My Kind of Obscenity by Steve RE Pereira

He is tall, whiplash thin, a cassock-sheathed tower of sublime whiteness crowned by a mahogany brown face; square-jawed, heavy-lidded, eagle-nosed, lip curled in perpetual scorn. I remember well that serpentine grace. Brother Ignatius Loyola Alfonso. He slithers swiftly, wraithlike up and down the whitewashed stone colonnades, up the rows of iron beds in dark, moon-speckled dormitories, down the aisles of battered wooden desks in sun-blasted classrooms, hands clasped behind back, his trailing cassock rustling, whispering. He appears behind you, beside you, sneering lip, all-knowing. He says little, rarely smiling, never, never laughing preferring firstly the intimidation of silence and then a pincer grip on the upper ear to raise, lower, or just inflict pain and then with spectacular intent, a thin bamboo cane whipped out from its hiding place within his sleeve to smite the back of tender thighs..

1963. Brother Ignatius, the only Indian Brother of the Fraternal Order of The Virgin Mother in the Immaculate Heart of Mary Academy deep in the heart of the Indian sub-continent. One of still only a handful of Indian Brothers in the country and so special, they go by aeroplane to the isle of St. Patrick to meet the Superior General himself. Your native servants Your Grace, see how they make us proud.

At the school the Irish/English brothers told us novice boys, inflicting awe at the thought of brown faces in white places. “You too could be one of the chosen.” We too? We looked upon Brother Ignatius Loyola Alfonso, a tower of disdainful silence and practised our sneers.

Brother Alfonso is immaculate, always, from his Brylcremeed polished widow’s peak to the harmonising tips of his gleaming leather shoes, immaculate. For him, always, black shoes and black socks; but for athletic activity pristine white socks and pristine white tennis shoes sporting a thin blue line. No sandals for Brother Alfonso, no sandals or slippers even when the other Brothers, the pale Irish and English ones go native in the months of torpor-making Indian heat or months of torrential monsoon rain. And certainly, no chappals like old Brother Donovan, forty-two years in the Order of The Virgin Mother, thirty-two of them in the Orient and indulged for his singlet and chappal wearing, chapatti eating and Hindi speaking ways. Nothing of that sort for Brother Ignatius Loyola Alfonso so proudly carrying that civilizing burden at The Immaculate Mary Academy in the darkness of the sub-continental heart.

From the beginning, and when the beginning was I can’t recall, we have had a thing Brother Alfonso and I. The collective pubescent, tumescent, student body all have a thing for him. His height, those striking looks, that easy athleticism, that scorning wit and even the sadistic punishments he inflicts draw us all, moths to withering flame. But of the three hundred odd acolytes he has at his disposal, it is we who have a thing, Brother Alfonso, and I. I know we do. just the two of us, are locked in our very own clandestine second circle of hell.

And he is there every time, and it is every time, when I am the target of a joke from a circle of jeering boys, and there every time I miss a catch, a hit; every time I am the very last to be picked for a team; every time I am the first to be assigned a female role in the school plays; every time the last to struggle up the hill, or the first in line to be roundly mocked for nothing special. He is there, he and his Cheshire cat sneer searing right through me. At every single gathering he searches me out through the crowd I know he does. It happens every time. His lingering look of studied indifference touched with contempt is designed to squeeze the breath out of my throat. Every time. If he cares so little why does he bother looking? Every time.

