The Crazyladies of Pearl Street (35 page)

As a gesture of sisterly solidarity, the Altar Societies of Saint Joseph's and Saint Anthony's exchanged visits once each year. These included attending a high mass followed by triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off and tea (which the Italian ladies didn't like) or coffee (which the Irish ladies mistrusted). These visits provided opportunities to score points in their on-going competition, which was fought out over the number and thickness of candles, the invention and abundance of floral decoration, the richness of fabric and fineness of stitching on the vestments, the volume of song, the lavishness of display, and the general cleanliness, glitter, polish and shine. Determined to be fair ('giving the devil his due' was how they saw it), the women of Saint Joseph's conceded that Italians had a certain innate decorative flair (a euphemism for their Mediterranean penchant for the garish and the gaudy). But Saint Joseph's could also pull off an impressive display on High Holy Days: forests of glittering candles; procession vestments of green, red and gold silk; swirls of dense incense tumbling over the edge of a swinging thurible; walls of sound erected by the organ whose bass notes were so low that they vibrated your bench and buzzed in your testicles as the massed voices of the Women's Chorus, the Men's Chorus and the Children's Chorus of Our Lady of Angels drenched the congregation with thick, luscious sound. High mass would be served by as many as four of the priests for whom our widows and spinsters nourished feelings that were largely, if not exclusively, maternal. These smiling, smooth-voiced priests were served by half a dozen stars of the corps of altar boys, mostly older lads who were seriously considering The Calling.

Father Looney was not smiling and smooth-voiced. An irritated frown was the expression into which his brow collapsed when he relaxed, and the papery cackle of his worn-out voice was better suited to reprimanding than to guidance and consolation. And his lone helper was unlikely to be 'called' to a vocation and, even if he had been, was unlikely to answer. The bleary-eyed early-morning masses that gruff old Father Looney and I ran were a down-market, off-the-rack version of those up-lifting spectacles that were the pride of Saint Joseph's and, our ladies felt sure, the secret envy of Saint Anthony's.

Father Looney with his scowling face and his unforgiving eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses was the parish's doyen. Over eighty years old and by turns vague, eccentric and prickly, he should have been retired years earlier, but as a zealous young priest at the turn of the century, Father Looney had taken upon himself the task of raising the money for all the church's stained glass; and no one, not even the bishop, had the courage to tell him that he could no longer serve in the church he had so richly illuminated. Instead, they restricted him to one early morning low mass each Sunday, with its small catchment from the seedy southeast edge of the parish: a handful of shelter-seeking bums and a scant score of pious old women, none of whom were ever seen by the grandees who attended high mass, that glittering ninety-minute feast for eye, ear, heart and spirit.

Father Looney was notorious for his tendency to divert his sermons from the text for the day onto his pet peeve: those evil children who played baseball in the street outside his church, their foul balls a constant threat to his precious windows. By the end of each sermon he would be hanging over the front of the lectern, his round eyeglasses askew and flashing as he assured the congregation in his broad west-of-Ireland brogue that putting the church's stained glass into jeopardy by playing ball in the street was a sin! Wanton destruction of God's house, that's what it was! Theft, pure and simple! It was stealing from God every bit as much as if you pulled out a gun and stuck the Baby Jesus up in some back alley! And don't you imagine for a minute that God doesn't see what you're up to. He sees! He knows!

The old women in front pews would shift their eyes nervously, and the bums at the back would turn up their collars and pull in their chins.

