Mercy (7 page)

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled—

Mathilda gasps, her eyes skipping down.

My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door—

She flicks to a previous page.

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice
.

“Awooooo—” Vera wails like a ghost in her sleep.

Mathilda claps the little book shut and shoves it frantically down the front of her dress.

Away down the inching Communion queue, August catches glimpse after shifting glimpse of the flowery hilltop that is Mathilda’s Sunday hat. Unlike most, it’s actually pretty—tiny violets between dark cloth leaves. She moves closer. Nectar and velvety petals. He can smell them now, artificial though they are.

Defrocked
. The word rises unbidden, unaccompanied by the dreadful image it normally evokes—a great dark bird with its magnificent wings cut away. Suddenly a frock is something whispery in the fingers, perhaps that pale blue one she often wears.

Her husband steps up to the rail, extending a disturbingly wide tongue. He takes the host the way a child takes a cookie—grinning stupidly and munching it down—then draws aside like a thick curtain to reveal his young wife.

Not the blue after all, but a green one he’s never seen. Before he can stop them, August’s eyes peel the dress away, fabric dropping in loose coils to reveal delicate, almost edible flesh.

Can he have fallen so far in a single month?

He blinks hard, but naked Mathilda remains, eyes downcast, lips parting to receive the host. Naked, that is, but for one small thing. It’s barely a hat at all, really, it’s so
unobtrusive, as though the violets are part of her, having pushed their way up through her scalp.

Next in line, a bent old man clears his throat, its phlegmy rattle yanking August back. The dress returns in an instant, curling darkly to hide her glorious form. August’s hand convulses, hoists a wafer and places it on her waiting tongue.

She won’t touch her meat. She’ll cook it dutifully, but for a week now Mathilda’s eaten around whatever Thomas provides, lamb chops or roast chicken, tender little veal rosettes. He’s not blind. She’s never had a big appetite, but at least she used to try—pick at her spare ribs and push them around on the plate.

It eats at him. Every untouched cut.

“Mathilda,” he says one evening as she lifts a forkful of peas to her mouth, “you’re not eating.”

Her mouth full, she chews and swallows before answering. “Yes, I am.”

“You know what I mean. You’re not eating your meat.”

She lays down her fork. “I can’t stand it,” she says quietly. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t stand it?” He tries to laugh, ignoring the rushing sensation in his neck. “A butcher’s wife who can’t stand meat?”

She looks up at him, the longest, straightest look she’s given him yet. “Is that what bothers you?”

“What?” he splutters. “No, I’m—I’m only thinking of your health.”

“I feel fine.”

“Well, you won’t for long.”

She lowers her gaze. “Is that a threat?”

“What?! What the—no! I just—I meant your health will suffer. You’ll get sick, is what I meant, if you keep this up.” He shakes his head. “Jesus.”

“Please don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Sorry.” He saws a chunk off his T-bone. “Mathilda, honey, I just want you to be healthy, you know, strong. For your own good.” He takes a deep breath. “Maybe for a baby one day soon.”

She shoots her chair back from the table. “I don’t feel well.”

“Honey, what is it?” He reaches for her hand, his touch making her flare.

“It’s this meat,” she says hotly. “Mounds and mounds of it. It’s disgusting. It’s making me sick!”

His fingers draw back as though burnt.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” she demands. “Cutting up all those animals, hacking them up into bits?!”

“Mathilda,” he says, keeping a choke hold on his tone, “human beings eat meat. It’s God’s will.”

She blanches, her face contorting like that of an outraged child. “Since when?” she shouts, bursting into tears. “How do you know? Who says?!”

“The Bible.”

She stares at him. “What?”

“Whose offering did God honour?” he asks quietly, glaring at his steak, gripping the rim of his plate.

“He—”

“Abel’s. Abel’s offering, not Cain’s. God wanted meat, Mathilda, not rabbit food. Abel gave Him lamb.”

“What would you know about it?” she mumbles. “You’re
Presbyterian.”

Thomas explodes. “You think Catholics are the only—?!” he yells. “Dammit, we read the Bible! Not to mention all the crap I had to learn for the privilege of marrying you!
Corpus Christi
—isn’t that what they’re serving down there? The poor bastard’s body and blood?!”

Mathilda leaps to her feet and hammers up the stairs, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

“Mathilda!” Thomas howls, his voice breaking over her name. He’s gone too far. Lost hold of the reins, felt the old man grab them and gallop away.

Surely, to be tempted is no sin. August stares sleeplessly into the convergence of beams above his bed. Even the saints were tempted, he reasons, even Christ Himself. His hand fumbles at the scrolled base of the bedside lamp, twisting the little serrated knob to spread a circle of light over his shoulders and head. Better.

Beside the lamp, a precarious tower of books, the top volume winking glossy black letters from its yellow spine.
Confessions
. There—Saint Augustine was tempted. More than tempted. He succumbed, lost the path and found it again, then had the tremendous courage to record his travails.
August reaches out greedily, sitting up a little, shoving a pillow in at the small of his back before cracking the book.

My soul being sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense
.

August nods eagerly. That’s what it is, a sickness.

Don’t scratch
. Aggie bending to lift him from the slippery baking-soda bath, pulling white cotton socks over his small hands.
They’ll get infected if you do
. He faced himself in her long mirror, three years old, a scrawny, pot-bellied child, enough like a plucked chicken without the pox.

He skips ahead.

I defiled the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence—

His eyes cloud over with chagrin. It’s true, he thinks savagely. A fine young woman confides in her priest, and he rewards her with sinful thoughts and a lustful gaze. Well, no more, he resolves with a sudden righteous surge, no more. Encouraged, he flips forward.

His concubine gone, the saint laments,
my heart which clave unto her was torn and wounded and bleeding
.

