by Paul Theroux
“I wasn’t smiling, Father.”
He winced: he was insulted that I had replied to him—that I had spoken at all.
“Backtalk,” he said sourly.
“I was just thinking, Father,” I said, and there was a terrible twanging in my head. I was still kneeling, with my face upturned to the Pastor.
“Smart, aren’t you,” he said. “You’re very bold”—bold was one of the worst things anyone could be. “I don’t know where you get it from. Your mother and dad are good kind people. Your brother Louie was an excellent altar boy—always well-behaved and very clean-cut. But you just stare and smile, bold as brass.”
It was always disastrous for me when someone described the expression on my face, and it was—though I cannot explain why—a very common occurrence. As soon as the person said it, I assumed that expression—their saying it made me guilty and silenced me. Now I was ashamed, but I was not offended: I expected to be criticized—I knew I deserved it for my impure thoughts.
I dropped my gaze and saw, looking behind me in deep embarrassment, that I was wearing sneakers. Another rule broken—and they were very torn and dirty. I had worked the morning shift at Wright’s and spent the afternoon at the Sandpits. Alone, among the steep slopes and ledges and secret places, I had thought intensely of Tina. Isolated places always gave me impure thoughts and anyway I had begun to think of the Sandpits as Hell—like the great naked teasing Hell in Dante.
“What’s that in your back pocket?”
I pulled it out and offered it.
“A book, Father.”
Instead of taking it from me, he moved his hands behind his back and left me holding it in the air. He twisted his head around to read the title.
“Dante. The Inferno.”
“It’s about Hell,” I said. “And different types of punishments, for the various sinners. It’s all separate circles.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and said severely, “Does your mother know you’re reading it?”
“I think so, Father.”
“He thinks so.”
But he said no more for a moment, and I had the feeling that he was at a loss for words.
“Kneel up straight,” he said sharply.
I had let my bum rest against my heels. I straightened and raised my hands prayerfully under my chin.
“I’ve given you another funeral,” he said, and when I did not respond he added, “Don’t you know how to say thank you?”
“Yes, Father. Thank you, Father.”
“One more funeral and you’ll have earned yourself a wedding.”
Ah, that was why he wanted to be thanked—for the wedding that lay ahead, the short happy service, the white roll of cloth down the center aisle, the kiss, the confetti afterwards, the two dollars.
“And three early masses. Make sure you’re on time. And no sneakers.”
“Yes, Father.”
“That’s all. Now pray for forgiveness. Pray for your immortal soul.”
“I was going to ask a question, Father.”
He winced again and looked at me with hatred. Bold as brass, he was thinking. Backtalk! I wanted to apologize and tell him I couldn’t help it.
He nodded—twitched once—for me to continue.
“Is Father Feeney a real priest, Father? I heard him speaking on the Common.”
The Pastor chewed his tongue for a moment, and then said, “Father Feeney received the sacrament of Holy Orders. That can never be taken away, even though he is not a Jesuit anymore, nor a Harvard chaplain. He still celebrates holy mass—it is his sacred duty.”
“But what about his sermons? I was just wondering.”
“Only Almighty God knows the answer to that,” the Pastor said, and then he added, “Father Feeney had a very difficult time. He was a brilliant man, and a lot of what he says makes sense,” as if the Pastor knew a little of what Almighty God might say.
“Thank you, Father.”
“And did your mother know you were hanging around Boston Common?”
“No, Father.”
“Well!” he said triumphantly, and the matter was settled. “Now pray!”
Yet I was still not satisfied. At the first of my three seven o’clocks I asked Father Furty the same question.
“Him!” he said, waking up. “Feeney!” And out of the side of his mouth, “He’s a crackpot!”
It was funny hearing him say this with all his vestments on.
I said, “I sometimes think I’m a crackpot.”
“Oh, no. You’re an ace, Andy. I like you. We’re intimate friends.”
This made me beam eagerly, and perhaps he guessed that I wanted to know more. Yet I was angry with myself for noticing that he had said innimit.
“You fibbed for me. You’re a great altar boy. You’re bashful. And I love the way you told me how much your gun cost you.”
“Forty dollars?”
“Fotty dawlas,” he said. He thought I talked funny, too!
5.
That was the strangest thing about the altar boy roster—all my masses were being said by Father Furty, and they were all early, and I was the only server. I could not explain it, but I was glad about it. It meant that I would be on time for the morning shift at Wright’s Pond, and my afternoons would be free—to shoot bottles at the Sandpits, or to see Tina. And there was the bonus of the funeral. I had not wanted to appear too grateful for fear of seeming too greedy; but I looked forward to another funeral, and finally a wedding.
All this also meant that I would be seeing Father Furty. I had begun to depend on him, not just seeing him but confessing my sins to him. These days I was much more truthful in the confessional and felt better afterwards. I had stopped feeling that I was probably going to Hell, and I sensed that I would most likely end up in Purgatory. The punishment in Purgatory was that you did not see God. It was a punishment I felt I could bear, and in fact on some days I was relieved by the prospect that I would not be seeing God in Purgatory; I had so often felt punished—ashamed and afraid—in the glare of God’s sight.
