He had moved perhaps six feet from the grille, and his eyes began to distinguish heads – perhaps the sky was clearing: they hung around him like gourds. A voice said, ‘Who are you?’ He made no reply, feeling panic, edging in. Suddenly he found himself against the back wall: the stone was wet against his hand – the cell could not have been more than twelve feet deep. He found he could just sit down if he kept his feet drawn up under him. An old man lay slumped against his shoulder; he told his age from the featherweight lightness of the bones, the feeble uneven flutter of the breath. He was either somebody close to birth or death – and he could hardly be a child in this place. The old man said suddenly, ‘Is that you, Catarina?’ and his breath went out in a long patient sigh, as if he had been waiting a long while and could afford to wait a lot longer.
The priest said, ‘No. Not Catarina.’ When he spoke everybody came suddenly silent, listening, as if what he said had importance: then the voices and movements began again. But the sound of his own voice, the sense of communication with a neighbour, calmed him.
‘You wouldn’t be,’ the old man said. ‘I didn’t really think you were. She’ll never come.’
‘Is she your wife?’
‘What’s that you’re saying? I haven’t got a wife.’
‘Catarina?’
‘She’s my daughter.’ Everybody was listening except the two invisible people who were concerned only in their cramped pleasure.
‘Perhaps they won’t allow her here.’
‘She’ll never try,’ the old hopeless voice pronounced with absolute conviction. The priest’s feet began to ache, drawn up under his haunches. He said, ‘If she loves you . . .’ Somewhere across the huddle of dark shapes the woman cried again – that finished cry of protest and abandonment and pleasure.
‘It’s the priests who’ve done it,’ the old man said.
‘The priests?’
‘The priests.’
‘Why the priests?’
‘The priests.’
A low voice near his knees said, ‘The old man’s crazy. What’s the use of asking him questions?’
‘Is that you, Catarina?’ He added, ‘I don’t really believe it, you know. It’s just a question.’
‘Now I’ve got something to complain about,’ the voice went on. ‘A man’s got to defend his honour. You’ll admit that, won’t you?’
‘I don’t know anything about honour.’
‘I was in the cantina and the man I’m telling you about came up to me and said, “Your mother’s a whore.” Well, I couldn’t do anything about it: he’d got his gun on him. All I could do was wait. He drank too much beer – I knew he would – and when he was staggering I followed him out. I had a bottle and I smashed it against a wall. You see, I hadn’t got my gun. His family’s got influence with the jefe or I’d never be here.’
‘It’s a terrible thing to kill a man.’
‘You talk like a priest.’
‘It was the priests who did it,’ the old man said. ‘You’re right there.’
‘What does he mean?’
‘What does it matter what an old man like that means? I’d like to tell you about something else . . .’
A woman’s voice said, ‘They took the child away from him.’
‘Why?’
‘It was a bastard. They acted quite correctly.’
At the word ‘bastard’ his heart moved painfully, as when a man in love hears a stranger name a flower which is also the name of his woman. ‘Bastard!’ the word filled him with miserable happiness. It brought his own child nearer: he could see her under the tree by the rubbish-dump, unguarded. He repeated ‘Bastard?’ as he might have repeated her name – with tenderness disguised as indifference.
‘They said he was no fit father. But, of course, when the priests fled, she had to go with him. Where else could she go?’ It was like a happy ending until she said, ‘Of course she hated him. They’d taught her about things.’ He could imagine the small set mouth of an educated woman. What was she doing here?
‘Why is he in prison?’
‘He had a crucifix.’
The stench from the pail got worse all the time; the night stood round them like a wall, without ventilation, and he could hear somebody making water, drumming on the tin sides. He said, ‘They had no business . . .’
‘They were doing what was right, of course. It was a mortal sin.’
‘No right to make her hate him.’
‘They knew what’s right.’
He said, ‘They were bad priests to do a thing like that. The sin was over. It was their duty to teach – well, love.’
