The Taste of Ashes

by Sheila Peters

  He was none of her business and the provincial superior had no right involving a woman they thought he’d feel an obligation to. But instead of walking away, he followed her inside to set down the paper on a big paint-stained table. Jars of brushes, dozens of pots of paint, and two easels holding big sheets of blank paper. The walls were covered in paintings. He wasn’t prepared for them. Lots of black. Flashes of red. They hit him like a huge curling wave of heat. A giant blue couple standing with their backs to each other. A house with a sun rising overhead, trees, and a little family. A body dangling out of a shattered window. All of the emotion in the paintings funnelled into his body, standing the hair on his neck straight up.

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “Who?” He could barely hear what she was saying.

  “The art therapist. Chris Mundy.”

  “I don’t think so. If I have, I don’t remember.” Álvaro wanted to get out of the room.

  “She runs groups for the kids here. She also works with torture survivors. War zones. Started with the Vietnamese years back, Cambodians. Central America in the eighties, when they were all coming through. Now I think it’s Bosnians.”

  Álvaro stared at a painting of a figure wrapped in grey. A swarm of wasps darted in from every side, stinging the bits of exposed pinkness wherever the grey didn’t cover it. Angry red welts were scribbled into the stung bits. Margaret came over to look, reached out one finger to touch a place on the thigh where the red scratches tore the paper.

  “Don’t!” Álvaro cried, swatting her hand away.

  Her shock and the way she shrank from him, holding her hand, brought him back to her presence. Regret. He bent his head into his hands and rubbed his face, the scar throbbing. Even though all he expected now was pain, he was never ready. Even though he held himself in a permanent crouch of self-protection, his defences still crumbled.

  He went and looked out the window at the leafless trees, the cars on the street below, and the ocean beyond. It was good there was this ocean here. A place where the water pooled and circled and swept everything away, brought it back reordered. Like prayer used to do for him.

  He wished he could remember his priest’s life. The combination of tedium and delirious conviction. His body tingling with the expectation of joy, knowing that the possibility of ecstasy waited in every moment. Every day, the transformation of communion, the cleansing, and the renewal. The felt presence as the whole world prayed together. Give me a new heart and place a new spirit within me. Take from my body my stony heart and give me a natural one.

  He spoke to the tree trunk outside the window. “I’m sorry.” He turned to see she had already absorbed the shock, and was worried instead about him. The red mark on the back of her hand where he had struck her would be a bruise. “I’m pretty much a lost cause.”

  “I’d like to give you a hug,” Margaret sighed, “but it’s probably not a good idea.”

  “No,” he said, realizing how lonely his body was.

  “Why don’t you give her a try?”

  “Who?”

  “Chris. She’s very good. These art therapists, they know there are some things you can’t talk about. You can’t think through. Things you can only feel.” Margaret paused, touching the beads at her throat. “She’ll be in Monday.”

  When Álvaro had walked away from the last counselling sessions, Walter had stood up for him. Oblates weren’t made to sit around contemplating their navels, he’d said. Pry out the damn lint and get on with it. Leave the rest to God.

  Covenant House had phoned the next day and asked if he could come in a couple of days a week and make some translations for them. They’d been very kind. Whatever he felt comfortable with, they’d said. After Margaret left, he bent once more over his desk, the chatter from the next office soothed him with its combination of the banal and the serious — anxiety about a weekend date, about some wedding, about one of the kids who’d run away, another who was making a home visit — and he realized how much he wanted to keep working here. It was a fragile link: the smell of good food cooking and the kids’ voices, the same edgy laughter, the jabs of outrage at some unfairness. These Vancouver kids were bigger, though, and slower-moving than the ones he’d known in Guatemala City. The thousands of small dark shapes dodging through the rain-black streets of Guatemala City, flickering like fish under moving water. At least until the solvents kicked in.

