‘Shall I put up a net, father?’
‘No. It doesn’t matter.’ He had had more fevers in the last ten years than he could count: he had ceased to bother: they came and went and made no difference – they were part of his environment.
Presently she left the hut and he could hear her voice gossiping outside. He was astonished and a bit relieved by her resilience. Once for five minutes seven years ago they had been lovers – if you could give that name to a relationship in which she had never used his baptismal name: to her it was just an incident, a scratch which heals completely in the healthy flesh: she was even proud of having been the priest’s woman. He alone carried a wound, as though a whole world had died.
It was dark: no sign as yet of the dawn. Perhaps two dozen people sat on the earth floor of the largest hut while he preached to them. He couldn’t see them with any distinctness. The candles on the packing-case smoked steadily upwards – the door was shut and there was no current of air. He was talking about heaven, standing between them and the candles in the ragged peon trousers and the torn shirt. They grunted and moved restlessly. He knew they were longing for the Mass to be over: they had woken him very early, because there were rumours of police . . .
He said, ‘One of the Fathers has told us that joy always depends on pain. Pain is part of joy. We are hungry and then think how we enjoy our food at last. We are thirsty . . .’ He stopped suddenly, with his eyes glancing away into the shadows, expecting the cruel laugh that did not come. He said, ‘We deny ourselves so that we can enjoy. You have heard of rich men in the north who eat salted foods, so that they can be thirsty – for what they call the cocktail. Before the marriage, too, there is the long betrothal . . .’ Again he stopped. He felt his own unworthiness like a weight at the back of the tongue. There was a smell of hot wax from where a candle drooped in the nocturnal heat; people shifted on the hard floor in the shadows. The smell of unwashed human beings warred with the wax. He cried out stubbornly in a voice of authority, ‘That is why I tell you that heaven is here: this is a part of heaven just as pain is a part of pleasure.’ He said, ‘Pray that you will suffer more and more and more. Never get tired of suffering. The police watching you, the soldiers gathering taxes, the beating you always get from the jefe because you are too poor to pay, smallpox and fever, hunger . . . that is all part of heaven – the preparation. Perhaps without them, who can tell, you wouldn’t enjoy heaven so much. Heaven would not be complete. And heaven. What is heaven?’ Literary phrases from what seemed now to be another life altogether – the strict quiet life of the seminary – became confused on his tongue: the names of precious stones: Jerusalem the Golden. But these people had never seen gold.
He went rather stumbling on, ‘Heaven is where there is no jefe, no unjust laws, no taxes, no soldiers and no hunger. Your children do not die in heaven.’ The door of the hut opened and a man slipped in. There was whispering out of the range of the candlelight. ‘You will never be afraid there – or unsafe. There are no Red Shirts. Nobody grows old. The crops never fail. Oh, it is easy to say all the things that there will not be in heaven: what is there is God. That is more difficult. Our words are made to describe what we know with our senses. We say “light”, but we are thinking only of the sun, “love” . . .’ It was not easy to concentrate: the police were not far away. The man had probably brought news. ‘That means perhaps a child . . .’ The door opened again: he could see another day drawn across like a grey slate outside. A voice whispered urgently to him, ‘Father.’
‘Yes?’
‘The police are on the way. They are only a mile off, coming through the forest.’
This was what he was used to: the words not striking home, the hurried close, the expectation of pain coming between him and his faith. He said stubbornly, ‘Above all remember this – heaven is here.’ Were they on horseback or on foot? If they were on foot, he had twenty minutes left to finish Mass and hide. ‘Here now, at this minute, your fear and my fear are part of heaven, where there will be no fear any more for ever.’ He turned his back on them and began very quickly to recite the Credo. There was a time when he had approached the Canon of the Mass with actual physical dread – the first time he had consumed the body and blood of God in a state of mortal sin. But then life bred its excuses – it hadn’t after a while seemed to matter very much, whether he was damned or not, so long as these others . . .
He kissed the top of the packing-case and turned to bless. In the inadequate light he could just see two men kneeling with their arms stretched out in the shape of a cross – they would keep that position until the consecration was over, one more mortification squeezed out of their harsh and painful lives. He felt humbled by the pain ordinary men bore voluntarily; his pain was forced on him. ‘Oh Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house . . .’ The candles smoked and the people shifted on their knees – an absurd happiness bobbed up in him again before anxiety returned: it was as if he had been permitted to look in from the outside at the population of heaven. Heaven must contain just such scared and dutiful and hunger-lined faces. For a matter of seconds he felt an immense satisfaction that he could talk of suffering to them now without hypocrisy – it is hard for the sleek and well-fed priest to praise poverty. He began the prayer for the living: the long list of the Apostles and Martyrs fell like footsteps – Cornelii, Cypriani, Laurentii, Chrysogoni – soon the police would reach the clearing where his mule had sat down under him and he had washed in the pool. The Latin words ran into each other on his hasty tongue: he could feel impatience all round him. He began the Consecration of the Host (he had finished the wafers long ago – it was a piece of bread from Maria’s oven); impatience abruptly died away: everything in time became a routine but this – ‘Who the day before he suffered took Bread into his holy and venerable hands . . .’ Whoever moved outside on the forest path, there was no movement here – ‘Hoc est enim Corpus Meum.’ He could hear the sigh of breaths released: God was here in the body for the first time in six years. When he raised the Host he could imagine the faces lifted like famished dogs. He began the Consecration of the Wine – in a chipped cup. That was one more surrender – for two years he had carried a chalice around with him; once it would have cost him his life, if the police officer who opened his case had not been a Catholic. It may very well have cost the officer his life, if anybody had discovered the evasion – he didn’t know; you went round making God knew what martyrs – in Concepción or elsewhere – when you yourself were without grace enough to die.
