Дональд Уэстлейк: Brothers Keepers

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been four days since my last confession.”

“Yes, yes. Go on.”

Why does he always sound so impatient? Rush rush rush; that’s not the proper attitude. “Well,” I said, “let’s see.” I tried not to be rattled. “I had an impure thought,” I said, “on Thursday evening, during a shaving commercial on television.”

“A shaving commercial?” Now he sounded exasperated; it was bad enough, apparently, that I bored him, without bewildering him as well.

“It’s a commercial,” I said, “in which a blonde lady with a Swedish accent applies shaving cream to the face of a young man with a rather prognathous jaw.”

“Prognathous?” More bewildered than exasperated this time; I’d caught his attention for fair.

“That means, uh, prominent. A large jaw, that sort of sticks out.”

“Does that have anything to do with the sin?”

“No, no. I just thought, uh, I thought you wanted to know, uh...”

“This impure thought,” he said, chopping off my unfinished sentence. “Did it concern the woman or the man?”

“The woman, of course! What do you think?” I was shocked; you don’t expect to hear that sort of thing in confession.

“All right,” he said. “Anything else?” His name is Father Banzolini, and he comes here twice a week to hear our confessions. We give him a nice dinner before and a nightcap after, but he’s surly all the time, a very surly priest. I imagine he finds us dull, and would rather be hearing confessions over in the theater district or down in Greenwich Village. After all, how far can a lamb stray in a monastery?

“Um,” I said, trying to think. I’d had all my sins organized in my mind before coming in here, but as usual Father Banzolini’s asperity had thrown me off course. I’d once thought I might jot down all my sins in advance and simply read them from the paper in the confessional, but somehow that lacked the proper tone for contrition and so on. Also, what if the paper were to fall into the wrong hands?

Father Banzolini cleared his throat.

“Um,” I said hurriedly. “I, uh, I stole an orange Flair pen from Brother Valerian.”

“You stole it? Or you borrowed it?”

“I stole it,” I said, somewhat proudly. “On purpose.”

“Why?”

“Because he did the puzzle in last Sunday’s Times , and he knows that’s my prerogative. He claims he forgot. I imagine you’ll be hearing the story from his side a little later tonight.”

“Never mind anyone else’s sins,” Father Banzolini said. “Did you make restitution?”

“Beg pardon?”

A long artificial sigh. “Did you give it back?”

“No, I lost it. You didn’t see it, did you? It’s an ordinary orange—”

“No, I did not see it!”

“Oh. Well, I know it’s around here somewhere, and when I find it I’ll give it right back.”

“Good,” he said. “Of course, if you don’t find it you’ll have to replace it.”

Forty-nine cents. I sighed, but said, “Yes, I know, I will.”

“Anything else?”

I wished I could say no, but it seemed to me there had been something more than the Flair pen and the impure thought. Now, what was it? I cast my mind back.

“Brother Benedict?”

“I’m thinking,” I said. “Yes!”

He gave a sudden little jump, the other side of the small screened window. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. But I remember the other one.”

“There’s more,” he said, without joy.

“Just one. I took the Lord’s name in vain.”

He rested his chin on his hand. It was hard to see his face in the semidark, but his eyes appeared hooded, perhaps entirely closed. “Tell me about it,” he said.

“I was in the courtyard,” I told him, “and Brother Jerome was washing windows on the second floor when he dropped the cloth. It landed on my head, wet and cold and utterly without warning, and I instinctively shouted, ‘ Jesus Christ!’ ”

He jumped again.

“Whoops,” I whispered. “Did I say that too loud?”

He coughed a bit. “Perhaps more than was absolutely necessary,” he said. “Is that all of it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Definitely.”

“And do you have contrition and a firm purpose of amendment?”

“Oh, positively,” I said.

“Good.” He roused himself a bit, lifting his chin from his propped hand and shifting around on his chair. “For your penance, say two Our Fathers and, oh, seven Hail Marys.”

That seemed a bit steep for three little sins, but penances are non-negotiable. “Yes, Father,” I said.

“And it might be a good idea to close your eyes during television commercials.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Now say a good act of contrition.”

I closed my eyes and said the prayer, hearing him mumble the absolution in slurred Latin at the same time, and then my turn was finished and I left the confessional, my place being taken at once by old Brother Zebulon, tiny, bent, wrinkled and white-haired. He nodded at me and slipped behind the curtain, out of sight but not out of hearing; the cracking of his joints as he knelt down in there sounded through the chapel like a pair of rifle shots.

I knelt at the altar rail to zip through my penance, all the time trying to think where that blasted Flair could be. I’d taken it Thursday afternoon, and when I’d changed my mind the next morning — felt remorseful, in fact — the pen was absolutely nowhere to be found. This was Saturday night, and I had now spent the last day and a half looking for it, with so far not the slightest trace. What on earth had I done with it?

Finishing my penance without having solved the mystery of the missing Flair, I left the chapel and looked at the big clock in the hall. Ten-forty. The Sunday Times would be at the newsstand by now. I hurried along toward the office to get the necessary sixty cents and official permission to leave the premises.

Brother Leo was on duty at the desk, reading one of his aviation magazines. He was the exception to the rule. Brother Leo, an extremely stout man who wasn’t the slightest bit jolly. He was named for the lion, but he looked and acted more like a bear, or a bull, though fatter than either. All he cared about in this world was private aviation, the Lord knows why. Relatives from outside subscribed him to aviation magazines, which he read at all hours of the day and night. When a plane would pass over the monastery while Brother Leo was in the courtyard, he would shade his eyes with a massive pudgy hand and gaze up at the sky as though Christ Himself were up there on a cloud. And then, like as not, tell you what sort of plane it had been. “Boeing,” he’d say. “Seven-oh-seven.” What sort of response can you make to a thing like that?

Now Brother Leo put down his magazine on the reception desk and peered at me through the top half of his bifocals. “The Sunday Times ,” he said.

“That’s right,” I agreed. My weekly journey on Saturday evening to get the Sunday Times afforded me a pleasure even Brother Leo’s sour disposition couldn’t spoil. It — along with Sunday Mass, of course — was the highlight of my week.

“Brother Benedict,” he said, “there’s something worldly about you.”

I looked pointedly at his magazine, but said nothing. Having just come from confession, my soul as clean and well scrubbed as a sheet on a line, I had no desire to get into an altercation in which I might become uncharitable.