The House (2 page)

THE CONFESSOR

by Leonard D'arava

The thurible sways. The confessor, dressed in black, looks down from the smoking plinth.

The writer stands in ashes.

"Why are you here?" comes the voice, but it is no human voice at all. It sputters like rushing water, like dead leaves in the wind. The voice is incalculable.

"Absolve me," the writer replies.
Stand tall,
he thinks.
Be brave and you will prevail.
"Forgive me in my state of disgrace."

The pause howls. Then: "But I am not your confessor."

These words, black as the confessor's raiments, make the writer feel barely extant. What is manhood—no,
spirit
hood—but courage and faith? He's here for more than absolution. He's come for truth. He's come all this way, to this terrible vale, to ask:
What is truth? What is truth really?
 But now that he's been granted his moment of petition, his resolve flees. His courage and his faith flee, too. At once, he feels worthless before the immobile figure in black.

"So you've come to ask a question," it bids.

The vale's graven dark oozes gossamer mists as if through pores. The writer thinks of sepulchers and uteri, of palls and wedding gowns and newborn pudenda and autopsy saws and grave-dirt; he thinks of the fornication of opposites.

He's not quite certain what the vale is. An interstice, perhaps. A rive or a threshold. Whatever it is, it's far and away from the world. He senses higher orders beyond: orders which bar the admittance of any imperfection, but not heaven. Heaven is a different place. The writer thinks of life and death, yet he knows he is not dead. Maybe he's just still learning.

Or perhaps this is the end. Perhaps he's learned all he'll
ever
 learn.

"I see too much," he confesses. "I feel too much."

"You blame your loss on
sensitivities?
"

It's as though the notion is absurd. "I..." the writer attempts, and nothing else. It's not forgiveness for his sins that he craves—that's another realm. He craves to be absolved of all he's misconstrued, and of his failure to calculate truth,
real truth
 and what it adds up to. He feels like a seer who's seen all the wrong things.

"Tell me what you've seen," the confessor says.

The behest dilates in his mind, a black flower. What has he seen, though, that could be so deluding? Sadness? Dissolution?

"Despair," he finally answers. "Too many lives and too many hearts pushed past the point of collapse."

"Ah, despair." The confessor raises a finger. "And what of your own life? Your own heart?"

"I don't know. Regret, I guess."

"But you've been given so
much.
"

"I know! Forgive me!"

The vale shimmers in its fulgent mist. The confessor says, "But I am not your confessor."

The darkness, too, is incalculable. It's midnight now, wherever this place really is. It is the moment of reckoning's totality, the holy hour of the Druids. The full moon's bright light cuts the writer's features down to the starkness of bone, and the fragrant smoke which eddies off the thurible reminds him of the scent of her hair.

"You deserve nothing," the confessor asserts, "because you've lost...
everything.
 Are you listening to me?"

Yeah, I'm listening.
This fact, this aphorism, crushes the writer. That's how he feels. Crushed.
I am a crushed man,
 he muses. It's almost funny.

"Be brave, though, seer, and you will prevail."

Will I?
 he wonders. But it must be so. The writer's love was gone, taken away or lost—it didn't matter which—by the decrees which ruled and ruined the world. Sometimes he espies the world of nothing but a demesne of rain and failure. Yes, he's lost his love; that's what had bidden this ultimate question. He felt desperate to pursue the truth out of his own doubt of it.

"I've lost my love," he finally admits.

"Yes," the confessor says. "You have."

The thurible sways closer, its arcane blue embers for the first time revealing glimpses of its bearer's face. The writer shudders. It's a terrible visage. A mouth like a knife-cut in meat, and chiseled slits for eyes.
My God,
 the writer thinks. The blue glimpses steal everything left in him at once. If he'd ever had any courage, any courage at all, it was gone now. If he'd ever had any faith...

Gone. All of it, gone.

The confessor points down with a finger of black stone. Derision looms in the unearthly voice. "Look now,
seer.
Into
yourself.
"

My God,
he panics.
What is truth? What is truth really?

Her words reach back to him like corpse hands reaching back from death. That's the saddest part of all. Her words are ghosts. Her words are tiny specters.

—i'm proud of you—

—can i have a kiss?—

—i would do anything for you—

—me, too—

—you do, huh? well i love
you
 more—

Next: visions. Memories pouring into light.

She's so beautiful beneath him, he's astonished. It rifles through his eyes into his head: her raw, naked, indefectible
beauty.
Even her sweat is beautiful, the sweat on her breasts and legs, on her angel's face, the beads of sweat nestled like jewels in the lovely little plot of fur. She's shining,
glowing,
 in this avatistic beauty, wet in flesh and real blood, real love. Perhaps the only moment of genuine truth in his life collides with him now in the vivid image, like hammer to piton. Even if it's only a shred of a moment, it's still perfect. Her voice is a tiny plea impoverished out of the desperation to communicate that which reduces words to total inferiority and sails away beyond anything even remotely conveyable through primitive human utterance. Her plea is this: "I love you."

The writer falls to his knees, in ashes.

"Seen enough, seer?"

"I've buried my own faith myself," the writer croaks. "All my courage, virtue, insight, all my truth. Forgive me."

"I am not your confessor," the confessor repeats. "You can only forgive yourself."

The writer's fingers worm through the ashes. The ashes are warm. He lowers his face and kisses the pallid puffs, thinking of his love and how brightly it let him see the world.

"You can stay here forever if you like. But where is the truth in that?"

The writer's eyes widen; it was a good question. His loss has made his face a wet, ashen mask, and on high, atop the plinth, the confessor slowly leans back and begins to laugh. The laughter blurts outward like a gaggle of black birds.