  In his last few months there, he’d buried himself in their chaotic lives. Their clustering on the cement doorstep of the little downtown school Margaret’s money had paid for. The bodies pushing inside when the grill slid open in the mornings, shivering cold, coming down. Cleaning up their cuts and bruises. Chattering over loot they’d rustled from the cemetery where the graves were rented like rooms. If the rent wasn’t paid, the bodies were thrown into la baranca. The kids scavenged whatever the workers missed. Rings rattling loose on finger bones. Lots of rosaries, the smell of death sometimes still on them. Bullets. All he could think to do was make them wash their hands and their treasures.

  Juan Tzul collected bones, the tiny ones — the fingers and feet. Álvaro had tracked down an old anatomy book and turned it into a game. Trying to assemble an entire hand, for example. One time they’d found the skeleton of a baby inside the mother. They’d gathered the pieces together into a tiny cloth bag and buried it properly. What is the state of this baby’s soul, Juan had asked? If it hasn’t been blessed but hasn’t been born? Will it be in hell? He wanted to be a priest. He muttered the act of contrition even as he stole food and sniffed gasoline. Álvaro blessed him every morning but refused him the last rites, saying he must not seek death.

  He had tried to teach him to read. Juan would stare at the page and trace his fingers around the letters and say what they looked like, the shape of a word. La casa looked like a trolley car, he’d say. La madre like what? A house with a balcony. Or a church with two steeples. A refuge. The lines on the page were a secret code he could never decipher. How is el perro a dog, he’d ask. A dog has four legs — some have three, but there’s no dog alive with one leg. And Álvaro would find himself drawing the words with cartoon appendages. Love, he’d think. How could he draw love for Juan, the bone collector? He had written la niña in fetal finger bones. La preciosita. The joy on the boy’s battered face as he slipped into a coma, Álvaro’s fingers glistening with holy oil, his lips moving in the final blessing.

  †

  All weekend, Álvaro expected a phone call from Covenant House. The last thing they needed was a crazy man upstairs who’d assaulted a woman who was undoubtedly one of their donors. He wondered who they would choose to initiate the quiet dismissal. He was shivering in a lawn chair beside the pool someone had emptied on Saturday when Walter found him on Sunday. After missing mass again.

  “Why anyone chooses to live in Vancouver beats me,” the old man said, lowering himself into the chair across from Álvaro. The rain had dropped almost an inch of new water into the pool. “Damn thing will be full again by next Sunday.”

  “You’re not going to start in on the empty vessel metaphor, are you?”

  Walter snorted. “I was thinking how at least up north you could, in winter, use the aforementioned receptacle for a skating rink. Where the cold does you some good.”

  Álvaro waited.

  “There’s a reserve at the end of a big lake up there, hell, half the reserves are at the end of big lakes up there.” He laughed. “This one is a beauty. Rough looking when the roads are mud and potholes and you can see all the junk piled up around the houses. But the snow comes and it’s forty below and the church is blue and white like the sky and the snow. The graveyard goes back to the early eighteen-hundreds. You stand there at the altar with those graves behind you like an anchor. A strong anchor reminding you of why you’re here celebrating with those good people who have come out to clear the snow off the steps and light the stove three, four hours before you get there, and the old timbers holding the place up are snapping a
nd groaning in the cold. It is the greatest blessing to be there. It is what we were made for.”

  There were times Álvaro could not help but stick some of his pain into others. When Walter thought of priests and torture, he thought of Brébeuf and bravery. He didn’t think of the inquisition, the priests whispering in the ears of their brothers, the ones they flayed, promising much if only they would give them names of the others, erections stiff under their black frocks, lips dry with excitement. All the eloquence of love, sympathy, and regret as they cut you open and sewed you back up filled with salted shards of glass.

  “In the old Mayan stories,” Álvaro said, “wood was what the gods first used to make men. It didn’t work very well. Animals tore those first people apart.”

  “Clay’s the thing,” Walter said. “Easier to work with.”

