“God bless him,” Matamoros said, adding: “I’m not going to drink a toast alone.”
They smiled with another murmur. The Father lost patience.
“Go, go and find your glasses and sit with me, and toast with me, before we say our goodbyes. I don’t want any food, just a moment with you, to take our minds off the bad weather, and then I’ll go. The rain’s stopped; God knows when to give and when to take away. I won’t need a taxi.”
“Don’t say that, Father, don’t talk of leaving without trying dishes made by no one but us. For the first time in years we cooked because we wanted to, because we really felt like it, and that makes us happy. We’re glad to serve you, but it’s difficult to sit and have a drink with you. We’re not used to that. We just cook, Father, and await the sleep of the just.”
As they said this, they moved closer to the priest. The murmuring grew quieter, almost inaudible. The confession.
“But you can’t imagine how tired we are of all this, Father.”
“That’s why I’m telling you to sit down.”
“No, Father, don’t trouble yourself,” one said.
“After all, we’re used to being on our feet,” another said.
“We suffer from varicose veins, but what can we do?” The third raised her leg with difficulty and unhesitatingly hitched up her skirt to show the Father her calf and most of her thigh, both swollen up like bladders, the branching blue veins, thick and strangling, veins Tancredo already knew about.
“It’s tiring work,” another said. “Especially the Community Meals. If it were just meals for everyone who lives in the presbytery, fair enough. But the Community Meals are torture. No one shows us any pity, Father. We have to rush from here to there; there are chairs in the kitchen, but we have to walk back and forth constantly, keeping an eye on things. Setting out plates and filling them while the oil bubbles, and careful, the potatoes are burning, while the soup boils, and careful, the potatoes are turning to mush, we have to fly about the whole time, and that’s cooking nothing but potatoes, occasionally a bit of pork, who knows what would happen if we were frying cassava and plantain, and the whole time, not a day, not one Sunday set aside by God, not a single morning’s rest, because God’s children eat every day and we have to prepare their food, it’s that simple; if we don’t cook, they die. Who knows how many miles we run in a single day?”
The youngest of the Lilias picked up the thread.
“And it’s not just varicose veins,” she said. “Doing battle with the coal stove, its plates old like us, they get messed up, they come loose, plates that stick out like barbs, sometimes we get burned.” And she showed her wrinkled arm, scarred across by a red blister.
It was the night of lamentations, Tancredo thought. A night he too had experienced, in his room, when the three Lilias had come in silently, each with a chair, sat themselves down opposite him and started to describe their tiredness, to show him their burns — couldn’t Tancredito speak to the Father and let him know they were ailing, in need of two or three strong girls to help out in the kitchen? They could not do everything on their own.
The wailing had worsened three years back, when the Community Meals had begun; penning the hunchback into any corner, they begged him to intercede with Almida on their behalf; they were dying, they said, sickening in the worst possible way, from fatigue and tedium both. With so many meals to prepare. Even if they were not special meals, just potato soup, creamed potatoes, fried potatoes, stuffed potatoes and mashed potatoes, potatoes in sauce, potatoes in a million and one guises, it was a lot of meals, a vast quantity, too many; they wished they were giants who could dole out potatoes to the whole world, but they were old women, small women, and running around every day is tiring; and besides, they had to take care of the Father’s exclusive meals, the sacristan’s, their own, also the cats’, and all at the same time, every day: either they really were old or from one minute to the next life had become tedious for them. That night Tancredo had paid no attention to their complaints, he’d barely heard them; he’d been astonished to see them seated on the three little chairs around his bed, the three of them wrapped in their black blankets, beneath the moonlight filtering through the window, their faces anxious, afraid, perhaps, of Tancredo himself. “We don’t want to believe,” they said, “that it’s Celeste Machado, God forgive us, who makes Father Almida forget about us.” “Why don’t you speak to him?” he asked. And they answered: “To the Reverend?” “Yes, to Father Almida.” “God bless us, we wouldn’t know how, that would be impossible. How could we complain to the person who provides our food and clothing? Maybe he should notice what’s wrong himself, but he has his duties too, he’s the spiritual leader of this parish, we know his work is unending, how could we ask him to take our needs into account? And yet, when he passes the kitchen and sees us and says hello, he should notice that we’ve been old for many years already, he should understand we’re no longer what we once were and realize that even one sturdy girl would be a help with the heaviest work, the washing-up, for example; we’re all arthritic, after the heat of the cookers we can’t put our hands into cold water, it hurts our fingers, look, we can hardly bend them; peeling potatoes is pure martyrdom, not because we’re lazy, but because we can’t stand the pain, it’s that simple.”
“I’m missing a finger,” one of the Lilias dared to say. She had said as much to Tancredo that night, and now repeated it to Matamoros. “It was my own fault. I was chopping onions and trying to remember a dream I’d had that morning. When I was having breakfast I could still remember it, and I felt happy because it was a happy dream, one of those ones that make you laugh to yourself like an idiot, and I wanted to laugh while I was chopping the onions, but I couldn’t remember the dream any more. . I just couldn’t; I think I’d dreamt someone had said two words inside my head, just two wise words I couldn’t remember, and trying to remember those two words made me cut off a finger all of a sudden, this one, Father.” And she held out one hand; the index finger was missing.
“Of course,” Matamoros said, “I cannot see it.”
“Don’t bother the Father about your finger,” another Lilia said.
“Yes,” the other said. “You already said it was your fault, so why go on about it?”
“My fault or the dream’s fault? I don’t know. I mentioned it so the Father understands that our invitation to eat is genuine. If we want to, it’s because we want to. For him, we’re not tired. For him, I wouldn’t mind losing another finger. I’m not just saying it. No one here wants him to leave.”
“Samaritan women, meditate on John, chapter 4, verses 7 to 30,” the priest said.
“That’s it, Father. You won’t regret it.”
The three Lilias made to leave the office. But all three, possessed and impelled by the same sense, paused unexpectedly in the doorway, putting their hands on their hips at the same time.
“Tancredito,” they said into the darkness, “keep the Father company. We’ll call you into the kitchen shortly.”
All that time they’d known the hunchback was there; all that time they’d guessed he was hidden in the courtyard.
With Tancredo in the office, Matamoros could raise the glass to his lips. Drinking without stopping, he served himself anew. He drank again, more steadily, then filled his glass once more. It seemed as if Tancredo was waiting for him to have a third drink, but Matamoros did not oblige.