The Cure at Troy

Brian taught English at Xavier College for nearly forty years. He retired three years ago but kept in touch with his old buddies through a friendly little group that meets every Friday morning. They have a cup of coffee in Brunetti’s in Carlton and talk about the good old days when boys could be smacked if they couldn’t name the twelve apostles or recite the life history of Ignatius Loyola. Once the coffee and the nostalgia are out of the way, Brian and his fellow retirees head down to East Melbourne for their weekly meeting with John the security guard.

John didn’t go to a posh school like Xavier College. He’s a bit vague on schooling to be honest. His years in the Army beat out any memories of childhood, happy or otherwise and his lived in face and bulbous fists suggests that his education didn’t come from musty old priests and men in tweed jackets. He shuffled from foot to foot as if ready to start a race and stared with weary resignation as Brian and his friends unpacked their placards and assembled a small table on the footpath before him.

Brian has been coming here every Friday morning for the past two years but has never spoken to John. They dance around each other but are destined never to embrace.

The retirees like to be set up by 8am when the first appointments are held in the East Melbourne Day procedure centre. Brian likes to think that they hold a dignified protest and they make a point of not speaking to or physically impeding the frightened and lonely women who are there to avail of the centre’s pregnancy termination services. John is there just in case their dignity deserts them.

I passed at 8am on my way to work and as anyone who knows me will testify, my brain is not exactly in gear at that ungodly hour. I saw a group of old men engaged in a silent protest outside a medical centre and assumed that Australia had followed Ireland’s example and removed free healthcare for pensioners. Or perhaps they were complaining about the delay in receiving a hip replacement. It was only when I got closer that I saw that their protest was more sinister and realised that being undignified can come in other ways than through the spoken word. Brian held a poster that showed a picture of a before and after termination. Subtlety obviously wasn’t the corner stone of their campaign.

I stopped and asked if they were Catholic. “We’re not a Catholic organisation” Brian said. “But most of us are Catholics.” He picked up on my accent and asked if I was also a member of the one true faith.

I said only part of me was these days, but it was my conscience and it told me that these guys should be ashamed of themselves. Brian didn’t even flinch. Countering that argument was taught in Pro-Life class 101. “There is no shame in helping those who can’t help themselves”.

“What would Jesus do?” I said. “What did he do when he found Mary Magdalene being stoned? She had been engaged in the sort of sexual immoralities that you guys get excited about. Did he knock up a couple of posters of her before and after she’d been stoned? Did he tell her about the various departments of hell to which she was condemned? No, he didn’t. He put his arm round her and told her that he loved her. But what did he do when he found the money lenders in the temple? He smashed up their tables and threw them out. Because Jesus realised that Greed is man’s worse sin. So you know what you and your pensioner mates should be doing Brian? You should be outside the Banks down in the CBD protesting about their immorality and leave these poor girls to their own conscience.”

I heard a chuckle from behind and saw that John was taking great merriment from my comments. “These guys act all holier than thou. But there’s an old fellow sleeps in that alleyway every night and none of them would even bring him a cup of tea. They don’t care about real people, only ones who haven’t been born yet.”

Brian ignored him as he had clearly done every Friday for the past two years. I was a reluctant but potential recruit however. “Do you know The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney?” he asked.

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

the outcry and the birth-cry

of new life at its term.

“You’re not trying to convince me with poetry” I asked. “Sure even the devil can quote scripture for his purpose.” Brian smiled. His eyes lit up when I mentioned the devil, as though we were back in his territory. “I taught Heaney for the last twenty years in Xavier. Don’t you think those words are pertinent.”

“I prefer the start of that poem” I said. “Human Beings suffer, they torture one another, they get hurt and get hard… and hope and history rhyme”. Isn’t there lots of pain and suffering in the world that you could devote your energies towards? Why not protest about the real live babies being bombed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq? Or the malnourished children being brought up in poverty in some of Melbourne’s suburbs?”

“These guys haven’t got long left” John said. “They have to ration out their protest. Give it a couple of years and they’ll all be dead and then they can ask God personally if they were right to make my Friday mornings miserable these pass two years.”

Thirty minutes later I was sitting at my money lenders desk in the temple of Capitalism. Doom and gloom filled our computer screens and it seemed as though the second coming was at hand. Jesus, in the form of the global credit crisis was about to smash our tables and chuck our immoral asses into the street.