The Second Victory, page 26
CHAPTER 20
IT WAS a Saturday afternoon, late and drowsy with the heat of high summer.
Father Albertus sat, cramped and tired, in a room a little larger than a coffin, but not quite as big as a grave. In front of him was a velvet curtain, purple in colour, musty with age and human exhalation. On either side of him were walls of pine slab, darkened by age, each pierced by a small grille, which was covered by a Judas door. Behind him was the grey stone wall of the church.
Every week he came here, stiffied by the heat or frozen by the winter cold, waiting for his people to come to the shriving of sins. Every week a succession of shadowy faces pressed themselves to the grilles, and their halting whispers counted out the tally of commissions and omissions for judgment and forgiveness.
Children’s voices told him of the first small lapses from innocence. Young men, hoarse and ashamed, stumbled through their tales of passion under the pine trees. The married told of their angers and their hates and their occasional adulteries. Spendthrifts came and misers, proud men and humble girls, the wise, the foolish, the selfish and the sorrowing; and over each he pronounced the words of absolution and the counsel suited to their needs.
There were moments—all too few—when his narrow room seemed to grow and lighten like the courtyards of heaven and he was humbled by the manifest workings of God among his creatures. There were other times when the walls closed in on him, like those of the punishment cell at Mauthausen, and he was broken and beaten down by the weight of misery laid on his old shoulders.
He was a priest, like his Master. Like his Master he must make himself the scapegoat of the people. When they did not repent he must count it a failure in himself. When they refused to do penance, he must chastise their follies in his own flesh. This was the meaning of priesthood—a lifelong crucifixion, to merit for others the gratuitous mercies of which he was the channel and the minister.
Sometimes, as it did today, the sheer repetition and continuity of human folly drove him to the brink of despair. In spite of two thousand years of redemption, of renewed martyrdom and crucifixion, the sum of sin never seemed to diminish. A thousand absolutions issued in ten thousand new transgressions. The very patience of God was made a mockery.
When he waited in the stuffy darkness for a new penitent to present himself at the grille, it seemed to him that the years of celibacy and discipline were a monstrous waste. When he struggled to pray against the temptation his lips framed only the desolate words of the dying Christus: ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.…My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’
Long years ago the Bishop had anointed his fingers and given him all men for his children. But his children left him to follow strange gods, and even after he had forgiven them they went back, like dogs to the vomit, and he could do nothing but wait and hope, and pray for their return.
Age lay on him like a cross and he asked often for the mercy of release from it. But the mercy was withheld, so that he sat here still in the room that was like a coffin and waited for his next patient.
He heard the creaking of the confessional door and the rustle of clothing inside the booth. He slid aside the Judas door, bent his face to the grille, averted his eyes and waited. Then he heard Mark Hanlon’s voice, low but firm in the ritual preamble:
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
The old man’s heart leapt, but he kept his face averted and raised his broken hands in blessing.
“Benedico te, mi fili.…How long since your last confession?”
“A long time, Father. Five years, six maybe.”
“You know that this is itself a great sin, that a man should turn away from the grace that is offered to him daily?”
“I know that.”
“Tell me your sins, my son.”
Then it began—the long count of the locust years, the slow reconstruction of the complex relationship between the old man and the pupil who had left him so many ages ago: the brotherhood of the faith, the fatherhood of the Spirit, the sinner and the judge, priest and penitent, Caesar’s friend and the follower of the Crucified.
To each, the moment brought its own pain and its own consolation. The failures of the pupil were the failures of his master. The penitence of the one was humbling to the other. The hands that would confer forgiveness were shaky with gratitude for the restoration of simple, human affection.
When the long recitation was over, Father Albertus asked him: “Is that all, my son?”
“All I can remember.”
“It is enough.”
The broken fingers were raised and Mark Hanlon bowed his head to receive the absolution. “Deinde ego te absolvo.…I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“For your penance, you will recite the sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.”
From the other side of the grille came a small, ironic chuckle and Father Albertus looked up sharply, but Hanlon’s face was an indistinguishable blur against the wire mesh.
“As easy as that, Father?”
“Forgiveness is always easy, my son,” said Father Albertus soberly. “The hardest thing of all is to bend the will to ask for it. It has taken these years and a singular mercy to bring you to this moment.”
“There’s a harder thing yet,” said Mark Hanlon dryly. “To live with the memory of the past.”
The old, deep voice admonished him firmly. “That is part of the penance. To perform it you will need new courage and a new mercy. You dare not despise yourself, because that would be to despise the greatness of God and the good that He has made to flower under your hand. You may regret the past, but you must not resent it. You must not brood upon it, else you may poison the happiness of those with whom you live. You will accept it, humbly, as you will accept what the future offers. You will be grateful that the design of God, through a physical accident, has resolved a dilemma that you could never have resolved yourself. Let the dead bury their dead—but pray for them, because the dead still belong to you, and you to them, through the Communion of Saints. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Go in peace, my son.”
Mark Hanlon stood up and the door creaked again. After he had gone the old priest sat a long time, praying quietly and waiting for the next visitor; then, as no one came, he too got up, stretched his cramped limbs and walked out into the shadowy nave.
The church was empty except for Mark Hanlon, who knelt in the front pew, looking up towards the sanctuary where the dim taper flickered in its bowl of crimson glass. Father Albertus went up and knelt beside him. In a low, clear voice he began to recite the canticle of the Mother of God.
“Magnificat anima mea Dominum.…My soul doth magnify the Lord.”
“Quia deposuit potentes…” answered Colonel Mark Hanlon. “Because he hath put down the mighty from the seats, and hath exalted the humble.”
Together, master and pupil, victor and vanquished, they finished the recitation of the hymn. Then they walked out together through the forest of headboards, past the wooden Christus, out through the lych gate and up the dappled hillside to the Spiderhouse, where Anna Kunzli was waiting for them.
Morris West, The Second Victory
