My Secret History by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online Page B

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 afternoonhe 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