Chapter Four

    As on his first morning in Blackfish Bay, Paul again served mass for his new pastor and employer. McKeon, never far out of touch with his own youthful days, did not insist on altar boys showing up on the weekdays in vacation, but could see no reason for Paul not to step up if he felt like it.
   
    “Any excuse to keep up my Latin,” Paul said, when he showed up again in the sacristy. “I have to admit that I’ve never been very good at it, so I need an excuse to keep my hand in.”
   
    “That’s a bit of a surprise. I’ve been told you sing the Gregorian very well.”
  
     “The Gregorian is music. Sung anything is different than the prose, so there is an incredible difference in motivation. I can learn any language, with a little help in certain cases, between the first and last words of the lyrics, but I’ve never been over fond of anything that isn’t set to music. I take comfort in the Cure of Ars, and perhaps the Church is doing the same, now that they’re bringing the vernacular on side. You know why we got Vatican Two, don’t you?” He grinned.
   
    “Because John XXIII was inspired to call for it. Everyone knows that.”
   
    “Yes, but what inspired him? In our tribe, we blame it on Nick Taylor. He was taking instruction before Pius XII was dead, let alone before Roncalli was Pope. He told God that if he was going to become a Catholic novelist he wanted to be able to dramatize the mass in the language of Shakespeare and Dickens, not Virgil. He never liked the Aeneid anymore than I did.
The mass should have stayed in Greek, so we were more likely to read Homer.”
   
    “I don’t remember Dickens dramatizing the mass,” McKeon said, grinning. He was a regular consumer of classic fiction.
   
    “Of course not. He didn’t have it. But Nick will.”
   
    “Are you telling me you don’t like the Latin in the mass now? Then why are coming out to the altar with me?”
  
     “Oh, I don’t mind it. I also hope they keep up with it to some degree. You can’t run the Church universal without it, so there always has to be an atmosphere for training people in the language. Besides, you say it well, as if you know the meaning that’s underneath, and feel it. You can’t say that for every priest. Too many of them hurtle along as if they were selling cattle at an auction. My father says that’s an affliction brought on by bad memory training, especially of prayers, especially of the rosary. The secret is to go slow enough to allow Jesus or Mary to get a word in edgewise now and again. I mean who’s got the richer vocabulary, God or man?”
  
     Out they went, and the same dozen souls from the day before rose to their feet.
   
    “In nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. Introibo ad altare Dei.” As Paul had said, McKeon said his mass with full and sober dignity, in good conscience from the manner in which he lived his vocation, and with a pretty sound grasp on just who it was he was talking to. But as if stimulated to new efforts by the conversation in the sacristy while he was vesting up, his voice came out more strongly than usual, and the little flock looked up in mild wonder.
  
     “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” In spite of his anticipation of eventually doing all this in English, Paul rendered the Latin well and the nine women and three men continued to speculate on the sudden rush of energy. The two on the altar, the priest and his server, had been quieter the day before, although of course everyone had noticed Paul because they all suspected he was the new teacher they had heard about, some quite a bit, others only a note or two. Some cared about the school, others hardly thought of it except as a drain on the parish finances. The general drift of the information on him available over the summer months had been that he was supposed to be a painter who knew something about music, but had never taught before. Some said this made him sound next to useless and a sign that the school was about to fail for lack of nuns, while others said that Sister Principal had let it be known before she went away for the summer that he was a satisfactory replacement for Sister Barbara and that he came from a very good family that had sent a daughter to their order who had already acquired a sound reputation as a mathematics teacher. This information did what it could to contend for notice with the prices for lumber and the size of and price for the sockeye and coho runs. And the women in the daily mass contingent as of yesterday had begun to wonder at the effect Paul would have on the adolescent girls, especially as he was supposed to be an artist. One of them could not get it out of her head that if he was at all properly trained as an painter he must have drawn women in the nude. No one had heard yet that he was going to stay at the Blakeley’s. It was not the custom at the daily masses to have music, so no one sang, and no one heard Paul’s singing voice.
   
    As soon as they returned to the rectory, the phone rang, so Paul started making breakfast, the likes of which they had already discussed. He had already explained that he was usually the cook on the small tugs. “It’ll be nice to do it all on a stove stop that stays level,” he had said. From the kitchen he could not hear the priest’s voice, but he was aware that the conversation went on for some minutes. When McKeon finally returned he said that Paul’s appointment with Sister Teresa was put back to four o’clock, as she was catching a later ferry.
  