We were a team, Father Looney and I. I viewed myself as the smooth, nearly invisible facilitator of Father Looney's star turn... something like the black-clad puppet handlers of Bunrako. But I also relished my solo time, when all eyes were on me, or so I hoped. While Father Looney was in the sacristy, tugging his vestments on with impatient grunts, I would enter alone and genuflect as I passed before the tabernacle lamp. I always genuflected very deeply, bringing my nose to my knee, and holding the posture for a long moment to let its significance sink in for any onlookers. Then I would take up the long wood-and-brass candle lighter/snuffer, light its wick from one of the squat votive candles that flickered within red glass and, moving as gracefully as I could, I would touch my flame to each of the six candles that were our meager allotment. I always moved my wick away from the candle as soon as the flame caught, because I had noticed from out front that it never looked as though the candle was alight just at first, so I could create the near-miracle of candles seeming to light by themselves in the wake of my snuffer's passage. I would then return to the sacristy to give Father Looney's vestments a quick glance, because he was careless and often got things on crooked or wrongly tucked in and I, his theatrical dresser, would have to pull them around straight while he snorted and complained, after which I would assume my most severe and pious mien and follow him in to begin the service.

When I shook the little silver bell as Father Looney elevated the Eucharist, I tried to make the movement invisible, hoping that some of the celebrants might think the tinkle of the bell was a magic accompaniment to the miracle of transubstantiation. Father Looney was always impatient to get away as soon as mass was over, so he never stood outside the entrance, harvesting compliments and bestowing blessings. I would follow him to the sacristy, take his stole and chasuble and carefully fold them into his locker, then undo his rope girdle and hang it up. He insisted on grunting his own flailing, arthritic way out of his alb with a grumpy irritation that threatened to rip the seams. As he sat back, breathing heavily after his struggle, I took off my own starched surplice, so that I was in the all-black stage-hand's cassock when I returned to the altar to snuff out the candles, which I did in a new rhythm, the efficient motions of the workman cleaning up after a job well done. As I lifted the cup of the snuffer from each candle in turn, a thread of silvery smoke would wriggle up and vanish into the darkness above. I discovered that moving the candle wand away quickly after snuffing out a candle would drag the thread of smoke after it, crumpled and twisting, and the moment of miracles was over for another week.

For me, the smell of just-snuffed candles will always be the scent of sanctity... of mystery... of faith... of century upon century of secret fears and hopes whispered into the darkness.? HYPERLINK “file:///C:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Administrator\\Impostazioni%20locali\\Temp\\Rar$EX00.266\\Trevanian%20-%20The%20Crazyladies%20of%20Pearl%20Street.htm” \l “note38#note38” ??[38]?

I liked the evocative sound of old-fashioned holy days like Quinquagesima Sunday, the Epiphany of the Magi, Pentecost and Childermas. When I came across the character Quasimodo in Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, I thought I was probably the only kid in Albany to know that the hunchback's name came from the Quasimodo Sunday introit that begins, Quasi modo geniti infantes: “As newborn babes...” For me, Eastertide ran from Quinquagesima, the Sunday before Lent, to Quasimodo, the Sunday after Easter, not because the season actually included those two bookends, but because I liked the sound of them.

I shall never forget Quinquagesima Sunday, 1941, for it was during that early mass that it suddenly dawned on me that I was guilty of sacrilege, for which my soul deserved all the torments of hell. And that's the kind of thing likely to cling to one's memory.

Among the pious old women who attended those six o'clock Sunday masses were two spinster sisters who always sat in the front pew because among the many afflictions God had sent to test their faith, they were hard of hearing. The poor dears also suffered from Parkinson's disease, so throughout Father Looney's tirade about evil baseballs and vulnerable church windows their heads would shake in what, if their eyebrows were lowered, might be interpreted as frowning disbelief that children could be so irresponsible or, with raised eyebrows, might be frightened denial of any personal complicity in this outrageous vandalism.

Each Sunday, after pouring first the wine then the water into Father Looney's chalice and watching him take the blood of Christ on behalf of the congregation, I would be the first to receive the communion wafer. Father Looney suffered from bouts of palsy that made his hand tremble uncontrollably, causing his nicotine-yellow fingernail to click against my front teeth as he gave me the wafer. It is the altar boy's responsibility to protect the incarnate body of Our Lord from the desecration of falling onto the church floor by catching it on a golden paten, should it slip from the priest's fingers in its passage to the communicants' mouths. I took this awesome duty very seriously as I accompanied the palsied Father Looney along the communion rail, particularly when we came to the two sisters with Parkinson's. Fearing a slip, I would grip the handle of the paten so tensely that my hand trembled, and with priest, communicants and altar boy all shaking, each in a different plane and at a different tempo, it was truly a miracle that the transubstantiated body of Christ didn't end up in the dust.

