The Body and the Blood
Matthew Sloan
Bank Square is home to outposts of Ireland’s two most important institutions. By day, the spire casts a long, dark shadow over the beer garden where, by night, revellers sin. The ground between the two is cobbled, a dangerous terrain for a drunken foot. It is a path that has worn down the sole of Father Tom Murphy’s shoes.
Tom fell into the priesthood by accident; David had been the devout one. Tom suspected he was a believer, but was much more interested in carnal and corporeal pleasures than spiritual ones. After the accident, he felt tacitly obliged to fill David’s vestments, and indeed, his mother and grandmother expressed great relief and delight at his decision.
He rises early on Sunday mornings to absolve the tangible sins of the previous night – a vomit-filled Guinness glass, a slew of Marlboro butts in the baptismal font – before the pious throngs arrive for 10 o’clock mass.
He begins the ceremony as normal, mumbling through a variation on a theme mechanically. Trouble arises, however, when he opens a dog-eared bible and is missing the ichthys bookmark that David gifted him. He starts to sweat under his cassock and to scratch his inner left arm. He wonders how familiar his congregants are with Pulp Fiction, before opening the book at random and satisfying his audience with Matthew 18:12.
He relaxes into the ritual of the eucharist, reverting once more to a comfortable auto-pilot as the choir hymned their praise.
He retrieves the wine, bread and accoutrements from the sacristy.
Through him, with him and in him…
He fills the chalice and stifles a gag.
… in the unity of the holy spirit…
He breaks the wafer into pieces.
… all glory and honour is yours…
He distributes both to the devotees.
“The blood of Christ. The body of Christ.”
At the completion of the ceremony, he retires to his quarters. There is a lenticular print of Jesus on the wall. He lifts a bottle of cheap whiskey that sits atop a copy of Naked Lunch with a bookmark protruding from its pages. He stares at a picture of David with their mother and grandmother in a frame with a crack that cuts diagonally across his brother’s face. He begins to well up.
He drinks the remainder of his whiskey, turns on the stereo and enters his personal sacristy.
He returns with a leather washbag from which he retrieves the instruments.
He heats the powder along with a drop of holy water to form a viscous liquid.
I’m gonna try for the kingdom if I can…
He extracts some with the syringe.
… when I put a spike into my vein…
He pushes the divine elixir into his bloodstream.
He shivers as he sinks into inner peace under the icon of a weeping Jesus.
Through his stupor, he sees David standing in the shadows alongside their mother and grandmother, in the same formation as in the photograph. They wear the same clothes, David even has a scar across his face where the frame’s crack had marred his memory. Gone are the familial grins; replaced on his mother and grandmother’s faces with shameful scowls. David’s expression is the scene’s single active element, as it fluctuates between pity and scorn. A single tear rolls down Tom’s right cheek.
Matthew Sloan is an Irish writer and MA Translation student at Queen's University, Belfast. His writing has appeared in Belfast-based publication, London & Newcastle.
