Bishop's Man (13 page)
Authors: Linden Macintyre
The darkness thickened outside. Large, ragged snowflakes swirled just beyond the window, streaking tracers flashing past the street light at the end of the driveway. An invisible snow-plough roared past. The electricity failed in the middle of the early evening news.
Sextus had warned me about the winter. It’s the one big test, he said. I reminded him that I’d spent more winters here than he had, but he pointed out that a winter living alone in an old house would introduce me to a kind of isolation that would challenge whatever survival assets I thought I had. Maybe even my faith. I assumed he was joking. “You’re going to have to get yourself a girlfriend,” he said, laughing. “You wouldn’t be the first.” He assured me that I wouldn’t notice the loneliness until probably mid-February. That night with the storm hammering the house, the feeling of vulnerability was overwhelming. And it was only the middle of December.
Is this what drives priests crazy? Is there a link between deviance and isolation? How many deviant ministers do we ever hear about among the Protestants? Effie and Sextus attribute everything to celibacy. Alfonso would have disagreed. Loneliness, he’d say, is the natural fear of extinction. It’s that simple. We are liberated from loneliness by the Resurrection, not by procreation or society. Deviance is a loss of faith.
I remember saying to him: Try explaining that like you really believe it.
He stared at me, half smiling. And you don’t, he said. It was not a question.
Today I’d ask him: What of idleness? What about the toxic mixture of idleness and isolation? Is this where deviance begins?
Mullins pretended to be surprised when I told him I was having trouble keeping busy. “Any time you’re feeling bored, come on down,” he said. “There’s lots to do here.” His best year was when Brendan Bell was there. “Took the load off in a dozen little ways. Reduced the grind. Be my guest,” he said. “Better still, be my curate.”
“Did anybody tell you Brendan’s out?” I asked. “He’s left. Up and got married.”
“Doesn’t surprise me a bit. Too much of a social animal for this racket, our Brendan Bell.”
The truth of the matter, he declared, is that there really isn’t much to do anymore unless you work hard to make yourself useful. Especially in a place like Creignish, where there’s no school or hospital or jail. No critical mass of misery. So you have to get out among them. Figure out their needs. Boredom is a luxury. “Though I’m not surprised you’d find it quiet there,” he said, “considering all the drama you’ve been involved in.”
The lashing snow obliterates the memory of kinder weather. Will there ever be another summer? I tried to picture the
Jacinta,
now high and dry, propped up proudly among her sisters, prow thrust against the harsh north winds. It is a relief to imagine her perched there on the shore, out of the fickle, racing sea. A boat is like a mistress, I imagine. Unpredictable in her moods and physical needs. You never know when she’s going to hit you with some new demand for attention or legitimacy. Not that I know much about mistresses. Or women in any capacity. Or boats.
Jacinta,
now high and dry, propped up proudly among her sisters, prow thrust against the harsh north winds. It is a relief to imagine her perched there on the shore, out of the fickle, racing sea. A boat is like a mistress, I imagine. Unpredictable in her moods and physical needs. You never know when she’s going to hit you with some new demand for attention or legitimacy. Not that I know much about mistresses. Or women in any capacity. Or boats.
But the name is perfect.
Jacinta.
Jacinta.
feb. 8. fifth sunday after the epiphany. fr. a. talking this evening about growing up. three brothers and four sisters. very poor, working a small piece of land for subsistence. puts my own growing up in perspective. but i want to know more about her. she’s a mystery, he says. comes from the mountains in el salvador. he thinks she might have once been married back in their own country. el salvador, the saviour.
I was developing a grudging respect for old Mullins. The isolation didn’t bother him. He could see that, maybe, I had too much on my mind. Maybe, he thought, I’m one of those poor fellows who thinks too much. Wallows in regrets. He told me straight out: You have to understand the feelings of a lot of people in the deanery. Those were difficult times for all of us. There are a lot of conflicted feelings about the way things were handled. But I shouldn’t take small quibbles personally, about my mysterious connections with the bishop, my mysterious involvement in certain … shall we say, disappearances. “You know what they used to call you?” he said.
“Yes,” I replied.
He laughed, shaking his head. “You know what I mean, then. But don’t worry. It’ll all work to your advantage some fine day. Monsignor MacAskill? Nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
But what would Mullins have thought if he knew what happened to me just that morning? Walking through the mall, fighting the tide of seasonal hysteria, I noticed a young woman approaching through the mob of shoppers. Our eyes met only briefly. But I knew her right away. She flushed suddenly and looked away and walked quickly by. She had a child by the hand. He was staring back at me as she tugged him onward. I realized I was caught in a kind of paralysis. Just standing there. I walked on, flushed and shaky, no longer sure why I was there. I happened to be near the liquor store, so I went in.
The liquor store clerk seemed to know me, and there was something familiar about his face, too. The name eluded me.
“You grew up out on the Long Stretch, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“I knew the Gillises there. You aren’t related to them?”
“No. They were neighbours.”
“It’s a pretty common name around here, Gillis. One of them just moved home from away.”
“Sextus.”
“You know him?”
“Yes.”
“Quite the cat, that Sextus.”
“I suppose.”
The woman and the child were waiting as I left, the bag of liquor clinking in my hand.
She had her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her eyes were wide and dry, but her lips were contracted in a small, tight pucker, presumably to keep the lower lip from trembling. Head cocked to one side.
She is no longer pretty, I thought, her features eroded by the life that has happened to her since—what year was it?—just after Honduras. Was it ’77 or ’78? And then I remembered the priest’s name and that I’d never known hers, even then. Life is full of temporary absences, I think I told her.
“When I realized that he wasn’t going to come back from where you sent him, I knew I had to give the baby up,” she said. “I thought you’d want to know that.”
