His dream was full of a jangle of cheerful noise.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 1
The middle-aged woman sat on the veranda darning socks; she wore pince-nez and she had kicked off her shoes for further comfort. Mr Lehr, her brother, read a New York magazine – it was three weeks old, but that didn’t really matter: the whole scene was like peace.
‘Just help yourself to water,’ Miss Lehr said, ‘when you want it.’
A huge earthenware jar stood in a cool corner with a ladle and a tumbler. ‘Don’t you have to boil the water?’ the priest asked.
‘Oh no, our water’s fresh and clean,’ Miss Lehr said primly, as if she couldn’t answer for anybody else’s.
‘Best water in the state,’ her brother said. The shiny magazine leaves crackled as they turned, covered with photographs of big clean-shaven mastiff jowls – Senators and Congressmen. Pasture stretched away beyond the garden fence, undulating gently towards the next mountain range, and a tulipan tree blossomed and faded daily at the gate.
‘You certainly are looking better, father,’ Miss Lehr said. They both spoke rather guttural English with slight American accents – Mr Lehr had left Germany when he was a boy to escape military service: he had a shrewd, lined and idealistic face. You needed to be shrewd in this country if you were going to retain any ideals at all and he was cunning in the defence of the good life.
‘Oh,’ Mr Lehr said, ‘he only needed to rest up a few days.’ He was quite incurious about this man whom his foreman had brought in on a mule in a state of collapse three days before. All he knew the priest had told him. That was another thing this country taught you – never ask questions or to look ahead.
‘So I can go on,’ the priest said.
‘You don’t have to hurry,’ said Miss Lehr, turning over her brother’s sock, looking for holes.
‘It’s so quiet here.’
‘Oh,’ Mr Lehr said, ‘we’ve had our troubles.’ He turned a page and said, ‘That Senator – Hiram Long – they ought to control him. It doesn’t do any good insulting other countries.’
‘Haven’t they tried to take your land?’
The idealistic face turned his way: it wore a look of innocent craft. ‘Oh, I gave them as much as they asked for – five hundred acres of barren land. I saved a lot on taxes. I never could get anything to grow there.’ He nodded towards the veranda posts. ‘That was the last real trouble. See the bullet-holes. Villa’s men.’
The priest got up again and drank more water. He wasn’t very thirsty; he was satisfying a sense of luxury. He asked, ‘How long will it take me to get to Las Casas?’
‘You could do it in four days,’ Mr Lehr said.
‘Not in his condition,’ Miss Lehr said. ‘Six.’
‘It will seem so strange,’ the priest said. ‘A city with churches, a university . . .’
‘Of course,’ Mr Lehr said, ‘my sister and I are Lutherans. We don’t hold with your Church, father. Too much luxury, it seems to me, while the people starve.’
Miss Lehr said, ‘Now, dear, it isn’t the father’s fault.’
‘Luxury?’ the priest asked. He stood by the earthenware jar, glass in hand, trying to collect his thoughts, staring out over the long peaceful glassy slopes. ‘You mean . . .’ Perhaps Mr Lehr was right; he had lived very easily once and here he was, already settling down to idleness again.
‘All the gold leaf in the churches.’
‘It’s often just paint, you know,’ the priest murmured conciliatingly. He thought: yes, three days and I’ve done nothing, nothing, and he looked down at his feet elegantly shod in a pair of Mr Lehr’s shoes, his legs in Mr Lehr’s spare trousers. Mr Lehr said, ‘He won’t mind my speaking my mind. We’re all Christians here.’
‘Of course. I like to hear . . .’
‘It seems to me you people make a lot of fuss about inessentials.’
‘Yes? You mean . . .’
‘Fasting . . . fish on Friday . . .’
Yes, he remembered like something in his childhood that there had been a time when he had observed these rules. He said, ‘After all, Mr Lehr, you’re a German. A great military nation.’
‘I was never a soldier. I disapprove . . .’
