Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

the priests, the people who worked here, the officials, the secretaries, the cleaners, even? Yet how familiar it was, this poised stillness all about him, familiar from long ago, longer than he cared to remember. His heart was beating very fast; it felt as if it had come loose somehow and were joggling about inside his rib cage. It occurred to him that he might be having a heart attack, or suffering a stroke—that he might, in fact, be dying. Far from being frightening, the idea was almost funny, and despite his distressed state he gave a wheezy laugh, which made his pulse beat all the faster and started up a burning sensation in his chest. He put a hand to his face. His cheeks and forehead were chill and stickily moist. The word infarction came to him, but for the moment he could not think what it meant, which was absurd—was his memory going, too?
    What seemed to be an electric bell was dinning somewhere nearby; he could not decide if it was in his head or if a telephone was ringing. Here, around a corner, was another hallway, or corridor, with heavy-framed paintings on the walls, large, muddy, and very bad portraits of venerable clerics interspersed with martyred saints writhing in picturesque agony. His heart, still hammering, now seemed to be swelling and rising slowly up through his chest, pressing from beneath against his esophagus, robbing him of breath. He stopped and stood still and shut his eyes, pressing the lids together tightly. He told himself he must stay calm. This would pass. It was a seizure of some kind, but he was sure now it would not kill him. In the darkness inside his head great whorls of multicolored light formed and burst, like fireworks going off in silent slow motion. He opened his eyes and stumbled on. Was there no one to help him? Then suddenly there was the front door, at last. Panting, he dragged it open and almost fell through it, onto the stone step outside, gulping mouthfuls of air.
    The sky was overcast now, yet the light was as intense as a magnesium flare, and he had to shut his eyes again for a moment. He felt exhausted, as if he had all at once become very old and infirm, and he sat down on the step, slowly and carefully. The granite was comfortingly cool to the touch. Through slitted eyelids—the light was searing still—he peered this way and that about the grounds. The yellow-green grass now had an even more unnaturally acid cast, and the stark branches of the trees looked like so many arms flung upwards in surprise or horror or both. He put a hand to his heart; it was still struggling behind his ribs like a big heavy bird in a too-small cage. Yet he was aware of a calm descending on him, as if a veil of some transparent, gossamer stuff were being laid gently over him from head to foot. Was he dying, after all? Was this how it would be, not violence and terror but a calm, slow sinking into oblivion?
    A blackbird alighted on the lawn just beyond the ring of gravel and began busily stabbing at the turf with its orange beak, its rounded gleaming blue-black head moving jerkily, like the head of a clockwork toy. He watched it at its delving. The bird seemed to mean something, to be something, something beyond itself. He had a sense of dawning wonderment, as if he had never really looked at the world before, had never before seen it in all its raw vividness.
    The door opened and he heard a step behind him. It was the old man with the crooked back. “Ah, Lord, sir, what ails you at all?” he said.
    The blackbird flew off, sounding a shrilly urgent, repeated note.
    Quirke tried to scramble to his feet but his knees refused to work. They felt as if they were made not of bone but metal, as if they were two hinged metal boxes that the rivets had fallen out of, and he was afraid the loose flanges would tear the skin covering them and break through and bleed and begin to rust in the harsh April air. The old man was bent so far forward that although he was on his feet his face was at the same level as Quirke’s where he sat. The eyes were a whitish-blue color—cataracts, Quirke thought distractedly.
    “Felt a bit queer,” Quirke said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud. “Just having a rest here for a minute.”
    He tried again to get his legs to work, flexing the muscles gingerly, afraid that those hinges in his knees would come asunder if he put pressure on them. It was a novel sensation—comical, yes—sitting here in a heap on the stone step with the old man’s face in