Delicate Indecencies by Sandy McCutcheon

Author:Sandy McCutcheon [McCutcheon, Sandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2016-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘My name was Dominic Healy and I was fourteen the year that I discovered for true and certain that God wanted me. Have you any idea how hard it is for someone that age to explain to an adult that they know what they’re doing?’

For the first time since they had met, Teschmaker saw Viola’s sloe-black eyes burn with an inner fire.

‘I tried so hard to make them understand. I did everything I could. But no matter how I explained it, they didn’t hear me. I felt like I was the only person with a voice in a world of deaf people. I tried to show my parents how dedicated I was, but just as they couldn’t hear, they couldn’t see. But I was determined and so I spent every spare moment in church. I went to St Sebastian’s every day and knelt on those cold hard flagstones, and they were hard. Back then I wore short pants and I would come out with my knees red and sore. But the more it hurt the stronger my conviction grew and I would kneel in front of the statue of Jesus and look at those wounds and I knew. I knew that we had all gone wrong because we didn’t understand how he had suffered. It was so clear to me, even at that age, that unless we understood the real meaning of suffering, we could never be saved. I read that we had to be born in the blood of the lamb and I knew it was true. I wanted that blood so much. If I could have traded places with Jesus I would have. I dreamed of it, night after night . . .’

He lapsed into silence, his eyes shut, but his eyelids and lips quivered with the intensity of his remembered vision. Teschmaker watched, dumbfounded by the outpouring, bewildered by the depth of the pain he could sense beneath the words. He tried to remember himself at fourteen but all he saw was Jane. Had she been his epiphany?

‘More than anything I wanted to be crucified. I could imagine the sensation of the nails pressed against my hands. Then the dull thud of the hammer and the explosion of pain. And my legs . . . I would lie in bed and imagine that my legs were bound and the nail would go through the skin, then flesh, then bone of one leg and then into the leg beneath. When I was in the church I found I could shut my eyes and imagine it so strongly that my body would twitch and I would cry out.’

‘Jesus, Viola!’ Teschmaker had done everything not to interrupt, but couldn’t help himself.

‘No! Don’t you see?’ Viola rubbed wildly at his face; strong raking strokes. Teschmaker reached out, but Viola was lost in his own catharsis.

‘I couldn’t understand why they were so proud of the agony of Jesus and yet couldn’t tolerate my small pain. I was too real for them and they couldn’t deal with it.

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