“The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
377
A week after she returned to Michael she went to a priest for instruction to become a
Catholic.
* * *
From the innermost recess of the church the bell tolled for repentance. As she had been
taught to do, Kay struck her breast
lightly with her clenched hand, the stroke of
repentance. The bell tolled again and there was the shuffling of feet as the
communicants left their seats to go to the altar rail. Kay rose to join them. She knelt at
the altar and from the depths of the church the bell tolled again.
With her closed hand
she struck her heart once more. The priest was before her. She tilted back her head and
opened her mouth to receive the papery thin wafer. This was the most terrible moment
of all. Until it melted away and she could swallow and she could do what she came to
do.
Washed
clean of sin, a favored supplicant, she bowed her head and folded her hands
over the altar rail. She shifted her body to make her weight less punishing to her knees.
She emptied her
mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all anger, of all
rebellion, of all questions. Then with a profound and deeply willed
desire to believe, to
be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the
necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.