Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

They were outside in the cold fog. There was another cart filled with coal waiting to be taken in. That was why Under Redeemer Smith, lazy bastard as always, had jammed the door open rather than lock it as he must have been instructed to do.

Normally they would have stolen as much coal as they could carry, but their pockets were full of food and they were too afraid in any case.

“Where are we?” asked Vague Henri.

“No idea,” replied Cale. He moved down the ambo trying to get used to the fog and the dark in order to find a landmark. But now the relief at their deliverance was fading. They’d walked a long way in the tunnel. They could be anywhere in the Sanctuary and its maze of buildings and ambos and corridors.

Then a huge pair of feet loomed out of the fog. It was the great statue of the Hanged Redeemer they had left behind more than an hour ago.

Within less than five minutes they, separately, joined the queue for the sleepshed, more formally known as the Dormitory of the Lady of Perpetual Succor. What any of this meant they knew not and cared less. They began chanting along with the others: “What if I should die tonight? What if I should die tonight? What if I should die tonight?” The answer to this dismal question had been made pretty clear to the acolytes all their lives by the Redeemers: most of them would go to hell because of the disgusting black state of their souls and be burned for all eternity. For years when the subject of their dying in the middle of the night came up, and it came up often, Cale was frequently hauled to the front of the group, and the Redeemer in charge would raise his cassock up to reveal his naked back and show the bruises that covered it from nape to sacroiliac. The bruises were of many sizes, and while going through the various states of healing, his back was sometimes beautiful to behold with so many variations of blue and gray and green, vermilioned reds and almost golden purple yellows. “Look at these colors!” the Redeemer would say. “Your souls, which should be as white as a turtle’s wing, are worse than the blacks and purples on this boy’s back. This is what all of you look like to God: purple and black. And if any one of you dies tonight, you don’t need me to tell you what line you’ll be forming. As for what’s waiting at the end of that line-there are beasts to eat you and shit you out and eat you yet again. There are metal ovens waiting, heated red, and you’ll be baked to cinders for an hour, then rendered down to fat, then kneaded by a devil, ash and lard together like an ugly dough, and then be born again and then be burned again and born and burned for all eternity.”

Once, a visiting dignitary, one Redeemer Compton, who was opposed to Bosco, had witnessed this demonstration and also seen one of the beatings that had caused the bruises. “These boys,” said Redeemer Compton, “are being shaped to fight the blasphemy of the Antagonists. Violence so extreme against a child no matter how much he has become the devil’s playground will break his spirit long before it will make it tough enough to help us wipe their sacrilege from the sight of God.”

“He is not unruly and he is very far from being the playground of the devil.” Bosco, always so very guarded when it came to discussing Cale, was instantly angry with himself at being provoked even to so enigmatic an explanation.

“Then why do you allow this?”

“Do not ask the reason. Be satisfied.”

“Tell me, Redeemer.”

“I say I will not.”

And at this, Redeemer Compton, wiser for once than Bosco, held his tongue, but later he instructed two of his paid squealers at the Sanctuary to pick up whatever they could about the purple-backed boy.

“What if I should die tonight? What if I should die tonight? What if I should die tonight?” As Cale and the others muttered their way to bed, the chant that years of repetition had rendered almost empty of meaning renewed the dreadful power it had had over them as young children, when they would lie awake all night convinced that merely the closing of their eyes would see them feeling the hot mouth of the beast or hearing the charred clash of the metal oven doors.

Within ten minutes the huge shed was full and the door locked as five hundred boys in absolute silence prepared to sleep in the vast, freezing and dimly lit barn. Then the candles were put out, and the boys began to prepare for a sleep that came quickly, for they had been awake since five o’clock that morning. The dormitory settled into a noisy mixture of snores, weeping, yelps and grunts as the boys fled into whatever comfort or horror waited for them in their dreams.

Three boys, of course, did not fall asleep quickly, nor did they do so for many hours.

Cale woke early. This had been his habit for as long as he could remember. It gave him an entire hour to be on his own, as far as anyone could be alone with five hundred sleeping boys in the same room. But in the dark before dawn no one talked to him, watched him, told him what to do, threatened him or looked for an excuse to beat or even kill him. And even if he was hungry, he was at least warm under his blanket. And then, of course, he remembered the food. His pockets were full of it. It was reckless to reach for the cassock hanging by his bed, but he was driven by something irresistible, not just hunger, because he lived with that constantly, but delight, the thought, the unbearable pleasure of eating something that tasted so wonderful. Taking his time, he reached into his pocket and took the first thing he found there, a kind of plain biscuit with a custard layer, and shoved it in his mouth.

At first he thought he would go wild with delight, the flavors of sugar and butter exploding not only in his mouth but in his brain, indeed, in his very soul. He chewed on and swallowed, pleasure beyond words.

And then, of course, he felt sick. He was no more used to food like this than an elephant is to flying through the air. Like a man dying of thirst or from lack of food, he needed to be fed stingy drops and morsels or his body would rebel and die of the very thing it so desperately needed. Cale lay there for half an hour and tried very hard not to vomit.

As he began to recover he could hear the sound of one of the Redeemers walking his rounds before wake-up. The hard soles of his shoes clacked on the stone floor as he circled the sleeping boys. This went on for ten minutes. Then suddenly a quickening of pace and loud claps. GET UP! GET UP!

Cale, still queasy, eased himself upright and began to pull on his cassock, careful not to let anything spill from his overfull pockets as the five hundred groaned and staggered their way to their feet.

A few minutes later they marched through the rain to assemble in the great stone Basilica of Eternal Mercy, where they spent the next two hours muttering prayers in response to the ten Redeemers holding Mass, using words that had long ago become empty from repetition. Cale didn’t mind this; he had learned as a small boy to sleep with his eyes open and mutter along with the rest, only a small part of his mind keeping wary, alert for Redeemers on the lookout for slackers.

Then it was breakfast, more gray porridge and dead men’s feet, a kind of cake made from many kinds of animal and vegetable fat, usually rancid, and numerous varieties of seed. It was revolting but highly nutritious. It was only because of this disgusting mixture that the boys survived at all. The Redeemers wished them to have as little pleasure in life as possible, but their plans for the future, for the great war against the Antagonists, meant that the boys had to be strong. Those who lived, of course.

It was not until eight o’clock as they queued for practice on the Field of Our Redeemer’s Absolute Forgiveness, that the three were able to talk again.