Finding Moon

Family in faded colors. He walked past the row of confessionals, the center door of each with its barred window curtained in black and the doors to the penitents’ booths solid wood. Much like the ones in old St. Stephen’s.

That was so Father Kelly could see who was coming, Eddie.had always insisted, so he’d know which boy was admitting his awful crimes against God and society. Moon had asked his mother about that and she’d laughed. Actually, Victoria had said, it was because the priest had to sit in that hotbox for hours and needed the air to keep from smothering.

Moon opened the penitents’ door. In addition to the standard kneeler, a little straight-backed chair had been crowded into the tiny space. Perhaps this booth was intended for the aged and infirm. At St. Stephen’s one knelt, infirm or not. But times change. He sat on the chair, closed the door behind him, and let the memories come. The darkness was the same, and the silence, and the fear he could remember. And, most vividly, the shame. And finally, the despair.

Moon knelt and leaned his forehead against the wooden grating. The only difference between this.and the confessionals of his boyhood was the sound. Closing the door had shut out the whispers and shuffling of the other students waiting for their turn. But through the closed privacy shutter behind the grate you could hear the indistinct, indecipherable mutter of offenses recited by the sinners on the other side, and of Father Kelly’s instructions to the sinner. And then the shutter would slide open. The dreaded moment would arrive.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Moon whispered into the emptiness. “It has been-it has been a hundred thousand weeks since my last confession, and since then-”

A slight sound reached him through the grating, a polite, throat-clearing cough. The shutter was open. Moon felt his heart stop beating.

“How many weeks?” a soft accented voice said. “A long long time, I think you mean.”

Moon sat back on the chair, drew in his breath. Of course. A priest had been sitting there thinking his thoughts, his night on duty in the confessional. “Sorry,” Moon said. “I’m sorry. I was just… it was raining, and…” He stopped. Nothing to say.

“If I were a religious man,” the voice said, and chuckled, “If I was that, I would say the rain drove you in. And since God makes the rain, perhaps God had a hand in this. In getting you here after one hundred thousand weeks.”

The voice sounded neither young nor old and the accent had that odd cadence Moon had noticed in Filipinos speaking English. A little like reciting song lyrics. He’d heard it in Castenada’s voice. The man behind the wooden grating is about my age, Moon thought. Maybe a little older. But he could think of nothing to say. He opened the door.

“Since we are here, and I have almost another hour, and since you don’t want to get wet, why don’t you just stay and talk? Or even make your confession?”

“Why not?” Moon said. “Because I’d be wasting my time. And your time.”

“That bad, is it? You’ve done something even our God of Mercy could not forgive?”

“I don’t think that’s the trouble,” Moon said. “Another priest told me you have to forgive yourself.” It had been a chaplain at Fort Riley, a captain who had come to visit him in the stockade. He hadn’t liked the captain, and the captain hadn’t liked him.

The priest laughed. “In my long experience in here I’ve learned that’s usually the easiest part. It is for me. I come to like my own sins. I find myself a reason for doing them. But is that why a hundred thousand weeks ago you stopped going to confession?”

“No,” Moon said.

Silence.

The priest sighed. “I guess you’re an American. A military man from the base, right?”

“American, but not military. Here on business. I was just out taking a walk.”

“I peeked out a little while ago,” the priest said. “The regulars have already been in to see me. I’m not going to have any more business. Not likely with the rain. I see three or four people out there. Praying for better lives and better luck. at the side altar. And then there are a couple of poor souls who came in to stay dry.”

Moon heard the sound of a sigh.

“I’ve said my evening prayers. I’ve meditated a little, and when you came in I was trying to remember what I was going to tell my students Monday about Thomas Merton. I have them reading The Seven Story Mountain and I’ve taught that book so often that thinking about it makes me sleepy. And my chair in here is just as hard as yours. So then you come in and sit awhile. But then there is nothing but silence. Mi, something different. I start waking up. And when you finally speak you tell me a hundred thousand weeks. That’s a challenge. I think of how many commandments could be broken in such a long lifetime. I think, What could provoke repentance now for sins so fossilized? I was excited.” He sighed again. “But now you are thinking of disappointing me. You didn’t know a priest was lurking here. You were engulfed in nostalgia. I think you were remembering how it was that lifetime ago the last time you asked your God to help you.” The mockery in the tone included them both and swept away Moon’s embarrassment.

“You left out the important part,” Moon said. “About telling God I was sorry. That I had repented. That I would go forth and sin no more.” And as he said it, he realized that he was, in a strange way, confessing.

“And then next week, or next month, back again with the same litany of lust and avarice and anger and malicious gossip,” the priest said. “Is that it? It is for me. It has always-been my problem too. This business of feeling like a hypocrite.”

“Sure,” Moon said. “And do you also feel like you’re wasting your time? The rule says you have to-what’s the language-’make a firm resolve to sin no more’-and when you walk out of the confessional you know you’re going to do it again.”

“It’s usually sex,” the priest said. “With men, anyway. Adultery with the married men, or single men sleeping with their girlfriends, or trying to. With women, it’s more often some sort of malice. Or it’s laws of the church. Missing mass on Sunday without a good reason. It used to be eating meat on Friday, but since Pope John the Twenty-third that’s off the list. God be praised for that. Anyway, women seem to have trouble forgiving somebody.”

“Really?” Moon said. He was thinking of Victoria.

“Sometimes it’s stealing, of course. Shoplifting. Taking a neighbor’s chicken. But finally they get down to what’s really bothering them. Her sister has insulted her and she has done so much for her sister. How can she be expected to forgive this? Surely the Lord would not expect it of her.”

The priest sounded so troubled by this that Moon suspected he had just dealt with this question.

“How about men?” he asked.

“Little things. Things done in anger. God’s name taken in vain. Illicit sex. Hardly ever does anybody confess cheating on the wages they pay, or taking bribes.” He laughed. “In Manila if people confessed to taking bribes, I’d never get out of here.” The tone of that canceled the chuckle.

“I guess you’ll find avarice everywhere,” Moon said. “We have some of it in Colorado.”

“Nobody seems to think greed is against the rules. Or grinding down the poor.” The priest sighed. “I wonder what President Marcos says to his confessor? ‘I’ve been stealing a billion pisos a month from my people. I will give that back. I will stop torturing the political prisoners. I will-’” Brief silence. “Mi, well. I doubt if the president and Imelda go to confession much anymore.”

“So women have trouble forgiving,” Moon said. “How about mothers? Do they forgive their children?”

“How about you?” the priest asked. “Was treasuring a hatred that favorite sin of yours? The one that caused you to leave the church?”

“As you said,” Moon said, “with men it’s usually sex.”

“Adultery?”

Moon laughed. “I was just a boy. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. With a heart full of lust.”

“Impure thoughts? Or impure actions?”

“Fiercely impure intentions,” Moon said. “Relentless. To make it worse, the target was usually the sister of a very good friend. Intention to betray as well as intention to fornicate. Thus a double load of guilt.”

“So you stopped going to confession.”

“I went,” Moon said. “But I quit telling Father Kelly about the things I knew I wasn’t going to stop. I’d just make up stuff. I’d tell him I’d stolen something. I’d lied to my mother. I’d been mean to my little brother. Cheated in class. So forth. Until finally I just quit going.”