August loved Latin—such musical precision, a perfect system through which to divide and conquer the world. He thrived within its bounds, just as he thrived within the tolling structure of the seminary day. St. Peter’s broke life into pieces and portioned it out. For the first time in his life August began to feel secure.
Until.
Late one night, in the heart of the grand silence, there came a moaning through the wall beside his bed. Someone else might have thought the moaner was ill or in the grips of a nightmare, but August was all too familiar with the sound of sin. He lay frozen in his bed, just as he’d lain frozen the night he heard his mother being killed.
She’d cried out over and over, and the thing that was murdering her must’ve had more than one head, because it answered in the voice of a bull, then a coyote, then a bear. August heard it leave by the slamming back door, then a hush, and he knew with a childish certainty she was dead. The next morning, Aggie folded down his quilt to find him curled at the foot of his little bed. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she said softly, and he opened his eyes and screamed.
Now, as he buried his head under the pillow, his neighbour moaned louder, as though it were somehow fundamental to his release that he be overheard, that he not arrive at his whimpered climax entirely alone.
August found himself looking out for the young man at morning prayer. Even though they’d slept separated by a wall for three years, August knew him only by sight, never having bothered to remember a name. The neighbour had the look of an invalid about him—watery eyes, fine cheekbones, flaxen hair. The mouth he’d moaned through was pink—it formed itself sweetly, almost girlishly, around the words of supplication and filial love. Watching it move, August felt a sickening response in his groin.
Not long after his arrival at St. Peter’s he had chosen the flamboyant Father Charlebois for his spiritual adviser. Their next tête-à-tête wasn’t scheduled for two weeks, but August wasn’t sure he could wait that long. He requested a special session and spilled his contaminated guts. When he finally grew quiet, Father Charlebois seized hold of his hand, sandwiching it only partially, as his own were so pitiably small.
“My son,” he began gravely, “there are times when a Man of God must do battle with the Prince of Darkness.” He lowered his voice, as though they might be overheard. “No weapons, you understand. Hand to hand.”
August nodded. He knew all about combat—what it meant to be shaken so your tongue slapped in your mouth, kicked blue and breathless, shoved face down in a filthy ditch. What happened? Aggie bending over his latest wound, her hair loose, fingers greasy with the flowery salve she was rubbing into his knuckles, his cheek, his knee. The answer always a lie. I tripped. I fell.
He’d fought back at first, slight though he was, but it only brought more of them piling on. In the end there seemed to be little use in defending his mother’s honour—after all, everything they said or sang about her was true. He realized it lying on his stomach with a larger boy’s knee in his back. The ditch water he lay in was hopping with chorus frogs. A blue-spotted salamander stared out at him from a snarl of weeds. Surrender, he thought, play dead. And it worked.
Father Charlebois’s eyes were burning. “You never know when he will strike, August. Even after years of faithful service, Satan can come at you like a rabid dog, and when he does, there’s nothing to do but beat him back!” He released August from his grip and sat back, his smile almost disgusting in the way it cracked open and spread. “Remember the war in heaven, my son.”
August looked up, bewildered. “But Father, those were angels.”
The priest’s finger shot out like a striking baby snake. “The point is,” he shouted happily, “we won!”
With food in her belly and the radiator on high, Mathilda yields easily to the ever-present temptation of sleep. Her eyes flutter open on January then February light, the growing swell of herself beneath the quilt and, very often, Thomas jammed up against the bed on a small wooden chair.
On St. Valentine’s Day he sits waiting for her to awaken, a heart-shaped box of chocolates folded to his chest. At length she stirs, peering out at him through her lashes. “Thomas,” she murmurs, as though talking in her sleep.
He takes her hand in his, holding it a little too hard. “Yes, love?”
“Do you know when I first noticed you?”
Her tone is almost tender. He swallows loudly. “No, when?”
“At the Labour Day picnic. You remember, you were stuck behind that table, slicing up ham.”