  “The Mayan gods used clay too. The second time. But the people wouldn’t hold together. There was no need of a catastrophe — they just dissolved. When they finally got it right and made the old Maya, they set in motion three thousand years of slaughter. And another five hundred of martyrdom at our hands.”

  Walter had leaned close to him, the mint strong on his old breath. “You know we’re not called here as fixers, Álvaro. That’s the oldest red herring in the book.”

  “But there was another effort they made,” Álvaro said. “The gods made one very fine group of people. Unfortunately they made them too well. Their vision was too acute, too near to the vision of the gods themselves. And when the gods questioned them, when they led them in their catechism, they didn’t answer properly. They were curious about the world and forgot to praise the gods for making them.”

  Álvaro drew his finger across his throat. “Pffft.” He opened his hands. “Lord, open my lips and my mouth will proclaim your praise.” He looked away from Walter. “All my torturer wanted, Walter, was for me to confess my sins and sing his praises.” The voice was loud inside his head, the cajoling whisper. The hand holding the razor or the cigarette, the pain waiting in every nerve. “Right now, the language of prayer seems too much like I’m talking to him.”

  Walter’s head bent and his hand came up to cross himself.

  “You can see my problem? And talking to a psychiatrist doesn’t seem any better.”

  The old head snapped up, his derision evident. He took Álvaro’s hands in his and put them together palm to palm. “We need to find you something that uses your hands. Something active. Your hands and your heart. That translation stuff — it’s all inside your head again, isn’t it? Maybe we should change that.”

  “Hold on.” Álvaro’s stomach clenched. “I’d like to stick with that for a while if they’ll let me. It’s something.”

  A voice called them in for lunch and Álvaro helped Walter to his feet. On the slow walk to the dining room, Walter told him about an old Carrier Indian who thought the priest needed a little instruction about love in marriage. It comes, he said, and it goes. Like the creeks in high places. You’re climbing right alongside one, drinking from it now and then, splashing it on your face to cool you down. Then it disappears. Where there was water, there’s nothing but a little spill of rocks and maybe a trace of dried mud. Your dog, he’s no help. He runs off whenever he sniffs out a patch of grass or snow to cool his feet. He probably knows exactly where that stream went, and he figures you do too. After all, you’re the boss. So you keep going, not wanting your dog to catch on to your foolishness. Then, a few hundred yards further up, for no reason you can figure, there’s water again and maybe a dipper. You take a drink and keep going.”

  “What if your love is truly gone? How long do you wait?”

  “You don’t wait. You keep going,” Walter had said. “Find some form of prayer you can make use of, son. Find that prayer and stick to it. You’re a priest and you always will be. There’s no changing that.”

  †

  Álvaro wanted nothing more than a prayer he could hold on to. On Monday, he rode the bus down Granville and across the bridge. He walked up the quiet street and rang the bell at Covenant House. If they let him in, he told himself. If they let him in, he would talk to her. Today. Now.

  Hello, Father Al, they said, smiling. No averted eyes. No mention of Margaret. He climbed the stairs up past his office, up to the third floor, and knocked. A woman opened the door. She wore layers of clothing, bright colours, shawls, scarves, things in her hair, bracelets. Where the frame of her body was visible, it looked strong. A wide mouth between angular cheekbones. A nose stud.

  “Margaret suggested I come to see you.”

  “Yes. She mentioned it.”

  She held herself very still.

  “You sound hesitant.” He was surprised at his disappointment. From where he stood, he could see out the window. No ground, no water, no sky. Just the trunks of trees. The walls were stripped of pictures.

  “The pictures,” he said. “They’re very powerful.”

  “They’re meant to be private. Margaret shouldn’t have brought you in here.” She turned away, walked into the room. “I don’t often work with men anymore. Or priests.”

  “Are you Catholic?” he asked.

  “Have been.”

  For some women, Álvaro knew, the church was not a friend.

  “Do you believe God arranges the whole world to test your faith?” he asked.

  “Often.”