I am not like the others. Never was, never will be. I am always sitting on the dormitory steps reading. Not playing cricket, nor hockey, nor basketball, nor football, nor squash, not running, not walking, not jumping, not squabbling, fighting, tormenting or even gossiping, just reading. He says to me ‘You sit here all the time. You are getting fat. Get up and do something. Why are you a sissy?’ He slits his eyes and curls his lip at me. He pinches my cheek hard; I feel the sting of tears. He sneers some more and then walks away, again. Another time caught — talking in the chapel- waiting to go in to confession — another Friday another sin- he comes up behind me, gripping the back of my neck, hard, leaning down from his height, the rush of breath in my ear, the prick of his stubble on my cheek as he whispers a sibilant ‘Silence’ in my ear. ‘You have so much to confess,’ he whispers, ‘So much. Why do you want to add more? All those dirty books, all those dirty thoughts, isn’t that so?’ The heat from his breath blasts my ear, and then he is gone. In class, he cultivates his popularity and my corresponding ignominy by whipping a mob out of thirty, twittering, chortling boys. ‘Pretty boy over here is very quiet,’ he will say ‘Let’s ask … what does Sister Francis call him?’ He asks it every time, and a chorus of taunting voices currying favour replies, ‘Cherub’, ‘Cherub!’, ‘Che-rub’. He sneers at my inflamed face and moves on. He will be back.

He thinks he knows me, Brother Ignatius Loyola Alfonso. He knows me well.

Fear, loathing and desire, that’s what I feel for him. I am terrified that he will notice me, terrified that he won’t. Overwhelming wantingness from me. A wantingness that eviscerates me with a single glance. One day, I hold my breath at cricket when his shirt falls loose revealing, as he pivots and stretches to bowl, the chocolate brown skin, the deep indentation of his navel and surprising thick wiry coils of raven hair below. Spears of gold and fire.

Then this night.

The cavernous hall that is our dormitory: one hundred and twenty boys in one hundred and twenty beds, eight columns and fifteen rows of identical beds with identical lime green covers. An hour after lights out and creatures stir. Whispers, snores mutterings and mumblings, somebody (there is always somebody, not always me) trying to gulp back sobs — otherwise pillows, books, rotten fruit, hisses, curses or worse will be thrown.

This night, I can’t sleep. My ear burns, the palm of my left-hand throbs but most of all my skin itches and boils, the crook of my arms, around my ankles, the base of my penis, the insides of my wrist. Psoriasis is my stigmata. I pray, as told, for special consideration for my condition. Five Hail Mary’s instead of three, ten decades of the rosary instead of five. My prayers and intercessions are multiplying with mathematical regularity, but numbers don’t seem to be my game. No mystical formulas to save me from sticks, stones and names that always hurt me.

I had been offered comfort that day; cold comfort. Brother Shearer has been at me that afternoon when he chanced upon me loitering around the Brothers’ quarters. ‘Soothing cream, ‘That’s what you be needing,’ he says, spit foam bubbling at the corners of his mouth as he ushers me into his room. Brother Shearer has a special cream his sister has sent all the way from America, so he says. A special request he had made. So special it couldn’t be shared with other, especially not Nurse Sister who would confiscate it even from him. So, he says.

So, shushes all around as he rubs the cream into places that don’t itch and places that do after he has been there. When I emerge from his room scratching at where he has scratched, I look up, and there is Brother Alfonso on his way somewhere. His gaze is withering. It blazes out of his hooded eyes and drips off the downturned corners of his mouth. ‘Touching yourself” he hisses “Always touching yourself.”

The unfairness of it. ‘I wasn’t!’ blurts out. Step backwards. ‘Brother Shearer …’ I start again not sure where I am going with it, but it doesn’t matter. His open-handed slap cuts me off. My right ear erupts in an explosion of leaden heat, and pain and I’m on my back on the gravel pathway staring up at the Brothers grim. Brother Shearer is at his door saying nothing, doing nothing. Brother Alfonso steps around and over me is gone. I have been stoned — there are three embedded in the palm of my hand. More stigmata.

So, I leak hot tears this night as I burn, throb, itch and rage. My circle of hell is closing down on me.

I wrap my towel around my waist to secure the failing elastic on my pyjama bottoms and take myself and my book down to the toilets. Heads rise, and hisses follow as I pass, but I don’t give a fucking fuck about them either. ‘Cherub, where do you think you’re going? ‘Cherub get back to bed.’ ‘Cherub. Cherub’. Venomous crickets in the night. Sister Francis, why did she have to call me that. My fervent hope at that moment is that it’s true that all the Sisters have had their tits cut off. I am hoping that it hurt bad, really bad. That is my prayer.

