He settled into his seat, expecting to see something new and different. The procession passed by him, with Andy Walsh at its head, dressed in long red robes embroidered in gold. He looked a lot like Tibor did, during the corresponding day in the Armenian calendar. Behind him came two middle-aged men carrying books. They were dressed in white muslin garments that looked cheap, badly made and half-finished. The altar boys that followed them were dressed in the same way, except that their garments looked even cheaper. That was definitely an innovation. In the old days, the altar boys had been dressed with as much care as a girl on the night of her debutante ball.
This, Gregor thought, was not going to be as interesting as he’d hoped it would be.
[4]
As it turned out, for most of the Mass it wasn’t interesting at all. There was a lot of standing and sitting and making the Sign of the Cross. There was a lot of singing, too. The congregation was supposed to join in, but it didn’t, leaving the vocal exertions up to the choir. Gregor didn’t blame them. The music was frequently insipid and sometimes just plain awful, the kind of thing the Carpenters might have written on a bad day. Insipidity, as far as Gregor could tell, was the chief achievement of this new Mass as translated into English. The Bible readings had power, because the Bible had power. Even a bad translation of the Bible couldn’t avoid letting through some of the passion that had possessed the book’s authors. The new prayers sounded as if they’d been written by and for the sort of person who never graduated from the vocabulary of Dick and Jane. Those old prayers that had been retained had been virtually destroyed, and for no good reason Gregor could discover. The Confiteor had been eviscerated.
He’d expected something worth hearing in Andy Walsh’s homily—he had heard so much about Andy Walsh’s homilies—but that came to nothing, too. It was as rambling and incoherent as he’d been led to expect it would be, but there were no sideswipes at the Pope or speculations on how much better the world would be if it gave up its commitment to the idea of sin. If the little speech was about anything at all, it was about kindness to animals. That made Gregor think of the goat, and to look for it. It was nowhere in sight.
According to the little booklet that had been left on his seat, the Washing of the Feet was supposed to follow the homily, if it was to take place at all. Apparently it wasn’t. Andy Walsh finished talking and left the lecturn. The choir tuned up and warbled a little ditty about Peace on Earth. Andy Walsh came down front and center and said, “Could we have the gifts brought to the altar?”
It was all very informal and haphazard. There was hesitation in the pews. Then two people, a man and a woman, got up and went to the small table that had been placed far at the front of the center aisle. On that table were a plate covered with a cloth, a small pitcher of the kind used to hold cream, and the larger pitcher Peg Monaghan had been carrying back and forth before the service started. The woman took the plate and the small pitcher. The man took the larger pitcher. The two of them walked up to Andy Walsh and handed the things over.
It was when the man turned around to go back to his seat that Gregor realized he was watching Barry Field. Again. This time, there could be no mistake. Gregor was staring Field straight in the face. He sat forward, trying to get a better look. Field slipped into a pew and out of sight.
There were priests in the Catholic Church known to get their Masses over with in no time at all. Andy Walsh must have been one of them. No sooner had Field returned to his seat than the congregation was required to stand. No sooner had they stood than Andy had raced them through what looked like four long paragraphs of prayer in Gregor’s booklet. Then the congregation boomed out another abominable simplification of an ancient prayer—why change “Lord God of Hosts” to “Lord, God of power and might”? what for?—and everyone in the church went down on their knees.
Gregor’s height was in his body, not his legs. Like the legs of most Armenian men, his were stumpy. Down on his knees, he should have been able to see anything. Instead, he could see nothing but the back of the woman in front of him.
He leaned sideways into the aisle and tried to get a look at what was going on. Andy Walsh was making his way through the Roman Canon, much more slowly than he had made his way through anything else. For some reason, Gregor found his tone ominous.
He’s getting ready to pull something, Gregor thought. What?
The canon over, Andy Walsh had lifted a large Host over his head and was going into the familiar words, the one part of the Mass that had not been changed.
“‘He broke the bread, gave it to His disciples, and said, Take this, all of you, and eat it; this is my body which will be given up for you.’” Andy Walsh broke the bread, and ate it. Then he gripped the edge of the altar and knelt quickly down. Just as quickly, he came up.