The vehicles passing him were mostly World War II vintage jeeps, remodeled as taxis, garishly painted, honking for no reason he could understand. The sidewalk now was illuminated by the yellow glare of a streetlight. It showed him a shallow flood of dark water running down the concrete toward him.
Water?
Moon stopped, stared, sucked in his breath, and jumped to one side.
The stream was a multitude of insects: agile, light brown cockroaches. A migration of them flowing rapidly down the sidewalk. The crunching he’d felt under his shoe soles on the dark street behind him hadn’t been dead leaves as he’d thought. Feeling slightly sickened, he hurried down the sea-wall away from this grotesque strangeness.
The rain caught Moon as he crossed the park in front of the Manila Cathedral. A drizzle at first, the tiny droplets oddly warm. But the drizzle quickly became a heavy shower. Moon ran across the grass and up the cathedral steps. In the shelter of the vestibule he stopped to catch his breath, looked back. A man was hurrying through the rain behind him, protecting his head with a newspaper. He wasn’t wearing a blue turtleneck.
Moon sat at the end of the final pew. A dim red light at the main altar told him the Consecrated Host was there. An electric bulb cast a yellow glow on one of the side altars, silhouetting two kneeling men and a woman. But the body of the church was dark, lit only by a bank of offertory candles burning before an ornate crucifix in an alcove. The breeze brought in the smell of rain, of pollen, of mildew, seaweed, and decay. And then the breeze died. Moon found himself engulfed in the aroma of burning candle wax, furniture polish, old incense. Engulfed in memories.
Of sneaking with Eddie Tafoya and Ricky into St. Stephen’s and salvaging guttered-out candles, melting them down, making their own candles which Eddie believed, erroneously, they could sell in competition with Father Kelly. Of swinging the censor in the sacristry, fanning the charcoal to red heat, producing a great blue cloud of aromatic smoke. Moon closed his eyes, trying to remember the sound of the Latin-“Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis”-and Ricky saying, “Who told us pick cotton Monday,” and getting away with it because Father Kelly was too deaf to tell the difference.
“He who takes away the sins of the world,” Moon said, “have mercy on us.” He slid out of the pew, walked down the side aisle, looked out the doorway at the rain, examined the stained-glass window above him-the Holy 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.