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“Ave Maria, gratia plena”
Heathcliff had memorized countless prayers since he was a child. He hated the fact that he remembered sacred texts far better than the faces of some of his loved ones, but he prayed, hoping God would be merciful to him. That's why people pray, right?
"What are you doing?"
“Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus”
An innocent, simple, and sudden question. Heathcliff himself had once asked it of his loved ones, earning him a couple of slaps on the wrist for it, and afterward, Nelly had taught him everything, how to pray, how to cross himself, how to repent. But he hadn't realized that someone could be ignorant of such simple truths as an adult.
"I pray, why?" he asks, casting a distrustful glance to the side, but keeping his hands clasped in prayer. "Don't you know what that is, mate?”
"But there's no one here, whose mercy are you seeking?"
Hong Lu, of course, didn't know much. Sometimes it seemed he knew absolutely nothing about the world, about people. As if he weren't human at all, just an attempt, a successful attempt, but one that hadn't been imbued with sentimental memories of a happy youth and a forgotten childhood, where everything went according to his whims. According to him, his childhood wasn't great. And neither was Heathcliff's, for that matter.
"You don't understand, look..."
Heathcliff sighed, lowering his hands, looking around. Even though his room resembled a bookstore, for some reason a prayer book hadn't been included in the reading list.
"Praying isn't the same as begging someone for something. You pray for your soul to go to Heaven after death, or you pray for your loved ones to be safe. There are different prayers, but each of them is dedicated to God or angels.”
Hong Lu listened attentively, nodding occasionally, though he genuinely didn't understand the difference. But he was genuinely trying to grasp the essence, the very idea of the existence of God, the Virgin Mary, angels, and apostles. Religion was alien to him not because he didn't want to know it, but because it made no sense.
"But you're still begging someone ," he said, looking puzzled as Heathcliff sincerely tried to explain the meaning of his foolish, human obsessions. "You say 'Lord, have mercy on me' so often. Is that the same as me asking my father for mercy?”
“Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,”
Heathcliff just frowns angrily; he doesn't like being asked stupid questions that have answers but he can't explain. He doesn't know the difference; he's just been taught that way. Would Nelly have taught him anything bad?
"I'm telling you, it's different!" he snorts, turning away from the curious gaze, toward the wall where a single small icon hung. "And anyway, why did you drag yourself into my room without permission?"
Hong Lu just stares, stares at his back, so intensely that Heathcliff feels the enervating gaze of those inquisitive eyes, behind which there's no soul, no thought of the Almighty. Especially the one that glowed so frighteningly in the dim light. For some reason, the moment of silence spent waiting for him to form the words into yet another stupid thought seemed like an eternity.
"I was just wondering what you were muttering about morning and night," his voice soft, innocent, as if nothing had happened. "I've already memorized a couple of your prayers; I read them to myself sometimes. Is that how it's supposed to be?"
Coming from Hong Lu's lips, every thought truly sounds like sheer stupidity, something only an uneducated child, still ignorant of how life works, could utter. That seems to be the only reason Heathcliff doesn't get as angry as he would if someone else had said it. Or maybe there's something else?
"Actually, no..." he begins from afar, turning back to face his guest, but one look into his empty, melancholy eyes makes him pause and pause. "Well, if you want, of course, I can tell you all sorts of things, from the very beginning.”
Heathcliff could have sworn to God that at that moment a sparkle, a lively one, appeared in his jade eye, like life itself finally appeared on this empty soulless body, but he didn't comment on it, lest he bring disaster upon himself. He doesn't even know what's really in front of him.
"What was in the beginning?" Hong Lu's voice became even softer, more interested than before. So he really wants to understand what the point of this is.
"Well, in the beginning there was God..." Heathcliff begins at a distance; he knows the history of the universe very well, but he's not given even the chance to tell the whole story.
"Oh, I know that word," he says, disregarding etiquette, inserting his own coin into this rather strange conversation. "I've been called that occasionally. What does that mean, Heathcliff? Have you been praying to me all this time?”
“ora pro nobis peccatoribus,”
Something froze inside the tiny, human soul that has sometimes been called by its name — Heathcliff. Sometimes, Hong Lu said things he wouldn't understand, even if they were explained. It all seemed like a fabrication, a sick fantasy, designed to keep Hong Lu's life from being boring for those who listened. He wanted to believe it was all a fabrication, but the horror had already overwhelmed him, and he couldn't escape it.
"No, thank God," Heathcliff managed to force out at least this, looking at the small icon on the wall. "I wouldn't want such a God."
Something lit up again in the bright, inquisitive eyes of his so-called comrade, as if he sensed the mistrust and fear that had long been hanging in the air; this time, it was melancholy.
"You think so?" He changed his tone to a quieter, more wistful one; he rarely spoke like that. "It's strange, I thought I was very good-natured. But it's your business, do as you please.”
“nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.”
Heathcliff sighed, nodding, feeling as if something had unraveled from him, fear, perhaps, because after that awkward conversation Hong Lu left the room as abruptly as he'd entered. After that, he never asked anything about religion, God, or prayer, though at night Heathcliff could hear familiar verses resounding through the next wall, but with a completely off-key rhythm, expressionless, and, most importantly, without remorse. As if they were praying for fun, for fun, behind him. But there was no point in arguing with him, really. He himself didn't know why he was doing all this; his life hadn't been, and still wasn't, any better. But Hong Lu seemed to be walking around in God's bosom without even realizing it. It was honestly a little irritating, considering his ignorance. But he wasn't the one to ask such questions. Heathcliff was ignorant in many ways, and a coward in comparison, so he merely listened, silently correcting the errors in the poems, involuntarily praying for his happiness. It was the only time the fear of this man's image ever left the unfortunate Heathcliff alone.
“Amen.”