     “She’s looking forward to meeting you. Very much, I think The problem of an adequate replacement for Sister Barbara has rested quite heavily on her. In spite of the order being here for seven years now she still wonders if the parish really accepts them. There have not been any vocations so far, you know.”
   
    “Where’s she been? I mean, what campus for summer school for more upgrading? That’s usually what they do after dropping in on the parents. Or before.”
  
     “Of late, in Portland. She’s been talking to your sister.” McKeon rustled in the cupboard for the coffee tin. Paul had been busy with bacon and eggs, but the water was boiling.
  
     “Ah hearing the family secrets, especially the ones about me. Am I fired?’
  
     “On the contrary, I think she’s suffering from the same disease as myself, thinking too hard about all the things you would be useful for.” The priest paused, telling himself that Paul might ask him what they had talked about. But he quickly realized that of course this was not going to happen. Paul Cameron, from the time he walked into the rectory with his parents had given off no hint whatever that he need someone else to explain his own essential relationships to him. He and Sister could look after themselves. But he wanted to say one thing, out of sheer personal gratitude. “Sister did not say this in so many words, but I think she’s very grateful to have a man around, and for the girls as well as the boys, some of whom are getting pretty big and pretty lively. Actually, I think this is the biggest class of the biggest boys we’ve ever had. No doubt you’ll get to discuss such things at your meeting. But I’m grateful as well. As a pastor, I find it difficult to think of relating to them when they’re rascals with the strap, but I have a feeling that if only from your days on the briny, you won’t have that problem.”
  
     “Not the briny,” Paul said, “although the seafaring life does confront one with lessons in instant and respectful obedience, but my Dad. I think I hold the family record for a well-bruised backside when required. And what did the Lord say, ‘Freely as you have received, freely give.’
Besides, Nick and I had some chats about this over the summer. He put in four years in the classroom before he went to work for the university and the bishop. He had a very simple rule. As fond of them as you may be, and as much as you hate to give anyone pain, especially a sinner, you have to remember that there never has been and never will be a strapping that can hurt as much as the flames of hell or purgatory. He knows. He’s been in both. The sooner we understand the consequence of sin the better.”
   
    “That was a very compassionate thing to say.”
  
     “What was?”
  
     “As much as you hate to give pain, especially to a sinner.’”
   
    “Well, that’s because the sinner is already in pain, from his sin. Not every sinner, mind you. They say that Stalin really enjoyed signing all those death warrants. But it’s often the case, because sin divides us from real joy.” Paul moved the bacon to the edges of the frying pan and broke a pair of eggs to lie beside it.

    “Of course,” said McKeon. “Well, my justification for being hard nosed is that the more I read theology the more I realize that only the perfect get into heaven. We’re on this earth to grind the rough edges and sharp corners off each other. That explains life and its hard choices as well as anything can. But what was this about hell and purgatory and your friend? You said something about yesterday just before we parted company. I think it was your justification for going out in the heat to walk to the school for your practice. I thought at first you were simply speaking metaphorically, as we normally do. ‘It’s as hot as hell, I’ve had a hell of a day, etcetera. But it came to me afterward that you meant something else. I’m no mystic as far as I know, but I have quite a good memory of my professor of ascetic and mystical theology. Barnaby, his name was. Aloysius Barnaby. He had met Tanquery, actually. He insisted, quite repeatedly, that when the saints said they’d had these experiences, they’d had them, and people who tried to teach, or worse, preach, that spiritual writers like de Montfort or Liguori were just exaggerating, didn’t know what they were talking about.”   
   
     McKeon chuckled. “And he was certainly no extremist himself. A very balanced man. He also always insisted that New York was a wonderful place to live, because it had the Dodgers in the summer and the Rangers in the winter. He’d also met Jackie Robinson. But back to theology and extremism. He would say that from time to exaggeration did get out of hand. He had no patience with Bosco’s saying that God gave religious vocations to ninety percent of mankind. He said that was actually heretical, because it flatly, and perversely, contradicted the first chapters of the book of Genesis. But you know what Newman said, that the old Church Fathers were heretical to a degree here and there, so anxious to stress the significance of one aspect of the Faith that they suppressed or distorted another. So what about your friend?”
  
     “He knows the other world. Or worlds. The Church suffering, the Church triumphant. And not just metaphorically. By experience. By extraordinary events in his soul. It’s from these things, in part, that he gets his sense of discipline.”
  
     “That would be a good foundation.” He smiled at Paul. “If it’s true.”

