A Burnt Out Case (12 page)

‘I have enough sleep.’

‘Perhaps you ought to have a check-up with Doctor Colin. It’s wonderful what a pill will do at the right time.’

‘Father, why are you so against M. Querry?’

‘I hope I’m not. I’m unaware of it.’

‘What other man in his position – he’s world-famous, father, even though Father Paul may never have heard of him – would bury himself here, helping with the hospital?’

‘I don’t look for motives, Father Thomas. I hope I accept what he does with gratitude.’

‘Well, I do look for motives. I’ve been talking to Deo Gratias. I hope I would have done what he did, going out at night into the bush looking for a servant, but I doubt . . .’

‘Are you afraid of the dark?’

‘I’m not ashamed to say that I am.’

‘Then it would have needed more courage in your case. I have still to find what does frighten M. Querry.’

‘Well, isn’t that heroic?’

‘Oh no. I am disturbed by a man without fear as I would be by a man without a heart. Fear saves us from so many things. Not that I’m saying, of course, that M. Querry . . .’

‘Does it show a lack of heart staying beside his boy all night, praying with him?’

‘They are telling that story in the city, I know, but did he pray? It’s not what Querry told the doctor.’

‘I asked Deo Gratias. He said yes. I asked him what prayers – the
Ave Maria
, I asked him? He said yes.’

‘Father Thomas, when you have been in Africa a little longer, you will learn not to ask an African a question which may be answered by yes. It is their form of courtesy to agree. It means nothing at all.’

‘I think after two years I can tell when an African is lying.’

‘Those are not lies. Father Thomas, I can well understand why you are attracted to Querry. You are both men of extremes. But in our way of life, it is better for us not to have heroes – not live heroes, that is. The saints should be enough for us.’

‘You are not suggesting there are not live saints?’

‘Of course not. But don’t let’s recognize them before the Church does. We shall be saved a lot of disappointment that way.’

III

Father Thomas stood by his netted door staring through the wire mesh at the ill-lighted avenue of the leproserie. Behind him on his table he had prepared a candle and the flame shone palely below the bare electric globe; in five minutes all the lights would go out. This was the moment he feared; prayers were of no avail to heal the darkness. The Superior’s words had reawakened his longing for Europe. Liège might be an ugly and brutal city, but there was no hour of the night when a man, lifting his curtain, could not see a light shining on the opposite wall of the street or perhaps a late passer-by going home. Here at ten o’clock, when the dynamos ceased working, it needed an act of faith to know that the forest had not come up to the threshold of the room. Sometimes it seemed to him that he could hear the leaves brushing on the mosquito wire. He looked at his watch – four minutes to go.

He had admitted to the Superior that he was afraid of the dark. But the Superior had brushed away his fear as of no account. He felt an enormous longing to confide, but it was almost impossible to confide in men of his own Order, any more than a soldier could admit his cowardice to another soldier. He couldn’t say to the Superior, ‘Every night I pray that I won’t be summoned to attend someone dying in the hospital or in his kitchen, that I won’t have to light the lamp of my bicycle and pedal through the dark.’ A few weeks ago an old man had so died, but it was Father Joseph who went out to find the corpse where it sat in a rickety deck-chair with some fetish or other for Nzambi placed in its lap and a holy medal round its neck; he had given conditional absolution by the light of the bicycle-lamp because there were no candles to be found.

He believed that the Superior grudged the admiration he felt for Querry. His companions, it seemed to him, spent their lives with small concerns which they could easily discuss together – the cost of foot-baths, a fault in the dynamo, a holdup at the brick-kiln, but the things which worried him he could discuss with no one. He envied the happily married man who had a ready confidante at bed and board. Father Thomas was married to the Church and the Church responded to his confidence only in the clichés of the confessional. He remembered how even in the seminary his confessor had checked him whenever he had gone farther than the platitudes of his problem. The word ‘scruple’ was posted like a traffic sign in whichever direction the mind drove. ‘I want to talk, I want to talk,’ Father Thomas cried silently to himself as all the lights went out and the beat of the dynamos stopped. Somebody came down the veranda in the dark; the steps passed the room of Father Paul and would have passed his own if he had not called out, ‘Is it you, M. Querry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Won’t you come in for a moment?’

