Elders

by Ryan McIlvain

  “Oh, hey,” McLeod said. “What?”

  “You tell me,” Passos said.

  They ate breakfast together at seven o’clock, held personal study from seven thirty to eight thirty, companionship study from eight thirty to nine thirty. All of it straight out of the Missionary Handbook. You would have thought God Himself had dropped in to observe. At moments Passos wanted to laugh again, but he resisted. He decided not to ask anything about anything. Whatever this was felt newborn, fragile.

  As soon as the elders left the apartment, the day began to waste away in door contacting—little there because of the championships, but what else could they do? And McLeod didn’t complain. At one point he did suggest they drop in and meet Maurilho, their Advocate with the Locals, as McLeod called him, and a good friend. Maurilho’s blue stucco house sat just off the main street, fairly close to the elders’ apartment, and very close, uncomfortably close, to the neighborhood brothel, its darkened neon sign—DRIVE-THRU—like an unlit fuse. To even pass the drive-through’s outer walls, even in the middle of the day, set Elder Passos on edge, conjuring up images that reminded him in turn of the images he had hidden in the back of his desk drawer. He resolved to get rid of the magazine once and for all, and very soon.

  Inside Maurilho’s house Passos met the big man himself: completely bald, a smiler, with a belly that slung down from his sternum like a giant kangaroo pouch. He met Rose, too, Maurilho’s wife, a tall and elegant woman, her skin stretched drumhead taut across high cheekbones, her hair tipping just this side of gray. Passos figured Maurilho must have drawn on a store of considerable wit and charm to marry her. He liked them both instantly. And their son, Rômulo, a fourteen-year-old with a buzz cut, a Ronaldo jersey, and a precocious air that reminded Passos of his little brother.

  The elders sat opposite the little family on wooden chairs. Where are you from? How long have you been on the mission? How did you find the church? The usual questions. After Passos had answered each of them in brief—he gave his most basic conversion story, not even mentioning his mother’s death—he followed Maurilho’s eyes to his companion beside him. McLeod sat silent, smiling.

  “What are you grinning at, whitey?” Maurilho said. He ran his palm over the high smooth dome of his head. “We look practically alike by now, don’t we?”

  Rose caught Passos’s eye, said softly, “He’s just teasing him. They’re grand comics, these two.”

  “Ah,” Passos said.

  Elder McLeod mimicked Maurilho, smoothing his hand over his own head, the hair close-cropped and bleached almost invisibly blond by the sun. Brancão indeed. It occurred to Passos that McLeod was the palest companion he had had so far, by a wide margin.

  “There are worse people to look like, right?” McLeod answered Maurilho. “How’s your team, by the way? You still thinking of painting a flag on your head?”

  “Later on, maybe. It’s still early stages. Brazil beat Paraguay, four to one, in the first round. A little stroll on the pitch. It’ll get harder, though.”

  “I assume it’s just South America, right? The U.S. isn’t playing?”

  “No, they’re not invited. You guys are too busy stockpiling for war.”

  “Maurilho,” Rose said, a note of warning in her voice.

  “What she said,” McLeod said, and he smiled.

  Maurilho smiled too, after a moment, and the conversation turned to other subjects. When these ran out, Rose got up and motioned for Rômulo to follow her into the kitchen, where they prepared drinks and snack plates for the rest of them. They all ate and drank in an alcove just off the kitchen. McLeod sat beside Maurilho and asked at one point how the job search was going. The big man dropped his head. McLeod chucked him, lightly, on the shoulder. They all clearly liked McLeod, and he them, but Passos felt a hanging back in himself at this intimate rapport, almost too intimate. Or was it? After the events of the last twenty-four hours Passos had reason to doubt his first impressions. Hadn’t the Lord Himself established rapports? Hadn’t He suffered even little children to come to Him? He might have dandled them on his knee, done magic tricks for them. Elder Passos knew he could sometimes confuse mere soberness with righteousness, and he wanted to check that in himself—that and so much else. He decided to keep an open mind about McLeod’s—what to call it even? His openness? His familiarity? It was clear to him, in any case, that Maurilho and his family reciprocated McLeod’s warm feelings, and that they’d missed the memos circulating through the mission about McLeod’s mulishness and arrogance and sloth.

