The Head of the Saint

by Socorro Acioli

  “It is a pregnancy, Father. It’s my son, Samuel.”

  Mariinha was able to rely on at least a shred of pity from her sister, who gave her a little money and an old leather suitcase to help her go.

  She stopped at the little Tauá church before leaving, to ask forgiveness from God for her sin and pray that her son be healthy, strong and a friend to her.

  The priest was in the sacristy, and Mariinha thought it would be a good idea to confess before going. She told him everything, of her sin and her passion, being thrown out by her father, the child in her belly, the loneliness she now had to face. It was this kind priest who told her that she who has faith is never alone, and suggested she go to live in the town of Juazeiro do Norte, under the eyes of Father Cicero. He gave Mariinha a blessed Mother of God rosary with blue and white beads. Mariinha noticed that there was a green bead in the place of one of the blue ones.

  “Green is my lucky color,” the priest explained.

  He wrote on a piece of paper the names of several people he knew from when he had lived in Juazeiro. But he underlined the name of Dona Glória, the blessed, as the single most important friend to seek out.

  It was said that one day Dona Glória would become a saint. She had barely turned thirteen when she was in church and a man came up to one of the side windows and gestured for her to come over. He had a message from her mother, he said. It was serious: her father had had a heart attack and he was dying. Her mother had asked this man to fetch her by bicycle because that way she would get there more quickly. Glória didn’t notice anything strange about it until the bicycle was flying along a road that was nowhere near her house. When she started asking questions, sitting on the crossbar, the man told her to shut up or he’d kill her. He almost did. He raped Glória and was at the point of killing her when two men happened, miraculously, to pass by. They saved her life.

  The rapist managed to get away, but he had got the poor girl pregnant. It was a public disgrace, and the town agreed that she ought to have an abortion. The doctor of Juazeiro arranged the whole thing and warned the family that the procedure carried some risk of death. That was when Glória asked her mother to call Father Cicero to give her a final blessing. To Glória’s amazement, he appeared right behind her mother even before she’d finished saying his name. And he was furious. Overcome with rage.

  “Get up and go and wait for your child to be born. You’re quite old enough to understand what courage is. Your son will help you in life.”

  The father had such a presence—those black robes, those blue eyes. Glória did as she was told, running counter to everyone else, and there were many who turned their backs on her. It was a difficult birth, and she nearly died. The boy was born sick and spent his days in a hospital with Glória by his side. Nothing in their lives seemed to be as Father Cicero had predicted. They said the boy wouldn’t live, that he was a testament to the sin, the memento of a crime. Only Glória, deep down, never doubted. And it was only when she was about thirty that things began to change. The boy studied, grew, became a doctor of law, went off to live in the capital and passed the examination to be a judge.

  Glória never wanted to leave Juazeiro, and as the years went by her presence bore witness to a miracle. Her son, Dr. Marcelo, never set foot there again, but he sent money for the upkeep of the five-bedroom house he had bought her. Five bedrooms. She used the house to take in single mothers, and she took Mariinha in with a hug that was silent but filled with all the words the girl needed to hear. Glória looked after her in labor and taught her how to weave hats, and Mariinha looked after the older woman until the day she died. Glória the blessed.

  —

  Before leaving the town in which he had been born, Samuel walked to the statue of Father Cicero for the last time. He found it funny, this fantasy that the white statue, huge and motionless, should be able to see anything or care whether anyone lived or died in Juazeiro do Norte. His mother had believed that fantasy right up until her death.

  Beside the statue there was a house for the votive offerings from those who had asked Father Cicero to bestow his graces upon them. Wooden legs and arms, bridal dresses, photographs of cars, hearts; miracles to suit every taste. Samuel lit the candle his mother had asked for with contempt for the stupid act, which as far as he was concerned had no purpose but to fill the pockets of the candle sellers—bad company whom he knew well. He watched the candle flame tremble, trying to turn into fire—that was beautiful, at least. He remembered his mother, her thin hands covered in loose, dry skin, trembling while lighting a candle. The nimble hands that had woven hats for so many years, dead now and under the earth. The hands of his mother.

