The Walls Come a’Tumblin’

By

Byron Edgington

The walls of the confessional protecting him on all sides, Father Alfredo twists the ring on his left hand, a symbol of fifty years in the priesthood. The old woman drones on: “….Father, for I have sinned, I hated and cursed a man for what he did to my beautiful boy…” Her voice quivers, and raw sobbing stops her confession.

“Go on, daughter.” Waiting for her, Alfredo listens to the agonized oration of perceived shortcoming, the woman’s self-flagellation at the too human act of cursing her son’s assailant. Behind the dim screen of the confessional, Rosarita composes herself enough to continue. “….his holy mother Mary did not curse the men who took her son’s life, Father, so how can I curse when my son suffers in such a way?”

Alfredo closes his eyes. He listens intently to the woman’s grief, her agony at her loss. Samos…one of his favorite young men at the parish, a candidate once for the priesthood, until it was revealed that he was…different, in that way. “You must forgive yourself, Rosarita,” Alfredo whispers, as gently as he can. “Allow yourself to work through this terrible thing, and to be angry, and even to curse if it helps you.”

“Father, I have wondered, since my Samos… I’ve wondered if I ever believed before, or ever will again? Who would encourage this kind of thing, Father? Who gives other men such hateful thoughts? I don’t know, Father. I just don’t know.”

Alfredo waits patiently letting the old woman expunge whatever grief she can in the darkness.

How many thousands of confessions have I heard within these walls, the old priest wonders? Some haunt him; some compel him. He’s heard people confess terrible sins, acts that have made him shudder at the vision of human depravity they exposed. Abuse of children; of their own spouses; of neighbors—of themselves. Scandals so dark and twisted he’s marveled at their tangled intricacy. Sins that have made him question the very makeup of the human heart, the gentle confines of the soul—even the intentions of the all powerful, all knowing Creator: A man who, years ago, had robbed a clerk at the little bodega on the corner, and then balked when Alfredo insisted he return the money. “….my kid brother’s bail, Father Al, that’s all.” The woman who stole from her boss, “…to feed my hungry children, Father, because the man will not pay me enough.” And the boy last week, railing against gays: “….they’re doing a worse sin, Father, ain’t that so? Didn’t you say that, Father? On the altar all those times?”

What hides behind those sins? What has he not heard? What evil intentions have people been ashamed to admit, even to him? Especially to him? Alfredo can never reveal those sins, of course. No matter how vile, no matter how urgently those confessions might compel him to intervene, to expose the sinner’s identity, he never can. Indeed, he must forget them himself, pretend they never happened, that those sinners will heed his command to ‘…go, and sin no more.’ How many confessions? How many secrets in the human heart?

And he’s wondered if his demands from the altar for obedience, and for allegiance have enabled sins? Has he not forgiven those who steal to feed the hungry? Has he not absolved larceny in response to greed? Forgiven the sin of lust in the name of love’s pursuit? Has he not commanded his flock “….to make straight the way of the Lord”?

“Do you forgive him, father?”

Alfredo startles, and sits upright. “It is what we are commanded to do, Rosarita,” he says again. “To forgive. It is all we can do.”

            Framed by her tattered scarf, Rosarita’s eyes are a mass of tears. She fingers her beads.

“My Samos…such a good man, Father, even though… But he did as you commanded, Father. He loved another as you told him to do. He loved with passion, with his music and his art. Such a gentle, kind man, Father. He followed your example, and your teaching. Why would someone..? I know I must forgive, but it is so hard.”

            “I can only counsel you to do that Rosarita, to forgive and try to go on. The man who did this terrible thing to your son is living with an awful sin on his conscience. And when he is discovered, he will be brought to justice, Rosa, I promise you.” Alfredo shudders at the memory of the young man who’d knelt right where Rosarita kneels, confessing to missing Mass, to cursing, to premarital sex—sins that Alfredo hears every day—and then to the boy’s simmering anger and vile intent to harm ‘poofie guys who go after little kids...’

            Behind the screen, Rosarita’s sobs wrack her frail body. Her anguished cries seep into Father Alfredo’s cell in the tiny confessional making the walls press closer. He imagines reaching through the screen, touching the grieving mother, laying his hands on her as Christ would have done. He cannot do that; instead, he leans away, making himself smaller, wishing Rosarita would finish. The screen between them marks a protective wall, a separation between parishioner and priest. When his supplicant most needs the solace he might offer, he cannot give it. The sacred wall will not allow it. “I promise you, Rosarita. He will be found, and you will have justice.”

            “Thank you, Father. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

            “You are not disturbing me, Rosarita. Now go in peace.” His hand rises in blessing.

            “Oh my god, I am heartily sorry…” Rosarita begins her act of contrition.

The old priest sits in the dark, paralyzed by his inability to reach out to a grieving parishioner. He’s frozen in fear at the guilt that’s gnawed at him. Since the awful days before Samos was attacked, and hearing the boy’s hate-filled confession.

 Rosa’s voice stirs him again. “….I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.”  In dim shadow behind the screen she crosses herself.