  The evening drew down over Carinha in slow degrees, the light fading, dimming away the edges of the city, yet priming the color of laundry on the clotheslines, the whites ghostly blue in the almost dark. Rooftop satellites and antennae pricked the skyline like the bristled fur of a giant, sleeping animal. This was Elder Passos’s favorite time of day. The air got cool and dry, the tick and whir of unthreatening insects came up, replacing for the most part the whine of motors, and also, and best of all, the people came to their doors. More often than usual anyway. They answered in the unwind after work, or with the looseness of alcohol, or out of sheer recreational curiosity. The missionaries never reaped, of course. The harvests of truly interested investigators in this, the most Catholic state in one of the most Catholic countries in the world, were always modest. But missionary work, at bottom, did not concern itself with quantity, or with anything finite. The three people Passos had baptized had changed their lives and hearts forever, as he himself had done four years earlier, and they, like he, had mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, some of them born, many more unborn, an infinite, waiting posterity like the sands of the sea or the stars of the sky, as the Lord had explained to Father Abraham. Passos tried to maintain an Abrahamic perspective on the hottest, barest days. He sought to persuade not all the stars in this sky but one star in a million, a golden elect, who in turn would beget numberless other stars, other skies, worlds without end.

  Amen, Passos thought as their hour of after-dark tracting proved as fruitless as it had during the day. Amen and amen. Passos figured the flush of no-shows owed something to the championships as well. He remembered Josefina’s words—Better do it after six, they’re day games—and he smiled. Passos pictured the whole of Brazil sitting in front of a vast tentacular television, its million component screens reaching into a million different living rooms, uniting them by the same enthusiasm, the same broadcasts: the pregame shows, then the games themselves, then the postgame shows. A communal experience. He almost regretted to have to interrupt it, or have to try to interrupt it.

  The elders approached Josefina’s door, with some trepidation, at a few minutes before seven. Where did the trepidation come from? Was it fear that a promising thing might come to nothing? That a solid contact might be lost? Or was it the prospect of having to knock more doors if the appointment with Josefina fell through? Elder McLeod knocked the door—“Here goes,” he said—before Passos could decide.

  Josefina answered quickly, as if she’d been waiting. She opened the outer door with a smile. “Hello, what-do-I-call-yous.”

  “I’m sorry?” Passos said.

  “Your first names,” she said. “I didn’t get your first names yesterday.”

  “Oh, well, we usually go by our titles. I’m Elder Passos.” He nodded at his companion, who wore a strange, plastic smile. “And this is Elder McLeod.”

  McLeod took a breath. “You can just call us ‘Elders’ if you want. Like, ‘Hello, Elders.’ ” He laughed a bit. “Or whatever you prefer.”

  Josefina smiled at the suggestion. She made a game-show sweep of her hand, said, “Please come in, Elders. It’s not much, but …” She trailed off as they came into the dirt-packed yard. Josefina led them into the front room of her house, where a thin wiry man in a cutoff T-shirt and shorts sat in the changing light of a TV set. Josefina introduced Leandro and turned off the set. Leandro’s mouth tightened, then slowly relaxed.

  McLeod crossed the roo
m, said “What were you watching?,” and stuck out a hand—all too casual, Passos thought. Then he remembered his resolve to curb such thoughts.

  “Postgame,” Leandro said. He shook McLeod’s hand, put a tentative smile on his lips.

  “Your team win?”

  Josefina said, “Brazil doesn’t play again for a few days. Can I get you two some water? Cookies? Please, Elders, have a seat.”