  He ran. He ran down Horto Hill with his suitcase in his hand. His luggage wasn’t heavy, he’d never had many possessions. He walked, panting, on the road out of Juazeiro do Norte and felt a little less pain in his chest once he had left, passing over the stones that Mariinha’s fragile feet would never tread again.

  There was a moment on the road when he looked back and realized that he could no longer see the giant white man, Father Cicero, who had not been strong enough to save his mother from a life of sorrows and a wretched death.

  He believed that all saints were merely an invention of people who were desperate, and nothing that Mariinha had said his whole life had convinced him otherwise. Saints were stone, and only stone. That was Samuel’s law.

  As he recovered, Samuel’s first days in Candeia were a time of some comfort compared to the wretchedness of the journey. He had a place to sleep and something to eat, by the good grace and efforts of Francisco and the blackmail about the silly secret of the porn magazines. The dogs never came back. It really did only rain on Niceia’s orders, and after this one downpour the clouds seemed happy, never releasing rain again but remaining dry as cotton wool, high, like smoke in the sky. Samuel was a bit cleaner but still dressed in rags, and his hair had grown. Francisco showed him a large lake nearby where he could take a bath every now and then. It would have been ideal were the lake not the drinking place for the dogs. He saw the animals on the far bank one day and tried to leave without them spotting him. The dogs looked up at his arrival but did nothing, perhaps because it was daytime, perhaps because they only undertook to guard the hill during the night. They didn’t bark when they were off duty.

  The head became his house, and he set up everything more or less like a home. An old mattress with a pillow, a woolen blanket, candles, a little three-legged table, a few bottles, two glasses, a plate, cutlery—gifts from Francisco, neither bought nor stolen.

  In Candeia more houses were abandoned than lived in, and after the head of the saint brought misfortune to the town, a lot of people had left without taking all of their belongings with them. The rumor that the town was cursed scared off any impressionable souls overnight.

  The family in the green house, which was almost immediately facing the church, abandoned their home, leaving all their furniture: tables, sofas and beds and, on top of one of the beds, the grandmother of the family, Sara. She was the first woman to die from the curse of the head of the saint. The town only discovered her death when her cat began to meow day and night on the roof of the house. There had to be something strange going on—this cat wasn’t the kind of creature to give the time of day to anyone. Dr. Adriano had gone into the abandoned house with the police chief and found poor Sara dead on the bed, her eyes open. She had died more than a week earlier, he said. She had already started to stink. Dona Sara had been married to the previous mayor—she’d been Candeia’s richest woman in the good times. In the end she was buried in the family tomb by Francisco’s father, the gravedigger.

  It was from the green house that Francisco got the mattress, the cutlery, the pillow. It was all there because nobody went into the house. They said that it held Dona Sara’s breath and that only curses could ever come out of it. They said Dona Sara still walked around the kitchen, watched television at six o’clock and said the rosary at her window on Mass da
y. And if someone were to go into the house, she would whisper a premonition of death. They said a lot about Sara’s ghost, back when there were enough people in Candeia to spread rumors.

  Francisco wasn’t scared; he was the son of Chico the Gravedigger and he’d seen more dead bodies in his life than anything else. He held death in sufficiently high esteem not to be afraid of it. Every life lost was a few more coins for his father, who, besides his salary from the town hall, also earned the affection and gratitude of the families for taking care of the graves of their loved ones. Chico the Gravedigger swept the graves, washed the plastic flowers and cleaned the glass that protected the photographs on the better-off graves. The cemetery was his stone garden, his plantation of kindliness. Francisco was a regular helper. He grew up knowing that even death was something you could miss when it took its time coming.

