Paul Theroux - My Secret History

“If I tell you something will you promise not to tell anyone? Will you swear?”

I said God could strike me dead if I blabbed a word.

Tina scuffed the sidewalk and said, “My mother’s Jewish.”

I was startled — I couldn’t hide it.

“You’re going to tell!” she said. She had seen the excitement on my face.

“No, no,” I said.

“I mean, she’s Russian,” Tina said.

Did she think that would calm me? Being Russian seemed worse than Jewish, and her mother was both!

I said, “Well, we’re French. Our name’s actually Perron — that’s the way you’re supposed to say it.”

But the blood was beating in my head and making my eyes throb. It was a wonderful secret. If Tina had been a Catholic I might have given up on her. She was half Jewish — it didn’t matter what the other half was. This revelation made her seem pagan and possible. Nothing was a sin to her. But she couldn’t help it — she was already damned.

At the altar boy meeting in the sacristy a few days later, the Pastor read out the roster for the following week’s mass list. I had three seven o’clocks and another funeral — Mr. Kenway, from Brogan Road. I was serving all of them alone — that was strange. I turned to Chicky DePalma to get his reaction, but he was whispering to an altar boy named Slupski.

“She stuck a light bulb up her pussy, I’m telling you,” Chicky said.

“Did it light up?” Slupski said.

“I don’t want to see anyone wearing sneakers on the altar,” the Pastor was saying. His mouth hung open as he scrutinized us, and it made him seem very temperamental and impatient, like a big dog on a hot day. “I want to see clean faces and hands. No dungarees, no whispering. None of this Elvin Presley stuff.”

It was a warm summer night, with yellow moths flattened against the sacristy screens, and we sat and sweated and listened to the Pastor.

“What’s so funny, Bazzoli?” he said suddenly.

“Nothing, Father,” Bazzoli said and began swallowing his smile with difficulty, as though sipping it.

The rest of us knew why he had been smiling: “Elvin” Presley. Nothing undermined a warning quicker than a mispronunciation.

The Pastor resumed — he repeated himself, he criticized us some more — and then he said, “Get on your knees and pray for forgiveness.”

My mind had wandered. I had been thinking of Tina Spector and Did it light up? I had not heard the reason we were praying for forgiveness, but still I prayed as hard as I could.

“Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he said, making a slow sign of the cross with his stiff fingers. “You’re all dismissed except Andrew Parent.”

The altar boys left quickly, noisily, scraping their chairs, and some of them smirking at me.

The Pastor did not say anything immediately. He stared at me, he tortured me with the slow contemptuous heat of his colorless eyes, he let me suffer.

“Why were you smiling?”

I had been thinking about Tina — he had guessed at that: it had been plain on my face. I frowned in order to stiffen my expression and make it serious.

“Do you think immorality is funny?”

“No, Father.”

He let his mouth hang open and he panted at me in his doglike way. Then he said, “Immorality is a mortal sin. Your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost—”

He had known exactly what I had been thinking.

“—If you have impure thoughts you defile that temple. It’s as if you’ve smeared mud and filth on a lovely white sheet that your mother’s just washed. That’s nothing to smile about!”

“I wasn’t smiling, Father.”

He winced: he was insulted that I had replied to him — that I had spoken at all.

“Backtalk,” he said sourly.

“I was just thinking, Father,” I said, and there was a terrible twanging in my head. I was still kneeling, with my face upturned to the Pastor.

“Smart, aren’t you,” he said. “You’re very bold”—bold was one of the worst things anyone could be. “I don’t know where you get it from. Your mother and dad are good kind people. Your brother Louie was an excellent altar boy — always well-behaved and very clean-cut. But you just stare and smile, bold as brass.”

It was always disastrous for me when someone described the expression on my face, and it was — though I cannot explain why — a very common occurrence. As soon as the person said it, I assumed that expression — their saying it made me guilty and silenced me. Now I was ashamed, but I was not offended: I expected to be criticized — I knew I deserved it for my impure thoughts.

I dropped my gaze and saw, looking behind me in deep embarrassment, that I was wearing sneakers. Another rule broken — and they were very torn and dirty. I had worked the morning shift at Wright’s and spent the afternoon at the Sandpits. Alone, among the steep slopes and ledges and secret places, I had thought intensely of Tina. Isolated places always gave me impure thoughts and anyway I had begun to think of the Sandpits as Hell — like the great naked teasing Hell in Dante.

“What’s that in your back pocket?”

I pulled it out and offered it.

“A book, Father.”

Instead of taking it from me, he moved his hands behind his back and left me holding it in the air. He twisted his head around to read the title.

“Dante. The Inferno .”

“It’s about Hell,” I said. “And different types of punishments, for the various sinners. It’s all separate circles.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and said severely, “Does your mother know you’re reading it?”

“I think so, Father.”

“He thinks so.”

But he said no more for a moment, and I had the feeling that he was at a loss for words.

“Kneel up straight,” he said sharply.

I had let my bum rest against my heels. I straightened and raised my hands prayerfully under my chin.

“I’ve given you another funeral,” he said, and when I did not respond he added, “Don’t you know how to say thank you?”

“Yes, Father. Thank you, Father.”

“One more funeral and you’ll have earned yourself a wedding.”

Ah, that was why he wanted to be thanked — for the wedding that lay ahead, the short happy service, the white roll of cloth down the center aisle, the kiss, the confetti afterwards, the two dollars.

“And three early masses. Make sure you’re on time. And no sneakers.”

“Yes, Father.”

“That’s all. Now pray for forgiveness. Pray for your immortal soul.”

“I was going to ask a question, Father.”

He winced again and looked at me with hatred. Bold as brass , he was thinking. Backtalk! I wanted to apologize and tell him I couldn’t help it.

He nodded — twitched once — for me to continue.

“Is Father Feeney a real priest, Father? I heard him speaking on the Common.”

The Pastor chewed his tongue for a moment, and then said, “Father Feeney received the sacrament of Holy Orders. That can never be taken away, even though he is not a Jesuit anymore, nor a Harvard chaplain. He still celebrates holy mass — it is his sacred duty.”

“But what about his sermons? I was just wondering.”

“Only Almighty God knows the answer to that,” the Pastor said, and then he added, “Father Feeney had a very difficult time. He was a brilliant man, and a lot of what he says makes sense,” as if the Pastor knew a little of what Almighty God might say.

“Thank you, Father.”

“And did your mother know you were hanging around Boston Common?”

“No, Father.”

“Well!” he said triumphantly, and the matter was settled. “Now pray!”

Yet I was still not satisfied. At the first of my three seven o’clocks I asked Father Furty the same question.