Paradise for the Damned. - 13. Confession blues

The days trudged on despite the repulsive omen of rain. Eating Claude felt ill-conceived before the light of the hearth. Studying he found likewise ill-conceived as the chimeric squeals of rats nibbling and nibbling on the rags of his soul haunted. His mind turned, skipped from panic to panic. Sabrine. Sabrine and her bad teeth. Sabrine and her good virtue saving Amaline. Sabrine and her tender company with Alphonse.

He failed his duty once. He would not fail a second time.

He broke out of the cottage and hurled himself to Church. Paire Dennis would be sure to hear his tale of caution.

The wide light of day narrowed into the somber dimness of the sacristy. The air was damp and palely scented with incense. Paire Dennis was splashed over a seat, head bent on the chair rail and his forearm wilting over his head as though he were sighing for the heavenly visions that had failed to appear on the ceiling.

“Paire …” Claude approached the desk.

The priest stirred. The man with bald bare outlines of a grey tonsure became the spry dapper pacing excited circles around Claude with the latest news on Protestant barbarities. “They think to turn France into a den of heretics! A crown? How now a crown for a reprobate?”

Claude took the precious moment when Paire Dennis took a breath to say, “Dona Lefevre—”

But he shoved a breviary into Claude’s chest and demanded a translation of a psalm. Claude obliged. Spittle, silent rage followed a lecture on rudimentary Latin the priest should have known. Claude forgave all with a forced breath and began, “Dona Lefevre is—”

“I shall hear your confession now.”

Before Claude could protest, the priest nestled himself on his chair and made the sign of the cross over Claude. Instinctively, Claude knelt on the hard ground and obeyed.

“Do you believe our Lord was born of the Virgin?” Paire Dennis asked.

“Oc, Paire.”

A dull pattering sound of rain filtered through the stonewalls of the sacristy. Claude blurted careless Oc’s to Paire Dennis asking him to reconfirm his Christian faith. No great worry to confess blasphemy against God and the Virgin or the times he had called his tutor a hen, or when gluttony demanded him ten chestnut loaves and ruined him with colic.

“Is that all?” Paire Dennis asked. Claude nodded happily. “Have you done the shameful deed with a woman?”

“No, Paire.”

“Regarded her with sin in your heart?”

“No.”

“Leered at their succulent bosoms?”

“No.”

“Dreamed of kissing their sweet lips?”

“No.”

“Wished to see her milky arms?”

“No, Paire.”

Paire Dennis’s eyes slanted in an asymmetrical stare. “You would be more sinless than our Lord himself.”

Claude’s eyes scaled up the black cassock to the lips moving with accusations. Moist sins, sticky sins could plump those lips, color the stubble-gray cheeks, smooth out the crow’s feet and make him a handsome priest. But not this one, Paire Dennis gobbled sins and farted holiness. A wrinkled aubergine, an illiterate aubergine he was. Yesterday Claude stood tall over him, teaching basic Latin. Now he knelt before the illiterate, wrinkled aubergine without a promise of jaunty endings. The icon of the Virgin, who looked more a harpy than the ethereal alabaster beauty with blue eyes, peered from behind the priest’s back and wagged sententious fingers. Claude flurried up a prayerful pose and kept his eyes shut.

“My studies persuade me to virtue,” Claude said heavily.

“More virtue than Christ’s?”

“He alone was born without sin. I’m nothing.”

“Nothing that thinks naught of our comely Aurin flowers. Surely Amaline?”

“Her Papa refuses me her company. No, I don’t want her.”

“Even I see flowers and rejoice. Pride, Claude, pride is your sin.”

Claude clapped his hands together and banished anger. “Sabrine.”

“Sabrine?”

“Dona Lefevre.” Claude was stronger now. “She is creature of sin who deigns to ruin my virtue and the good virtue of Aurin.” A fresh wind of sermonizing joy fell upon him. “Tell all to stay from her sinful countenance.”