  She directed them to a sunken plaid couch catty-corner to the love seat where Leandro sat. She went into the kitchen, reemerging a moment later with two glasses of water and a plate of white wafers. She handed them the glasses and held the plate while each of them took a biscoito with thanks. She placed the rest of them on a shelf of a mostly empty bookcase that stood beside the couch: a few old textbooks, magazines, a Jehovah’s Witnesses tract, and two volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia, one marked E–F, the other M–N–O. A red throw rug in the center of the room took the edge off the poured-concrete floor. A potted plant adorned one of the corners. Passos recognized these attempts at making do—his family made them as well—and for a moment he felt exposed in front of his American companion. He looked over at him as if in fear of being caught out. McLeod sat facing Leandro and Josefina, making small talk, something about the offside rule.

  “So you’re the American then,” Leandro said.

  McLeod nodded.

  “Did I hear you guys do this for two whole years?”

  Another nod.

  “Do you get to go home at all, see your families? Do you get to have girlfriends or anything?”

  The questions were more for McLeod than Passos, who began to feel wary, as he often did, of too much conversation before a lesson. He hadn’t made his teaching preferences clear to McLeod in the week they’d been together, mostly because, he now realized, they hadn’t sat down for a full lesson until tonight. (A dazed, possibly homeless woman had listened to them on a bench a few days earlier, but Passos didn’t count that.) He liked to come into an investigator’s home and let the message, the Spirit, do the talking. He preferred to be a vessel—no more, no less.

  But now Leandro was waiting for his companion to answer, and McLeod was flushing pinker than usual, eyes averted. “Well, no,” he said. “We don’t have girlfriends. Not during these two years at least.”

  “And your families?” Josefina said. “You don’t get to see them at all?”

  “Well, we write them every week,” McLeod said. “And we call them on Christmas and Mother’s Day.”

  “That’s all?”

  “It’s a sacrifice, certainly,” Passos interjected. He smiled and gave a firm nod as if to mark the end of one phase of the conversation, the beginning of another, the real conversation. “But we make these sacrifices”—he leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees—“we make them because we believe very strongly in the message of the restored gospel. We’d like to share that message with you now. May we do that, Leandro? Josefina?”

  Leandro looked surprised to hear his name. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing for now. We just wanted to ask your permission.”

  “Oh. Oh, sure. Go ahead.”

  “Please,” Josefina said.

  Passos looked to McLeod, nodded, and turned back to Leandro and Josefina, their faces open, a little nervous.

  “Well, first,” McLeod said, “just to get to know you guys better, let me ask you a few questions …” Passos stiffened, marveled—his junior companion had never seemed more junior—as McLeod proceeded to ask the couple how long they’d been in the area (“Our whole lives”), how long they’d been married (“Three years”), how old they were even, how old (“I’m twenty-nine, he’s thirty-two”), and several other questions wholly irrelevant to the first missionary discussion. Passos thought of a frightened boxer, moving in too close to his opponent, leaning against him in the early rounds, stalling. Not that Josefina and Leandro were opponents, but listen to him! What was Leandro’s construction job like? What did it entail? Was it hard? Was it dangerous? Did he enjoy it? Leandro answered each question at some length, and Josefina said, “I just thank God one of us has work, you know? There isn’t very much of it—”

  “So you believe in God,” Passos cut in. “What are your thoughts on God? Do either of you belong to a church?”

  He clamped his eyes on Josefina and Leandro and reached a hand over to his companion’s knee as if searching for the Off button. Passos wouldn’t make the mistake of inviting McLeod, open-ended, into the lesson again.

  “We’re both Catholics,” Josefina answered, “and we believe in God, but you know …”

  “We go every once in a while,” Leandro said. He turned to his wife. “We go. Right?”

  Josefina kept her eyes on Passos. “We believe in God, and we believe He’s good. Merciful. Is that what you meant?”

  “God is good in very deed,” Passos said. “That’s the first principle we teach. There is a God in heaven who loves us very much. He wants us to be happy in this life. And the greatest happiness and the greatest growth come from following His commandments, but how do we know God’s commandments?”

