The Sisters
There was no hope for him this time:
it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it
was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night
after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly.
If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the
darkened blind, for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of
a corpse. He had often said to me: I am not long for this world,
and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night
as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis.
It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon
in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it
sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled
me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its
deadly work.
[...]
It was late when
I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as
a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences.
In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face
of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think
of Christmas. But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I
understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding
into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it waiting
for me. It began to confess to me in a murmuring voice and I wondered
why it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle.
But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I
too was smiling feebly, as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.
[...]
I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood
and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom
as if I had been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this
for, as my uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal.
He had studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce
Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon
Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies
of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest. Sometimes
he had amused himself by putting difficult questions to me, asking me
what one should do in certain circumstances or whether such and such sins
were mortal or venial or only imperfections. His questions showed me how
complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I
had always regarded as the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards
the Eucharist and towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave
to me that I wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage
to undertake them; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers
of the Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Directory
and as closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper, elucidating
all these intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make
no answer or only a very foolish and halting one, upon which he used to
smile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me through
the responses of the Mass, which he had made me learn by heart; and, as
I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now and then
pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately. When he smiled
he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon
his lower lip - a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning
of our acquaintance before I knew him well.
[...]
-Yes, said my aunt.
He was a disappointed man. You could see that.
A silence took possession
of the little room and, under cover of it, I approached the table and
tasted my sherry and then returned quietly to my chair in the corner.
Eliza seemed to have fallen into a deep reverie. We waited respectfully
for her to break the silence: and after a long pause she said slowly:
-It was that chalice
he broke
.That was the beginning of it. Of course, they say it
was all right, that it contained nothing, I mean. But still
They
say it was the boys fault. But poor James was so nervous, God be merciful
to him!
-And was that it?
said my aunt. I heard something
.
Eliza nodded.
-That affected his
mind, she said. After that he began to mope by himself, talking to no
one and wandering about by himself. So one night he was wanted for to
go on a call and they couldnt find him anywhere. They looked high up
and low down; and still they couldnt see a sight of him anywhere. So
then the clerk suggested to try the chapel. So then they got the keys
and opened the chapel, and the clerk and Father ORourke and another priest
that was there brought in a light for to look for him
And what
do you think but there he was, sitting up by himself in the dark in his
confession-box, wide-awake and laughing-like softly to himself?
She stopped suddenly
as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no sound in the house:
and I knew that the old priest was lying still in his coffin as we had
seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle chalice on his breast.
Eliza resumed:
-Wide-awake and laughing-like
to himself
. So then, of course, when they saw that, that made
them think that there was something gone wrong with him
.
|