Colm Toibin: The Testament of Mary
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THE TESTAMENT OF MARY, Colm Toibin
I loved watching my husband and my son walking together to the Temple,
and I loved waiting behind to pray before setting out to the Temple
alone, not speaking, looking at no one. I loved some of the prayers and
the words read from the book aloud to us. I knew them and they came to
mean soft comfort to me as I set out to walk home having listened to
them. What was strange then was that in those few hours before sundown a
sort of quiet battle went on within me between the after-sound of the
prayers, the peace of the day, the dull noiseless ease of things, and
something dark and disturbed, the sense that each week which passed was
time lost that could not be recovered and a sense of something else I
could not name that had lurked between the words of the book as though
in waiting like hunters, or trappers, or a hand that was ready to wield
the scythe at harvest time. The idea that time was moving, the idea that
so much of the world remained mysterious, unsettled me. But I accepted
it as an inevitable aspect of a day spent looking inward. I was glad
nonetheless when the shadows melted into darkness at sundown and we
could talk again and I could work in the kitchen and think once more of
the others and of the world outside.
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