  “So which of us is taking the exam here?”

  Somewhere in that moment, she gave something up. He could feel a shift in the air pressure. She gestured him toward a collection of chairs. He chose a dark stool. The shelves on the walls beside him were filled with stones, beads, crystals, carved bowls, balls, statues, stuffed toys, and small pieces of gnarled wood. When he sat, she sat across from him and over to one side. He had to choose to look at her.

  “Is it possible to do this without feeling like a child?” He nodded toward the shelves. The easels and pots of paint.

  “What do you want?”

  He thought. He wanted to feel focussed, directed anger. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to play soccer with a dozen novices. He wanted to feel the presence of God. He wanted everything. “I don’t know what’s possible.”

  “You were tortured?”

  He flinched. Something about the sound of the word in English. Torch. So close to touch. Tear. The chchch sound of instruments hitting bare flesh. The grrrowl of pain. And satisfaction. La tortura was much more delicate. Oblique.

  “I don’t want to talk about that. I’ve tried. It doesn’t help.”

  “Help what?”

  He looked right at her. Her eyes were blue, the irises flecked with gray. She was, he saw, intelligent enough to be afraid. Afraid of his pain and of what it could carry for her. He looked away. “How do you counsel people to process evil?”

  She sighed and got businesslike. “It depends. We can use whatever works. If you need to bring God into it, you can try to figure out what God is teaching you so you can better serve him. You can try to figure out what sins God is punishing you for. It gets harder if you feel you need to focus on Satan.”

  “Satan? No. I don’t want to focus on Satan. Or God.”

  “If I have my facts straight, the actual torture took place a couple of years ago?”

  “May I ask what facts you have?”

  She watched him as she recited what Margaret must have told her. What Eloise must have told Margaret. “You returned to Guatemala in the late eighties. You helped gather testimony for the peace accords. Worked on the exhumations of mass graves. Accompanied peasants to the city to look for their missing children — in the orphanages, on the streets, and in the morgue. In nineteen ninety-eight, you were in Guatemala City working for the church’s human rights commission. Just before their report was published, you were picked up, detained, and tortured. Upon your release, you received treatment for your substantial physical injuries but largely refused to talk about what had happened. Like everyone else, you were distraught about the murder of Bishop Gerar
di and your difficulties, you said, seemed to be a case of mistaken identity. A matter of poor timing, unrelated to the bishop’s death. You went back to work, focussing now on street children. You established a school for the least likely to survive kids, ran a fitness and self-defence program for them, and seemed to be functioning well enough, though your colleagues sensed a certain distance — which they respected — until one morning street workers found you unconscious in a basement. Stinking of glue and talking about death threats.”

  Álvaro tried to meet her eyes. “Margaret is frighteningly thorough.”

  “It was decided to get you out of the country, but they were nervous about getting you through airport security. You were indeed on someone’s list.”

  He clenched and unclenched his fists. She continued.

  “After a shaky beginning here, you appeared to be recuperating. Resting. Enjoying the quiet routine of life in the community house with only the occasional lapse. Then one day you experienced what appeared to be a psychotic episode and they took you to the even quieter provincial house. Sent you for counselling as the lapses continued. You wanted some work. They sent you here. You appear to be depressed. And in some doubt about your faith.”

  “Prozac will make me a believer again?” He laughed an abrupt laugh. “It’s not depression. That would be easy. Peaceful even. It’s rage. I bend to listen to one of the old priests at dinner and I want to sink my teeth into his ancient ear, an ear that has heard a hundred thousand tales of woe and still doesn’t understand. I want to rip it right off his head. Margaret reaches out to touch a painting and I almost break her hand. I want to break everything.”

  “The men who tortured you?”

  He stared through the trees, their individual trunks blending into a wall. But a wall that was cracked. There was light on the other side of those trunks; he could see it flickering as the wind moved through the few remaining leaves. He was exhausted. “Whatever it is we’re going to do, I can’t do it right now.”