The Consecration was in silence: no bell rang. He knelt by the packing-case exhausted, without a prayer. Somebody opened the door: a voice whispered urgently, ‘They’re here.’ They couldn’t have come on foot then, he thought vaguely. Somewhere in the absolute stillness of the dawn – it couldn’t have been more than a quarter of a mile away – a horse whinnied.
He got to his feet – Maria stood at his elbow. She said, ‘The cloth, father, give me the cloth.’ He put the Host hurriedly into his mouth and drank the wine: one had to avoid profanation: the cloth was whipped away from the packing-case. She nipped the candles, so that the wick should not leave a smell . . . The room was already cleared, only the owner hung by the entrance waiting to kiss his hand. Through the door the world was faintly visible, and a cock in the village crowed.
Maria said, ‘Come to the hut quickly.’
‘I’d better go.’ He was without a plan. ‘Not be found here.’
‘They are all round the village.’
Was this the end at last, he wondered? Somewhere fear waited to spring at him, he knew, but he wasn’t afraid yet. He followed the woman, scurrying across the village to her hut, repeating an act of contrition mechanically as he went. He wondered when the fear would start. He had been afraid when the policeman opened his case – but that was years ago. He had been afraid hiding in the shed among the bananas, hearing the child argue with the police officer – that was only a few weeks away. Fear would undoubtedly begin again soon. There wa
s no sign of the police – only the grey morning, and the chickens and turkeys astir, flopping down from the trees in which they had roosted during the night. Again the cock crew. If they were so careful, they must know beyond the shadow of doubt that he was here. It was the end.
Maria plucked at him. ‘Get in. Quick. On to the bed.’ Presumably she had an idea – women were appallingly practical: they built new plans at once out of the ruins of the old. But what was the good? She said, ‘Let me smell your breath. O God, anyone can tell . . . wine . . . what would we be doing with wine?’ She was gone again, inside, making a lot of bother in the peace and quiet of the dawn. Suddenly, out of the forest, a hundred yards away, an officer rode. In the absolute stillness you could hear the creaking of his revolver-holster as he turned and waved.
All round the little clearing the police appeared – they must have marched very quickly, for only the officer had a horse. Rifles at the trail, they approached the small group of huts – an exaggerated and rather absurd show of force. One man had a puttee trailing behind him – it had probably caught on something in the forest. He tripped on it and fell with a great clatter of cartridge-belt on gunstock: the lieutenant on the horse looked round and then turned his bitter and angry face upon the silent huts.
The woman was pulling at him from inside the hut. She said, ‘Bite this. Quick. There’s no time . . .’ He turned his back on the advancing police and came into the dusk of the room. She had a small raw onion in her hand. ‘Bite it,’ she said. He bit it and began to weep. ‘Is that better?’ she said. He could hear the pad, pad of the cautious horse hoofs advancing between the huts.
‘It’s horrible,’ he said with a giggle.
‘Give it to me.’ She made it disappear somewhere into her clothes: it was a trick all women seemed to know. He asked, ‘Where’s my case?’
‘Never mind your case. Get on to the bed.’
But before he could move a horse blocked the doorway. They could see a leg in riding-boots piped with scarlet: brass fittings gleamed: a hand in a glove rested on the high pommel. Maria put a hand upon his arm – it was as near as she had ever come to a movement of affection: affection was taboo between them. A voice cried, ‘Come on out, all of you.’ The horse stamped and a little pillar of dust went up. ‘Come on out, I said.’ Somewhere a shot was fired. The priest left the hut.
The dawn had really broken: light feathers of colour were blown up the sky: a man still held his gun pointed upwards: a little balloon of grey smoke hung at the muzzle. Was this how the agony would start?
Out of all the huts the villagers were reluctantly emerging – the children first: they were inquisitive and unfrightened. The men and women had the air already of people condemned by authority – authority was never wrong. None of them looked at the priest. They stared at the ground and waited. Only the children watched the horse as if it were the most important thing there.
The lieutenant said, ‘Search the huts.’ Time passed very slowly; even the smoke of the shot seemed to remain in the air for an unnatural period. Some pigs came grunting out of a hut, and a turkey-cock paced with evil dignity into the centre of the circle, puffing out its dusty feathers and tossing the long pink membrane from its beak. A soldier came up to the lieutenant and saluted sketchily. He said, ‘They’re all here.’
‘You’ve found nothing suspicious?’
‘No.’
‘Then look again.’
