Читать книгу Suzanne - Anais Barbeau-Lavalette - Страница 23

Father Bisson has one eyebrow, and you have always wanted to touch it. It looks soft.

It’s so hot in the church that his eyebrow is beaded with drops that would make a pretty necklace.

You look at your mother’s dry neck, and you imagine her wearing it. The two fine bones of her clavicle as a coat rack. Her neck stiff from being bent. From looking at what has to be washed rather than what is taking to the skies.

You squirm on the bench, which creaks. Up front, the priest is addressing the crowd with conviction.

‘Our economic recovery must bring jobs to all of our labourers and the unemployed. If the fervour of prayer, patience with the heat and fatigue, could bring about change, our wishes would come true, but we also need to change our lives so that they are more consistently generous and so that mortal sin, often repeated and rarely regretted, does not destroy most of the kind acts of a given day.’