Not too long ago, Serenity had beaten me nearly to death just hours after Padlock had tortured me and bled my mouth for tearing a strip off a banal secondhand headboard cast away and accursed by departing Indians. I had, from then on, become a non-respecter of property. Now Agatha no longer awed me. Her sweet, smooth curves no longer made my heart race with suggestive thoughts. She had descended from the stratosphere of idealization to the lowly status of mass-produced consumer item barely saved from the dilapidation of secondhand dinginess by a clever reconditioning job. Some generous soul in Canada had paid for Agatha with no intention of turning her into a whipping post for the seminarians among whom she was going to live. Maybe a few dim boys believed that Agatha was brand-new and that Lageau had acquired her with his own cash. Wrong. Agatha was an old shoe, a cute little whore who covered her history with glossy makeup.
What did all this say about us seminarians and the priests we were supposed to emulate? Were we indeed pussy-whipped and glass-balled? Were those wax-faced priests indeed money-awed turds? There they were, sitting, standing, as a fat blue-green fly wiped his feet on their stupid faces, laying eggs in their gaping mouths which would soon be gobbling a rich breakfast as we lapped thin, worm-infested porridge. Was that why they remained silent? Apart from their color, what had they added to priesthood? Had they expanded the vision of life and spirituality? Had they combatted suffering or added to human knowledge in any special way? When they opened their mouths, they merely regurgitated rotting Church rules, worm-infested dogmas and slimy platitudes created in the burrows of the holy armadillo. They were just perpetuating the stink-old order: white, nuclear-warhead-privileged priest above the black, shit-scared peasant priest, who was above the shitty-assed peasant nun, who lorded it over the wormy peasant faithful — man, woman, child. Hundreds of years of Catholic dictatorship later, ninety-five of them home-grown, had come only to this! What a waste!
Lwendo’s reaction to the incident mortified me. I found him at the water tank. He was waiting to draw water in his yellow plastic basin, at the bottom of which was an old loofah brush and a worn cake of Sunlight soap. Ah, Sunlight soap! A triumphant glint touched my eyes when I remembered that long ago I used to draw water and take it to the bathroom for him.
“Many bastards here have no respect for property,” he said. “Do you know how much that boat cost?”
“As if it was Red’s own money! Do you know the kind of stories he told the benefactor who paid for it? And the missionary organization which shipped it here? Yet he acts as if he paid for it all by himself. This is a simple boat, not a yacht.”
“Whatever it is, canoe or whaler, it deserves respect. A priest is supposed to look after the assets of his parish. Charity begins in the seminary.”
“What an original thought!”
“They did not have to injure her.”
“How sensitive of you! And how sensible of Red to shake his little monkey buttocks like that! Next year he might not have anything to sit on.”
“What should he have done? Called us saints?”
“He should have looked for the culprit, found him and dealt with him accordingly. But indulging in collective guilt is like licking his thin monkey lips — it didn’t come to much.”
“But at least you agree that he had cause to be angry.”
“Of course he had, like he had cause to swear at the power saboteur who is still at large,” I said, laughing.
“You talk like a supporter of the bastard.”
“Before he did something, all the fish ended up rotting in the freezer. Now, thanks to him, we get to see some of it on our plates.” I burst into laughter again.
“Maybe you are the power saboteur,” Lwendo said, grinning. “Maybe I should report to Father Lageau that I have caught his man.”
“It is good to see Father Red Indian turn crimson and swear at ninety miles per hour.”
“The bastard will get caught, and he will regret it.”
Lwendo’s conventionality in some respects defied my comprehension. This was the same fellow who used to grab other people’s things and use them without permission. This was the same one I nabbed fucking our very own Sr. Bison. Yet now he was defending Fr. Lageau’s indulgences. Was it obeisance to “might makes right”? Had Lwendo’s wild-man stint been just a type of inverted conformism? His reaction made me think that maybe I was the only person from a screwed-up environment and that I smelled rats where there were none. Why was nobody else experiencing a sense of outrage? Had I originally expected too much from Fr. Lageau and was now just working off my frustration?
I retired to the library. I wanted to stab Lageau and his ego, but which word could I sharpen like Dorobo’s monstrous arrows? Dirty words were out of the question: they would just confirm Lageau’s beliefs about us. Irony was the best ship home across the swirling waves of frustration and outrage.
I stole a cassock-like vestment from the pile used by altar boys, hid it behind the chapel and later moved it to the storage area where we kept old books. No one noticed the theft. A cassock was crucial for night raids: it was the insurance that Dorobo would not shoot you before issuing three loud warnings. Truants had their own cassocks, and often got away with their misdeeds because wandering priests mistook them for fellow priests and did not disturb them. Most priests, however, would not bother anybody roaming the night in a cassock because truants had, on a few occasions, thrown red pepper in the eyes of inquisitive priests in order to make good their escape. Fr. Mindi had been a victim of the trick thrice, though it had not stopped him from snooping.
I rehearsed my moves a few times and struck early one morning. Agatha was in a dangerous spot: she was lit up on all sides. The chances of being surprised by a sleepless priest or even the watchman were great. The hardest thing was to get to the hallway and the offices, which were twenty meters from the chapel, seventy from the classrooms, ten from the refectory and three hundred from Sing-Sing.
The night was pitch-black. I started my journey at the bathrooms, via Lwendo’s barn till I made my way to the back of the chapel, the only place with a winking light inside. Because there were no dogs on campus, I walked without fear of sudden attack. Having come this far, I walked bravely from the chapel to the hallway, opened the door and held my breath when I entered. Agatha was in front of me, emitting an oily whiff, her alabaster skin super-smooth in the fluorescent light. If caught fondling her, I would be dismissed outright, but I did not think about it. I looked at the damage: a faint, timid, tentative line, not the vicious gash I had expected. This was curiosity. Viciousness would have been deeper and louder.
I removed a long nail from my pocket, chose a spot near the middle and went to work on Agatha’s belly, four ribs from the top. My cuts were deep and long. Etching five letters and an exclamation mark seemed to take an eternity. In reality, it was a quick job. OH GOD! proudly stood on Agatha’s belly. I was shaking. I drew back and stood behind the door, listening. I watched the way to the chapel carefully. I followed the same route back to the bathrooms.
Fr. Lageau had his first real migraine that morning. One half of his head, neck and side felt paralyzed. He was too entangled in the web of his anger to think straight. He retired to his bedroom, incensed that everyone was going to see the evidence of his humiliation. The migraine was horrendous — he felt like vomiting, diarrhea grated in his rectum, light hurt his eyes — and he lay down in darkness. “Oh God!” he mumbled. The irony of it! The priest who drove Agatha to the lake took him to the hospital.