    As it would be a minute or two until the eggs needed turning over, Paul could afford a good long look at the man, as, for a moment, he was a little taken aback. He was certainly not in the habit of trotting out the factors of mysticism in Nicholas Taylor’s life as a matter of course when he related the anecdotes and examples of this or that he had become familiar with over the years of knowing him, and for two good reasons. The first was that as he could not feel that he was himself a mystic he rarely felt qualified to mention them, let alone discuss such issues, and the second was that he had run into few people who were interested in such questions, especially interested in the true forms of their actual and real existence as taught by the actual and real experts. In his own life, he’d had a pretty full run, he thought, of natural adventures, and adventures in grace which, without being extraordinary, were noteworthy in themselves, and it had most certainly been the same for Nick. In ordinary conversations, even of an especially full intellectual or artistic nature, the loftier topic simply, or at least rarely, ever had an excuse to show up. This had been true even among the priests and religious of his own parish or in residence at the university.
  
     It was not until the eggs were ready for flipping that he could come up with an answer.McKeon had in fact not looked cynical or disbelieving. Was he simply neutral, reserving judgement, or beyond judgement?
  
     Looking within himself Paul realized that he was not beyond anger. But he said, finally, “’By their fruits you shall know them’. Right? And my parents certainly don’t have any problems with it. Nor, I gather, Grandpere Philippe himself, although he and Nick have never met. Are you doubting my opinion? Good Lord. Nick and I lived under the same roof for two years, and we’ve kept in touch ever since. And I suspect that if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t be cooking breakfast in Blackfish Bay this morning while I wait for my classroom to get going. Nobody in our immediate family has taught elementary school since my grandfather. My Dad’s a professor, so is my Uncle Jerome, so is my brother Jacob, and my sister teaches high school. If it turns out that I’m any real use here it’ll be Nick Taylor that gets a fair amount of the credit!” He thought he was done, but then a further thought occurred to him. “Besides, you’ve met my parents. Did they seem like people who are easily taken in? Nick wouldn’t have lasted a week in our house if he’d been a fake, either a liar or some poor deluded aspirant to a state he had no right to. No way, Jose.” His anger suddenly left him. He still did not understand McKeon’s drift, but the look on the priest’s face was not querulous or cynical. Paul actually laughed. “In fact, if you must know, whatever spiritual experiences he’d had before he ran into Michael Thurman were peanuts compared to what happened to him in our house, in either hell or heaven. Deny him and you have to deny my family.”
   
    The coffee had finished dripping. McKeon took a pair of cups from the cupboard and poured out the morning’s starter fluid. Anticipating a lengthy conversation, not only during but after breakfast as well, he had made a very full pot. “I’m not denying anything. I’m only asking questions. Surely you’ve heard of the position known as the devil’s advocate?”
  
     “Of course. Well, you are the pastor. I suppose you have a flock to answer to, and I could be guilty of madness or credulity by association.”
  
     “Exactly. You’re a born storyteller. I learned that yesterday. The sort that can go on forever, and will go on forever if your students trick you into it. There’s no way you’ll not be telling some of your unusual tales in your classroom. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do so. I know very well what Saint Teresa says about these things. But this is a very mixed parish, like most parishes, and there will be reactions. There have already been reactions. It think it’s almost three months since it was known that you would be replacing Sister Barbara and that has given anyone the least bit interested plenty of time to either get it right, get it most wonderfully wrong, or have it somewhere in the usually muddled middle. As your namesake said back at the beginning of the one, holy, catholic etcetera, factions there must be. You are possibly the biggest occasion of factioning since we decided to build the school. Aside, of course, from the points of doctrine that agitate us in these times, especially with all the expectations arising out of the Council.”
   
    “Even within the sisters, so Celine has noted to Maman, there has been some controversy over my appointment. At least one nun thinks it outrageous that I should be getting a grade eight class when I’ve never taught before, and of course there’s always that old chestnut about Grandpere having no business dabbling in mysticism when he’s only a layman. It’s always interesting to meet or hear of professional religious who actually don’t seem to know how to read. But even then, I suppose you can read Phillipe’s writing and acknowledge it as true but go on thinking that he’s actually only copied it down from somewhere else and refused to acknowledge the source.”
  
     “Sadie knows it’s his own work, his own thinking. She’s had his writing on Mary for years. She comes from Halifax, you know. She was put on to it by some priest she knew back there. She had run into de Montfort on her own somehow and was talking about it with him and he mentioned your granddad.”
   