Duo in carne una
. A red ribbon of Genesis crosses the backs of August’s eyes.
Wherefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh
.

One flesh? Then how a sickness? Vaguely upset, he finds himself jumping again to a fresh page.

The eyes love fair and varied forms—

He jumps again.

For pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savoury, soft
.

“Fragrant,” he says aloud. “Savoury.” His mouth dries out. Suddenly desperate, he rifles madly through the book, as though searching for some memento left pressed between pages—a dark violet, a brittle, hand-shaped leaf. The word
Thou
catches his eye. He thrusts his face close to the type.

Thou flashedst, shonest and scatteredst my blindness. Thou breathedst odours and I drew in breath and pant for Thee
.

Words inscribed hastily, no doubt, an outpouring of the saint’s sensual regard for his God. August should be transported, should feel himself brimming over with the wine of devotional love. He realizes this, even as he feels keenly the lack.

Locked in the bathroom, Mathilda reads feverishly long after Thomas has given in to a heavy, disenchanted sleep.

“ ‘His eyes,’ “she murmurs, “ ‘are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.’ “She looks heavenward.
His eyes
. For a moment they float above her, ringed like targets, the colour of rainy slate.

She turns hastily to what is fast becoming her favourite line. “ ‘I am my beloved’s,’ “she whispers, “ ‘and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.’ “She can see him—not all of him, just his naked shoulders and face—crouched in a fiery meadow, the red goblet of a wood lily at his lips.
The image is terrible, wonderful. It spurs her on to more mysterious parts, the passages that move her in a manner she can’t begin to understand.

“ ‘His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.’ ”

Pages later she stumbles on another, deep and inviting as a country well. “ ‘The mandrakes give a smell—’ “She pauses.
Mandrakes
. Are they animals or plants? Their smell skunky or sweet, fetid or delicate or divine? In the end it doesn’t matter. The word itself thrills her to the marrow of her bones.

A
fter his run-in with Saint Augustine, August grows mistrustful of the mind’s twilight, as rife with questionable stirrings as its mirror in the natural world. He confines his bedtime reading to the one book that still seems fitting after prayer.

Quam speciosi pedes
, the Blessed Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans.
How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace—

August looks up from the page. The feet? Without thinking, he yanks at the cotton blanket, bunching it up to uncover his own. Toes the length of a child’s fingers, nails shiny, cut a little too close. He points his feet toward the door, then flexes them back, marvelling at their quiet strength. So many twigs and pebbles of bone. Down the end of the bed, his overlooked extremities seem suddenly miraculous. He sweeps them like windshield wipers, delighted by their synchronous grace.

He lifts an eyelid to dancing sheers and a thundering, greenish sky. The air is terribly close. He’s on his belly, right arm skewed beneath him, his bottom rib damming its
blood. The hand’s asleep, nestled dead against the mass of his groin. It could be the hand of another, for all the sensation it affords.

He presses dreamily against it, contracts his pelvis and presses again, feeling himself grow hard. A third tentative thrust and the hand stirs, shocking him awake all the way. It’s like walking in on somebody, catching them red-handed—only the hand in question is a sickly shade of blue.

August rolls off the slab of his arm, feels life return torturously in a stream of needles and pins. The hand arches its back. He grabs it, braiding the fingers with those of its more sensible twin.
“Pater noster, qui es in caelis
—” he mutters fiercely, burying himself in prayer.

The hog’s thick snout and drooping ears are tough, so Thomas boils them with the dewclaws and toes, letting them soften a bit before adding the rest of the head, the heart and tongue, the loose, leftover skin tied up in a cheesecloth sack. When everything’s tender, he picks the hot meat from the bones and chops the larger chunks down to size.

On the second boil he gives some thought to casing. He’s cleaned the hog’s paunch for a bag, but by the looks of things he’ll have a fair portion left over. Not enough to bother making links, though. He may as well pour it out in a pan.

The thought pricks out a memory from his mind—seventh grade, the last year the old man tolerated him wasting his strong arms in school. They were doing art.
Greasing their faces with petroleum jelly, sticking straws up their noses, tilting back for the papier mâché. Some of the kids didn’t like waiting for the moulds to dry. One undersized girl lost it, tore the whole mess from her face and ran bawling down the hall. Not Thomas. The mould felt cozy. He was sorry when it came time to lift it off.

Pouring in the plaster, he felt an indescribable excitement, an all-over electrical itch, as though he’d never looked into a mirror and was about to confront himself for the very first time. The results were less than thrilling. When the mask came free, it was altogether too smooth, a pale whitish grey. It was the largest in the class, true, but otherwise just as unremarkable as the rest. He accidentally knocked it to the floor, where it cracked across the eyelids and lips. The mould was better anyhow. It held a more accurate impression of him in its hollow bowl.

It was one of the few items he brought with him to Mercy, along with a yellowed photograph of his mother, his butchering book, a change of shorts and money in a brown paper sack. He keeps it in the top dresser drawer, right out in the open. He’d gladly tell Mathilda all about it, but she just folds his boxers and stacks them away beside the face of his youth, never once thinking to ask.

Thomas legs it up the stairs, and in moments he’s back with the mould in hand. He wipes the concave features with a bleached cloth, then lards up his fingers and begins rubbing fat into their cavities and cracks. For the moment he forgets all about the paunch. The mixture’s perfect—soft but not sloppy, the gelatin spread evenly throughout. He ladles the headcheese into the mould, then carries it to the back cooler with care.

Two hours later, the mask springs out lively, florid and expressive on its plate. Thomas displays it on the top shelf with sprigs of parsley cresting back from its brow.

Mrs. Carstairs is the first of many admirers. “Oh, Mr.
Rose.”
She presses her fat fingertips to her mouth. “It’s you, isn’t it? It’s
you.”