‘You don’t know what’s right. The priests know.’
He said after a moment’s hesitation, very distinctly, ‘I am a priest.’
It was like the end: there was no need to hope any longer. The ten years’ hunt was over at last. There was silence all round him. This place was very like the world: overcrowded with lust and crime and unhappy love, it stank to heaven; but he realized that after all it was possible to find peace there, when you knew for certain that the time was short.
‘A priest?’ the woman said at last.
‘Yes.’
‘Do they know?’
‘Not yet.’
He could feel a hand fumbling at his sleeve. A voice said, ‘You shouldn’t have told us. Father, there are all sorts here. Murderers . . .’
The voice which had described the crime to him said, ‘You’ve no cause to abuse me. Because I kill a man it doesn’t mean . . .’ Whispering started everywhere. The voice said bitterly, ‘I’m not an informer just because when a man says “Your mother was a whore . . .”’
The priest said, ‘There’s no need for anyone to inform on me. That would be a sin. When it’s daylight they’ll discover for themselves.’
‘They’ll shoot you, father,’ the woman’s voice said.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you afraid?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
A new voice spoke, in the corner from which the sounds of pleasure had come. It said roughly and obstinately, ‘A man isn’t afraid of a thing like that.’
‘No?’ the priest asked.
‘A bit of pain. What do you expect? It has to come.’
‘All the same,’ the priest said, ‘I am afraid.’
‘Toothache is worse.’
‘We can’t all be brave men.’
The voice said with contempt, ‘You believers are all the same. Christianity makes you cowards.’
‘Yes. Perhaps you are right. You see I am a bad priest and a bad man. To die in a state of mortal sin’ – he gave an uneasy chuckle – ‘it makes you think.’
‘There. It’s as I say. Believing in God makes cowards.’ The voice was triumphant, as if it had proved something.
‘So then?’ the priest said.
‘Better not to believe – and be a brave man.’
‘I see – yes. And of course, if one believed the Governor did not exist or the jefe, if we could pretend that this prison was not a prison at all but a garden, how brave we could be then.’
‘That’s just foolishness.’
‘But when we found that the prison was a prison, and the Governor up there in the square undoubtedly existed, well, it wouldn’t much matter if we’d been brave for an hour or two.’
‘Nobody could say that this prison was not a prison.’
‘No? You don’t think so? I can see you don’t listen to the politicians.’ His feet were giving him great pain: he had cramp in the soles, but he could bring no pressure on the muscles to relieve them. It was not yet midnight; the hours of darkness stretched ahead interminably.
The woman said suddenly, ‘Think. We have a martyr here . . .’
The priest giggled: he couldn’t stop himself. He said, ‘I don’t think martyrs are like this.’ He became suddenly serious, remembering Maria’s words – it wouldn’t be a good thing to bring mockery on the Church. He said, ‘Martyrs are holy men. It is wro
ng to think that just because one dies . . . no. I tell you I am in a state of mortal sin. I have done things I couldn’t talk to you about. I could only whisper them in the confessional.’ Everybody, when he spoke, listened attentively to him as if he were addressing them in church. He wondered where the inevitable Judas was sitting now, but he wasn’t aware of Judas as he had been in the forest hut. He was moved by an irrational affection for the inhabitants of this prison. A phrase came to him: ‘God so loved the world . . .’ He said, ‘My children, you must never think the holy martyrs are like me. You have a name for me. Oh, I’ve heard you use it before now. I am a whisky priest. I am in here now because they found a bottle of brandy in my pocket.’ He tried to move his feet from under him: the cramp had passed: now they were lifeless: all feeling gone. Oh well, let them stay. He wouldn’t have to use them often again.
The old man was muttering and the priest’s thoughts went back to Brigitta. The knowledge of the world lay in her like the dark explicable spot in an X-ray photograph; he longed – with a breathless feeling in the breast – to save her, but he knew the surgeon’s decision – the ill was incurable.
