Then he felt Sabina’s hands in his, hands like startled birds that flew up to his neck and hung on, the cold, swift kiss she pressed on him in desperation. All that time she had been following him.
“Sabina,” he said, pulling his face away, “this is the altar.”
“The altar,” she said, “the altar of my love for you.” She seemed maddened from so much love. Speechless, he stumbled, overcome by the strength of the small body, skinny but stubborn, hanging from his neck and, unlike the kiss, burning, shoving him to the marble edge of that same altar, the long, ice-cold table that gleamed upon a base like an upside-down triangle. There they fell, her on top of him, slowly and silently, as Tancredo devoted himself to breaking their fall, and she, voraciously, to kissing him. Suddenly, she took her lips away, exhaled damp breath across the hunchback’s face like another well-aimed caress and said: “Don’t go or I’ll stay under the altar and Father Almida will have to come to get me out and he’ll ask me why I’m here and I’ll tell him it’s because of you, only you.” She seemed to be crying as the hunchback lifted her into the air and put her down again to one side, like a wisp; there they sat beneath the marble triangle that Tancredo imagined to be the eye of God, upside down, regarding them. The eye of God, upside down, he thought again, and smiled in spite of himself, adding: What’s happening to me? I’m laughing. He remembered smiling recently in church; several times he had smiled right there in the sanctuary; what’s happening to me, he wondered again, and tried to see his hands, bewildered, as if they might be wet with blood. At that moment he was not thinking about Sabina at all, only about his hands — they seemed criminal to him — and the eye of God, upside down, spying on them, and then he smiled even more.
“You laugh, you’re laughing,” Sabina said, and launched herself at him again, trustingly. “This church is like a marketplace,” she said. “Those abusive Lilias are taking advantage of Almida’s absence. They flounce about like mistresses of the parish, puffed up like turkeys, but lie down like doormats for that little priest to walk all over.”
For a moment, Tancredo was overcome by a sort of sympathy and tenderness. There was Sabina, her tempestuous spirit locked inside her fragile blonde body, her reddened lips, pressed together, those teeth that bit them until they bled.
“Let’s run away, Tancredo,” he heard her say, stunned. “Right now, today, without saying goodbye to anyone. They owe us money, I’ve got it all planned, I know where to go, where we can live for ever. They won’t come after us; why should they? We’ve worked our whole lives for them. It’s only fair we’d get tired of it one day.”
He imagined himself running away with Sabina. He could not help smiling again.
She trusted him when he laughed. This time would be no different. She huffed, a flame consuming itself, the only candle still lit. Tancredo sensed her removing her blouse all at once, guessed at the movement in the shadows, the raised arms, the falling garment, utterly overwhelming. As if lit by a black flame, the church grew warm, the air caught fire, smelling of Sabina’s pale body, the shiver of her just-uncovered breasts, the sweat in her armpits, and the fear and joy of her ready, daring flesh.
They had been there years before, just once, in the same hollow beneath the altar, children playing with the pleasure of fear, the same fear of being discovered in the church’s most sacred corner, the danger of the sacristan appearing, or Father Almida, or the Lilias, the same danger as today, tonight. Tancredo thought: We haven’t changed at all, it’s the same fear. He smiled again, and once more Sabina was burning above him; it seemed to him that she was exuding smoke, that her flesh must be made of smoldering sticks, of the sweet and bitter smells that enveloped him. But he responded to her kiss — for one instant — more out of pity than desire, then plucked her off him again, like a feather, and said, jumping to his feet: “Cover yourself up,” and then, more plea than order: “Come to the office. The Lilias are waiting.”
“Never,” she replied, retreating and kneeling inside the marble niche. “I’m never going to leave if you don’t come here for me, it doesn’t matter what time, today or tomorrow or the day after, and I don’t care if Father Almida and my godfather or all the men in the world come instead of you, and line up in the church to see me and ask why I’m here, I swear I’ll answer them all that it’s ‘through your fault, through your most grievous fault, Amen,’ Tancredo, don’t you forget it, I’m never going to leave.” The threat came out mixed with sorrow and disappointment.
Tancredo hesitated. About to step through the door into the sacristy, he turned to look back at her, seeking her in the shadows of the altar; he could barely make her out, a quivering smudge; he heard her panting, glimpsed her eyes like blue flames — Tancredo thought he suffered them, two icy, blue hailstones that floated toward him and enveloped him, and felt a confusion of indignant compassion. “We’ll be waiting for you,” he said again, turning his back on her as if running away, and in reality he did run away, he ran from her, from her threat, a cry laid bare beneath the altar: “I’ll be waiting too, my love, I swear I will.”
Irritated, Tancredo thought the sacristy smelled of brandy as he passed through it and went out into the garden: he needed to think for a minute, to work things out. It had stopped raining. He tiptoed through the willows. The lit doorway to the office looked yellow. No voices could be heard. Raindrops pattered down from the leaves; they smacked against other big, fallen leaves, against scattered tins which no one ever found; there was the murmur of a drainpipe, gulping water; it was as if it were still raining, without rain. “They’re not talking,” Tancredo said to himself, “they’re not talking” — and he moved closer until he could see into the office. Yellow like the light, the three Lilias seemed to be asleep on their feet around Matamoros, who was seated at the head of the table. In spite of the silence, they were talking; their lips moved; their gestures enquired; their questioning heads responded. Tancredo inched closer. They were whispering. Their voices were like secrets, a confession. As he moved forward slowly, he could make them out.
“So, you’re not sisters,” Matamoros sighed. His face tilted toward theirs; his hand, meanwhile, went for the bottle at last. He filled his glass, but did not drink. “Not sisters,” he repeated. “But you look alike.”
“We’re from the same village, Father.”
“We were neighbors.”
The Lilias’ voices drifted into the night like stricken murmurings, identical, hurried. They all wanted to talk at once, to say the same things.
“We were cooks, we still are.”
“And family? Where are your families?”
“They killed our husbands on the same day in the village. No one knows who did it. One lot said it was the others, the others said it was the first lot. Anyway, they killed all the men. And there were a lot of them. Only we women were left, because they took the children too. We went to ask for them, we looked for them. Imagine, a hoard of mothers asking after a hoard of children. Who knew about them, who had them? One lot said the others, the others said the first lot. Dead or alive, who knows? Thanks to the Lord’s infinite mercy we met Father Almida, who had just taken on the church at Ricaurte. We were spared from crying all over the place. We followed the Father from village to village, from city to city. Why would we ever go home again? Our houses were empty, the village would die empty, they weren’t there, and they weren’t coming back. Without them we were alone, no maize to grind, no homes to keep. But God is great, God is God; Reverend Father Juan Pablo Almida appeared, and for that, God bless Father Almida, although. .”