Hoi Polloi by Craig Sherborne

singing towards the altar and Jesus-window because she knows some of the lines by heart and can look up from the book. I sing “Holy, holy, holy” in full voice then mime the rest while attempting to decode the meaning of the phrase “casting down their golden crowns”.
    More kneeling and bowing, more praying. This time the congregation joins in a chant, a low unified mutter of deep respectfulness. For this chant, which is like a hymn without music, no one uses a book. Everyone knows the words except me. Even for Heels and Winks the words come automatically. Them? Now me. Me ? Somehow the phrases arrive in my mouth. Had they seeped their way from the world into my memory without my knowing? Or is it a miracle of baptism? “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.”
    Bread. There is such a thing as bread that is not bread but the flesh of Christ. There is wine that is not really wine but the blood of Christ. The bread is eaten and the wine is drunk in a little meal called communion at the altar near the sword hilt and directly under the Jesus-window. This must truly be the moment when I become a soldier of Christ because it sounds to me like an initiation test, an obstacle course of sorts just as they have in the army. I will take the test alone. Winks mumbles that he’ll be fine sitting right where he is. “I’m not a wine drinker anyway,” he cracks to Heels who gives him the elbow and says to me, “You go up and do it by yourself like a big boy. I’ve got my stockings to think about.”
    Aunty Dorothy won’t go with me because it’s not appropriate, her being Catholic at a Church of England communion.
    “On the night he was betrayed,” the Minister says with his hands out of his sleeves and held away from his body as if feeling for rain. The bread-flesh and the wine-blood are a way of eating and drinking Christ because Christ himself said as much at a dinner when the betrayal happened. I don’t know exactly what betrayal that was but it makes sense that a great military leader had his enemies. That’s the whole point of a war. Just why we’re required to eat flesh and drink blood I can’t say. That’s cannibalism which the horis are supposed to have done to each other before the pakehas brought civilised order to New Zealand. This pakeha cannibalism has been kept a secret from me. This bread-flesh and wine-blood is surely my initiation into the war of souls. A war that has its fair share of bleeding and gore by the sounds of it—Christ hanging from the Cross from nails for a start. If I can swallow and gulp what I’m told is flesh and blood and not faint or throw up at the sight of it I will have passed the test. That must be the whole point of communion.
    But why will I, of all people, be given alcohol? Isn’t there something apart from wine that could be used? By calling wine blood am I expected to be turned off liquor for life? Is what is called wine here really real blood?
    “Body of Christ,” the Minister says, placing the crusty flesh on my tongue and moving down the line of six kneelers to the next opened mouth. When he reaches the end of the line he goes back to the first person and offers them a wine glass to sip from, grey metal not glass. After they’ve sipped he wipes the rim with a napkin. “Blood of Christ.”
    He puts the metal glass to my lips. I’ve not swallowed the bread-flesh and am not ready to drink. I don’t want to swallow the flesh. It’s rough on my tongue, flavourless, a disgusting thing to have in the mouth, Christ or no Christ. I want to spit it out. But this is a test. The Minister holds the grey glass till it touches my lips. “Blood of Christ,” he repeats firmly. I swallow the crust. I sip the wine. The wine tastes nothing like the sweet syrup of the phone box. It’s sour like a medicine meant to cure. Christ has turned his blood into this alcohol to cure me of ever wanting alcohol