“Sure.”
“You were looking at me.”
He smiles sheepishly. “I was always looking at you.”
“Yes, but this time I noticed. This time I looked back.”
“You did?”
“You wouldn’t remember. You were distracted by the crow.”
“Crow? What crow?” Then it comes to him—the sudden weight of it landing, its claws flexing into the flesh of his scalp. He shudders, recalling how he bellowed and danced, how the bird lifted as suddenly as it had arrived, left him hopping amid a laughing crowd. “You saw that?”
“Yes.”
He laughs weakly. “I guess it was the meat. They’re carrion birds, after all.”
“Maybe, but it didn’t seem that way to me.” Her voice is barely audible. He has to lean in close to hear the rest. “To me, it seemed like a sign.”
“A sign?”
“Like when Our Lady knew to accept Joseph.” She closes her eyes. “Only with him I think it was a dove.”
“Oh.” Thomas chokes on the little sound. His wife’s hair glows like dark honey, ranging over the pillow in slow streams. He touches a strand. “I always knew. From that first morning when I walked into town. Fourth Avenue looked empty except for you.”
It’s hard to read her face. That might be a strange kind of smile.
“Mathilda?” he says softly. “Honey, are you asleep?”
August hasn’t laid eyes on Mathilda since she told him, yet his image of her continues to evolve. She’d be six months along by now. Just as she no doubt grows large in the curtained bedroom above her husband’s shop, so too she expands in his mind.
He reads feverishly by the bedside lamp—Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit?—then drifts off to dream of her lying huge and prone, a jungle-bound shrine, her belly its central dome. She’s marked all over with an ancient tongue, dancing characters and runic designs. Snakes coil thickly, looped like vines from the huge-leaved trees. One drops in a bright pattern. Slides a slow, scripted m over her stony thighs.
August wakes bathed in sweat, feels the small hot head thrusting up where the pyjamas have twisted painfully about his groin.
“Why, Lord?” he cries, the words taking shape before he can think them down. “A serpent built into me, embedded in my flesh?” He clasps his hands hard to keep them innocent. “It’s too much, Lord,” he howls softly. “It’s cruel.”
And if thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off—
He thrashes his head from side to side. No. We are forged in His image. His to create and His alone to destroy.
For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish—
No. No. Father Felix explained all that, remember?
With the April melt, Mathilda grows hungry for news of the outside world. Thomas delivers, bringing stories like bright garnishes on every plate—sometimes gossip from the shop, sometimes an item from the flimsy Mercy Herald. By early May he’s begun to tell her of himself. First the shadowy closeness of mother and home, then a little of his father, the yawning slaughterhouse, its windows casting slabs of light.
“I fainted, you know,” he confesses, “the first time I had to stick a pig.”
“You did?” Mathilda opens her heavy-lidded eyes.
“Sure.” He grins. “Hit the floor.” He leaves out the thrashing he got when he came to, the half-stuck animal shrieking on its side, the old man jamming the heel of the knife back into his shaking hand.
“I fainted once.” Her eyes fall closed again. He’s used to it now, the serenity of her lidded gaze. “At confirmation, I stood up too fast after taking Communion—at least that’s what everybody thought.”
He nods sympathetically.
“But that wasn’t it.”
“It wasn’t?”
“I had a vision,” she says quietly. “Just for a second, but for that second it was like my whole head flooded with light.”
“Boy,” says Thomas. “That’s something, all right. Was it—I mean, what did you see?”
Her eyes move like fish under their lids. “Christ.”
“Oh.”
“He was floating above me, you know, on the Cross. His face was far away, kind of blurry, but his feet were right over my head. They were so close I could’ve reached up and caught hold of the nails.”
Thomas searches for something fitting to say, but it’s like riffling through the closet of a man half his size.
“I told Father Rock about it after,” Mathilda says, opening her eyes.
“You did?”
“I went to see him in his office.”