Once more time stopped like a broken clock. The lieutenant drew out a cigarette-case, hesitated and put it back again. Again the policeman approached and reported, ‘Nothing.’
The lieutenant barked out, ‘Attention. All of you. Listen to me.’ The outer ring of police closed in, pushing the villagers together into a small group in front of the lieutenant: only the children were left free. The priest saw his own child standing close to the lieutenant’s horse; she could just reach above his boot: she put up her hand and touched the leather. The lieutenant said, ‘I am looking for two men – one is a gringo, a yankee, a murderer. I can see very well he is not here. There is a reward of five hundred pesos for his capture. Keep your eyes open.’ He paused and ran his eye over them. The priest felt his gaze come to rest; he looked down like the others at the ground.
‘The other,’ the lieutenant said, ‘is a priest.’ He raised his voice: ‘You know what that means – a traitor to the republic. Anyone who shelters him is a traitor too.’ Their immobility seemed to anger him. He said, ‘You’re fools if you still believe what the priests tell you. All they want is your money. What has God ever done for you? Have you got enough to eat? Have your children got enough to eat? Instead of food they talk to you about heaven. Oh, everything will be fine after you are dead, they say. I tell you – everything will be fine when they are dead, and you must help.’ The child had her hand on his boot. He looked down at her with dark affection. He said with conviction, ‘This child is worth more than the Pope in Rome.’ The police leant on their guns; one of them yawned; the turkey-cock went hissing back towards the hut. The lieutenant said, ‘If you’ve seen this priest speak up. There’s a reward of seven hundred pesos . . .’ Nobody spoke.
The lieutenant yanked his horse’s head round towards them. He said, ‘We know he’s in this district. Perhaps you don’t know what happened to a man in Concepción.’ One of the women began to weep. He said, ‘Come up – one after the other – and let me have your names. No, not the women, the men.’
They filed sullenly up and he questioned them, ‘What’s your name? What do you do? Married? Which is your wife? Have you heard of this priest?’ Only one man now stood between the priest and the horse’s head. He recited an act of contrition silently with only half a mind – ‘. . . my sins, because they have crucified my loving Saviour . . . but above all because they have offended . . .’ He was alone in front of the lieutenant – ‘I hereby resolve never more to offend Thee . . .’ It was a formal act, because a man had to be prepared: it was like making your will and might be as valueless.
‘Your name?’
The name of the man in Concepción came back to him. He said, ‘Montez.’
‘Have you ever seen the priest?’
‘No.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I have a little land.’
‘Are you married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is your wife?’
Maria suddenly broke out, ‘I’m his wife. Why do you want to ask so many questions? Do you think he looks like a priest?’
The lieutenant was examining something on the pommel of his saddle: it seemed to be an old photograph. ‘Let me see your hands,’ he said.
The priest held them up: they were as hard as a labourer’s. Suddenly the lieutenant leant down from the saddle and sniffed at his breath. There was complete silence among the villagers – a dangerous silence, because it seemed to convey to the lieutenant a fear . . . He stared back at the hollow stubbled face, looked back at the photograph. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘next,’ and then as the priest stepped aside, ‘Wait.’ He put his hand down to Brigitta’s head and gently tugged at her black stiff hair. He said, ‘Look up. You know everyone in this village, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Who’s that man, then? What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know,’ the child said. The lieutenant caught his breath. ‘You don’t know his name?’ he said. ‘Is he a stranger?’
Maria cried, ‘Why, the child doesn’t know her own name. Ask her who her father is.’
‘Who’s your father?’
The child stared up at the lieutenant and then turned her knowing eyes upon the priest . . . ‘Sorry and beg pardon for all my sins,’ he was repeating to himself with his fingers crossed for luck. The child said, ‘That’s him. There.’
‘All right,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Next.’ The interrogations went on: name? work? married? while the sun came up above the forest. The priest stood with his hands clasped in front of him: again death had been
postponed. He felt an enormous temptation to throw himself in front of the lieutenant and declare himself – ‘I am the one you want.’ Would they shoot him out of hand? A delusive promise of peace tempted him. Far up in the sky a vulture watched; they must appear from that height as two groups of carnivorous animals who might at any time break into conflict, and it waited there, a tiny black spot, for carrion. Death was not the end of pain – to believe in peace was a kind of heresy.
The last man gave his evidence.
The lieutenant said, ‘Is no one willing to help?’
They stood silent beside the decayed bandstand. He said, ‘You heard what happened at Concepción. I took a hostage there . . . and when I found that this priest had been in the neighbourhood I put the man against the nearest tree. I found out because there’s always someone who changes his mind – perhaps because somebody in Concepción loved the man’s wife and wanted him out of the way. It’s not my business to look into reasons. I only know we found wine later in Concepción . . . Perhaps there’s somebody in this village who wants your piece of land – or your cow. It’s much safer to speak now. Because I’m going to take a hostage from here too.’ He paused. Then he said, ‘There’s no need even to speak, if he’s here among you. Just look at him. No one will know then that it was you who gave him away. He won’t know himself if you’re afraid of his curses. Now . . . This is your last chance.’
The priest looked at the ground – he wasn’t going to make it difficult for the man who gave him away.