Paul Theroux: My Secret History

“It’s simple,” he said. “It’s the body and blood of Christ. Real flesh. Real blood. It’s not bread and wine.”

He said “wine” hungrily, making it a round ripe word, and I remembered him drinking it out of the chalice in a glad thirsty way.

The women sat in a circle around him, feeding him and protesting that they weren’t hungry. He looked like a king on vacation, with some of his subjects.

On the way back he said, “Next time we’ll do some swimming.”

“Can I bring a friend?”

He said, “Sure. Swell. As long as it’s not that other altar boy.

He’s lethal.”

God was always glaring at me out of a hot sky. He was as pitiless and enigmatic as most of the adults I knew — they all spoke for Him anyway — and He said no just as often. But after that boat trip, when my mother said, “God might choose you to be a priest,” it did not seem like the end of the world. It was God’s choice, not mine, yet if He chose me I could be a priest like Father Furty — with a car radio, and a speedboat, and baggy pants, and a pack of Fatima cigarettes in my shirt pocket.

On Father Furty’s boat, everything had seemed possible: being a priest, getting married, going to college, earning money, having a future — it would all unroll. Until then, my feelings had been uncertain and whenever I became hopeful and looked ahead, the sky blazed and I thought: It will never happen. The boat made everything larger and different — Boston was bigger, the Sodality seemed truly sillier, the summer was breezier, I felt older and useful. I was proud to know this man. Sometimes I forgot he was a priest!

Knowing him made knowing Tina easier, though I could not tell exactly why. Things seemed less urgent. I wanted to touch her, but I could wait. I did not feel as if I had to hide — anyway, what was there to hide? I stopped sneaking and stopped trying to think of ways of impressing her. A month ago I had pictured us at the Sandpits and I was in the open, wearing my sunglasses, blasting bottles with my Mossberg, and Tina was waiting for me in the shade, so thrilled by my marksmanship she wanted me to hold her and squeeze her. Now that picture seemed a little silly. We took walks instead.

On one of these walks in Boston we went to the Public Gardens — rode in the Swan Boats, strolled around the pond. Tina didn’t know that although the Common was right across the street, the laws were different. You could lie on the grass on the Common — or even sleep on it all night — and have picnics and parties and baseball games and do whatever you liked. In the Public Gardens everything was forbidden — no picnics, no games, no sleeping.

“You can pick flowers on the Common,” I said.

“That’s why there’s no flowers to pick,” Tina said.

But people hugged and kissed on the grass of the Common.

Tina said that because of the laws the Public Gardens were pretty and the Common was a mess.

“That’s a funny thing for a non-Catholic to say,” I said. “I thought only Catholics worried about laws!”

There were often speakers on the Common — the black man telling how he had found Jesus; the little group with flags from the Socialist Party; the vegetarian; the ranter who said he was from the mental hospital in Mattapan; the couple from the Anti-Vivisection Society. Each speaker attracted a handful of listeners and a few hecklers.

“Why don’t you go back to Russia!”

“Hey, you think they should use people instead of rats?”

I used to stand and listen to the shouts — back and forth — and I wondered whether anyone meant what he said.

That day, with Tina, there was a new group, all in black, men and women.

“They’re priests and nuns,” Tina said.

I said no, priests and nuns never ranted on the Common — because privately I thought all the speakers on the Common were a little crazy. This group was dressed as priests and nuns, and yet I did not believe they were the real thing.

The speaker was a short, gray-faced man in a stiff dog-collar. His hair was thick on top of his head and he was very angry — yelling so loud that the listeners stepped away and made room for him.

“Our Lord Jesus shed His holy blood and died for our sins!” he yelled. He twisted his face and reached out with his hand, “And yet there are those among you who won’t enter His church to be saved!” He seemed to be looking straight at me when he shouted, “Unless you enter that church and cling to the Catholic faith you are damned for all eternity — you will burn!”

I stepped back, and someone said to the priest, “Wait a minute — do you mean—?”

“I’m not afraid to tell you the truth,” the priest said. “That’s why I can stand here and tell you that Harvard College and the whole diocese of Boston are being strangled by Jews, who—”

Someone said, “Don’t listen to him.”

“—robbing them blind and crippling them. Collecting money! Promising salvation and offering institutionalized atheism. They are selling damnation! One of the leaders of the Jew-Communist conspiracy is Albert Einstein — yes, the same Albert Einstein. But there are others—”

He named six or seven people, practically choking as he said their names, and some of the audience laughed and others protested. In between attacking Jews and communists and Russians, he talked about Jesus, the Catholic Church, and how everyone who stood aside was going to burn in Hell.

It was bad when he shouted but worse when he whispered. He was popeyed, and at the end of his speech he made threats against the government and the Archbishop. He was a very ordinary-looking man, but when he spoke his face changed and became ugly and fierce. I would have been frightened except that the rest of the people there either laughed or shouted at him — they weren’t afraid.

Then he blessed himself and said a loud prayer, and a woman beside Tina joined in, repeating the prayer.

“Come back, Father Feeney!” a man called out.

The priest did not reply. He stepped off his wooden box and disappeared in the middle of the priests and nuns.

The nuns went through the crowd with felt-lined plates collecting money. Even though I was fifteen years old I was struck by how young the nuns were, and in spite of their black cloaks and stiff headdresses, how attractive they were — what pretty faces. All the nuns I knew were ferocious and elderly, with huge bonnets that looked like starched sea gulls on their heads. But these were like the sort of veiled muslim women I had seen in harem pictures, with small white hands and dark eyes.

After the collection, one of the priests lifted a blue silk banner of the Virgin Mary and they all set off in a procession, singing.

No one followed them, but I could sense that they had left a certain atmosphere in the little crowd of onlookers, as if their dust was still sifting down on us. The people were quiet and serious; it had all been bluff and bluster before, but perhaps now they were afraid.

I had heard the notorious name of Father Feeney before, but this was the first time I had seen him. He didn’t come up to my expectations — he looked very ordinary, pasty and small. But I was excited by his shrill voice, by the gangster faces of his priests and by the beauty of his nuns, begging with their collection plates.

Tina had not said a word. At first I thought she was afraid of Father Feeney; then I realized that she was afraid of me. I kept asking her what was wrong, and she kept saying nothing, nothing. When we were alone, walking through the Common to Tremont Street, Tina started to cry.

“That guy scared me,” she said, and sniffled.

I said he had not scared me, or made me believe anything. I had been scared, but I had also been thrilled by his anger and conviction.