He said, ‘It’s impossible. There’s no way. I’m a priest. It’s out of my power.’
The child listened intently. She said, ‘Like a birthmark.’ She could hear him sucking desperately at the bottle. She said, ‘I think I could find my father’s brandy.’
‘Oh no, you mustn’t steal.’ He drained the beer: a long glassy whistle in the darkness: the last drop must have gone. He said, ‘I must leave. At once.’
‘You can always come back here.’
‘Your father would not like it.’
‘He needn’t know,’ she said. ‘I could look after you. My room is just opposite this door. You would just tap at my window. Perhaps,’ she went seriously on, ‘it would be better to have a code. You see, somebody else might tap.’
He said in a horrified voice, ‘Not a man?’
‘Yes. You never know. Another fugitive from justice.’
‘Surely,’ he asked in bewilderment, ‘that is not likely?’
She said airily, ‘These things do happen.’
‘Before today?’
‘No, but I expect they will again. I want to be prepared. You must tap three times. Two long taps and a short one.’
He giggled suddenly like a child. ‘How do you tap a long tap?’
‘Like this.’
‘Oh, you mean a loud one?’
‘I call them long taps – because of Morse.’ He was hopelessly out of his depth. He said, ‘You are very good. Will you pray for me?’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe in that.’
‘Not in praying?’
‘You see, I don’t believe in God. I lost my faith when I was ten.’
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Then I will pray for you.’
‘You can,’ she said patronizingly, ‘if you like. If you come again I shall teach you the Morse code. It would be useful to you.’
‘How?’
‘If you were hiding in the plantation I could flash to you with my mirror news of the enemy’s movements.’
He listened seriously. ‘But wouldn’t they see you?’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I would invent an explanation.’ She moved logically forward a step at a time, eliminating all objections.
‘Good-bye, my child,’ he said.
He lingered by the door. ‘Perhaps – you do not care for prayers. Perhaps you would like . . . I know a good conjuring trick.’
‘I like tricks.’
‘You do it with cards. Have you any cards?’
‘No.’
He sighed, ‘Then that’s no good,’ and giggled – she could smell the beer on his breath – ‘I shall just have to pray for you.’
She said, ‘You don’t sound afraid.’
‘A little drink,’ he said, ‘will work wonders in a cowardly man. With a little brandy, why, I’d defy – the devil.’ He stumbled in the doorway.
‘Good-bye,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ll escape.’ A faint sigh came out of the darkness. She said gently, ‘If they kill you I shan’t forgive them – ever.’ She was ready to accept any responsibility, even that of vengeance, without a second thought. It was her life.
Half a dozen huts of mud and wattle stood in a clearing; two were in ruins. A few pigs routed round, and an old woman carried a burning ember from hut to hut, lighting a little fire on the centre of each floor to fill the hut with smoke and keep mosquitoes away. Women lived in two of the huts, the pigs in another; in the last unruined hut where maize was stored, an old man and a boy and a tribe of rats. The old man stood in the clearing watching the fire being carried round; it flickered through the darkness like a ritual repeated at the same hour for a lifetime. White hair, a white stubbly beard, and hands brown and fragile as last year’s leaves, he gave an effect of immense permanence. Living on the edge of subsistence nothing much could ever change him. He had been old for years.
The stranger came into the clearing. He wore what used to be town shoes, black and pointed; only the uppers were left, so that he walked to all intents barefoot. The shoes were symbolic, like the cobwebbed flags in churches. He wore a shirt and a pair of black torn trousers and he carried his attaché case, as if he were a season-ticket holder. He had nearly reached the state of permanency too, but he carried about with him the scars of time – the damaged shoes implied a different past, the lines of his face suggested hopes and fears of the future. The old woman with the ember stopped between two huts and watched him. He came on into the clearing with his eyes on the ground and his shoulders hunched, as if he felt exposed. The old man advanced to meet him; he took the stranger’s hand and kissed it.
‘Can you let me have a hammock for the night?’
‘Ah, father, for a hammock you must go to a town. Here you must take only the luck of the road.’