This change in my mood I attributed to Father Furty. He made me feel I could face things. I was worthwhile and mature. Sometimes I was funny! He could be stern in the confessional, but he criticized the sin and made me see how it was avoidable. He always left me with hope, and just as he had surprised me by telling me I was his friend, he urged me at confession to pray for him.
I hoped he was my intimate friend, as he had claimed. He had the sort of good-humored friendliness that sometimes seems to hide real feeling—he was simply too generous and openhearted and gentle a man to reveal his doubts. He was never unkind or offhand; I loved him for that, but it prevented me from knowing him well. I must have disappointed him often; but if so he had never let me know it. He always made it seem as though I were doing him the favors, not the other way around.
“Sorry to get you up so early,” he said when he came into the sacristy on those mornings for the seven o’clock mass. He had puffy eyes and looked as though he had not slept. He sometimes looked punished, like a prisoner serving time, which was why his cheery nature was so surprising.
“What shall we pray for?” he said, before he began putting on his vestments.
I said, “The conversion of Russia?”
“I’m beginning to think that’s something we might leave to Saint Jude,” Father Furty said, and winked at me. “Let’s try for something we might verify fairly soon—a lovely day and good weather this weekend.”
He often looked frail. He was one of those people whose physical appearance is different morning and evening. He altered throughout the day, starting out weak and trembling. He strengthened and grew pinker as the hours passed. By late afternoon he was healthy and talkative. His hands were steady. The next morning he was small and trembly again.
“Got to see the dentist today,” he said after the first seven o’clock. “I’ve always been plagued with dental problems.”
Dennist, he said; and dennal. Pronounced
that way they did not sound quite so bad to me.
“Still reading Danny,” he said before we entered the church another day.
I had the paperback in my back pocket. I suppose he saw the bulge in my cassock.
“I’m up to Panders and Seducers,” I said.
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” he said.
When I turned around, he winked at me.
“Pull the chain,” he said, and out we went, on the bell.
Intro-eebo ad-ahltaree-dayee ah-dayum-kwee-lah-teefeekat yoo-ven too-tem mayum.
Early mass on a weekday was restful—very few people in the congregation, a half a dozen or so, scattered here and there, just shadows and occasionally a groan. They were anonymous people, they never sat in the front pews, they took communion but always with their faces averted. They knelt and prayed with their heads bowed.
“Not many people this morning,” I said one day after mass, just making conversation.
Father Furty said, “Enough of them to show us the way.”
He implied that he needed them—and all the other priests I had known seemed to imply the reverse of that: You need us! The Pastor’s line was usually: I’m leaving you sinners behind!
At early mass there was no sermon. Father Furty whispered the prayers, the few people in the congregation groveled and muttered in the humblest way, and I breathed the responses.
Soorsum corda.
Habeymoos a Dominoom.
At the congregation there was only the briefest tinkle of cruets and the lightest ring of bells. It was all muffled and peaceful, but also like a secret ritual. I always remembered what Father Furty had said on his boat: “Real flesh, real blood.”
I kept the wine cruet in one hand, the water in the other: he took a drop of each, and they ran down the inside of the gold chalice like two tears.
When he offered the host and then leaned over the altar to say, “This is my body,” he closed his eyes and became so still that it sometimes seemed as though he had died.
He was always saying, “Stick around—what’s the hurry?” And the second morning he took me to Holy Name House for breakfast. There he introduced me to Father Hanratty and Father Flynn, who were very skinny—Adam’s apples, popping eyes, narrow ankles—and they were full of talk.
“More toast, Betty,” Father Hanratty said to Mrs. Flaherty. “Father Furty tells us you’ve got a great appetite. But what does he know about anything? He’s a foreigner!”
Father Furty was sipping coffee and smoking his first Fatima of the day.
“He’s from New Jersey,” Father Flynn said.
“God’s country,” Father Furty said.
“Ah, you reminded me!” Father Flynn said, and laughed and shook his finger in excitement. “The Boss received a postcard yesterday from his brother in Ireland—you’ll never guess the message!”
“Don’t tell me you read it,” Father Hanratty said, but he was more interested than angry.
“If you weren’t meant to read postcards they’d be in envelopes.”
Father Furty said, “You’re keeping us in suspense.”
“Postmark, Cork. Message, ‘Greetings from the land of faith.’ I swear it! Have you ever heard such a thing?”
Father Furty laughed, but gently—it was still early morning and he was not yet himself. He said, “That’s enough. You’ll confuse the boy.” He turned to me. “You won’t get any intellectual stimulation here, son. They’ve never read Danny. Father Flynn here reads the racing sheets, while Father Hanratty struggles with the Boston Globe. And of course they read the Boss’s postcards.”
“And what do you read, Billy?” Father Flynn said.
“Eldridge’s Tide and Pilot Tables,” Father Furty said. “And I see that High Water in the harbor this Saturday is at the civilized hour of twelve noon. You’ll be coming along, won’t you, Andy?”
My mouth was full of toast, but I nodded eagerly yes.
