The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [406]
“We must give him all the chance we can and let the will of God and Nature take its course. Come now, dear. I know how you feel, and I want you to bear up like the brave mother that you are.”
“God have mercy on me, a poor mother carrying this cross at the end of my old days. Oh, Blessed Mary, Mother of God, be with me in my hour of tribulation.”
Following the nurse into the sick room, Mrs. Lonigan dipped her hands into the holy water fount hanging by the door, blessed herself, sprayed the room, formed the sign of the cross over Studs with wetted fingers while the nurse wiped his lips. She looked down at the emaciated and tortured parcel of flesh that was her son. She blessed herself, muttered words of prayer, walked out of the room, and the nurse heard her at the telephone.
The window curtain stirred. A troop of shouting children passed in the alley, and Studs tossed with the echoing of their cries. He quivered, coughed deep from his chest. He looked up beseechingly with glassy, half-opened eyes as the nurse wiped his lips. Why must he be tortured with a rough mattress?
III
His eyes closed. He knew that he had been left alone to burn up, to be bruised and hurt by a rough mattress. His ears buzzed. Turmoil seethed in his head. He had to get out. To sleep, to die, even death, anything but this fire and weakness in him, and this stiff, hard mattress. With relief, he felt a cold cloth on his face. His head sagged. He was aware of an enveloping blackness, and colors, colors that seemed sick and mysterious, orange streaks, green and scarlet bands, purple lines, wheels and rainbows of colors shot like fire-crackers and skyrockets, scarred all this blackness. He knew now what it was. He was dying, and he felt fear, like a great puke, sweep through him. And somewhere in this world of colors and blackness God awaited him. And the voice of God rumbled out of this blackness like some tremendous command.
Verily, verily, I say unto you if you want a soft bed, honor thy father and thy mother.
And the thin distorted figure of his mother rose against a purple background, and the flapping lips of her witch’s face opened in a moan.
You’ll never have another mother.
I’m damn glad of that, he said, knowing that his words would only sink his soul more deeply in Hell.
Bloated to about a half ton, and wearing the uniform of a clown, his father dropped off a moving band of color that was like golden sunlight, stood beside his mother, and cried out.
The son who put one gray hair on the head of a mother or a father will rue the day, rue the day, rue the day. What you say, Charlie? Studs asked.
A fat priest in a black robe with a red hat stepped from behind a wide band of wine red, like an actor making an entrance on the stage, and spoke in a solemn pulpit voice.
Remember, O Lonigan, that thou art dirty dust, and like a dirty dog thou shalt return to dirtier dust.
Hey, don’t talk so much, Studs said.
Sister Bertha, with the twisted face of a maniac in a motion picture close-up, danced a drunken jig around him, flung her nun’s black robe high, exposing the legs of a skeleton, and wailed in a toothless idiocy.
Now you die like a thief because you shot spit-balls in the class.
And his mother knocked Sister Bertha over, to get in front of her, and said:
No one loves you like your mother.
And George Washington appeared in moth-eaten rags with a purple cloak flung around his chest and a bartender’s towel wrapped around his gray wig, and he shouted, striking a Napoleonic attitude:
Your country right or wrong, but your country, my boy, jazz her.
And the Pope of Rome, with a thin face, was carried by six dark-skinned altar boys and dropped unceremoniously on his buttocks. In a stern authoritarian voice, he asked:
Do you receive the Sacraments regularly?
And like drunken Indians they did a war dance, whooping and bending, while bands of gold and yellow and orange and green and red like a fiery rainbow shot and whirled behind them. And out of the dancers, his sister Loretta, with a pregnant belly, called:
Cleanliness is next to Godliness.