Paire Dennis regarded him blinkingly then a moment of low hmm’s and ahh’s followed. “You’d add slander to your sins? She’s a good widow in good grace.”

Claude sputtered a derisive laugh on the villagers who prayed deliverance from evil every Sunday only to welcome gratefully a sylph of evil. “The Whore of Babylon she is.”

“She spoke up for Amaline against Quentin’s anger and visited peace upon their familial strife. How now?”

Paire Dennis did not allow Claude to scowl over the oft-repeated example of Sabrine’s grace and his sin of omission over Quentin’s domestic problems. He shunted him out the door with a grunt of absolution and demanded Claude return in a few days to speak of his sinful pride and give more lessons on Latin dative clauses. And of course Claude was forbidden to make mention of the corrective Latin lessons to the villagers.

Claude blundered out the sacristy and into the nave, gnashing his teeth on the thought of felling the massive crucifix over the altar and with it hack Paire Dennis’ suet neck.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Annoyance was a poor cape against the moist, chill air filtering through his doublet. The sky was as drenched parchment, ink and paper in a ruined mess of mist. The haze of winged termites in nuptial flight could soothe him to gaiety. The thick smell of rain-battered earth would goad him to good cheer. It brought to mind Antoine squatting under a shelter from rain, holding out sinner’s hands to patter and hail.

He would smile, but there on the path was a red-faced Alphonse holding his hat to his chest and grinning like a happy dog before the black tree of Sabrine. The whore she is.

Later that evening in the cottage, Claude was still mad, drunkenly mad, pugnaciously mad before the mad fire of the hearth. Sabrine and Alphonse. Alphonse and Sabrine. He crashed into the seating on the ground before the wrathful whips of fire crackling in the hearth. He only had himself to blame, he thought over and over again. When Guy had revealed his demon self, he should have left and struck his path to riches alone. Now leaving Guy would mean more sins of omission.

The next day, under a morning sky the color of molded cheese, Claude was smiling crookedly and proffering crooked invocations to the women in front of the communal bakery. Sooner or later Amaline should pass by and he would have words for her. Amaline had stopped bothering him since the uncommon moment with Quentin. It was a development whereof he would be more glad than sorry, but the nightmares of Sabrine stealing her blood stole whatever joy.

“The demon continues to pass over you,” she greeted from behind him.

Her face was a rain-polished brown pearl. Three little brothers, one not yet breeched, clung to her skirt as surface roots would drag a tired tree to the muddy ground.

Claude ignored the prophecy and scowled. “Dona Lefevre—”

“Dona Lefevre inspires me such goodness.” Her voice lilted higher with delight. “She told me of Paris, of Venice, of the sea. Have you seen the sea?” She leaned in with the refreshingly curious eyes. “She spoke of the sailors with strong smiles and strong brows.” The brown girl with the browner coif assumed a strange smile of lechery, all more disconcerting with the little one wiping his runny nose on her skirt.

Sabrine in Amaline attempting bashful eye flutters. Sabrine in that dismissive droop of her right hand. Sabrine in the vain corn poppies dotting her long braid. An iron coldness sank in his belly.

“Next, she would teach you the ways of foolish virgins,” he blurted. She chewed on her lips, red and pink swirling on her cheeks. “Keep away from her. She is not what she seems.”

“She hid me from Papa’s anger when you did nothing. Teaches me French and Latin gladly.” Claude felt a twisting of shame. “While you ever bellow hard words.”

Her blotchy face of disapproval recalled to Claude the surprise of rotten eggs that morning. He lurched back. “Travel? Useless Latin? And you idle with crones and smatter about lusty sailors. Where went your shame?”

A curtain of disgust fell down over her face. “Not only you rue my virtue, now you would be as Papa, commanding my company, commanding my steps.”

Would he be as Quentin in his hircine manners? St. Etienne save him! “Keep the crone,” yelled Claude, and he bumped past her and stomped off home.