The Monkey Devil

Father Patterson’s first sermon was a resounding success. He decided to do away with the more traditional speech and readings from the Bible, instead telling the congregation that he was about to declare his true feelings for Christ, to help them get to know him better. Everyone nodded, once, in unison. He began. I don’t know how to love him, he sang, in a reedy falsetto, What to do, how to move him. I’ve been changed, yes really changed. In these past few days, when I’ve seen myself, I seem like someone else. The audience did not know what to think. They had never seen a priest behaving like this before. I don’t know how to take this. I don’t see why he moves me. He’s a man. He’s just a man. And I’ve had so many men before, in very many ways. He’s just one more. Should I bring him down? Should I scream and shout? Should I speak of love, Let my feelings out? I never thought I’d come to this. What’s it all about? Don’t you think it’s rather funny, I should be in this position? I’m the one who’s always been so calm, so cool, no lover’s fool, Running every show. He scares me so. I never thought I’d come to this. What’s it all about? Yet, if he said he loved me, I’d be lost. I’d be frightened. I couldn’t cope, just couldn’t cope. I’d turn my head. I’d back away. I wouldn’t want to know. He scares me so. I want him so. He bent down for effect, and held the hand of an elderly lady in the front row with a black eye and weeping sores on both ears. I love him so, he said. There was applause, and the congregation exploded out into the night, filled with the joy and word of God.

There is a town crier that comes every third Monday in the very early hours. He stands in the road outside our apartment and shouts about what he can see. Hear ye, hear ye, he says, there is nothing happening. Stay in bed, stay in bed. There is nothing happening. I try and sleep again after closing the window, but it’s pointless.

He was born in a year, in a town, in a country other than here. His father built ships for the armies, arks designed to carry troops and their weapons, one of each. They marched on and off and then the war started. Father Patterson’s family went along for the ride, his father seeing to maintenance, his mother knitting jumpers for the soldiers when they got cold. Father Patterson played chess and shuffleboard on the decks with the soldiers. He never knew the touch of his father’s hand on his head as a congratulation; instead, when the army was called to war and the family had to go with them, his father was killed by the first bullet fired from the shoreline that they were attacking. Million to one shot, the Captain had said as they lowered his body into the sea in a fishing net adorned with flags. Father Patterson stayed on the boat with his mother, as they were in foreign waters with miles to go before they reached home. Once, at night, he tried to swim the distance, armed only with a small spear fashioned from a table leg and a pair of binoculars fastened to his head. He had ideas about the aquamen or the whales, things that he had read in stories and heard in fables. Gradually, after ten minutes of him pawing his way against the harsh current the tape around his head failed, and he lost the binoculars to the sea. He called to the creatures of the sea: come save me, take me to live with you and I will teach you our ways! The soldiers found him the next morning in their fishing nets when they were catching breakfast. He was dead, and his mother mourned. That evening, when everyone else was asleep he rose, weary and spluttering water, but alive. He wandered to the top deck and called his mother’s name. Mother, he yelled, mother, I am alive! There was drama in his voice, a gravitas he hadn’t felt before. Mother, I am alive and I am a man! His mother heard him, and ran to him in her nightdress and moccasins. They hugged on the poop, and she led him to the warm and cradled him to sleep. He slept for two days, and rose on the third. Mother, he said, I have found God. He will help me learn the ways of life, and show me what is right and what is wrong. His mother was confused. Son, did your father and I not teach you your morals? What can you learn from Him – she pointed upwards – that we didn’t show you ourselves? Father Patterson smiled at her. Yes, mother, you taught me lots. But, Daddy died. I shan’t make the same mistake. He started to read the Bible, in between firing off guns into the sea with the soldiers, and learning how to pleasure himself with a rolled up top sheet as he went to sleep. He knew, as long as he spilt none of it on the ground, he would be safe when he reached the Gates. He quickly rose through the ranks of the army without realising it, and attracted the love of many a sergeant on the way. Three days after he had his first touch of a woman he was sent into the jungle with everyone else on the boat, even though this was nothing he had searched or applied for. He did not complain, however, merely deciding to pack up his Bible and his rifle and head out with everyone else. When he was there, he killed hundreds of young fighting boys, naked in their armoury and exposed in their fears. This is for God and the good, he would scream, and plunge his bayonet into their plump swollen bellies, distended from eating grubs and woodland bark. He and his troupe would sleep with the village women, who were impressed by their guns and fancy languages. Still Father Patterson braced it all, the killing and the sex, with the knowledge that he carried his Bible and God with him, and was therefore exempt from the sin aspect of their lives. He had been there a while when the same sniper who had killed his father decided to take a shot at him, aimed square at his heart. The bullet was stopped by the Bible in Father Patterson’s top pocket. It is a sign, he sighed when they unpicked the metal projectile from the pages. It had stopped at Revelations. When the war was done they all returned to their ship and sailed home. Father Patterson’s mother had decided to marry the captain, and was sailing around the world with him. Come with us, son, she cried, but he refused. Mother, my calling is with God now, my real Father. She nodded, accepting it. They dropped him off at the centre of the world, as close to Paradise as they could get, and he headed East, clutching his Bible. He arrived in town only weeks after me. He rode in on the back of a donkey as a tribute, and threw open the doors of the church to the priestless congregation gathered there faithfully, and started his sermon. It was quite an event.

On my second or third day with Father Patterson he decided that the changes were nearly complete. The final straw, he told me, was to throw out the old hymn books and replace them with more popular songs of the day that celebrated Christ. We racked our brains for them, and came up with none. That evening we worked feverishly writing new songs. Father Patterson decided that we would keep the tunes of existing songs, and just change the words. I agreed; this was sensible. Songs of celebration should be enjoyed by all.

Father Patterson spends hours trying to persuade us to become missionaries for his cause. He loads our arms with copies of the book and our backs with cardboard crosses, strapped tight in hessian. I have the heaviest cross, he tells us, for I carry the burden of My Father’s knowledge. When we return, my shoulders sore from the burns of the rope, my mouth tired from sending to others the constant reassurance of Our Father’s presence, I ask him how he knows the source of his knowledge, of his burden. He turns and reaches into a large cardboard box that he keeps inside the altar under the vestments, and draws out a large framed picture. In it stands a man and a child, and the man is clutching a knife. The child has a look of terror on its face, the man one of pure distress and self-pity. Above them is the sun; rays flailing like semi-effervescent legs from every hind. This is God, I know. This, he tells me, is the nearest we will ever get to seeing Him in a photograph.