Long After Midnight (40 page)

 
          
On
the fifteenth day of July, he found himself staring at some boys idling by on
their bicycles, mouths full of Hershey bars that they were gulping and chewing.

 
          
That
night he awoke thinking Power House and Baby Ruth and Love Nest and Crunch.

 
          
He
stood it as long as he could and then got up, tried to read, tossed the book
down, paced the dark night church, and at last, spluttering mildly, went up to
the altar and asked one of his rare favors of God.

 
          
The
next afternoon, the young man who loved chocolate at last came back.

 
          
"Thank
you, Lord," murmured the priest, as he felt the vast weight creak the
other half of the confessional like a ship foundered with wild freight.

 
          
"What?"
whispered the young voice from the far side.

 
          
"Sorry,
I wasn't addressing you," said the priest.

 
          
He
shut his eyes and inhaled.

 
          
The
gates of the chocolate factory stood wide somewhere and its mild spice moved
forth to change the land.

 
          
Then,
an incredible thing happened.

 
          
Sharp
words burst from Father
Malle
/s mouth:

 
          
"You
shouldn't be
coming
here!"

 
          
"What,
what, Father?"

 
          
"Go
somewhere else! I can't help. You need special work. No, no."

 
          
The
old priest was stunned to feel his own mind jump out his tongue this way. Was
it the heat, the long days and weeks kept waiting by this fiend, what,
what?
But still his mouth leaped on:

 
          
"No
help here! No, no.
Go
for help—"

 
          
"To
the shrinks, you mean?" the voice cut in, amazingly calm, considering the
explosion.

 
          
"Yes,
yes, Lord save us, to those people. The—the psychiatrists."

 
          
This
last word was even more incredible. He had rarely heard himself say it.

 
          
"Oh,
God, Father, what do
they
know?"
said the young man.

 
          
What
indeed, thought Father
Malley
, for he had long been
put off by their carnival talk and to-the-rear-march chat and clamor. Good
grief, why don't I turn in my collar and buy me a beard! he thought, but went
on more calmly:

 
          
"What
do they know, my son? Why, they claim to know everything."

 
          
"Just
like the Church
used
to claim,
Father?"

 
          
Silence.
Then:

 
          
"There's
a difference between claiming and knowing," the old priest replied, as
calmly as his beating heart would allow.

 
          
"And
the-Church
knows,
is that it,
Father?"

 
          
"And
if it doesn't, I
dol
"

 
          
"Don't
get mad again, Father." The young man paused and sighed. "I didn't
come to dance angels on the head of a pin with you. Shall I start confession,
Father?"

 
          
"It's
about time!" The priest caught himself, settled back, shut his eyes
sweetly, and added, "Well?"

 
          
And
the voice on the other side, with the tongue and the breath of a child,
tinctured with silver-foiled kisses, flavored with honeycomb, moved by recent
sugars and memories or more immediate Cadbury fetes and galas, began to
describe its life of getting up and living with and going to bed with Swiss delights
and temptations out of Hershey, Pennsylvania, or how to chew the dark skin off
the exterior of a Clark Bar and keep the caramel and textured interior for
special shocks and celebrations.

 
          
Of
how the soul asked and the tongue demanded and the stomach accepted and the
blood danced to the drive of Power House, the promise of Love Nest, the
delivery of Butterfinger, but most of all the sweet African murmuring of dark
chocolate between the teeth, tinting the gums, flavoring the palate so you
muttered, whispered, murmured pure Congo,
Zambesi
,
Chad in your sleep.

 
          
And
the more the voice talked, as the days passed and the weeks, and the old priest
listened, the lighter became the burden on the other side of the grille. Father
Malley
knew, without looking, that the flesh
enclosing that voice was raining and falling away. The tread was less heavy.
The confessional did not cry out in such huge alarms when the body entered next
door.

 
          
For
even with the young voice there and the young man, the smell of chocolate was
truly fading and almost gone.

 
          
And
it was the loveliest summer the old priest had ever known.

 
          
Once,
years before, when he was a very young priest, a thing had happened that was
much like this, in its strange and special way.

 
          
A
girl, no more than sixteen by her voice, had come to whisper each day from the
time school let out to the time autumn school renewed.

 
          
For
all of that long summer he had come as close as a priest might to an alert
affection for that whisper and that dear voice. He had heard her through her
July attraction, her August madness, and her September disillusion, and as she
went away forever in October, in tears, he wanted to cry out: Oh, stay, stay!
Marry me!

