The Jew's Wife & Other Stories by Thomas J. Hubschman Read Free Book Online Page B

boy’s
responses for himself.
        He had
not said mass since Sunday morning. Even when he was sick, he had
never gone more than twenty-four hours without celebrating the
sacrament. Mass set the tone for the rest of his day. Long before
he was ordained, when still a child, he felt disoriented if he
failed to attend early mass. More recently, mass had become a
habit. Any activity, his confessor told him, even a sacred rite,
could become routine. One had to guard against familiarity, just as
marriage partners must not ever take one another for granted. Since
those early days of his youth he had come to see the less glamorous
side of a priest’s life—the chronic loneliness and bizarre
neuroticisms the chosen of God sometimes suffered. Thus far he had
escaped the worst of those afflictions, although for some time now
he had been finding it difficult to get up for early mass and his
attention, even during the more critical moments of the
confessional, had a way of wandering. He prayed for grace. But God
rarely seemed to move in straight lines and, as far as he could
tell, he was no better off now than he was two or even three months
ago.
        This
morning he spoke each word deliberately, like someone newly
ordained, or the boy who used to play-act the sacrifice on his
mother’s vanity, pretending her bottles of scent were cruets of
water and wine. But when he reached the consecration his eye was
distracted by the image in the mirror behind the dresser. It was a
long time since he had considered what he looked like when he was
speaking the words of consecration—his body bent forward almost to
a right angle, his lips carefully enunciating each word: “This
...is ...my ...body . . .” Gold wavelets reflected onto his face
from inside the chalice, emphasizing the dark rings under his eyes.
Once thick hair seemed grayer than he remembered it. “In like
manner, He took the cup, blessed it, and gave it to them, saying .
. .” He hunched over the chalice where a small amount of wine (even
the smell could make him lightheaded) rocked back and forth.
“...this ...is . . .”
        He
hesitated. The face in the mirror also hesitated. He hadn’t
forgotten the words; he could sooner forget his own name. The face
in the mirror waited for him to resume, its blue-green eyes staring
back at him. He knew they were his own eyes, just as the
high-bridged nose and prominent cheekbones were no one else’s. But
it was as if only the physical appearance of the face were his, a
simulacrum of the more substantial man he ought to have found
there. Every morning he shaved this face and combed the thinning
hair on its head. He took care not to mar his appearance with a
razor nick or a delayed trip to the barber. He did not consider
such care vanity, because he tended himself only in order to serve
his God more perfectly. But despite the daily shaves, clipping of
nose hairs and other ministrations of toilet, he had never seemed
to confront the man in the mirror as he was doing now. However
accurately they matched his own, the eyes staring back at him
seemed empty and confused. Who was this middle-aged man who seemed
so devoid of a wisdom he had taken for granted as his, if not by
his merit, then by virtue of his calling? Martha’s eyes, though
hard with Luciferian pride, seemed sage by comparison.
       
       “ Is that
you, Father?” his housekeeper said, having agreed gleefully to
accept the charges.
       “ The
very same,” he replied, dropping into the bantering tone he always
assumed with her. Innocent, a slave to work, and loyal as a
spaniel, she thought him a wit. He had no such illusions about
himself. Setting a light tone was just part of his job, like
running the Rosary Society or Knights of the Altar. If his silly
jokes amused her, what harm was done? “How’s tricks at Holy
Name?”
       “ Oh, you
know how it is,” she said, managing by a coy twist of her voice to
include him in her conspiracy against the