I stared at the little boy.
“That’s my sister’s,” she said. “He’s only five.” And then: “Did you really think … ? For God’s sake, my baby would be almost sixteen now.” She was staring at me, some of the wildness gone.
“I’m sorry. Time goes by so—”
“That’s pathetic,” she said.
And then she just turned and walked away, the small boy trotting after her.
Remembered prayers hum in my head in times like these, times of troubled idleness. The absence of external stimulation leaves a vacuum to be filled by memory and imagination. We hear the inner voices when there is no sound but consciousness. I always try to drown them out with prayer. Old remembered formulas, words fused by repetition into rhythmic stanzas, a kind of poetry if nothing else.
The troubled mind drifts like snow, rearranging banks of memory.
What would our father think if he could see the old place now? The kitchen is a sunny yellow. There are oriental carpets on the floor. Effie’s old bedroom, just off the kitchen, is now an office. There is a rustic harvest table and a chair. A filing cabinet. Her books and manuscripts, brought in boxes from the city, were piled helter-skelter when she was there last summer.
One day I asked her: What about the ghosts? What about the memories?
“You know as well as I do,” she replied with that inquiring smile that lights her face.
“I admire your strength,” I said.
“We get strength from resistance. You must know that. Fighting to survive makes us invincible. If, of course, we manage to survive.” She touched my cheek. “What’s the matter? You look as though you’re going to cry.”
“Get away with you,” I said. “Me cry?”
Wind and frost and moisture on the windows form exquisite patterns like lace, etched crystal ferns with human facial details. The rising storm batters the hypnotic silence, loosening the fragments of a lifetime.
I remember that the bishop’s call in 1980 was unexpected. He wanted a meeting, at the palace. It was to discuss an urgent matter of some delicacy. Another pregnant housekeeper, I assumed. Or some fool wanting to get married. There’s something unstable about my generation of priests. Maybe it was the liberating notions of John XXIII, the mighty humanist. He opened the doors to the romantics, to people with misty concepts of theology, infused with adolescent impulses about love. My seminary class was crawling with them. Mystical flower children with mixed-up notions about charity and holiness, confusing carnal impulses with altruism. Destined for disaster. You could smell it, but you couldn’t do a thing about it. They’re the ones who started packing up and leaving in the seventies. Marrying and breeding like the good Catholics they are.
But I knew right away when I arrived at the palace that it was more serious than that. You could see it in the old man’s face.
After he told me, I insisted that I had no stomach for what he was talking about or what he wanted me to do. Surely he could remember why he banished me to the Third World.
“God damn it, you weren’t banished anywhere,” he said, face flushed. “I want you to get off that kick once and for all.” He looked away, suddenly self-conscious about swearing.
I just sat and waited. Point made.
The priest in question was a former classmate at Holy Heart. The bishop told me I was the one man he had with the guts to handle this.
“Guts?” I said.
“It’s one of the things you can be sure you have. Guts, balls. Call it what you want to.”
I’d never heard him speak like this.
“You’ve got what it takes,” he said, jabbing my stomach with his forefinger. “I can spot a strong man a mile away.”
“Plus I’ve got the practical experience. Isn’t that what this is all about?”
“I don’t know what you’re referring to.” He seemed to mean it.
“Surely you remember—”
“This is different.”
“How—”
“You were wrong that time. Dead, dead wrong. Let’s move on. This is an entirely different situation.”
“What’s different?”
“Some layman has complained. Someone’s trying to make trouble.”
“Okay,” I said wearily. “What is it I’m supposed to do?”
“First, you’ll have to get the family onside. Convince them that we’re taking it seriously and that appropriate measures will follow. That’s mainly what they need to know. That we’re going to take decisive action.”
“What kind of action?”
“We’ll figure that out as we go along. It isn’t something for which we have a protocol. And, please God, this isn’t something we’ll ever have to face again.”
I remember asking myself: Does he really believe that? Does he really think that I was wrong?
Canon law is clear, the bishop said. “Keep your eye on the ball.”
You have to think of them as strangers, he said before I left his place that night. They’ll use anything. Collegiality. The brotherhood of the cloth. Just remember, they’re damaged and they’re desperate, but you have your job to do.
It must have been the expression in his eyes that reminded me of Calero, the policeman in Honduras. A former soldier, talking about assassination with impressive authority. Smiling softly, but with a terrifying intensity in the eyes. Never hesitate, Calero said. Never make eye contact, like I’m doing now. Say nothing. Walk up quickly. Do it. Drop your weapon. Walk away. You have to close your heart and seal it off from the deed. His eyes were glittering. This will be helpful to know in many situations. Getting rid of a bad employee or a troublesome girlfriend or eliminating a dangerous enemy. Same thing. He smiled.
And I remembered how Alfonso left the room, saying nothing.
“What’s wrong with him?” Calero asked.
I shrugged.
He laughed. “It isn’t really killing. It’s just rescheduling. We all die someday.”
The bishop said: “Don’t hesitate to use the trappings of authority. Wear everything—black suit, stock and collar. The chasuble if necessary. Hang the crucifix around your neck. Of course, I’m joking. But draw attention to the institution. And don’t forget: it’s the integrity of the institution that’s at stake. Something larger and more important than all or any of us.”
One look at the man who met me at the door on that first awkward visit to the family in question instantly convinced me that the bishop’s cautions were correct. He was large through the shoulders, big-bellied, a heavy-equipment operator according to the file. Obviously hostile. Anticipating an encounter with another potential pervert, maybe. But in the actual presence of the cloth the lines on his weather-beaten face soon softened and rearranged themselves in a mask of pain and confusion.
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