Alfredo’s hand comes up in absolution, “….nomine patris, et filio et spiritu sancto…”

The walls quiver as Rosarita stands, the air chilling as she brushes aside the curtain. Harsh light dances and stabs, and then darkness sweeps into the confessional once more. Rosarita enters a nearby pew. When she bends down the wooden kneeler creaks and cries. Alfredo listens, as she crosses herself, and begins her penance. “….hail Mary, full of grace…”

In the accusing dark of the confessional the scene’s chilling images batter the old priest again, as they have so many times since he heard about Samos. When he first had the terrifying visions he’s been able, mostly, to stop their hideous rush, the vivid images of violence and hatred that his mind conjures. There, in the dark, silent confessional, the scenes return again. This time, listening to Samos’ mother, Rosarita, he cannot hold them back.

The young man’s vicious litany chills him, the vengeful flood of invective and self-justification a week ago, behind that very screen:“….they’re doin’ a worse sin, Father, ain’t that so? And with little kids. Ain’t it okay to make ‘em stop doin’ that, Father? Ain’t that bein’ a soldier for Christ like you said? Them guys give that awful disease to each other, and then they go after innocent little kids, Father, so what’s wrong with takin’ care of ‘em first?”

Alfredo had withheld absolution only once in fifty years. The adulterer had argued with him, blaming his sin with another woman on his wife’s frigidity. Alfredo had commanded the fellow to cease his affair, repent and honor his marriage vows. In anguish, the man had argued, complained, finally sworn at the old priest: “….can’t imagine what it’s like, bein’ celibate…”

“Ah, but I can imagine it, my son…”

“But you chose to go without, I didn’t! Mother’a God, Father Al, she’s supposed to give it to me, and she don’t…It’s hell not bein’ able to… I done what they told me, and she still won’t…a man’s heart wants what it wants, that’s all.” The fellow had stormed from the confessional, leaving Alfredo torn and grieving for his incapacity, his feeling of failure. And at his unwillingness to absolve the man.

Last week, the young man’s angry voice, and his strident words brought the old priest close once again to argument and refusal to absolve. Despite the simmering hatred, and his threatening queries, it appeared at that point that the boy had done nothing with his rage. He’d confessed to ordinary sins: missing Mass one week, he said; cursing and ‘swearin’ an oath’ at work; having sex with his girlfriend “…even if we ain’t married yet, Father… but we’re gonna be, real soon.” Then he’d erupted in a tirade about ‘those poofie guys who go after little kids.’ Alfredo heard him out. “We must love others as Christ loved us,” he’d counseled.

The boy’s response chilled the old priest, installing worry in his heart. “Like that story you told us of puttin’ a millstone around their necks and drownin’ ‘em in the sea, Father? Like that, you mean? Like you talked about at the nine o’clock Mass that time?”

Hiding within his tiny confessional, Alfredo shuts his eyes, trying to erase the terrible vision, to block the storm of guilt and anguish engulfing him. The boy’s strident questions derived from his own Sunday sermons about biblical proscriptions, sins of the flesh and demands to avoid illicit sexual pursuits. The boy’s anger echoed Alfredo’s words in sermon after sermon: “….sinful life-styles…depraved actions…men lyin’ with men, women with other women, like you said, Father.” He’d repeated whole phrases the old priest has used in his fifty years of enforcing Church dictates.

 As Alfredo twisted the ring with fear in his heart that day, the boy had sworn allegiance to church demands, vowing to be true to his pledge as a soldier for Christ. “….like the bishop told me at Confirmation, Father. Besides, if priests can go without sex and stuff, then those poofie guys can…They think they’re better’n you, Father?”

 Alfredo had told the boy that God sees all, and that vengeance is not for us but for the almighty. The boy had recited his act of contrition, and slowly, with much anxiety, Alfredo’s hand rose in absolution.  

Then the keening sirens, the ambulance screaming past on Tenth Street. Rosarita coming to him in despair, falling to her knees bereft at the attack on her son. The priest tries once again to interrupt the vision, but it howls as if through the confessional screen, demonic images screaming at him, a fantasy so realistic his heart hammers and his breathing becomes ragged. “Samos, tell me it isn’t so. Tell me it didn’t happen.” The terrible scene shimmers in his mind, there, in the dark confessional: The boy’s uncle coming to him, making funeral arrangements. Rosarita’s wrenching cry as Alfredo sweeps around the bier, showering it with holy water, the pall of incense in the nave as a casket is wheeled out, mournful strains of the Dies Irae throbbing through the church. How ineffectual he feels at the cemetery, his tepid sermon, the fallow words—and the terrible secret hiding in his heart.

“Tell me it isn’t true , Samos.” Alfredo worries the ring. He tries to stand, but his knees wobble and a malevolent force presses him down. Could he have prevented what happened? Did he sanction the boy’s violent act? The thought will haunt him till his own day of judgment. He knows that.

