A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess

yourself, and Kit sat on the edge of his bed
in some queasiness. Off, off.
    - I saved him from drowning, know that and keep it in
your black heart. And I can outbook you in learning if I wish.
I know the Greek word tupto and can act on it.
    So saying he left, and Kit straightened his wrinkled hose,
blindly attached his bloodied trunks thereto, and put on his
dirty shirt. He was in need of a hot posset. This he got in
the College kitchen, where he instructed an undercook in the
curdling of hot milk with wine and the adding of cinnamon and
cloves. Then he went to the College chapel and sat in its cool
dark in a manner of self-disgust. There were confession boxes
here and, the hour being eleven, some students were lining up
on their knees at one of them. Auricular, as it was called, from
the Latin ear, but auric meant gold. Golden confession, a trinket
of the old faith reformed out of being. Now one confessed, if at
all, to God direct, but God rendered no absolution. He creaked
over, his headache still at him, to join the end of the line, asking
in a whisper:
    - What is the formula?
    - How?
    - What do I say?
    - I see, your first time. Say: Bless me father for I have
sinned exceedingly in thought word and deed through my most
grievous fault. And then peel your sins off one at a time, seriatim
if you prefer.
    When his turn came he found himself in a dark cell with
a prie-dieu under a curtain of black lawn through which, by
grace of light beyond, he dimly saw an outlined seated figure.
A sacramental seal, a double anonymity. He said:
    - I have committed fornication.
    - So have many, my son. With women married or unmarried?
    - Never. With boys and with men. (Married. Unmarried.
The rhotic weakness tried to strike a nerve, but the nerves
would not stay still for the striking.)
    - So. That is a foul sin since it is against nature. We
have not merely the condemnation of Holy Mother Church herself, which ordains burning as Sodom was burned, but the
prohibition of reason, since the male seed is for purposes of
generation.

    - Is all waste of the male seed equally heinous? Is mastru-pation as evil a sin?
    - Less so since it does not win others to sin, but souls
resident in man’s seed in potentia that might at the last people
God’s kingdom are thwarted, nay murdered by an unnatural act.
And sodomy is most unnatural, iniquitous and beastly. I beg you
to give up that sin.
    - I cannot, save by vowing celibacy. I am drawn to my
own sex, not to the other. I was born so.
    - No man is born so. Male and female created he them.
You have been perverted at some point in your life recoverable
to memory.
    - Not so. I am as I am. I can no more repent than I
can change my skin or grow another finger.
    - You say cannot, I say will not.
    - If I say I repent, I lie. If I undertake to turn my face
from it, this as I am told being a condition of forgiveness, then
the undertaking is a lie.
    - Well, my son, you must needs be damned.
    - And if I say that damnation itself is a lie?
    - Then you commit yourself to atheism and what sins you
will. But make no mistake about damnation. When you die
you go to hell and stay in hell for ever. This is no matter
of supposition. Holy Mother Church is built on the rock of
Christ’s ordination. Turn your back on truth if that is your
will, since all men have free will, but be prepared (prepared,
prepared, arhotic) for the ultimate fiery embrace of the Father of
Lies.
    - I say that my condition is condoned by Christ’s own
love of the beloved disciple.
    - That is foul blasphemy and sulphurous ignorance and
shows lamentable perversion in confusing eros and agape. You
seem to be a lost soul.
    - Amen.

    He left black in mood and ready to fist Frizer to jelly,
though his headache was cured. He sat in the refectory with
students on whom no sanctity seemed yet to have descended,
for they threw bread pith at one another and lifted their arses
from the bench the louder to rap