“The Priest”
by
William Faulkner
His novitiate was almost completed. Tomorrow he would be confirmed, tomorrow he would achieve that complete mystical union with the Lord, which he had so passionately desired. In his studious youth he had been led to expect it daily; he had hoped to attain it through confession, through talk with those who seemed to have it; through living a purging and a self denial until the earthly fires which troubled him had burned themselves out with time. He passionately desired a surcease and an easing of the appetites and hunger of his blood and flesh, which he had been taught to believe were
harmful: he expected something like sleep, a condition to which he would attain in which those voices in his blood would be stilled. Or rather, chastened. Not to trouble him more, at least: an exalted plane wherein the voices would be lost, sounding fainter and fainter, soon to be but a meaningless echo among the canyons and majestic heights of the glory of God.
But he had not gotten it. After talk with a father in his seminary he could return to his dormitory in a spiritual ecstasy, an emotional state in which his body was but the signboard bearing a flaming message to shake the world. His doubts were then allayed; he had neither doubt nor thought. The end of life was clear: to suffer, to use his blood and bone and flesh as a means for attaining eternal glory—a thing magnificent and astounding, forgetting that history and not the age made Savonarolas and Thomas a Beckets. To be of the chosen despite the hungers and gnawings of flesh, to attain a spiritual union with Infinite, to die—how could physical pleasure toward which his blood cried, be compared with this?
But, once with his fellow candidates, how soon was this forgotten! Their points of view, their callousness, were enigma to him. How could one be of the world and not of the world at the same time? And the dreadful doubt that perhaps he was missing something, that perhaps after all life was only what one could make of his short three score and ten of time, might be true. Who knows? who could know? There was Cardinal Bembo living in Italy in an age like silver, like an imperishable flower, creating a cult of love beyond the flesh, purged of all torturings of flesh. And was not this but an excuse, a palliation for this terrible fearing and doubting? was not the life of that long dead, passionate man such a one as his own: a fabric of fear and doubt and a passionate grasping after something beautiful and fine? Even something beautiful and fine meant to him a Virgin not calm with sorrow and fixed like a watchful benediction in the western sky; but a creature young and slender and helpless and (somehow) hurt, who had been taken by life and toyed with and tortured—a little ivory creature reft of her first born and raising her arms vainly upon a dying evening. In other words, a woman, with all of woman’s passionate grasping for today, for the hour itself; knowing that tomorrow may never come and that today alone signifies, because today alone is hers. They have taken a child and made of her a symbol of man’s old sorrows, he thought; and I too am a child reft of his childhood.
The evening was like a raised hand upon the west; night fell, and a new moon swam like a silver boat on a green sea. He sat upon his cot, staring out, while the voices of his fellows grew softer despite themselves with the magic of twilight. The world clanged without, and passed away—trolley cars and cabs and pedestrians. His companions talked of women, of love, and he said to himself: “Can these men become priests living in self denial, helping mankind?” He knew that they could, and would, which made it harder. And he recalled the words of Father Gianotti of whom he did not approve: “Throughout all of history man has instigated and engineered circumstances over which he has no control. And all he can do is to shape his sails to ride out the storm which he has himself brought about. And remember: the thing alone which does not change is laughter. Man sows, and reaps tragedy always: he puts into the earth seeds which he treasured, which are himself, and what is his harvest? Something of which he can have learned nothing and with which he cannot cope. The wise man is he who can withdraw from the world, regardless of his vocation, and laugh. Money you have, you spend it: you no longer have money. Laughter alone renews itself like the fabulous wine cup.”
But mankind lives in a world of illusion, he uses his puny powers to create about him a strange and bizarre place. Even he did this, with all his religious affirmations, just as his companions did it with their eternal talk of women. And he wondered how many priests leading chaste lives relieving human suffering, were virgin, and whether or not the fact of virginity made any difference. Surely his companions could not be chaste: no one could speak of women in that familiar way and be unknown to them, and yet they would make good churchmen. It was as though a man were given certain impulses and desires without being consulted by the donor, and it remained with him to satisfy them or not. He himself could not do this, though; he could not believe that sexual impulses could disrupt a man’s whole philosophy, and yet might be allayed in such a way. “What do you want?” he asked himself. He did not know: it was not so much wanting any particular thing as it was fearing that life and its meaning might be lost by him because of a phrase, empty words meaning nothing. “Surely, I should know how little words signify, in my profession.”
And suppose there was something going about, some answer to the riddle of man at his hand, which he could not see. “Man wants but little here below,” he thought; but to miss that little he does have!
Walking the streets, his problem became no clearer. The streets were filled with women: girls going home from work, their lithe young bodies became symbols of grace and beauty, of impulses antedating Christianity. “How many of them have lovers?” he wondered. Tomorrow I will scourge myself, I will pay penance for this in prayer and mortification, but now I shall think thoughts I have long wanted to.
Girls were everywhere: their thin garments shaped their stride along Canal street; girls going home to dinner—thinking food between their white teeth, of their physical pleasure in mastication and digestion, filled him with fire—to wash dishes; girls planning to dress and go out to dance among sultry saxophones and drums and colored lights, while they were young taking life like a cocktail from a silver salver; girls to sit at home reading books and dreaming of a lover on a white horse with silver trappings.
“Is it youth I want? Is it youth in me crying out to youth in others which troubles me? Then why does not exercise satisfy me—physical strife with other young men? Or is it Woman, the nameless feminine? Is my entire philosophy to be overthrown here? If one be born in this world to suffer such compulsions, where is my church, where that mystical union which has been promised me? And which is right: to obey these impulses and sin, or refrain and be forever tortured with the fear that I have somehow thrown away my life through abnegation?
“I will purge my soul,” he told himself. Life is more than this, salvation is more than this. But ah, God, ah, God; youth is so much in the world! it is everywhere in the young bodies of girls dulled with work over typewriters or behind counters in stores, uncaged and free at last and crying for the heritage of youth, taking their soft agile bodies aboard street cars, each with her own dream, of who knows what? “Except that today is today, and is worth a thousand tomorrows and yesterdays!” he cried.
Ah, God, ah, God; he thought, if tomorrow will but come! Then surely, when I am become an ordained servant of God I will find ease; I will then know how to control these voices in my blood. Ah, God, ah, God, if tomorrow will but come!
At the corner was a cigar store with men buying tobacco, men through with work for the day and going home to comfortable dinners, to wives and children; or to bachelor rooms to prepare for engagements with mistresses or sweethearts—always women. And I, too, am a man: I feel as they do; I, too, would answer to soft compulsions.
He left Canal street, leaving the flickering electric signs to fill and empty the dusk, unseen by him and therefore lightless, just as trees are green only when looked at. Lights flared and dreamed in the wet street, the lithe bodies of girls shaped to their hurrying toward food and diversion and love, all this was behind him now; for far before him a church spire soared like a prayer arrested and articulate against the evening. His footfall said Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
“Ave Maria, deam gratiam … tower of ivory, rose of Lebanon.…”
Biblioklept 