The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

sins committed in the village and ask for his blessing, which they would send out, all year long from the parish steeple on the mountain. The bells left for Rome on the day of Christ’s death and returned on Easter to announce his Resurrection.
    I think it was an angel who made a suggestion that became more and more pressing; though I had no way to go to the moon it would be very easy for me to go to Rome — with the travelling bells.
    The week was interminable. I knew that Good Friday was on the horizon and I was waiting for it, but it came no closer. Each day was longer than the one before. The suffering of Christ was endless. I couldn’t pray to him to hasten thearrival of Good Friday… I collected the coins I’d hidden in secret places, I wrote a message to put under my pillow, explaining my absence to my parents. Finally, I announced to my friend Lapin that I’d be disappearing for a few days ‘to a holy city I can’t tell you the name of.’
    â€˜Whereabouts?’
    My secret was too big for me.
    â€˜I’m going to Rome.’
    Lapin understood immediately.
    â€˜With the bells?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜Let’s both of us go to Rome!’
    At last it was Good Friday. In church, my friend Lapin and I followed from prayer to prayer, from psalm to psalm, with extraordinary attentiveness, the last hours of Christ who would die at three o’clock in the afternoon. At that very moment the bells would fly away, taking us with them to Rome. The psalms dragged on, prayers were repeated endlessly, with words that grew longer and longer. The hands on the clock above the pulpit seemed to have stopped moving towards three o’clock.
    Much later, it was two minutes to three. Our friends were praying relentlessly and their prayers prevented time from advancing. We wouldn’t see our praying friends again until after Easter, after our journey to Rome. Lapin and I waited for Christ’s final sigh: perhaps he had decided not to let himself be killed by men that Friday? We waited for three o’clock to arrive in the vestibule — the curé called it the narthex — where the ropes hung down from the bells they were attached to, high up in the steeple. The black hand on the clock suddenly indicated one minute to three. My legsfelt wobbly. Soon it would be three o’clock. As it had happened every year since the beginning of the Church, Christ would die at three o’clock and the bells would fly away to Rome. They would transport Lapin and me, clinging to the ropes which we would wind around our waists. As I tied the rope I could feel the bells shudder. They would take flight at precisely three o’clock. Christ on his cross would open his mouth to utter his last word. I could hear his voice, almost dead:
‘Sitio!’
He would allow his last sigh to escape. Lapin and I closed our eyes. When we opened them again we would be in Rome.
    It was three o’clock. Christ had died. Five past three. Ten. A quarter after three. Christ had been dead for several minutes and we were still clinging to the bell ropes. We were still far from Rome.
    â€˜If you ask me,’ Lapin concluded, ‘the bells haven’t gone anywhere.’
    I hadn’t given up hope: we hadn’t gone, but perhaps the bells…
    â€˜Let’s go and look,’ I suggested.
    We untied the ropes and ran up the dark staircase to the rood loft. Perhaps it wasn’t too late? From ladder to ladder, from landing to landing, we climbed up the steeple. Breathless, my head heavy with vertigo, at the top of the ladders I came to the little trap door through which I could see — huge, heavy — the bells. Their bronze was not trembling with the desire to fly away. They seemed like great motionless stones. The bells weren’t going to Rome. That was the sole truth. Crushing.
    My soul was as wounded as my body would have been if it had fallen from the