He hears the kneeler creak again and Rosarita’s steady, labored footsteps plodding away from the confessional. One after another, the old woman’s footfalls slap the hard floor as she pads down the side aisle. She reaches the east door and pushes it open. Street sounds gush in. The door squeaks shut, slams, and the noise ebbs, and dies. Father Alfredo steps from the confessional. The apse is empty. Late afternoon sunlight slants in, dust motes floating. Votive candles dance in a draft.

He goes to the table of candles and sees the photograph. In it, Samos leans forward caressing his violin, his face twisted in grief. Alfredo can almost hear the lilting music. He picks the photo up. “You played so well, my son.” His eyes mist as he studies the young man in the picture, his mahogany skin, his thin frame almost hidden under a threadbare Navy P-coat. Dreadlocks drape his right side, a wall of tears. The hair is Samos’ pride, his power—and his curse.

            Taken a week ago at Greenwood cemetery, the picture’s secret lies buried deeper than Alfredo is allowed to tell. Samos had come to him last month. He’d confessed his anguished tale of trying to obey the Church’s commandment to love, and the conflict that swarmed in his heart when he did so. He’d fulfilled that duty, he told the priest. He’d loved with a passion Alfredo could not accept, demanding instead that he repent. “How can I repent the act of love, Father? Is love not what I’m required to do? Hearing you preach, I’ve wondered if I ever believed before, or ever will again? I don’t know, Father. I just don’t know.”

            Alfredo studies the picture. Samos’ face shows the scar above his right eyebrow. He’d once asked how it happened? Samos explained that he’d disobeyed his mother when he was young. Despite her prohibition, he’d played baseball on Good Friday, he said. He’d been the catcher, he told the priest. A boy named Julian raced toward him, and they’d collided at home plate. “My head was bloodied, Father Al; so was Julian’s.” Telling the tale, Samos had smiled, a tear tracking his face. “We had identical wounds, Father. Identical in every way.” 

The walls lean in. Alfredo stares at the picture: Samos plays the violin at Julian’s grave. He’s set the camera up on another headstone, and aimed it at himself. It is early evening; wintertime; tree limbs are bare, crazed, jagged black against an opaque sky. Leaving the cemetery that day, someone outside the walls had beat Samos, then thrown him to the street and cut off much of his hair, according to a man who’d called 911. The assailant smashed the violin, and disappeared into the neighborhood.

             Father Alfredo turns the picture over and reads the inscription: “To my Julian—‘Air on the G string’ JS Bach—Love forever, Sam.” His chest aching, Alfredo puts the picture back, where dancing candlelight makes Samos’ violin come alive. Alfredo worries the ring, twisting its faded band.

In the silent nave the vision returns.

Incense lingers from the funeral mass. A stream of fading sunlight from the west window carpets the floor in yellows, blues, greens and reds. Alfredo studies the shadowy image on the floor depicting St. John of the Cross. “The one Christ loved,” he whispers. His own fiery sermons press against him, echoing from the very walls after so many years: “Life-style…men with men…women with women…abomination…” He sees himself preaching, as he scans the

congregation. Imagines heads sagging when his voice rises; people sending a silent rebuke as he grows more strident. Senses the chill from the pews when his homily reaches a crescendo, an inverse of energy—fulmination matched by stillness. The old priest hears the growing silence from his flock, the strained and awkward stares instead of knowing nods that once marked obedient concession. “My God, what have I done?” He puts the photograph back and turns toward the altar. “You must find a way to forgive yourself, Alfredo…”

 The awful vision retreats. Shaken and mortified, Alfredo returns to the confessional to escape, and to hide so it may not find him again. As he takes his seat in the pressing dark the curtain sweeps back, and the kneeler creaks. He startles again. “Rosarita?” Waiting, listening, his heart races as he slides the screen open. “Bless me father…” Alfredo’s eyes swim when he hears who it is begging forgiveness. The old priest twists the ring again. He stares at the shadow of the young man behind the screen, his bruised and battered face; his holy-white cast branded with inscriptions and stylized with glyphs more colorful than stained glass. Samos’ cropped and stringy hair. “….for I have sinned…”

“Wait, my son.”

“Father Al?” Samos looks up.

“Wait. Just…wait.” The walls of the confessional sag inward. Father Alfredo feels his way around, touching the worn, familiar wood, the beaded curtain with its frayed, velvet tassels, the old split cushion of faded red corduroy, its stuffing puffed out, cottony fragments silting the floor. “Wait, my son.”

“But…Father, Al…”

“Wait.” His breathing ragged, choking on the stifling air the old priest gasps, the ring a noose on his finger. Feeling the walls press closer, suffocating in the blind interior of the confessional, he lunges at the doorknob, misses and jams his hand. “Wait!”

“Father, Al..? Are you..?”

“Just a minute…” He presses against the screen, harder, harder still, till it snaps and gives way, clattering open. Father Alfredo sees Samos’ startled face as if for the first time, his clipped, childlike hair, his blackened eye, the old scar from his childhood disobedience, the wounds he’s borne for so long. Confused, Samos stares. His hands unfold and drop away. “Father Al? Are you…all right?”

The old priest falls to his knees. He turns sideways facing Samos. Then he crosses himself and starts his confession. “Forgive me…for I have sinned.”