The woman’s voice said pleadingly, ‘A little drink, father . . . it’s not so important.’ He wondered why she was here – probably for having a holy picture in her house. She had the tiresome intense note of a pious woman. They were extraordinarily foolish over pictures. Why not burn them? One didn’t need a picture . . . He said sternly, ‘Oh, I am not only a drunkard.’ He had always been worried by the fate of pious women. As much as politicians, they fed on illusion. He was frightened for them: they came to death so often in a state of invincible complacency, full of uncharity. It was one’s duty, if one could, to rob them of their sentimental notions of what was good . . . He said in hard accents, ‘I have a child.’
What a worthy woman she was! Her voice pleaded in the darkness; he couldn’t catch what she said, but it was something about the Good Thief. He said, ‘My child, the thief repented. I haven’t repented.’ He remembered her coming into the hut, the dark malicious knowing look with the sunlight at her back. He said, ‘I don’t know how to repent.’ That was true: he had lost the faculty. He couldn’t say to himself that he wished his sin had never existed, because the sin seemed to him now so unimportant and he loved the fruit of it. He needed a confessor to draw his mind slowly down the drab passages which led to grief and repentance.
The woman was silent now: he wondered whether after all he had been too harsh with her. If it helped her faith to believe that he was a martyr . . . But he rejected the idea: one was pledged to truth. He shifted an inch or two on his hams and said, ‘What time does it get light?’
‘Four . . . five . . .’ a man replied. ‘How can we tell, father? We haven’t clocks.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘Are you kept here all day?’
‘Oh no. They let us out to clean the yard.’
He thought: that is when I shall be discovered – unless it’s earlier, for surely one of these people will betray me first. A long train of thought began, which led him to announce after a while, ‘They are offering a reward for me. Five hundred, six hundred pesos, I’m not sure.’ Then he was silent again. He couldn’t urge any man to inform against him – that would be tempting him to sin – but at the same time if there was an informer here, there was no reason why the wretched creature should be bilked of his reward. To commit so ugly a sin – it must count as murder – and to have no compensation in this world . . . He thought: it wouldn’t be fair.
‘Nobody here,’ a voice said, ‘wants their blood money.’
Again he was touched by an extraordinary affection. He was just one criminal among a herd of criminals . . . He had a sense of companionship which he had never experienced in the old days when pious people came kissing his black cotton glove.
The pious woman’s voice leapt hysterically out at him, ‘It is so stupid to tell them that. You don’t know the sort of wretches who are here, father. Thieves, murderers . . .’
‘Well,’ an angry voice said, ‘why are you here?’
‘I had good books in my house,’ she announced, with unbearable pride. He had done nothing to shake her complacency. He said, ‘They are everywhere. It’s no different here.’
‘Good books?’
He giggled. ‘No, no. Thieves, murderers . . . Oh, well, my child, if you had more experience you would know there are worse things to be.’ The old man seemed to be uneasily asleep; his head lay sideways against the priest’s shoulder, and he muttered angrily. God knows, it had never been easy to move in this place, but the difficulty seemed to increase as the night wore on and limbs stiffened. He couldn’t twitch his shoulder now without waking the old man to another night of suffering. Well, he thought, it was my kind who robbed him: it’s only fair to be made a little uncomfortable . . . He sat silent and rigid against the damp wall, with his dead feet under his haunches. The mosquitoes droned on; it was no good defending yourself by striking at the air: they pervaded the whole place like an element. Somebody as well as the old man had fallen asleep and was snoring, a curious note of satisfaction, as though he had eaten and drunk well at a good dinner and was now taking a snooze. . . . The priest tried to calculate the hour: how much time had passed since he had met the beggar in the plaza? It was probably not long after midnight: there would be hours more of this.