Querry opened the door and came into the small radiance of the candle. He said, ‘I’ve been explaining to the Superior the difference between a bidet and a foot-bath.’

‘Please won’t you sit down? I can never sleep so early as this and my eyes are not good enough to read by candle-light.’ Already in one sentence he had admitted more to Querry than he had ever done to his Superior, for he knew that the Superior would only too readily have given him a torch and permission to read for as long as he liked after the lights went, but that permission would have drawn attention to his weakness. Querry looked for a chair. There was only one and Father Thomas began to pull back the mosquito-net from the bed.

‘Why not come to my room?’ Querry asked. ‘I have some whisky there.’

‘Today I am fasting,’ Father Thomas said. ‘Please take the chair. I will sit here.’ The candle burnt straight upwards to a smoky tip like a crayon. ‘I hope you are happy here,’ Father Thomas said.

‘Everyone has been very kind to me.’

‘You are the first visitor to stay here since I came.’

‘Is that so?’

Father Thomas’s long narrow nose was oddly twisted at the end; it gave him the effect of smelling sideways at some elusive odour. ‘Time is needed to settle in a place like this.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I’m not sure that I’m settled myself yet.’

‘I can understand that,’ Querry said mechanically for want of anything better to say, but the bromide was swallowed like wine by Father Thomas.

‘Yes, you have great understanding. I sometimes think a layman has more capacity for understanding than a priest. Sometimes,’ he added, ‘more faith.’

‘That’s certainly not true in my case,’ Querry said.

‘I have told this to no one else,’ Father Thomas said, as though he were handing over some precious object which would leave Querry for ever in his debt. ‘When I finished at the seminary I sometimes thought that only by martyrdom could I save myself – if I could die before I lost everything.’

‘One doesn’t die,’ Querry said.

‘I wanted to be sent to China, but they wouldn’t accept me.’

‘Your work here must be just as valuable,’ Querry said, dealing out his replies quickly and mechanically like cards.

‘Teaching the alphabet?’ Father Thomas shifted on the bed and the drape of mosquito-net fell over his face like a bride’s veil or a beekeeper’s. He turned it back and it fell again, as though even an inanimate object had enough consciousness to know the best moment to torment.

‘Well, it’s time for bed,’ Querry said.

‘I’m sorry. I know I’m keeping you up. I’m tiring you.’

‘Not at all,’ Querry said. ‘Besides I sleep badly.’

‘You do? It’s the heat. I can’t sleep for more than a few hours.’

‘I could let you have some pills.’

‘Oh no, no, thank you. I must learn somehow – this is the place God has sent me to.’

‘Surely you volunteered?’

‘Of course, but if it hadn’t been His will . . .’

‘Perhaps it’s his will that you should take a nembutal. Let me fetch you one.’

‘It does me so much more good just to talk to you for a little. You know in a community one doesn’t talk – about anything important. I’m not keeping you from your work, am I?’

‘I can’t work by candle-light.’

‘I’ll release you very soon,’ Father Thomas said, smiling weakly, and then fell silent again. The forest might be approaching, but for once he had a companion. Querry sat with his hands between his knees waiting. A mosquito hummed near the candle-flame. The dangerous desire to confide grew in Father Thomas’s mind like the pressure of an orgasm. He said, ‘You won’t understand how much one needs, sometimes, to have one’s faith fortified by talking to a man who believes.’

Querry said, ‘You have the fathers.’

‘We talk only about the dynamo and the schools.’ He said, ‘Sometimes I think if I stay here I’ll lose my faith altogether. Can you understand that?’

‘Oh yes, I can understand that. But I think it’s your confessor you should talk to, not me.’

‘Deo Gratias talked to you, didn’t he?’

‘Yes. A little.’

‘You make people talk. Rycker . . .’

‘God forbid.’ Querry moved restlessly on the hard chair. ‘What I would say to you wouldn’t help you at all. You must believe that. I’m not a man of – faith.’

‘You are a man of humility,’ Father Thomas said. ‘We’ve all noticed that.’

‘If you knew the extent of my pride . . .’

‘Pride which builds churches and hospitals is not so bad a pride.’

‘You mustn’t use me to buttress your faith, father. I’d be the weak spot. I don’t want to say anything that could disturb you more – but I’ve nothing for you – nothing. I wouldn’t even call myself a Catholic unless I were in the army or in a prison. I am a legal Catholic, that’s all.’