    “She mentioned the Marian writings of Philippe Gagnon last night. Although I didn’t know she was a Bluenose. Nick lived in that part of the world for a year or so. Following his soldier father. More stories. I think it was in Dartmouth that he first met the Trinity. In a fashion. The sort of ‘what the hell was that?’ reaction that starts you thinking. Ah. Speaking of stories, here’s one for the skeptics and other species of critics. How do I know it’s true? Have you ever had scruples?’
   
    “Of the ordinary kind, of course. But not the kind the spiritual writers describe. That’s one of the reasons I know I’m not a mystic.”
   
    “Nick had a terrible case of them. For two whole years. In Green River. The first place he taught Everything else was so peachy I guess there had to be something negative. It didn’t happen at Sunday Mass. That would have been dirty pool on God’s part, I would say. But at daily mass, which had become his habit, he’d get nicely past the Gospel of the day and into the canon and the devil immediately had leave to rag him with the accusation that he had never made a valid confession, was therefore in mortal sin, and therefore wasn't fit to take the Host."
   
    They were moving their plates and cups to the dining room table. “Ouch,” McKeon said. He had instantly seen the hell of such a circumstance were it his own, looming over the altar day after day. ‘That would not be pleasant. The devil of course wanted him to give up his trying to trod the route to perfection. I suppose once he’d made it to the Eucharist, the devil shut up and he was in peace until the following morning?”
   
    “Exactly.”
   
    “Well. Thank you very much for that little anecdote. I didn’t know it existed, but I think it’s exactly the story for the situation. Relating it is a cunning way to bring up the concept of the mortal sin, which a certain number of people keep telling themselves that the Council is going to do away with. Why the specific mention of two years?”
  
     I have no idea. When he went on to Skeena, it stopped. He was working on the organ in the choir loft one morning just after he got there and the Holy Spirit told him that trial was over. But how did Nick get into this conversation anyway? He doesn’t really have anything directly to do with our part of the world. He might by some point later on this year, but at the moment . . . .”
   
    “You’re forgetting that your sister belongs to the Sisters of the Holy Family of Winnipeg. She had to do a fair bit of persuasion selling you to us. Maybe if you’d been needed for grade four it wouldn’t have mattered. But grade eight was a big obstacle to a lot of minds. And of course everyone in the order – some to their chagrin – know whose granddaughter she is. So she talked about this young man who her older brother’s friend had discovered who everyone was sure was going to create some sort of chronicle about Philippe, so that people could read stories - novels, in fact - about the spiritual life, and not just texts that put more stress on your own imagination. The other big loss in Barbara’s promotion to the mother house is literature. To a lot of the kids that might have even been more of a blow than losing her music That’s why Nick’s name hangs in the air. For good and for bad. After all, if Philippe was presumptuous or deluded in his writing, then Nick is only going to make matters worse by popularizing him.”
   
    “But you don’t actually believe that would happen.”
  
     “No, I don’t. But there are those who do. Not all the odd fish in the ocean live on this coastline. The Church has its share. By the way, how is this project coming? Should I be looking on the bookshelves over the next while? I think Father Barnaby is still alive. I could send him a copy for Christmas.”
  
     “I wouldn’t bank on it. Even Jacob – that’s the older brother whose idea is was in the first place – even Jacob has given up thinking it can happen quickly. He was actually hoping that Nick could be done a volume or two in time for the story to be available to Jake as an English professor. But when he could finally see that it was going to be a long term process, he found a job teaching philosophy. My parents always warned him. Nick was already too much of a mystic to be able to just play docile chronicler of family legends and Grandpere’s journals. My Dad knew right off he was going to have to follow the same road, as best he could, and maybe get to the same place before he could get it all down on paper all right. I don’t read John of the Cross as a matter of habit, but once in a while I browse, especially if one or more of the older generation gets a certain look on his or her face. I’m quite familiar with a few key passages, or at least key as they refer to Nick’s assignment, and I know what the first page of the second book of the Dark Night says, that the process usually involves many years, and most who get well started don’t actually make it to the end. But my Dad says that Nick is too much like a bulldog not to, as far as he can see. And by the way, he is teaching a class in contemplation at Bishop Schwartz’ little university. And it’s generally understood by anyone who understands holy mother Church that Meinred is nobody’s fool. Do your detractors want to go up against him?”
  
     McKeon swallowed his bacon and eggs and said, laughing, “I don’t think we need to bother the bishop. I think I’ll just send them to you.”
  
