Blood, Curtains, and Forgiveness

In Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal three themes intertwine to convey the intense guilt and shame Cal battles:  blood, curtains, and forgiveness.  Biblical concepts, shared by both Catholics and Protestants, tie the trio together.  As Cal recognizes, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness (143).  At Christ’s crucifixion, the curtain separating man from God in the temple is torn in two, showing God’s acceptance of Jesus’ blood in payment for man’s sins, His forgiveness, and the new direct access into God’s presence for all men who believe.

MacLaverty makes multiple references to blood beyond those involved in the brutality of peers and police, the fallen drunk he encounters, and in Crilly’s bathroom beating of the older schoolboy.  Blood is presented in the remedy the preacher drinks (a strange twist on communion); in black puddings offered to his father; as he sucked his own skin when missing his mother; as he notices a knot in wood shaped like a comet with a blood-red tail; on both Lucy’s and Marcella’s pricked fingers; in his nightmare of the Roman train station; and even the cow that is sacrificed as part of the sins of others.  Cal desperately wants to be forgiven for his sins, yet is unable to atone through the insufficient shedding of his own blood.

Cal surrounds himself with curtains separating him from others.  His father comes out from a curtain of hanging cattle carcasses, Cal’s long hair forms a curtain over his face, curtains are mentioned in his own house in his room, his “Da’s” room, the kitchen, the landing, and inside the front door.  He hides from his enemies, and from light that would expose his crime, peering out at the world through impotent attempts to find safety.  More curtains appear, separating him from what he should not do--places of temptation where sin lies within:  drawn at Marcella’s house; twitching before the door is opened the night of Robert’s killing; drawn in Marcella’s bathroom before her shower; brought to his cottage in making it decent; in his dream; and at Crilly’s place.  Cal longs to “come out in the open” with his guilty secret sin, yet he denies himself the cleansing of the confessional with a Catholic father, never prays in repentance to his Heavenly Father, and rejects the offered confidence of his earthly father.

Typical of many criminals’ behavior, Cal is drawn magnetically back to the scene of his crime at Marcella’s home.  He yearns to confess to her and fantasizes about receiving her forgiveness, but also craves the more realistic result he recognizes would follow:  the punishment he deserves and is only postponing.  Cal aches to make restitution for the murder to the living victims.  He is repulsed by and has nothing to offer Robert’s dying dad; he hasn’t a clue what to do for Lucy.  The only offering he can present to Marcella is himself, in the form of the physical intimacy she was deprived at her husband’s death, and which Cal has never given to anyone else.  Of course, this attempt to reconcile his sins also fails miserably, only making his past offense more piercingly painful to the innocent, suffering Marcella.  In the end, Cal is “nailed,” and led away, to his great relief.  As in the book he checked out, both aspects are torture--one past and one future--Crime and Punishment.