‘Yes, of course, but still you understand – discipline is necessary. Drills may be no good in battle, but they form the character. Otherwise you get – well, people like me.’ He looked down with sudden hatred at the shoes – they were like the badge of a deserter. ‘People like me,’ he repeated with fury.
There was a good deal of embarrassment; Miss Lehr began to say something, ‘Why, father . . .’, but Mr Lehr forestalled her, laying down the magazine and its load of well-shaved politicians. He said in his German-American voice with its guttural precision, ‘Well, I guess it’s time for a bath now. Will you be coming, father?’ and the priest obediently followed him into their common bedroom. He took off Mr Lehr’s clothes and put on Mr Lehr’s mackintosh and followed Mr Lehr barefoot across the veranda and the field beyond. The day before he had asked apprehensively, ‘Are there no snakes?’ and Mr Lehr had grunted contemptuously that if there were any snakes they’d pretty soon get out of the way. Mr Lehr and his sister had combined to drive out savagery by simply ignoring anything that conflicted with an ordinary German-American homestead. It was, in its way, an admirable mode of life.
At the bottom of the field there was a little shallow stream running over brown pebbles. Mr Lehr took off his dressing-gown and lay down flat on his back. There was something upright and idealistic even in the thin elderly legs with their scrawny muscles. Tiny fishes played over his chest and made little tugs at his nipples undisturbed. This was the skeleton of the youth who had disapproved of militarism to the point of flight. Presently he sat up and began carefully to soap his lean thighs. The priest afterwards took the soap and followed suit. He felt it was expected of him, though he couldn’t help thinking it was a waste of time. Sweat cleaned you as effectively as water. But this was the race which had invented the proverb that cleanliness was next to godliness – cleanliness, not purity.
All the same, one did feel an enormous luxury lying there in a little cold stream while the sun sank . . . He thought of the prison cell with the old man and the pious woman, the half-caste lying across the hut door, the dead child, and the abandoned station. He thought with shame of his daughter left to her knowledge and her ignorance by the rubbish-dump. He had no right to such luxury.
Mr Lehr said, ‘Would you mind – the soap?’
He had heaved over on his face, and now he set to work on his back.
The priest said, ‘I think perhaps I should tell you – tomorrow I am saying Mass in the village. Would you prefer me to leave your house? I do not wish to make trouble for you.’
Mr Lehr splashed seriously, cleaning himself. He said, ‘Oh, they won’t bother me. But you had better be careful. You know, of course, that it’s against the law.’
‘Yes,’ the priest said. ‘I know that.’
‘A priest I knew was fined four hundred pesos. He couldn’t pay and they sent him to prison for a week. What are you smiling at?’
‘Only because it seems so . . . peaceful here. Prison for a week!’
‘Well, I’ve always heard you people get your own back when it comes to collections. Would you like the soap?’
‘No, thank you. I have finished.’
‘We’d better be drying ourselves then. Miss Lehr likes to have her bath before sunset.’
As they came back to the bungalow in single file they met Miss Lehr, very bulky under her dressing-gown. She asked mechanically, like a clock with a very gentle chime, ‘Is the water nice today?’ and her brother answered, as he must have answered a thousand times, ‘Pleasantly cool, dear,’ and she slopped down across the grass in bedroom slippers, stooping slightly with short sight.
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Mr Lehr said, shutting the bedroom door, ‘staying in here till Miss Lehr comes back. One can see the stream –
you understand – from the front of the house.’ He began to dress, tall and bony and a little stiff. Two brass bedsteads, a single chair and a wardrobe – the room was monastic, except that there was no cross – no ‘inessentials’ as Mr Lehr would have put it. But there was a Bible. It lay on the floor beside one of the beds in a black oilskin cover. When the priest had finished dressing he opened it.
On the flyleaf there was a label which stated that the book was furnished by the Gideons. It went on: ‘A Bible in every Hotel Guest Room. Winning Commercial Men for Christ. Good news.’ There was then a list of texts. The priest read with some astonishment:
If you are in trouble read Psalm 34.
If trade is poor Psalm 37.
If very prosperous I Corinthians, x, 2.
