Each piece of furniture was a creeping monster about to get him, and he frantically backed into the wall. His heart froze when a door opened somewhere in the house, but before he could have stopped breathing altogether, Mrs. Janina’s voice became the beacon of normality in a world of demons disguised as everyday items.
“What’s this racket? Is that you, Father Adam?” she asked. It was the first time Adam appreciated the clip-clop of her well-used slippers.
He managed to compose himself by the time her slender silhouette passed through the door. “The lights went off,” he said, baffled to find out she’d been home this entire time. He hadn’t entered her bedroom out of respect, but maybe he should have knocked after all.
Mrs. Janina stared at him and switched on a small flashlight, which cast a circle of white glow on the wooden floor. “You never get power failures in Warsaw? I showed you where the candles are on your first day here, Father.”
She was the evil step-mother he never had, but right now he wished he could spend the night listening to her numerous complaints.
“Yes… of course you have. I’m sorry. Where’s the electric box?”
She walked across the room and pulled out a white candle from the old wooden cabinet and handed it to Adam in her usual no-nonsense way. “It’s outside. We’ll just deal with it tomorrow. With this weather, I suspect pressing buttons won’t help much. It’s probably the cables. This happens almost every time we have heavy storms, and there will be many throughout the summer. We will have to wait for the technicians to fix it tomorrow. But don’t worry, we have a generator for the fridge and freezer.”
Adam wanted to stop her, because defrosting food was the last thing he cared about now, but words got stuck in his throat, so he watched her pad back into the corridor and then listened to her door shutting while he stood still in the middle of the living room with the candle as his only friend.
The sense of panic had subsided at least, but that did not mean Adam was fine. Far from it, actually, but if he wanted light, he needed to put the candle to use. Of all nights, did this power outage have to happen when he was so emotionally unstable?
The featureless face of a pregnant nun smiled at him from the darkest corners of his imagination, and as he lit a match and used it to start the candle, he feared he’d find her staring at him from the end of the corridor.
But all he got was a bit of brightness and longer shadows. He wouldn’t find peace without atonement.
And he knew just the thing to chase his demons back to where they belonged.
Unease clung to him when he walked to his room, eyes pinned to where the light was the brightest. The pastor didn’t know about his secret, and Adam needed to keep it that way. Self-flagellation, so widespread in the past, was now frowned upon—in the Polish Church anyway—and he wanted to avoid questions about the nature of sin he wished to atone for so badly.
But for Adam, it wasn’t about penance. He hurt himself, because it was the best way to stop his mind from wandering off, the best way to chase away thoughts of attractive male bodies. And while it worked like conversion therapy was supposed to, the scourge needed to always be on hand, because no matter how hard Adam slammed the tails against his flesh, the sinful need was always there, lying dormant like a snake creeping in the tree and ready to descend when its victim was at his most vulnerable.
But tonight, the focus on pain would take his mind off fear.
The whip burned his hand as he ran out of the parsonage, soaking his feet in the puddles while his brain did its best to convince him that there was no clomping to be heard through the roaring storm. He knew it was impossible, but as he reached the door at the back of the church and fumbled with the keys, instinct still warned him of the danger lurking somewhere in the shadows and ready to strike.
Relief turned his muscles into foam the moment he burst into the building and shut it behind him. The church was perfectly still—a place of sanctuary—but it still took several heartbeats for him to compose himself enough to let go of the door handle.
Here, he had many candles, and he could light them all to chase away the obsessive feeling of doom that settled in his chest and wouldn’t leave. Back in Emil’s home, holding lust at bay had been his only worry, but he’d lost his cool, let Emil touch him, and watched his beautiful naked body instead of making his presence known right away. Sins of thought were one thing, sins of the flesh—quite another, and in the moment when Emil had held his hand and pretended to read his future, spiritual panic took over.
Now he was bearing the consequences.
Adam walked from behind the altar and faced the high-ceilinged room, which looked back at him with its dusky window-eyes. It had expectations, but once Adam pulled off his wet T-shirt, he was ready to offer himself to God once again.
But the Lord remained silent and watched Adam scramble like the tiniest bug under a microscope. He knew that Adam had sinned with Emil countless times, even if just in his mind. He knew Adam would never confess his sexuality to a priest who could in any way identify him. And maybe he also knew what Adam feared deep in his heart—that he was not fit for the priesthood.
The cassock marked him as a shepherd of souls, but how could he instruct others if his own self-control slipped so easily?
He made his way across the altar, lighting every candle in sight. And once the church was lit up with a soft glow, he was ready to face the shadows in places the illumination couldn’t reach. This was a church. Adam would be safe here, both from physical threats and those lurking in his mind.
He gave a deep exhale, staring at the central painting, at Jesus on the cross, and his hand loosened on the scourge, releasing the beaded strings while the wooden handle remained in Adam’s hand. He stood in silence while the weather outside warred against logic, but when the wind tossed raindrops at the glass, Adam remained calm. He was no longer afraid.
The moment Emil appeared in his mind again, wearing wet briefs that left little to the imagination, Adam didn’t hesitate and swung the scourge, released from his sin only when the beads hit his bare back.
All he ever wanted was to be good. To fulfill expectations and make his family proud, so why was he so mercilessly taunted by emotions he wasn’t supposed to experience? Why couldn’t he have loved women? He could have gotten married then, had a family, lived in God’s grace. But if he couldn’t channel his energy into serving the Lord, what place was left for him within the Church? What was he supposed to do?
A sob tore out of his throat as he smacked the whip harder against his back. The pain came from within, always growing, pulsing like a cancer Adam couldn’t remove, but the physical agony allowed its release, reducing the pressure Adam had to live with day to day. Breathless, he counted each strike, closing his eyes as the continuous ache took away his fantasies of Emil, his scent, and the imagined flavor Adam associated with him—fresh like the sweetest strawberries yet also somewhat meaty, strong.
“What can I do?” he uttered in a broken whisper as his knees gave way, and he stumbled to the wooden floor, trying to catch his breath while his flesh adjusted to all the new bruises. How many strokes had it been? He’d stopped counting at twenty.
He’d brought this suffering upon himself. Every day. He jogged past Emil’s home with the purpose of seeing him, even if in passing. Every day when he fell asleep, Emil’s dark hair covering both their faces was the last thing he thought of. Since he’d arrived in Dybukowo, there hadn’t been an hour when he didn’t desire Emil. And when he didn’t think about him, Emil came to him in dreams.