‘Never mind. Anywhere to lie down. Can you give me – a little spirit?’
‘Coffee, father. We have nothing else.’
‘Some food.’
‘We have no food.’
‘Never mind.’
The boy came out of the hut and watched them: everybody watched. It was like a bull-fight. The animal was tired and they waited for the next move. They were not hard-hearted; they were watching the rare spectacle of something worse off than themselves. He limped on towards the hut. Inside it was dark from the knees upwards; there was no flame on the floor, just a slow burning away. The place was half filled by a stack of maize, and rats rustled among the dry outer leaves. There was a bed made of earth with a straw mat on it, and two packing-cases made a table. The stranger lay down, and the old man closed the door on them both.
‘Is it safe?’
‘The boy will watch. He knows.’
‘Were you expecting me?’
‘No, father. But it is five years since we have seen a priest . . . it was bound to happen one day.’
He fell uneasily asleep, and the old man crouched on the floor, fanning the fire with his breath. Somebody tapped on the door and the priest jerked upright. ‘It is all right,’ the old man said. ‘Just your coffee, father.’ He brought it to him – grey maize coffee smoking in a tin mug, but the priest was too tired to drink. He lay on his side perfectly still: a rat watched him from the maize.
‘The soldiers were here yesterday,’ the old man said. He blew on the fire. The smoke poured up and filled the hut. The priest began to cough, and the rat moved quickly like the shadow of a hand into the stack.
‘The boy, father, has not been baptized. The last priest who was here wanted two pesos. I had only one peso. Now I have only fifty centavos.’
‘Tomorrow,’ the priest said wearily.
‘Will you say Mass, father, in the morning?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘And confession, father, will you hear our confessions?’
‘Yes, but let me sleep first.’ He turned on his back and closed his eyes to keep out the smoke.
‘We have no money, father, to give you. The other priest, Padre José . . .’
‘Give me some clothes instead,’ he said impatiently.
‘But we have only what we wear.’
‘Take mine in exchange.’
The old man hummed dubiously to himself, glancing sideways at what the fire showed of the black torn cloth. ‘If I must, father,’ he said. He blew quietly at the fire for a few minutes. The priest’s eyes closed again.
‘After five years there is so much to confess.’
The priest sat up quickly. ‘What was that?’ he said.
‘You were dreaming, father. The boy will warn us if the soldiers come. I was only saying –’
‘Can’t you let me sleep for five minutes?’ He lay down again. Somewhere, in one of the women’s huts, someone was singing – ‘I went down to my field and there I found a rose.’
The old man said softly, ‘It would be a pity if the soldiers came before we had time . . . such a burden on poor souls, father . . .’ The priest shouldered himself upright against the wall and said furiously, ‘Very well. Begin. I will hear y
our confession.’ The rats scuffled in the maize. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Don’t waste time. Hurry. When did you last . . . ?’ The old man knelt beside the fire, and across the clearing the woman sang: ‘I went down to my field and the rose was withered.’
‘Five years ago.’ He paused and blew at the fire. ‘It’s hard to remember, father.’
‘Have you sinned against purity?’
The priest leant against the wall with his legs drawn up beneath him, and the rats accustomed to the voices moved again in the maize. The old man picked out his sins with difficulty, blowing at the fire. ‘Make a good act of contrition,’ the priest said, ‘and say – say – have you a rosary? – then say the Joyful Mysteries.’ His eyes closed, his lips and tongue stumbled over the absolution, failed to finish . . . he sprang awake again.
‘Can I bring the women?’ the old man was saying. ‘It is five years . . .’
‘Oh, let them come. Let them all come,’ the priest cried angrily. ‘I am your servant.’ He put his hand over his eyes and began to weep. The old man opened the door: it was not completely dark outside under the enormous arc of starry ill-lit sky. He went across to the women’s huts and knocked. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘You must say your confessions. It is only polite to the father.’ They wailed at him that they were tired . . . the morning would do. ‘Would you insult him?’ he said. ‘What do you think he has come here for? He is a very holy father. There he is in my hut now weeping for our sins.’ He hustled them out; one by one they picked their way across the clearing towards the hut, and the old man set off down the path towards the river to take the place of the boy who watched the ford for soldiers.