At the end of the mass Father Looney would turn to the congregation and chant, Dominus Vobiscum, and I would answer for the people, Et cum spiritu tuo. Finally back in the vestry, I would draw a deep breath of relief that the host had once again made it through communion without desecration.

For some time I had been sorely troubled by my dreams about Sister Mary-Theresa: the two of us floating on the lift of her wimple wings, she gripping my pen. I just knew this was sin. It had to be. It was too pleasurable not to be. Oh, not sin by deed or by word, maybe, but certainly sin by thought, because I couldn't help amplifying the details of our night flights in my imagination after I woke with an erection and sat at my window on the street, thinking about her, about us, about what she and I might someday... no, I mustn't think about that! But it wasn't until the Friday before Ash Wednesday, as I was walking home from school after my private lesson with Sister Mary-Theresa, that it suddenly occurred to me that during mass the following Sunday, Quinquagesima Sunday, I would be taking communion there before the congregation, while my soul was besmirched with the unconfessed sin of... well, I guess it would be grouped under Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.

Adultery. And not yet twelve years old. Jeez.

I decided to confess everything. I knew I'd feel better when this sin was off my soul. That Saturday evening I stayed home, listening to the radio, until it was almost time for the priests to leave their confessionals. There was ignoble method in waiting until the last minute, for I had decided that although I had no option but to confess my disgusting sins-of-thought, I would wait until the priest was eager to leave the confessional for tea at the priest house. That way I might get away with slipping my adultery in amongst my other sins and just sort of gliding over it without the priest really noticing. But, absorbed in the spooky radio mystery I was listening to, I dallied too long, so I had to run all the way to Saint Joseph's, and by the time I came clattering through the church door only one confessional still had its candle burning, and the last sinner was just returning to her pew and beginning to recite her penance.

I slipped into the confessional and breathlessly ran through blessmefatherforIhavesinned, then I whispered to the shadow beyond the perforated screen that I was sorry to keep him so late, and I quickly told him that it had been a week since my last confession and that during that time I had sinned twice against the Fourth Commandment in that I had disobeyed my mother, and a couple of times against the Sixth Commandment, and once against the Eighth Commandment in that I—

“The Sixth Commandment?” the priest interrupted me. “You're telling me that you committed adultery, Jean-Luc?”

The blood drained from my face. Father Looney never did stints in the confessional, not since there had been complaints about his quixotic notions of the relative gravity of various sins (playing baseball without a thought for church windows being ranked with apostasy, heresy and a taste for black masses). I guess they pressed him into service because of the rush for Easter absolution. Father Looney had, of course, recognized my voice.

“Let's hear about this adultery of yours,” he said impatiently.

“Ah... Well, Father, it wasn't exactly adultery, it was more like... something else. But... ah... all sexual sins are grouped under the Sixth Commandment, so I guess—”

“I don't need you to tell me what commandment sexual sins are grouped under, boy. Now, just what was the nature of this sexual sin of yours?”

“I didn't sin in deed, Father. It was sin of thought.”

“And what sort of thoughts were they that you entertained?”

Entertained? Could I tell Father Looney that his altar boy had been fantasizing about making love with a nun? No, of course not.

“Is it playing with yourself you've been doing, Jean-Luc?” Father Looney prompted, eager for his slippers and tea.

“No, Father. I... ah... well... I never did it before.” I automatically fell back on a device I often used with authority figures: avoiding a downright lie by couching an irrelevant truth in terms that would cause them to draw a false conclusion. In this case, I said that I had never done it before, which was true. If he chose to extrapolate from my phrasing that I was admitting doing it now, was that my fault? I never thought out these sleight-of-mind ploys in advance; they just came naturally. My con-man genes, I guess.