I find sanctuary in the toilets. I am reading in the toilet. Not allowed at any time. Toilet business should be accomplished as quickly as possible. Any impulse to linger is, during the day, swiftly thwarted. There is a constant procession of Brothers, Captains, and Prefects who make sure of that, banging on the doors warning of hellfire and brimstone if anything other than shit and piss should leave the body. Blood is permissible only as a badge of honour of the sporting variety. All else is invariably the result of personal carelessness and thus the devil’s handiwork. Snot frowned upon, but no other emissions allowed and actively discouraged; hands out of pockets at all times, above covers in bed at all times. We shower on Thursdays and Saturdays in our bathing trunks or underwear. In the stark white tiled room, we stand under rows of rusty shower heads for a-stop-watch-timed 5 minutes watching/watched closely. Fingers linger in zones forbidden and the wrath of God descends in a stinging rap across the wrist from the cane-wielding Brothers with a hissed, ‘Respect Yourself’.

This night, I can’t concentrate on the book; not there is much to concentrate on in this battered Nick Carter pulp thriller. My fingers press into my wrists and the pain of the fall comes back. ‘Fucking, fuck, fucking Alonso,’ I burst out somewhat involuntarily. I am not loud I think, but in the quiet of the night, sound bounces off the stone walls echoing down the hallways. I hold my breath.

The hum of the fluorescent lights is loud, the light bouncing off the whitewashed stone walls, unearthly bright.

A shadow moves. There is someone near. Moving stealthily. Air catches in a lump in my throat. My skin burns again. In the bright gap between the door and floor: a foot of light, two feet in the light. There are two feet in the light. Two shiny black leather-shod feet. He would be standing right up at the door. A step further and I can see his body emerging in bas relief as an avenging angel frieze in the toilet door. How long has he been standing there?

It has to be Alfonso. Brother Alfonso, unlike the other Brothers in their collegial rooms in the house on the hill, has his solitary room at the back of the dormitory. A dark angel to watch over us. And watch he does. He has been sighted at all hours between midnight and sunrise; a striding spectre in black shirt, black pants, silver cross on left pocket, rustling through the rows of beds, disappearing in pools of dark in the stone corridors. Here he is now. Of course.

Moments, eternity passes. Nothing happens. It would be completely characteristic of him to keep us suspended here all night.

I fumble with the bolt which sticks when I attempt to slide it back. When I finally emerge, he is standing there, arms loose at his side, as if ready for a fight. He wears no habit, but is a black pillar of ominousness with the blackest of expressions, black shirt, black pants, and black shoes. I let my eyes rest on the shoes. Never look them in the eye unless specifically instructed to do so. Otherwise, suffer the wages of insolence.

I stand before him, hands pointlessly hiding the book behind my back. The world is still.

Silence. I watch my chest heave up and down drawing in gulps of air that clog my throat.

Again, it’s my move apparently. I look up at him, into the coal blackness of his eyes. ‘I couldn’t sleep, Brother.’

Silence.

‘I didn’t want to disturb anybody else, so I came down here. To read.’ I hold out the battered book as evidence.

‘I know exactly what you were doing, Daniel. I know.’ It is the way he is looking at me, and even though the tone is even and low, there is sharpness, jaggedness to the edge of anger in his voice that is new, and that quickens my interest.

He leans towards me. He is so close I must crane my head to look up at him.

‘But I wasn’t … I was …’ I start to say, but he cuts me off. ‘Wasn’t what Daniel? You were not what?’ He bends down from the heights, so we are face to face. I can see beads of perspiration in his hairline, the moisture gathering in the raw fleshy corners of his eyes. ‘If you weren’t then what is it that you were? What have you been doing? What?! What?!’

He gets progressively more and more heated as he speaks. He is positively hissing a fine spray of spittle floating through the air towards me. I feel it anointing my brow, my cheeks, the top of my lip. Asperges me.

