The Wine of Youth Read Online Free PDF Page A

The old, cold church was empty except for the sixteen of us and a nun. The sobs of Catherine rose and filled it like timid puffs of smoke. Her dress danced to the jerk of them. The nun tiptoed in from the vestibule. She put a black-draped arm around the little girl’s shoulder and gently stroked her curls.
    â€œThere, there!” she whispered. “Don’t you take it so hard. I’m sure our Lord knows you’re sorry for your sins.”
    We guys looked at one another and snickered. Sissy Catherine, sorry for her sins! Sissy Catherine, sorry for her sins!
    Sorry for her sins? I looked at the dancing curls. Why should she be crying? If there was anybody in that class who had a right to cry, it was I. Catherine crying? Huh! Sissy, sissy, sissy! Wait until she had something really wicked to confess. Then she could cry, all right. Wait until she had to confess what I had to confess. Little sissy Catherine!
    Straightway, I began a bad habit which lived with me for a long time thenceforth. I began to examine her conscience for her. I looked for faults in her as big as mine. She was a very good little girl. She got high marks. She knew by heart “Excelsior” and “Lead, Kindly Light.” I went over the summertimes and days I had known her. I could think of nothing worth crying over. I imagined her in the act of committing a sin. I took her out of the church pew and transposed her to the filling-station grounds, my favorite hang-out. I leaned her against the filling-station wall, put a cigarette butt into her mouth, and made her swear, say the six wicked words. But it was hardly convincing. Sissy Catherine simply would not do that. She could not swear as I did. Nobody could swear like me. Nobody had the nerve to swear like me. Nobody was bad enough to swear like me. Nobody was dirty enough. Nobody…I sniffed.
    Long before the priest came down from the sacristy I was out-bawling little Catherine. I was the dirtiest guy who ever was. I drew my forearm across my nose and snuggled my face into it. The boy on my left was crying softly. The fellow on my right cleared his throat. White handkerchiefs fluttered among the little girls in the two front pews. Everybody cried. The nun, moved to ecstatic tears herself, pronounced us her most edifying class.
    II
    The priest came out of the sacristy and knelt for a moment in prayer at the altar. Maybe, I thought, he is praying to our Lord,asking Him please not to send anybody into the confessional who has dirty words to confess. The statue of Christ, His toga opened to a red and bloody heart pierced by two stilettos, pleaded to us from the peak of the marble altar. I was sure I saw His eyes move. I was sure I saw Him breathing. I was sure blood dripped from His heart.
    I burrowed into my elbow and howled: “O dear Jesus, I won’t say it any more! I’ll be good! I won’t hang around the filling-station any more! Wait and see! Gimme another chance, and wait and see!”
    The priest came down from the altar to the confessional. His feet buried themselves into the carpet like iron chains. He took a toothpick out of his mouth and spat a splinter of it to the floor. With breathless curiosity and anxiety the sixteen of us watched him. Then he blew his nose and patted it amiably with his handkerchief. He stared up at the choir-loft for a moment as if he had forgotten something. He smiled to the nun, counted us, sighed, and entered the confessional.
    The Confessions began. The girls were first. Each rose from her pew and looked back timorously at the nun. She nodded kindly, and pointed to the confessional. The girls entered softly, one by one. Through the glazed door we could see each penitent in turn, kneeling in the booth. Came the click-clack, click-clack, at two-minute intervals, of the little slide grating that separates priest from penitent. One after another the girls went in and came out. Their eyes were still wrinkled from tears, but their lips