Visions of Gerard Read Online Free PDF Page B

the funny ribbon on the cross of the lover they killed—and, they put a nail through it”—Whatever mysterious thoughts that lie beneath in the bent heads of people and children in churches and temples century after century—“He’s crying!” moaned Gerard, seeing it all.
    Two other sins to confess: the deep sin of looking at Lajoie’s and Lajoie could look at his, at the urinals, Wednesday morning, in the corner, for a long time—On purpose—Gerard blushes to think of it—He sees the strange image of Lajoie’s, different, curlier than his, he twinges to urinate namelessly and twists in his knee rest with the horror of his shame, not knowing—Sin’s so deeply ingrained in us we invent them where they aint and ignore them where they are—Across his mind sneaks the proposition to avoid referring to the priest—But God will know—And to mock the kindly ear of the listener Priest, who expects what there is, by removing one whit, a human sin divine to discover—“Poor Father Priest, what’ll he know if I dont tell him? he wont know anything and he’ll comfort me and send me off with my prayer, well it’ll be a big sin to hide him a sin—like if I’d spit in his eyes when he’s dead, like”—
    The fortunate priest, Père Anselme Fournier, of Trois Rivières Quebec, the last of twelve sons but the first in his father’s eye, pink-handed where he might have been horny-handed from the soil of Abraham, receives Ti Gerard in the confessional by sliding open his panel and bending quick ear obedient and loaded with long afternoon—Coughs revolve around the ceiling and sail and set in the pew sea, a knee-rest scrapes Sca-ra-at! with a harsh harmonizing bang from the altar where a worker creaks around with chair and candle snuffer—
    â€œBénit” is the only word, “bless,” Gerard hears as the priest quickly mutters the introductory invocation and then his ear is ready—Gerard can faintly smell the adult breath and that peculiar adult smell of old teeth in old mouths long at work—“Bz bz bz” he hears as his predecessor in the confessional, just let out, prays fast and furious his repentant penalty rosaries at the rear seat half on his way to run out and slap cap on and run screaming across dusk stained fields of stubble and raw mud, to gangs in clover dales wrangling with rocks—A bird zings across the reddening late sky and over the roof of St. Louis de France, as though the Holy Ghost wanted it—Saffron is the east, white is the west, where a bank cloud hides the thrower Sun, but soon it’ll all girdle and engolden and be rich red gambling sunset splendor, again, as yesterday—No school tomorrow is the frost announcement in the field grass, in the quiet corners of the schoolyards—Gerard senses all this but his day’s work is just begun.
    â€œMy father, I confess that I pushed a little boy because he made me mad.”
    â€œDid you hurt him?”
    â€œNo—but I hurt his heart.”
    The priest is amazed to hear the refinement of it, the hairsplitting elegant point of it, (“He’ll make a priest” he inner grins).
    â€œYes, you’re right, my child, it hurt his heart. Why did you push him?” he pursues in conclusion with that sorrowful tender sorriness of the priest in the confessional as tho and as much to say “When all is said and done, why do we sit here and have to admit the sinningness of man.”
    â€œI pushed him because he had broken my little card-house.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œIt made me mad.”
    â€œYou flew into a rage.”
    â€œ Oui .”
    â€œYou didnt think—He was younger than you.”
    â€œ Oui , just a little boy of the first grade.”
    â€œAw,”—regretfully the fine priest looks around at Gerard briefly, commisserating as tender heart to tender heart—Ah, a