Free The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) by J.F. Powers

death-bed), he was beset by the grossest distractions. They were to be expected, he knew, as indelible in the order of things: the bingo game going on under the Cross for the seamless garment of the Son of Man: everywhere the sign of the contradiction, and always. When would he cease to be surprised by it? Incidents repeated themselves, twined, parted, faded away, came back clear, and would not be prayed out of mind. He watched himself mounting the pulpit of a metropolitan church, heralded by the pastor as the renowned Franciscan father sent by God in His goodness to preach this novena—like to say a little prayer to test the microphone, Father?—and later reading through the petitions to Our Blessed Mother, cynically tabulating the pleas for a Catholic boyfriend, drunkenness banished, the sale of real estate and coming furiously upon one: “that I’m not pregnant.” And at the same church on Good Friday carrying the crucifix along the communion rail for the people to kiss, giving them the indulgence, and afterwards in the sacristy wiping the lipstick of the faithful from the image of Christ crucified.
    “Take down a book, any book, Titus, and read. Begin anywhere.”
    Roused by his voice, the canary fluttered, looked sharply about and buried its head once more in the warmth of its wing.
    “‘By the lions,’” Titus read, “‘are understood the acrimonies and impetuosities of the irascible faculty, which faculty is as bold and daring in its acts as are the lions. By the harts and the leaping does is understood the other faculty of the soul, which is the concupiscible—that is—’”
    “Skip the exegesis,” Didymus broke in weakly. “I can do without that now. Read the verse.”
    Titus read: “‘Birds of swift wing, lions, harts, leaping does, mountains, valleys, banks, waters, breezes, heats and terrors that keep watch by night, by the pleasant lyres and by the siren’s song, I conjure you, cease your wrath and touch not the wall . . .’”
    “Turn off the light, Titus.”
    Titus went over to the switch. There was a brief period of darkness during which Didymus’s eyes became accustomed to a different shade, a glow rather, which possessed the room slowly. Then he saw the full moon had let down a ladder of light through the window. He could see the snow, strangely blue, falling outside. So sensitive was his mind and eye (because his body, now faint, no longer blurred his vision?) he could count the snowflakes, all of them separately, before they drifted, winding, below the sill.
    With the same wonderful clarity, he saw what he had made of his life. He saw himself tied down, caged, stunted in his apostolate, seeking the crumbs, the little pleasure, neglecting the source, always knowing death changes nothing, only immortalizes . . . and still ever lukewarm. In trivial attachments, in love of things, was death, no matter the appearance of life. In the highest attachment only, no matter the appearance of death, was life. He had always known this truth, but now he was feeling it. Unable to move his hand, only his lips, and hardly breathing, was it too late to act?
    “Open the window, Titus,” he whispered.
    And suddenly he could pray. Hail Mary . . . Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death . . . finally the time to say, pray for me now — the hour of my death, amen . Lest he deceive himself at the very end that this was the answer to a lifetime of praying for a happy death, happy because painless, he tried to turn his thoughts from himself, to join them to God, thinking how at last he did—didn’t he now ?—prefer God above all else. But ashamedly not sure he did, perhaps only fearing hell, with an uneasy sense of justice he put himself foremost among the wise in their own generation, the perennials seeking after God when doctor, lawyer, and bank fail. If he wronged himself, he did so out of humility—a holy error. He ended, to make certain he had not