One Touch
Confession in the Season of Uncovering: A Short Story in James Luo’s Third Face Universe
IMAGINE A WORLD,
a world in which an icy touch can uncover your face. Not the first face which you show everyone, nor the second face which you show only trusted ones, but the third face: the face you show no one, not even yourself. A virus had crash-landed on this world, a Truth Virus – airborne, and with no vaccine. Where do you run to when you’ve reached the end of secrets?
Father Vincențiu looked into the small mirror above the sacristy sink and saw that, in the past few weeks, he had aged at least a decade. After the Saturday morning services, when he prayed for the dead, he would look again and find another year or two cut into his face. This had been going on for several weeks. He would’ve blamed it on the pandemic, but he didn’t really understand it.
Never in his career had there been so many confessions. Not like this. Not on Fridays. Not on regular Fridays, outside Great Lent, outside Easter, outside any season when people were expected to remember that they had souls. Father Vincențiu tried not to pride himself on being a stickler for the rules, but in this case, he could not help it. He wore both masks. He wore gloves. He kept the icons, the chair, and the little brass handle wiped down. Everything that could be touched was disinfected. Everything that could be kissed was now just touched with reverence.
“God doesn’t care about the lips of our face, but the openness of our hearts.”
He examined his face, looking for the young man who had built the church in the 1990s. There had been a fair, and somehow they had got funding from some gangsters, repentant gangsters. Not even gangsters, just men who stole clothes from Germany and sold them in Romania. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t even that much money, but for that time, it was a lot. And then they wanted to steal their salvation, and so they built a church, and the church built another annex, and another, and a bell tower, and now the whole cathedral towered over the neighborhood of Pajura, big and proud, a target for criticism.
It was not something he ever told Father Timotei or any of the deacons who were younger than forty-five. What good would it be for them to know this stuff? But ever since the pandemic started, as far as Father Vincențiu understood it, he knew they could find out at any moment… One touch–
One knock. Timotei rapping rapidly three times.
“Yeah, Father Timi, what do you want, my dear?” asked the old priest.
“Father, there is a man here asking if you have time for confession.”
Time he had. It was all he had had for more than a decade, since his wife died and the last of his children left home to begin their own lives.
“You can’t take care of him yourself, Father, can you now?” he asked Timi, knowing he couldn’t. Still, he saw it as a parental duty to make sure the young priest did not wallow too long in it.
“Father, I know I have to get back into it. I can’t keep letting you do all the confessions yourself, but today I am still quite shaken. Just this morning, the adulteress came to pick up her stuff.”
“I won’t allow this kind of language, Father, especially not in the Lord’s House, but surely not anywhere in my presence. And I am sure they aren’t going to let you talk like that wherever you decide to go, if you still decide to go,” said Father Vincențiu, washing his face, slapping his beard, and getting ready to rock and roll, as he liked to say, to the annoyance of the rigorists.
Young Father Timotei had been infected and was planning on becoming a monk. He had found out that his wife not only had an affair, but also had an OnlyFans account, whatever that was, and that she was presenting herself as the number one priestess. He would have forgiven the adultery, but not the Satanism. You know what she did, the harlot? She would dress herself in some robes and do all these disgusting deeds in the name of the Unclean One. Father Vicentiu crossed himself as he tried not to judge the young priest.
“Is the booth clean, my dear?” he asked before he put on the first mask.
“Should be, Father. I told Viorica to clean it as soon as the Christian asked me about confession. I would’ve taken it if you couldn’t. I will have to in the future.”
“Well, depending on what monastery you’re going to, it might take some time before they let you take confessions anyway.”
“Father, I have decided to stay. It’s the end of days anyway, and I would rather be with you here during the apocalypse.”
Father Vincențiu sighed. Was it the end of days? Were the Americans right about Revelation? Who knows, the old priest thought. He crossed himself once more, came out of the sacristy, and looked at Father Timotei through his visor.
“You have no idea how much joy and strength you brought me, Father. Now let’s rock and roll.”
They marched together in their cassocks and masks towards the new confession booth. Father Vicențiu was quite proud of this construction, although both the parish and the architect said that it was too Catholic. “Say what you want about the Catholics, but they’ve been more practical than even the Protestants. My mother-in-law, God rest her soul, always said that you should learn what is good from everybody.” This was something he used to say even before the pandemic. And with his stubbornness and those couple of maxims, the small yet imposing booth was built to satisfy three necessities: his need for distance, their need for comfort, and the third need, Salvation.
“…and Father, tell me honestly, how can I forgive myself? How can God forgive me for what I did to my brother?”
“Now, my dear, I don’t think you did anything to your brother. I think this virus has gotten you a little confused. It’s got all of us confused. From what you are telling me, this seems to be between your brother and his wife.”
“Yes, Father, it might seem so, but didn’t I scandalize my neighbor? My brother, whom I love? His wife was always thinking about me when they were lying as a man and wife. Imagine how it feels to know she was thinking of me when he was in her, wondering if my manhood was the same as his.”
“My son, I would prefer it if we could keep this more civil. I don’t think we need all the details. But for what it’s worth, I think you are still confessing their sins, not yours.”