If overcome and backsliding James I. Hosea xiv, 4–9.
If tired of sin Psalm 51. Luke xviii, 9–14.
If you desire peace, power and plenty John 14.
If you are lonesome and discouraged Psalms 23 and 27.
If you are losing confidence in men I Corinthians, xiii.
If you desire peaceful slumbers Psalm 121.
He couldn’t help wondering how it had got here – with its ugly type and its over-simple explanations – into a hacienda in Southern Mexico. Mr Lehr turned away from his mirror with a big coarse hairbrush in his hand and explained carefully, ‘My sister ran a hotel once. For drummers. She sold it to join me when my wife died, and she brought one of those from the hotel. You wouldn’t understand that, father. You don’t like people to read the Bible.’ He was on the defensive all the time about his faith, as if he were perpetually conscious of some friction, like that of an ill-fitting shoe.
The priest asked, ‘Is your wife buried here?’
‘In the paddock,’ Mr Lehr said bluntly. He stood listening, brush in hand, to the gentle footsteps outside. ‘That’s Miss Lehr,’ he said, ‘come up from her bath. We can go out now.’
The priest got off Mr Lehr’s old horse when he reached the church and threw the rein over a bush. This was his first visit to the village since the night he collapsed beside the wall. The village ran down below him in the dusk: tin-roofed bungalows and mud huts faced each other over a single wide grass-grown street. A few lamps had been lit and fire was being carried round among the poorest huts. He walked slowly, conscious of peace and safety. The first man he saw took off his hat and knelt and kissed the priest’s hand.
‘What is your name?’ the priest asked.
‘Pedro, father.’
‘Good night, Pedro.’
‘Is there to be Mass in the morning, father?’
‘Yes. There is to be Mass.’
He passed the rural school. The schoolmaster sat on the step: a plump young man with dark brown eyes and horn-rimmed glasses. When he saw the priest coming he looked ostentatiously away. He was the law-abiding element: he wouldn’t recognize criminals. He began to talk pedantically and priggishly to someone behind him – something about the infant class. A woman kissed the priest’s hand; it was odd to be wanted again, not to feel himself the carrier of death. She asked, ‘Father, will you hear our confessions?’
He said, ‘Yes. Yes. In Señor Lehr’s barn. Before the Mass. I will be there at five. As soon as it is light.’
‘There are so many of us, father . . .’
‘Well tonight too then . . . At eight.’
‘And, father, there are many children to be baptized. There has not been a priest for three years.’
‘I am going to be here for two more days.’
‘What will you charge, father?’
‘Well – two pesos is the usual charge.’ He thought: I must hire two mules and a guide. It will cost me fifty pesos to reach Las Casas. Five pesos for the Mass – that left forty-five.
‘We are very poor here, father,’ she haggled gently. ‘I have four children myself. Eight pesos is a lot of money.’
‘Four children are a lot of children – if the priest was here only three years ago.’
He could hear authority, the old parish intonation coming back into his voice, as if the last years had been a dream and he had never really been away from the Guilds, the Children of Mary, and the daily Mass. He asked sharply, ‘How many children are there here – unbaptized?’
‘Perhaps a hundred, father.’
He made calculations: there was no need to arrive in Las Casas then as a beggar; he could buy a decent suit of clothes, find a respectable lodging, settle down . . . He said, ‘You must pay one peso fifty a head.’
‘One peso, father. We are very poor.’
‘One peso fifty.’ A voice from years back said firmly into his ear: they don’t value what they don’t pay for. It was the old priest he had succeeded at Concepción who had explained to him: ‘They will always tell you they are poor, starving, but they will always have a little store of money buried somewhere, in a pot.’ The priest said, ‘You must bring the money – and the children – to Señor Lehr’s barn tomorrow at two in the afternoon.’