 
          
But
I am the groom to the brides of Christ, another voice whispered.

 
          
And
he had
not
run forth, that very young
priest, into the traffics of the world.

 
          
Now,
nearing sixty, the young soul within him sighed, stirred, recalled, compared
that old and shopworn memory with this new, somehow funny yet withal sad
encounter with a lost soul whose love was not summer madness for girls in dire
swimsuits, but chocolate unwrapped in secret and devoured in stealth.

 
          
"Father,"
said the voice, late one afternoon. "It has been a fine summer."

 
          
"Strange
you would say that," said the priest. "I have thought so
myself."

 
          
"Father,
I have something really awful to confess to you."

 
          
"I'm
beyond shocking, I think."

 
          
"Father,
I am not from your diocese."

 
          
"That's
all right."

 
          
"And,
Father, forgive me, but, I—"

 
          
"Go
on."

 
          
"I'm
not even Catholic."

 
          
"You're
what!"
cried the old man.

 
          
"I'm
not even Catholic, Father. Isn't that awful?"

 
          
"Awful?"

 
          
"I
mean, I'm sorry, truly I am. I'll join the church, if you want, Father, to make
up."

 
          
"Join
the church, you idiot?" shouted the old man. "It's too late for that!
Do you know what you've done? Do you know the depths of depravity you've
plumbed? You've taken my time, bent my ear, driven me wild, asked advice,
needed a psychiatrist, argued religion, criticized the Pope, if I remember
correctly, and I
do
remember, used up
three months, eighty or ninety days, and now, now,
now
you want to join the church and 'make up'?"

 
          
"If
you don't mind, Father."

 
          
"Mind!
Mind!" yelled the priest, and lapsed into a ten-second apoplexy.

 
          
He
almost tore the door wide to run around and seize the culprit out into the
light. But then:

 
          
"It
was not all for nothing, Father," said the voice from beyond the grille.

 
          
The
priest grew quiet.

 
          
For
you see, Father, God bless you, you have helped me."

 
          
The
priest grew very quiet.

 
          
"Yes,
Father, oh bless you indeed, you have helped me so very much, and I am
beholden," whispered the voice. "You haven't asked, but don't you
guess? I have lost weight. You wouldn't believe the weight I have lost. Eighty,
eighty-five, ninety pounds. Because of you, Father. I gave it up. I gave it up.
Take a deep breath. Inhale."

 
          
The
priest, against his wish, did so.

 
          
"What
do you smell?"

 
          
"Nothing."

 
          
"Nothing,
Father, nothing! It's gone. The smell of chocolate and the chocolate with it.
Gone. Gone. I'm free."

 
          
The
old priest sat, knowing not what to say, and a peculiar itching came about his
eyelids.

 
          
"You
have done Christ's work, Father, as you yourself must know. He walked through
the world and helped. You walk through the world and help. When I was falling,
you put out your hand, Father, and saved me."

 
          
Then
a most peculiar thing happened.

 
          
Father
Malley
felt tears burst from his eyes. They brimmed
over. They streaked along his cheeks. They gathered at his tight lips and he
untightened
them and the tears fell from his chin. He could
not stop them. They came, O Lord, they came like a shower of spring rain after
the seven lean years and the drought over and himself alone, dancing about,
thankful, in the pour.

 
          
He
heard sounds from the other booth and could not be sure but somehow felt that
the other one was crying, too.

 
          
So
here they sat, while the sinful world rushed by on streets, here in the sweet
incense gloom, two men on opposite sides of some fragile board
slattings
, on a late afternoon at the end of summer,
weeping.

 
          
And
at last they grew very quiet indeed and the voice asked, anxiously, "Are
you all right, Father?"

 
          
The
priest replied at last, eyes shut, "Fine. Thanks."

 
          
"Anything
I can do, Father?"

 
          
"You
have already done it, my son."

 
          
"About
... my joining the church. I meant it."

 
          
"No
matter."

 
          
"But
it does matter. I'll join. Even though I'm Jewish."

 
          
Father
Malley
snorted half a laugh. "
Wha
-what?"

 
          
"Jewish,
Father, but an Irish Jew, if that helps."

 
          
"Oh,
yes!" roared the old priest. "It helps, it helps!"