Confessional
It is dark in here. Outside is where the light is. I can see it, broken up by the lattice that hides me.
I’ve been in here most of the morning. I know his routine by now, although he hasn’t ever noticed me. I’m just another lost voice in this little dark box. With the door closed, I don’t even exist.
But I know his routine. I watched him go around to the outside door to the bell tower, and share a joke and some encouraging words with the bell ringers. It was enough time for me to get inside, and now I wait. There wasn’t time for me to rethink my plans. The sign at the front of the church said that there was a wedding starting at ten-thirty. He’s alone now for half an hour, and then the guests will start to arrive.
And here he comes. The righteous priest, so upstanding, so charming. Such a friendly man, always willing to give of himself as much as his flock will take. He moves along the far aisle, his hands out, brushing the backs of the hard wood pews, waving dust around in the shafts of light, amused in his solitude, relaxed, content. He was born to this, I’m sure he thinks. He has never known a world without hope or love.
I stand here, pressed up, eyes as close to the tiny diamonds of brightness as I can get them, watching him as he comes about, passes the altar. Now I can see his face, and he almost seems to be walking towards me. I am straining as hard as I can to curve my neck and keep sight of him, without pushing the door open, but it is hard. As he gets closer, he goes out of view for a second, and I am lost again for a moment, and I wonder.
I wonder whether it is possible to truly feel love, or hope, if you have never felt their absence? Surely those two things, more than any other, can only be recognised if you can see their edges, feel their shape, in the vacuum that surrounds them?
I am heading down a path that ends with the man outside this thin wooden box bereft of anything that means anything, but then he is in view once again, right in front of me, facing ahead of him, towards the giant church doors.
I suck in that last breath, try not to move. He is less then a meter away. He turns his head in my direction. Seems to be thinking about something, a half smile on his face. He half-turns again, looks over at the other door to the box, the one that would seat him as my redemption. My resolve almost falters.
But I must keep to my plan. I screw my nerves down until they are pinned tight, clench my fists. Watch him. He is only inches away, has moved closer, as if he can see me… as if he can smell me. That half smile lengthens, becomes beatific. Maybe he can see me! Maybe he can smell my sin… wants to eat it! No, he can’t possibly know I’m here, in the dark. On this side of the door, there is nothing but darkness… I am nothing, invisible. I hold my ground.
He turns away, toward the sounds of the wedding’s advance party. He claps his hands together and calls a greeting to them, full of warmth and humanity, that echoes away from me, like it always seems to. And if I was going to move, the moment has passed. I stand here, blood pounding in my ears, and watch the back of his head and neck, pink with life, and the shapes of the people beyond him.
Then, before he moves off, he turns his neck ever so slightly, so that his face is in profile, and it is almost as if he hasn’t spoken at all.
“You don’t have to hide in there, you know. This service is open. There is sure to be some space at the back.”
I feel my eyelid move spastically, all of its own accord, but the rest of my body is loyal, to something at least, and stays still. The priest pauses for a second longer, and then moves toward the real people.
It is a beautiful service.
He has chosen, as he always does, the perfect words to push these two out into the world together. Standing up there, showing them the way, he knows all, and is the embodiment of strength, tradition and love. He could be God himself, for what he means to the people here assembled. It is beautiful to watch, and as it always does, makes something normally loud and distracted inside me lie quiet for a while.
I try not to notice that nobody looks over at me. A wedding is a bad time to feel that particular breed of alone.
He thinks I come here because I like weddings, and perhaps am crushingly shy. This is one of the many ways in which he is not God… he doesn’t know everything. The lack of contrast in his love means that in some ways, he doesn’t know much of anything at all, in fact. In many ways, he almost isn’t like a human at all.
I bask in the bride and groom’s happiness, warming me through those tiny little holes like sunlight on a summer’s day. It gives me relief, watching them… this is why I come, as seldom as I can stand to… it gives me pleasure to see these people now, on the one day when they are assured of feeling that most certain and unconditional cloudburst of adoration, this one moment. Even if it doesn’t last until the end of the day; even if the groom’s father gets into a fight at the reception, or the kids run riot through everything. This is the one place and time where you can see it on their faces, and it is beautiful.
Tomorrow, they will be screaming or slumped with each other in the city centre, or struggling silently over the nightly meal. I need to see that that isn’t all there is, and that is why I come here, and that is why I hide when I do. Not shyness, shame. I don’t believe any of this bullshit, I just need it. I don’t sit here in the darkness to confess, I do it because I’m ashamed of myself… ashamed that poor Julia doesn’t know, and wouldn’t understand, why I need to watch these strangers come together; why our own marriage isn’t enough.
And so what if the old man knows that I do this? No-one else is going to find me in here. No-one comes to a wedding to confess.
As the service dissipates, I wonder again. I wonder whether it is the knowledge of the shape that our lives would take without love that pushes us together. If it is that which keeps Julia and I rattling around together, in that house too big for two, after everything that has happened.
The priest, if he ever got to speak to me, would try to understand, but he can’t, not really. He doesn’t speak the right language. Luckily, it won’t ever happen. In a minute, he is going to go outside the front doors, and I will sneak out of the side exit. He’ll be out there, chatting to the guests, making jokes with the happy couple, standing for photographs.
I know his routine.
