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have touched one of them, except in his fantasies. To watch them develop into young women, to be aware of untouched breasts below the clothing, gave him pleasure which he knew was sexual. And almost certainly sinful.
Society did not realise to what psychological torture it condemned its men like Liam Dooley. To deny them the right to yield to natural passions, to force them to hold back their human urges, almost to deny their very humanity, was to inflict suffering more grievous than any devised by the Inquisition. Men like Liam Dooley were prisoners and victims of a cruel and uncompassionate moral code. Society chained them like dogs on a leash. They could run and play within that determined circle. But any attempt to leap beyond its bounds, even in playfulness, was checked by a tight yank on the leash that choked. For a dog to be tied continuously to an immovable stake was unnatural. A dog, like any other living creature, had to have freedom to explore, to learn, to develop. Constant frustration of its natural urges turned the young and playful pup into a snarling and vicious brute, smarting from the raw-red abrasions round its neck, abrasions that pained more unbearably the more he pulled against the leash. Snarling viciousness might be desirable in a Cerberus but not in a Fido or a Spot. Liam Dooley smarted from moral chafing, but the hurt was more mental than physical. He had long ago recognized the limits of his leash. He looked beyond the well-trodden circle, but however green and lush the grass that grew there he did not try to caper into it, as a pup would. Liam was a cowed old mongrel who had come to terms with his predicament. No Cerberus. Merely a Fido or a Spot, lying at the feet of women and saints, a symbol of fidelity, a carrier of torches, a licker of wounds, a foot-rest for Crusaders who fought life’s battles in fields faraway. He felt like the little dog with reddish hair that Aztecs cremated with the corpse of the dead. On this little dog the departed soul swam into the underworld. White dogs could not swim the river; they had washed themselves. Black dogs could not swim the river; they had soiled themselves. Only red dogs could pass to the shore of the dead. That was Liam; neither pure nor wicked, yet sacrificed by society for being neither the one nor the other.
Now there was Nora.
Nora Sinead Carrick was the most intelligent pupil he had taught in his sixteen years at the school in Corrymore. Every week the pages of her exercise books were decorated with small, shiny, adhesive stars, the coveted emblems of excellence. And hers were always gold stars, the highest and most coveted award of all. Every year that she attended school…
Libros Libertad 