The priest was in his cell, praying; he knelt on the wooden step of the small desk.
He put the book mark in the bible and stood up. Though his knees were aching, he did not consider it any greater than his other ordeal.
He poured water from the jug into the bowl. He washed his face and under his arms. Then he dried himself with the towel and put the towel back on its hook.
As he did so, he glanced up at the calendar on the wall of the cell. It was not yet the fifth, but soon it would be.
He thought of how it had felt when the weapon that had been hurled into his soul. He remembered the pain, the strength going out of him and the feeling he had of no longer being able to continue. How much he had suffered! Even his entrails were torn and ruptured by the weapon. No agony was spared, and he felt as though he was going to die.
His old friend, Michele came to pick him up for their little trip. The priest, who was a big man, sat with his knees up against the dashboard of Michele’s tiny car.
The car was old. The brakes were worn. Each time they came to a crossing, Michele put his foot down and the priest’s knees pressed against the dashboard.
They drove along the coast road. As the sea meandered in and out of sight, the priest remembered his youth, playing among the rocks and fishing for crabs, eating bread and tomatoes under the sun with his friends. All that he thought was lost and would never come back.
They stopped at the restaurant owned by Michele’s cousin. The restaurant looked over a bay where people would come to gossip and bathe. They sat down and ordered a fish course, but no pasta. The waiter brought some bread and olives, and a small carafe of white wine.
At the end of the meal, Michele’s cousin came over with two pieces of ricotta cake, and they drank a coffee together. Michele’s cousin told a funny story about a fisherman who fell in the sea as he was fishing octopus. The fisherman could not swim very well. He splashed around believing he was going to drown only to stand up in a few metres of water.
Michele’s cousin looked to see the priest’s reaction. Though it pained him, the priest smiled.
They went outside into the sun. It was going a hot afternoon.
Behind the restaurant was an abandoned monastery where the priest liked to go and collect his thoughts. He climbed the steps to the bell tower and looked down at the bay. Some holiday makers had put up their tent on the beach.
The priest’s eye wandered over the rocks and out to sea. He watched the children playing in the sand, and the swimmers out in the bay.
For a moment he sat on the steps of the bell tower, contemplating those childhood memories that had been bestirred by the gentle scene, and that now came kinder than they had before.
When he returned to the car, Michele was waiting for him. As they drove, his friend asked whether he had enjoyed the meal.
The priest declared the fish was good and very fresh.
Michele told him his cousin had gone to the market in the port specially to choose it.
Michele asked him if the priest had enjoyed the ricotta cake.
The priest said it was the best ricotta cake he had tasted in a month of Sundays.
Michele smiled. “It was made by my cousin’s aunt,” he said. “Everyone says she has the best recipe.”
The priest grimaced; he knew the word would get around. Knowing that he had expressed his enthusiasm for the cake, people would want to order the old woman’s cake. What would happen to all the other old women’s cakes? Would no one eat them?
They would have made good time on the return journey. The traffic, however, was bad as they passed by the city. Michele feared there might have been an accident on the ring road, but it turned out to be road works. They were putting out traffic cones where a bulldozer was getting to work on the hard shoulder. Men were stripped to the waist and shovelling rubble around a man with a drill. The sight of them – all so hard and vigorously at work – unsettled the priest until they were shot of them.
After that was all plain sailing along the state road. Even so, the priest was glad when they turned off onto the narrower B road because he was hot and sweaty and wanted to be in the cool.
When they reached the village, he asked Michele to drop him at the church.
The priest sat at the back of the church. He did not move.
An old woman came in. She crossed herself as she passed the statue of the saint. She walked up to the front of the church. She sat down and started muttering her rosary. Now, he wondered, what good were rosaries? What good were prayers?
People started to come in for the evening service. Soon the church would be full. The priest did not want to stay, and he returned to his cell wondering if he would ever pray again.
The following day it was his turn to hear confessions in the church. He sat in the confession box and listened to a woman who confessed her sins openly. A second woman came and confessed her sins more timidly. Although he listened to each of their sins, he could not help but differentiate. As a rule, it pained him to hear confessions; the priest always suffered from thinking he was prying into people’s lives. When the third sinner came, he closed his eyes and prayed for strength.
But strength did not come. When they found him, collapsed from fainting, his colleague went to fetch some water. He was well enough to walk back to his cell.
It was the day of the fifth, and the wound had opened again.