She said, ‘Yes, father.’ She seemed quite satisfied; she had brought him down by fifty centavos a head. The priest walked on. Say a hundred children, he was thinking, that means a hundred and sixty pesos with tomorrow’s Mass. Perhaps I can get the mules and the guide for forty pesos. Señor Lehr will give me food for three days. I shall have a hundred and twenty pesos left. After all these years, it was like wealth. He felt respect all the way up the street: men took off their hats as he passed: it was as if he had got back to the days before the persecution. He could feel the old life hardening round him like a habit, a stony cast which held his head high and dictated the way he walked, and even formed his words. A voice from the cantina said, ‘Father.’
The man was very fat, with three commercial chins: he wore a waistcoat in spite of the great heat, and a watch-chain. ‘Yes?’ the priest said. Behind the man’s head stood bottles of mineral waters, beer, spirits . . . The priest came in out of the dusty street to the heat of the lamp. He asked, ‘What is it?’ with his new-old manner of authority and impatience.
‘I thought, father, you might be in need of a little sacramental wine.’
‘Perhaps . . . but you will have to give me credit.’
‘A priest’s credit, father, is always good enough for me. I am a religious man myself. This is a religious place. No doubt you will be holding a baptism.’ He leant avidly forward with a respectful and impertinent manner, as if they were two people with the same ideas, educated men.
‘Perhaps . . .’
The man smiled understandingly. Between people like ourselves, he seemed to indicate, there is no need of anything explicit: we understand each other’s thoughts. He said, ‘In the old days, when the church was open, I was treasurer to the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament. Oh, I am a good Catholic, father. The people, of course, are very ignorant.’ He asked, ‘Would you perhaps honour me by taking a glass of brandy?’ He was in his way quite sincere.
The priest said doubtfully, ‘It is kind . . .’ The two glasses were already filled. He remembered the last drink he had had, sitting on the bed in the dark, listening to the Chief of Police, and seeing, as the light went on, the last wine drain away . . . The memory was like a hand, pulling away the cast, exposing him. The smell of brandy dried his mouth. He thought: what a play-actor I am. I have no business here, among good people. He turned the glass in his hand, and all the other glasses turned too: he remembered the dentist talking of his children and Maria unearthing the bottle of spirits she had kept for him – the whisky priest.
He took a reluctant drink. ‘It’s good brandy, father,’ the man said.
‘Yes. Good brandy.’
‘I could let you have a dozen bottles for sixty pesos.’
‘Where would I find sixty pesos?’ He thought that in some ways it was better over there, across the border. Fear and death were not the worst things. It was sometimes a mistake for life to go on.
‘I wouldn’t make a profit out of you, father. Fifty p
esos.’
‘Fifty, sixty. It’s all the same to me.’
‘Go on. Have another glass, father. It’s good brandy.’ The man leant engagingly forward across the counter and said, ‘Why not half a dozen, father, for twenty-four pesos?’ He said slyly, ‘After all, father – there are the baptisms.’
It was appalling how easily one forgot and went back; he could still hear his own voice speaking in the street with the Concepción accent – unchanged by mortal sin and unrepentance and desertion. The brandy was musty on the tongue with his own corruption. God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety? He remembered the woman in the prison and how impossible it had been to shake her complacency. It seemed to him that he was another of the same kind. He drank the brandy down like damnation: men like the half-caste could be saved, salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer and the Guild meeting and the feel of humble lips on your gloved hand.
‘Las Casas is a fine town, father. They say you can hear Mass every day.’
This was another pious person. There were a lot of them about in the world. He was pouring a little more brandy, but going carefully – not too much. He said, ‘When you get there, father, look up a compadre of mine in Guadalupe Street. He has the cantina nearest the church – a good man. Treasurer of the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament – just like I was in this place in the good days. He’ll see you get what you want cheap. Now, what about some bottles for the journey?’
The priest drank. There was no point in not drinking. He had the habit now – like piety and the parish voice. He said, ‘Three bottles. For eleven pesos. Keep them for me here.’ He finished what was left and went back into the street; the lamps were lit in windows and the wide street stretched like a prairie in between. He stumbled in a hole and felt a hand upon his sleeve. ‘Ah, Pedro. That was the name wasn’t it? Thank you, Pedro.’