Fall on Your Knees Read Online Free

tuner. She was cross-examined. “Did he touch you? Are you sure?” And the nuns were alerted. She was never alone, and at night her mother locked Materia’s bedroom door.
    Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, “Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.” She’d been too young to realize that he was talking to her brothers. On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Materia climbed out her window and left the Old Country for ever.
    Come with me from Lebanon, O my sister . February 17 1899, a moonless night, I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys . They set out before dawn on a hired horse and got married that day at Irish Cove, in a Protestant ceremony performed by an ex-navy chaplain who asked no questions in exchange for a quart of rum. Thy lips, O my bride, drop as the honeycomb, honey and milk are under thy tongue . They snowshoed in to a hunting cabin on Great Bras d’Or Lake that was used by rich Americans in the fall, thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my bride . It was all boarded up but he set to work — thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes — prying planks off windows, healing the blind. Inside, he wouldn’t let her open her eyes till he’d swept, lit a fire and laid the table. He’d thought of everything; there was rosehip wine, new linen sheets, and the moth-bally tartan from his late mother’s hope chest, and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon . He sang her a Gaelic lullaby which made him cry because, if such a thing was possible, he loved her more in his mother tongue, a garden inclosed is my sister, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed . He kissed her so gently, didn’t want to frighten her, he’d mail-ordered What Every Husband Should Know but decided never to touch her in that way if necessary, he’d rather die than frighten or hurt — she reached up and stroked the back of his head, “Habibi,” she whispered, “BeHebak.” With my own hands I opened to my love .
    On the second day she said, “Let’s live here for ever, let’s never go anywhere except New York City.”
    And he said, “Don’t you want a lovely big house and fine handsome children and to have your parents say, ‘Well, you were right all along, Mrs Piper’?”
    “No,” rolling over to lie on him, her elbows on either side of his face, “I want to stay right here for a long long time,” curving her belly against him, “for ever and ever …” kiss me with the kisses of your mouth . “And ever and ever …,” he sighed.
    When he came out of the woods for provisions on the third day, James was seized by two large men and taken by cart to Sydney and the back room of Mr Mahmoud’s Dry Goods Emporium on Pitt Street. Mr Mahmoud sat on a pressed-back wooden chair, a long narrow man with leathery cheeks and black wavy hair.
    “Sir —” said James.
    Mr Mahmoud had splintering brown eyes. James looked for Materia in them. “Sir —” said James.
    Mr Mahmoud raised his forefinger slightly and the two younger men removed James’s boots and socks — James noted with some distaste that they both of them could use a shave.
    “— where’s my wife?”
    Mr Mahmoud took a leather thong and whipped the soles of James’s feet so that for days they swelled and peeled and leaked like drenched onion paper.
    They put him in the YMCA and brought him meals. When he could walk again with the aid of a cane, the two men escorted him to Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church. “Take your hands off me,” James said, but he hadn’t heard either man speak a word of English. “Oily bastards,” he added.
    Materia was waiting for him alone at the altar, veiled in black. She wouldn’t look at him. Her hair had been cut off. They exchanged vows once again, this time before a priest of Rome. It was James’s first time in a Catholic church. Smells like a whorehouse, he thought, although he’d never been in one of those either.
    At