  Passos heard the inflection of his voice curl upward out of habit—too upward for now. “I meant that rhetorically,” he said. He removed his Bible from his shoulder bag and opened to an underlined, age-yellowed page. “My companion is going to read a scripture from the book of Amos, in the Old Testament, that answers this question. He’s just going to read it.” He passed the book to McLeod and pinioned a stiff forefinger over the verse.

  McLeod recited Amos 3:7 from memory, ignoring Passos’s Bible. “ ‘Surely the Lord God will do nothing without first revealing it to His servants the prophets.’ ”

  “Thank you, Elder,” Passos said. “And that’s the answer. We learn about God’s will and God’s commandments from the prophets He calls. He has called them throughout all human history. Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Amos, John the Baptist, Jesus Himself. All these people were prophets, called to pass along messages from God to man. Does that make sense?”

  It was another reflexive question, though for now he let it hang in the air, an act of faith.

  “So that means Jesus,” Josefina said, “was a prophet of God and the Son of God at the same time, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Passos said. “Absolutely.”

  Josefina smiled, and Leandro too—a little uncertain, Leandro’s smile, but at least he seemed attentive. They both did. Engaged even. And how long had it been? How long since he had sat before two intelligent, interested investigators, and a couple at that, a young family?

  “That’s absolutely right,” Passos said with sudden feeling, that old, good feeling. “God is good and God is merciful in very deed, and in His mercy He called prophets to lead us back to Him. And in the meridian of time, as it is rightly called, He rose up John the Baptist—a rude man, a locust eater—to make straight the way of the Lord, the very Son of God.” Passos felt the Spirit building in him, a different energy, and he began to lift—he did it unconsciously—into the familiar registers of the charism priests of his youth, their rhythms, their bouncing cadences. This music rose in Passos at moments of excitement, heat—it rose alongside the excitement, like a bright shirt bleeding freer as the wash water warms.

  “The prophet John the Baptist prepared the way for the Son of God, the Only Begotten Son, who gave His life, as we read in John, that those who believe in Him and His words, His prophecies, might not perish but have everlasting life. Ever. Lasting. Life,” Passos repeated, getting warmer still, and suddenly a muted “Amen” came from Josefina, and another, a second later, from Leandro.

  “Amen indeed,” Passos said, “for He is life itself. He is the way, the truth, the life. He paid the last, the very last farthing for our sins, our waywardness, our baseness, our corruption, our lusting and groping after darkness, and can any man doubt it? No! The Lord came to earth and established His perfect church that we may know how to
live worthy to return to Him. But what happened to this church? My friends, there is a ‘but.’ Here, sadly, tragically, there is a great and terrible ‘but.’ It came in the form of wicked men who drove away the pure, simple truth of that church and replaced it with the philosophies of the day, the corruptions of the day. I am sad to testify that the very truth forked away into paths choked with thorns and thistles, covered in mists of thick darkness. Every man began following after his own light, and not the Lord’s light, not the light, until soon, and it was very soon—it was only a few generations after the Lord’s ascension—soon the saving truth in all its purity and grace was lost, and the world lay in darkness for long centuries.”

  Elder Passos paused. He let the world lie in darkness for several seconds. He felt his companion’s eyes move to him—a curious smile too, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure. Passos was looking straight ahead at Josefina and Leandro, their faces arched, waiting.

  “But we have come with good news,” he said softly. “We have come with the good news. We proclaim that in the spring of 1820 the Lord saw fit to raise up a new prophet, in the fullness of times, in these the latter days. He called a young boy of only fourteen years—an American farm boy, unschooled, simple—a prophet like John the Baptist before him, rude and despised of the world. For the Lord God says He will make the weak things strong, confounding the wise and the haughty with the ignorant, confounding them even out of the mouth of babes, out of the mouth of a simple farm boy, an American. And that’s just what the Lord did, my friends, in His wisdom, in His infinite, infinite mercy—”

  “Amen,” Josefina said, a little louder than before.

  “Amen,” Leandro said.