Wake: Chapter One

Chapter One

Confession

New York City

March 23, 1995

. . . . .As Monsignor Vincent O’Reilly approached the penitents, he cast his eyes downward towards the base of the pews. He avoided eye contact so that those with shameful reflections would not shrink from the quest for grace, forgiveness and Light. He also feared for his safety.

Whether or not there should be a late Saturday night Mass, preceded by Confessions, was hotly debated in the rectory of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. #While those who opposed the services weren’t at liberty to discuss the specific reasons for their reluctance, it was generally understood that some of the most unsavory and volatile of God’s creatures confessed their indiscretions just before midnight Mass.

Mayhem was not an uncommon subject for discussion between priest and penitent. Once Monsignor O’Reilly had heard a Confession from a man who had killed his wife, then cut her body into tiny cubes and fed them to the piranha at the zoo, where he worked--a few cubes at a time, taken in his lunch box. Vince imagined how the pieces must have smelled, even though the penitent said they had been refrigerated, and ended the session prematurely by barfing into the pocket of his cassock.

Reports of incest, robbery, beatings, and other forms of debauchery were commonplace. It was a relief to hear “I stole three packs of cigarettes and took the Lord’s name in vain seven times.”

There had been the confession of a woman’s adultery, so graphic and sensual the Monsignor had retreated to his room and pleasured himself so many times over the course of the next few days that he suffered utter and complete physical exhaustion. He’d hardly been able to attend to his clerical duties, prepare his sermon, or stay awake during vespers.

There was to be a High Mass this evening and the preparatory smells of burning incense filled the creases and crevasses of the church from the altar to the choir loft. It was so strong that the celebrant directed that several of the windows in the back of the church be opened. This exposed the congregation to a cold, piercing wind.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” began the gravelly voice of a man the Monsignor at first thought he might have recognized, then lost in the din of screeching traffic beneath the open windows. “It has been twenty years since my last confession.”

“Yes, my son,” the monsignor said in an encouraging tone. He usually tried to project as a supportive proponent for atonement, but tonight he slumped in his high backed wooden chair, rested his black zucchetto with magenta piping on his lap, and flopped his chubby elbows over the armrests. He was physically and emotionally drained.

There was no response. The man knelt in silence.

“Yes, my son,” the priest repeated. Still there was no response. The Monsignor waited, wondering what to do. He began to pray for the man’s soul.

“I’ve become a murderer,” the penitent said.

The priest sat up, hoping he had misunderstood the man’s shrive. “What?”

“You heard me, Padré. I’ve done a lot of murders. I’d like to give you an exact number, but I can’t.”

Struggling to come to attention, Vince sat erect in his chair, disoriented—as though he had just been soaked with cold water, awakened from a sound sleep.

The man continued. “Well, not me exactly. Let’s just say that I helped some lost souls find their way to the hereafter. That’s just the same, ain’t it, Padré?”

The priest couldn’t make up his mind whether the man was telling the truth, or taunting him. He put his ear closer to the linen cloth that obscured the man’s features. He could see the penitent’s silhouette against the pure white cloth, back-lit by bright beams of light from the choir loft that peaked through the draperies on the windows of the confessional door. He couldn’t distinguish the man’s features, but he could tell that he had facial hair. ”Are you telling the truth?”

“I wouldn’t shit you within these holy walls, Padre,” he said. “. . . even if your kind desecrates them.”

Incense bit at the priest’s nose. The blood drained from his fingertips. All of a sudden, they felt icy. Do I know this guy? Ill at ease, the priest shifted his weight from one cheek to the other on his hard wooden chair. “In order to receive absolution, you must be remorseful, my son,” Monsignor O’Reilly said in what he tried to present in a conciliatory tone. There was a long silence.

The man’s voice grew gravelly and dripped with rancor. “She had it coming,” the confessant said. “She cleaved unto others!” “Do you mean she was an adulteress?” “She waz,” the man replied, reminding the priest that they might well be speaking of her in the past tense.The “wahz’ was affected, as if it were part of a put on or manufactured vocabulary.

Monsignor O’Reilly ignored the man’s impertinence. He tried to keep his mind on saving his soul. “Even if she did that doesn’t justify murder,” he said to the penitent.

The man spoke in a lofty voice, “Deuteronomy 22, verse 22: If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.” The monsignor got a chill up his spine and then down his back, when the man’s gravelly voice raised an octave, as it uttered the word die. “That’s from the Old Testament, my son. The New Testament teaches us to be merciful and forgiving.”

The priest could sense the man’s agitation as the penitent rocked back and forth behind the linen, which hung between them. “New Testament? They didn’t abide the New Testament! If they had, I wouldn’t have done ‘em in.” Invidious laughter entwined these words, then trailed off to what might be described as a barnyard cackle. The voice again seemed familiar.

“Who are you? Do I know you?” The monsignor asked. There was no answer. “Do I know you?” the priest insisted. Still there was no response.

The priest had an irrepressible feeling the man was gone. Then, he did the unthinkable. He opened the door to the confessional, leapt into the aisle, and caught a glimpse of someone hurriedly slipping through the swinging doors of the vestibule. All that registered was the dark colored tail of a full-length coat.

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