John McGahern - The Barracks

The priest came constantly and soon after she’d been taken bad he gave her Extreme Unction, it seemed awful ordinary, the touching of nostrils and eyes and ears and lips, the hands and feet with the yellow oil, smell of the 65 per cent wax candles burning, the wooden crucifix, the vessels of ordinary water and holy water, the host in the little pyx on the table.

She had prepared patients in the hospitals herself for this same Sacrament. They’d have to wash them beforehand; make the bed so that the clothes at the bottom would be free to fold back from the feet; and when it was over she used burn the cotton-wool that had soaked the holy oil. She’d never been able to envisage herself receiving it, always it was other people.

She flinched as she was touched with the wet wool. The organs of sense, through which sin had entered the soul, were being anointed; and she wanted to declare in the face of the Latin words that sense of truth and justice and beauty and all things else had entered that way too. She felt terribly unreal, frightened of the significance, till her eyes lit on the little bottle of yellow oil the priest had. Surely it was olive oil. Out of the Cathecism Notes they used singsong by heart at school,

O oil of olives

mixed with balm

and blessed by the bishop

on Holy Thursday .

That was all, no awe now or intimations or anything, the priest with the purple stole touching the senses in their turn with the oil and murmuring the prayers and the 65 per cent wax candles burning that had been blessed too and, Oil of olives/mixed with balm/and blessed by the bishop/on Holy Thursday , beating in her mind, echoed by a choir of young voices preparing for Confirmation in a lost schoolroom, shutting out the full realism of the Sacrament being administered to her in this room that had grown somehow horrible. They’d got such a careful upbringing in a way, so careful that it was hard now to see what it had all been for, was it just for this? And the terror that brought could be soothed by this chanting in the memory.

O oil of olives

mixed with balm

and blessed by the bishop

on Holy Thursday .

Then it was over, and she’d managed not to realize much, the priest was going away, he’d come again tomorrow.

He was kind, now that she was ill, but she continued to dislike him, their first meeting and clash was deep in her mind and it would never leave it. She had always found her first instinctive reaction to people right, no matter how false somebody’s conduct made that first judgement seem for a time it had never been really proved wrong, no matter how successfully she was able to override it with reason or even a late liking.

She tried never to let this priest close. In the confessional she put everything into formula. She didn’t let him know any of her thoughts. It was dishonest, though lawfully proper enough. Her thoughts had been with her too long, they had changed themselves too often for her to want to change them now because of another’s interpretation of a law big enough to include every positive position of honesty; and if her own truth wasn’t within herself she didn’t see how it could possibly concern her anyhow. She wanted to be understood, that was the old craving, but was it not an indulgence? How could anyone have time to understand her, they were as full of their own lives as she was of hers; all their lives had to overflow or cripple and die and did it matter where the overflow ran? This priest would have to examine and try to understand what she’d say in the light of his own life, and it could only lead to the wilful agreement of sympathy, or open or silent conflict. He’d want to change her to his view and she’d want to hold her own. The whole of her vital world was in herself, contracting or going outwards to embrace according to the strength and direction of her desire, but it had nothing to do with what some one else thought or felt. She didn’t want to struggle and argue, she hadn’t blind strength enough for that in years, she wanted to have her own way and be let go it in peace. Now she was losing even that desire.

So few people took on individuality in her mind, and this priest was definitely not one of them. A big tall man in his sixties, as tall as Reegan but not so straight, bloated, a tracery of thread-like purple veins under the red skin of his face. She was detached, she could watch: he was sitting on a chair at the bedside, a priest supposed to be comforting a dying woman; she didn’t care. Sometimes the pressure of his talk oppressed her to near craziness, as if she’d been dragged close as inches to the steel singing far away across the lake, and she felt like crying at him for some ease or silence. Mostly she didn’t hear what he was saying but agreed with him mechanically as she watched him, his bloated appearance fascinated her most, and she’d think how strange it was how some wore down to skin and bone and others puffed out to burst like a pod in the sun.

The one thing she’d fear if she could care enough was his aggressiveness, when he began to suspect that her total acquiescence wasn’t agreement but the evasion it actually was.

“You must pray to Mary, she has the ear of God, she speaks to God for us, we’re one of the few nations in the world who understand Her importance. Don’t you think we should have great devotion to Mary?” he impressed hotly one evening.

“Yes, of course,” she answered wearily.

“There’s no of course about it, we should, and that’s all,” he said.

She went hot with resentment, the instinct to savage him rose and as quickly died. He was simply a person to be avoided if she had a choice in the matter but she didn’t care whether she chose or was chosen any more, it was all the same. For a moment a picture of the ridiculous village presbytery, the hideous Virgin Mary blue of doors and windows in the whitewashed walls at the end of the lovely drive of limes, showed itself to her eyes and she wanted to laugh. “Yes. That’s quite right,” she said. She was able to agree. She’d save herself that much noise.

It was hard enough to accept the reality of her situation; but it was surely the last and hardest thing to accept its interpretations from knaves and active fools and being compelled to live in them as in strait-jackets. To be able to say yes to that intolerant lunacy so as to be able to go your own way without noise or interruption was to accept everything and was hardest of all to do.

A worn and dry craving to see the back of this priest would take possession of her; for Reegan to come from the bog with turf-mould dried in sweat to his face and hands; for them to kneel down about her bed so that she could hear them chant.

Mystical Rose,

Pray for us.

Tower of David,

pray for us.

Tower of Ivory,

pray for us.

House of Gold,

pray for us.

Ark of the Covenant,

pray for us.

Gate of Heaven,

pray for us.

Morning Star .

The rosary had grown into her life: she’d come to love its words, its rhythm, its repetitions, its confident chanting, its eternal mysteries; what it meant didn’t matter, whether it meant anything at all or not it gave the last need of her heart release, the need to praise and celebrate, in which everything rejoiced.

She grew worse, she began to sink, though they didn’t know when it would end. As she felt herself go she tried to say once to herself, “This is not my life. This is not the way I lived. What’s happening now was never part of my life. I have lived in health, not in sickness in death,” but suddenly it was too tiring or futile to continue and the resolution was soon lost, as everything was.