassock locker, and about meeting Tina — I was already late; and worrying too about everything Chicky had said, the sex talk. But Father Furty’s big soft hand was holding down my worry and calming me — we were helping each other out of the sacristy.

Instead of going to the rectory which was only fifty feet away, we passed it, cut behind the church and down the parking lot, crossed Fulton — he was still limping: where were we going? — and headed towards a blue bungalow. It was called Holy Name House. I had never seen anyone enter or leave it, and I did not think it had any connection with Saint Ray’s.

“Easy does it,” Father Furty said. “We’re almost there.”

He seemed to be saying it to encourage me, because I was slowing down. Did he want me to follow him in? He was rather feeble, and I was sure there was something wrong with him. I did not imagine him to be drunk — after all, he had only downed one cruet of wine and less than half a bottle in the sacristy. It was not enough. No, he was sick — I was sure of that.

An “alkie” was a different kind of person altogether — the kind of crazy stinking bum that slept on Boston Common and mumbled as you passed by and always had a bottle in his hand. But even staggering and breathing hard, Father Furty had a look of understanding and authority — and I had the sense that he was both funny and friendly. He had seen my Mossberg and only smiled!