‘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!’
‘What’s so funny, Father?’
‘I don’t know, but it is, it is, funny, funny!’
And here he burst into such paroxysms of laughter as made him cry and such floodings of tears as made him laugh again until all mingled in a grand outrush and uproar. The church slammed back echoes of cleansing laughter.
In the midst of it all he knew that, telling all this to Bishop Kelly, his confessor, tomorrow, he would be let off easy. A church is washed well and good and fine not only by the tears of sorrow but by the clean freshcut meadowbrooms of that self-forgiveness and other-forgiveness which God gave only to man and called it laughter.
It took a long while for their mutual shouts to subside, for now the young man had given up weeping and taken on hilarity, too, and the church rocked with the sounds of two men who one minute had done a sad thing and now did a happy one. The sniffle was gone, Joy banged the walls like wild birds flying to be free.
At last, the sounds weakened. The two men sat, wiping their faces, unseen to each other.
Then, as if the world knew there must be a shift of mood and scene, a wind blew in the church doors far away. Leaves drifted from trees and fell into the aisles. A smell of autumn filled the dusky air. Summer was truly over.
Father Malley looked beyond to that door and the wind and the leaves moving off and gone, and suddenly, as in spring, wanted to go with them. His blood demanded a way out, but there was no way.
‘I’m leaving, Father.’
The old priest sat up.
‘For the time being, you mean.’
‘No, I’m going away, Father. This is my last time with you.’
You can’t do that! thought the priest, and almost said it.
But instead he said, as calmly as he could:
‘Where are you off to, son?’
‘Oh, around the world, Father. Many places. I was always afraid, before. I never went anywhere. But now, with my weight gone, I’m heading out. A new job and so many places to be.’
‘How long will you be gone, lad?’
‘A year, five years, ten. Will you be here ten years from now, Father?’
‘God willing.’
‘Well, somewhere along the way I’ll be in Rome and buy something small but have it blessed by the Pope and when I come back I’ll bring it here and look you up.’
‘Will you do that?’
‘I will. Do you forgive me, Father?’
‘For what?’
‘For everything.’
‘We have forgiven each other, dear boy, which is the finest thing that men can do.’
There was the merest stir of feet from the other side.
‘I’m going now, Father. Is it true that “good-by” means God be with you?’
‘That’s what it means.’
‘Well then, oh truly, good-by, Father.’
‘And good-by in all its original meaning to you, lad.’
And the booth next to his elbow was suddenly empty.
And the young man gone.
Many years later, when Father Malley was a very old man indeed and full of sleep, a final thing happened to fill out his life. Late one afternoon, dozing in the confessional, listening to rain fall out beyond the church, he smelled a strange and familiar smell and opened his eyes.
Gently, from the other side of the grille, the faintest odor of chocolate seeped through.
The confessional creaked. On the other side, someone was trying to find words.
The old priest leaned forward, his heart beating quickly, wild with amazement
