38 / 194
32
common sense. Common sense is all well and good . . . But
all it really is, is what you say when you don’t know what
else to say.
It’s too bad you didn’t know him, you could’ve warned her.
You didn’t know him? Though she wouldn’t have believed
you anyway, of that I’m sure. No one can ever be drawn
away from love. And if you ask me, they shouldn’t be.
When someone’s drawn away you never know where they’ll
end up.
I thought the Priest might not agree. But they made him. Is
it so hard to force a man to go against himself? We go
against ourselves all the time just to avoid trouble. They
forced him to do it by saying they’d put the word out. I told
you he kept away from girls. No, that no one knew. There
has to be something you don’t know even when you know
everything. He’d quit seminary, that much was known. He
kept a surplice and stole and a Bible in a suitcase, that
much was known. Before he started his lunch in the
cafeteria he would cross himself, he prayed every evening
before he went to bed, he never missed Sunday Mass, so
everyone thought he still kept up his calling. Even I didn’t
know, and we’d often had long conversations together
when I climbed to where he was working up aloft. How did
the other man know? I couldn’t say. I don’t want to make
accusations without any proof. In any case, if word had
gotten around, his life on the site would have been
miserable. It wouldn’t have made any difference that he was