Thomas pictures the towering, snowy-haired priest. Sees him pacing behind that immovable desk, shaking his big head silently, almost threateningly, while Thomas struggled through the lesson of the day. “What did he say?”
“He said I was imagining things.” Her mouth trembles ever so slightly. “I told him, no, Father Rock, I saw Him, I swear, but he said if I hadn’t imagined it, then I must be telling a lie.”
“He never.”
She nods. “He did. He said it was wicked of me. He said I was deceitful and vain.”
“Vain?”
“To try and make myself the centre of attention. To try and take the attention away from Him—the Saviour, he meant—on such a holy occasion.”
“The gall of him,” Thomas says angrily. “The gall.”
She tilts her round face his way. “You believe me, Thomas, don’t you?”
There’s something new in her tone. Something, if he’s not mistaken, very much like need. “Yes, love.” He touches her cheek. She doesn’t flinch. “Yes,” he repeats firmly, “I do.”
It took a letter from Father Felix to arrange for August’s ordination to take place at St. Augustine’s in Brandon, rather than at home. The old priest picked Aggie up bright and early on the day, sat in her little kitchen sipping tea while she fussed with her hair, called out to remind her to go easy on the makeup and maybe put on something a little plain. She complied gracefully, emerging in a dark brown dress that clung like melted chocolate to her thighs.
Long past the blush of youth, Aggie still took effortless command of a room. August watched it happen—the turning heads on his fellow deacons, the sliding eyes on more than a few of the priests in attendance, though not, thanks be to God, the archbishop himself. August stared at the ground as he passed, but he could still feel her, a dark softness in the middle pew, strangely mighty, almost frightening in her way.
When it came time to prostrate himself before the archbishop’s throne, August did so eagerly. He knew the position well. Back home, he’d lain like that on the rippling grass or, in winter, face down in the snow. Not often. He kept it for emergencies, nights when the rhythm of Aggie’s bedsprings threatened to split his skull, when he couldn’t bear to witness yet another heart-rending cry. He’d stumble out into the field that backed onto their house, sometimes in his pyjamas, boots and coat, sometimes just pyjamas and bony bare feet. It didn’t matter if he caught his toes in a dog hole or cut his heel on a curl of wire—nothing stopped him until he made it to the heart of that field. Once there, he’d flop down on his belly, spread out like a starfish and grab fistfuls of grass, or powdery, compacting snow.
Prostration was meant to make him feel helpless, he knew, humiliated even, but in truth he found it comforting. So comforting, he nearly forgot he was meant to be listening for the voice of God. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you. August strained his inner ears. Nothing. He waited so long, the parish priest cleared his throat, his echo approximating the hoped-for words. August rose to a dizzy sickness, the blood draining to pool warmly in his feet.
The archbishop’s hands settled heavily on his head, and he wobbled a little under their weight. Dozens of men had touched him there. Pudgy hands, sticky with sweat. Old, almost fleshless hands. Hard hands, a seemingly endless stream of railway men and farm hire snaking through town. They patted his head as though they were uncles or family friends, pressed pennies into his waiting palm. Go get a sugar stick now—or a licorice whip, or a chocolate dollar—go on now, make yourself scarce like a good boy. The man in the striped suit was no different, save for the value of his coins. Two whole quarters—enough for a stack of chocolate bars, or more two-a-penny candy than August could hold. He opted for the latter, turning the front of his shirt up like a pea-picker’s apron, loading it with the most sugar his money would buy. He forced it all down, up to his eyes in the reeds beside Rat Creek.
All through his teens August washed his hair each and every day, ignoring Aggie’s talk of pneumonia, scrubbing until she swore he’d go bald.
“Tu es sacerdos in aeternum,” the archbishop pronounced, and August felt himself sway forward as the pressure of those hands lifted away. It was irreversible, that phrase. You are forever a priest. He stepped back to don his chasuble, grinning like a bloody fool.