CHAPTER 4: The Bystanders
It was years since Mr Tench had written a letter. He sat before the work-table sucking at a steel nib; an odd impulse had come to him to project this stray letter towards the last address he had – in Southend. Who knew who was alive still? He tried to begin. It was like breaking the ice at a party where you knew nobody. He started to write the envelope – Mrs Henry Tench, care of Mrs Marsdyke, 3 The Avenue, Westcliff. It was her mother’s house: the dominating interfering creature who had induced him to set up his place in Southend for a fatal while. ‘Please forward,’ he wrote. She wouldn’t do it if she knew, but she had probably forgotten his handwriting by this time.
He sucked the inky nib – how to go on? It would have been easier if there had been some purpose behind it other than the vague desire to put on record to somebody that he was still alive. It might prove awkward if she had married again, but in that case she wouldn’t hesitate to tear the letter up. He wrote: Dear Sylvia, in a big clear immature script, listening to the furnace purring on the bench. He was making a gold alloy – there were no depots here where he could buy his material ready-made. Besides, the depots didn’t favour 14-carat gold for dental work, and he couldn’t afford finer material.
The trouble was – nothing ever happened here. His life was as sober, respectable, regular as even Mrs Marsdyke could require.
He took a look at the crucible. The gold was on the point of fusion with the alloy, so he flung in a spoonful of vegetable charcoal to protect the mixture from the air, took up his pen again and sat mooning over the paper. He couldn’t remember his wife clearly – only the hats she wore. How surprised she would be at hearing from him after this long while; there had been one letter written by each of them since the little boy died. The years really meant nothing to him – they drifted fairly rapidly by without changing a habit. He had meant to leave six years ago, but the peso dropped with a revolution, and so he had come south. Now he had more money saved, but a month ago the peso dropped again – another revolution somewhere. There was nothing to do but wait . . . the nib went back between his teeth and memory melted in the little hot room. Why write at all? He couldn’t remember now what had given him the odd idea. Somebody knocked at the outer door and he left the letter on the bench – Dear Sylvia, staring up, big and bold and hopeless. A boat’s bell rang by the riverside: it was the General Obregon back from Vera Cruz. A memory stirred. It was as if something alive and in pain moved in the little front room among the rocking-chairs – ‘an interesting afternoon: what happened to him, I wonder, when’ – then died, or got away. Mr Tench was used to pain: it was his profession. He waited cautiously till a hand beat on the door again and a voice said, ‘Con amistad’ – there was no trust anywhere – before he drew the bolts and opened up, to admit a patient.
Padre José went in, under the big classical gateway marked in black letters ‘Silencio’ to what people used to call the Garden of God. It was like a building estate where nobody had paid attention to the architecture of the next house. The big stone tombs of above-ground burial were any height and any shape; sometimes an angel stood on the roof with lichenous wings: sometimes through a glass window you could see some rusting metal flowers upon a shelf – it was like looking into the kitchen of a house whose owners have moved on, forgetting to clean the vases out. There was a sense of intimacy – you could go anywhere and see anything. Life here had withdrawn altogether.
He walked very slowly because of his bulk among the tombs; he could be alone here, there were no children about, and he could waken a faint sense of homesickness which was better than no feeling at all. He had buried some of these people. His small inflamed eyes turned here and there. Coming round the huge grey bulk of the Lopez tomb – a merchant family which fifty years ago had owned the only hotel in the capital – he found he was not alone. A grave was being dug at the edge of the cemetery next the wall: two men were rapidly at work: a woman stood by and an old man. A child’s coffin lay at their feet – it took no time at all in the spongy soil to get down far enough. A little water collected. That was why those who could afford it lay above ground.