‘You will sprinkle me, O Lord, with hyssop’ I don’t realise I’m actually saying this, whispering it, until I see Alfonso’s face freeze open-mouthed. Deliberately now I whisper fully aware of the audacity of it but doing it nonetheless ‘and I shall be cleansed. You will wash me, and I shall be washed whiter than snow. Pity me, O God, according to Your great mercy.’ I am staring straight into Alfonso’s face. His eyes; they blaze, they glisten but his lips they tremble and betray him.

For the first time, I’m not afraid at all. The frisson of whatever runs through me, a current starting at my groin radiating up making my heart race. My breath catches, my cheeks burn. My tongue reaches out, and I lick his spittle off my lip.

A step too far.

He moves swiftly grabbing me by the back of the head, his thumb and fingers digging painfully into the side of my skull and propels me towards the shower room. ‘Filthy boy,’ he hisses, ‘Filthy, filthy boy.’ He is pushing my head faster than my feet can move. Head forced down I watch my feet stumble. The book falls from my hand then when I trip over the step to the shower room the towel around my waist slips off. The towel was holding my pyjama pants up, the cord having long broken. The pants are not going to stay up for long.

Sure enough, when he lifts me up the step into the bathroom by the scruff of my neck and flings me into the middle of it like the rag doll that I am, I feel the pyjama bottoms slither past my ankles.

I land on the floor face first. My cheek hitting the tiles with a bone-jarring thump. Shards of pain shoot into the back of my eyes and they water. But I don’t make a sound. I can’t.

I fight a momentary temptation to curl up into a ball, to conceal my exposed self. I lie as I land, spread-eagled on my stomach on the cold tiled floor. When I remember all this later, I remember being surprised at how unfrightened I was. I was in pain, but I had no fear. There is just that cold hot thrill fluttering in my stomach. St. Theresa’s ecstasy. I can understand the appeal now.

He is breathing heavily, panting almost. ‘You are utterly shameless,’ he says, voice ragged but not raised. I have no response to make. He is right.

I hear the pad of his shoes as he walks away then the squeak of the heavy metal taps. A sputter then hiss of water streaming down from the showers. The water hits me. It is cooling not cold.

I raise my head and look for him, at him. He is standing in the showers too, rivulets of water streaming down his face, over his glaring eyes, into his open mouth. He narrows his eyes at me. There is an intensity to him, radiating from him. I can see a tremble in the taut cords of his neck, in the muscles in his cheeks, in the knuckles showing white against the black of his pants.

‘You are an obscenity.’ The water sputters down from a dozen shower heads; the drains are gurgling, the fluorescent lights buzzing. A pool of water is gathering around my head. I can feel it lapping at my nostrils. Could I drown?

‘Stand up.’ He says it quietly, teeth gritted. I pull myself to my feet and stand to face him, but head dutifully lowered. I start moving my hands to cover my genitals but with a perverse instinct move them to my sides. He exposed me, let him be exposed to me

With a snarl that I barely have time to register, I see him take swift steps forward, see from the corner of my eye the clenched fist come swinging in from the left, feel the explosion of pain in my cheek, feel myself fly back to feel the second burst of pain at the back of my head where it hits a sink I see stars, I do, before everything goes black.

Then I feel his warm breath on my face, feel his fingers gentle on my throbbing cheek. I hold my eyes closed for another beat. ‘Daniel’ His voice is soft, urgent. Another first. ‘Daniel’ again. His face drips water on to mine, he wipes the drops off and then drips some more.

One hand is cradling my head, with his other he is caressing my cheek. I open my eyes, but now I can’t bear to look at him. I look sideways at bloody water pooling on the tile floor by my head. His voice is urgent but soft ‘Daniel? Are you, all right? Daniel?’

I don’t want to be all right. I want this.

‘Daniel?’ He asks again.

I struggle to speak. ‘It’s all right,’ I say, looking up at him. ‘I’m all right.’