  They chatted a lot, Francisco and Samuel. They told each other the stories of their lives, from up on Horto Hill to down in the grave pits. Bit by bit they began to confide in each other. They tried to understand how it was that the prayers of the women came to be trapped within the concrete of the decapitated saint—but it was impossible. They went carefully over their plans, plotting to earn money by exploiting the carelessness of the saint who had allowed Samuel access to the prayers of his followers. They were going to make a serious impact in Candeia. They laughed at their own misfortunes and at other people’s. Misfortunes were all there to be laughed at.

  Thursday, five a.m. precisely. Samuel awoke with a start in his saint’s-head house and pressed his ear to the mark for the voice they’d worked out to be Madeinusa’s. It was on the right, just above the ear. Francisco tried, too; he had stayed over especially, as this business of the saint preferring Samuel really annoyed him. It was no use, though—he still couldn’t hear anything.

  Madeinusa was asking the saint to give her the strength and courage to go to see Dr. Adriano. She asked the wedding maker, St. Anthony, to find some way to make sure her mother would not suspect anything, she said amen and that was that. The plan was to say she was going to a friend’s house to collect some money she was owed, because she knew that the girl had won something on the lottery in Fortaleza. Helenice was money-mad, so the plan was perfect.

  Samuel and Francisco ran out without having to say a word—their plan was all ready, too. Francisco would go to the health center, and Samuel would go and talk to Madeinusa.

  And so it was.

  Samuel surprised the girl in the middle of the street as she hurried along, and he walked beside her at the same pace. She was afraid.

  “Listen, Madeinusa. You know I live in St. Anthony’s head? He’s sent you a message.”

  “Ha, that’s all I need.”

  “He said he can’t bear being tied up under your bed any longer.”

  Madeinusa went pale. This was ridiculous. How could he possibly know?

  “St. Anthony said he wants to see you married to Dr. Adriano, and he has instructions for you.”

  “What kind of joke is this?”

  “Look, you just have to go into his office and say you’ve got a pain in the heart. Just say that. And take the sock.”

  “What?”

  “The doctor’s sock. Take the sock with you to the appointment.”

  No one knew about the saint under the bed, about her passion for the doctor, the appointment and the sock—oh God! If this crazy beggar boy was talking about it, his story deserved her attention. She prayed to the saint in secret, she had stolen the sock in secret, and now this boy was revealing it all like this—it had to be for some good reason.

  “Pain in the heart? What pain in the heart?”

  “Don’t ask me. It’s a message from the saint.”

  Moments before the crazy boy had appeared, Madeinusa had been wondering what she could say when she walked into the office, since she wasn’t in any pain apart from the passion that was consuming her life. It made her believe the boy’s words were true. All this happened so fast—the two of them spoke so quickly—that there was no time for her to think.

  —

  The next day Francisco arrived early at the health center so he could be first in the queue. Madeinusa took a little longer, and there were about eight people ahead of her. She stood at the back of the queue in a state of visible anxiety. She was pretty, Madeinusa, she always had been. Her father said that something as lovely as her must have been imported, like the radio he’d bought. The box bore the words: “Made in USA.” “My daughter’s name comes from abroad. All I did was put the letters together.”

  She wore her hair long, always tied back, her skirt below the knee, clothes buttoned up to her neck. She instinctively knew that untying her hair, rolling down the waistband of her skirt just a bit and opening one pathetic button on her blouse would make her even more beautiful, with many, many more years to live.

  Samuel took his place at the front of the queue alongside Francisco. The doctor arrived right away, said good morning without looking at anyone and went into the building. He didn’t even see Madeinusa as she practically fainted. She loved that man, everything she saw of him and everything she imagined he had within him.

  The queue was kept in order by a health assistant, whose job it was to note who arrived after whom and to open the office door. Her portly bearing and permanent expression of disgust averted any possibility of confusion in the order of arrivals. There was no need, there were never many people—eight, ten, fifteen of the area’s residents. People came here from outside Candeia, because they knew there was almost nobody living here in need of a doctor.

