The Sisters Page #2

"The Sisters" is a short story by James Joyce that represents a psychological exploration of an Irish boy and his reactions towards the death of Father Flynn - a priest who was his mentor. The story delves into the boy's emotions of fear, guilt, and angst, as he attempts to reconcile with death and related existentialist questions. It's one of the stories from Joyce's collection, Dubliners, examining the monotony and complexities of small-town life in Dublin.

• Children

								

were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as
the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and
towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I
wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake
them; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the
Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Directory and as
closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper, elucidating all
these intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make no
answer or only a very foolish and halting one upon which he used to
smile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me
through the responses of the Mass which he had made me learn by heart;
and, as I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now
and then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately.
When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his
tongue lie upon his lower lip—a habit which had made me feel uneasy in
the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.

As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried
to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered
that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique
fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the
customs were strange—in Persia, I thought.... But I could not remember
the end of the dream.

In the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning.
It was after sunset; but the window-panes of the houses that looked to
the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds. Nannie
received us in the hall; and, as it would have been unseemly to have
shouted at her, my aunt shook hands with her for all. The old woman
pointed upwards interrogatively and, on my aunt’s nodding, proceeded to
toil up the narrow staircase before us, her bowed head being scarcely
above the level of the banister-rail. At the first landing she stopped
and beckoned us forward encouragingly towards the open door of the
dead-room. My aunt went in and the old woman, seeing that I hesitated
to enter, began to beckon to me again repeatedly with her hand.

I went in on tiptoe. The room through the lace end of the blind was
suffused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like
pale thin flames. He had been coffined. Nannie gave the lead and we
three knelt down at the foot of the bed. I pretended to pray but I
could not gather my thoughts because the old woman’s mutterings
distracted me. I noticed how clumsily her skirt was hooked at the back
and how the heels of her cloth boots were trodden down all to one side.
The fancy came to me that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in
his coffin.

But no. When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he
was not smiling. There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the
altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice. His face was very
truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled
by a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room—the flowers.

We blessed ourselves and came away. In the little room downstairs we
found Eliza seated in his arm-chair in state. I groped my way towards
my usual chair in the corner while Nannie went to the sideboard and
brought out a decanter of sherry and some wine-glasses. She set these
on the table and invited us to take a little glass of wine. Then, at
her sister’s bidding, she filled out the sherry into the glasses and
passed them to us. She pressed me to take some cream crackers also but
I declined because I thought I would make too much noise eating them.
She seemed to be somewhat disappointed at my refusal and went over
quietly to the sofa where she sat down behind her sister. No one spoke:
we all gazed at the empty fireplace.

My aunt waited until Eliza sighed and then said:

“Ah, well, he’s gone to a better world.”

Eliza sighed again and bowed her head in assent. My aunt fingered the
stem of her wine-glass before sipping a little.

“Did he ... peacefully?” she asked.

“Oh, quite peacefully, ma’am,” said Eliza. “You couldn’t tell when the
breath went out of him. He had a beautiful death, God be praised.”

“And everything...?”

“Father O’Rourke was in with him a Tuesday and anointed him and
prepared him and all.”

“He knew then?”

“He was quite resigned.”

“He looks quite resigned,” said my aunt.

“That’s what the woman we had in to wash him said. She said he just
looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No
one would think he’d make such a beautiful corpse.”

“Yes, indeed,” said my aunt.

She sipped a little more from her glass and said:

“Well, Miss Flynn, at any rate it must be a great comfort for you to
know that you did all you could for him. You were both very kind to
him, I must say.”

Eliza smoothed her dress over her knees.

“Ah, poor James!” she said. “God knows we done all we could, as poor as
we are—we wouldn’t see him want anything while he was in it.”

Nannie had leaned her head against the sofa-pillow and seemed about to
fall asleep.

“There’s poor Nannie,” said Eliza, looking at her, “she’s wore out. All
the work we had, she and me, getting in the woman to wash him and then
laying him out and then the coffin and then arranging about the Mass in
the chapel. Only for Father O’Rourke I don’t know what we’d have done
at all. It was him brought us all them flowers and them two
candlesticks out of the chapel and wrote out the notice for the
Freeman’s General and took charge of all the papers for the cemetery
and poor James’s insurance.”

“Wasn’t that good of him?” said my aunt.

Eliza closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.

“Ah, there’s no friends like the old friends,” she said, “when all is
said and done, no friends that a body can trust.”

“Indeed, that’s true,” said my aunt. “And I’m sure now that he’s gone
to his eternal reward he won’t forget you and all your kindness to
him.”

“Ah, poor James!” said Eliza. “He was no great trouble to us. You
wouldn’t hear him in the house any more than now. Still, I know he’s
gone and all to that....”

“It’s when it’s all over that you’ll miss him,” said my aunt.

“I know that,” said Eliza. “I won’t be bringing him in his cup of
beef-tea any more, nor you, ma’am, sending him his snuff. Ah, poor
James!”

She stopped, as if she were communing with the past and then said
shrewdly:

“Mind you, I noticed there was something queer coming over him
latterly. Whenever I’d bring in his soup to him there I’d find him with
his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth
open.”

She laid a finger against her nose and frowned: then she continued:

“But still and all he kept on saying that before the summer was over
he’d go out for a drive one fine day just to see the old house again
where we were all born down in Irishtown and take me and Nannie with
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