He does some more staring, his thumb sliding along my cheekbone. His eyes are deep, deep black pools of sorrow that will never go away. I can feel, hear him exhale as he bends his face down and then his lips are on mine. I think he meant to kiss my forehead and I think I inadvertently arched my head up. I think. I really don’t remember. I really didn’t plan it. Really.

We freeze. He stops breathing. I am staring into the pores of cheeks smelling up close the sharpness of his aftershave. The lights flicker and sizzle through the hiss of the showers running, water plashing the tiles, gurgling down the drains. He sighs a breath of air into my mouth, but his lips don’t leave. His tongue licks his lips, touches mine. My palm is trapped between us on his chest, and I can feel the drumbeat of his heart, it grows frantic, and then I can see even as his lips remain on mine, the panic begin to flood his eyes. He snatches his head away.

He grips my jaw hard. ‘Obscenity,’ he hisses and then hisses it again.

I can’t breathe. The bone of his wrist is pressing down on my throat. The pain in my head is excruciating. I am going to die. I struggle and try to push him off me. My fingers end up in his mouth. He lifts my head and slams it against the floor. A searing pain, then it all goes black again.

I recall drifting in and out of consciousness. I have a vague memory of being carried across the lawns the air cold on my damp skin, my nose pressed against his damp shirt. The banging on the infirmary door, the sudden burst of light, Sister Nurse’s panicked, ‘Oh, Jesus, Mary, Joseph,’ and the rumble of Alfonso’s voice in his chest. Then it all goes black again.

+

‘In his own arms,’ Nurse Sister told me the next day, eyes stretched wide to impress on me the wonderment of it. ‘He brought you in his own arms here … in the middle of the night! You should be thanking God every day. Otherwise, God-only-knows what would have happened to you; eaten by dogs or something lying there in dark bleeding to death.’

‘But he didn’t tell you what happened to me?’ ‘No baba. He just said he found you … Why won’t you tell me what happened to you? You are going to have to tell Brother O’Leary. I can’t keep telling him to let you sleep.’ Sister Nurse looks at my downcast, silent face.

Much later that afternoon, when I wince as she checks the dressing on my head she says, in an impatient sharpened tone, ‘You can’t let them do this to you. You have to stand up for yourself. You can’t go through life like this.’ Nurse Sister stops fussing with the bandages. She holds my chin forcing me to look at her. ‘Daniel … Sometimes I don’t know … Why do you let the boys do things like this to you?’ Her voice is like what I imagine the Virgin would have sounded like to the children at Lourdes; leaching regret, disappointment and sublimated accusation.

I am crushed, I like Sister Nurse, and I want her to like me. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ It’s all I can think to mutter. ‘Daniel …’ she strokes my head. It has been a very long time since anyone has done that. ‘You are not a weak boy like the Gomes boy, or a sissy like Sunny. I know you. You can be very capable when you want to be, but you have to take some responsibility too. Nah?’

My jagged sobs sound loud in the quiet room. Sister Nurse stays stroking my head until I calm down. When I can breathe again, I look up at her and say, ‘I fell down the steps to the toilets. It was late at night, I was sleepy, and I tripped.’ She looks down at me impassively. Then she moves away and starts to gather things. ‘If that is what you say happened then that is what you better tell Brother O’Leary.’ She pauses by the door. ‘You will be all right Daniel, nothing broken just bruises and a slight concussion. You need to rest for a bit. You can go back to the dormitory on Saturday.’ She leaves. Saturday … today is Thursday.

Where is Alfonso? I can’t stop thinking about him.

+

I awake myself with a moan and lie there in the darkened room breathing heavily very conscious of the throbbing erection tenting the bed covers. If Sister Nurse comes in now … I roll over to my side and curl my knees up.

My eyes are closed when it registers. In the chair in the corner of the room, a spectre in white. I open my eyes and see the gleam of white cassock, and the shine of a pasty white face, the gleam of spectacles.

Not Alfonso. Brother O’Leary. He is watching me. All my blood falls back.