‘We both of us have our doubts,’ Father Thomas said. ‘Perhaps I have more than you. They even come to me at the altar with the Host in my hands.’

‘I’ve long ceased to have doubts. Father, if I must speak plainly, I don’t believe at all. Not at all. I’ve worked it out of my system – like women. I’ve no desire to convert others to disbelief, or even to worry them. I want to keep my mouth shut, if only you’d let me.’

‘You can’t think what a lot of good our conversation has done me,’ Father Thomas said with excitement. ‘There’s not a priest here to whom I can talk as we’re talking. One sometimes desperately needs a man who has experienced the same weaknesses as oneself.’

‘But you’ve misunderstood me, father.’

‘Don’t you see that perhaps you’ve been given the grace of aridity? Perhaps even now you are walking in the footsteps of St John of the Cross, the
noche oscura
.’

‘You are so very far from the truth,’ Querry said, making a movement with his hands of bewilderment or rejection.

‘I’ve watched you here,’ Father Thomas said, ‘I am capable of judging a man’s actions.’ He leant forward until his face was not very far from Querry’s and Querry could smell the lotion Father Thomas used against mosquito bites. ‘For the first time since I came to this place, I feel I can be of use. If you ever have the need to confess, always remember I am here.’

‘The only confession I am ever likely to make,’ Querry said, ‘would be to an examining magistrate.’

‘Ha, ha.’ Father Thomas caught the joke in mid-air and confiscated it, like a schoolboy’s ball, under his soutane. He said, ‘Those doubts you have. I can assure you I know them too. But couldn’t we perhaps go over together the philosophical arguments . . . to help us both?’

‘They wouldn’t help me, father. Any sixteen-year-old student could demolish them, and anyway I need no help. I don’t want to be harsh, father, but I don’t wish to believe. I’m cured.’

‘Then why do I get more sense of faith from you than from anyone here?’

‘It’s in your own mind, father. You are looking for faith and so I suppose you find it. But I’m not looking. I don’t want any of the things I’ve known and lost. If faith were a tree growing at the end of the avenue, I promise you I’d never go that way. I don’t mean to say anything to hurt you, father. I would help you if I could. If you feel in pain because you doubt, it is obvious that you are feeling the pain of faith, and I wish you luck.’

‘You really do understand, don’t you?’ Father Thomas said, and Querry could not restrain an expression of tired despair. ‘Don’t be irritated. Perhaps I know you better than you do yourself. I haven’t found so much understanding, “not in all Israel” if you can call the community that. You have done so much good. Perhaps – another night – we could have a talk again. On our problems – yours and mine.’

‘Perhaps, but –’

‘And pray for me, M. Querry. I would value your prayers.’

‘I don’t pray.’

‘I have heard differently from Deo Gratias,’ Father Thomas said, fetching up a smile like a liquorice-stick, dark and sweet and prehensile. He said, ‘There are interior prayers, the prayers of silence. There are even unconscious prayers when men have goodwill. A thought from you may be a prayer in the eyes of God. Think of me occasionally, M. Querry.’

‘Of course.’

‘I would like to be of help to you as you have been to me.’ He paused as though he were waiting for some appeal, but Querry only put a hand to his face and brushed away the sticky tendrils which a spider had left dangling between him and the door. ‘I shall sleep tonight,’ Father Thomas said, threateningly.

CHAPTER 2

I

About twice a month the Bishop’s boat was due to come in with the heavier provisions for the leproserie, but sometimes many weeks went by without a visit. They waited for it with forced patience; perhaps the captain of the Otraco boat which brought the mail would also bring news of her small rival – a snag in the river might have pierced its bottom: it might be stranded on a mud-bank; perhaps the rudder had been twisted in collision with a fallen tree-trunk; or the captain might be down with fever or have been appointed a professor of Greek by the Bishop who had not yet found a priest to take his place. It was not a very popular job among members of the Order. No knowledge of navigation was required, not even of machinery, for the African mate was in virtual charge of the engine and the bridge. Four weeks of loneliness on the river every trip, the attempt at each halt to discover some cargo which had not been pledged to Otraco, such a life compared unfavourably with employment at the cathedral in Luc or even at a seminary in the bush.