It was, of course, the end, but at the same time you had to be prepared for everything, even escape. If God intended him to escape He could snatch him away from in front of a firing-squad. But God was merciful. There was only one reason, surely, which would make Him refuse His peace – if there was any peace – that he could still be of use in saving a soul, his own or another’s. But what good could he do now? They had him on the run; he dared not enter a village in case somebody else should pay with his life – perhaps a man who was in mortal sin and unrepentant. It was impossible to say what souls might not be lost simply because he was obstinate and proud and wouldn’t admit defeat. He couldn’t even say Mass any longer – he had no wine. It had gone down the dry gullet of the Chief of Police. It was appallingly complicated. He was still afraid of death, he would be more afraid of death yet when the morning came, but it was beginning to attract him by its simplicity.
The pious woman was whispering to him. She must have somehow edged her way nearer. She was saying, ‘Father, will you hear my confession?’
‘My dear child, here! It’s quite impossible. Where would be the secrecy?’
‘It’s been so long . . .’
‘Say an Act of Contrition for your sins. You must trust God, my dear, to make allowances . . .’
‘I wouldn’t mind suffering . . .’
‘Well, you are here.’
‘That’s nothing. In the morning my sister will have raised the money for my fine.’
Somewhere against the far wall pleasure began again; it was unmistakable: the movements, the breathlessness, and then the cry. The pious woman said aloud with fury, ‘Why won’t they stop it? The brutes, the animals!’
‘What’s the good of your saying an Act of Contrition now in this state of mind?’
‘But the ugliness . . .’
‘Don’t believe that. It’s dangerous. Because suddenly we discover that our sins have so much beauty.’
‘Beauty,’ she said with disgust. ‘Here. In this cell. With strangers all round.’
‘Such a lot of beauty. Saints talk about the beauty of suffering. Well, we are not saints, you and I. Suffering to us is just ugly. Stench and crowding and pain. That is beautiful in that corner – to them. It needs a lot of learning to see things with a saint’s eye: a saint gets a subtle taste for beauty and can look down on poor ignorant palates like theirs. But we can’t afford to.’
‘It’s mortal sin.’
‘We don’t know. It may be. But I’m a bad priest, you see. I know – from experience – how much beauty Satan carried down with him
when he fell. Nobody ever said the fallen angels were the ugly ones. Oh no, they were just as quick and light and . . .’
Again the cry came, an expression of intolerable pleasure. The woman said, ‘Stop them. It’s a scandal.’ He felt fingers on his knee, grasping, digging. He said, ‘We’re all fellow prisoners. I want drink at this moment more than anything, more than God. That’s a sin too.’
‘Now,’ the woman said, ‘I can see you’re a bad priest. I wouldn’t believe it before. I do now. You sympathize with these animals. If your bishop heard you . . .’
‘Ah, he’s a very long way off.’ He thought of the old man now in Mexico City, living in one of those ugly comfortable pious houses, full of images and holy pictures, saying Mass on Sundays at one of the cathedral altars.
‘When I get out of here, I shall write . . .’
He couldn’t help laughing: she had no sense of how life had changed. He said, ‘If he gets the letter he’ll be interested to hear I’m alive.’ But again he became serious. It was more difficult to feel pity for her than for the half-caste who a week ago had tagged him through the forest, but her case might be worse. The other had so much excuse – poverty and fever and innumerable humiliations. He said, ‘Try not to be angry. Pray for me instead.’
‘The sooner you are dead the better.’
He couldn’t see her in the darkness, but there were plenty of faces he could remember from the old days which fitted the voice. When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity – that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination. He began to feel an overwhelming responsibility for this pious woman. ‘You and Father José,’ she said. ‘It’s people like you who make people mock – at real religion.’ She had, after all, as many excuses as the half-caste. He saw the kind of salon in which she spent her days, with the rocking-chair and the photographs, meeting no one. He said gently, ‘You are not married, are you?’
The Power and the Glory Page 14