‘Good evening Daniel,’ he says, ‘Are you feeling better now?’ I have to swallow before I can manage a muttered, ‘Yes, Brother.’ I can hear the shouts of boys heading across the quadrangle from chapel to the refectory. He must have come in from evening prayers.

There is a rustle from his corner as he reaches up to turn the overhead light on. Even though the soft yellow light does nothing more than chase the gloom into the corners of the room, I pretend a glare and squeeze my eyes tightly shut. Anything not to see him.

More rustling as he settles back in his chair. ‘Sister Nurse tells me that you fell down the stairs to the toilets.’ ‘Yes, Brother,’ I say.

There is silence. I open my eyes. Fingers steepled in front of his pudgy face, he regards me over the top of his spectacles.

‘You don’t get bruises like that falling down stairs Daniel.’ He says. I can see him peering at me distastefully through his thick glasses. ‘Are you sure that’s what you want to say happened?’ ‘It’s what happened,’ I mutter sullenly.

He is silent, peering expressionlessly at me.

‘What did Brother Alfonso say?’ I ask. He goes still for a moment then purses his liver lips. ‘Sister Nurse tells me also that you don’t remember very much of what happened last night. After you fell down the stairs to the toilets, that is.’ My eyes flicker away from him. ‘No Brother, I don’t.’

He shifts in his chair. ‘Then it doesn’t really matter what Bother Alfonso says does it Daniel?” I say nothing.

‘You know Daniel,’ he is ice sorrow now, ‘Your type of boy is always trouble. Always.’

My type of boy is only trouble when we meet Alfonso’s type of Brother.

With a rustling and a heave, he is on his feet and then at the foot of my bed. More staring. I look away and worry at the blanket some more.

“What is going to happen to me?” I finally ask.

A sour satisfaction seeps out of his downturned mouth and rheumy eyes. ‘You are leaving. I telephoned your parents this morning. We had a long conversation. You see Daniel, falling down stairs can have very profound consequences, and we need to make sure you get the best possible care. As I told your parents I don’t know if we can provide you with that sort of care here. You are going back to Bombay. Your parents are arranging to get you into St. Francis there. The Jesuits can look after you.’

‘Sister Nurse said that I would be fine.’ The tremble in my voice betrays my bravado.

He gets into his brisk and no-nonsense mode. ‘Sister is very capable, but she is not a trained doctor. We need to get you proper treatment. You are leaving Saturday morning. Sister Louise is packing your things for you right now. We didn’t think in your condition you should go back to the dormitory. The boys are making a get-well card for you, and we are going to say a novena for you. You see, you will be well looked after.’

And so, it came to pass.

The next day I was driven to the train station, and Sister Nurse accompanied me on the two-day train journey to Bombay. Neither of us said very much. My parents met me at the station. Beyond asking how I was feeling, absolutely nothing was said, and the following week I started at St. Francis.

+

I see Brother Alfonso again. 30 years later in Bombay now Mumbai. He has done well for himself with extensive postings in places south: Africa, America. He is now a senior, senior official in the order and friends with the Pope it is said. I have followed his career all these years, and when he was finally back in the country, I tracked him down to a charity function for an orphanage for boys, of which he was a patron. Brother Alfonso is greyer, gaunter, but otherwise unchanged. I watch him move among the crowd. Aloof and inscrutable as always. Later in the evening, I make sure I am introduced to him while my wife is otherwise occupied. He blinks when he hears my name, and I can feel him hold his breath. He remembers me and he knows that I remember him. We lock eyes. We shake hands. It is like touching a piece of marble. I say what an honour it is to meet him, again with just a slight stress on the word honour to make it seem like I could mean something else. Then I let his hand go and move on without looking back, without giving him a chance to speak. I don’t look for or at him for the rest of the evening, but as I leave, I pause at the top step and scan the room below me. There he is. He is looking up at me, those eyes blazing that mouth that gash of sneer. I let my gaze drift from him to the rest of the room. I take my wife’s arm and we walk out. I thought I would finally leave Alfonso behind. But I don’t know I really can.