We sat, and I listened to their banter, and I was the more excited for not understanding it, because I was so flattered to be included. I had the strong impression from their comedy, which was always a little forced and desperate, that they were outcasts, and that I was one of them. So at last I had a place at Saint Ray’s.
“Too bad you have to go,” Father Furty said, when I got up to head for the pond.
He sounded as if he meant it!
“Why not serve for me tomorrow?”
It was the only day I didn’t have a mass.
“I’ll add your name,” he said. “Listen, I’d appreciate it!”
That made it a full week of serving early masses, but I began to see a point in the routine. Instead of the masses being an interruption, the other hours in the day seemed an interruption; the masses were regular, dignified, austere and orderly on those cool bright summer mornings: the muffled church, the few people in the pews, the whispered prayers, the two tearlike droplets in the chalice; four masses, and then my second funeral.
We went to an afternoon movie, Tina and I, because I wanted to touch her. It was All That Heaven Allows, with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman, and we held hands until they were so hot and sticky I was glad to let go. That year the girls wore several petticoats that filled their skirts, and Tina must have been wearing two or three because they crunched in the narrow movie-seat, I suppose it was the starch, and aroused me. I reached for her leg but her hand was there already and snatched mine away. I put my arm around her and kept it there until it went to sleep, and when I yanked it back, we knocked our heads together. The movie ended at five-thirty and we went out and were blinded by the sun on Salem Street. I had a headache, my feet were tingly from sitting. We bought ice-cream cones at Brigham’s, then I went home and had meatloaf. It was always meatloaf. I was glad that Tina had not let me touch her: there was nothing to confess except the impure thought. She had saved me.
“You’ve been smoking,” my mother said, putting her face against my hair and sniffing hard.
I denied it—it must have been the musty stink at the Square Theater.
“Where have you been?”
“After work I went to the library.”
Wasting a glorious day in God’s sunshine! she would have said if I had been to a movie. And where did you get the money? If I had told her I had gone with a girl she would have squinted at me and said Why? And she would have kept asking why until I admitted that it was a waste of money, a waste of time, and very foolish—And who is this girl?
I never dared to give the truthful answers to her questions. I lied and pretended I was telling her the truth. She glared at me like God and pretended she believed me. But she knew.
“I was looking up some information on Dante—and seeing if they had the other two books.”
Louie said, “I don’t believe you’re really reading that book.”
“Test me!” I said, and put the paperback on the table. The cover was cracked and peeling from being stuffed into my back pocket. It had the mangled look of having been read.
No one said anything—perhaps I had been too shrill. But after all my lies they had chosen to challenge me when I was actually telling the truth!
“It’s not fire at the bottom of Hell, you know,” I said, because out of curiosity—and fear—I had skipped ahead in order to know the worst. I had read the last three cantos. “It’s ice, it’s all ice—murderers are frozen in it. It’s not fire!”
They were a little impressed and a little apologetic, and I felt all the more guilty about having lied about the library.
My second funeral, Mr. Kenway’s, was eerie. I found myself thinking: One more and I get a wedding—and I warned myself not to think it.
“I didn’t know he was a Catholic,” my mother said. “He never went to mass.”
I took it that he might not have died in a state of grace. He had been old and alone. He had no family. The pallbearers were from Gaffey’s Funeral Home—I could tell by their gray gloves and black coats and pin-stripe trousers. They had brought the
coffin and were waiting to take it away, to Oak Grove.
There were no tears, no sobs, the church was almost empty. I recognized the other people as those who went to most of the services—early mass, the Novenas, the Stations, and the funerals of people they didn’t know. Yet that day Saint Ray’s was sadder than if every pew had been filled with weeping, honking relatives. Father Furty and I were the chief mourners, and were not mourning. When the coffin bumped over the threshold, the sound rang throughout the church, like a loud ouch! Then the pitiful clatter of the wheels, and the organ groaning into the emptiness.
Father Furty seemed frightened. He was very silent and trembling in his midmorning frailty; his shoes squeaked in a way I associated with timidity—most of his moods were revealed by the different squeaks of his shoes.
Once again I was the only altar boy. In the still church, with the solitary coffin, I went through the routine and noticed how Father Furty’s hands trembled. He was very unsteady and walked in a toppling way. When he came over for water and wine his chalice rattled against my cruet of wine. I was in the habit of only dispensing a drop, and though he seemed to be waiting for more—clank, clank—I mechanically resisted tipping the cruet. He got his two drops and went to the tabernacle, still trembling.
It was a hot day, but he was perspiring more than usual, and his white sleeves and his collar were limp and dark with dampness, his wet hair shone in prickly points on his forehead and his neck. (My own plastic collar was slippery with sweat and kept springing out of its button and clamping itself over my shoulder.)
Father Furty’s voice quavered when he spoke directly to the coffin in Latin. He incensed it, and holy-watered it, and blessed it; but still it had a sad unpolished look and I kept thinking that Mr. Kenway’s soul might be in Bolgia Five of the Inferno, among the Grafters and Demons.
The men from Gaffey’s got up and rolled the coffin down the aisle towards the blazing doorway, and then the church was empty and smelling sadly of vigil lights and flowers.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Father Furty said, when we were in the sacristy.