     “You can’t get out of it that easily. What authority do I have? I’m only a relative. I’m not a priest with a degree in theology, nor do I have any mystical experience worth falling back on.”
  
     “If you say so. Excellent cooking, by the way. You must have been in great demand on the smaller tugs. I can see them all fighting over you.”
  
     “Likewise for the coffee,” Paul said, raising his cup. “Yes, it was a handy extra skill. It made it easy to get a job every spring. A few of the lads were quite annoyed when I said I wasn’t signing on this year, because first I had the chance to substitute to see how I liked the classroom, and then I needed to really concentrate on the music and ring up Nick every time I had a question about the rest of it. And then I could paint when I had nothing else to do.”
  
     “I thought you already had the music under your belt, thanks to your mother’s teaching.”
  
     “The basics, yes. But there were a number places to put them into practice with a grade eight class in mind, especially after Michael Thurman got wind of what I was up to. He’s Jacob’s friend from UBC, the one who actually discovered Nick rattling away on a novel in the north basement of Brock Hall. That’s the students’ building. Nick’s club was the university newspaper. Michael and Jacob were a big part of the theatre society, and now Michael is doing a lot of television for the CBC. Nick would probably have done some stuff with him by now, at least in Vancouver, if it hadn’t been for the other things, and thus he departed for the outback only weeks after he and Cassandra were married and has happily stayed there. But now, because of Meinred’s pint-sized university, he’s navigating a little closer to Michael’s own highroad. I was telling the Blakeleys’ about this last night. It came out because Sadie was all worried about Iris McCallum having a fit from losing Deirdre and Maggie to me. So I just borrowed someone else’s weight – Nick and Michael’s – and threw it around. But I wasn’t bluffing. If the music works as planned, especially if the singing goes according to the book, Michael is very likely to show up with cameras and crew, and possibly Nick as well.”
  
     “In our humble little school?”
  
     “Something good came out of Nazareth, why not Blackfish Bay? Thirty kids and real musical learning can make a mighty choir, and maybe a bit of an orchestra as well.”
   
    “But why? What makes Saint Bridget’s so special?”
  
     “The combination of opportunities. I know what I’m doing – I think – thanks to Grandpere and Maman, and Michael, who owes just about everything he knows about music to those two – well, you have to throw Jacob in there too – is keen to show the world where he came from. You see, he’s not that much of contemplative, or so he says, and he gets to do active things. There is some use for those of us who don’t live with the great big hand on the back of our collective necks. And it will be a very interesting creative experience for the kids. Michael is a rising film maker. He’s profoundly good at what he does, probably too good to stay in Canada, as much as he’d like to. I mean, he really knows the business, but he’s also a great artist with an amazing ability to settle people down into themselves and put out their best work. The kids will love it, or should, if I can have them properly prepared. Voice training is an art in itself.”
   
    “Did you have all this in mind when you applied for the job?”
   
    “Heavens, no. Michael had this in mind when he heard where I was headed for. I told you that.”
  
     “I know. Just checking against the gossip mill. There will be those who will say that all this attention will turn the children’s heads, influence them to think themselves better than they are, raise expectations that will only be disappointed when real life returns. For myself, I’m reminded of the good old seminary days and homiletics class, when we had professional actors from Broadway give us speech lessons.”
  
     “What can be more real than a real voice? Untrained voices are a part of the unreal world. The world of illusion, as the Buddha says. That’s the real truth of the matter. Men and women were created to make whole and beautiful sounds, so as to nourish each other. That’s the power of a properly trained choir. If the singers truly resonate, so do the bones in the audience, so the listeners are getting a kind of physical massage as well as some nice sounds in their ears. But you can’t do that without voice training, without learning how to pin every vowel in its centre and drive it home like a nail under a twelve pound sledge hammer.”
  
     “Are you going to quote the Buddha in religion class?”
  
     “Of course. Actual grace is actual grace, and he’s a very strong natural argument for celibacy.
John XXIII may have been looking for the wrong allies when he called Vatican Two. The Orthodox and the Protestants are very fuzzy on that issue.”
  
     “Well, I can see that we’re going to have an interesting year in Blackfish Bay. Perhaps the town will never be the same again. And I think I’ve fulfilled my duties as devil’s advocate and simply say that as an old New Yorker it’s extremely pleasant to see such a similar cosmopolitan attitude show up under my own roofs. More coffee, Mr. Cameron?”