Incense
M.F.G. BOLTON

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It was the excitement of the dark that drew me to sing. Up at the back of the church, up there in the loft, came the scraping of papers and then the full breath of the choir, but down here in the pews you couldn't see their faces because of the light. The thick, fractured light of the windows trickled through them into a flood upon us and all I saw was the shape of the mass.

They were up there forever. Always before us and always after us their sound swirling about me, even after the singing had stopped. They saw us all, when we saw nothing of them, and they gave us everything, pure and effortless and exotically mysterious. I knew they were all beautiful in that dark because I could hear it in their voices. It was the clearness of God so soft and strong and washing you into loving them.

I would stand with my mother in the pews and hold her hand as they sang. She wondered why I squeezed so tight with the highest notes, and I told her it was God. She said that God was near the altar, to look there, and I would try, but his voice was somewhere in the choir and it tugged me to look back. 'Don't look back, it's rude.' 'Don't stare at Mrs. Harris, she's crippled, it's rude.' 'Don't look at Mr. Skinner's ears like that, it makes him shy.' She would squeeze my hand to make me turn 'round. But she didn't squeeze my hand like I had hers and I knew that she wasn't God.

The people in our pews couldn't sing and they weren't beautiful, that was why they gave their money to the men with the heavy wooden plates that no one must drop. I put my pennies in, too, making them clink with all the others, each week trying to cover Mrs. Martin's wide blue bank note. I knew they were all scared of Mrs. Martin because of her voice and her money. She taught in the big school and shouted at the big boys and girls. I was scared of her like everyone else and I hated her voice, warbling and dull, but when the choir sang there was a beauty in it that was nobody's--it was just there, present. They let us hear and believe in God--I saw the priest raise his arms and heard the bell ring, but it was the choir that brought God into the church. He could see and hear everything, my mother told me, but I knew He was never there without the choir because they used Latin and a music so old that people said God had written it.

One week we went to church on a Saturday and, when I twisted my mother's hand as always, they had gone. Near our pew were some people with guitars, and they sang songs about God--but He wasn't here. I knew that time was different, everywhere, and I wondered if God was somewhere else that Sunday, in some country, with the choir, just listening. That day the Host tasted waxy and I couldn't swallow it. My mother said I had to. It was Jesus' body. I wondered if Jesus would mind if I held onto Him, if l put him in my hand.

My mother saw me and dragged me out into the harsh daylight. I began to feel bare without all that wood and stone and glass around. She said I must eat it and I shook my head; I didn't want to eat Jesus--I wanted to hold Him and watch Him. She said that Jesus didn't want little boys with dirty hands touching Him; she said that I was not clean enough to touch Him; she said only the priest was clean because he was good and I was not.

When I looked at Jesus, He wasn't very dirty but I said I was sorry, and I swallowed Him. I could feel Him in my tummy making it warm, and it was like the choir sound in my tummy, and my mother said that was my soul. She said it was a good sign and that God would forgive me because I was so little, and I wondered then why she could not, but I didn't say it--she would squeeze my hand again and it would hurt.

One winter night, when it was dark and cold outside, my mother asked me why I liked singing. I said because God sang, and I told her that God lived in the choir loft. God lives everywhere in the church she said--because it is His house--but perhaps sometimes He was in the choir loft. I knew she couldn't hear Him in their voices because she always looked at the altar, upright and unturning, staring with her eyes down at the priest and whispering softly to herself and squeezing my hand to turn around or learn the words. I told her I thought the choir were angels and that, if they could sing like that, they could probably fly and they could probably do miracles like Jesus and make things happy. She laughed and said all they could do was sing, like me, and that I could be in the choir if she asked. Did I want her to ask. Ohhhh yes! Oh, yes please. I knew that I loved her then and I thought she might love me, too. The hand could not squeeze me in the choir.

All the way we walked to the church, I dangled my free hand on the garden walls, pushing the scraping and rumbling through my body and into her hand, trying to shake mine away. She was very strong and only said I must pay attention to Mr. Braun, the choirmaster, that I must do what he said and be good and polite like everyone else. I remember how dark it was by the church that night and how the moon seemed to be a winking eye as I skipped along with my mother. That night I could feel my soul jump as we got closer and closer to the thick, heavy wooden door and beyond that all the ghosts and angels and silent sleeping dead that glowed from the walls. It was so old in there that my excitement and fear was swathed in calm and I didn't feel seven anymore; I felt God's age. The coolness of the church was different from outside, it was a musty enclosing flow and I believed it was really the Holy spirit flooding to surround me.

My mother took me over to one of the pews and there he sat; the closest man to God I could imagine. Here was the man who could make God come to our church. This was the man who summoned such beauty for the priest, and deep in his face I could see all the command and control of God. When he touched my own face with his strong warm hands it was a blessing, and I could feel myself warm to him. I thought he might have been John the Baptist making our parish ready for God, and I shivered to think of his creased, gentle old man's head on a silver plate. My mother left me with Mr. Braun, and as she let my hand go he offered his own and I felt a tiny embrace as I took it.