Boy in the World. Niall Williams

a supplier in Dublin the Master knew. It had a thin frayed golden ribbon that acted as a page marker. This the boy especially loved. He loved when the book was closed to see how it marked his progress, and to open the journal by taking the frayed end and pulling so the pages splayed open at exactly the right place, like an invitation.

      Now the invitation was urgent. He pulled open the page quickly and took a green pen from the book-stacked locker beside his bed. He looked briefly at the words he had written the night before.

      Cour-age

      Faith-age

      Believe-age

      I believe in what?

      Now on a new page he wrote:

      I burnt the cream letter.

      Crimletter Criminaletter

      Why? Why?

      There is no I in why.

      There is no why.

      Because knot.

      Because I am knot.

      Because A cause B cause

      See cause I don’t want to know.

      No know thatsall.

      Endofstory.

      The boy lifted his pen and snapped the journal shut. That was it. He was done. Though to someone else the few phrases he had written might have seemed barely anything, almost the moment he had finished writing them the boy felt better. He sat on his bed and could breathe more easily now. It was over and done with. In a few moments he heard the Master’s heavy step on the stairs, then the knock on his door.

      ‘Come in,’ the boy said.

      The Master’s face was kind and full of concern, in his grey eyes something so forgiving and wise that the boy felt at once the comfort of him, like a flannel blanket.

      ‘All right?’ asked the Master.

      ‘Yes. Fine. Thanks.’

      ‘All right, just that it’s maybe time for us to go. And you know what Father Paul’s like. Want everything like clockwork. Be up since dawn with terror of the bishop coming.’

      The boy stood up.

      ‘Here,’ the Master leaned forward and with a slight tugging put the boy’s tie back in place. ‘All right?’

      The boy nodded. They went downstairs and passed through the sitting-room that was set for the guests later, the boy’s seven great-aunts and their husbands. There were stacks of rough-looking sandwiches with their fillings half-falling out and bottles of various kinds of drink. ‘Look all right?’ asked the Master. ‘You know what my sisters-in-law are like? Eat a turkey each, never mind turkey sandwiches.’

      ‘Looks fine.’

      ‘Good, good.’ The Master crossed to the television where the news channel the boy liked to watch was reporting latest trends in world terrorism. He switched it off. ‘Enough of that,’ he said, ‘come on.’ They went outside and got into the small yellow car and drove towards the village.

      It was a blue May day, the countryside they passed full of the beginnings of summer: hedgerows sprinkled with the small white blooms of blackthorn and the blaze of yellow gorse, meadows already green and grass thickening. Soon farmers would be out in tractors and morning, noon and early night would fill with the sound of mowers. The village was not far away and as they arrived at the top of its one long street there were cars parked everywhere and at all angles, as if abandoned. Banners of small triangular flags had been hung between the lamp-posts to signal the Confirmation Day and to welcome the bishop.

      ‘We’re a tiny bit late,’ the Master said, ‘but never mind,’ he added, noting a look of concern on the boy’s face. ‘I’m the Master, they can’t start without me.’

      The boy did not say anything.

      ‘You all right?’ The Master patted him on his shoulder. ‘Honestly you’ll be fine. Absolutely fine.’

      He stopped in the middle of the street and then began to reverse into the smallest of spaces between two cars, but as he did the engine coughed and died. The Master shrugged. ‘Well, made it this far,’ he said to the old car, and got out to hurry up the street.

      Inside the church the choir was already singing. The parents of children from the Master’s school exchanged looks of disapproval when he at last arrived. He smiled and was making a small wave at his seven sisters-in-law when the bell was rung on the altar and all stood. Mrs Conway on the organ pounded out the notes and made a jerking motion of her head, so that verse by verse her pink glasses edged further down her nose. The small timid figure of Father Paul came out; to hide his terror of the bishop, he wore a curve of smile freshly glued.

      The bishop was a large man who loved himself completely. His fine black helmet of hair he considered magnificent, his nose straight, his teeth blanched and fearsome, his great girth symbolic. There was more of him than of most people.

      The choir sang. The little church was hot with people, with the hundred candles and the pride of the parents. The first prayers passed over the boy, and soon he was standing and kneeling with others of his classmates but in a kind of dream. The whole event was unreal, as though he were watching it on the television, or had opened the door and come inside a theatre where a play was going on and everyone was involved except him. Everyone but him knew the lines. Or, they didn’t even see him. He wasn’t even there. There was just this new shirt and tie and new trousers and polished shoes in his place.

      Over the weeks of preparation and drilling, the many visits the class had made down to the church, the boy knew what followed what. He knew like clockwork how the ceremony was to go, how first there was the Mass and then inside it as it were was the actual Confirmation when the boys and girls would step out of the church pews and go in line up to the bishop. He knew there were some in his class who were terrified of this. There were some whose mothers and fathers, for what reasons he was not sure, had told them horror stories from their own childhood. Had told them of bishops who smacked children hard across the face sending them spinning like tops. Bishops who asked impossible questions just to watch the humiliation burning the cheeks of the poor unfortunates. Bishops with waxy skin and hedgehog moustaches. Bishops with teeth that whistled. Bishops who smelled like burnt sausages. And when Father Paul had come to talk to the class about the Confirmation and its meaning he was a priest who was so unsure of himself, who seemed terrified that he might say the wrong thing, that he spoke in whispers. To the best that most of them could understand he had told them that after Confirmation they were all going to be soldiers.

      The Master had told the boy no such tales. Rather when the boy had asked him one evening he had spoken of Confirmation as a rite of passage. ‘It’s a kind of gateway,’ he said, ‘between boyhood and manhood.’

      ‘Other religions have them too.’

      ‘They do,’ agreed the Master. ‘In the Jewish religion they have the Bar Mitzvah.’

      ‘The Hindus have a ceremony too. The native Americans used to have one.’

      ‘That’s right. Jumping across fires, I seem to recall,’ the Master said. ‘The main point is it marks something. I suppose it’s the beginning of becoming who you are. There’s nothing at all to be afraid of.’

      Now, as the actual ceremony continued, the boy was not frightened at all. But there was an unease gathering inside him. Something was wrong. For no reason at all he kept thinking about one of the prayers, the Creed, and its opening line, ‘I believe in one God.’ He had said it a hundred times, maybe more. But only now, at that very moment, did he ask himself if this was what he believed. Suddenly it seemed such a huge thing to him, such a declaration. Did he even believe he had a soul? Did he believe such a thing existed? Or had a separate life longer than his? That even then as he sat there in the church it was inside him? That somewhere his mother’s soul floated?

      Meanwhile the Offertory had come and gone, the gifts had been carried up. On the altar