Sad Clowns

The Clown’s danced and jigged like sad marionettes, jagged, strings tightened to high tension, Red and white onesies, opposing coloured buttons, blood on snow, snowflakes on blood, seeming like epileptic, primary teddy bears. White daubed faces, black scars, black tears, red lips, bold against the alabaster make up the Clowns wake in our world. Hidden before, reanimated.

The sad clown’s carousel around me in a mad harlequinade whilst I knelt in their midst, bowed, the tears of heaven falling upon me.

My priestly robes, dark wool, crimson sash, blended me into the sad melee.

I gazed upon their faces and looked into their eyes and saw them as mimes, controlled, guided and driven by something else. In a play. They were painted and odd to humans such as I.

My face was clear and clean, shaved, unadorned but smeared with ash from prayer. A polar opposite but the same, a clownish marionette dressed in, purple, black and crimson, as a priest should be. Bible Black. Funereal purple. Blood red. The only difference between they and I; they were dancing and I prostrate.

I raised my head to look at the monsters surrounding me, dancing in saturnalia, Dionysian abandon. I gazed upon the glazed eyes, the unmoving faces and saw them as a disgusting play. A play where there was only one victim and that was to be me.

My face was not painted but pale skinned, darkened only by the ash smeared on my forehead from prayer. I seemed their polar opposite but I was the very same. A clownish marionette dressed in priestly robes. A figure of ridicule.

2.

Despite the dance there was no music, no pipes, or drums, they danced to the music of their madness. Silence reigned. The children and old folk huddled close but made no sound, no gasp, no whoop nor wail, they, simply, waited.

I knew my crimes against the church that I loved, I knew my crimes before god and Jesus.

My only hope for absolution, forgiveness, acceptance by the great and the good lay in the fact that even as I did those bad things I was trying to do good. I was trying to help, often with misgiving’s. I was trying to make life better for others. I failed more often than I succeeded.

3.

I had not until this time understood the fell beast that is Satan. He was simply a name, a fear, a banshee, a barrow weight, another monster to be feared but unknown to me. A shadow under my bed at night, a darkness at the back of a wardrobe.

There was never anything there other than dust or old clothes. Satan did not lurk in the corners of my bedroom or kitchen. Something else did.

I have never slept well, I never have, I have much on my conscience and so that should be no surprise, most sleeping nights, I spend tossing and turning but even insomniacs finally succumb to exhaustion. On those nights I sleep and sometimes, I dream.

She first appeared to me in this time of contemplation, a rare night of sleep. In the guise of a penitent she threw herself at my feet. The sad clowns parody our first meeting in a whirligig of emotions. Despair, dark and purple, poison yellow and gangrene boiled and stirred rises to the top as a scum that should be lifted from the pot. It was never lifted and our fist touch was a kiss to my hand then an embrace after her husband died. Buckets of water thrown over each other sad faces, glee and victimisation their only toll.

3.

Mass, over, sanctified, I divested myself of my priestly garb and the chains of my office. I was free again to be who I would be. She sat on the stairs weeping as I descended.

I have always been a good person, I was a good boy, a good son to my parents, a good brother to my brother. I have rarely done badly by anyone, I will not suffer injustice or parsimony I preach clemency upon those that sin.

Yet I am human and plagued by human emotions, fears and thoughts much as everyone else. I am not an angel, in my darker moments, I wish death upon spiders, as I have a dislike for them. The other insects can live, the mammals, rats, mice, snakes, even the parasites, all have their place in god’s plan, I just do not like spiders.

I sat beside her, drawing in the black robes, I put a comforting arm around her shoulder. Often you can console yourself and those under your care with “throwaway lines” such as “she/he had a good life” or “they will be happy to see you continue”. “hey are with their husband/wife/children. Every priest worries and hates those days but at the same time feel’s lucky that it is not them or their Family. Still, for all it comes, insidious, or blatant, we all die and every priest, minister and person alive knows that. Can we prepare for it? No, even at a hundred years old, even after a long illness it is still difficult to lose a loved one. It always was and it always will be.

4,

Whilst wondrously tempting she was no temptress. No Gloriana, Maeve, or Guinevere rather a mousey little housewife seeking solace from god. Yet that is temptation to a priest. A soul in need of succour, one wishing redemption, the sinner. I was helping her, aiding her through her dark times, helping, I thought, though I see differently now.

I needed to save that woman, it was not only her due but my calling that drew me to her. I could, perhaps, help her in the way that Jesus helped us all, my training focused upon saving the lost and unwary, she seemed that girl. I would help her.

I talked with her often, she believed, not pretending to as so many these days. She loved god. But had been mistreated.

Pray with me, I asked and rising from her sofa gazed towards the empty wall. Accept god as I have.

The clowns dance, in a circle, in the midst are two people, man and woman both are wearing masks one wears the mask of an angel, the other the mask of a devil. One is dressed in priestly robes the other naked.

There is no beauty the woman’s face hollow and haggard, thin lipped, her cheeks drawn in her dark eyes sunken. Her breasts drooping and flat against her chest.

5.

The devil tempts all of god’s disciples in differing ways, a temptation that they cannot resist, I could not resist the hopeless and helpless woman. My piousness, my faith, protected me from the lure of beauty, the draw of riches, perfection and adoration but it had not prepared me for the misery and abjection, the woman showed. My priestly soul cried out for her and my comfort for her abjection was assured.

The sad clowns pirouetted a dance of my demise. Moving in slow and supple shapes they painted my life in a sad, cloudy melodrama describing in dance, or an approximation thereof, my fall from grace.

A Grand Guignol drama set before them, a derisory polka, each weaving through and around the two.

The priest and the penitent were describing arcs, rounded shapes, arched backs, drawn in bellies, fluids passed and needs long repressed sated. He took her home, made her soup and gave her his bed as he slept upon his rough uncomfortable couch and for weeks that ritual continued until one night as the chill grew deeper and took hold she crept through and pushed her self onto the couch beside him.

6.

She felt warm curled into him and he was grateful for the warmth. His imagination took him places that he could never go where it had before. All in his mind. Yet slowly as she crept into his bed she crept into his heart and he began to see her beauty. She payed with him arousing his sex, his humanity his sexuality, his need, to give help, to aid.

7. The sad clowns saw his pain, felt his need, they danced with garish familiarity around the pair. Keening their sad song. In the centre there are two figures kneeling, facing each other, one in priestly robes the other in a shapeless denim dress. The priest takes the woman’s hand and kisses her palm softly and sensuously.

Temptation comes, in many forms, those that are obvious, gold, riches, beauty, sex and others that may well be our salvation. Our goodness, charity, faith and our propensity to good as well as ill. Perhaps even our goodness is the work of the devil.

The sad clowns all gather together in a circle around the soon to become lovers, sad and glad as all clowns should be.