They all paused a moment and looked at Padre José, and he sidled back towards the Lopez tomb as if he were an intruder. There was no sign of grief anywhere in the bright hot day: a vulture sat on a roof outside the cemetery. Somebody said, ‘Father.’
Padre José put up his hand deprecatingly as if he were trying to indicate that he was not there, that he was gone, away, out of sight.
The old man said, ‘Padre José.’ They all watched him hungrily; they had been quite resigned until he had appeared, but now they were anxious, eager. . . . He ducked and dodged away from them. ‘Padre José,’ the old man repeated. ‘A prayer?’ They smiled at him, waiting. They were quite accustomed to people dying, but an unforeseen hope of happiness had bobbed up among the tombs: they could boast after this that one at least of their family had gone into the ground with an official prayer.
‘It’s impossible,’ Padre José said.
‘Yesterday was her saint’s day,’ the woman said, as if that made a difference. ‘She was five.’ She was one of those garrulous women who show to strangers the photographs of their children, but all she had to show was a coffin.
‘I am sorry.’
The old man pushed the coffin aside with his foot the better to approach Padre José; it was small and light and might have contained nothing but bones. ‘Not a whole service, you understand – just a prayer. She was – innocent,’ he said. The word in the little stony town sounded odd and archaic and local, outdated like the Lopez tomb, belonging only here.
‘It is against the law.’
‘Her name,’ the woman went on, ‘was Anita. I was sick when I had her,’ she explained, as if to excuse the child’s delicacy which had led to all this inconvenience.
‘The law . . .’
The old man put his finger to his nose. ‘You can trust us. It is just the case of a short prayer. I am her grandfather. This is her mother, her father, her uncle. You can trust us.’
But that was the trouble – he could trust no one. As soon as they got back home one or other of them would certainly begin to boast. He walked backwards all the time, weaving his plump fingers, shaking his head, nearly bumping into the Lopez tomb. He was scared, and yet a curious pride bubbled
in his throat because he was being treated as a priest again, with respect. ‘If I could,’ he said, ‘my children . . .’
Suddenly and unexpectedly there was agony in the cemetery. They had been used to losing children, but they hadn’t been used to what the rest of the world knows best of all – the hope which peters out. The woman began to cry, dryly, without tears, the trapped noise of something wanting to be released; the old man fell on his knees with his hands held out. ‘Padre José,’ he said, ‘there is no one else . . .’ He looked as if he were asking for a miracle. An enormous temptation came to Padre José to take the risk and say a prayer over the grave. He felt the wild attraction of doing one’s duty and stretched a sign of the cross in the air; then fear came back, like a drug. Contempt and safety waited for him down by the quay: he wanted to get away. He sank hopelessly down on his knees and entreated them: ‘Leave me alone.’ He said, ‘I am unworthy. Can’t you see? – I am a coward.’ The two old men faced each other on their knees among the tombs, the small coffin shoved aside like a pretext – an absurd spectacle. He knew it was absurd: a lifetime of self-analysis enabled him to see himself as he was, fat and ugly and old and humiliated. It was as if a whole seducing choir of angels had silently withdrawn and left the voices of the children in the patio – ‘Come to bed, José, come to bed,’ sharp and shrill and worse than they had ever been. He knew he was in the grip of the unforgivable sin, despair.
‘At last the blessed day arrived,’ the mother read aloud, ‘when the days of Juan’s novitiate were over. Oh, what a joyful day was that for his mother and sisters. And a little sad too, for the flesh cannot always be strong, and how could they help mourning a while in their hearts for the loss of a small son and an elder brother? Ah, if they had known that they were gaining that day a saint in heaven to pray for them.’
The younger girl on the bed said, ‘Have we got a saint?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why did they want another saint?’
The mother went on reading: ‘Next day the whole family received communion from the hands of a son and brother. Then they said a fond good-bye – they little knew that it was the last – to the new soldier of Christ and returned to their homes in Morelos. Already clouds were darkening the heavens, and President Calles was discussing the anti-Catholic laws in the Palace at Chapultepec. The devil was ready to assail poor Mexico.’