  She opened the door, making an abrupt gesture as if to say, “Well, go in then, idiots….”

  Francisco and Samuel went in. That was the deal. If Francisco took Samuel to the doctor to cure the wound on his leg and help Madeinusa, he would have the privacy of the hollow head restored to him. Samuel could leave once his leg had healed, and he could set about finding his father once more. The doctor, jotting something down, asked what the problem was. Dr. Adriano looked at the wound from a distance, not disguising his shock. It was serious.

  “How did that happen?”

  “A dog bite, at the saint’s head.”

  The doctor looked up and gave Samuel a ferocious look of reproach. The boy guessed why—he had mentioned the saint’s head that had condemned Candeia to wretchedness. He knew from Francisco that talking about St. Anthony was forbidden.

  “I live in the head and I listen to what the saint is thinking, Doctor.”

  “He’s trying to help the town,” Francisco joined in.

  “How long have you been hearing voices?”

  “Since I arrived in Candeia.”

  “Is there any history of mental illness in your family?”

  “You think I’m crazy, Doctor? I’m completely normal!”

  Dr. Adriano laughed quietly to himself, because he’d learned from his psychiatry professor that crazy people always say they’re sane. The prescription he wrote out was more illegible than his usual scrawl; he wanted to get rid of the strange boy as quickly as he could. No sane person would live in the saint’s head. He handed over the prescription, said the course of treatment would last ten days and gave Samuel a few boxes of free medicine samples. He looked over at the door, wishing the two of them were already on the other side of it, but they didn’t move a muscle.

  “St Anthony has sent you a message, Dr. Adriano.”

  Dr. Adriano sighed but waited for more.

  “He said a girl’s going to come in here today saying she’s got a pain in the heart. St. Anthony asked me to tell you that she’s the love of your life.”

  “That’s a good one!”

  “Listen to me, Doctor. She will be bringing you your sock.”

  Sock. The word struck the doctor between the eyes like a lightning bolt.

  “When did he arrive?” the doctor asked Francisco.

  “A few days ago.”

  “Before last Friday?”

 
; “After Friday.”

  “How do you know about the sock?” he asked Samuel.

  “The saint told me.”

  No one knew about the sock. It had disappeared from the doctor’s car. The previous Friday he had left one of the doors unlocked and a single sock had vanished. Just one of the pair—it was the oddest thing. If it had been a real thief, he’d have stolen the envelope of money that was in the glove compartment, his jacket, the car stereo, his watch, his bag. Candeia had never been the sort of place to have thieves. Getting a single sock stolen from a pair—that was something you didn’t forget.

  The doctor was shaken. He threw the two of them out of the room and hurried back to his desk. There was still time for Samuel to give Madeinusa an encouraging wink.

  With every minute that passed during his work, the message from the saint troubled the young doctor more and more. This wasn’t the kind of thing that happened in his predictable life. Every day he would wake up and drive his car to the towns where he worked, knowing precisely the menu of ailments that he would find. A message from a saint—that was not on the list. It was unsettling.

  The most practical thing would be for him to stick his head out of the door and take a look at the queue, but he was afraid. With each woman who came in, his panic increased, particularly if it was a woman without many teeth or a hefty woman with digestive troubles. The rest of the patients were all men and children.

  The young doctor rushed through the consultations as quickly as he could, sweating. He asked his assistant at the door how many people were still in the queue.

  “Only three, thank God. I’ll be out by eleven.”

  Two patients dripping with sweat and then finally Madeinusa. The long wait had left both of them overcome by anxiety—knowing that there was some superior force at work in this meeting. Hers were eyes of curiosity and courage. His, of dread and eagerness. Adriano was shy, very shy, especially when it came to women. Madeinusa had never been this close to a man in her life. Especially not in a room with no one else there.