“I can feel them both, even now, every shape and form of her lust, every pang of his pain, ringing in my ears like a pop song I heard on the radio and now can’t get rid of.”
“Dear, you are not the first one to bring this issue to my attention, and you will probably not be the last until this is over. People are now confessing memories that they received. Spouses confess the adulterous thoughts and deeds of their partners. Parents confess the sins of their children, children the sins of their parents, neighbors the sins of their neighbors, and it’s hard. For you, for me, for all of us. I know. I know. Half the time, I find myself saying that is not something you did.”
“Oh no, Father, I did. I did. I made her do it. I made her do it when I told her to touch my abs ten years ago. I made him mistreat her when she turned cold, believing she had married the wrong brother.”
“Please, dear, let me finish… Where was I? Oh, yes. As you clearly pointed out, people have started to lose the ability to see where their own sins end and where they begin. Maybe it’s a blessing. Maybe this is something good. Maybe this is Judgment Day. We are all seeing each other’s sins, aren’t we?”
The confession ended in a bit of a mess, but not more so than most confessions since the pandemic.
Now Father Vincențiu was heading toward the kiosk, where he would get a beer, as he did these days. Maybe two. Sometimes three. If it was hot outside, he never even got to savor the first one properly.
He took off his masks as soon as he left the church courtyard. He did not put on the N95 he carried in his briefcase when he decided to step inside the kiosk with the red awning.
Father Vincențiu entered the shop and saw the morning paper folded by the register, its headline reading:
“Give me two Birra Moretti bottles, the 0.5 ones,” he said to Dile, the shopkeeper.
“Ah, thirsty, Father, ain’t it? Was the service long today?”
“Eh, not that much today. How are you holding up? Haven’t seen your wife recently. Is she good?”
“We had a bit of an argument, you know, after we both got infected, but I’m sure it will sort itself out. She just needs to cool off at my in-laws.”
“Well, Dile, you don’t let her cool off too much, will you now? You know, eyes that don’t see each other forget each other.”
“Yeah, yeah, Father, but who’ll run the kiosk? Who’ll sell you the beer?”
“You know, Dile, would you be kind enough to give me a pack of Marlboro Reds?”
“Now, Father,” said Dile, “I would like to pretend I didn’t know you smoked, but you never bought from this shop. You know, I always thought you wanted to keep up appearances.”
“Eh, what’s to do with appearances, Dile?” said Father Vincențiu. “One touch is enough, and maybe, you know, from what I’ve been hearing, I feel that I’m touched. All these confessions touched me. We’re all seeing each other’s sins, and maybe that’s a blessing. Maybe this is the time when everything that was hidden is uncovered, and we should embrace it.”
Dile looked at him askew and scratched his mustache.
“Well, Father, that would be forty lei.”
“Are you giving me a discount, Dile?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, Father,” Dile sighed, opening and closing the register, looking into the old priest’s eyes, searching for an answer. “This pandemic has been weird. It was easier with my wife, you know? But not with the kids.”
“You know, Dile, I heard a confession today, and now I’m off the clock. You should get your fat butt to church. We built a very nice booth there for this kind of situation,” said Father Vincențiu with a wink. Dile laughed.
“Yeah, sorry, Father. Forgot you’re done for the day.”
“Just for the day, Dile, just for the day. You mind if I crack one of them open here, in front of the shop?”
“Well, yeah, Father, that’s why I put that table there.”
Outside in the warm sun, Father Vincențiu took a seat. He opened the beer and had a long sip, chewing the liquid in his mouth. Nothing compared with the first beer after a day of fasting.
He took out the cigarette pack and searched his briefcase for a lighter. He found only the matches he had used to light the incense. He lit one and took a long drag.
He knew he would have to change the cassock by tomorrow if he did not want Father Timotei and the parishioners smelling smoke on him. But then he let out a sigh and said,
“Eh, what’s the point? One touch.”
Just as he said that, he saw Father Timotei walking down the street. He signaled to him and asked him to come closer. Father Timotei looked baffled, seeing his mentor smoking and drinking in the middle of the day.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” said Father Vincențiu. “Come on, take a seat and have a beer. I got this for you,” he lied.
Father Timotei sat down beside him. He put a gloveless hand on Father Vincențiu’s shoulder, over the cassock, and they clinked their beer bottles.
“Doamne ajută,” said Father Vincențiu.
And he took another long sip, getting ready to be invaded by the Truth, the whole Truth, maybe not that of God, but definitely that of mankind.
Acknowledgement: I would like to acknowledge Paul Imgrund ’s influence on and inspiration for this piece, as well as the setting, which emerged directly from his own short story, Bless Me, Father. It is equal in scope and power to one of Chekhov’s Orthodox tales, and I highly recommend giving it a read.
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The scene of him lying about the beer just to sit with Timotei got me, quietly, more than anything else in the story. Beautifully done.
I can so vividly see the priests sat at that red plastic table outside the kiosk with their beers and cigarettes, clad in cassocks no less. What a fascinating premise. Doamne ajută.