Richard Temple by Patrick O'Brian

Author:Patrick O'Brian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

ADISGUSTING VISCERAL PAIN and an extreme foulness came welling up to destroy the order of his mind: the years and days of his recollection that filled this dark present cell were thrown out of all sequence by the assault, and they almost vanished to their former hidden place. But this was a pain that he could circumvent or shorten (an old pain, known ever since his first interrogation) and in time it passed, leaving him to grope his way slowly back to that point at which the chain had been broken. He did not reach his place easily or quickly; it was a humiliating, disagreeable place to inhabit, for all his cynicism and detachment.

There is very little known about sin. And if sin is not only what is described as loathsome and shameful in works of piety but also what is loathed and contemned in living fact then even less is known about it, because at this point communications break down: the plain word no longer suffices and poetry and parable are needed to throw their indirect brilliance; but there are few poets, and those few do not have many listeners.

The direct account is not enough, if only because of the rule of custom. In ordinary circumstances the mean sin is never acknowledged, so that when it is the effect is excessive and disgusting: Bunyan was the chief of sinners, but he furiously denied any particular fault; Christian was a little better than his author, but he never mentions bilking the tradesmen of Destruction before his departure; spite and vanity have no place in any man’s Confessions. There is something like a parallel in the difficulty with reported conversation: many ordinary men say such words as fuck and cunt, but until recently they have scarcely ever been printed and even now they tend to leap right out of the page when they are seen although they may have been said in a mild and commonplace voice. Or in the description of a person: to say of a boy that he picks his nose is to present a more than ordinarily unpleasant little brute, and to say that self-abuse is his delight is to hold up a monster; whereas the boy may be ordinary enough, and even amiable.

And even in ordinary circumstances the communication is still imperfect, cold, formal and inefficient: how far can a man go and still confess? Confess the doing rather than only the name of the deed? Not very far, even with the fear of Hell behind him, because language is not designed to convey information about sin. Language and the whole habit of mind of a lifetime make anything much more than the ‘miserable sinners’ nearly impossible in direct terms, even with the best of will.

‘. . . and Father, I have committed impurity.’

‘Yes, my son; with women or with men?’

‘Oh,’ (in a shocked voice), ‘only with men, Father.’ (Or only with women, as the case may be.)

But impurity, even when it has been related how many times and whether adultery or fornication, does not get you very near the fact.

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